#the rules of the genre

[themyscirah]

Just finished the Qi'ra saga (WotBH/Crimson Reign/Hidden Empire) minus some tie ins and I am....... not okay

Tragedy enjoyers you guys need to get on this one asap

[methoughtsphantom]

silly headcannon #2 that Bruce never got the reference that Jason always made of himself being short round (he always thought it was Jason saying he was short) until after he died and Tim, avid Indiana Jones fan made Bruce watch the movies with him, only the man breaks out crying., sobbing, full on breaking down over the two second scene that is Indy ruffling Short Round’s hair as he explains they first met when he caught the kid stealing from him, and then took him under his wing.

[bittasol]

smile, iruma! | hey ive been here before

[danandfuckingjonlmao]

a good animated show must have at least 4 of the following:

- gay

- existentialism/nihilism

- morally grey lead characters

- horrendously depressing themes/messages

- psychedelic weird shit that highlights the absurdity of life

i don’t make the rules (i do make the rules pls recommend me shows—i’ll put the ones i’ve watched in the tags, feel free to add any you think of)

[s0fter-sin]

one of my favourite aspects of supernatural that you very rarely see in paranormal shows is that sam and dean are already versed in the world they live in. there’s no sudden discovery of ghosts and demons and now they have to learn about them along with the audience; they are born into it and already know all about it. it allows the audience to follow their personal story instead of also trying to figure out this new world and its rules

the first season is full of knowledge we never see them learn; “w*ndigoes are in the minnesota woods or- or northern michigan. i’ve never even heard of one this far west.” […] “great. well then this [his gun] is useless.” (1x02), “you don’t break a curse. you get the hell out of its way.” (1x08), d: “it’s a god. a pagan god, anyway.” […] “the annual cycle of its killings? and the fact that the victims are always a man and a woman. like some kind of fertility right.” […] s: “the last meal. given to sacrificial victims. d: “yeah, i’m thinking a ritual sacrifice to appease some pagan god.” (1x11)

almost every episode in the first season is a monster they’ve faced before that they then explain to the audience in a way that should feel patronising; like it’s the same speech given over and over again but instead, the audience almost feels included in the knowledge. it’s stated with such an innate confidence and comfort in said knowledge that it feels like we already knew it too; “spirits and demons don't have to unlock doors. if they want inside, they just go through the walls.” […] “the claws, the speed that it moves; could be a skinwalker, maybe a black dog.” (1x02), “it's biblical numerology. you know noah's ark, it rained for forty days. the number means death.” (1x04), “no no no, not the reaper, a reaper. there's reaper lore in pretty much every culture on earth, it goes by 100 different names.” […] “you said it yourself that the clock stopped, right? reapers stop time. and you can only see 'em when they're coming at you which is why i could see it and you couldn't.” (1x12)

they already know and, at least in the first season, already have what they need to kill whatever they’re hunting; already know to salt and burn bones for spirits, fire for a w*ndigo, exorcisms for demons, a silver bullet to the heart for shapeshifters. there’s only three times in the entire first season that they run into something new to them; 1x14 when sam gets his first vision that leads him to another psychic, 1x16 when dean calls caleb for help on the sigil he put together and he tells him about daevas, and 1x20 when they find out vampires are real- and they only don’t know that bc john thought they were hunted to extinction and not worth mentioning

(there’s also technically two half instances if you count one of them knowing something the other doesn’t - sam figuring out the tulpa in 1x17 and dean already knowing about the shtriga in 1x18 - but those still rely on sam and dean having prior knowledge)

even when they’re uncertain about facing something, it’s not bc they don’t know what it is; it’s precisely bc they know what it is and acknowledge that it’ll be a difficult hunt (“i don't know, man. this isn't our normal gig. i mean, demons, they don't want anything, just death and destruction for its own sake. this is big. and i wish dad was here.” 1x04)

so much of the tension in paranormal shows typically comes from the main character(s) not knowing what is happening to them/the people around them and having to find out how to resolve it. supernatural is unique in that it operates more like a police procedural. the tension comes from solving the clues and identifying patterns to figure out who (what) the killer is and intercepting before they can take another victim

