#(bc politics talk)

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

massages forehead So Ambessa hid Mel away because she was a weapon in the literal sense, a mage. But Ambessa came to Piltover for Hextech? And Ambessa had nothing to say to Mel about her powers having visibly awakened? Even when Mel offered to go with Ambessa, giving her the ultimate opportunity to make Mel a weapon for real? And Ambessa made no attempt to find or retrieve Mel - not just her daughter and the remnants of the family Ambessa professes to love, but also her ultimate weapon - when she disappeared? And Ambessa trusted Singed and Viktor on their home turf - neither of them hiding how insane and self-serving they are with every reason to take over Ambessa's soldiers or just blatantly turn on her as soon as it benefits them - more than she trusted Mel? While Caitlyn (and by extension Piltover) was visibly and clearly falling away from Ambessa's teachings before Ambessa's eyes? (as if getting rid of certain people allows piltover to get rid of fascism but we won't get into All That)

Not only do I struggle to be hyped for Mel's powers beyond how amazing and beautiful she looks, but I can't help but feel like Mel is somehow less powerful in season 2 than she was in season 1, and not in an interesting way. As if Mel's ability to bend all of Piltover politics and economics to her will in season 1 now means nothing in season 2? You can argue that Jinx's attack led directly to Mel losing ground in Piltover - because I expected Mel to have to claw back that power without being able to rely on people who are too easily seduced by Ambessa and authoritarianism, and she would have to get creative to go toe to toe with her mother. I expected pushback to her mage identity that she would have to navigate. But instead this went either unwritten, or was ignored or discarded. Instead Mel is removed from the main plot, cutting her off from what made her the most interesting - only for all of Mel's very real talents, her very real powers and abilities, to be not only translated but REPLACED with magical powers she doesn't know how to control, and by the finale, those magic powers are the only powers that are considered real. Mel takes a backseat to Piltover's governing and decisions, a backseat to Jayce of all people who was not only new to politics mere months ago but made poor governing, strategic, and diplomatic decisions when he had that power. In season 1 Mel stayed off the "throne" but she did pull its strings one way or the other, and she makes no attempt at this in season 2

In my least generous suspicions, Mel was gentled and quieted to capitulate to an agenda for other characters who had to be correct and heroic - or wrong and villainous - no matter what the leadup narrative said, given her powers to help sell the game and set up future shows, and was effectively ejected from the Arcane story with faceless soldiers and a role she doesn't want because she was inconvenient there

[allyriadayne]

Hook, line and sinker: Larys and Alicent // Larys and Aegon

[padmestrilogy]

the thing about padme’s deleted “mother of the rebellion” rots scenes is this is a once-14yo girl who said “i was not elected to watch my people suffer and die while you discuss this invasion in a committee” now a 27yo woman who grew into one of those helpless senators, spending her final days trying to stop a war via committee before watching her husband cause untold suffering and death. like id lose the will to live too damn

[kindred-spirit-93]

thetis and her grandbaby

the second panel originally was going to read "hes mine now" lol.

achilles probably jumped in after his mother (who went to show off to her friends), forgetting that neo is very cant breathe under water XD

look at his tiny lil hand holding onto her robes dfghjk. held my baby cousin last night and shes so light and squishy ahh. very babbly too :')

[notebookpapers]

Seeing Americans join RedNote and realize that education, healthcare, food, and housing are cheaper in China rlly makes me lose faith in some people’s critical thinking skills.

Like, yeah. We’ve known. Anyone with friends or family in China has known this. Anyone with an ounce of curiosity and access to a search engine has known. And no, China is by no means a perfect country, but some things are WAY better than over here.

Have you never been curious?? To what living conditions in other countries are like??? Have you looked into it??? Really looked??? Because why are you just learning these things now?

Expand your horizons, guys. Learn about different cultures. I guarantee you, you have more in common than you think.

