#btw the chickens have the default names

[strawberrinoz]

i made a new save file to fully experience 1.6. here’s a farmer redesign (click for better quality if you’re on the mobile app… 🙁)

she goes by ruru. she has rbf. she’s an aspiring crazy cat lady and she has no concern for her well being

ok that’s it ty

[happy74827]

Can you make more Joe Goldberg? You did such aan amazing job on the first one that I NEED a second one. Just please consider. Thank. Love your fics btw 💖💖💖

Lily of the Valley

[Joe Goldberg x Female!Reader]

Synopsis: Coffee might not be his favorite, but things can change when it involves a person like you.

WC: 659

Category: Fluff

Fortunately, I already had this small idea in mind for our lovely stalker man and this request really just put the icing on top of the cake. Hopefully it fulfills your needs 🙌 (also you’re too sweet… thank you so much for the kind words 💞)

『••✎••』

Coffee. The hard, hot, and bitter drink that is the reason many people get out of bed each day and the reason why some people stay up until the early hours of the morning. He never understood the appeal.

But that didn't mean he didn't enjoy the smell of coffee beans roasting, the smell of fresh ground beans being poured into a filter, and the smell of the finished product. He didn't understand how something so bitter and disgusting could have such a calming and comforting smell.

Joe had been sitting in a booth in a coffee shop for the past few hours, watching the world outside go by, sipping a small mug of tea, and his current read, "The Woman In The Window" by A.J Finn, in front of him. His eyes were trained on the people going by, not really taking much of anything in. He was on autopilot, a default setting he slipped into whenever his mind was full of something else.

It was only when a waitress with a short, black pixie cut walked over to his table that his eyes come back into focus, and his thoughts began to slow down. She didn't look like she belonged in a coffee shop. With a long, floral dress, combat boots, and a cardigan, she was far too pretty and too interesting to be serving lattes. She was a rose in a garden full of daisies, a peacock among chickens.

Then, like a snap to reality, the sound of his name pulled him away from her and onto… you. The whole reason he was here in the first place.

If he thought the waitress was a rose, you were a whole bouquet.

"Jonathan! Are you going to order anything, or are you just going to keep sitting there, scaring all our other employees?" You said a laugh in your voice.

He hadn't even noticed the waitress had already left, and now, you were standing by the table, holding a coffee pot.

Yeah, he needs to stop letting his thoughts take over.

"No, no, I was just, uh, reading."

"Reading a book, or reading her?" You said, cocking your head to the side, indicating the waitress who had moved on to another table.

"Reading the book."

"Mhm, sure." You said, not at all convinced. God, he just wanted to kiss the smirk off your face. Those pretty lipstick-covered lips moving against his.

You shook your head, smiling.

"You want a muffin… or something? On the house, since you're a regular and all."

He looked down at the book again, then back up at you. Unlike the waitress, you were dressed for work in a black, collared shirt tucked into black pants and a black apron tied around your waist.

It told him a lot about you, like the fact that you were a rule follower organized. The other waitress played confidence to stand out. You wanted to blend in, but still, he noticed.

How could he not notice you?

"Sure."

"Blueberry, right? Your usual."

"Yeah."

"Okay. I'll be back in a second."

You had just turned to leave before you spun on your heel and stopped.

"And, Jonathan,” you paused. "That book in your hands? Wonderful read."

As you walked away, he realized how his heart had started to beat faster, and he couldn't stop the grin on his face.

A bouquet? No, you were something far more rare and far more beautiful than that.

You were an orchid.

And when you returned with that perfectly shaped muffin and that award-winning smile, Joe decided this would be the last time he ever chased a woman. Because this one?

You?

It was as though you were a mix between all his past loves and yet someone entirely new.

You were that new orchid in the greenhouse, the lily of the valley, and he wanted to nurture you and make you grow.

It's time to stop blending in; he would bring you out to bloom.

