#but i cant post that fast

[rabbitlover1027]

Solstice Celebration

"Then we will look forward to seeing both of you in Summer six months from now."

Rhysand wrapped his arm around my waist. Normally, I would melt back against him, but saying farewell to Tarquin and Cresseida at my formal birthday celebration thrown by my mate, it was best to stay in full High Lady mode. I stood tall and thanked them both for coming. Tarquin had made a show of stating only he and Cresseida were leaving, which was no doubt a relief to Varian. Now he could turn his full attention to Amren.

I kissed them both good-bye on their cheek and watched them leave. The party hall Rhys had rented in the middle of the Rainbow was almost empty. Staff was already cleaning off tables. Rhysand had made the celebration a luncheon so that we could all be home and together by evening. High Lords, or an emissary, from each court had attended along with many Velaris residents. Rhysand had covered his surprise better than I when a tanned blonde male had arrived, sending regards from the Spring Court. He had not stayed to eat. It was good though. A sign Tamlin was rebuilding his court and hopefully had some interest in being cordial.

"I can't wait to get you home and give you your presents," Rhysand murmured in my ear.

I gave him a wicked grin.

"Thank you. Truly. I didn’t need a party, but this was nice."

His violet eyes sparkled. "Did you enjoy it?"

Before I could answer, the door to the hall opened. Two red heads and dark haired man entered. My heart rose slightly. I had been a little disappointed Lucien hadn't come. Better late than never.

Jurian’s eyes scanned the hall, taking in all that was left of the party, ever the general. Vassa stood, head high, and seemed to spread out into the spaces around her. I wished again that I could figure out how to break the spell cursed upon her. Rhys sensed my discomfort and rubbed his hand up my back.

"You're doing your best," he whispered.

I flashed him a grateful look before stepping towards our new guests. Vassa said something quiet to Lucien that caused him to roll his eyes. I saw the corner of her mouth tick up ever so slightly, entertained. He turned his head and looked straight to me, no search for his mate. My heart ached. I wished Lucien and my sister could find some resolution. I shook my hair back and headed his way as he headed mine.

Lucien held out a hand, but I wrapped my arms around his neck, my fingers sliding past his long hair. He squeezed me close, placing a soft kiss on my cheek.

"Happy Birthday, Feyre," he nodded a greeting at Rhys. My mate smiled at him. We turned to greet the remaining members of Lucien’s Band of Exiles.

Jurian bowed, and I felt Rhys tighten. It was never easy to tell if Jurian was mocking you or not. I decided to curtsy back to him and Vassa to diffuse the situation before it could start. She extended a hand and when I put mine in hers, she squeezed it.

"We were so happy for the invitation, Feyre Cursebreaker. We have many things to do today, but we wished to stop by and wish you a happy day," the words rolled off her tongue in a way that made me wish she had more to say.

She handed me a small box, wrapped in glossy, navy paper. I gave her a questioning look and she smiled. Looking first to Lucien and Jurian and finding no objections, I slipped my thumb under the edge of the paper and tore it open. A small white box opened to reveal two gorgeous earrings, deep blue flecked with white. Like a night sky.

I pressed a hand to my chest.

"They're gorgeous. Thank you."

Vassa smiled. "They're called sandstone. We hope you enjoy them."

She leaned forward and gave me a warm hug. An obvious good-bye. Jurian threw a thin lipped grin to my mate. I turned to Lucien.

"I'm happy you stopped by," I said to him. I meant it too.

"Good-bye, Feyre. We have some things planned for this evening. I'm sorry I won't be joining you," his mouth tightened. "I hope you have an enjoyable Solstice. Perhaps I can join you another time."

I understood. He'd told me. It was too much. It didn't mean I liked it, for him or for my sister. Once again, I wondered why they'd been made mates. I kept my face neutral.

"Of course," I replied.

I watched them turn and head for the door. I wondered what strength it took for him to come here time and again and leave unacknowledged by his mate. It hadn't escaped me that for once, he had brought no Solstice gift for her. I hadn't seen him look for her once. Perhaps he was giving up.

They were almost to the door when Elain appeared by my side, Nyx on her hip. She'd entertained him most of the party so Rhysand and I could mingle with guests.

