#Daniel Handler funny

[dont-read-this-im-dead]

"You should be taking a shower, but you're heartbroken on the bed, I hope so."

[sauxyan]

Went to a meet-and-greet with Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket at Doylestown Bookshop last friday! This is the second time I have met him, the first time I didn't expect to see him.* I don't like my photo taken but I love the funny photos he takes with everyone, so as a kind of last minute idea I asked if he would pose "with" my Snicket Pup (which I had shown him last time we met, lol) and I was prepared for him to say absolutely not, but...not only did he do it, he nailed it. I just told him to do whatever he wanted and I love how it came out! He said he always wanted to know what it would be like to be Bob Hoskins in Who Framed Roger Rabbit so I hope I got the right vibe. *It was at a play he was workshopping and everyone told me he'd probably be there but I was a fool and thought of course he wouldn't be, he'd be watching it remotely at MOST, why would be be in New Jersey?? Yeah so of course I was wrong about that. I'm an idiot.

He also signed some books for me and I gave him a gift (a hand typed/bound/illustrated book, my translations of a small collection of 100 year old works by Kenji Miyazawa). It was such an amazing experience, once again! If you ever get a chance to meet this wonderful man, do!

Also read his new memoir, And Then? And Then? What Else? It's really, really good! (I ended up with four copies by accident but I don't regret it because they each had something special attached, i.e. the first one came two weeks early for no reason, which allowed me to read it at my own pace before meeting with him, which made me very happy! Forgot to ask my questions specific to that book, though, damn it!)

[skippydiesposting]

Do you have a top ten for weird experimental books to recommend? 👀 (Minus Skippy Dies bc it's already on my tbr lol)

yes certainly!! :)

it's so funny to me and yet makes complete sense that every time someone sends me an ask about book recommendations they have to add the caveat that I don't need to tell them about Skippy Dies again. I love it. but as a quick aside that's relevant to this ask, I gotta say that Skippy Dies isn't even that weird or experimental of a book besides the structural decision of having the prologue take place 2/3rd through the narrative, and in fact I think that's partially why it often flies under the radar more than books of similar complexity which are more obvious about their weirdness/depth--House of Leaves, for instance, which imo is the only novel I know of that is as dense and full of meaning as Skippy Dies. and that's part of what is especially maddening to me about Skippy Dies, it entirely masquerades as a normal book. you can just read it and enjoy the story without necessarily going down all the insane rabbit holes that I have. but they're there.

in fact I think the most experimental/weird Paul Murray novel is The Mark And The Void, simply because it's so metafictional and actively deconstructing the idea of narrative storytelling while, in itself, being narrative storytelling.

anyway here are some other weird book recommendations, though most of them ended up being broad author recommendations:

The Crystal Eaters by Shane Jones - all his books are weird, but I especially liked this one, about a town that believes everyone has 100 crystals inside of them that deplete over your life/due to illness and injury

anything by Amelia Gray - definitely one of my favorite weird/experimental writers. I especially liked her book of short stories, Gutshot, and her novel Threats.

anything by Nell Zink - I got into Nell Zink a couple years ago and eagerly await every new thing she puts out; the stories are weird and character-heavy and I love her writing style. my favorite novels of hers are probably Mislaid and Doxology

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn - an epistolary novel in which an imaginary town, alledgedly the origin of the phrase "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", stops using letters one by one as they fall off the town monument dedicated to the phrase until someone else comes up with a new sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet. super fun read. he also has the novel Ibid., which I didn't enjoy as much, but is composed exclusively of imaginary endnotes for a biography we never get to see.

Watch Your Mouth by Daniel Handler - otherwise known as Lemony Snicket, this is one of Daniel Handler's adult novels published under his real name. (his novel Basic Eight is incredible and everyone should read it also btw) this one is super weird, sort of follows the structure of an opera and has some bizarre references to Jewish mysticism. also just as a warning if it's not your thing, there is lots and lots of discussion about incest in this one.

anything by Tom Robbins - nobody in the world is writing like Tom Robbins and I feel like I have to recommend him to everybody. I don't think it really matters which book of his you read, they're all equally bizarre and funny and satirical, but I think my favorites are Still Life With Woodpecker and Skinny Legs And All.

