#do we get my point

[hows-itgoagain]

i love mashle to absolute BITS and yet i will oftentimes complain about what it lacks and what could be better about it (such as the very minimal and very poorly written female cast) but i’ve never really figured out how to properly articulate what my biggest issue is until just now.

mashle is a fantastic story, but all in all? it lacks consequences.

explanation under cut, it gets spoilery so i don’t wanna say any more and risk anyone seeing if they haven’t read the manga

there are no consequences to anything. like yeah, sure, IZ and his kids go to prison, but like… that’s it? so so so many things happen that just don’t even matter. if you look at my character hc post, a good handful of them are kinda reliant on stuff that gets reversed, but because i think there SHOULD be consequences, i elect to ignore that part.

domina died, helping mash— except no he didn’t. lance nearly died, and should’ve suffered issues from the extreme injuries he received— except he didn’t. dot should’ve gotten BURNED by that acid— except he didn’t. mash briefly lived WITHOUT A HEART IN HIS BODY, then had a replacement that was only really temporary, and there should’ve been some effect from that— except there wasn’t.

and those are just the super significant ones.

COUNTLESS people died and were injured by the hands of innocent zero and what he wanted to accomplish, and yet everything was just undone in a second. like it was nothing. like the sacrifices, the injuries, the casualties, the destruction, the pain of it all, ignored. like nothing ever happened.

mash won that fight, and they just fixed everything. there were no consequences to anything that happened. and it almost feels like none of it mattered? mash batted his pretty little eyes and told IZ he could maybe not be an asshole and he just agreed because fuck it why not.

the only issues left after that would be psychological ones, and it’s not like we’d get to see that at all because mashle isn’t that type of series, and it ends too soon after to even see how like, dot would probably have nightmares about epidem and lance, or how finn and rayne have to put in so much effort to fix their relationship, or just anything.

my point is that mashle lacks consequences to any of it’s events. and it needs that. if it had consequences (and if it had a better female cast) it would be impeccable. though, let us not forget i still adore it regardless, flaws and all.

[kwadlayns]

talk to me in french, talk to me in spanish 🍒

[egophiliac]

don't think I'm not still obsessing over 7-12

[nuclearanomaly]

Spite Loves...

[umblrspectrum]

part 4 of a lot funnier in my head than on paper

[shanastoryteller]

i know supernatural is the show of missed opportunities but man. the trials really get to me - what a perfect way to reboot and reset this show that you're artificially extending for ratings. it could have been really, really good, actually

so the trials of god is a way for someone to gain the ability to seal the gates of hell and the gates of heaven

they have the translation for hell, they know that slamming the gates of hell shut means calling all the demons back home and locking the key. it's logical, then, to for them to believe the same is true of the one for heaven - that it calls all the angels back home and locks them away where they can't do any more damage

peace, for the people of earth, outside of the influence of angels and demons. that's got to be worth it, right?

so while sam is completing the hell trials, they get the angel tablet, kevin gets translating, to figure out the angel trials. or maybe metatron helps nudge them along to figuring it out, since him being the big bad here isn't really relevant and they are in a bit of time crunch

canon doesn't tell us what the heaven trials are, except that the first one involves a ritual using the heart of a nephilim. they make it sound like they're carving it from their chest, but what i would do is

have a nephilim offer you their heart from their chest (gain their loyalty in a binding ceremony)

create grace from freshwater (there is no rain that falls anywhere on earth that is safe to drink and god said let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters)

find a human soul to guide you to heaven (babel fell but the stairway was built and those with wings have no need of stairs)

so sam is in the midst of the hell trials when dean sort of accidentally on purpose completes the first heaven trial and then the brothers are on parallel train tracks heading in the opposite direction

sam works to close the gates of hell

dean works to close the gates of heaven

demons and angels both working to stop them

sam completes the trials. he restores crowley's humanity and he dies and the gates of hell are closed

but that's not the end

metatron says they can close the gates if they're willing to pay the price. canon says the price is sam's death, but frankly that doesn't make any sense. what's the death of one human against the horrors of hell? and remember, metatron doesn't know the winchesters. maybe another angel would make this comment, knowing how the winchesters have weighed the safety of the world against their brother and left the world out to dry, would think this a price worth warning for. but metatron wouldn't bother, wouldn't even think of it, if that was the only price

the gates of hell close and malevolent spirits explode across the globe, evil spirits and angry ghosts causing death and destruction everywhere

hell serves a function and now the gates are closed and every evil human soul is forced to stay on earth, causing as much destruction as it can

that's the price for closing the gates of hell

except. except. aren't the hell trials interesting?

