A Genie offers you one wish, and you modestly wish to have a very productive 2017. The genie misunderstands, and for the rest of your life, every 20:17 you become impossibly productive for just 60 seconds.
“Well, it was a nice day.” You kiss your sweetheart gently on the forehead and sigh as the last remaining seconds of 20:16 tick away. “See you at 8:18,” you say.
Then it happens. Every ounce of fatigue or hunger leaves your body. The face of your beloved is perfectly still, their expression exactly the same. The ticking of the clock on the wall has stopped. Once again, it’s 20:17.
You stretch your arms and walk to the table with the homework for the three doctorates you’re working on. The work is mentally stimulating and enjoyable, but it’s finished far too quickly. You check your pocket watch and see that not even one hundredth of a second has passed.
You knew it was too soon to be able to see any movement on the watch, but you can never quite help yourself from looking early on every 20:17. Time to move on.
You clean your home, do your budget, then go outside and fix a noise that your car was making earlier that afternoon. (Oh how you already miss afternoons.) Then you go back inside, boot up your computer (which magically speeds up to keep pace with you as long as you’re in contact with it) and check for any new orders.
You’ve set up a website for the small business you started called “Magic Elf Services.” People in your area can pay a modest fee on your site to have different tasks and odd jobs done by “The Magic Elf” at 8:17pm every day. It was a little slow to get started, but word has spread and these days you have a steady stream of clients.
The money that comes in from the business is nice, but you’re mostly grateful that it gives you a clear list of things to do. You print off your updated list of clients, step outside, and start making your way through the neighborhood with your to-do list.
There’s the apartments down your street where several neighbors have hired you to tidy up, do the dishes, and mop the floors. You do the windows too, just to see if they notice. There’s the large house across town that paid the “Magic Elf” to clean out the gutters. After the first dozen jobs are done, you manage to stop looking at your pocket watch.
As near as you’ve been able to determine in the past, 20:17 seems to last for approximately one normal year. But it’s not exact. For one thing, it’s hard to keep track of “time” when everything but you has crawled to an almost total standstill. For another thing, time seems to move differently depending on how “productive” your behavior is. One time you tried to spend all of 20:17 sitting at home in your pajamas, but that was getting you nowhere, so you eventually gave up and got busy. (Though you defiantly stayed in your pajamas the whole time.)
During 20:17 your body doesn’t get tired, hungry, sick, or injured. You’re essentially tireless and immortal for the duration of the “minute.” So sleeping or eating away your boredom has never really worked for you.
One of the houses on your list forgot to follow the instructions and leave a key for you to get in. At first you figure you’ll just send them an email telling them to pay more attention and that you’ll do the job tomorrow. Then you decide to go home, get your locksmith tools, and come back.
After finishing up all the jobs on your list, you go into several other homes and small businesses in the area, performing tasks you hope they’ll find helpful, and leaving a hand-painted business card at each one. (The business cards don’t contain your real name just in case somebody thinks “The Magic Elf” should be subject to breaking and entering laws.)
Speaking of laws, you head down to the local police station to pick up your case file. You’ve been in contact with a detective who’s been investigating corruption within their department, and your ability to investigate unseen and get in almost anywhere between the ticks of the clock has proven invaluable. You see that they’ve also added five missing person cases to your file this evening, which certainly raises your interest in the job.
You make your way through town gathering evidence, and start making your way to the outskirts of town. Since you happen to be out that way (and you’ve already solved three of the five missing person cases) you decide to swing by the stone castle you’re building and do some more work there.
The castle walls stand about 20 feet right now, but you know they’ll be much higher when you’re done. You’re far from any roads and pretty safely tucked away, so for now it’s your little secret. You’ve been excavating and moving all the rock yourself, which has been much easier than you first expected since your body doesn’t get tired or sore. You’ve also got a nice system of tunnels going underneath the castle, and you dig and build more of that network for a while.
All that time spent underground has left you feeling rather lonely, so you walk back home to see the face of your sweetheart. Their facial expression has moved ever so slightly since you last saw them, which is a comfort to you. Looking at them gets your imagination going and makes you dream up a story you’d like to tell, so you sit on your couch, plug in your laptop, and write a book.
After you finish editing the last chapter for the third time, you finally allow yourself to look at your pocket watch again. Three seconds have officially passed so far.
It’s gonna be a long 20:17.
Wow, Dave. You managed to take a concept that seems nice on the exterior and make it into a real nightmare. This is some good stuff.
Which is EXACTLY why you should never trust a wish-granting djinn.
Morally grey: A character who does too much bad to be a good person, but does too much good to be a bad person.
Sympathetic villain: A character who is a bad person, but whose backstory/character arc makes you feel sorry for or sympathetic towards them.
Anti-hero: A character who does bad things to achieve a good goal.
Anti-villain: A character who does bad things to achieve a goal that they believe to be good, but is actually messed up.