[t00thpasteface]

honestly i think a lot of us should consider getting involved in local republican primaries and conventions and stuff to get less cartoonishly evil people into the party. i mean if we're stuck with a two-party system anyway, i feel like it'd be in our best interest to try and defang the worse party, instead of only pushing the vote-blue-no-matter-who angle that's been giving us so many pro-war candidates (or just plain incompetent ones). i mean like pushing from the inside to take face-eating leopard stuff off the platforms... we could potentially fumigate the republican party from the inside out if we really dug into it i think.

my extended family has a statistically above-average gay & trans proportion, and what i've gathered from talking to older/more conservative-leaning relatives is that there seems to be a strong and widespread desire to just see some politicians who will decrease/reprioritize the collection and spending of tax money and reeeeally don't like the way the republican party as an organization always tries to bundle that with attacking queer freedom... the same way i (and many of you i hope) hate the way the democratic party seems to have been bundling promises of various minority protections with drone strikes on the middle east. it would probably be worthwhile to find local politicians and movements that want to get the anti-queer stuff off of the local/county republican platforms before it can spread out to the state or national levels. i really believe the true frothing hatred of the biggest names is a vocal minority... like, in my experience, people in real life really are just like "how's it going man" more often than not. i think there's an untapped potential for a powerful bipartisan de-zealotification.

of course we should be doing the same for the left too, but i really don't think the solution for a two-party system is to just make it a one-party system instead by only showing up every two or four years to vote blue down the ballot and then stop thinking about it the rest of the time. no i don't have all the solutions or the perfect battleplan; this push would look different for every household in every city in america, because this country is so diverse and so are its issues... i just think we should be taking the shaka zulu approach of tackling the system from both sides instead of just throwing ourselves against the left flank only.

[princehendir]

Every time there's a post about not getting all your political & other opinions from On Here the example url used is vaguely fandom-y and I just want to make it clear that while you definitely shouldn't be getting your political views from ron-and-harry-in-the-tardis you also probably shouldn't be getting them from leninforeskin or doggirlgore either

[chrollohearttags]

haven’t decided if I’ll be coming back to this blog fully (not that anybody gives a fuck). Literally only logged in to look at an old draft for a commission and ppl cannot help themselves and are continually harassing me. But if anyone is still here, I do have a new page, if you wanna follow. I am no longer interested in debating, talking politics, I no longer care or give a single shit about any of it. What I said or have to say does not matter so I really don’t understand what all the smoke was about. My words should’ve never been taken at more than anything except an opinion. I’m here to write, lust over fictional men and that’s it. If you can’t respect that, you know where the fucking door is. Anon is also off and will be until further notice. Hope you all have been well and take care of yourselves. Bless and be well 🫶🏾

[oh-no-its-bird]

The Hatake Clan of the year 1798, 2 years before Konoha's founding

7 / 21 accounted for (I'll make the others, or possibly beg someone to share their own with me, as I go along)

Close ups:

+ Bonus designs as I think about political machinations :

"when I looked it up, the wiki says that Iron country actually has little to no shinobi, and instead use samurai?

So, like, incooperating that, thinking that they ultimately ditch it for fire bc in 1789, the new daimyo (who is only 15 and being puppeted by his mother, the previous Daimyo's concubine, who also comes from a big samurai family) basically tells all the existing shinobi clans in iron (of which there are very few and generally keep to themselves out in the wilds) that they need to either leave, stop being shinobi alltogether, or come sit at the foot of the throne like good boys and sign some fun funky new contracts with the new daimyo heavily restricting their every move

like 2 years later Konoha is founded and the Hatake, who were looking for a way to get out of their situation, took the opportunity and ran"

Anyways I haven't slept in almost 24 hours, like holy shit, but I need everyone to look at his face tho:

He can do no wrong

Early Konoha oc art pt. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]

[sforzesco]

hey! hi! the cartoonist cooperative has an e-sim drive for gaza, offering art for e-sim donations (instructions etc in the link)

[looking-for-wisdom]

the “ex-something” character in disco elysium is so interesting to me because what we finally learn about the true Dora from harry’s dream sequence & conversations with the 41st precinct initially undercuts the first impression you get as a player. We learn things that makes it seem like Harry should be over her leaving. Specifically, the fact that she and Harry were never actually married and that it has been six years since she left.

Everything we’re told about Dora needs to be taken with a grain of salt, since it primarily comes from Harry. He’s an unreliable narrator and, if we had her perspective on things, there would surely be more to the story. But even with that said, I feel reasonably confident that the player’s first impression — that whoever this ex is did some damage even beyond typical breakup heartbreak — isn’t completely wrong.

We know a few things for certain. Harry was a gym teacher before they met, and Dora was the reason he joined the RCM. We can also do the math to figure out that they were together for around 12 years. Married or not, that’s a serious relationship. There are implications that Dora might have been pregnant at some point.

Dora’s family was wealthier than Harry’s, but they struggled financially when they were together. They had to rely on her parents for support.

Harry is a grown ass man who is responsible for his own choices. None of this changes that. But the way he is starts to make more sense when you consider that it wasn’t just their breakup that was traumatic. Their relationship itself seems unhealthy.

