sparklyaxolotlstudent

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

I feel like Bruce Wayne projects the kind of amiable playboy 'fun' vibe that he'd be the type of celebrity that certain interviewers feel comfortable surprising with puppies.

You know the kind of shows I mean.

The late-night talk show situations where they're making benign small talk with their smiling guest, and there's a segment where animals get brought out, usually to talk about some sort of ecological relief effort.

So you're watching your trash TV talk show late at night, and you get to watch billionaire pretty boy Bruce Wayne be begrudgingly talked into holding a (relatively) harmless creature which inevitably gets a lot of delighted shrieks from the audience as it starts being a lot more active than the handler promised. And to his credit, Bruce doesn't flinch, he doesn't freak out. But his eyes are a little wide, and his voice a little tight as the smile on his face takes on a slight rictus quality before he's inevitably rescued by an apologetic handler who is also laughing because they all know there was no real danger, it was just funny to put Bruce, who is an undeniable good sport and already laughing along, out of his comfort zone for the sake of charity.

Meanwhile, up in the Justice League headquarters, several founding members of the League are wondering how fast they can get a fake Oscar award shipped to the space station because fuck off. Absolutely fuck off, Bruce. Where the fuck did he study? Juilliard? (Probably.)

(Clark ends up going to a novelty store during the commercial break. It's faster than trying to get anything shipped, even with the infrastructure Bats built for them. He finds it several days later taped to his console in a conspicuously empty briefing room. It's gaudy and awful, the words "Best Actor" engraved on the plaque. No one's around to see him smile. No one comments when it vanishes. Everyone thinks it's been yeeted out an airlock. Dick absolutely comments when it shows up in the manor, stashed in one of the trophy cases that sprung up for all the bat kids' school awards. Bruce has no idea how it got there. Must have been Alfred. (It was not.))

Anyway, consider, for your amusement, Bruce Wayne getting highjacked on The Gotham Toight Show with a handful of wriggling puppies and, for a split second, not having to pretend he's delighted to be there.

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

The guy in panel 3 is actually Superdupont at his day job.

Check out the bonus panel on the site!

SMBC ◆ PATREON ◆ INSTAGRAM ◆ BLUESKY ◆ STORE

Buy this comic as a print!

A City on Mars is now out in paperback!

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

this feels like a good time to remind the internet of my favorite website:

it's a website where you can search any program or website and it will give you crowdsourced alternatives to that program, along with information about what features it has/if it costs anything/how similar vs different it is AND reviews from people who used it letting you know how it worked for them!

i recently ran a "de-google your life" workshop and got most of my suggestions of new programs from extensive alternativeto dot net searches. i think the reviews are especially helpful for if you want to see how specific features stack up against whatever program you're trying to get rid of

and if you're not sure where to start/it feels like too much information, i posted the slides from my workshop on my website here! it includes links to all the programs i talk about.

the slides don't have a lot of extra information on them since a lot of the workshop is me talking but i think they're a pretty good jumping off point

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

yeah this is where this was always gonna fuckin go, unfortunately

she’s 35 years old, by the way

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

this is, as the kids say, frying me (a glasses wearer)

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

BREAKING: Superman Spotted in Gotham with Billionaire Bruce Wayne?!

They seem to be quite close as well…

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

Only one person died. Only one singular person. In a superhero movie! The type that love to throw around casualty counts like it’s all a big game, waving off 70 people being killed in a handful of days like it’s no big deal, yet only ONE PERSON died.

And he was mourned. Superman cried for him—this stranger who gave him free falafel and, while facing death, told him that he still believed in him. Metamorpho, this cold-seeming man who is being actively blackmailed to do this, breaking down and taking the risk to believe in Superman, too, because seeing someone murdered right in front of him is devastating enough to take the risk. The newspapers run a front page article talking about how they’re going to memorialize him.

The stakes didn’t have to involve real actual loss of life. The threat of it was enough to convey the severity of the situation. Because human life is that important. All life is that important, at least to Superman who goes out of his way to save dogs and squirrels.

(Hawkgirl does kill SHEIN Netanyahu but genocidal dictators don’t count as human beings lol.)

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

Watched Descendants 4, and I have no proof, but also no doubts, that "Ella" and "Bridget" were originally meant to be someone else.

I remember the theory on tv tropes that Lonnie in D1 was meant to be Snow White's daughter, because in that movie the character is nothing like Mulan, and the other "Classic" Princesses are otherwise in the movie, so no including Snow White having a child feels a bit off, and including her as a reporter is even weirder.

Anyway, I think something similar happened, they managed to get Brandi and Paolo and they decided to change the characters to Cinderella and Charming, despite them already having representation in Chad in the OG trilogy.