kill a hellhound. rescue an innocent soul and return it to heaven. purify a demon and restore their humanity.

the trials are not to prove if someone is worthy of closing the gates of hell. it's to prove they're capable of setting hell to rights

the trials are if things got too out of hand, if things were taken too far, and hell had to be put back in it's place. sam dies and ends up exactly where azazel wanted him - ruler of hell. all the demons and souls are trapped with him and what he has to do, while he has them all there, while they can't escape, is exactly what he did to get there

he kills the hellhounds, leaving only those meant to patrol hell. he releases every innocent soul bound there. he purifies the demons one by one, who he either releases as innocent souls or who to pledge to do their job as demons of hell - punishing evil, containing evil - in penance for what they did before (how do i even begin to make up for what i've done, crowley had asked, and this is the answer)

meanwhile, dean, heartbroken, completes the heaven trials and dies

and the gates of heaven slam shut and all the angels are stripped of their grace and expelled from heaven and dean finds himself in charge of an empty heaven

the trials are for when things have gone too far and heaven must be rebuilt, after all

good souls pile up, no one who dies able to truly leave earth, and given enough time they become twisted things that must be hunted along with the spirits of evil men and women who cause chaos from their last breath

dean has work to do. he has one angel - the nephilim whose loyalty he earned in the first trial - and this is what he has to do. he recruits more, to replace the ranks, he creates grace and hands it out judiciously. he sends them to guide the good souls home, using the stairway that the former angels wouldn't be able to use even if they wanted to, and each good act and deed earns them a little more grace. former angels throw themselves into the fight for humans, because they know it's the only way that dean will return their grace to them and lift them back into heaven

and in fighting for them, in living like them, they learn to love these creations of their father that they'd despised. they see what he saw and the thought of destroying this place in a civil war becomes unthinkable to them. they are once more the angels god intended them to be

in this, dean and sam fulfill their destiny as lucifer and michael's vessels. not in letting them in, but in pushing them out, in doing the work each was intended for but refused

only when there is only evil human souls being punished and caged, only once the demons are once more working to run hell and earn their release to heaven, does sam reopen the gates of hell

only when there's a full choir of angels once more, committed to their cause, only once there are souls working with reapers as it once always was, does dean reopen the gates of heaven

they're called the god trials for a reason. above and below, sam and dean act as god, putting things back in their intended places

they could stay. they should stay. keeping house, making sure it all goes smoothly, eternally keeping earth safe from angels and demons both

they're called the god trials for a reason. not even god could resist the paradise inbetween that he'd created

dean doesn't know if sam is going to return to earth. he might stay in hell, and if dean becomes human once more, then what's the point? he'll live and die a human, get stuck in heaven, and be forever separated from the brother he loves

sam doesn't know if dean is going to return to earth. he migh not be able to, might be stuck doing his work - sam assumes if the hell trials did this to him, then the heaven trials did the same to dean, and the idea that dean could have failed the heaven trials after he dies doesn't even cross mind. if he returns and dean's not there then he loses it all, he never again gets to see the brother he loves

but when, exactly, haven't they been willing to risk everything for each other?

dean falls as lucifer fell, throwing himself towards earth

sam rises as michael did after the fall, pulling himself towards earth the same way michael once pulled himself to the top of heaven

what's the use of being a god without his brother, after all?

dean and sam are reunited on earth, human once more

no more angels, no more demons, heaven and hell functioning once more as they should. we're back to basics, a clean slate, all of the rest remade and set aside by their own hands (it's literal and a metaphor, the way the show could have remade itself with the trials, after setting aside kripke's plan while at the same time recognizing that the design of it - two brothers who love each other going across america and fighting evil - is the thing that made it worth watching to begin with) and now it's them again, brothers forged in blood and sacrifice and love, and a new appreciation for the humanity they gave up and returned to

and then we get my beloved monster of the week with no stupid too high stakes, convoluted bullshit involved, beyond the occasional angel who dean refused to reinstate and demon tracking down miscreant souls and, every once in a while, a person or creature or something in between squinting at them and going - weren't you two gods?