[meguchi512]

assigning behaviors I've noticed in people to pjsk characters:

tsukasa: writes his name EVERYWHERE. his desk at school has "tsukasa" "tsukasa" "tsukasa" "tsukasa" written all over it, his notebooks too and even his classmates' notebooks (from a classmate)

shizuku: says "oh, madonna!" instead of "oh god" (from my italian grandpa)

saki: tsukasa rides a bike and saki sits on the handlebar & every time they have to stop they fall off but they just get up and go on like nothing's happened (from an old friend)

mizuki: accidentally sends "penis shaped messages" and immediately points it out (me)

ena: is so fucking done with mizuki's penis messages (my friends)

kanade: "uhh i think I'm forgetting something? oh well it probably wasn't important" hasn't drank water since yesterday (me again)

rui: extremely verbose, to the point where everyone around him thinks he's some sort of philosophical genius but in reality he's just saying dumb shit and articulating it intelligently (my italian grandpa again so sorry)

an: sends her friends "hot milfs in your area" messages pretending to be a bot because silly and immediately gets banned ( @robinoullea literally)

airi: wants to be supportive but types way too quickly ( @robinoullea trying to say "10/10")

emu: says the most deranged things in roblox chats and manages to not get censored while her friend (nene) can't even go one sentence without "########" ( @harukaisu )

nene, trying to tell tsukasa to reset his roblox avatar because he got stuck: uhhh kill yourself (me) (I'M SO SORRY)

minori: tries to download a pin and accidentally sends it to a random person and dies of embarrassment (everyone. no one is safe from Pinterest's AWFUL interface)

ichika: goes into a store. gets an ingredient. goes back home. goes back. gets an ingredient. goes back home. repeat until she's got everything to make dinner when it's already 11pm (my forgetful mom)

mafuyu: has the most DERANGED dreams I'm not even kidding ( @robinoullea when he had that one dream where he sent me a tiktok meme of Richard Watterson saying the names of popular pornstars with them flashing on screen for a second each. I've cried real tears about this btw)

kohane: has a chicken farm in minecraft but she's so attached to them that she can't kill any of them for food so they just keep reproducing and in turn the server keeps getting laggier. eventually a creeper explodes right next to it and she throws herself off a mountain (me)

haruka: uses the default pfp which is also the pfp that shows when you get blocked by someone. she also turns her phone off often (which causes messages to not get sent until it's on) so minori always panics and sends her messages to make sure she's not blocked (classmate)

akito: makes gagging noises on purpose because it makes ena gag too and get VERY annoyed and he finds it funny (classmate)

toya: unintentionally causes a lot of fights in vbs regarding what the best way to make coffee is (my whole friend group) (except me i do it on purpose)

honami: whenever someone tags her in l/n's group chat she heroically says "who calls for my help?" ( @robinoullea )

shiho: doesn't have the heart to tell honami how funny it is when she does that (not me i always make sure to mention it)

[kerubimcrepin]

LIVEBLOG: Wakfu Season 4, Episode 4 [PART 2]

I wonder how long he's been standing there. Did he come an hour early? 20 minutes early? Just standing there, doing nothing...

Dios mio... la creatura!

Something very weird happened with the Eni queen/leader. In s2, her cape and hands were like this because she was sitting, in this season — it's just part of her design. Did nobody check this stuff? Am I going insane thinking this is an error? Did she look bad when her cape was down? What the fuck is happening?

Once again, something very silly is happening with Sufokia, if they have an empress and a king. My headcanon to fix it is "the king is a consort-king" or something.

(*sobs in Ankama, or, really, 89% of all media, not understanding that whoever marries the ruler of the nation is a [insert title]-consort, and does not have as much political power or the right of succession* *Hysterically convulses in "99% of all Queens were Queen-consorts, and the title itself, by default, usually means a consort. For this reason, female rulers (rare non-consort Queens who came to throne due to lack of male princes) typically named their husbands "Princes" and not "Kings", because the title king always implies a higher degree of power than a queen; therefore, it might be reasonable to assume, that in this fantasy setting, a Ruling Empress's husband might be called a king for this reason* *Foams at mouth because Ankama just forgot they mentioed Sufokia having a king and I'm trying to cope. badly*)

Also since I'm on this tangent already, YES, this means that Sadida rules of throne succession are:

1. extremely easy for outsiders to abuse (say what you will, but "the spouse inherits the throne" is a BADDD rule to combat conquest by foreign nations, there's a reason it was children or blood-relatives of the ruler, besides patriarchy/divine right of kings/whatever — the spouse is an outsider. All it takes is a princess, who is Wonderful at poisoning, being married off to a foreign nation and whoopsie-daisy, their country is now Her country, and therefore her Family's country),

2. it's unrealistic,

3. probably just bad writing for the sake of drama.

