#lets call this prevention

[scarycranegame]

EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP AND READ THIS.

THE CURRENT VOTE COUNT IS NOT THE FINAL RESULT.

IT WILL TAKE SEVERAL DAYS TO COUNT ALL OF THE VOTES AND DETERMINE WHO WINS THE ELECTION (POSSIBLY MORE IF A RECOUNT IS NECESSARY).

IT IS VERY LIKELY THAT THE FINAL RESULTS WILL NOT LOOK LIKE THE INITIAL RESULTS.

STOP DOOMPOSTING AND LEARN HOW THIS SHIT WORKS.

[the-force-awakens]

Still not used to this life or death situation stuff. That's good, 'cause I'm not either. You never get used to it.

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

I just saw one of those “Jesus wanted everyone to love each other” asks where the Christian pile-on gotcha answer was, and I’m going to oversimplify it, “Jesus was actually murdered because he was a brutally honest dick” and you know, sure, people throw out that “hey you’re not being very loving as I understand love for being a member of the love religion, why aren’t you behaving how I want you to behave” gotcha a lot, often that kind of statement is made in exceeding bad faith by someone who has nothing but deep contempt for religion, and further, we all make God in our own image and I can’t help but feel like people who feel compelled to point out what an abrasive and combative person Jesus was are themselves—but I digress

I’m not sure how to articulate this

Jesus is more severe than people who think he was some kind of 1960s free love hippie like to imagine, but I can’t help but think that the people who are a little too happy, gleeful even, to shove the perception in the opposite direction are also missing something

Whose is the greater sin? Do we prefer to stand before God accused of being too tolerant or too legalistic?

I’m not sure, but, I think that people who are incapable of squaring the circle of Christ preaching love AND being crucified, and think therefore he must have been incredibly abrasive, are underestimating how angry you can make some people by being, say, extremely merciful

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

hi! i saw on your shipping chart you had meenah and cronus as moirails and noted 'would have prevented all problems' and ive never really seen that take before. id love to hear your thoughts on that if you wanted to talk about them, your analysis in general is always amazing

Sure! I know this one's going to be controversial, but TBH I'm kind of fascinated by their dynamic. So please bear with me here and come into it with an open mind; I was also really surprised when I noticed what was going on.

Also, standard disclaimer that nobody has to agree with me or ship my ships, I literally don't care, HCs are valid, death of the author, etc. etc. This is just a canon discussion blog, and there's kind of a weird amount to read into in the canon between these two.

Okay, so, first of all, quick refresher on moirallegiance: it's not necessarily about being BFFs, it's very specifically about pacifying each other, keeping each other calm and stable, and preventing each other from causing harm to oneself or to others.

Ergo, the marker of moirallegiance rests not on "do these two get along as BFFs?" and instead on "do these two keep each other calm and/or mitigate each others' harm".

So with that out of the way, Cronus and Meenah. We know that Cronus has a redcrush on her, echoing Eridan's redcrush on Feferi, and that Meenah is not interested at all. Cronus shoots his shot with her, she's like ick, no & leaves, and that's that on that. Cronus then rounds on Mituna and says some unbelievably cruel and shitty stuff, but here's Point #1 - Meenah shows up again, and Cronus stops immediately, and then is noticeably calmer and friendlier to Mituna. Compare:

CRONUS: you are a brain damaged reject on a team full of rejects. a rejects reject. i vwould havwe culled you myself if that vword meant vwhat it should havwe on our planet.

-

CRONUS: vwell, this is clearly absurd, but nyeh, vwhat the heck. CRONUS: mituna, i just cant take it anymore. i think my ghost is going to kill itself. MITUNA: WH0W4H L375 FUCK!!!!! CRONUS: vwait... CRONUS: really? MITUNA: N0 0Y0 P135H3 0FF 1ND107 FUGG1NG G4R484G3  #FUCKY0UFUCKY0UFUCKY0UFUCKY0UFUCKY0U CRONUS: oh.

So at the very least, SOMETHING conciliatory seems to be happening here, whether that's pale or ashen. But I'm going with pale, because it continues.

