A Casual Geek

Obsessed with that bit where P— told John to be a bad wizard. That they could write the history books later to say he was good, but what he needed to do now was to scare the shit out of people. What he needed was leverage.

Because that's what he did! That's exactly what he did. He got his leverage, he played the bad wizard, he scared the shit out of everyone. And then after the dust settled, when he was the last man standing, he wrote the history books to say he was good.

And like. The thing that gets me is. After all that, he named her Pyrrha.

They won. It wasn't worth it.

And like. It's also about how John didn't set up the conditions for the end of the world alone. He didn't do jackshit on his own. He had the magic powers, and he pulled the trigger, but they all helped load the gun. The apocalypse was a group project.

#like yes C— gave him very good advice that he should have followed re: vengence and spite#but John is not the only one who brushed her off#A— also waved her off with 'yeah we'll get to that after we've shown the bastards'#after A— and M— negotiated for John to have control of a nuke#John focused on the death side of his powers yeah but who was it thst went out and dug up a graveyard for him?#who framed him as a religious figure and compared him to Jesus?#he didn't come up with that one himself#john said he wiped his friends' minds to absolve them of the guilt for the parts they played in what happened#and while I'm sure he had other motives#it's astounding how well his stated plan worked @mayasaura

I'm always thinking about the implications of the mindwipe. Killing your friends while they're still alive and walking. Taking away their memories their selfhood and their identity but their guilt along with it. Washed clean of the original sin.

I love how despite not being a bender, Sokka is the biggest embodiment of everything the Water Tribe values in the show, both good and bad.

Change. Sokka who humbled himself when the Kyoshi warriors proved him wrong and took their teachings to heart. Sokka who always had a plan, a few hundred backup plans, and could still get out of a sticky situation on the fly. Sokka whose friends became bored and aimless without his quick wit and initiative.

Kindness. Sokka who went to save Aang before Katara even had to ask him to. Sokka who saw the humanity in an old man from the fire nation. Sokka who gave Jet a second chance despite being the first one to be suspicious of him. Sokka who showed Zuko to his room and held no resentment against him. Sokka who shielded Toph from falling debris with his body.

Ingenuity. Sokka who invented airships and submarines. Sokka who took down the drill. Sokka who broke into a Fire Nation prison rig and out of the highest security prison in the country. Sokka who levelled Ozai’s entire sky fleet in one tactical manoeuvre.

Love. Sokka who couldn’t remember his mother’s face but carries the grief of her death so deeply that he protects every woman he meets with the same unhealthy hypervigilance. Sokka who instinctually jumps to defend his sister despite their constant bickering.

Community. Sokka who gave up his childhood to become the sole protector of his village and dedicated his time to training the younger boys in combat. Sokka who learned to let go of his hypervigilance and put his trust in the people he’a afraid of losing so they can protect him like he protects them. Sokka who stood alone guarding the gates of his home as Zuko’s ship towered over them.

Repeat after me:

It is OKAY to have content preferences and to be uncomfortable with certain ships or topics, controversial or not. It is OKAY to distance yourself from such content and block certain tags or creators.

It is NOT OKAY to actively hate and harass real people for creating content of fictional characters that features things that make you uncomfortable.

THEY'A TRIMMED THE HERBS!

Source

Okay I'm gonna add some context in case anyone doesn't know or remember

There's been a group of people on the internet called "Team 0%" (link it to their website, where you can also find this info), who've been working towards making the original Mario Maker for the Wii U have every level cleared

They though this level, named Trimming the Herbs, would be impossible for a human and would stay uncleared, because it was clear tested using a hardware cheats, something though to be impossible for the Wii U until the creator admitted to using them 7 years later, so the team decided to not count the level due to this

However, the person playing in this video, Sanyx91SMM2, after 100 hours of practice and attempts, managed to beat it without any tools on April 5th 2024, becoming the first to ever truely clear the level, days before the servers shut down

To signify this, team 0% decided to make the completion percent on their website say 101%, treating it like the secret final boss of Mario Maker

The Goblin Emperor has the funniest answer to "why am I the only one in my family who wasn't assassinated" and the answer is that the assassin forgot you existed. Thought they could overtake the government by killing the entire royal family but oops they genuinely just forgot that the emperor had a 4th son.

Look, I know The Untamed has THE LONGING and I love it too, but we all gotta accept that the MDZS novel is unmatched because, my dudes, WWX defeats the villain by sabotaging his homophobia.