"Feyre, would you take him, please?" she handed my son to me. He reached for me with warm, sticky fingers. I'd never known love could feel like this until Rhys and I had been blessed with Nyx. I took my son and kissed all over his face. I twisted into Rhys's arms, as he kissed both of us on the top of our heads. My family, perfect.

It was the way Rhys's body jolted, small enough I could only feel it, I would have never seen it, which caused me to look up. He was staring, a look of disbelief crossed his face before he turned to look at the table where Nesta and Cassian sat with Azriel and the rest of the Valkyries who had left the library to attend today. I turned my head to see what had surprised him.

Elain had followed the Exiles. Had stopped them. My eyes widened and I also looked to see if Nesta was watching. Nesta was. In fact, Nesta was openly staring. I guess Elain was shocking us all.

Before, as a human, they would have been too far away for me to hear. Now, as a fae, it was unavoidable. I couldn't have even pretended not to listen, as Elain’s voice spread softly through the room, clear and song like.

"Lord Lucien."

He faltered, froze momentarily, and then bowed to her.

"My Lady, please. Lord is the name for males of status. I'm currently far from any such thing. Lucien will suffice."

My sister bit her lip uncomfortably.

"You didn't respond to my sister's invitation to join us tonight for Solstice."

Jurian and Vassa traded a look before stepping closer to each other and farther away from my sister. Lucien paid no notice.

"No, my Lady," he swallowed. "You will not see me at Solstice this evening."

He bowed to her and stepped back. Pain not present when he spoke to me etched his face. He started to turn to Vassa and Jurian. Vassa even held out her hand. I wasn't sure if I should be grateful Lucien had her for support or if I should hate her for her clear disdain of my sister's interference of their leaving.

"Lucien," my sister choked on his name. "I brought this, in case you came to the party. It's for you."

She pulled a small satchel from pocket and handed it to him. The satchel was forest green with orange strings. He took it, his eyes searching her face. She gave no answers. Lucien pulled the strings loose and reached in, pulling out several long, thin strips of leather. He twisted them in his hand, threading them through his fingers. He stared at the gift from my sister.

I found it hard to breathe watching them, the sharp unspoken hurts bouncing inbetween them.

She frowned, "To tie your hair back. If you want. It falls in your face sometimes," her face was turning pink. She looked past him to where Jurian and Vassa looked on. She held Jurian's eye for only a moment and then curtsied deep to Vassa. She rose and turned towards Lucien, not meeting his astonished gaze. "Happy Solstice, Lor-, Lucien."

And then she left. She walked off, not to Nesta's table, but back towards the kitchen where Nuala and Ceridwen were getting ready to leave no doubt. Lucien stood oblivious to most of the room staring, watching as she left until Vassa gently pressed her hand to his back and whispered in his ear too softly for me to hear. Jurian threw a last look at all of us, and they slipped out the door. I looked back to Rhys and he shook his head, a suggestion to stay out of it. He left my side to go sit beside Azriel, who glared openly at my mate. I watched as they began talking, looking as though they were disagreeing about something and wondered if I could sneak into Rhys's mind to see what they were saying to each other. But then Nyx pouted for a snack, so I allowed myself the space to not think about my sister and her mate, nor mine and his dear friend. I pushed all worries aside to take care of the need that I could, and plucked a sliver of cheese off a tray for my son, savoring his pleased smile.

[girlboyburger]

mspaint commissions !!!! all 16 of 'em!!

[icewindandboringhorror]

On average, what is the total MONTHLY amount that you spend on dining out*?

*(This doesn't only count going out to restaurants, but also stuff like picking up fast food to bring home, getting a coffee on the way to work, getting a premade sandwich from a grocery store deli during lunch, buying a quick snack from a convenience store or food cart whilst walking somewhere, ordering a pizza or any other food to be delivered to your home, etc.)

*(If you often dine out in groups/as a household: calculate and divide the costs so that you get a Per Person average. This is for YOU individually, NOT the total household/group costs)

(I'm sure polls similar to this have been made before (very common topic), I just haven't personally seen one that I can remember, so, I was curious to do my own! I was discussing this with a group of people today and it was very interesting to see how widely the number varied between individuals. :0c )

(Reblog for bigger sample size if you can, and feel free to explain your answer in tags if there's anything extra to add!)