Chip Kidd's novels The Learners and The Cheese Monkeys are both a fictionalized account of a character who participated in the Milgrim studies, and they also talk a lot about typesetting.

The Melancholy of Anatomy by Shelly Jackson - short stories based on different parts of the body, always in strange and surreal ways: sperm cells are bovine-sized creatures that are farmed like livestock, a city with a menstrual cycle, et cetera. very weird and interesting. she also wrote the novel Half Life, another weird one about conjoined twins.

I Have Blinded Myself Writing This by Jess Stoner - probably the strangest premise for a book I have ever come across: the main character suffers from an affliction in which every physical injury to her body erases a memory. super strange and good and definitely experimental. it's small press book so this one might be hard to find, but it's worth it if you can.

thanks for the question! I love to talk about books even when they aren't Skippy Dies lol

[veryfergaliciousdude]

in the bad beginning part 2 on netflix mr poe has a haircut when count olaf comes in BUT HE HAS NO HAIR!! sorry I just realized that that’s so funny I love lemony (daniel) snicket (handler)

[averagely-lucky-eod-agent]

“Hello everyone! I’m Agent 13, (or Thirteen, however you want to spell it,) an EOD agent. There’s a small chance you’ve heard of me already. If you have, let me be the first to tell you that the rumors you’ve heard aren’t true. If you haven’t, please avoid hearing any of the rumors in the first place. I’m perfectly normal. Well… I do have telekinesis… scratch that. I’m no weirder than anyone else in the EOD. 

Starting an ask blog is probably the last thing I should be doing since The Agency is built around secrecy, but I’m incredibly bored, so send in asks and I’ll answer them with as much information as I can. And please don’t tell my superiors about this. Please.

Daniel Sans DNI”

[OOC] Agent 13 is an oc from my Handler Ollie au who’s mildly infamous for her remarkable luck. It isn’t necessarily good luck, it isn’t necessarily bad luck, but it’s certainly luck and she has a whole lot of it. She adamantly denies that fact. 

She gained her nickname during a brief, simple mission called Operation: Common Cold (frequently referred to as the “Arctic Incident”) that ended up being very complicated and taking 72 hours. It happened at the same time as Operation: Rising Phoenix, so it was largely overshadowed. 

Very few people know all of what happened there. What’s important is that she gained a bit of notoriety, people started calling her Agent 13, and Daniel Sans now hates her. She doesn’t like Sans either, but she doesn’t hate him nearly as much as he hates her.

Rules/Info:

-No NSFW

-No racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, etc.

-In case it wasn’t clear, the Daniel Sans DNI was a joke. If you want to send an ask pretending to be him, go ahead! That’d actually be really funny.

-In character asks are 100% allowed and encouraged!

-You can also ask questions to other characters (Phoenix, Ollie, Zor, etc.) but I still want to keep the blog mostly focused on 13. Maybe consider asking some other characters’ opinions on her and things like that.

-I might take a while to reply, apologies in advance.

[asexual-angsty-writer]

"Cuddle time is a must."

First time I post a drawing about my boy, Joshua but I couldn't help myself!

This is a drawing based on an AU me and my friend ( @gsstories ), where Joshua (human) is Daniel's handler. Semi, functioning as his translator during those early days as a newbie.

This is all based on @missterious-figure Wine and Feather AU. Which, let me say, wonderful au! I love the peacock trios design so much and its pretty funny to imagine Joshua and Daniel just watching poor Y/N dealing with those three.

Joshua could also fuction as a therapy human for these birds — he just likes taking care of people and animals.