If you're curious why I know all this shit.......... I have a blorbo in a different fandom, and his entire thing is that he was married into a royal family and then tortured by his queen wife in a sort of gender-bent Henry VIII arrangement (except he was kept alive against his will and there was no divorce or church splits). God bless that blorbo for making me learn.

These Huppermages were repurposed from the movie concept art, btw.

I find it quite interesting, that Joris has the authority to be present here...

My personal theory/headcanon is that he is their mediator, and they just call him to their meetings so that, instead of yelling at each other and declaring wars, they can talk to him (and therefore, yell only at him and declare no wars).

Ugh, once again, I am not entirely fond of the English subs. First the translation error about the brotherhood of forgotten/tofu, and now they are making Joris say this spring chicken thing...

It doesn't fit his character and reads weird. Just leave it as "I'm not that young", like in the original. It's more fitting for Joris to speak in negative sentences ("I am not young") than in affirmative ones ("I am old") because he is not fond of stating direct facts about himself and his life... besides the fact that he's standing in front of multiple world leaders.

[kicks my legs cutely thinking about the fact that Joris, older than every king and queen in this place, and fully convinced of his excellence and wisdom and heroism, has been forced to bow down to them for his entire life despite hating at 90% of them for their political decision] I love his commitment to being the protagonist of an 18th century Russian novel about being doomed by the narrative.

Also, kinda wild. You'd think that during Ogrest's chaos they'd— actually I think everyone was too dead to hold meetings during that, nvm.

I wonder what they would do, if the maker of the eyes wouldn't reply. Just stand there? Or is this speech more of a formality — something he always says, in the lead-up to the meeting?

(I am once again reminding you, this blog is LITERALLY about overthinking crepinjurgen lore! Ankama gave no shit while writing this. I'm just doing this for fun.)

He's so unimpressed. Probably still trying to gauge what the fuck is going on.

THE LITTLE SMILE— he's trying to suppress it so hard in the first screenshot here. He's probably glad that Yugo seems to be in good spirits about what's happening, even if he himself is still quite worried.

His expression here is a beautiful mix of "PLEASE DON'T FUCK THIS UP" and "it is a canon event, I cannot intervene"

Literally, Joris's expressions at this moment should be analyzed frame by frame. You can feel the desperation. He now understands that there is a high possibility they are fucked. Because his bestie (who is always right) is an impulsive 20-something year old boy who knows nothing about politics or what people can do, and his mom is a god, and the leaders of the world aren't going to like whatever the fuck is going on, and he KNOWS what they might do, and what might happen, and oh god oh fuck oh god oh fuck—

"Yugo :) perhaps you shuoild :) um. :) ease them into it. :).... :("

He's trying to keep smiling, so hard. It's crazy.

Joris has lived through the huppermage genocide. He knows people don't need that much of a reason to begin killing. He understands precisely just how fragile the position that Yugo and his people are in. He understands his own place in the pecking order, too — he isn't going to act like Yugo's friend if these people are watching.

And neither Yugo, not any other Eliatrope is able to understand this. There are cruelties in this world that they are fundamentally unable to grasp without having truly been seeped in it before.

Like, what is he even to do here, to make Yugo understand how bad the situation is. All he can do is stand there looking haunted, while receiving unprecedented amounts of psychic damage.

If I was Joris at this point, I would simply pull out a flask of whiskey and a cigarette. The political situation has now gone completely unfixable. There is no going back, now that she has said these two lines.

Someone native to the World of Twelve and old enough to understand politics would know how bad this sounds. But to her, these are good things. Of course they are, since she knows what is good and what isn't, and everyone in her world has always accepted those things as good.

Basically: the conflict between WoT and Eliatropes is that a nation of people from a world of teletubbies-level conflict, — with no bigotry or nations or poverty or hunger or theft or inequality, or ulterior motives, — has been added to a "game of thrones" type society with no explanation. And now they are all forced to try and understand one another.

If I was Joris at this moment, I would simply shoot myself in the temple with a gun. If things were bad before, they are horrible now. She is talking to world leaders as her children. It might have been alright even with Eliatropes, but these people aren't Eliatropes.

DO I EVEN NEED TO COMMENT ON HOW BAD THIS IS? IN A WORLD WHERE COLONIALISM, RACISM, SUBJUGATION, AND SLAVERY ARE REAL? IS SHE ON CRACK?

I would give anythign to see Joris's expressions as she's saying these things. I think he should be trembling. Staring vacantly into space.

