Neighborhood Nerd

Recovering from teenage nerdiness

[koffeinkaos]

After one of Merlin's casual off-hand declarations of devotion Arthur heads to Morgana's chambers, let's himself fall dramatically on the bed, sighing like a teenage girl in a 2000s movie before telling her all about it. What Merlin said, how stunning he looked while he said it, that Arthur wanted to kiss him right there and why he couldn't (his duty to Camelot but mainly the fear of forcing Merlin into something)

And while he gushes about his manservant, ignoring the stupid gestures of his sister that look like she wants him to shut up, said manservant was hiding behind the screen in Morgana's room, because Arthur just interrupted their magic lesson.

[mypancakesareblue]

someone drop a 300k word slow burn with this as the final push together rn

[friendlyneighbourhoodnerd]

Learning pieces of real Arthurian legend after being a Merlin fan for almost 10 years is crazy, because what do you mean Gwaine is originally the son of King Lot and Morgause and brothers with Agravaine and Mordred??

[dookins]

Here's how to Disable Third Parties (Like AI Companies) from Looking At Your Shit. A Comprehensible Guide.

If you're on your computer, go to "ACCOUNT" located on the Left <-side bar, and choose for the blog you want to shield from the artificial onlookers. (Side note: You're gonna have to do this to each blog you have... ughhh.. they don't make it easy.) ANyway, choose one of your blogs and click it.

Once there, go to the Right -> side bar, and click on "BLOG SETTINGS."

Your Blog's page set up should be set up like this. Now, scroll allll the way down (it's near the damn BOTTOM >:( ) Until you get to a Section Called, "VISIBILITY."

Here's the "VISIBILITY" section. If you look at the blue bullet right there, you'll see "Prevent third-party sharing for (yourtumblrblogname)". Yours will probably be a gray bullet. Gray means you've switched it to OFF. Blue means it's switched to ON. Make sure the bullet slider is blue. And Bam. You're done (for this blog). No extra save button thankfully or whatever. BUT now you have to go and do the same thing for all your other side blogs. Hope this helps some of my followers. Because the tumblr is set up in a way that gives you multiple setting options for not just each blog, but your account as well. So you'd ASSUME it'd be underneath your account so it could apply to everything! Buuut its not. And here we are. Good luck out there fellow artists. And tumblr? Shame. Live was a mistake, and so was this.

[friendlyneighbourhoodnerd]

Forever mad at prime for cancelling the wheel of time, it has some of my favourite world building, character dynamics and representation out there (lesbians and indigenous Aussie representation) - please sign the petition if you want more!!

Sign the Petition Sign a multi-purpose petition supporting three key efforts: urging Amazon to reverse its decision, encouraging Sony to

[friendlyneighbourhoodnerd]

I totally buy McKenna as Maysilee because I’ve seen her in the Handmaid’s Tale. That girl has the range AND the sass to pull off my icon Maysilee

[friendlyneighbourhoodnerd]

Katniss: Peeta is all that’s good in the world, everyone loves him and I must protect him at all costs

Also Katniss: What’s this weird feeling when he kisses me? Must be that admiration.

[dream-girls-dream-girl]

instead of bitching why don’t we all just be thankful ao3 doesn’t have ads xxx

[starryeyedreader911]

Crimson Rivers combines by old obsession in The Hunger Games with my new obsession in Jegulus in a VERY DANGEROUS WAY

[melanovia]

something kinda gay about having a nemesis

[aucuparias-deactivated20251012]

the fact that I cannot watch our flag means death because I’m in the UK is a fucking crime and I simply will not stand for it. hand the series over, this is a robbery.

[mymoodisno-deactivated20220904]

[dear-ao3]

[fictionadventurer]

I think the Hunger Games series sits in a similar literary position to The Lord of the Rings, as a piece of literature (by a Catholic author) that sparked a whole new subgenre and then gets blamed for flaws that exist in the copycat books and aren’t actually part of the original.

Like, despite what parodies might say, Katniss is nowhere near the stereotypical “unqualified teenager chosen to lead a rebellion for no good reason”.  The entire point is that she’s not leading the rebellion. She’s a traumatized teenager who has emotional reactions to the horrors in her society, and is constantly being reined in by more experienced adults who have to tell her, “No, this is not how you fight the government, you are going to get people killed.” She’s not the upstart teenager showing the brainless adults what to do–she’s a teenager being manipulated by smarter and more experienced adults. She has no power in the rebellion except as a useful piece of propaganda, and the entire trilogy is her straining against that role. It’s much more realistic and far more nuanced than anyone who dismisses it as “stereotypical YA dystopian” gives it credit for.

