#probably closer to two

[victorluvsalice]

Surprise -- it's video time! Rather pixelated video time, but there's not much I can do about that -- this is a straight upload of a video I took in my Chill Valicer Save a little while ago, and apparently this is the quality that it's in. *shrug* Besides, it's not the video that I'm so interested in sharing as it is the sound --

Because, as you might have guessed from the title, the whole point of this 17-second clip of my game is to share what my Smiler actually sounds like. Back when I first posted the 2013 Alton Towers Firework Show for a "Song Saturday," I mentioned that the surprisingly deep voice they used for The Smiler stuck with me as what my Smiler should sound like. And while the Sims version doesn't sound quite the same as the coaster, it's close enough in my ears. At the very least, it gets the point across that their voice is deeper than you might expect coming out of them! So yeah. Enjoy your new knowledge of Smiler's voice!

(Oh, and if you want context for the clip, this was recorded when I sent the trio to Chestnut Ridge for SimCity Founding -- that's a few Chill Valicer Save updates in your future, though!)

[aflamboyanceofflamingos]

Jason, mildly concerned as he watches silent tears stream down Tim’s face: …You okay there?

Tim, who would rather die for than admit that he was crying because he was trying so hard not to laugh at memes of satosuguru breaking up outside of KFC: …Eddie…uh…died?

Jason, having no clue how to respond to this: uh…Who’s Eddie?

Tim, realizing he can’t use the uncle excuse because Dick and Bruce already know it’s bs: …My turtle

[correct-hermitcraft-quotes]

Impulse, talking about Grian shaming them for playing Phasmophobia without him: 24 hours of gifs was like, h- how has he not run out of gifs yet! *laughing* That's what I kept thinking! How has he not run out of gifs to make us feel bad! He keeps finding 'em from the dark corners of the internet.

Skizz, with exactly the same tone for both sentences: Doesn't make me feel bad, I don't have a soul. Dude, I- Bro, I am having blueberries. They're the size of small apples.

[starrysharks]

winter assassin outfit

[layaart]

I read an arc of A Dark And Drowning Tide recently. It was good.

[arovalentines]

time to make your choice only you can be the one

[thegooblet]

you know how cats will leave dead mice and birds on your doorstep as gifts? lifesteal mapicc totally does that shit

[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.

[elumish]

I had the extremely cool experience of getting to pre-order a friend's book from Barnes & Noble, and it was so exciting.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

remember remember the thirteenth of november, gunpowder treason and mackie second gotcha day. a girl who has for sure definitely certainly not learned how to turn the porch lights on and off

[timey-fandom-stuff]

> Blood Moon - a dark fantasy ISAT AU

aaaand here we go again, this time with my take on a vam-- I MEAN, my I-can't-believe-it's-not-another-vampire AU. what can I say, I'm a sucker for messy AU ideas. ba dum tss. ALRIGHT ALRIGHT, all jokes aside... I couldn't resist after seeing so many fun vampire Siffrin AU ideas floating around, but still wanted to try my hand at doing something a little different. don't be fooled, this has at least 2000% more world building packed into it than it has any business having.

hey, I didn't lie! they're not actually a vampire! technically!! don't worry, I came up with something worse. more below the cut.

> OVERVIEW

set in a world where fae encounters are simply a grim reality of life, Siffrin himself is a part of the darkness that humanity has been taught to fear-- even if he himself doesn't realize what that entails. how could he, when everything that he was has been erased from the world? the Court of the Empty Star is no more, scattered to the winds-- its history wiped clean, even from the fae themselves. weak and depleted without their source of magic, the 'Lost Ones' found new ways of filling the hollowness it left behind-- methods that would render them monsters more than any fae had ever been before.

somewhere along the coast, a human village took pity on a wayward child and took them in, raising them as their own. they believed him to be a harmless abandoned changeling, a creature of fae origin that had lost its ill-gotten mortal name yet been left behind as a part of their world. they only knew he was no such thing after livestock started going missing, nothing but scattered inedible remnants left behind by morning. this certainly was not the work of a changeling. so they called him something else; a 'Cursed One,' bearing the Curse of Hunger that had twisted its afflicted for generations... an insatiable beast who could live forever by devouring the lives of others.

how could they abide something so dangerous in their homes?

how long until this hungry little monster was eating more than just chickens and cattle, after all? it was only ever a matter of time.

how long until their own families began to look like easy food?

he heard every word spoken in the town hall that night, and knew that this place would never be the home he'd hoped it to be.

so the child ran, and ran, and they've never stopped running since.

it's been over a decade since then. deep in the heart of the nation of Vaugarde, a vast fount of otherworldly power flows its cursed power across the land, twisting the land of mortals into a paradise for beings of the Moonlit Realm. there, concealed by night with only the moon and the stars shining overhead, creatures of the darkness travel freely and humanity is condemned to wander as ageless beasts. rumors even claimed that the pure magic of this strange, macabre 'blessing' could cure the hunger of a Cursed One.

'Siffrin' was never the type to play hero. everyone knows that the favors of a monster never come for free, after all. the Saviors believe he is their secret weapon, a mysterious creature who seems as at ease in this expanse of unfathomable night as they are in the day.

but he knows the truth. their new 'friends' will pay the price for such a dreadful bargain-- even if they haven't yet realized the cost.

will they pay their toll in blood or in tears? in time, or the stars above?

or will the pull of two conflicting worlds snap him in two first?

[bayetea]

just all of this from moa regarding frank/hazel/leo. the most uncomfortable romantic tension ever because nobody understands it and nobody involved wants it to be there

especially "Hazel's eyes glittered like gold. 'Gold is easy,' she said. It didn't seem that way to Leo--not when he looked at her." like we can interpret this in a few ways. what an interesting thing to think about a girl you just met

and the whole "if this is a private special thing that she's only done with her boyfriend then I either really don't want to try it or I really really do want to try it" like STOP cut the cameras

[snezfics-n-shit]

[puppetmaster13u]

Just had the idea of @phoenixcatch7's Possessed Doll au and a danny phantom crossover. And just, like, how would the batfam's souls look like to ghosts? Like they're in a symbiotic-possession relationship with giant puppet things. Almost like overshadowing. Would ghosts mistake them for other ghosts or like, do they feel off. Like a part of their soul has been chipped away, or maybe even some sort of terrifying amalgamation of two souls, something no longer human. Or would they just feel liminal as all heck

[silo1013]

salvaged from the office fire in 1998

[britney-rosberg06]

halfbaked and basic landoscar fic concept where Lando tends bar at a struggling pub recently passed down to Logan and Alex, who reaches out to Logan’s childhood friend Oscar to help save the bar and over the course of several weeks/months/however Oscar and Lando grow closer trying to do their best to save the pub while Sargbon try to set them up