[doomedclockworkdotmp3]

heeyyy gaaanggg

the pose and the background of the album version (left) are based on oingo boingos only a lad album art. not cause i think he has anything to do with it but just cause ive been wantin to draw that pose for like. weeks and i didnt know who to put there. so why not my latest bug man.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

:-P

[ajwalkerartblog]

i'm very obsessed with skip and loafer atm

[cowboy-robooty]

this is a dorohedoro moment (redraw of a sketch i never poasted lawl)

[just-null]

the way you drew kokichi .. i think im ascending to the heavens .. i see the light .. chest collapsing .. heartbeat flatlining ..

oho, a Kokichi enjoyer!! tysm!! it was my first time drawing him at the time so im glad i didnt fail him. i dont want to fail any of the kyoto group. i love them all!! even w my clear favoritism

he's nice too, a bit more expressive than Noritoshi so i can finally draw something that isnt :| or >:( even if it isnt by much- i like him too

I like how he's both a dick but also kinda sweet. He's a different flavor of tsun... i can use this. my knowledge on him is limited but FROM WHAT I SAW IN THE WIKI OH MY GOD???????? OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!! KOKICHI!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ask-october-fox]

Goodness so much going on and its only been just a bit over a week into the month! But yes, as I mentioned, my friend will be arriving later on tonight and she'll be with me for the remainder of the month. I assure you that I am not going anywhere, so I will do my best to pop in when im able to, but I apologize in advance for any delays I may have. There is still much left of October left to go so we're not done by a long shot!

[gncrezan]

rereading @ataleofcrowns and remembering why i had no other choice but to love him!!!!!!!!!

[rosetterer]

If you're going to be mad that a canon ship has 1000+ fics when HenRen also has that amount but spread out over several years, then you should be furious that a non-canon m/m ship has 25k+ fics... you know, if this REALLY was about caring about the way that people write for lesbian couples compared to gay couples...

Just like some of y'all all of a sudden care about the female love interests

And just like you all of a sudden care about racism

But... it's not really about all that, now is it?

[agoldengalaxy]

dan almost breaks his neck

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

To elaborate more on the Pesterquest stuff -

Alternia is a hell world. It's shitty to live in, even if you're a highblood, unless you fit a very specific mold of person AND are lucky enough to be born of a high caste. Every troll character we care about is, in some way, fucked over by their relationship to their society; Eridan and Vriska get it the worst, having been forced to participate in the murdering side of things since they were young, but every lowblood is screwed and every highblood is made worse even just by their passive participation. Kanaya becomes less sympathetic because she seems completely at peace with the society she grew up in, and Feferi wants to enforce casteism, even if it's of a different flavor. Gamzee and Equius both hold genuinely casteist beliefs and attitudes, which slip out and alienate them from the people they care about.

Putting a friendship simulator into the middle of all this is... a choice, I guess. I'm not going to begrudge anyone for wanting that or liking that, but it's going to be inherently at odds with what Alternia is and is meant to represent, and thus, fundamentally at odds with many of the characters' arcs and even basic personality traits, so heavily are they influenced by the shit society they grew up in.

For a non-Eridan example, Karkat loathes himself in massive part because his society loathes him. He's kill-on-sight and lives in daily terror of death. He wears a symbol at all because not having one marks him as even more of a freak, even though he knows that that symbol is connected to the empire's biggest rebel, whose footsteps he is expected to follow. The reason he's so obsessed with being leader-y and earning his teammates' reapect, or the respect of anybody, is because he's so deeply insecure about whether or not he even deserves to exist.

If you soften Alternia to the point you can write a lighthearted friendship simulator in it, then that characterization... goes away. Karkat is no longer motivated by deep, overwhelming insecurities, which drive him to idolize the society that deems him unworthy, mistakenly believing that if he can find validation in that society, he'll feel less bad about himself. Instead, Karkat is just kind of an asshole!

It's the same way with Eridan. He and Karkat are equal and opposite in this way - while Karkat is marked for death by his society, Eridan belongs to the extremely privileged caste of sea dweller royalty - even moreso than Feferi, as Feferi is slated to be murdered by the Condesce as soon as she comes of age (and her ridiculous optimism is likely something she cultivated in outright defiance of this fate). But it turns out that being a sea dweller sucks shit, too, if you aren't the extremely niche type of person that society deems "correct."

