alex. 30. they/he. nonbinary.
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i‘m a leverage stan first and human somewhere down the line i guess
We have lost the meaning of queerbait
Just because what you wanted didn't happen, doesn't mean it's queerbaiting. It is now being used an excuse when the ship you want didn't get together. Queerbaiting has to do with marketing.
real people being partially closeted or ambiguous about their own sexuality while making Gay Art is not queerbaiting
Real people figuring out they’re queer through the process of making gay art is not queerbaiting either
the fact that generative A.I. has created a completely new fundamental doubt in reality (checking to see if an artwork we see is manmade or not) and doubt in the instinct of enjoying art is unforgivable. its sickeningly tragic, and i mean it. NOTHING is worth this price and i hope that everyone will one day realize this.
being anti ai is making me feel like in going insane. "you asked for thoughts about your characters backstory and i put it into chat gpt for ideas". studies have proven its making people dumber. "i asked ai to generate this meal plan". its causing water shortages where its data centers are built. "ill generate some pictures for the dnd campaign". its spreading misinformation. "meta, generate an image of this guy doing something stupid". its trained off stolen images, writing, video, audio. "i was talking with my snapchat ai-" theres no way to verify what its doing with the information it collects. "youtube is impletmenting ai based age verification". my work has an entire graphics media department and has still put ai generated motivational posters up everywhere. ai playlists. ai facial verification. google ai microsoft ai meta ai snapchat ai. everyone treats it as a novelty. every treats it as a mandatory part of life. am i the only one who sees it? am i paranoid? am i going insane? jesus fucking christ. if i have to hear one more "well at least-" "but it does-" "but you can-" im about to lose it. i shouldnt have to jump through hoops to avoid the evil machine. have you no principles? no goddamn spine? am i the weird one here?
Everyone misunderstands what makes Nate so scary. What makes Nate scary is not that he might snap and kill someone. What makes Nate scary is that if he wants you to die, you will die, and you will do it to yourself. You will walk onto the platform and put your head into the noose and pull the lever, and you could turn around and stop at any time but you won't, because he's calculated everything and he knows exactly what will make you want to do all of that. He'll never pull the trigger because he'll never need to.
if you watch Leverage and wonder about the real cases behind the fictionalised (but sadly very much reality-inspired) marks on the show, i highly recommend listening to the podcast Swindled. it explores white collar crimes and corruption, with many of the cases and people discussed being real life examples of the cases and marks on Leverage. some of them are cases that directly inspired Leverage marks & episodes. i’d especially recommend episode 10: The Judges (Kids for Cash), which explains the true story of the scheme portrayed in The Jailhouse Job episode of Leverage. the difference between Leverage and real life? in Leverage, the people being unjustly imprisoned so that corrupt judges could get money from private prisons were adults. in real life, they were children. it’s an extremely upsetting case but an important one to hear, imo.
i like the extra details and context you can get from the podcast. if you get a bit lost sometimes when hearing about the financial details of these situations, the explanations in the podcast really helped me understand what was going on. i also feel like it’s taught me more about how to spot scams and corporate wrongdoings.
re: the louvre heist…. i imagine parker woke up from a nap to 52 missed calls from the team, silently appeared behind them in the HQ (and scared the shit out of them in doing so), and then got offended when they explained why they were calling - because she would never be so sloppy if she were robbing the louvre.
"seven minutes? pshh! it shouldn’t even take two! and who takes a basket lift to a heist? climb the wall yourself like a real thief. even that guy who got caught for the musée d’art moderne heist knew that. amateur hour over here, am i right? i wouldn’t bother with the louvre again anyway. they’ve had security concerns in the news for months. where’s the challenge in that? a chronically understaffed, giant old building with a bajillion sparkly expensive things… it’s just asking to get all heisted up! i’m surprised it took 28 years since i stole that corot for the place to be robbed again. *sigh*… that was one of the earliest commissioned jobs i took. brings back memories. beautiful, beautiful cash…".
it's 5am and my head hurts and I should be sleeping but I can't stop thinking about Azune using Mending on Bolaire. "I would show you," Bolaire says, fissures in his voice, in his composure, because it is so important that these people believe him. I can show you my body, my seams, my secrets, the most flawed and vulnerable parts of me. And then Azune, gentle as can be, says: "No, it's okay. That's not what I'm looking for. Bolaire, that's not what I'm looking for."