Their second conversation together is really interesting - not only has Cronus stopped redflirting with her, but he no longer even seems interested. Compare this to the section with Mituna above:

CRONUS: oh sure. no grub sauce on your hands! MEENAH: wow you did it MEENAH: ampora you totally changed my mind about you lets start makin out immediately  #not CRONUS: just admit it. you havwe it vwithin you to be just as harsh to our behelmeted buddy as i am, if not more

Like, he doesn't even ACKNOWLEDGE the "let's make out #not". Not even in an indignant "see, you keep playing with my collapsing and expanding bladder based vwascular system" kind of way. Literally just breezes right by it, which says to me that he isn't even really that into her concupiscently.

But more interesting are the actual contents of the conversation. Cronus is the only person on the entire team who's able to make Meenah have misgivings about how awesome the Condy is.

MEENAH: man MEENAH: a girls gotta have fuel for her pimp ride know what im sayin MEENAH: like MEENAH: i probably took care of him good MEENAH: you know how it is someones gotta take care of the guy anyways MEENAH: and... yeah #38(

This is the first and only time that Meenah even acknowledges that the Condy - herself at her worst - is kind of shitty. This is the first and only time she's ever expressed any emotion for the Condy other than fangirlish admiration or rage against Caluborn for enslaving her. For whatever reason, she actually listens to Cronus when Cronus takes her to task, and he's actually able to make her genuinely reflect on her worst tendencies.

But maybe more damning is the fact that in their first real conversation together for nearly an eon, she almost fixes him:

MEENAH: i heard a rumor you think youre a human now MEENAH: that true CRONUS: its a privwate matter. i dont see vwhy i should havwe to talk about it vwith you, and open myself up to more of your judgmental scorn. MEENAH: sounds like another desperate cry for attention imo

[...]

CRONUS: to be honest, she might be right. sometimes i think i might only be saying im a human to get attention. maybe i should givwe it up.

Cronus's fundamental emotional problem is a sense of purposelesness and ennui. Born into a caste of high privilege, with his identity overshadowed by said position, he's been handed an unpleasant cocktail of entitlement, lack of true emotional support or connection, and lack of a real, authentic personal identity - especially because the thing he DID seem to derive a sense of identity and purpose from - his little Harry Potter wizard backstory - was driven out of him. In other words, he's kind of a shitty rich kid that doesn't really know who he is outside of that, and his humankin stuff is an attempt to fill the wizard hole without addressing his real underlying issues. It's a Bad Thing for him to be doing, and something he should drop in order to start addressing his genuine insecurities, feelings of emptiness, and lack of identity or purpose. In other words, it's harm he's performing on himself, and a single conversation with Meenah being enough to make him reconsider it? Hmmmmmm.

In fact, I'm not the only one picking up on the pale vibes. The specific way that Kankri interrupts the two reads as incredibly pick-me in pale:

KANKRI: Listen, I was d9ing y9u a fav9r. Y9u d9n't need t9 6e dating any9ne wh9 can't appreciate y9u f9r wh9 y9u really are, 9r m9re imp9rtantly, which fantasy versi9n 9f y9urself y9u m9st str9ngly identify with.

[...]

I just wanted y9u t9 kn9w that I'm here f9r y9u, and am prepared t9 lecture t9 y9u extensively, I mean, listen t9 y9u extensively, a69ut y9ur ultra-imp9rtant pr96lem.

"Don't take Meenah's advice about your problems! Take mine instead, I care about you sooo much more than she does!" lol. I have a whole essay on how Kankri and Cronus are actually super toxic for each other, in an interesting foil to Karkat and Eridan, which I'll link here in a bit (I'm on mobile RN and it's hard enough C/Ping my sources).

In any case, Kankri slides in at exactly the moment where Meenah's about to fix Cronus, and proceeds to make Cronus worse. The details are in the Cronus and Kankri essay, but TL;DR it's kind of implied that Kankri is the one who talked Cronus out of the wizard stuff in the first place, which pretty much disqualifies the two's relationship from pale, given how harmful that was. This whole thing is pretty reminiscent of Gamzee coming between Karkat and Eridan when Eridan is trying to comfort Karkat about Sollux dying, because it's implied Gamzee has a palecrush on the guy. That might be subjective, though.

What isn't subjective is the fact that Meenah unironically defends Cronus's wizard beliefs when Aranea starts shitting on them.

ARANEA: Whatever the case, it was pro8a8ly for the 8est, since pretty much everyone who had half a think pan thought [Cronus's wizard beliefs were] all a 8unch of ridiculous nonsense. MEENAH: serket why do you got to hate on other peoples religions MEENAH: dont you kno they just as much a load of crackpotty bunk as all your spiritual bullfuck ARANEA: 8ut I........ ARANEA: Yes, I guess I was out of line.