And the misconceptions don’t end there. The Hunger Games has no “stereotypical YA love triangle”–yes, there are two potential love interests, but the romance is so not the point. There’s a war going on! Katniss has more important things to worry about than boys! The romance was never about her choosing between two hot boys–it’s about choosing between two diametrically opposed worldviews. Will she choose anger and war, or compassion and peace? Of course a trilogy filled with the horrors of war ends with her marriage to the peace-loving Peeta. Unlike some of the YA dystopian copycats, the romance here is part of the message, not just something to pacify readers who expect “hot love triangles” in their YA. 

The worldbuilding in the Hunger Games trilogy is simplistic and not realistic, but unlike some of her imitators, Collins does this because she has something to say, not because she’s cobbling together a grim and gritty dystopia that’s “similar to the Hunger Games”. The worldbuilding has an allegorical function, kept simple so we can see beyond it to what Collins is really saying–and it’s nothing so comforting as “we need to fight the evil people who are ruining society”. The Capitol’s not just the powerful, greedy bad guys–the Capitol is us, First World America, living in luxury while we ignore the problems of the rest of the world, and thinking of other nations largely in terms of what resources we can get from them. This simplistic world is a sparsely set stage that lets us explore the larger themes about exploitation and war and the horrors people will commit for the sake of their bread and circuses, meant to make us think deeper about what separates a hero from a villain.

There’s a reason these books became a literary phenomenon. There’s a reason that dozens upon dozens of authors attempted to imitate them. But these imitators can’t capture that same genius, largely because they’re trying to imitate the trappings of another book, and failing to capture the larger and more meaningful message underneath. Make a copy of a copy of a copy, and you’ll wind up with something far removed from the original masterpiece. But we shouldn’t make the mistake of blaming those flaws on the original work.

[bcitisthelight-deactivated20241]

THIS POST WAS MADE FOR ME. Literally nobody gets how profound The Hunger Games are as a piece of literature, actually, because it’s been lumped in with all of the copycats that came after it.

“I’m tired of love triangles” THE HUNGER GAMES IS LITERALLY AN ALLEGORICAL FICTION REFLECTING ON THE MERITS OF JUST-WAR THEORY.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/books/suzanne-collins-talks-about-the-hunger-games-the-books-and-the-movies.amp.html

This is a FASCINATING article where Suzanne Collins talks about this. Basically, just war theory - popularized by Thomas Aquinas, and I didn’t know she was Catholic, so that makes a TON of sense how she would know about that, anyways, just-war theory advocates for this idea that a war can be just based on certain conditions being met. In the Hunger Games, Katniss is a stand in for humanity generally, a sort of neutral figure whose going through this moral/philosophical battle. Gale represents a favorable view of just-war theory, whereas Peeta represents - if not pacifism, then certainly at the very least, a rejection of war.

THATS WHY ITS SO FUCKING PROFOUND that Katniss ends up with Peeta, like, can we just collectively admire for a moment, the final passage of Mockingjay, now that we get that what’s actually going on is a statement re: cycles of violence and the needs of humanity?

“Peeta and I grow back together. There are still moments when he clutches the back of a chair and hangs on until the flashbacks are over. I wake screaming from nightmares of mutts and lost children. But his arms are there to comfort me. And eventually his lips. On the night I feel that thing again, the hunger that overtook me on the beach, I knew this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale’s fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.”

I MEAN. GOD. GOD. WHAT POETRY THAT IS. Humanity cannot rely on war, and hatred, and violence, it does not need it to live, it cannot feast forever on bread and circuses gained from blood. This passage nearly makes me cry every time I read it, it’s SO lovely.

Anyways, the Hunger Games rocks.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the first book in the trilogy, here is an excerpt from an interview between the publisher and the autho

[friendlyneighbourhoodnerd]

We forever reblog the nuance of my favourite series

[friendlyneighbourhoodnerd]

What if archive of our own had a Spotify wrapped where they tell us our top ships of the year, longest fics, time spent reading, top fic authors and top tags. That would be so interesting.

[friendlyneighbourhoodnerd]

Sirius Black is that kid who claims he’s dumb and doesn’t know anything and then does amazing in all of his exams because he just remembers stuff. Remus gets a bit jealous.

[wylanvnneck]

Fangirls say goodnight and then go read fanfics until 3am

[friendlyneighbourhoodnerd]

why you gotta be calling us out like that

[youngreckless]

what's the point of enemies to lovers if it's not gay