#also it’s not like i have the money to buy any of this stuff so i’m not actually upset abt us not agreeing on decor lmao

[nerdykeppie]

Holiday Shopping that fights period poverty for college students? Yep! Read on. :)

After the success of our June/Pride 2024 sales goal, where we managed to eliminate a lot of the debt we accumulated while I was unable to work earlier this year & stock up cash so we didn't have to borrow for payroll during the fall lull and also donate to @queerliblib, we were considering where to focus on this year when a conversation I had with my mom pointed me in the direction of our charity for Holidays 2024: the East Stroudsburg University Warrior Food Pantry, and specifically, stocking menstrual products at the pantry.

Without getting too much into the weeds about the details - which I'll talk about under the cut for those of you who are interested - here's the pitch: we need to hit a gross sales goal of $45K in December in order to pay our bills and payroll basically until Pride starts up. Businesses like ours are very much feast or famine, and we've got to eat and we've got people whose paychecks depend on us having the cash to pay them.

If we hit that goal, we'll donate the equivalent of 1% of our net profit from the month of December in period products -- tampons and pads, specifically, by request of the food pantry, and possibly reusable pads and menstrual cups, if the pantry wants that from us. (At the end of the day, this is about taking care of people the way they need, and we'll listen to the pantry staff about what people are requesting.)

We've currently got our Bottoms & Tops sale going, too, so you can buy 2 tops or bottoms from the linked collection & get 69% off the 3rd item from that collection.

Okay, so for the long version whys and wherefores:

My mom taught math at ESU for 35 years, and she and Dad now volunteer running the food pantry along with a couple of other people. ESU is a state school, and as such is one of the few remaining vaguely affordable schools in Pennsylvania. A lot of its students are self-supporting for one reason or another -- many are "non-traditional"/adult students, have kids, or don't have families that can support them while they go to school. Mom & Dad have pushed to expand what the food pantry offers to personal care items, which has been difficult due to a bunch of boring stuff about money and state entities and also people thinking 'that's not food,' but Mom is stubborn about it, because -- to paraphrase her -- how can you focus on class when you feel gross? This struggle has been especially difficult for menstrual products, and way more so for tampons, because it's a rather conservative area and... yeah. People get weird about it.

I've been really broke, with a young kid, and reliant on food pantries, which rarely, if ever, have any menstrual products, let alone tampons. Period poverty is very real, and it sucks.

Plus, I gotta tell you, if we can send a bunch of boxes of tampons and pads to the food pantry, well... Rumor has it this will help my mom win an argument over whether those items should be carried at all, because what are they gonna do, throw them out? They're here! They've been donated! Wasting them would be terrible. :)

So that's the pitch, guys. Help me make a direct, measurable difference in the lives of people at the school where I went to winter swim team, the school that fed me growing up... and help my mom win an argument about making people's lives better... and get your holiday shopping done while you do. ;) We start counting sales from the minute I hit post. :P

[stergeon]

25 rejected edeleth fluff ideas

here are some edeleth stories i thought a lot about but did not write. if anybody wants to actually write one of these, be my guest (and also pleeeeease send me a link, i'm desperate for content about Them Girls™)

byleth takes edelgard on a fishing trip and she has an absolutely abysmal time

edelgard makes a valiant attempt to corral byleth's atrocious fashion sense ahead of a formal event

byleth teaches edelgard swear words

edelgard tries some of those weird herbs rhea used to give students to relax; byleth is more than happy to babysit

byleth does edelgard's taxes. she's wearing her goofy professor glasses. it does something weird for edelgard

edelgard takes byleth on a date to the opera and byleth cries the whole time

byleth reads a work of fiction for the first time ever. it's a horror story. she did not like it. edelgard reads her something nicer.

edelgard gets byleth to pose for a portrait and shows it to her

byleth has to give a speech at a big event and is a nervous wreck. edelgard has been waiting all her life for this coaching opportunity

edelgard tries to teach byleth how to draw (she is very bad at it)

byleth cannot for the life of her figure out which fork is used for what purpose at this fancy dinner. edelgard covers for her

edelgard goes all out to celebrate byleth's birthday on the day byleth thought was (read: randomly chose as) her birthday, not her actual birthday; byleth doesn't have the heart to tell her

byleth brings edelgard various souvenirs from her travels around the country. edelgard tries not to be so soft over it, even though they're… not all hits

edelgard attempts to make dinner and botches it beyond salvation. they get takeout.

byleth will not shut up about this cute house she saw when she was out on a mission and how nice it would be for them to "have something like it one day." edelgard arranges to buy the place

edelgard sees byleth in a dress uniform and cannot stop swooning

byleth is being relentlessly pursued by a suitor who won't take a hint and edelgard challenges the idiot to a duel

edelgard decides she will learn to swim. it goes poorly, to say the least, but she manages in the end. as it turns out, getting to see byleth in a swimsuit is a good motivator

byleth gets caught kissing edelgard by hubert. the resulting conversation is unpleasant for everyone. ferdinand, meanwhile, is overjoyed

edelgard is having a terrible, horrible, no-good very bad day. she chews byleth out over nothing and immediately feels awful about it. byleth forces her to take the rest of the day off to chill

byleth is going away for a month-long mission. both girls are inconsolable. they write each other letters literally every day.

edelgard really puts somebody on blast in a council meeting. byleth gets stars in her eyes

byleth concocts a very, very elaborate story about some kind of summit in faerghus; she and edelgard leave enbarr for two weeks to attend. surprise: there's no summit, it's a spa retreat

edelgard arranges a "normal date" where they go out in town in disguise and do very boring things like run errands, look at furniture, buy socks, etc.

