Eyes Filled With Blueprints and Night

Varia

[planb-is-in-effect]

So, that childhood maid who went up the mountain with her, who appears when all the other maids have departed, is definitely dead, eh?

[thebiballerina]

The Power of Leverage

Hey, so many of you are familiar with fix-it fanfiction, the superglue which holds together the hearts canon has shattered, right? Well, I have a point to make. As of right now (1-28-2020), there are 6,659 fanfictions in the Leverage category on AO3. You know how many of those are fix-it fics? 25. A measly 0.38% of Leverage fanfiction is tagged as fix-it. For comparison, 2.20% of MCU fanfiction and 1.25% of Supernatural fanfiction are fix-its.

So yeah, Leverage is so amazing that hardly anything needs to be fixed. But we already knew that. No, it gets better. Of those 25 fix-it fanfictions, 16 (64%) of them are actually fix-its for OTHER fandoms. Leverage has been used in fix-its for White Collar, The Walking Dead, Coupling (UK), The Flash, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Kings, Person of Interest, Pacific Rim, Once Upon a Time, The Losers, Merlin, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the actual 2016 US election (yeah, that).

The point here, being, not only is Leverage’s own canon one of the most perfect to grace television, it is so brilliant that it can literally bust in and fix everyone else’s canon as well.

[krakenartificer]

The bit about fixing other fandoms literally made me laugh out loud. Maybe more of a cackle. I love this show so much

[waywren]

Parker: *to the heartbroken or otherwise traumatised characters of other franchises* You are suffering under a tremendous weight. We provide… leverage.

[no-stabbing-wednesdays]

Eliot busting in to fix your canon

[chesh-of-the-shire]

Hey, so, I re-ran the numbers and as of 4am on 6/9/26:

In the Leverage (US TV 2008) fandom only (so not including US TV 2008 & Related Fandoms or Redemption) there are currently 12,309 fics. (Nearly double Jan 2020, go us).

Filtering for “Fix-it” brings us down to 85 or 0.69% (noice).

Excluding Crossovers puts us down to 27 fics total. That means that out of the 85 fix-its, only 32% are to fix the Leverage Canon itself and out of all 12k Leverage fics, only 0.22% are to fix Leverage Canon itself.

Meanwhile, Supernatural is sitting at 8,657/320,089 or 2.70% and the MCU is 13,675/635,920 or 2.15%.

And that’s me being generous by Excluding Crossovers. I’m willing to bet a bunch of those Crossovers in both are other fandoms coming in to fix the Supernatural and MCU canons. Almost certainly the more than in the Leverage + Crossover fics. Someone who’s better at tag filtering or has a longer attention span than me can sift through all 3k-ish fics with Crossovers to get the exact numbers! 😂

[planb-is-in-effect]

Putting on my tinted mineral face sunscreen and nodding approvingly to my reflection: just like a foundation-wearing general.

[waowpuppy]

a perfect world where people go to play minigolf and say to each other "so. if this is minigolf, then whats golf?" and no one knows because golf hasnt existed for hundreds of years by that point

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

They reinvent golf from minigolf and what they come up with involves rolling beach balls through a theme park

[literary-sparks]

“Why don’t you use ai” idk man beyond the obvious environmental and “this machine causes psychosis and encourages people to kill themselves” thing I think asking the equivalent of a solid D student who is also a pathological liar if they can answer my question/do the work for me seems pretty fucking stupid

[dgalerab]

honestly my favorite thing about hardison is that he has no real tragic backstory, he's just like "i am very smart and therefore i should be allowed to do crime" and he's entirely correct

[dgalerab]

i love everyone reblogging this going "yeah! soft boy!" in the tags bc that's my other favorite thing about hardison (i have many) and that's that he's never particularly treated as morally grey bc he is constantly so kind and loving and good and also he enjoys some crime

[dgalerab]

parker: i have severe psychological trauma and i steal things to cope bc i don't know how to relate to people

eliott: i have a tragic history being entangled in the mafia and even now i could kill the most dangerous fighters without firing a gun

hardison: if money is fake, why not for me and my grandma who i love? :)

[polytropic-liar]

Yes!! I love Hardison's orientation towards right and wrong, in part because it's such a fun, powerful contrast with other members of the team.

