tumblr HATES my 44.1mb image swag so it has SO MUCH COMPRESSION and downsizing here. :') peep the actual intended size & quality (or as good as i could get it exported)
we can all agree on that right? like she's a 'said she was born in the wrong generation in middle school' fleetwood mac, david bowie, the mamas & the papas, niche modern indie artists and also chappell roan kind of music listener. obviously. but.... i dont think we've really considered pete's music taste?
pete, who is a science, left-brained kind of kid, so he probably does not actively go out to look for music and is instead just provided music by the people around him?
pete whose older brother is theodore spankoffski and so his earliest and most fond and nostalgic music influences from his childhood would have come directly from ted's cd collection???
basically what im saying is peter spankoffski has the most trashy, early 00's ke$ha, black eyed peas my humps era, all american rejects ass music taste in the world
that boy had bowling for soup's 1985 memorized at age four, his guilty pleasure music is hollywood undead's everywhere i go, ted did his first decent person move in years when pete came out as trans as a kid and stopped listening to grow a pear by ke$ha and pete forcibly made him play it because it's a bop
and then his only friends are a weeb and a theatre kid.
steph gives him the aux cord on a date to be nice, as a sign of trust, and is blasted in the face with the most uncurated mess of j-pop, sondheim, weezer, and like... owl city's fireflies and that's just a fact
We, as a fandom, don't talk about how TERRIFIC Joey's physicality is as Pete. How specific-but-natural all of his movements are as he melds the body language of the previous Pete portrayals into one coherent character. Like the way the tension thrums through him and how at the start of the show he's often pulling inwards or slouching down like he wants to shrink into nothing and disappear from sight, only to then relax when he's just with the people he's comfortable with (Richie, Ruth, later Steph) while still keeping consistent mannerisms. And the way he stops trying to take up less space as the show goes on and Pete, despite all the horror unfolding around him, begins to actually develop confidence through his friendship with Steph. It's just a really great bit of physical acting from Joey.
So since mxtx has said that in novel canon nie huaisang is eventually going to end up being chief cultivator we can presume the headshaker thing, while based on his existing personality, was in fact an act and he is way more competent at his job than he's let on. And with Jin Guangyao dead and gone he has no reason to put on that act anymore.
Imagine being an Nie cultivator. Your flopppy incompetent sect leader comes home from traumatic events after it turns out his older brother's sworn brother- who's been over to your sect basically every other week for years now- is the one that killed said brother and you're fully prepared for tears and dramatics. And while you definitley don't like lianfang-zun since it just came out he killed your last (way more competent) sect leader he was sorta the one holding the sect together so you're bracing yourself for the worst, and instead he's... stoic? Paperwork is suddenly getting done well and on time without help. He's not wailing during negotiations anymore and you're getting actual good trade deals for the first time in over a decade. He answers questions now? With something other than "I don't know i don't know i really don't know!"
And even if you had none of the revelations wei wuxian had in guanyin temple, slowly the realization creeps up on you that all his earlier embarassing antics that cost your family their comfortable livelihoods and your sect their good name was on purpose. And from there it's not that hard to put two and two together. The rest of the cultivation world assumes the shock of jin guangyao's betrayal has finally forced the headshaker to grow up a little but you have worked side by side with him for a decade, probably even watched him grow up under his brother's rule. You know better.
How do you feel at that point? What can you even do? He's your sect leader. And he's finally doing his job, things are looking up, shouldn't you feel relieved? It' not like his incompetence really caused any deaths among the nie, just wiped out generational wealth and reputation that will take years and years to build back up. Is it really reasonable to only start hating someone for something when they've stopped doing it? Thereby proving that they were capable of stopping all along?