Eridan is not actually casteist and genuinely likes his land dweller friends - and this is unacceptible. Not only that, but smaller "unacceptible" offenses are wrapped up in big ones - despite not liking murder and feeling guilty about it, murder is objectively the correct thing for Eridan to be doing, constantly, to the point of it being "all [he's] ever done practically," because if he doesn't fulfil the duty of his bloodline to be murdering lusii (and by extension, their charges, who are culled when their lusii die), EVERYBODY dies. The constant push-pull of trauma, societal expectations and obligations, the fate of the species, and the fact that he is inherently not the "right" kind of person for his society, are pretty much his entire character. He's basically a walking ball of anxiety and emotional turmoil.

So, again, if you soften Alternia to the point where you can write a story about Eridan wanting to see Shrek in a public theater (something he would not actually be able to peacefully do in canon Alternia - at least not without taking off his cape, hiding his fins, and going anonblood - as sea dwellers are considered ridiculously hostile to the point even Gamzee's nervous about being on the beach for too long), Eridan ends up being just kind of an asshole!

Pesterquest!Eridan is, and I cannot stress this enough, fundamentally not the same guy as canon Eridan. They have practically nothing in common, from the fact that PQ!Eridan is willing to do something for leisure, to the fact that he isn't widely feared and the movie theater doesn't empty out in a panic when he turns up, even down to the fact that he likes femme fashion (canon Eridan goes to Lengths to lean into masc fashion) and Shrek (canon Eridan is a hipster). Hell, even the fact that PQ!Eridan SMILES is a massive deviation from canon!Eridan, who has never once been depicted smiling, and probably hasn't for many sweeps.

Also that he has that much beef with Sollux when, canonically, the two had a lukewarm mutual dislike and didn't even bother interacting until Feferi was added to the mix and Eridan became mad that Sollux was dating her. He wasn't even casteist about him until then, and after, even Sollux and Feferi don't think he's casteist, they just think he's ashenflirting so he can get into a quad with Feferi. Like come on, if you're going to feature another troll in Eridan's route, 1) make it be Karkat, and 2) have Eridan cheat on you the whole time with Karkat like he does to Feferi.

Eridan is just overall a wild choice in a friendship sim - I can't even blame them for just writing an OC and putting an Eridan skin on top - because societally, Eridan isn't even supposed to have non-sea dweller friends. The sea dweller/land dweller race war is something the Condesce deliberately put into place in order to keep land dwelling nobility in line, and Equius cites it as one of the reasons he never got along with Eridan. Like, the very fact that Eridan talks to two land dwellers on friendly terms (Kanaya and Karkat) is a MASSIVE deviation from what he's "supposed" to be like, and a huge hint that he's not as casteist as he'd like to appear. You are genuinely hundreds, if not thousands, of times likelier to end an encounter with Eridan either orphaned or dead than as his friend. He's an unstable maniac, and there's a reason so many members of his team don't like him even though he's legitimately not casteist and they mostly seem aware of it (nobody really complains about or even notices Eridan's casteism by the time they're on the meteor - his contradictions are really obvious, and it's likely that they've more or less realized that he's full of shit).

Again, I don't begrudge anybody for wanting or liking PQ. Who cares, really. I'm just saying that as a canon discussion blog, there's not really any place for PQ because it's so far removed from canon that, like, there's not really anything meaningful to discuss about it. The setting and characters in PQ are fundamentally divested from canon, and not even in an AU way. And it's totally fine if that's what you like, but, yeah, like.

Was Eridan written well (where "well" = accurate to canon): no. Maybe he's fine as an OC with an Eridan Minecraft skin slapped on, but that's not my beautiful son, that's not my baby boy.

What did they get wrong about Eridan (where "wrong" = inaccurate to canon): all.

What route would I have written for Eridan: he shoots you with a gun and you die. And then maybe cheats on you with Karkat

[domwitch]

When you live with roommates so you have to fuck him in the laundry room with the washing machine on to drown out his moans 😖😖

[ffc1cb]

actually while i’m at it. i haven’t drawn danblock in a while

[angel-archivist]

It's not your time, my valentine It's not your time, my valentine