it’s such a different tone to go for when compared to other shows that came both before, during, and after its run. it sets sam and dean on even footing with each other since they both have the same knowledge going in, and it puts them in a place of authority usually reserved for an outside character

the shows i compare spn to most is charmed, buffy and teen wolf; every main character in those shows are brought into the paranormal world knowing nothing, putting them on the same level as the audience, and they have their mc interact with others already knowledgeable about that world in order to overcome their problem/monster of the week. the audience organically learns about this new world as the characters learn about it. it’s a sound writing strategy that prevents “as we already know”-style exposition but something that complicates it is if your world building isn’t unique or intriguing enough, this slow introduction can become boring

we’ve seen shows like these before; sitting through the same tropes of characters learning to use their powers, struggling with no longer feeling normal/relating to the regular world around them, and not knowing how much they can trust the people already involved in this new world gets repetitive. all three shows eventually reach the same level of comfort with their new world that spn starts with but if the characters aren’t enough to draw you in, you can end up dropping it before they reach that point (and often, before the overarching plot can really kick in and evolve the show beyond the villain of the week format)

it’s the superhero origin movie in tv format; dragged out and overplayed. dropping the audience into an established world of course comes with its own problems but you also have the benefit of pre-existing established character dynamics that let the audience slot in like they’ve always been there instead of just getting to know all the characters while the characters also get to know each other

sam and dean already knowing about the supernatural lets the audience immediately get to the core of the story; the conflict between sam and dean, the search for their father, and the mystery of what killed their mother

[loriache]

neon genesis meshi

[shikai-the-storyteller]

I genuinely love how each character on the QSMP is living in a different genre, so two characters doing the same thing have different consequences, and it has different weight on their story / the QSMP narrative as a whole.

For example, Cellbit killing 4 Federation workers is treated very seriously, and we know his actions will have serious consequences in the future.

Meanwhile, Etoiles wiping out every single Federation worker on his way out of an infiltration mission is par for the course because man's living in a shonen anime.

[prentissluvr]

need sam winchester biblically and its such a crime i can't be binging spn rn, but that does mean i will be thinking about him all the time without spending said time watching him which means i will have thoughts about him which means i will have time to write for him which means that folks should send me sam requests i promise i'm nice and a decent writer heheheh

[project-sekai-facts]

Kanade's another cut for the Twilight Light 3DMV is a direct reference to her untrained The Dream I Saw Will One Day 4* card.

Screencap source

[scribefindegil]

Sometimes I think about Teru And The Narrative and lose my mind. like. I joke that he's the only character who knows he's in an anime and that can be funny, but the truth is that he's so desperate to find a story to fit into because that's the only way his life will Make Sense. No, his parents didn't abandon him; they just had to go somewhere else to keep themselves safe, and he has to be the one dealing with the threats because he's The Protagonist. It doesn't matter that he's a kid; the protagonists of the stories he reads are as young as him and they deal with worse than this all the time! He has to {learn to fight off adult attackers} {hone his powers so he's unbeatable} {violate the Geneva Convention} because that's what protagonists do!

And then he meets Mob.

But instead of the experience making him realize that he isn't in that kind of story, it convinces him that he is, but he isn't the protagonist. Mob is. (And obviously, from our perspective, he's right, but he has the genre wrong. Teru has never seen a story with themes as kind as Mob Psycho's).

So then: he's a side character. He's Mob's rival (complete with intense homoromantic adoration). He redefines his role in the story, but he doesn't redefine the rules that tell him it's okay that he lives alone and is constantly fighting for his life. In fact, he keeps going out to find more ways to get in trouble. He goes to confront the broccoli alone. He makes himself a superhero outfit and starts flying around Seasoning City hoping he could gain some fulfillment from playing superhero. His after-school activity is taking down terrorist splinter groups!

Because if he tries to change the genre or abandon the conceit, tries to live his life as an ordinary middle-schooler, suddenly he doesn't have an excuse anymore. For his parents leaving. For what he needed to do to survive. It stops being fun and becomes horrifying.

In Confession Arc, one of the things that he has to face is that Mob isn't the protagonist of the world any more than Teru himself was. I don't think that he's broken out of his narrative thinking completely (he still calls himself Mob's rival), but it finally shakes some of those foundations when he sets himself and Mob on equal footing for the first time.