I know we joke (and we SHOULD) about jgy the shipper et etc but in the end, it’s whimsical humor.

In the scene where jgy has our heroes trapped, held hostage, and villian monologues about poor Lan Wangji’s unrequited gay love…

All this fake sympathy for LXC’s brother is 100% bad intent: he’s revealing a “dirty secret” to the hostages & Jin minions about his biggest threat (the biggest fire power) that would stain lwj in the eyes of the sect world. A secret that might repulse wwx when laid out publically - make him let down lwj easy at best.

(Recall, jgy is THAT GUY who killed his own infant son out of fear of public disdain.)

What is actually happening here is that he’s trying to shame them. Just like how he attacks JC in another scene, destabilizing him w his words, and plays mind games w LXC. JGY’s greatest weapon in his persuasion and narrative building. His words are just as much of a weapon as the string he slides around wwx’s neck.

But none of this plays out the way jgy expects it to AT ALL. He sees it going weird, kinda sideways, but is completely unprepared for what actually happens.

Which is a key component of the humor. But also a fucking AMAZING climactic moment for a novel that has reminded the reader and the characters over and over that they exist in a homophobic society where tainted public reputation and rumors can have violent, deadly consequences.

And what does wwx do in the face of that? Before jgy can start in on lwj w his word knives, wwx SCREAMS that he wanted to have sex with the man who was just maliciously outed. Like, yelps it at the top of his lungs

He grasps what the villian is trying to do and turns it on its head. He takes the power of the moment back. You want to other, to humiliate, and to degrade Lan Wangji? Figuratively and LITERALLY taking his power away? Well, fuck you. Actually we had. sex. MAN ON MAN SEX. AND I WANTED IT. AND ILL DO IT AGAIN.

The power of this wholesale rejection of jgy’s narrative, the sheer audacity of this gay pride rant, stuns & unhinges the master of whispers and wwx springs free from the trap.

The novel doesn’t allow us to forget about the othering that WWX/LWJ have just experienced. They are seated away from everyone else, people are uncomfortable around them.

This only underscores how absolutely badass it was. And how irrevocable. It forshadows what is to come, as they continue to express affection off on their own side, before “eloping” on their own at the end. (The only reason drama!LWJ can BE Chief Cultivator is that this scene never happened.)

But novel wwx and lwj don’t gaf. And that’s how they win. They craft their happy ending regardless of their society’s prejudices – you can’t erase them but you can refuse to let them change you, quiet you, isolate you. You can build your own patchwork families and proudly love who you love.

#as funny as the scene is it’s really whack to see the fandom#REPEATEDLY believe that JGY knew WWX reciprocated LWJs feelings#he clearly had no idea#he CLEARLY thought he was revealing a deeply held shameful secret and that it would drive a wedge between them#everyone is like oh it’s so obvious they like each other and the misunderstanding is just stupidity#but it’s not obvious#that’s the whole point#it isn’t obvious in a world where face is everything and LWJ is like#the EPITOME of public face#and WWX is cultivation world trash but also he’s powerful and clever and many things people are jealous of#therefore LWJ CANNOT like WWX#and WWX would never reciprocate bc he’d never be a cutsleeve#combine that with the tension of pretty much all of their dynamics#and ??? obviously people misread the situation#THEY misread the situation too!#but yeah agreed the point of that scene is the JGY has made a mistake#something that he doesn’t do often#but something that he’s done not only because of how he perceives reputation#but because of his relationship with LXC#who has misunderstood the situation in the exact way JGY has#that wangji’s love is not reciprocated and has in fact been REJECTED before in a deeply traumatic moment#(the either JGY knows about or has had implied to him and prob thinks WWX forget - accurately)#LXC is the only person he trusts and it SHOWS here in how stupid this move was on his part#there’s layers to it! mdzs is like an onion and i love it#mdzs#meta

Look, I know The Untamed has THE LONGING and I love it too, but we all gotta accept that the MDZS novel is unmatched because, my dudes, WWX defeats the villain by sabotaging his homophobia.

I know we joke (and we SHOULD) about jgy the shipper et etc but in the end, it's whimsical humor.

In the scene where jgy has our heroes trapped, held hostage, and villian monologues about poor Lan Wangji's unrequited gay love...

All this fake sympathy for LXC's brother is 100% bad intent: he's revealing a "dirty secret" to the hostages & Jin minions about his biggest threat (the biggest fire power) that would stain lwj in the eyes of the sect world. A secret that might repulse wwx when laid out publically - make him let down lwj easy at best.