She doesn't do this for anybody else. Not long after, it turns out she's absolutely joking about defending Kurloz:

MEENAH: wow serket MEENAH: just wow so rude MEENAH: poor clown ARANEA: Don't give me that! I seem to remem8er you having more than a few unkind words for him 8ehind his 8ack. MEENAH: yeah im messin witchu he sux

And even proceeds to shit on HIS spiritual bullfuck:

MEENAH: )(ONK ARANEA: Honk honk! ::::) MEENAH: lol im glad we can both agree that clowny fuckin soda cult is the dumbest shit ever

So... weird, huh? Seems like she gives Cronus special treatment for some reason.

That's it for the diegetic stuff to go over, which, yes, means that there's a bit of non-diegetic stuff to discuss. It's not much, but here's Hussie's commentary from the Act 5 Act 2 book, on Mindfang's journal entries about Dualscar leading up to the 3x showdown (emphasis mine):

In the end, even though violets are the ruling class, she doesn't care much about them either. All she cares about is keeping her stranglehold on power with this complex, staggered, oppression-based sort of pyramid scheme. Note how it says the Condesce doesn't even know who Dualscar is. That's how insignificant he is, ultimately. Similarly, all Eridan was to Feferi after a while was a tiresome pest. The way that situation played out could also be seen as long-delayed karmic backlash for Dualscar's irrelevance to her, at least from a very Amporan point of view.

Now, while the specific context here is about how, from the point of view of a shitty entitled guy, Eridan killing Feferi is kind of a retribution for the Condy not giving a shit about Dualscar, all of Hussie's commentary is meant to be interrogated just as much as the base text, and it just makes me wonder. The dancestors very much treat their Alternian counterparts as alternate versions of themselves, consistent throughout their interactions, meaning we ought to consider Duascar and the Condesce to be versions of Cronus and Meenah.

If it is, in fact, the case that Cronus and Meenah would've made for excellent, harm-reducing moirails for each other, then murderstuck being a karmic backlash for their ultimate irrelevance to each other takes on a much greater implication - one that traces back to Cronus's classpect.

Bards start off massive karmic chain reactions, resulting in improbable victory or abject defeat, sometimes both; Hope is an aspect whose main application is making fake things real.

So I'm not saying that Cronus believing that an evil wizard attacked him when he was younger but was inadvertently sealed away and that Cronus was therefore karmically destined to defeat this wizard, but then having his beliefs shattered halfway through, led to him karmically contributing to the eventual creation of LE via his Hope abilities "inviting destruction" by making only the first half of his fake prophecy true, but - oh, no, wait, I am saying that. Man, that really sucks for everybody. If only Cronus had a friend who was, for whatever reason, willing to stick up for his dumbass wizard faith.

If only.

[crowswarm]

okay honestly im really confused as to how and why ambessa dies

like mel breaks the necklace, ambessa gets sent to the shadow realm where leblanc does ooky spooky shadow magic on her brain and mel steps in and frees ambessa but ambessa dies immediately after being set free.

why did mel send ambessa to leblanc? she says a "wolf has no mercy" did she intend to have leblanc kill her mother? and why does leblanc act like mel is betraying her by interfering? ambessa still ends up dead.

was leblanc like... looking for something in ambessas mind? is that why she didnt just have the chains crush ambessa like she did with elora? mel says "i know your face deceiver" so i assume she knows leblanc was lying about her intentions. but what then? leblanc knows what ambessa "stole" and from who. she knows ambessa is instrumental to the heralds plans and that's why she sends mel to stop her. was there something else? in that case why imply that right before shes about to die? it feels like an afterthought.

like maybe i wasnt paying attention to some key moment where someone says something that makes this scene make sense. but ive watched it and the scene where leblanc tells mel she has to kill her mother over again and i just. cant peice it together. like it was a little jarring and disorienting to watch as mel steps in to save her mother from the black rose only for ambessa to still die.... make it make sense

[orphanbychoice]

batgirl (2000)

[qcomicsy]

Marvel writer: Then Wade get involved with monsters! And–

Me:

[universesrising]

i hate rain but also sometimes i just wanna sit outside on a rainy day with a warm cup of coffee and a comfy sweater ya feel me

[mouthpoisons]

One of the things that strikes me about your theory is that Arcane has always been about subverting our expectations in a believable way, and never giving us the easy way out.