[filmforager]

Anora: Review

Sex, Lies and Videogames

There’s always been a fairytale quality to the films of Sean Baker. Whether it’s the deluded aspirations of a retired pornstar in Red Rocket, or the Disneyland dreams of a young girl in The Florida Project, they feature protagonists whose fantasies are slowly brought down to reality. Playing out as a sort of Pretty Woman without the Hollywoodisms, his dazzling new film Anora offers a dark spin on the Prince Charming archetype, with hilarious and heartbreaking results.

In an entrancing opening sequence improbably scored to Take That’s ‘Greatest Day’, we follow the life of Anora Mikheeva (Mikey Madison), a stripper in New York. Shot to mesmerising effect by cinematographer Drew Daniels, it delves into the ordinary reality of sex work, where exotic dances and vibrant colours are broken up by smoke breaks and frosty early morning commutes.

This routine is disrupted when Anora meets over-excited Russian teen Vanya (played with gawky charm by Mark Eidelshtein) at work, who just happens to be the wealthy son of a tabloid-famous family. After a whirlwind romance where Vanya pays for Anora’s services as a girlfriend (they bond over sex and video games), they spontaneously get married in Vegas after just 2 weeks. But while Anora is lost in feelings of marital bliss, his judgemental family have other ideas.

You might have ideas of where the film is about to go, but writer-director Sean Baker upends these pretty quickly. When Vanya’s family find out that their son has married a sex worker, they send handlers Toros (Karren Karagulian), Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and Igor (Yura Borisov) to annul the marriage and save the family from ‘disgrace’. But though they look and sound threatening, their bumbling attempts to manage the situation lead to plenty of physical comedy, particularly when Anora gets into a bruising encounter with the trio at Vanya’s mansion home. Baker again profits from working with relatively new faces, with Borisov’s largely silent performance particularly standing out in his heart-warming sympathy for Anora’s ordeal.

Like in his other films, there’s also a great deal of pathos for those on the margins of capitalist society, showing how the rich and powerful look down on sex work. At the heart of this is a wonderful performance from Madison, whose feisty but tender presence holds the film together. After featuring in the Scream series and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Madison really steals the show here, expressively showing how Anora goes from euphoria to heartbreak. Thanks to this performance, you never forget about the person most affected by the chaos.

Featuring a tremendous breakout performance from Madison, Anora is funny, poignant, and Sean Baker’s best film to date.

★★★★

[aokozaki]

Funniest thing Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler) ever did was quote a poem in the last book of ASoUE that fits perfectly in context and also acts as a funny prank to play on the young readers devouring those books - by where if they try to look up the rest of the poem they'll discover the stanzas that weren't included in the book drop the f-word repeatedly.

Subtly encouraging young readers to check out a poem that is, perhaps, not demographically appropriate, also works perfectly in the context of what ASoUE is doing.

[gsstories]

Meet the newbie!

I have gone ahead and made the newbie of the casino, Daniel the Golden Pheasant! Have some lore!

Originating from a different business in Shanghai, China, Daniel would be one of the most recent exotic harpies to have been bought by the casino. In his former home in China, he was to perform just as much as he would here in the casino, often getting foreign visitors to come and watch only for him. He loved it there but the owners were tight on money after a rather nasty incident that came with a lawsuit against them and he was sold and bought by the Birds of Paradise casino. Now he is in a continent where he understands everyone due to the visitors being from all over the world when he was in Shanghai, he understands a lot of languages and English is one of them, but he never got to learn to speak it and so there is a bit of a language barrier there and it doesn’t help considering he is painfully shy around others due to the new environment he is in. The casino is just so grand and there are much more harpies than he ever met and he cannot communicate with them and even if he wanted to, he was scared. Thankfully, his handler is a patient man and even though he cannot understand a word he is saying, he still is caring for him well enough.