And he has been looking. While Hal asks his questions and Murray stares in half-wonder and half-glee. He is the one looking. He touched Bolaire's "face" before: "Does this feel like flesh?" searching for something living and person-like. And earlier: "Are you alive?" asking for sentience, intelligence, compassion. But Bolaire can't give him either. "How would I know?" and "It depends on your definition of alive." But still, even then, Azune casts Mending.
(And if you think about it, I feel like this is the same as Cure Wounds. This is the same as laying on hands and attempting to heal someone. Bolaire can't be stitched back together the way a flesh and blood body can, but his shape, his form, it can remember that it once was whole and return to that wholeness.)
Azune, hearing that Bolaire cannot confirm their personhood, does not draw back, does not reject or judge, he heals Bolaire, or the closest possible thing he can do for a person that is also an object. And it feels like such a monumental acknowledgement of Bolaire as more than a thing, with such a simple gesture. Azune could have easily sided with Thjazi's perspective on Bolaire, any of them could have, but instead he offers them a kindness, an intimacy, a reassurance. He says: you are person enough for me to put back together again if you were harmed, and this is how I would do it.
And most heart wrenching of all is the response to this gesture, "Oh, interesting," Talesin says, "I don't know [how it would affect me]. I hadn't even thought about that." How else would they heal you, Bolaire? If not with this? But of course you wouldn't consider that, because who would heal a thing?
Azune Nayar would. Azune Nayar who prays the names of the dead and trusts his loved ones implicitly and cares so deeply he stomachs unimaginable pain instead of ever forgetting. He would imagine a way to tell you that you are safe, and accepted, and that you are a person to him, all in one fell swoop. And I hope to the gods they don't forget he did cast that before they were interrupted, because I want to know what a healing spell that is a remembering spell does to an object this ancient and I want to know how that object/person feels about being healed, or even the gesture of it
i can‘t fully put my finger on it yet, but already after the first episode and even more so now after the second, my emotional reaction to thjazi fang and the connections he had with the people surrounding him at the wake, it‘s ringing all the same bells and pressing all the same buttons as molly
in a different universe, a different timeline, a different world, this is how the story of the mighty nein would go. it starts with molly‘s death—and every soul he‘s touched comes together at his wake. this is how the mighty nein meet. how they start. it would work so well
idk man,,, there‘s just something about this revolutionary, this man of many faces, this mischief maker, hero, traitor, thief. this family man. with a smirk on his face, making even the most down to earth people believe he may still rise from the dead. it‘s just,,, that‘s mollymauk tealeaf. man that you are, thjazi fang, you already live in my brain rent free
thinking about this again. i don‘t even think it was mainly thjazi fang‘s whole deal that made me go down this road
it‘s the coinciding of this opening act of campaign 4 with the release of the animated mighty nein trailer. it‘s the way mollymauk is made to narrate those first looks at the animated show
i could absolutely see them making this a thing for the show as a whole—mollymauk as the narrator. the one to tell the story that brings them all together. the circus man, announcing his act. his best show yet. a bit of sleight of hand here, a bit of misdirection there, and voilà. a bunch of assholes are a family
and we all know where it leads, we all know how that story ends—and then doesn‘t. and honestly? i could see them pulling off the narration through molly even after his death. or at least reintroduce his narrative back into the story once lucian is revived
and i think that‘s also—at least partially—why thjazi‘s whole vibe gives me such strong mollymauk feelings. although not literally, but in the way brennan weaves the story and ties these characters to thjazi fang, tells the little flashbacks and remembered moments, it is as if thjazi gets to tell his own story postmortem. he‘s haunting the narrative he was supposed to tell
and if that isn‘t a mollymauk tealeaf special, i don‘t know what is
so, episode 3, right? right. not the most thjazi centered episode, so i wasn‘t expecting to add onto this again, but then brennan threw in this gorgeous bit for thimble‘s insight check on wick:
thjazi believed in two things. he believed above all that despite all of the darkness in the world, there was always hope that people might turn and choose a better path, even if it is hard. and he also believed if you had a rich kid in your pocket to help pave the way, that is not a ticket you throw out.
