#theres only one episode out

[s0fter-sin]

insecure soap whose insecurities don't stem from a place of inadequacy

he knows how talented he is, how hard he’s worked to get where he is; that he didn’t land a spot on an exclusive highly skilled taskforce for no reason. he's confident about his skills; doesn't brag or show off, doesn't need to because he knows he'll always live up to and surpass expectations the second someone doubts him

but he also knows he can always be better

there's records left unbroken, mental walls he can shatter; if he just keeps pushing, keeps training he'll be more. he's always trying to beat himself, not in search of validation or outward assurance but because he knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that his yesterday self was lesser

slower

weaker

every muscle that burns and tears heals stronger so he dedicates himself to ripping them apart. scarred skin doesn't flinch from heat so he welcomes the burns. he’s strict with his diet and stricter with his schedule, he spends hours in the gym and longer at the range and not a minute of rest goes by without him thinking it’s time wasted when he could be improving, always improving

soap knows he's good

because he knows he can be great

and he won't stop until he is, no matter how many times he needs to break himself to get there

[greatgoddyke]

time to make your choice only you can be the one

[homophyte]

its an episode about the many ways morty fears rick.

its about being afraid of rick and being afraid of his sadness and his callousness and his power. its about morty knowing the power rick has over him and being afraid of that. and knowing that ricks decisions are fickle and often Bad and that morty is going to be beholden to them. when rick jumps morty is forced to follow after and pay the same price for no crime. and the fear that for his loyalty and obedience there is no reward . Morty Is Afraid Of Being A Dog.

if rick is in a simulation where hes given everything he wants and hes too selfish and cowardly to leave when it threatens his life, morty will have to die with him.

if rick is in a simulation where he has the option of pretending nothing is wrong and everything is fine and hes too selfish and cowardly to admit its a lie even when it threatens his life, morty will have to die with him.

if rick is forced to admit he cares for morty or die he would die before saying it. and morty knows it. and Im Going Crazy

[oifaaa]

Started watching a new anime and the first episode has me so bewildered basically it's meant to be a cinderella story evil step mom wicked half sister that crack only one of the things they have to show how horrible cinderella girls life is by having the boy who she has feelings for become engaged to the half sister and she is so smug about the whole thing despite this being objectively the worst possible husband choice for her since he's also so in love with cinderella like sweetheart your gonna spend the rest of your life with a man who is more in love with your wet blanket of a sister and honesty he's not even that pretty I get you hate cinderella but she's moving away you've gotta start thinking about your future

[ungodlysaltyinfrastructure]

What up gang 😎

Nothing heartbreaking here. Nuh uh. No sir-ey! Just a nice happy family 👍

(Yall getting a double whammy of an alt version of the first one)

Ok, time for incoherent ramblings.

Since AR 14 I've been thinking alot about Alux's parents. More in the sense of, what the fuck is going on with Alux's mom

The circumstances of Alux's mother's death are extremely suspicious.

She was

Murdered

It was IN FRONT OF ALUX

It seemed like it was an ambush of some kind.

There seems to be no clear reason

Why she died is ambiguous. Was it a planned attack? Or did Alux and his mother get tangled in the crossfire of a battle that didn't originally involve them?

If it was planned, why only go for Alux's mom????? Did they kill his mom, and then not realize he was just standing there??????

Or maybe during the attack Alux hid? And the following shots of his dead mom we see from his perspective is the aftermath of everything, and it had died down?

If this attack was purely meant for his mom, why?

If the QUEEN OF COZEN had DIED, what would the other kingdoms say?

What the hell did Hamatria say??????

Could the queen's death be, if not THE, then one of the inciting incidents that lead to the rising tensions between Hamatria and Cozen?

Mind you, all of this shit would have been like, 15 years ago. Maybe 20 if Alux is a bit older. So like. Wtf was going in back then.

Now, there is one thing. And it's that, how do magic users come to be? Is it genetic? Or can it be manually learned? With Alux, it may be genetic. (Mother fucker took one sip of pink and then BUSTed green crystals all over the place, he did NOT learn that manually) And if so, it would be from his mom. (Elric fucking died by a stab wound and Alux seems to have super healing abilities. Either Elric is not a magic user, or he is not the father.)

Either way, it seemed like Alux's mom had the Magic Gene™️

in a kingdom that's racist to Magic users.

…

Maybe Elric didn't hate magic users as much as Alux would put it.

Maybe he was just weary of Alux discovering his magic abilities in a kingdom that would probably lynch you if you were a magic user.

Maybe Elric didn't really like Petro, not because he was gay- *cough* sorry, a magic user, but that he was teaching his son about magic when his son has magical powers.

Not gonna lie, if I had lost my wife for being a magic user, and now my son was most likely one, and he was set to become king of a kingdom that *has the reputation of not liking magic users* when I died, I would be scared shitless for him.

That actually brings me to a question, did Elric start this whole “Magic user bad” thing in Cozen, or was it already within its culture and he just had to abide by it so he wouldn't get overthrown? Eh. Either way,

Whether or not it was a consequence of Elrics actions, Alux would definitely not have been prepared for being king, (That's kind why he's going on this self discovery adventure) so like…

Maybe… At least we have a motive for Elric's action of keeping Alux sheltered and inside the Castel? Granted, if Elric started the whole Magic racism thing then it's his own fault his son is not ready, but 🤷

That actually brings me to this.