Daniel is a 8’6 feet tall ball of anxiety which only seems to disappear when he performs considering it’s what he did back in China. At first, people would have thought that because he cannot speak English, he don’t understand them either and speak freely around him. Jokes on them, he understands very well and has heard the latest gossip no one else has! Doesn’t have the means to share it though, aside to Abigail’s handler who is part Chinese and does understand him but he isn’t very comfortable around her just yet. He would love having his feathers brushed and he admires the peacocks greatly, although a bit intimidated by Moon who I imagine would sometimes poke fun at him cause newbie ya know. I imagine there would be very funny interactions between Daniel and the peacocks (the owls as well lol-) Daniel loves mangoes btw 🥭

Scenario: Worker: And then I found out it was because of the dog! Other worker: No way! Daniel, standing there: *is listening and understanding everything that is being said* 0-0

---- Sun: Oh look, it's the newbie! Haven't had a new bird in a while. What's your name? Daniel, nervous: È, wǒ de míngzì shì dānní'ěr… (Uhh, my name is Daniel.) Sun: HUh? Daniel's handler (Zane): Sorry Sun, he can only speak Chinese but he understands English very well! His name is Daniel by the way. Sun: Oh, I see! ---- Moon: This the newbie? No offense but I was expecting... more. Daniel: Tā hěn shǎn liàng. Bùguò yǒudiǎn yìsi... (He's shiny. Kinda mean though.) Moon: Oh riiiiight, you can't speak English. Wonder how that will work out for ya here, hehe. Daniel, tilting his head: *is confused at Moon*

---- Wine and Feathers AU belongs to @missterious-figure

The Handler, aka Zane, belongs to my friend @ikari-shinsei

Daniel belongs to moi!

[missterious-figure]

I have gone ahead and made the newbie of the casino, Daniel the Golden Pheasant! Have some lore!

Originating from a different business in Shanghai, China, Daniel would be one of the most recent exotic harpies to have been bought by the casino. In his former home in China, he was to perform just as much as he would here in the casino, often getting foreign visitors to come and watch only for him. He loved it there but the owners were tight on money after a rather nasty incident that came with a lawsuit against them and he was sold and bought by the Birds of Paradise casino. Now he is in a continent where he understands everyone due to the visitors being from all over the world when he was in Shanghai, he understands a lot of languages and English is one of them, but he never got to learn to speak it and so there is a bit of a language barrier there and it doesn’t help considering he is painfully shy around others due to the new environment he is in. The casino is just so grand and there are much more harpies than he ever met and he cannot communicate with them and even if he wanted to, he was scared. Thankfully, his handler is a patient man and even though he cannot understand a word he is saying, he still is caring for him well enough. Daniel is a 8’6 feet tall ball of anxiety which only seems to disappear when he performs considering it’s what he did back in China. At first, people would have thought that because he cannot speak English, he don’t understand them either and speak freely around him. Jokes on them, he understands very well and has heard the latest gossip no one else has! Doesn’t have the means to share it though, aside to Abigail’s handler who is part Chinese and does understand him but he isn’t very comfortable around her just yet. He would love having his feathers brushed and he admires the peacocks greatly, although a bit intimidated by Moon who I imagine would sometimes poke fun at him cause newbie ya know. I imagine there would be very funny interactions between Daniel and the peacocks (the owls as well lol-) Daniel loves mangoes btw 🥭

Anyway, I hope you like the design of my boi! Did him in like an hour after waking up today! ❤️💛

Wow!! I Do love me a golden pheasant!! I like his background too!!! Thank you for sharing!!!

[deprivedmusicaljunkie]

5 and 8 for the book asks!!

ask game

5. crowd pleaser: a book you would recommend to almost everyone

HAS to be my favorite read of the year (+ possibly all time): and then? and then? what else? it’s a memoir slash series of essays slash literature appreciation moment written by daniel handler (pen name lemony snicket). i’ve read it twice already and i just love his brilliant mind—he’s truly so subversive and intelligent and funny—you can tell that he really views the world with an entirely different filter. love him.