and i mean,,, this??? this screams mollymauk tealeaf. it is so loud
the absolute faith in the good of humanity, the belief that people can change and grow and learn, and that this is something to make space for, that people deserve the opportunity to become better—that is so inherent to molly as a character. and of course, so is using the privilege of those people to their full extent
feeling some type of way about hal's house being a nexus of established safety and solace. everywhere else in the city is a place of danger, intrigue, and corruption, but the rookery is if not exempt from that then at the very least the hooks aren't dug quite so deep around the fang residence.
the funeral of thjazi fang drew in conspirators, arcanists, and those with their hands wrist deep in schemes that would get them executed at best if caught, and yet not a single armed force marched on the rookery even if it would've been the easiest way to round them all up. the sundered houses' influence stretches far across the city, but has yet to stretch quite as far as hal's doorstep... the power of community and hospitality, "always and for all", acting as a shield...
feeling some type of way about thjazi fang. we have such an idealized posthumous image of who he was as a person. we don't actually know for a fact if he was as wonderful as thimble remembers or as horrible as julien describes. we don't even know what his motives were. we only know the things that he did and how they affected everyone around him. even his death was a performance, his last act intended to disrupt the plans of those in power. all we have are scattered accounts of him and every single one of them fails to be objective due to the nature of their connections. a character who now only exists in fallible memory. the closest thing to his true self that we get are the last desperate words to his brother moments before he dies, the only time he goes from a public figure to just thjazi. just a man fighting to get out all the things left unsaid. AUGH.
i can‘t fully put my finger on it yet, but already after the first episode and even more so now after the second, my emotional reaction to thjazi fang and the connections he had with the people surrounding him at the wake, it‘s ringing all the same bells and pressing all the same buttons as molly
in a different universe, a different timeline, a different world, this is how the story of the mighty nein would go. it starts with molly‘s death—and every soul he‘s touched comes together at his wake. this is how the mighty nein meet. how they start. it would work so well
idk man,,, there‘s just something about this revolutionary, this man of many faces, this mischief maker, hero, traitor, thief. this family man. with a smirk on his face, making even the most down to earth people believe he may still rise from the dead. it‘s just,,, that‘s mollymauk tealeaf. man that you are, thjazi fang, you already live in my brain rent free
thinking about this again. i don‘t even think it was mainly thjazi fang‘s whole deal that made me go down this road
it‘s the coinciding of this opening act of campaign 4 with the release of the animated mighty nein trailer. it‘s the way mollymauk is made to narrate those first looks at the animated show
i could absolutely see them making this a thing for the show as a whole—mollymauk as the narrator. the one to tell the story that brings them all together. the circus man, announcing his act. his best show yet. a bit of sleight of hand here, a bit of misdirection there, and voilà. a bunch of assholes are a family
and we all know where it leads, we all know how that story ends—and then doesn‘t. and honestly? i could see them pulling off the narration through molly even after his death. or at least reintroduce his narrative back into the story once lucian is revived
and i think that‘s also—at least partially—why thjazi‘s whole vibe gives me such strong mollymauk feelings. although not literally, but in the way brennan weaves the story and ties these characters to thjazi fang, tells the little flashbacks and remembered moments, it is as if thjazi gets to tell his own story postmortem. he‘s haunting the narrative he was supposed to tell
and if that isn‘t a mollymauk tealeaf special, i don‘t know what is