My Conspiracy Theory is that Ella was going to be Tiana ("Get your hands dirty" is totally something she would sing, and having an attitude against royalty, except for her best friend, would also be more in character with Tiana than with Cinderella.

Speaking of said best friend? White girl who is ultra nice despite being raised (like) a princess? Besties with a mere "peasant"? Wears pink all the time? I firmly believe Bridget was originally Lottie, as again, it matches her character to a T. (Except for the being born a princess, but that could have been easily explained with her marrying the King of Hearts).

It also would match if Chloe is weirded out that her mother is working to the bone (instead of being mistreated by a stepmother) and her father is a lazy hedonist, instead of the balanced King and Queen that raised her.

Yes, I know Tiana was planned to appear as a different person, but the whole thing with Zellie/Meadow very much proves that things changed a LOT in the production of that movie.

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

Many of you I fear

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

I can understand how "modern person thrown into the past gets by pretending to be a healer/doctor" is as surprisingly common of a trope as it is. I mean I'm fluent enough at bullshitting to be pretty sure I could pull it off to impersonate a doctor in any time pre-1800s. If I have no idea what something is or how to treat it, I could just get the opinion of the other whatever-passes-as-medical-professionals around, but if their suggestions sound like bullshit I'm not doing it. And I'll beat the shit out of anyone suggesting bloodletting or mercury. With my healing stick. I've tied little bells on it, that jingle comically with every smack.

The awesome curative powers of my healing stick come from two separate sources: Placebo, and me using it to beat anyone trying to give my patients mercury.

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

My brother in the fam group chat: Girlfriend made me watch shape of water

Me: *has to remind myself it’s the fam chat so I can’t say the monster fucker movie*

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

*aborted little brother voice* it would be my turn on the xbox...if i existed...

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]

There is a species of butterfly that lives in the mountains.

When it hatches as a caterpillar, it lowers itself to the ground on a strand of silk, and then produces a chemical that smells like the larvae of ants. An ant eventually discovers it, lured by the scent, and brings it back to the anthill, where it is cared for by the colony until it pupates. After a few weeks, the adult butterfly crawls back up through the anthill, through the dirt and the winding tunnels, and out into the sunlight before it can finally open its wings.

Some say that the caterpillar “tricks” the ants into doing this. I don’t know if I agree – I think it’s too small a thing to accuse of guile, don’t you?

With this in mind: Once upon a time, there were seven dwarves.

They lived and worked in the mountains, mining for gold and jewels and precious things. And one night, after a long day’s labour, they heard a knocking at the great stone doors of their mountain.

Outside, shivering and small, they found a human child.

I’m sure you can guess most of what she told them. Stepmothers were involved – it’s not important. What’s important was that each of the dwarves felt a dire and pressing need to care for the child, and they took her into their home, fed her, clothed her, and gave her a warm bed to sleep in. And many seasons passed around that mountain, with the dwarves raising the child as one of their own, until one autumn’s day.

The girl laid, slender and still, in a coffin of spun glass. And some weeks later, one of the dwarves had the idea to call for a prince. This was of course the sensible thing to do, and the prince of a nearby kingdom who listened to the story thought an ensorcelled girl would be a grand thing to rescue.

Poor devils. It feels cruel to judge them. But there were so many questions they could’ve asked – what was this stepmother’s name? Was she real? Did she exist? Who had made the glass coffin? Surely one of them must’ve thought of the question. And why did it grow more opaque with every passing day?

Were they wrong to trust?

I guess it doesn’t matter now.

The moment the prince stepped into the subterranean chamber with the glass coffin, it shivered with a twinkling, plinking noise. Threads of glass exploded into glittering, razor-edged confetti.

A claw split the great glass cocoon.

The thing that spilled out of it, hulking and huge, knew in the fog of its mind, in a base animal sense that screamed, that it was in a room too small for it to fit. It wanted up. It wanted out.

In front of it was some twiggy little thing holding a sword.

It took its first breath.

The flames were the colour of cornflowers.

The dwarves fled. The thing followed close behind, up, up, up through the stone and the winding tunnels, not to chase, not to hunt, but to get up, to get out, out, out–

It struck the great stone doors at a run. They crumbled like gingerbread. And then there was sunlight, and the open sky…

And it could finally open its wings.

Convergent evolution is a hell of a thing.

The dragon, of course, lived happily ever after with its loot of gold and jewels from a hastily abandoned dwarf mine. Being much bigger than a caterpillar, we could accuse it of tricking the dwarves who were kind to it, had taken it in, had fed and clothed and warmed it.

It probably wouldn't mind.

[sparklyaxolotlstudent]