8. blorbo of the year: perhaps not your favorite of the year, but contains Your Character

i don’t have a literary blorbo (anymore), but i’ll say everyone in my family has killed someone because ernest cunningham, the main character, is SO pathetic and SUCH a loser. i’m honestly surprised that the series isn’t more popular because ernest is everything: he’s short. he’s unemployed. he’s completely socially inadequate. he’s divorced. he’s australian. everyone he meets hates him to some degree. he’s sad, wet, hopeless, un-charming, uncharismatic, stupid sometimes, and well he’s my silly rabbit. hope that helps.

[beatricebidelaire]

thanks lulu for mentioning jon scieszka’s who done it. i went and found the book and just started reading - i haven’t gotten to the lemony snicket part but this book’s premise is so funny and the kind of thing that i enjoy. i did notice that lisa brown is also in the sus i mean authors list and but not with daniel handler. not that handler is in the list himself. only lemony is.

[onboardsorasora]

Something something younger drivers fall in love with Daniel because he’s the first one to welcome them to the paddock and is always kind to them regardless of what the situation of their f1 entrance may be

Yes exactly!!

You're here on the big stage, nervous and trying to do well and not step on anyone's toes. Keep to yourself and your team and the people you know.

Then this hot as fuck guy that you've been crushing on while going up thru feeder series while he's winning and being funny and cute and everyone loves him. EVERYONE loves him. Comes up to you to welcome you to the paddock

And you blush and stumble thru your thanks and he winks and leaves and then you see your own media handler ALSO BLUSHING BESIDE YOU because Daniel is just so so hot and beloved and fucking amazing.

You realize too late you're in love with him too

[skippydiesposting]

Cam u give us some recs of Weird And Good Stuff? 👀

absolutely I can! I've been sitting on this ask for a few days because I wanted to give it the attention that it deserves and it's got me thinking a lot about the things that I personally consider "Good" and/or "Weird" stuff.

this is especially interesting to think about as someone who has Very Specific media tastes and did not exactly grow up exposed to the most mainstream stuff: I was raised by 90s hipsters, homeschooled, then went to an alternative school, and have only lived in one city/only worked at one institution my whole life--all of these were/have been great experiences for me, however I understand that this means I do not exactly have the best idea of what constitutes mainstream or popular media. I definitely have the tendency to lean towards pretentiousness/snobbery (as I have been told), in part because it seems to me that, by definition, the things that are part of the mainstream have less depth and heart to them than the obscure things; the things I have fallen in love with, by and large, are the obscure things. I have been confounded my whole life by the experience of coming across beautiful, meaningful works of art and then being baffled when nobody else is talking about them, as well as the mirrored experience of being exposed to the mainstream and being completely unable to understand what people are getting out of it. (are obscure and weird the same thing? something else to think about.)

that being said, I don't think any of these things are the Weirdest it gets. but they are certainly things beyond the general public "mainstream" consciousness, and they are defintely things that I think deserve more recognition as great works of art. just keep in mind I am aware that it does get a lot weirder and more obscure than this.

also, of course it's easiest to give recommendations if I already know the taste of the person I am recommending things to, so all of this will depend on your own personal taste, especially where music and books are concerned. but regardless, here are a bunch of my favorite Weird/Good things:

books:

-if you know me or have been following me at all, you already know about this but I'm gonna have to plug Skippy Dies. most perfectly constructed/researched/executed/painful book of all time. I will recommend it until my dying breath. this is one of those things that seems so exemplary of the genre that I absolutely cannot believe is not more well-known. however, I did also just read Paul Murray's third novel, the Mark and the Void, and that's something I can absolutely recommend as well. I think it's weirder than Skippy Dies, at least in that it heavily revolves around the metafictional and recursive idea that the author, Paul, has created a fictionalized version of himself as a character in the story who is himself trying to write the book that eventually will become the book itself. it's incredibly funny and smart and bizarre. also you will learn a lot about investment banking.