A semi-common expectation for the next arc is that Jayce caused the future he was trying to prevent. While it does fit with Arcane's recurring theme of "Creating your worst enemy", it feels like the show wants us to think that's the direction it's going. (It's like how the trailers set up certain ideas and made us think the show was going to go a certain way-and then didn't go that direction.) We're given just enough of Jayce's POV to feel like it cannot be that straightforward.

And that's why the "Jayce stopping the apocalypse by creating the Machine Herald" theory you're proposing is so interesting to me. Because, even if he prevents the Apocalypse Wizard future, Jayce is still creating a massive potential threat to Piltover, and permanently destroying a bond that he holds so dear* in the process. (Also, the Battlecast universe proves that Viktor has the potential to bring the apocalypse without the Hexcore, so Jayce is just swapping out one guaranteed apocalypse for another, only possible, one.)

* (Hence why one of my alternate Classpects for S2 Jayce specifically (as of 2x06) is a Prince of Blood: deliberately or not, he actively destroys emotional connections and destroys with emotional connections. Using the Hexcore to save Viktor pushes them apart, and ultimately leads to him being willing to kill his former friend-which in turn leads to Isha's death and Warwick losing his humanity, severing those bonds as well.)

FROLICKING WITH YOU THROUGH A FIELD LALALALALALALLAA

[alicent-archive]

It must have been horrifying for Aegon, Aemond, and Helaena in the years before the dance, all three of them experiencing varying levels of heightened paranoia and unrest every single day.

Viserys was sicky-looking even in ep 6, and the chance of him dying (even then) was pretty high. I can’t imagine that uncertainty breeding anything but fear and worry among everyone.

From their inception, the kids lived in this constant “flight or fight” state, not knowing if Rhaenyra would ever return to the Red Keep, not knowing if Daemon would just turn up at the gates and demand their heads, not knowing if one day Viserys would just disinherit them at the request of his ‘only child.’

Aegon getting drunk every night because the alternative would be thinking of his (very likely) visit to the executioners block; Aemond throwing himself into every lesson, every practice fight with Criston, every flight with Vhagar, because he knows that this period of peace is a farce; Helaena flinching at every touch and sound because she simply doesn’t know whether that’s a friend, or whether the beasts have finally caught up with her.

Alicent going to bed each night, knowing that in the morning, her children’s heads might decorate the walls of the Keep. That one day, she’ll go into Helaena’s rooms and find her missing; that Aegon may never return from his visits to the city; that Aemond may just take the fight to Dragonstone just to end the painful wait that Rhaenyra has (unknowingly, which makes it worse) subjected them all to.

That if her father messes up again, Viserys will send him away (again), that she’ll be alone (again) in a castle that doesn’t want her (again), without allies or friends (again).

Can you imagine living in that state for a week, let alone two decades?

[heckling-hydrena]

here's another goatlings complainpost for you all: the site itself is so unbearably bright, and you can't even set a dark theme yourself with darkreader or userstyles or w/e, unless you want to see an awful pixelated border around all the images because THEY'RE ALL GIFS and also clearly not made with dark mode in mind!!!!!!

[penisbilt]

the bittersweet but absolute flood of relief that comes from admitting defeat at living independently, to have to move back in with parents. we tried! we gave it our best shot for almost 3 years! but living like this (being on our own) is just not possible for us at this time of our lives. we've finally proved it to ourselves that we can't do it. it'll be okay to let ourselves rest now

[maeraevokaya]

*long sigh*

[casbeeminestiel]

Nooo haha you’re fine it’s just that the way you equated corporate intrigue and corrupt government interference in aspects of life under capitalism with modern scientific research and medical advancements being false just turned me off a ��lil.

[uselessgaywhovian]

so how's everyone else's saturday night going

[sandumilfshou]

once again thinking about the mass effect x sw prequels crossover that exists entirely in my head where during ME3 they find another prothean beacon but when shepard activates it, it teleports her halfway across the universe

and she lands directly in the middle of the clone wars, smack between the 501st and 212th facing off against a droid factory

after hurried introductions, they find out that shepard's black widow rifle can take out droidekas in like two shots, so she's immediately on the team. she is fascinated by obi-wan and anakin's 'invisible biotics' and they are fucking horrified when she releases a biotic lash-charge-nova combo that takes out literally a hundred droids in under 10 seconds