#this is so many levels of not okay

[rainbowharadise]

⚠️ He needs to come with a warning…

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[artkaninchenbau]

I love The Girls

Especially Girl^2

[fandomunsexyman]

SVSSS is a novel with a fandom.

[ID: A Scum Villain edit of the "missing the point" meme. A bullet arcs from velinxi art of child Shen Jiu kneeling while furiously glaring. The bullet says, "People are not entirely one thing or the other and holding them to these extremes ignores the complexities that come with their humanity." It arcs over the head of a person across from it, who ignores the bullet and exclaims: "Wow!! Shen Jiu's only crime was being mean and was wrongly hated!" End ID]

[catocappuccino]

He got a sweater WITH A DOG ON IT?! So happy and joyous

[crybaby-bkg]

Arranged marriage AU with Barbarian Bakugou who is so daunting to be around at first. He’s all gruff curses and broad shoulders and scarred cheeks and neck and jaw. He scowls constantly, stares at you while your parents auction you off like some show pig, but doesn’t say much to you besides a grunt of his name. You’re terrified, thinking that he’ll be cruel to you, that you’re being set up for a life full of unhappiness and terror and regret.

But he’s the exact opposite. Bakugou is gentle in ways a man of his size typically wouldn’t be, but he shrinks himself for you. Not in a way that diminishes his status as the newly appointed king, but to respect you, show you that you’re beside him instead of behind him.

He picks you berries on his hunts because he knows the smell of a fresh kill brings nausea to your stomach. You find him along with the other maidens and helpers around his village, sitting beside them, big fingers holding tiny little flowers that he weaves into a crown for you. When he sets it on your head, he purses his lips, mutters something under his breath in his language that you’re still not too familiar with, but sure it means something along the lines of pretty and soft.

And when he finds you bathing in the river only few have access to, he’s sweet the whole time. Doesn’t make a spectacle of you being naked, and is relieved when you don’t instantly cower when he wades his way over to you. You try not to stare at the clawed scars that decorate his pec and jaw when he stands above you, and it helps when he suddenly dumps water all over your head. He shushes you when you splutter, continues on with cupping his hands and letting the water run off of your hair and down your shoulders, scrubbing at your skin until your flesh squeaks. He doesn’t expect you to do the same for him, but he hums in satisfaction when you push him down a little lower so you can wash the crown of his head.

[frnkiebby]

this motherfuckers smile i stg~🎃

[angelsdean]

me, dean, and everyone else watching: ok sure, sammy

[blackkatmagic]

Once again screaming wailing gnashing my teeth over the lost and ignored themes of distrust, worthlessness, ambition, and loyalty in Son Jin Woo.

Like!! This is a man who explicitly says he learned to never trust other people because they always turn on him and betray him eventually, and raises soldiers from the dead with the explicit feeling that they're desperately reaching out to him, specifically, to save them from death. He surrounds himself with an army of fanatically loyal undead, and it's mentioned a few times that he's just as fanatically loyal to them in return, that he mourns every single one, and it's purely his own willpower that lets him reanimate them, that how much he wants them to be his is what gives him the power to raise them.

He's quiet and ruthless and set up to be a remorseless killer who doesn't give a damn about anyone but those he decides to love, who follows and surveils his loved ones at all times so he knows they're safe, who uses people without pause and doesn't care what people think about him. He loves fighting and gets a thrill from every time he gains power, says explicitly that as he levels up he feels more and more divorced from humanity, and only relies on his shadow army! He's a villain-coded figure in the role of hero and it's!! so cool!!!

And yet the narrative takes all these interesting bits and just. never addresses them. There's no consequence of Jin Woo feeling any of this. The whole series devolves into bland power fantasy/Gary Stu ridiculousness where the whole world can be divided into Good Guys Who Love the Protagonist and Bad Guys Who Hate/Are Jealous of the Protagonist. What a waste. We could have had it aaaaaall.

[braisedhoney]

my brain rebels against me by shoving several incongruous fandoms into my face repeatedly with zero breathing room. and then looping them before i can actually draw anything.

awww iswm... i should... oh, tsp? nice, comfort zone... dp? sick, haven't seen danny phantom in a while. nice change of—disco elysium? sure! man that game was packed and—rdr2? oh. neat! didn't think that one would—undertale?? is it a video game thing, or—PHANTOM OF??? THE OPERA??? WHAT???

[xanzilopterix]

The only Heaven I'll be sent to

Is when I'm alone with you

[uselessnocturnal]

okok but you see it’s not about the cannibalism. it’s about the YEARNING

[broodygaming]

Man oh man, it confuses me, very genuinely that ppl dont think that Beau and Yasha were a good end pairing. That they don’t see it. Idk. I catches me off guard every time I read it because, to me I suppose, they go together like... Chocolate ganache. You heat the milk, pour in the chocolate and stir and stir.... and you’re staring at it and there’s awkward chocolate chunks and it’s just milk with chocolate, oh my god I’ve messed it up, it’s sticking to the bottom omfg ive wasted ALL this milk holy shit I’m an idiot and - Bam. Suddenly. One last little stir and it magically transforms before your eyes into smooth rich brown chocolate ganache.  