To someone from a world of violence, a world with "no violence" seems like a world where violence is hidden, and enacted to stop them from voicing their disagreement with the status quo.

Tot has described this as a sort of conflict between the modern world approaches to society — and named China and America as examples of what he was inspired by, while writing Eliatrope.

I will not get into detail on my feelings on it (China is often extremely criticized in the west for things every country in the world does due to racism)

But this might point us towards the fact that the world of Eliatropes wasn't as free of conflict as the show portrays it to be, and it was, in fact, Just A Society, with all that entails. In which case, things get morally morally gray... might explain why, in the earlier drafts of the season, she was meant to be the main antagonist — and why it was decided against.

(Is that maybe why Qilby is so embittered — his experiences were silenced, and he was made to suck it up, only confiding in Shinonome? She does constantly shut up Yugo and Qilby, not letting them speak up about their grudges against each other to keep the peace— [I am quickly silenced by tangent police])

[a-lost-crow]

Lukas in the storymode!Jesse au. Since I don’t have any other drawings here’s Lukas being scared of a command block

This has a longer list than the Discord mod Romeo post so I’ll keep it brief 1/746

Lukas can do Minecraft commands. And it’s exactly what you think of.

Lukas is only person in Beacontown who can use Minecraft commands

Everyone can use Minecraft commands but so little have access to it because it’s impossible to get it.

You have to think “outside of the box” to get commands. Example, The Dragon Prince spoilers btw, is when Callum is a regular human who can’t do powers who thinks “outside of the box” and suddenly he has air powers I think

Lukas was a little child when he first discovered it.

It started by his love of reading in the library, then he found an old shabby book about commands. People who usually pick that book would stop reading as soon as people read one of the passages.

But Lukas kept it with him, as a secret.

If the librarians found out who stole the book in the present, Lukas would have to pay a LOT because of that overdue book.

Anyways, Lukas read one of the passages that people usually stop on

It had to do with seeing the world as some kind of hack. Not a simulation, but in a way where he has to see reality as something else.

Being a child, he didn’t care. So he continued and eventually it worked.

Considering, as my recent headcanon, how his life as a kid was already a mess (and that he has gifted child syndrome) he keeps it a secret

People who can do commands usually get a bit upset because of this newfound information, thinking they can use it for greed. They instead felt despair.

For Lukas and a couple of others it was an act of curiosity.

Like him and the others, they can manage keep balance between the world he lives in and with the commands.

There is actually a quote written in the book for people who have the power.

“Treat this power as if it were another trait. Don’t treat it as any more than what it already is.”

So Lukas didn’t have a hard time managing with his power.

He sees it like it was any other duty like fighting, being the leader of the Ocelots, baking, etc. It’s just that the commands can become more deadly

Petra knows his powers after Lukas had to use a command to save Petra

She’s the only person to know pre-MCSM

It’s because Lukas doesn’t trust people. How people can use him for gain.

And that’s why he fears command blocks

He doesn’t want to see the power people will do with it

He just doesn’t want more attention and the aftermaths that come after it.

Because people don’t know how command blocks are made, and that the Order of the Stone lied to them, they were seen as a mere concept or a myth and it stayed like that for a long time

People who use commands don’t recommend it but there’s always people who let curiosity and personal greed drive them

Just like Ivor

In the au, Lukas doesn’t show it but he fears Ivor because of the command block

I don’t promote keeping secrets but Lukas not telling people he can use commands as a child is a smart choice

Nothing much he uses the commands for any personal gain

He mostly uses commands if he’s lazy to do something

Teleport items, automatically wear things (in Minecraft logic it’s just changing skin), generate a missing item

He doesn’t use it a lot because he doesn’t want to live his life full of cheats and being power hungry

Jesse is one of the other people he could trust telling him about the commands

It is because both have an understanding between their world and what lies upon it

So Lukas told Jesse about the commands as an exchange

In one of my posts it explains that he knows that Jesse can rewind because of Lukas’ knowledge of commands that can give him awareness.

IT WEIRDS HIM OUT SO MUCH

“It makes sense now, on why the world feels a bit weird.” - Lukas

“Why is that?” - Jesse

“Because you rewind at times at the most unnecessary moments. Seriously I felt weird trying to eat my sandwich the second time since you rewinded. Next thing you know I started having a migraine.” - Lukas

“It’s not my fault Aiden messed up my favorite jacket.” - Jesse

“But still. You don’t want to know what it felt like eating the same sandwich bite again.” - Lukas

You can kill live things if you have access to commands

But people who have commands would rather not

Most people who have access to commands test it on a random live thing rather than humans. Each death is different but it’s already enough for the person to never do it again

Lukas was lucky that he used a chicken for that command.