-I also must recommend the book that I was obsessed with before Skippy Dies, and though it wasn't to the same extent, it's still a wonderful novel that more people should read: Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr. it's similar in theme/message to Skippy Dies but much shorter and less complex. (the cover illustration was my first tattoo. I still love it, I just love Skippy Dies more. this book feels like my amicably divorced spouse.)

-Daniel Handler is well-known under his pen name Lemony Snicket as the author of the Series of Unfortunate Events, but his adult novels under his real name are fantastic, especially The Basic Eight. it's a kind of a satire of 90s true-crime tell-alls: think Heathers but self-referential and about snobby teenagers who are obsessed with poetry and theater. fantastic book. one of the best plot twists of all time. I also liked his book Watch Your Mouth: super weird story about incest and Jewish mysticism kind of told through the narrative of an opera.

-Steve Erickson is one of my favorite authors overall, and surprisingly few people know about him. his novels often have an element of surreal realism/magical realism, but it doesn't play too much into the plot; weird things are mentioned offhand and then not really treated as weird. there's a fair amount of historical fiction, and it's also common for his plot threads/characters to show up in multiple novels; he even does the metafictional thing of sometimes having himself appear as a character. my favorites of his are probably These Dreams of You and the Sea Came in at Midnight. But they're all lovely and most are interconnected in some way.

-Nancy Huston is another one of my favorite authors who people don't know about, though she seems to have more traction in Canada. I love her writing style and her stories are very character-focused, often about darkly intimate relationships and tensions between parents and children. these might be harder to find, but my favories are Instruments of Darkness and Slow Emergencies.

-Tom Robbins is fairly well-known, but if you haven't read him I highly recommend it. there's no one in the world writing like Tom Robbins; he's an excellent satirist without leaning into the cynical, and his novels are bizarre and hilarious while also seemingly to impart some kind of deep truths about humanity. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues is a classic, but they're all wonderful. I particularly liked Still Life With Woodpecker.

-George Saunders is also fairly well-known these days, but he's an excellent excellent writer. Weird funny true sometimes-satire. I recommend his short story collection Tenth of December.

-very well known but Geek Love (Katherine Dunn) is a masterpiece of the weird and disturbing. everything that AHS:Freakshow could have been.

-I really enjoyed Ben Lerner's recent book the Topeka School; like many things on this list, it's metafiction/autofiction, very strongly based on his life but through a fictionalized lens. it's a beautifully structured book, and you'll learn a lot about debate club and poetry.

-Jenny Offill's books Department of Speculation and Weather are both delicious little nuggets of insightful and concise observations. super short and super beautiful. they'll make you want to write more.

-Jamie Iredell wrote a small press book in the past couple years called The Fat Kid. I adored it. disturbing and surreal look into the ways that men destroy each other; an exploration of toxic masculinity without misogyny. highly reccomend.

-another gorgeous small press book: memoir called What About the Rest of Your Life by Sung Yim

-Amelia Gray writes wonderfully strange short stories. I love her collections Gutshot and AM/PM.

-Nell Zink is another recent author who I always jump at the chance to read. similar to Steve Erickson, her books always feel like a strange mix of surreal and realistic. I really liked Mislaid and Doxology.

-Maggie Nelson wrote a book called Bluets that I love, a meditation on being in love with the color blue. she also wrote the somewhat-more-well-known book the Argonauts, which is part memoir part queer theory. very good.

-Leni Zumas is one of the best weird authors around. her stories are always very visceral and surreal. all her stuff is good: her short story collection is Farewell Navigator, and her novels are The Listeners and Red Clocks

-Carmen Maria Machado has also gained some traction in the last couple years, and deserves it. she's an excellent horror writer; an expert at making normal things feel unsettling and threatening. she has a short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, as well as a memoir, In the Dream House, which is about her experience being trapped in an abusive queer relationship. it's so fucking good.