Just plain annoying: A character who does bad things to achieve a bad goal but has one throwaway line about a hard childhood that is expected to put them into one of the aforementioned categories when in reality it just makes them annoying
I think my favorite thing about Kim Possible is how weirdly mundane it is, for being an action show. Like most other teen superhero shows are very dramatic with huge stakes, but Kim didn’t even have any powers. She was just an exceptionally good cheerleader, she didn’t even have a secret identity. The villain wasn’t even some big baddie with a tragic backstory and weird powers, he was just some crazy middle aged dude with a grumpy assistant that like just happened to live in the same town as Kim.
They ate fast food in like every episode. What even was Kim Possible.
Don’t forget that:
Both her parents bent the dumb and unknowing parent tropes by both being geniuses and fully aware of their daughter’s superhero activities
The show also balanced funny and non-serious villains with regular actual big threat villains
Character development actually stuck past one shot episodes
Both Ron and Kim had relatable teen issues and they didn’t just give them to Kim, like Ron’s entire episode about toxic masculinity and male body image
The relatable and healthy family dynamics both Ron and Kim had with their families
Teacher’s who didn’t excuse Kim for her superhero extracurricular activities and forcing her to go through detention or pay library fines or take tests even when she just saved the world
The global spread of their adventures beyond being strictly in the USA and the respectful way Kim adapted to every culture she went to
The respectful way Kim met dignitaries and those giving her lifts everywhere
The vast allies Kim gains through the series through just her attitude and kindness alone
Their sidekick animal was a FREAKING MOLE RAT
Drakkon and Shego’s relationship was villain goals and I firmly believed set up Agent P and Doof’s relationship dynamic in Phineas and Ferb
How incredibly wholesome and inspiring he show was and how it was the animated Buffy the Vampire Slayer of our time
How Kim didn’t sacrifice traditional feminine behavior or interests or her kindness and compassion to be more macho or tough
Ron and Kim were our first shipping experience and than became relationship goals
Kim Possible is an iconic piece of 90’s television that has literally shaped an entire generation and if you don’t believe agree with me I feel so sorry for you
“Yes, being in a female dominated field, I do know what it means to be marginalized. “
oh
my
god
omg
oh my fucking god
The really ugly part is they’ve actually done multiple sociological studies on this, and guess what the result is? Men in female-dominated fields aren’t marginalized at all; they get special treatment and are fast-tracked to the top, getting more credit for their work, faster promotions, and greater pay and benefits than their female colleagues.
“if she eat the fruit, she a thot”, the Allmighty said
“all women are queensssss” the serpent hissed into Eve’s ear
HE saw that they had eaten the fruit. and so with divine fury, he cast them out of Paradise as HIS voice thundered across the planes
“This bitch sentient. YEET”
Jesus handed his disciples the cup with wine
“take a sip babes, for this is my blood”
as he cast samael the lightbringer out of heaven, the lord turned to his voice. metatron, this is so sad. play despacito
God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. Then said for all, but Noah and his family, “then perish”
And on the seventh day, God said: “It is Sunday, my dudes.”
And He told His followers about the Promised Land:
Moses commanded the red sea in the name of God, “Move, I’m gay.”
And the Lord spoke to his disciples, “Take, cronch. This is my body, given for you.” Then, lifting the wine, Jesus cracked open a cold one with the boys.
The blind man was made to see by Jesus’ hand, and he looked up in awe. “I’d like to thank not only God but also Jesus.”
The Pharaoh of Egypt would not relent, for he was the sand guardian, guardian of the sand, and the Israelites quivered before him.
Tied up and helpless, Samson’s wig was snatched.
On the third day, Jesus rose again. “I’m a bad bitch, you can’t kill me.”
“PSA: here are the new Commandments, thank you for coming to my TED talk.”
“Um OP literally created the world and everything in it but go off I guess”
Witnessing Jesus walking on water, the disciples were in awe: “Oh, my God — He on x-games mode”
PSA: journalists aren’t supposed to put names in the headlines if the person isn’t a public figure. It’s not a matter of maliciously not giving credit
^^^as a journalist, this is something that bothers me ALL THE TIME
A friend of mine on Twitter explained this the other day, so to elaborate based on what she said: If the name is not instantly recognizable the way a public figure is, then putting the name in the headline isn’t going to bring about any sort of recognition or connection in the reader, and doesn’t do much to draw the reader into the story. But something like “local teen” does create a connection by tying the person into the community, and encourages the reader to learn more about what this local teen has done. The name will be in the article itself, after the headline has done its job at getting the reader to look into it.
It’s worth noting too that usually, according to the Inverted Pyramid writing style used for journalism where the most important information is shared first, the person’s name is usually in the first sentence of the first paragraph.
Whenever I see someone get up at arms over a headline that says “Local Teen” and the first comment is “SAY THEIR NAME” I’m always like “hey, thanks for telling every journalist present that you don’t read articles and just skim headlines.” Really makes us feel appreciated.
I think this Onion headline illustrates the point pretty well
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