Pyxie's Corner

Natural Black Hair Tutorial! Usually Black hair is excluded in the hair tutorials which I have seen so I have gone through it in depth because it’s really not enough to tell someone simply, “Black hair is really curly, draw it really curly.” 

… but… Bees consent. NO. I’M NOT KIDDING.

How? Bee hives aren’t kept on leashes. They’re outside, the bees can travel miles every day. They follow their queen. Who is also outside, not on a leash, and can travel miles every day. If she doesn’t like the hive for any reason - for example: it got too hot, too cold, too messy, too filled with sugary stuff and they need more space… then the queen leaves. And with her the hive.

The queen stays in the hive because the hive is the best place to live. Period. Done. End of. If the hive is staying with the beekeeper it’s because the keeper is doing their job correctly and keeping them happy because the bees can, and do, leave bad beekeepers.

Harvesting honey does not murder bees.

The device pictured above does not mash up bees or their hives.

There’s no ethical concern when it comes to eating honey, it’s totally ethical as food is concerned.

Bees manufacture honey using pollen. They store it in the cells of their hive, where it’s used as food for the colony, particularly the larvae growing into the next generation of bees.

When you harvest honey, you remove parts of the hive that are being used to store the honey, without taking any bees along for the ride. Those parts of the hive are then put into a device, like the centrifugal extractor shown above by gemstone-gynoid, where the parts are spun really fast to pull extract the honey. The honey gets collected on the walls of the extractor, drips down, and can then be filtered and bottled for human use.

So.

It turns out that bees love making honey and can make more of it than they’d ever need. It also turns out that beekeepers taking care of hives and harvesting their honey keeps bees healthy and thriving, more so than they’d normally accomplish on their own. And we really need bees healthy and thriving because they help us grow an astonishing amount of food by pollinating plants.

Solas could not help the easy smile on his face, the memory of Griffon Keep and the desert itself was not his favorite during the time of the Inquisition, but she had spent it there with her. He ran his thumb along her cheek, wiping away the tears that remained, that neither of them chose to fully acknowledge, “And do you remember those moments we stole away from the others, hidden corners in the dark? Where I cooled your skin with my hands, and for once the world felt like ours. No death, no duty.” He paused, watching the expression on her face change, as she remembered their less than subtle passionate moments deep in the desert, “I wish our lives could be that simple, but fate was not kind to us. Remember this lesson but do not dwell on what loss you could not prevent.” Solas shifted so she could not look away, “You did not invent war, nor death, nor the Blight. So you must keep going… not just for Thedas, but for me as well.”

The Theory of Being

This is the first commission I've gotten of both Solas and Isathe from my longfic! (I have art for both their modern AU versions and a few of just Isathe!) and working with @commander-sarahs-art is lovely and easy as always. 💚

I highly suggest getting a commission from them. Look how soft my babies are. 😭

I was expecting a like a Chart or two, maybe some written instructions. not Seventy Seven full color pages for One type of rose.

she has also made a website since the first post (link) the patterns are cheaper there and the payment is handled through PayPal (and I'm guessing she gets a Way bigger cut of the money than with her Etsy so maybe check out the site instead) of the Etsy listed above.

also quick faq below the cut bc idk, supporting small businesses ran by WOC is important and this lady is rad. I just genuinely love her products and want more people to know about them.

I was window shopping and well. If you were hesitant about trying a patty pattern bc money is Tight for everyone rn. Here's one that just straight up free because she discontinued the pattern collection it was a part of.

Art trade for SuzTheSnooze on bluesky!

You believe me like a god / I’ll betray you like a man

oh I'd love to provide! these have been my personal favorites so far (also fair warning, I am a solavellan fucked in DAI truther and that is reflected in my choices below so your mileage may vary)

Everything by niceasspavus - especially their fic Servitude which is an absolute masterwork. The prose is succinct but spectacular, the smut is excellent and never feels out of place (smut sometimes can with solavellan okay) and they dig into Solas' mind in a really beautiful way. They also started a modern AU fic and while that's not usually my trope at all, I've actually read what they have posted so far like three times because it's so good. Can't wait to see if they grace us with more.