(pro tip: get an epub reader on your phone. libgen.is your friend.)

music:

-They Might Be Giants have been good and weird since the 80s, and continue to be just as good and just as weird. they have a massive discography, so if you're unfamiliar with them, start with the album Flood. or just start from the beginning. it's literally all good.

-most of these fall into post-punk/indie rock; some of my favorite lesser known bands in this category include Mighty, Weatherbox, Krill, Hop Along, and Shoe

https://youtu.be/S1ZBkmA-kS4

https://youtu.be/iH7WqUBVRDs

https://youtu.be/iX3dItyNnyA

-Pile is a post-punk/post-hardcore band that never gets enough love. genius writing, beautiful riffs, some of the best screaming around. another one of my tattoos.

https://youtu.be/XSJ6xdhClVU

-Fat History Month is delightful and lo-fi, if that's your thing: https://youtu.be/RtsAP0fdOXE

-not particularly weird per se, but not enough people know about Sir Chloe. their new album is flawless. it's just good music.

https://youtu.be/3x554vRA9Ic

-Man Man is delightfully catchy and weird:

-the co-creator of one of my favorite shows (Venture Bros) is now the guitarist in a band called Pageant Girls, and their first album is great. minor-key 80s synth ballad rock.

https://youtu.be/Zd9H_9BXsYA

-WHY? is hard to describe--experimental indie alternative hip hop?--but it's definitely weird. start with the album Alopecia.

https://youtu.be/acJ3hiRxWUk

-mewithoutYou is another of my favorites; strange tempos and spoken-word vocals and excellent screaming. probably the best band ever to see live. every album is good, but probably start with Ten Stories

movies and tv:

-most of my favorite movies are indie slice-of-life dramas about someone slowly having a mental breakdown. Magnolia is the epitome of this. also: most surprising twist in a movie you will ever see.

-all of Charlie Kaufman's movies are fucking weird. Synecdoche New York, Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation are among the weirdest.

-well-known, but stil weird and good: Donnie Darko

-my favorite lesser-known filmmaker is Mike Mills. his movies are Thumbsucker, Beginners, and 20th Century Women (i think he has a newer one as well) and all are excellent if you like slow, poignant indie dramas as much as I do

-a pair of Amazon shows that I don't think get enough attention: I Love Dick and Patriot.

-Venture Bros is the best animated television show of all time, and not enough people know about it. you gotta stick through the first couple seasons but I promise it's worth it.

-Fargo (the show, not the movie) isn't really obscure but it is really good. every season is a different set of characters and set in a different time period, but they're all interconnected. mostly centered on organized crime and the interpersonal shenanigans that come with that. it really seems like tumblr would be more into this show. season 2 and season 4 are the best ones, but you can watch any of them in any order.

podcasts:

I could recommend podcasts literally all day but here are some of the weirdest ones:

-Love + Radio: interviews with some of the most interesting, strange and controversial subjects. the editing is also wonderfully bizarre. I recommend the episode

-Appearances is another one of those things which is a semi-fictionalized retelling. it's about a woman trying to find the right partner to have a baby with while also dredging through the family drama of her past. beautiful and emotional.

-the Memory Palace: short vignettes about history. will make you feel serene and deeply connected to your fellow humans

-the Ballad of Billy Balls: part memoir, part mystery(that actually has a satisfying conclusion!) iO Tillet Wright tries to find the body of his mom's first love who was murdered by the police. incredibly touching and wonderfully produced.