nah, they say, all corn fed grins and the dimples their momma gave them, we're brothers

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

i vote that next year instead of reading Dracula we do a Jeeves & Wooster Book Club. those two never got the rabid tumblr shipping fandom they deserved (disqualified for the sheer technicality of being published a century too soon). we must correct this injustice

[andr0nap-02]

doggoframe 1999: the protopuppers

[bacchuschucklefuck]

class swap design masterpost for convenience (from top to bottom: bard!riz, cleric!gorgug, sorcerer!kristen, barbarian!fig, artificer!adaine, and rogue!fabian)

[quadrantadvisor]

Even after learning their secret identities, the hero community always insisted that there was something inhuman about the bats. No one doubted that their intensive training had a lot to do with it, but it never quite explained how they could evade a Kryptonian's super senses, how they could melt into shadows, how they could function so long with little food, little rest, little oxygen if need be. Most people dismissed their uneasy feelings, but there was something strange about the bats, something uncanny, something that made them different from the arrows and other vanilla human members. And, slowly enough that no one really noticed, it was getting stronger.

Until one day, during a diplomatic meeting with the ruler of the Infinite Realms, when High King Phantom turned to Batman and his brood and literally brightened. "Oh! I didn't know you had liminal members!"

Or: through a variety of factors (proximity to death, their own death/near death experiences, exposure to the Lazarus Pits, the favor of Lady Gotham, immersion in Gotham's own cursed ambient ectoplasm, being a close knit group who continued to expose eachother, etc.) the batfamily have been becoming liminal/ecto-contaminated without noticing. The powers they're developing have been subtle, and align with the skills they expect to have, so no one brought it up when they started being able to hold their breath beyond human limitations, or got so sneaky that they literally seemed invisible, or had a lucky miss when they expected a bullet to go right through them. And they always exuded an unsettling aura of fear, so no one else thought anything was out of the ordinary either. By the time they meet Danny, Gotham counts as one of the most fiercely defended ghost haunts on the planet, with so many territorial liminals patrolling the streets.

[aethersea]

I do think Blazing Saddles handled its one depiction of native americans very poorly, and the full extent of its representation of chinese workers on the railroad is they were literally just there. not even one single speaking line. unclear if this is worse or better than the redface.

it's fucking phenomenal at lampooning antiblack racism though. extremely blatant, extremely funny satire, which is constantly and loudly saying "racism is the philosophy of the terminally stupid at best and morally depraved at worst, and we should all be pointing and laughing at them 24/7"

plus the main character is a heroic black man who has to navigate a whole lot of bullshit but is constantly smirking at the extraordinarily stupid racists and inviting the audience into the joke. the one heroic white character is a guy who was suicidally depressed until he met the protagonist and they just instantly became buds, and he's firmly in a supporting role the whole time and happy to be there. the protagonist saves the day with the help of his black friends from the railroad, and uses the position of power he was given to uplift not only those friends, but all the railroad workers of other minorities too, in an explicit show of solidarity.

anyone saying "Blazing Saddles is racist" had better be talking about its treatment of non-black minorities. it had better not be such superficial takes as "oh but they say the n-word all the time" or "they have nazis and the kkk in there!" because goddamn if that's the full extent of your critique I very seriously suggest you read up on media analysis. there is too much going over your head, you need to learn to recognize satire.

[egophiliac]

still ruminating over Lost In the Book With Spooky Skeletons Part 1, so here's a selection of some of my favorite little bits! (...some more loosely paraphrased than others) (I just feel like Idia has no room to criticize in general, okay)

anyway, I'm sure we're just going to have a fun time celebrating Halloween and nothing bad is going to happen whatsoever! :)

[jojaxcola]

"I thought I was just gonna nail the impression and leave..."

fizz's visit (part 2)

[ jojamart mockumentary #21 ]

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[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji goes to Lotus Pier (No relation to the AU of the same name)

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[spongebob-connoisseur]

People like to characterize human Spongebob as some waifish barely 20 years old looking twink but honestly I think he'd be more like Pat from the UK version of Ghosts.

The shorts, the passion for what he does and his craft, the dorky glasses, the positive and all forgiving attitude, the knee high socks, the love of nature and the outdoors, the tie, the love for his friends and family, the shoes, the love of pranks, the OVERALL WHOLESOMENESS AND GOOD NATURE

[teratomatica]

you always land on all fours