Did Elric ever feel guilt for not being there for his family when they were in danger? Did he ever feel empathy for Alux or regret in his decision to keep him inside? Did he feel shame for not taking better care of his son? Did he sometimes feel like he did everything wrong but can't go back?

Did he ever feel alone after his wife died?

I'm actually kind of sad that Elric died so early on. A Lot could have been done with him. But maybe we'll see that in flashbacks. But that does leave room for speculation that could *in canon* be left up to the viewer to interpret so :DDDDDDDDDDDD I'm gonna rewrite Elric!1!!1!! Or maybe, add onto his character that wouldn't be shown within the series. Yippee🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

[fiendishartist2]

I saw him at a birthday party once. All the older kids were down in the basement playing video games, to hide from everyone. He was down there, too. He was older than the rest of them, though.

[cow-wife]

[seaweedstarshine]

Late to the game as I’ve kinda been kinda non-here for a minute but I scrolled through the Dot and Bubble tag, and thought I wanted to write this post into existence.

There's this part in Doctor Who Unleashed where RTD says this:

“What we can’t tell is how many people will have worked that out before the ending. Because they’ve seen white person after white person after white person, and television these days is very diverse. I wonder, will you be ten minutes into it, will you be fifteen, will you be twenty, before you start to think, everyone in this community is white. And if you don’t think that — why didn’t you? So, that’s gonna be interesting. I hope it’s one of those pieces of television you see, and always remember.”

And I'm like. Yeah. But the reason this works even as well as it does is largely thanks to the work of the previous showrunner with the previous creative team, which was notably the first era to have any writers of color (amongst other firsts in terms of inclusivity in directors, composer, actors). While Chibnall fumbled whenever he tried to write about race himself, he did have the self-awareness to have Black and South Asian writers writing the episodes where race is the focus (and a female writer for the episode where sexism is a focus; my point is, he seemed to know his shortcomings).

I wonder what the current creative team looks like? (not really, but I wasn't 100% sure for all of them)

To quote RTD:

“...before you start to think, everyone in this community is white.”

This is pretty non-self-aware, right? It's pretty “It is said, and I understand this, there was a history of racism with the original Toymaker, the Celestial Toymaker, who had ‘celestial,’ and I did not know this, but ‘celestial’ can mean of Chinese origin, but in a derogatory way,” right? (from The Giggle Unleashed) It's pretty “and I had problems with that, and a lot of us on the production team had problems with that: associating disability with evil,” right? (from Destination Skaro Unleashed)

—none of which are issues that should be overlooked, but think how much exponentially better they might’ve been addressed if he’d consulted with Chinese writers and wheelchair-using writers before going straight to giving the Toymaker weird fake accents and making Davros walk?

How many Black or non-white people do we think saw the Dot and Bubble script before it landed in Ncuti’s hands?

And this just keeps happening.

And like, from some of the shocked responses I've seen from white viewers to the ending of Dot and Bubble, maybe the episode's unsubtlety was needed? From the way RTD talks about it in Unleashed, the episode was written with a white audience in mind, Baby's First Microaggressions (where of course the microaggressions come from people who are pretty self-admittedly white supremacists). Ricky September, a more seemingly normal depiction of someone in the racist bubble of Finetime, seemed like an interesting element, up until the way he died.

The ending worked for me, because I do think the Doctor's reaction is true to how the Doctor would react. I just keep thinking of how much better the core themes could've been handled by someone with actual lived experience on the subject matter.

[sapphorror]

There's something quintessentially very sibling-ish in Dib's ability to simultaneously maintain his perception of Gaz as a walking personification of nightmare capable of turning his life into a living hell AND as the helpless little sister he needs to protect

[puppppppppy]

Ouhhhh friendship I love friendship……..

[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

[lena-in-a-red-dress]

Did you read the Adjudicator's backstory that the Director/people from the show talked about? And that apparently they decided not to have anyone mention it on the show because it would make the audience sympathise too much with her? It makes zero sense at all. Rats ate her mouth when she was a baby because of her mother's neglect? This probably around the 1930s and she survived? And learned to talk and everything like nothing happened? Those scars don't even look like rat bites to begging with

I haven't, but I mean. That's all well and good, but it's literally extracanonical and therefore doesn't count? And to further disparage the creators-- if they were worried about making her too sympathetic, they a) did a huge disservice to Katie McGrath's ability to act absolutely reprehensible, and b) did us meme-knowers a huge injustice by assuming we wouldn't gleefully ascribe to the "cool backstory, still murder" gif.

And also, why does she need to be non-sympathetic? She wasn't our villain. Or any villain, really. She didn't actually do anything except get under Mel Gibson's skin, so obviously we were going to eat her up anyway.

I also want to point out that if the creators had this backstory, and it's cool-slash-important enough for the creators to talk about it with fans-- they should have put it in the FUCKING show. Releasing it as twitter bonus content is a real dick move.

Sounds like a whole steaming pile of male-creator bullshit if you ask me.

[orcelito]

Watching the Obito Reveal in naruto and while I still want to punch this guy in the face, I'm rly enjoying seeing how emotional Kakashi is getting AND how supportive Guy is being to him. Like Fuck You, obito, guy is here and he's better than you in every fucking way. Up to and including giving kakashi the support he deserves ❤️

[florshedworf]

tierlists are fun

[cherry-treelane]

his hand on her arm/back is the cutest thing ever and yes i will be taking this two second interaction and obsessing over it

[birdricks]

just remembered the pheonixperson fight [walking into the ocean]