-all of Jamie Loftus' podcasts: My Year in Mensa, Aack Cast, Lolita Podcast, Ghost Church. (she also had a book come out recently, Raw Dog, which I haven't read yet but looks amazing)

video essay(ists):

-along with the more well-known video essayists like Contrapoints and Defunctland, I also gotta shout out CJ the X, who makes excellently researched and chaotic videos about a variety of topics. one of my favorites: https://youtu.be/JuKbDpPAooE

unfortunately I'm not a huge video gamer--I mostly just play pokemon ROM hacks on my phone, which I guess is weird--so I don't have many recommendations on that front. (but also everyone should play Wingspan.)

however, Twine is a wonderful (free!) program you can use to make html games and I know that itch.io hosts a lot of them. so if you're interesting in making games, definitely play around with that.

well. this is way long and maybe I should have made it into a few separate posts. let me know if you have trouble accessing any of this stuff. and tell me if you check any of it out! I want to talk about all of it! and thanks for sending this ask, I love to write about all the weird brilliant things that I like :)

[afterthegreatunknown]

Hi! What are your headcannons for trans Duncan+Quigley? (If you have any) :)

:D! I'm strangely glad you ask!

When Duncan and Quigley were around preschool age, they were drawn to the boy's costumes in preschool, assigning themselves in the typical boy's roles when playing dress up with his classmates (who didn't mind it). This continued on into kindergarten as well.

Before the summer of first grade, Duncan and Quigley when out shopping for new clothes, found themselves drawn to the boy's clothes, buying some boy's clothes in the mix of it all to mix and match. Duncan more so than Quigley. Their parents didn't mind at all, telling them to buy what they feel comfortable in. And which each year, they bought both more and more boy's clothes.

Both Duncan and Quigley initially wore a mixture of boy and girl's clothes. Slowly over the years, they wore less and less. Duncan by third grade completely had a wardrobe of boy's clothes, while Quigley has the occasional skirt and dress that he wears with leggings.

While some kids bullied them for this, the rest of the students didn't mind. The teachers didn't mind also, and would swiftly give a lecture to the bullies and detention when seeing it. If they weren't around, Isadora would find one, knowing that these teachers take bullying seriously. Isadora also give them a particular death glare that scares them to where the bully will 100% stop (no one messes with Isadora's siblings except for her!)

One day, two bullies thought it 'funny' to stick gum into Duncan and Quigley's hairs, leading the short and curl style the Quagmires have in the illustrations, because there was no way the gum was going to get out other than snipping it off. When seeing their new haircut in the mirror, both realized this is how they want look like, how they want to be seen, that this is their identity.

Both together told Isadora first and she was happy for her brothers and for them to being happy as well. Later on, the boys told their parents, and they too, were happy for their sons.

Regarding how Duncan and Quigley got their names:

Duncan picked his name because one day their parents went for dozen donuts from Dunkin' Donuts, and when they returned, he made a joke about Duncan dunkin' for donuts, and he went, "Wait no, I like this!"

Quigley asked his parents for the potential names they picked out, and they oblige by giving him the list they thought they threw away, but didn't. The name 'Quigley' was last, and Quigley liked how 'Q.Q' sounded.

Again, thank you for strangely asking! I don't really talk about this particular headcanon, and I'm glad I got to here! I mentioned in the tags of a reblog post, this is a flux headcanon for me.

I sometimes headcanon the go-to common one in the fandom of Isadora being trans and Duncan and Quigley are cis, or headcanon that they aren't identical at all because Lemony is mocking the 'identical not identical sibling' trope because this is Daniel Handler, after all. This was a nice way to talk about the reverse headcanon. I hope you enjoy reading them!

[lone-nyctophile]

i noticed you mentioned Daniel Handler in one of your posts, (idk if i spelled the name right) have you read a series of unfortunate events? I fell in love with the show and then started reading the books two years ago. I ended up getting distracted from them after finishing the tenth book but I hope I can get myself to finish them this summer, they're definitely my favorite :)

(it's kinda funny how hard it is for me to keep up with my own reading, lol)

I read A Series of Unfortunate Events when I was middle school and it prompted my fascination with dark humour. I loved the narration style which was extremely witty and fun to read.

I loved the TV series as well. The actors did a really good job, especially Neil Harris who perfectly played the role of Count Olaf.

Also I get you because setting specific goals can sometimes just take the fun out of reading so it's better if we just go with the flow because technically, reading isn't an assignment.