You have Parker, who has been designated as bad and wrong since she was a very young child and who has let go of any expectation of being anything else, so that identifying and doing what she thinks is the right thing is consistently an overwhelming and scary experience for her;

Then there's Eliot, who can point to exactly when and how he became irredeemable in his own eyes and whose highest ambition now is to do the wrong thing for the right people this time at least;

Nate, who is clinging to all of these ideas about morality and legality and good and bad that are completely inconsistent both internally and with his behavior, because his very normative view of the world was shattered and he never put the pieces back together in any kind of coherent way;

Sophie, who sees right and wrong as primarily about relationships between people, like she does everything else: right and wrong is in how you engage and who you hurt interpersonally, anything more abstract is irrelevant. But within that, there's also this weight to how she engages, this sense of regret at how she's treated people in the past that we never really see the full scope of;

And into this morass of regret and alienation and self-doubt, beautiful sunshine child Alec Hardison sails with this completely coherent, straightforward understanding: he's doing the right thing. He understands the systems creating and maintaining inequality and he's winning against them. He doesn't feel bad at all about breaking the law because he doesn't respect it as having any moral weight, and why should he? He's right. Y'all I love him so much.

[renewedmotionforjudgment]

I'm going to be a bit meta right now (and if you are enjoying ashes to crown, scroll past), but I think Ashes to Crown is probably the best example of why the 大女主 ("big female lead") genre feels so empty these days.

Because it's so vibe based. The scriptwriting feels catered to the fans of the FL who wants to see their jiejie playing Mary Sue-perfect type characters with Iron Man level plot armor dramatically staring at the camera in slow mo than ... actual plotting. What have the character done to actually warrant the title? Nothing.

Like the epitome of the big female lead drama is legend of zhen huan and Minglan. But what's so special about those 2 dramas are that they let their leads fail. Zhen Huan falls, multiple times. Minglan had to work through many layers of childhood trauma. Neither gave them Boss Level fighting abilities.

So yes, maybe the current way they're filming allows fans to make cuts on Douyin, but it's just empty.

(And sure, some people are like, why can't women have their wish fulfillment? I'm not saying you can't, but also, I don't think it's too much to want actual substance in writing.)

[dangermousie]

I think the one good recent example is Yang Mi in This Thriving Land which was very centered on her character and made her real and the world real and any victories hard earned. But that is prestige and I think that’s a different beast perhaps.

[drwcn]

who are these women that have fulfilment wishes? literally no women i know who actually worked for their hard earned career care for these empty female fulfilment shows. even my mother who dont care for fandom shit is like...this shit is so so so boring after one or two shows.

not shitting on young people, but like I feel like these shows are purely targeting young women.

[renewedmotionforjudgment]

It has to be teens.

Bc I can be considered as a successful career woman (TM) and like …. I’m sorry, all I want is a vacation. My actual fantasy show is meet yourself where FL’s phone didn’t work for 2 days straight. That would be nice.

[drwcn]

no for real.

no pages for an entire call shift. thats my fantasy.

[planb-is-in-effect]

Ohhhh, the starting over fantasy makes so much more sense to me if it's not a 'Undue my Past Mistakes' fantasy (let's be real, you'd make new ones and most of us are tired already) but a young person's wish fulfillment to know 'The Correct Life Path in Advance'.

(I feel like Undercover Miss Hong encapsulates why many women wouldn't enjoy being 18 again -- she was constantly enraged by people not taking her seriously.)

[planb-is-in-effect]

I love going on MDL and they've tagged a show 'age gap (real life)' and it's because the stars are 29 and 31. Or 38 and 44.

Are we in high school?

[qcharlie]

please god watch this right now

[fangirltothefullest]

The editing of this video is hysterical and genius- they switch between so many editing styles to reflect exactly what kind of thing they're going for in each segment its GREAT.

[postarcadian]

the thing I love most about how tumblr users use tags is that it’s like what if a social media website had a footnotes system

[azspot]

“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”

— The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech

[dangermousie]

Ashes to Crown needs to be a mini starring Hu Yiyao and Zhou Junwei with supporting roles played by three dudes, a big tub and a wind machine.

Instead whoever made it is trying very hard to come across as if it’s a mix of The Advisors Alliance if Cao Pi had earring trauma and The Empress of China if Wu Zetian covered her boobs like the censors insisted.

Sadly, in terms of actual complexity, the advisors involved are attending kindergarten and the empress of China is a name second grade girls gave to their pretend glassware emporium.

Please just embrace the trashiness, makers! You know where you belong! This ain’t Three Kingdoms, this is barely quarter of a kingdom. Maybe.

PS where can one buy Zhou Yiran’a teleporter? Asking for a friend.

[renewedmotionforjudgment]

1/3 Kingdom

Seriously, they keep trying to be serious and I keep laughing. But also the way the writers are like "we must narrate everything because how else the audience can possibly understand our complex plot"

(I mean, it's still fun but it's not a great sign that a drama is starting with me watching it for the lulz)

(and yeah, I like the actors themselves fine and have spent my weekend giffing (mostly) Zhou Yiran, but to me, this is a good example why on screen chemistry is important.)