So afterwards, maybe he can become the protagonist of his own life. Maybe, finally, he can start making decisions about the story he wants to be in instead of trying to adapt himself to fit the one he thinks someone else has defined for him.

[hanzajesthanza]

(Adam Dudaczyk) The fact that vampires drink blood to get that *meaningful hand-neck gesture* - you made that up? (Andrzej Sapkowski) Yes, I didn't model myself on anyone here, I don't know anyone who wrote before me about the fact that vampires drink blood not to satisfy their hunger, but to satisfy their thirst for… entertainment. Texts: the guys sent me to get blood, I was flying drunk… The fun was great.

as i reread this i couldn't stop thinking of this meme

[allgirlsareprincesses]

Stop calling My Lady Jane stupid! It's not stupid, it's actually a very deliberate and carefully crafted show FFS. They purposely made it anachronistic and whimsical and sexy AF! And it's good at being all those things!

Just like how Bridgerton isn't real history either and it's not trying to be, but it's very good at being a romantic fantasy!

Stop trying to prove you have refined taste and just enjoy things!

[thatincorrectquotegeneratorguy]

I'm bored and procrastinating, hit me with your longest hyperfixation rant

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Tears For Fears - Everybody Wants To Rule The World

[vaguely-concerned]

Origins is of course the DA game most closely in conversation with and playing around with Tolkien (right down to the walking talking poetree haha) -- and even more so than most works in the larger western fantasy tradition derived from Tolkien's work that DA:O also hails from and owes a lot of its Stuff to, what makes the game so great to me is that it's doing so very deliberately, and is subverting and deconstructing those tropes and entrenched ideas in some very interesting ways without at all denigrating what it's commenting on. (it doesn't have the almost disdainful undertones of the vein of fantasy that seeks to make the world more 'realistic' ala the more tedious reactions to G.R.R.Martin's work, for example, despite having the darker fantasy bent to it.) among other elements it adopts, what I find the most fascinating is the choice to use the same literary device/conceit Tolkien did in ostensibly only having in-universe biased sources and works to deliver the world through (which I feel is an underappreciated thing about his approach but is part of what makes his world so enduringly compelling and real-feeling -- the feeling of real scholarship devoted/applied to a made-up world. the grounding effect of a good diegetic footnote about source criticism, truly).

many things to be said there, and I'm glad each following game has taken on different perspectives and lenses and traditions to view the world of Thedas through because if you stick with that one too closely for too long I fear we could teeter precariously close to Pratchett's famous and bitingly accurate accusation of most modern fantasy of that era just being about rearranging the furniture in Tolkien's attic lol. and while you could accuse DA2 (my perfect wife who has never done anything wrong in her life to be clear) of many things, that's not one of them, they are pulling on some completely different strings for that one and both the game and DA overall is better for it, to my mind. as so many things in this series: worth staying with and exploring for an installment even if it might get stale if all of it was like this! people are understandably sad about the elements from previous games that they liked which were lost along the way, but that capacity for reinvention is to my mind a huge strength of dragon age as a whole.

(I think Veilguard is coming in as a close second in Tolkien conversation-ness if only in outlining/revealing the worldbuilding that indeed may have been planned since DA:O around the animosity that SHOULD by all rights exist between dwarves and elves in this universe (as per Tolkienesque tradition standards). but doesn't really because you see: politics and the many pitfalls of conservation of knowledge over the ages. our ancestral enmity got semi-intentionally lost between the floorboards of history and you know what. maybe for the best. the humans are already up to so much shit you gotta keep your eyes on them at all times you can't be brawling with each other in the deep roads while they're still around getting up to their nonsense or they'll just pile up even more of it)

[windowsloth]

"My land is the land of the far horizons, of the wide sky. It is the land of grass and wind and galloping hoofs. In summer the wind can be as hot as the breath of an oven, and when the pampas take fire, the line of smoke stretches a hundred leagues and the lions ride our cattle to escape it, looking like devils.”

Gene Wolfe, Citadel of the Autarch

—

took another swing at some fan art I drew earlier in the year, this is much closer to what I had in mind. Definitely outside my comfort zone but I had a lot of fun