(Recall, jgy is THAT GUY who killed his own infant son out of fear of public disdain.)

What is actually happening here is that he's trying to shame them. Just like how he attacks JC in another scene, destabilizing him w his words, and plays mind games w LXC. JGY's greatest weapon in his persuasion and narrative building. His words are just as much of a weapon as the string he slides around wwx's neck.

But none of this plays out the way jgy expects it to AT ALL. He sees it going weird, kinda sideways, but is completely unprepared for what actually happens.

Which is a key component of the humor. But also a fucking AMAZING climactic moment for a novel that has reminded the reader and the characters over and over that they exist in a homophobic society where tainted public reputation and rumors can have violent, deadly consequences.

And what does wwx do in the face of that? Before jgy can start in on lwj w his word knives, wwx SCREAMS that he wanted to have sex with the man who was just maliciously outed. Like, yelps it at the top of his lungs

He grasps what the villian is trying to do and turns it on its head. He takes the power of the moment back. You want to other, to humiliate, and to degrade Lan Wangji? Figuratively and LITERALLY taking his power away? Well, fuck you. Actually we had. sex. MAN ON MAN SEX. AND I WANTED IT. AND ILL DO IT AGAIN.

The power of this wholesale rejection of jgy's narrative, the sheer audacity of this gay pride rant, stuns & unhinges the master of whispers and wwx springs free from the trap.

The novel doesn't allow us to forget about the othering that WWX/LWJ have just experienced. They are seated away from everyone else, people are uncomfortable around them.

This only underscores how absolutely badass it was. And how irrevocable. It forshadows what is to come, as they continue to express affection off on their own side, before "eloping" on their own at the end. (The only reason drama!LWJ can BE Chief Cultivator is that this scene never happened.)

But novel wwx and lwj don't gaf. And that's how they win. They craft their happy ending regardless of their society's prejudices -- you can't erase them but you can refuse to let them change you, quiet you, isolate you. You can build your own patchwork families and proudly love who you love.

I like how @sauvechouris references that jgy broaches the topic but lets lxc keep carrying it forth. tbh that's how I see his style of insidious social engineering. That's always his plausible deniability. He just is benignly mentioning stuff, just casual conversation u know, just sharing concerns. (He's just feels sooooo bad for poor lwj, he just can't! stay! silent!) And LXC and other major cultivators always pick up the threads jgy has dropped. Even when lxc is HELD HOSTAGE by the guy, is he mostly worrying about why the heck the wanted criminal is outing his brother and dredging up his vulnerabilities? Something that makes his brother out to be pathetic and of "abnormal" habits?

Yeah he was sharpening his knives for a direct assault with that 'your life is in my hands' comment but I love love that initial chess move to set up lxc to be the aggressor FOR HIM. It gives you a little sense of maybe how these last 10 years have gone. Gotta admire an artist at work.

hottest sexiest moment in all of leverage is when “we are on a reset. the main objective is the girl, we find her and bring her back safe. we lose the chip if we have to, we burn connell if we have to.” and then “nate, if im engaged–” “do you worst.” and then “this is a goodwill gesture. what i want for it in return is your undivided attention and the benefit of the doubt. my name is nate ford and in a few seconds the phone is going to ring.” all with the screams of the people at the carnival in the background

The team was willing to kill everyone in their path to get that child back and honestly that is the sexiest thing on earth

“These guys are very bad guys, the guys that took you, okay? But I’m coming for you – me – and I’m going to find you and I’m going to bring you home. Now you tell me, does that sound like the truth?”

“…yes.”

stating to think there’s an inverse correlation between how good media is and how easily fandomizable it is 😁

good media should make you stare at wall for 2 hours instead of immediately starting shippings wars and coffeeshop au and slowburn fics

no no you’re not wrong but also

there’s a reason for this.

My personal theory is that if Media is REALLY good, there isn't really... space, if you will for fans to add or change perspectives on it. Too dense, too complete. Like how coral won't grow on plastic because it's too smooth

Whereas some half-baked hot garbage has got ALL KINDS of plot holes, incomplete characterization, warped timelines, missing worldbuilding and other Spaces for fans to colonize, like coral growing on a sunken battleship.

And then if a series just sucks too much, it's not fun to interact with at all, and people won't fandomize it because it's toxic. Like how coral won't grow on sunken piles of burnt-out tires.

I call this the Fandom Barrier-Reef Theory.