[pandorumblu]

I keep laughing at the rational, adult-driven Tumblr commentary vs the MyDramaList swill of hormone-heavy keyboard warriors defending how sexy and perfect everything is, and attacking anyone who disagrees. It's a wild and chaotic hellscape over there.

[renewedmotionforjudgment]

I wish it was sexy and the leads actually have chemistry! It would go a long way in fixing the shortcomings.

[fiftysevenacademics]

I wonder if "narrate everything" was done to appeal to Netflix, specifically, which is where I'm watching it.

I have read that Netflix wants action to be narrated because they want people to have shows on as background or while they're scrolling their phones.

The sheer volume of shows released each year in China compared to the meager cdrama offerings I find on Netflix tells me they are either highly selective in what they pick up, or they have sweetheart deals with certain Chinese production or distribution companies, or even that certain individuals have good personal connections with someone at Netflix who makes these decisions.

If it's a matter of selectivity, I imagine it would help to hit the notes they like. And if it's a matter of not being in the loop, you have to try that much harder.

But the other, even more likely possibility is that the "narrate everything" mentality is seeping into Chinese production as well because their audiences are also watching while they're doing other things and are only paying half attention.

For the record, I don't think "narrate everything" is a good idea and generally don't watch shows that do it. But it is an attitude that Netflix, and probably other streaming platforms apparently have. Probably cent is no different.

[renewedmotionforjudgment]

I don’t think it’s a Netflix specific thing (because Youku seems to have a deal with either Netflix or Viki as all Youku dramas get there one way or the other)

I have a longer post about it in my mind, but I think it’s a culmination of (1) c-ent spent the last 3 years wanting to capture the Douyin market, (2) these screenwriters aren’t particularly well versed in political intrigue, and (3) they are condensing an almost 400 chapter novel into 24 episodes I guess they figured they need to sacrifice something for the pacing.

But of course, for me the fundamental issue is just the political intrigue is so, so dumb. And doesn’t even have good chemistry of the leads to serve as a buffer. I feel like I’m watching first graders trying to reenact three kingdoms.

[gandalfsbignaturals]

learning to notice an absence of people of color is crazy. you start seeing it everywhere. ill see a random pic of characters or people or whatever and be like "these are all white people. why"

[gandalfsbignaturals]

all the babies in those baby youtube video memes. humanized character posts. like. its the little innocent shit. and like, the people making those baby memes probably arent seeking out white babies. maybe theyre just easier to find. but why are they easier to find? a complicated question, surely... but you know what it probably comes down to. someone, somewhere, maybe a lot of someones in a lot of places, made a choice. maybe knowingly, maybe not. but they made a choice. it starts to make you feel like a conspiracy theorist!!

[gandalfsbignaturals]

its really funny that after 2 months this post is still making racists come into my askbox treating me like im a horrible person for pointing out that sometimes people of color are excluded from things in visible and offputting ways. cry about it

[duncan-rohanne]

Yang Yang as Zhan Zhao, Zhang Ruonan as Huo Linglong and Alen Fang as Bai Yutang in ZHAN ZHAO ADVENTURES (2026)

I still have the two of you. That's enough for me. It feels like I've won. You are lucky you met the two of us. With us by your side, you won't have to suffer anymore. I don't want to be a burden. Burden? Strange word between the three of you. Of course we are going together.

[gffa]

“The way I personally stay true to the story I started down on is to give myself permission to not teach anyone anything. I’m not writing a manual. I’m not delivering bromides. I know that a lot of people do take enormous pleasure and relief in lines or phrases or ideas from stories that ring true to their own lives, but it’s important for me that I tell a story and that I’m not writing Chicken Soup for the Necromantic Soul. It is getting harder and harder again, especially for authors from marginalised places or backgrounds, to write works where the takeaway isn’t ‘this is to succour all my marginalised people’. For anyone on the female-identified axis this is especially hard because it seems to me that most books by anyone female-adjacent have an expectation that they will comfort the uncomfortable and discomfit the comfortable etc., whereas a guy can just tell an adventure story and be done with it. This ties in with an idea that I think nowadays that good art is moral and bad art is immoral: i.e. if a story is bad it actually has to be because the lessons are bad, and if a story is good it must somehow be beautiful on the moral scale. We go looking for why the art we love is moral even if the art we love is a donut. I think this is the pressure of capitalism on time – that everything has to double or triple up in benefit compared to the time we take on it: if we’re prepared to waste eight hours on a book we had better be able to tot up at the end how that book was also feeding us in some way. That’s brand time we just used.“  (Tamsyn Muir) Holy shit, Ms. Muir, marry me.

[stargatesource]

FAVOURITE STARGATE SG-1 CHARACTERS VOTED BY YOU || #4 JACK O'NEILL

[whatsinsideawritersmind]

“The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn’t.”

— Iain M. Banks