#is this fluffy. i dont know

[companionwolf]

Fluffbruary fill #1

@fluffbruary

Prompt: 15. Radio + vague + tent

Fandom: XCOM 2; 'What if Central rescued the Commander before they got tanked?' AU

Rating: PG

Warnings: N/A

Word count: 395

They lay in the dark of the tent supplied by the Reapers, the Commander on a rickety cot, Central on the cold ground.

Distantly somewhere outside a radio plays, vague sounds of a news report. The Commander does their best not to listen; they can't take the constant reminder of their failures. 

They turn over and sit up so that they're looking down at their central officer, who's in the soldier pose with his eyes shut. For a moment, they just admire his form, run their eyes over him, assure themselves he's there. 

"Central?" they ask finally.

He grunts but otherwise doesn't respond.

"Central, I'm cold," the Commander says, and it's more whiny than they expect, more childish and small than they'd hoped to reveal. 

"What do you want me to do about it?" His voice rasps with sleep, and he still doesn't move, doesn't even open his eyes. 

They swallow hard. "Would-- would you--"

The Commander can't spit it out. But they don't seem to have to; Central's getting up, clambering onto the cot beside them, grumbling that he's going to fall off. 

They lie there in silence for a few moments, back to back, before Central asks, "Are you going to warm up or not?" He's twisting around to face them now, opening his arms. 

"O-oh," says the Commander, and timidly slides into the space he's offering. Central's arm comes down, pulls them a little closer to him.

The Commander fumbles for the blanket, pulling it over the both of them. His breath is in their hair, their breath against his chest.

The Commander shivers. 

"You're still cold?" He sounds incredulous. 

"No, I'm ok," they say. "I just--" They hesitate. "We shouldn't do this." 

Central shrugs. "Not like anyone whose opinion matters is around anymore," he says. "It's fine."

"What about the Reapers?"

"I don't think they care either way," he says, visibly fighting back a yawn.

"Are you sure?" 

And he laughs, and the Commander wants to live in that, in this warmth. 

"I'm sure," he says. "Try to get some sleep, would you?" 

"Okay," they say, very softly.

Soon enough, they are almost asleep, on the edge of dreams, so they aren't sure it's real, but...

Central gingerly plants a kiss on their forehead. The Commander sighs contentedly.

The world outside might be fucked, but here, right now, it's all okay.

[delicourse]

i miss them a little if im gonna be honest

[notahorseindisguise]

I'm so sorry you're hurting yourself like this. You're clearly an autistic young woman. I hope you get the help you need ❤️

thank you so much!! i really needed this encouragement. it means so much to hear you call me a woman, especially since im a cisgender male.

i will get the help i need! ill look into hormone replacement therapy and become the beautiful autistic young woman you see inside me!!

[corpusdiem-seizethedead]

*camera filming like a documentary. Vaggie is narrating. The camera focuses on Husk reading on the couch*

Vaggie: This is Husk. He enjoys his personal space-

*camera pans out to reveal Angel laying across Husk’s lap*

Vaggie: This is Angel. He also enjoys Husk’s personal space.

[maskofnova]

I don't even know how to describe how I could picture the scars on her back. Like. Rivets? Conductors? Just raised metal along the scars where her endoskeleton was put in. I think it'd be similar for kit but different. I imagine his little backpack is more or less part of his body so it'd cover anything like that more than surge's does.

[eliashirsch]

icemav + kisses

[noxx-33i]

Retrospring dump 4

guys please

[puppyeared]

doodles of my fav sillies

anton belongs to @poicyss

[musubiki]

oh you know just.....typical limochi activities.......

[loving-delusions]

septmeber.........

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Laughingstock Lives in My Head Rent Free because Of You (/pos)

YIPPEE YAHOO <3<3

[yumayui]

hes putting on contacts instead of glasses

[gurggggleburgle]

SY picking up a fluffy ball of fur: what a cute fluffy pomeranian

3 weeks later crushed under the weight: oh no. It's a Chow!!!

[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

[celestriix]

i had a vision...

[dailychunsik]

[89] chunsik cat sillay version