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[parodeity]

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[parodeity]

Duh.

[ it sounds entirely like a thing dave would want to see. ]

[splinten]

Oh.

[This is still surprising.]

They're kinda derivative. By nature, obviously, but you'd definitely do a more creative job with them.

I can show you some?

[parodeity]

What movies have you done?

[ that's a "yes" or asking what the options are at least. ]

[splinten]

Basically everything Lars von Trier made. Most Andrew Kaufman, but Adaptation is the best one I did. Armageddon, Waterworld. Some others I can't think of off the top of my head.

[parodeity]

Adaption if it's the best, then. Or Armageddon. John fuckin' loves that one.

[ for some reason. DAVE...can't keep all his disaster movies straight tbh ]

[splinten]

I don't know if it's the best. [Immediately backtracking because he's an idiot?] I just hate that movie most out of Kaufman's work so I put the most energy into it. It could be mediocre at best.

[parodeity]

I want to see it.

[ and he does? it's the first thing he's been less than neutral about in a good hour. or however long the stupid film was plus breakfast time. ]

[splinten]

Okay.

[Like Dirk won't jump at that. He goes to grab his harddive and plug it into whatever set-up they have to allow them to watch these things. Probably it could be wireless but Dirk moving around trying to look cool while filled with a weird anxious excitement is a hilarious image and should be actualized. So he draws up his pastiche and plays it.

It is.... probably funny to Dave, honestly, because of their sense of humour. It's absurd and highly ironic. Nic Cage always gives a lot of fodder for this kind of thing. The sincere core under the ridiculous mash-up mockery is Dirk's irritation over the lack of a sincere core, so a weirdly moving arc about identity and interpretation somehow is implied with the various Nic Cage clips employed in the narrative. Dirk wanted to give it the sincerity at heart that he felt it was missing. It's oblique and weird but if anyone can catch it, it would be Dave.

There are like a dumb number of stupid jokes THEIR HUMOUR IS TOO ALIGNED]

[parodeity]

[ there is exactly one other person in the universe who shares a sense of humor with dave this closely. rose gets his jokes and follows along more often than she doesn't, but his absurd roots and her gothic ones don't always overlap. jade and jon have never really come close to getting dave's jokes even if they laughed, and karkat didn't really have the patience to even pretend to try to understand sbahj even if he could quote some of it through long exposure to dave and rose. bro had maybe understood or maybe had not. it was impossible to tell and didn't even matter.

no one he's spoken to since arriving in sub has ever fully gotten him, either. the kharaa fucking adore dave's offbeat sense of humor, but he knows better than anyone it makes no actual sense to them. they just...like him. for some reason.

but while dirk's grasp on irony is opposed to dave's even if he suspects most people who know them might assume there's overlap or that they're working off the same playbook - while his grasp on irony is opposed and he deliberately puts in the sincerity that dave does almost by accident, he gets it.

and while it doesn't move him immediately, he does relax as the pastiche goes on.

eventually he even laughs, a quick huff of air more than anything else, one of the quieter varieties of dave expressing humor. ]

[splinten]

[Dirk is calling it a win. The more Dave relaxes and the happier he gets, the more Dirk himself unwinds. It isn't just their fight; Dirk is nervous about showing things he made to Dave. Dave seeming to like it is incredibly relieving. Dirk even manages to eat a few chips towards the end of things in his relief.]

[parodeity]

[ amused is not happy but it's as close as he's going to get for the foreseeable future and at least he is amused. he likes the ridiculous rewrite. it's an emotion and it exists and it makes him tired again but whatever. ]

You should've shown me this earlier. [ like when they first got here, immediately ]

[splinten]

It didn't really occur to me.

[Showing Dave things he makes can be weirdly nerve-wracking. Even when it's just making Dave a coffee maker by request.]

You can have the full catalogue of Di-Stri rewrites if you want.

[parodeity]

Why? Didn't it occur to you. Not the second half.

[ since that didn't really require a why ]

[splinten]

If you want to reach into the deeper analysis of things, then frankly, I don't really value most of my work. The only things I've ever really been proud of have been given to the people I love as birthday presents. It didn't occur to me that you'd want to see the bullshit I made up because I was bored and angry at dead directors.

The fact that I always really want to impress you doesn't help.

[parodeity]

You like seein' shit I don't value.

[splinten]

Because I value a lot of things about you that you don't. It probably isn't a surprise that the reverse is true.

You might not have noticed that I was nervous about handin' you even the coffee maker.

[god that sounds stupid]

[parodeity]

...I thought that was because you didn't want to give me even more access to coffee.

[splinten]

I was mostly resigned to that. [The thing that made him nervous...] My concern was you'd hate its coffee more than the other coffee machine. And then I'd have fucked up the one thing you asked me to do with it. That you drink even more coffee now is agonizing, but it really makes me happy you enjoy it.

[parodeity]

The other coffee machine made terrible coffee? [ like. it wasn't hard to improve on it. ] Literally always told you I wasn't sure why I was drinkin' it.

[splinten]

But you asked me, specifically, to make you one that made better coffee.

[parodeity]

You constantly impress me.

[splinten]

I don't like to let you down.

[parodeity]

I'm the only person who ever lets me down?

[splinten]

That is not how down-lettin' works as much as it is how your inability to share culpability with other people works. Like, if I let you down, you decide it's because your expectations were too high, instead of accepting that maybe I just fell short of what you wanted from me and that's on me.

[parodeity]

I don't have any expectations of you.

[ that's been a historic problem so he's decided he just won't? heads up. ]