Fellchaser by @rosieofcorona - Okay make that literally anything Darcy touches I recommend but Fellchaser is...I want to plaster my walls with it. The walls of my mind prison at least. The first time I read it, I literally read it five times back to back to back (I was admittedly very high but that's NOT THE POINT) because I was so taken with the prose and every detail. It is absolute perfection, seriously, the only thing wrong with it is that it isn't 100k words

What He Wouldn't Give by sugarhihello - a devastating take what happens immediately after the Crestwood scene we know and hate to love. I'm scared of writers who can make me want more of a scene like that and yet this fic gives me that

The Waiting by say_lene - solavellan thigh riding, need I say more?

Even Gods Need Miracles by callmebecks - A study of Solas' mindset from DAI to now include the DAV ending.

A Field as Wild as Your Heart by lillith_morgana - An exceptional take on the solavellan ending/post-DAV with gorgeous prose

Dreadful Recollections by @scaryanneee - if you know me from the bg3 era at all, you know Think of Me is a smut of all time so scaryanne joining us in solavellan hell has been SO FUN (for me personally at least eheheh) This little smut is so brilliant because it truly gave me so many ideas to play with for my own ship during this time period while also being so hot??? Also just read the tags on this and you know you're in for a great time

Handle With Care by feynite - I'm sure you've seen feynite if you've looked at solavellan fics because Looking Glass is the biggest one but I think this is just a really excellent little fic of theirs. Sad AND sexy - what every Solas fan is looking for I think

Lumberjacks, like most megafauna species generally require more space than the average hardware store, even a big box store could provide. The misconception is that Lumberjacks are a social species because of how they often work and live together.

This is a matter of necessity, not preference, and a survival technique for thriving under the LogBoss.

A “pack” of Lumberjacks, if not under the environmental pressure of a LogBoss will naturally disperse until they each have a wide territory.

Lumberjacks rarely fight for territory.

One on one, a Lumberjack could drive out a Dad or Lesbian, however the latter tend to travel in social packs.

Lumberjacks will passively retreat on the presence of large numbers of people. Kind of like Sasquatch.

Getting a “pack” of Lumberjacks assembled would be hard enough unless they were forced into a Hardware Store by a LogBoss. In that case, they would already be in a heightened and potentially agitated state far above their natural behavior. This artificial scenario can be likened to a circus animal running amok. If it had been in the wild, the incident would not have occurred.

Free-roaming Lumberjacks are the cryptids of the Hardware ecosystem. They are surprisingly quiet and unobtrusive.

Only experienced silverbacks or the boldest young Dads dare venture into a craft store for long without his mate or offspring to keep roving Craft Ladies at bay and guide him in this strange ecosystem. If a Dad enters with his mate and is separated from her, he will often scuttle for the seeming familiarity of Woodcrafts, Models, or Paints (the latter not to be confused with Fine Arts, unquestioned territory of art students), but he eyes Scrapbooking and Jewelry with trepidation and will usually venture into those exotic areas only in the company of females of his pack.

Lumberjacks are rarely spotted entering craft stores of their own volition, for while they do not fear it as Dads do, they know it is an environment unsuited for megafauna such as themselves.

Hardware store Lesbians generally adapt more easily to craft stores, although they may enlist another Lesbian of a subspecies more adapted to that environment to guide them until they find their niche. Lesbians have even been known to seek the aid of a Craft Lady, a native fauna that share similarities with Lesbians but are usually smaller and nimbler to suit their chosen habitat. Dads who witness this are often awed by the Lesbians’ temerity, for although larger, Dads are generally wary of the cunning and dexterous Craft Ladies and may mistake their enthusiastic pack greetings as predatory swarming.

Craft Ladies, secure in their ecological niche, have no fear of interlopers and take the presence of non-native beings in stride, although they may become territorial about scarcer resources.

@thedisablednaturalist @fagtabulous