Harry clearly likes working with kids. Kim actually points out how he is easily able to connect with Cuno and the other teens in Martinase. With that in mind, I imagine he probably liked being a gym teacher. But we learn that Dora encourages him to join the RCM to do more for the greater good. Again, Harry had to agree to this — she didn’t force him to quit at gunpoint. But it rubs me the wrong way that, shortly after they start dating, she implies that his work isn’t fulfilling or important (probably patently untrue in an area where kids won’t necessarily have stable home lives). And, more than that, she suggests that joining the police is the solution.

Granted, we’re told there’s a lot of crime in Jamrock. Maybe it is as simple as her thinking law enforcement helps prevent that. But given the political tones of the game, which intentionally critique cops and the moralist forces they represent? I think it’s notable.

Speaking of which. The class difference between Dora and Harry has to be thematic. So much of the game discusses the struggle between the working class and the bourgeoisie. There’s an inherent power dynamic there. It’s her parents who are consistently paying their bills and keeping them afloat. She has an out that Harry doesn’t. Money won’t be an issue for her when they split, but Harry will be left without any support. Regardless of whether she intentionally held this over his head, this game shows that even without meaning to, the capitalist system harms the poor. That strain must be felt in their relationship, and could cause a lot of damage over 12 years.

All this to say: their relationship clearly wasn’t some fling. And, if Harry is to be believed, the blame for things falling apart was largely placed on him: working to much, not bringing home enough money, not being enough. But even if Dora wasn’t actively manipulating him and he came up with all of this on his own, I think the facts still point to a dynamic where he was made to be small in the face of a woman who came from more. Their backgrounds create an imbalance where Harry was always going to feel the flaws in their relationship more acutely. He starts with little, and gives up much of what he does have to pursue something better for the both of them. But when that isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, he’s the only one left with nothing. She can leave the country and start over.

It makes sense, to me, that he might not have recovered from that in six years. Especially when that rock bottom feeling seems so permanent that he isn’t trying to get better so much as numb himself enough to exist another day.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t responsible or that he’s exempt from having to get his shit together. The game very clearly illustrates that everyone will turn away from him if he doesn’t. But it does complicate his character a bit more than “got left by extremely bangable woman, proceeds to make the lives of everyone around him worse.”

[a-dragons-journal]

Genuinely, how do so many anti-endo people have the fact that they're anti-endo and "fakeclaimers DNI" right next to each other in their profile/pinned/etc.? Babe, you are the fakeclaimer. The thing you are doing when you say "DNI endogenic "systems"/supporters", putting "systems" in scare quotes to state that you don't think they're really systems, is by definition fakeclaiming. You just think that it's justified when you do it because this time you've got the REAL fakes and you REALLY know how to tell when someone is lying about their experiences and identity, pinkie promise. That doesn't make it not fakeclaiming - all fakeclaimers think that. They wouldn't do it otherwise.

[ravenkings]

[somewhereincairparavel]

the day the pjo fandom matures is the day they realise that piper fawning over jason all the time in hoo is most definitely valid if you have jason grace as a boyfriend <3

[starry-bi-sky]

pouring one out for luo binghe in my disciple SQQ fic, poor guy has taken a backseat here. we're nearly 30k words deep and he hasn't even shown his face once. it'll be much longer before he even actually talks to Shen Qingqiu.

(i say im pouring one out but in reality im sitting in my director's chair chewing on a cigar and wearing a beret as he tearily and unsuccessfully pleads with me for more scenes with Shen Qingqiu)

[ganondoodle]

"(that one arcane writer guy) drew inspiration from the US two party system and how they fail to communicate with each other"

what what what, yes of course thats totally comparable, you know, piltover, the rich powerful oppressor class living in paradise and zaun, the poor and exploited, that are literally made to live underground in poisoned air and water and waste created by the maschinery that makes piltover rich, rats in their garbage, that have no power anywhere and the second they resist get run over by enforcers of the rich and powerful

they just have a communication problem uwu, which is why putting 3 zaunites into the uniforms of their opressors and have them fight and die for a stupid otherworldy threat together makes them understand each other, which is why getting rid of any counceler that even mildly cared about zaun, reinstate that system, and giving a single seat to sevika instead makes sense, and look, the rich upper class powerful lesbian that turned into a dictator for a time gets to keep her power and the poor zaunite lesbian that lost everything get to be together!! we did it! we solved politics!