doropetra-edeleth double date

[ambrosykim]

i never realised how poor i was until i got a job lol

[jrueships]

Bought one of my lil nephew giannis shoes for his birthday bcs he loves giannis and these are some of the ugliest fucking things I have ever laid my eyes on in my life. anyways it's his bday today so i gave them to him. but they are so ugly. he loves them

[perilegs]

truly nothing worse when there's a good product but its packaging is so incredibly annoying and cringe you loathe to see it in your house

[supersecretnerd]

Ok so these designs are cute as hell, the Internet is just mean

I have too many thoughts about a game I still need to watch

[carcarrot]

do i really want to make individual drinks again

[seonghwasblr]

A fun fact about me is, that it's been my dream for a very long time to become a nailtech

[eats-the-stars]

hate my sister's shitty good for nothing boyfriend. can you imagine being a 30yo man with two kids who won't even scramble an egg. Not for his kids, not for his girlfriend, not for himself. literally if my sister doesn't leave out pre-made meals when he's watching the kids he will rip up bread or pour them dry cereal or open a granola bar and make himself microwave dinners. like, lowest effort possible. but if i mention this to my sis, she'll be like "no he's definitely cooked for the kids! he scrambled an egg for them once! i watched him do it!" but it's like...so he scrambled one egg in the last five years. just to like, prove he can? at your direct insistence? should we all clap? like seriously. hate this guy. had to really hold back recently because he had someone over and he was interacting with the kids more than usual for appearances, and he had to keep asking me and my sis what the 5yo was signing because he barely bothered to learn his own son's primary form of communication. i was so tempted to say "that one means 'go home' but you wouldn't know that because you don't take them anywhere." so hard to hold that in. If I had to describe this man in two words they would be these: Low Effort. Not quite bare minimum, but JUST enough to convince my sister that it would be too much hassle to get rid of him. he's stupid as fuck, but just smart enough to quickly stop shit like screaming obscenities at the kids for doing normal kid things. and he once stomped on my headphones and broke them in a fit of rage, but gave my sister money to replace them so it was "fine." Like, my sister thinks that he's just struggling with his anger issues, because he had a bad childhood, blah, blah, and oh he would never actually hurt her or the kids. and like, good for you, but i don't trust like that. genuinely hoping he gets struck by lightning and dies instantly.

[alullinchaos]

wait off topic if I change Cinder's semblance for my rwby canon-adjacent au.... would this be controversial editing to warn people that the tags are novel length but that i love them and also @graythegreyt pls read them when u have a chance

[sanchoyo]

haven’t been on much bc my dog has been sick :( between seizures and an infected tooth we’ve been having a Time trying to get everything fixed (this started around the holidays so our vet has been very booked up…we have been like 3-4 times in the past 4-5 weeks OTL does not help it’s like an hour drive there, so that’s been exhausting) now his new seizure meds are making him sick (was hoping it was like, just an adjustment period thing but he’s been sick for a week and having concerning symptoms…) if I’m not on a ton or slow to replying to messages it’s bc I’m working as much overtime as my job will give me bc Vet Expensive and mentally drained obvi 😞

[bitchfitch]

a lot of the comments on that stained glass post are really funny because they assume the horse was like, a serious attempt and not me going "ok I've never used these tools before, I'm going in with no plan and just fucking up half sqft of glass while i learn how the cutter and pliers work" and then assembling the resulting shards into something vaguely resembling a horse to get the rest of the process down in my pre research fuck around and find out phase of learning a new skill.

Also the soldering looks like shit because the articles i found in the 20 minutes i was buying the stuff to start all said "flux makes the soldering better" in really vague terms without actually like, explaining that it lowers the flow point of the solder and makes the copper foil more receptive to it. so i assumed it wasn't necessary and was just used for vague betterness reasons and didn't buy any until a few days later when I started properly researching how to do things and found out it's actual job and that it's absolutely vital to the process.

So the solder isn't actually fully bound to the tape on the horse and is just like, melted overtop it following the lines of the tape. there's a distinct oval shape where the sides of the bead are up and off the tape instead of the domed shape it's actually supposed to be.

I also hadn't bought a grinder at that point bc I'm cheap and wanted to find one lightly used on ebay and also i wanted to wait for my pay check so I'd have a Little extra wiggle room with the whole shebang before i dropped 70 bucks on a tool i might not enjoy using too much.

which is to say, the whale is the first actual attempt and not the horse.

[webvampzz]

me when i want to buy something but its over 20 dollars

[fingertipsmp3]

Ughhhhhhh I hate writing and I hate not writing and I hate myself

[umilily]

shopping for clothes online stresses me tf out

[subsequentibis]

'nother big post of closed species guys i've designed since folks were nice abt the last one :)

mignyans (alien parasite crabs that infect a host and cause the thing-esque meat to manifest on their bodies):

^ free anniversary event design! they do a scavenger hunt every october for traits and it's always a good time

^design i did as a guest artist for the species! using the new mineral deposit trait that was added after the last anniversary event

^ this is one of my favorites i've ever done. i love you channel wvmb you will always be famous to me.

^ this one and the next one were designed based on premade crabs! this one's the same species as the first mignyan i ever designed

^ this one goes with the sun & moon one :) wizard & apprentice

^metalhead!! bloody remnants logo designed by my wonderful fiance

starlyngs (avian creatures that are personified stars i think? i'll be honest i'm less clear on the lore i just think they're neat):

^ shithead extraordinaire who is in trouble all the time for stealing & conning people out of valuables

^ freak.