Idk. For me. They are this fascinating twirling of strong forces that at some point just meld together to make this beautiful thing neither of them could have ever even visualized. The dichotomy of two violent women who have been battered by the world. Told over and over how Destructive they are. Who have destroyed each other in all these crazy situations? Who have been lauded as machines of war and bastions of retribution or cast out as “too much to deal with”..... These two women who have been taught over and over again that EVERY single fucking hand that touches.... strikes.... So strike back and first before they get the fucking chance.... 

Gods be damned do they deserve gentleness. 

And not to say there’s not many places you can find that. But the idea of standing there, holding your broken parts and looking around to find someone to help you... Not fix you, just help you hold them all... And the peace someone might feel handing them to someone whose hands have known pain. Someone whose hands are scarred and battered and tough. Someone who won’t be shocked to see so many broken parts. Someone who is carrying their own armful and a few more of yours won’t be a huge burden. Someone who fucking gets it. You know? I just think of Beau sliding into that hot bath and thinking of the kind words. Not even just kind words, but the acknowledgment and the sincerity. 

The... “I see you. I see you. And I’m not looking away. I will carry these pieces with you, if you might also carry some of mine”. 

[last-in-line-for-hell]

Gonna say it here too but Wei Wuxian has nothing to be sorry for regarding Nightless City.

He tried to speak but they refused to listen.

He was attacked first, defended himself, and was condemned for it.

They wanted to kill not only him, but all the innocent people he was protecting as well.

People blaming him for the ensuing slaughter when his mind broke upon Jiang Yanli’s sacrifice (which was ALSO not his fault like c’mon???) make no sense to me.

They pushed him to it.

They spit on the sacrifices of Wen Qing and Wen Ning.

They refused to hear him out and decided he was done for before Jin Zixuan even died, let’s be real.

(And no, 3000 cultivators did not die at Nightless City. Wei Wuxian straight up questions the absurdity of such a high number himself.)

I don’t know, I’ll probably delete this, but it boggles my mind when people hold this against Wei Wuxian when he was the one attacked.

[heybiji]

hi!!! i just wanted to say i really love all of your MASKS stuff. i'm something of a newbie when it comes to the TTRPG community, but MASKS seems to be not very well-known and i think that's a real shame. i'm a huge fan of old-school superhero-adjacent stuff, especially the silver- and bronze-age ones!

by the way, i was wondering if you'd be willing to share some tips for a first-time GM? you don't have to if you'd rather not! i just figured i'd try asking since i was planning on GMing a MASKS campaign for some of my friends later, but despite my decade's worth of roleplaying experience i've never been in a TTRPG campaign nor a GM (or similar) role before

Thank you so much!! I was just lamenting about how I felt bad for the MASKS tag because it is now flooded with all my npc nonsense hahah so this is really nice to hear.

It's awesome you're planning on running a MASKS game for your friends!! There is an indispensable post on twitter I saw that has a LOT of great tips for running MASKS that I recommend checking out. But for my own personal tips that are just me things, here's what I got. Sorry it's gonna be extremely long-winded, it may take a few months to read through it.

(Note: I am also hugely into RP and probably put more into it than what is necessary, especially with MASKS which is meant to be able to be played out of the box. It was definitely not played out of the box in our case because I require a lot out of myself and everyone else to feel good about running something. if anyone else wants to continue seeing me as a normal human being please don't click the Keep Reading)

Since you're running it, make the world interesting to you. If the world runs around themes you're personally interested in then you'll have a much easier time coming up with answers on the fly. For me, themes I'm interested in that lend themselves well to a superhero world: money, power, family, celebrity, media, the 24 hour news cycle and the desensitization of violence. Because I'm interested in this stuff anyway, wrapping a world around them makes it much simpler for me to figure out how the world ticks and thus how the characters fit into it and how the world reacts to them, and I am DESPERATE to find out how the characters react to all the questions and expectations the world is imposing upon them.

Make sure your players have a good grasp of the tone of story so they can make characters that gel well within it. For me the tone is a lil more adult because I'm not personally into younger morality tale stories in tone, it's pretty grounded, and I think comedy and tragedy work hand in hand so I lean into them.

Talk. A lot. Talk about the characters, talk about the world. MASKS is fun because it's a LOT of talking and figuring out the narrative together. It's not a lot of crunchy mechanics, it's all around seeing how the characters react to the world narratively, all hurt and comfort and emotions which (for me) requires people to have a good grasp on their characters and the world. I like to give my players "homework" where I ask them a question involving their characters in some way like "what hero did your character look up to as a child?" so they get to come up with past heroes, or "How does your character feel about _____?" etc etc. The only fans are gonna be your table and fans love to talk so be the biggest fans of the PCs!!