Poor chicken. Lukas didn’t even eat it >:/

The reason the kill command scares command users is because once you kill something, it won’t come back.

You can give or reduce health bars/hearts from other people but you will never reverse death.

That applies to Jesse’s storymode powers also.

(About the pick Magnus or Ellegaard’s armor option, yes, Jesse can rewind time to pick another person but the same fate will come.)

A similar thing happened to Jesse, when it comes to death. Always choosing to choose which mob should be killed. It caught him off gaurd that when it comes to choosing which human like Ellegaard and Magnus.

Lukas will not win a fight against Romeo even if he gives himself OP commands.

He doesn’t use his commands much, prefers to fight with no powers, and that he would lose by default

Months after the events of season 2, Lukas decided to write another book that will help people with commands

Instead of how to get commands, it’s how to handle having them.

Lukas publishes the book with a pen name that doesn’t give his real name away. For reasons of not wanting people to ask him how he got the command powers. But it is nice hearing people talking about him and his influence from time to time.

There are more things I like to address with Lukas’ command powers or what he does with it but that’s like if someone asks in the ask box or something.

[doebt]

also what mods do u use for minecraft,, i wanna get some but idk what to do i just want more cute animals and plants and pretty things

also i use my laptop which can’t cope w too much lol

YESSS ANIMALS AND PLANTS AND PRETTY THINGS IS LIKE MY MAIN PURPOSE W MODS ok heres a list w links and brief descriptions so u kinda know whats going on <3 ill kind of categorise them too... 

some laptops seem way better than others at handling mods but i would say just pick and choose ur absolute favorites and if thats too much for it then take one out until its more manageable! my laptop handled mods very well but i dont think i had THIS many on it hadflkjghdfkjlghndklfjhg

under a readmore bc idk how long this will get LOL

animals:

ice and fire adds dragons and TONS of like fantasy animals and some scary mobs too!!! u can tame most of the animals and theyre all very unique and SUPER cool! u can ride some of them, theyll fight for u, etc... its very configurable like u can change spawn rates and stuff, i personally turned dragons WAY down so theyre very rare to come across, bc they kill u like instantly and also cause a ton of lag if theres a lot at once, and theyre default spawn rates are ummm too high lol. but yah this is one of the best mods i think ever probably...i love it sm its like a classic

better animal models makes vanilla animals look cuter and better and better animals plus (by the same ppl) adds a bunch of other animals that are rly cute! a lot of them are tameable and theyre very well thought out

genetic animals adds a bunch of dif breeds + colors and new breeding and feeding mechanics to farm animals, its kind of new but very well done but i really really love it! if you use it in conjuncture with better animal models, it replaces to vanilla farm animals but not the wolves and foxes and stuff, so they work very well together. also the chicken babies are like incredibly teeny tiny and adorable. and it lets you be able to ride llamas and cows with saddles and bridles... i could go on (this mod is what i use in place of animania, my favorite mod ever, but that one hasnt updated past 1.12)

alexs mobs also just adds a bunch of new animals, almost all of these are tameable and very unique, i LOVE that it adds crows lol you can also ride some of these animals once u tame them... u can also configure spawn rates for these if theres ones you dont want or want more of, etc. they update pretty often with new animals as well

realistic horse genetics is a super well done mod that makes horses come in wayyyyy more colors, it also has them come in different sizes and stuff...basically what it says in the name but its like. INCREDIBLY well done i couldnt live without it lol

exotic birds adds a ton of pretty birds! it also adds a rare phoenix you can obtain and tame, and ride, which is cool! you can keep birds in birdcages breed them and incubate eggs and all kinds of stuff

making stuff pretty:

biomes o plenty is super popular and really awesome, adds a tonnnn of new biomes with their own trees and wood types and plants and stuff! theres also some cool rare biomes (this mod also works well with all the animal mods); and some other biome mods i kinda cycle between are terraforged (also makes terrain generate better, smoother and stuff and super configurable! this works alongside mods that add biomes) and traverse is good too

macaws roofs, doors, windows, furniture, fences, etc are good for making ur houses pretty! i havent done much w this yet bc i havent built a house since i got it, but it looks really nice

diagonal fences does what it says on the can its suuper convenient and i like it a lot since i make a lot of animal pastures hehe... and it works with custom fences (so if you have macaws fences it will work for those too!)