You're theory's almost there... but might I present for Further Conjecture: JRR Tolkien.

Lord of the Rings (both book and movie) is fun to read/watch, is objectively good, and also very occasionally feels like homework. It feels like homework when you ask yourself; where the hell is Moria? Why don't any of these elves speak Common? If Theoden has a huge ass castle in the mountains why doesn't he Just live there? It's homework but it's like when your teacher said you had to do a book report but you could pick any book you wanted. Or like the time Mr. Jenkins told us to come back on Monday with bugs and leaves to stick under the microscope.

It's also, objectively, great literature. It's very very probable that Lord of the Rings will be the sort of thing that's a standard of college literature classes in a hundred years.

I think, quite possibly, fan fiction happens when the author of the source material, either purposefully or unwittingly, creates 'space' for it. Usually by either implication or omission. This is why there's so much comics fanfic. Because there's no real cannon, other than the fact that Uncle Ben and the Waynes always die. There's so much space to explore, so many characters to interact with, so many stories that could be told but haven't been. It's why DC and Marvel keep printing comics. And it's why fans keep writing fic.

Sometimes a creator will have a vision of a story and it's entirely complete, the narrative is tight and you see the entire picture beginning to end without any gaps. But gaps don't necessarily make a work inferior, they just mean that the author didn't need to fill them in order to tell the story. I'll even posit that Tolkien left those gaps on purpose because he wrote fan fiction himself when he was young and encouraged young people to do so as well because he viewed it as foundational in the process of learning to tell stories.

My dream is to one day write something where the narrative of the story is tight, and you see the whole picture and you stare at the wall for 2 hours after you've finished. And then when you go back to look at it again you say; Hey, what about...

Because I will have left those gaps for you, just for you, to go on your own adventure.

to me, the funniest thing about “that’s rough buddy” isn’t the fact that sokka says something patently insane with zero context seemingly out of nowhere, or the fact that zuko clearly doesn’t know how to respond. it’s the completely incorrect use of the word “buddy.” zuko would obviously like to be friends with sokka, but sokka is not, in fact, his friend. this is the most time they’ve ever spent together, and it’s because zuko invited himself to tag along on sokka’s suicide mission. at this point in the episode, sokka still hates this guy, perhaps less than he did a week ago, but he still hates him enough that he didn’t bother forcing zuko to stay home, which means he still didn’t really care whether or not zuko lives or dies. which, considering that he had tried to kill zuko multiple times in the past, is not all that surprising. this entire episode is essentially just zuko forcing his friendship onto sokka while sokka is legitimately too depressed to care. so when zuko calls sokka “buddy,” there’s a spirit of dogged optimism characterizing that epithet, because in no possible realm would sokka consider zuko his buddy at this point in the episode. and that’s something we miss when noting the iconicness of this exchange, simply because, by the end of this episode, they are buddies, so in our minds looking back on these lines, the implication of friendship doesn’t feel out of place at all. and really, it isn’t out of place, but only because zuko’s tenacity and determination (in this instance, his determination to befriend sokka) has always hugely outweighed his ability to read the room.

Things fanfic is reputed for inserting into the source material:

Things fanfic actually inserts into the source material:

And so importantly, in prev tag:

#actual personality for character who was done dirty in canon

Padding across the floor

Viscount. You may not be aware of what my job entails as the royal head of security. My job is to protect the crown, to make sure no harm comes to the crown. To step in when someone toys with the crown's emotions, you see.

The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004) dir. Garry Marshall

one man's hyperfixation is another man's blocked tag

I get my media recommendations the old fashioned way: by watching someone I follow on here go on an unhinged reblog spree of media related content until I eventually decide to go "alright, what's all this then"

love that when she can’t use her powers chibiusa just starts biting people 💀

Sorry for repost but this is an important addition… the above comment said 500 yen is 5 bucks

It’s five bucks but also paper money in Japan starts at 1000 yen, or ten bucks. 500 yen is a coin, about the size of a quarter. So not only is it a comically small amount, he is in fact asking for literal pocket change.

I feel sorry for the Xuanwu of Slaughter. It was just sitting there minding its own business in a too-small enclosure that didn’t provide sufficient enrichment or nourishment. It’s not its fault that Wen Chao tried to feed a bunch of teens to it or that it was trapped by a demonic plot point sword. Killing it doesn’t even allow Wangxian to escape! They’re stuck there until Jiang Cheng and Jin Zixuan come rescue them! Extremely sad day for jianghu monster conservation. 😢