Figure out your framing. I know in MASKS they suggest framing it like a comic book, and basically talking about the frames on screen. For me, because I'm more into movies and tv than comics, I frame it like that. So I have an active "camera" in play during sessions and will ask things like "would anyone like to grab the camera?" to encourage the players to put the character into a scene or "what does the audience see as the camera focuses in on your character in this emotional moment?" There is a LOT of playing up to the camera and framing the sessions as episodes of a show, so it's like, okay, you have several options but what is going to be interesting for the audience to see? I find this encourages the players to have their characters take bigger swings and feel comfortable letting us into how their character is feeling because it all looks GREAT on camera. The camera loves it. The PCs are the story after all.

Because I frame it a show, I also like to play individual ending songs over the "credits" at the end of each episode. So I asked my players to make playlists for their characters so if I feel an episode had a lot of emotional focus on one character in particular, I can play one of their songs at the end of the episode! I also made a general MASKS playlist with a bunch of songs from the era we set it in (2004) to pull from. It's a fun little addition that I really enjoy and that I hope makes it all feel more special.

The Dino Donut Effect: create landmarks in your world. (OK THIS IS GONNA BE LONG BUT WORK WITH ME HERE) They don't have to be locations, more solid landmarks of the story that the characters can refer back to and lean on to make the world feel more "real." I call it the Dino Donut Effect because in our world the thing that made everything click into place was talking out the backstory of one of the PC's figuring out they had the power negation ability. We were talking one night trying to figure it out; we wanted the character to fall out of a building and be caught by a flying superhero and accidentally turn off their powers, so they toss the kid to another flying supe whose powers also get turned off. But we were like... holy shit what is the height of a building needed that can handle this much action in the air without them hitting the ground in 3 seconds. So after a long night of talking about terminal velocity and looking at Splat Calculators we figured out the height of the building, and we needed them to crash into something that wouldn't fuckin kill them. The first suggestion was a truck full of bananas. Nah. We landed on a giant balloon that could take the impact. And the balloon became a giant T-Rex holding a donut that was the mascot of the city's beloved decades old donut shop Dino Donut. And so we decided that one of the two flying supes grabbed onto the kid and the other and flew into the giant balloon to try and keep them all alive, which destroyed the balloon, which was a city institution, and there was a crowd of children there that day that saw their friend Dino Donut die. Killed by a superhero. The balloon deflated loudly so it sounded like Dino Donut was screaming in agony. All the kids were traumatized (screaming crying throwing up), the city was furious because everyone loved Dino Donut, it was constantly in the news cycle, and it ruined the career of the supe that "killed Dino Donut." AND THEN THEY REPLACED THE DINO DONUT BALLOON WITH A LAME "UPDATED DESIGN" DINO DONUT STATUE which everyone hates and people consider to be a memorial to the old Dino Donut. ANYWAY, the Dino Donut effect is that now all the PCs have one single incident to refer back to that they all have feelings about. A couple of them were there that day and heard Dino Donut scream, one is now the protege of the disgraced superhero that killed Dino Donut so she feels uncomfortable talking about it, there's the kid that was saved that day but was sworn to secrecy by the supe so no one would find out about his power negation ability, and then there's the kid that wasn't there because she's an alien that just arrived to earth and now the kids have to explain the incident to her with all their varying opinions. Now the PCs' meeting spot is at a Dino Donut. Having this one solid incident that is both funny and kind of goes into the themes of the world has been an absolute treat. Creating "landmarks" like that in the world has done so much and now I'm like okay I'm gonna try to do this moving forward with any other thing I run.

anyway these are my extremely specific to me tips. my RP standards are kind of high which makes me a bit of a terror but also when the flowers bloom from it it feels GREAT. i'm not sure if this will help but hopefully there is something there that can be useful!

MASKS is fun and simple once you get the hang of it, though, so I'm sure whatever you do you and your players will have a lot of fun! especially if you're someone who is into RP which is the background I'm coming from too; MASKS is extremely narrative! i'll be looking in the tag for your game hehe

(The Day Dino Donut Died art by JD)

[cthulhum]

the way i see it the supernatural finale could be interpreted as disrespectful and a slap in the face to the characters who fought so hard to create their own story, write their own destiny, define all odds and live their lives outside of gods will in this case but personally to me the whole "this was always gonna end like this", "love was there and it didn't chnage anything. but it still matters that the love was there", and the fact that their story and legacy will live on and the fact that sam and dean died the way they were introduced to us in the very first episode and the way both characters always predicted,, is kind of,, its kind of beautiful,..