fairy lights adds paper lanterns and string lights which look way better than torches! also lets u make flag banners and stuff

falling tree lets you chop a tree down in 1 swoop, and automatically destroys the floating leaves so u dont have floating trees and stuff everywhere...might seem cheaty but i like it lol (i also use this in place of dynamic trees, which makes trees BEAUTIFUL but, again, hasnt updated past 1.12)

i also use the unity resource pack (i like this one bc it makes colors more coordinated and muted! my ocd lollll i also like mizunos of courseee) and sildurs vibrant shaders (sildurs is pretty graphics intensive but the lite or medium versions are less so! there are also less intense shaders out there, this is just the one i use)... for shaders to work u need optifine (which also adds dynamic lighting! i.e torches will light the way when you hold them without placing them, stuff like that. its also just good to have, it optimises your game better to prevent lag)

SO YEAH LOL those are all the mods i use rn! some of these have dependents you have to download to make them work (like biomes o plenty requires open terrain generator) but they tell u that on the download pages and stuff, just look out for that <3 also most of these mods have wikis if you wanna know how to tame an animal or crafting recipes and stuff like that, i pretty much keep the wikis open whenever im playing lol. idk how much u know abt the like process of installing mods n stuff but if u need help hmu and ill try to help!

(sorry this is SO long btw but i wanted to be thorough and also have this in my minecraft tag in case anyone else is curious lol)

[ve-tra]

11 question... thing?

Hoo boy never done one of these before so here we go! I was tagged by the wonderful @i-dont-even-like-elves to do this thing. Thank you for tagging me btw aaaaa

1) THE LAST TIME YOU WERE HAPPY, IT WAS BECAUSE YOU ___. Played saints row 3 for the first time in years with one of my best friends and let me tell you it was GREAT

2) WHAT’S THE BEST (OR STRANGEST, OR MOST UNEXPECTED) COMPLIMENT YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED? I was in the middle of food shopping the other week and this girl suddenly came up to me and said "excuse me, but you're really pretty!" and honestly I have never been so flustered like hot damn girl take my heart with you why dont you

3) BASED ON THE TALENTS YOU CURRENTLY POSSES, ARE YOU A WARRIOR, ROGUE, MAGE, OR BARD (OR IF NONE, NAME ANOTHER CLASS)? WHAT’S YOUR SIGNATURE SKILL? YOUR LEAST IMPRESSIVE SKILL? BARD! Both my signature skill and least impressive skill are the ability to fit the entirety of baby got back into a seemingly normal conversation 

4) WHAT’S THE SONG THAT REMINDS YOU OF THE BEST NIGHT OF YOUR LIFE? I actually don't know what to put for this one, maybe shut up and dance by walk the moon? Mainly because that's the main song I heard when I went to pride back in June and that was amazing!

5) MUST PROTECT AT ALL COSTS: ____ People who unironically use XD to show how happy they are about shit. I don’t know how they do it but that innocence deserves preservation. 

6) WELL, SHIT. VARRIC’S WRITING A BOOK ABOUT YOUR EXPLOITS. WHAT’S THE TITLE? Sleepy & Salty... fuck it I'm bad at titles that’s all I got 

7) WHAT’S AN OBSESSION YOU HONESTLY HOPE NEVER GOES AWAY? I've been playing video games since I was 4 years old and I’m not sure what I’d do in my free time without them so games!

8) WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO IN YOUR RETIREMENT? I honestly want to watch speedruns while knitting scarfs and shit. So basically, I want to continue doing what I do now. 

9) WHO WAS YOUR FIRST CRUSH OR HERO? WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THEM NOW? Pretty sure my first crush was on a kid I went to school with. I spoke to him briefly while we were in line for food, he told me to get away from him... so I did boy bye I don’t need that shit

10) WHAT’S SOMETHING THAT OTHERS EXPECT YOU TO CARE ABOUT, BUT YOU SIMPLY DON’T? Game of thrones. Like nearly every single person who gets to know me assumes I've watched it but no? Never have. 

11) WHAT MYTH, FAIRY TALE, LEGEND, OR SUPERSTITION DO YOU MOST WISH WERE TRUE? I W A N T T O B E L I E V E (on a side note tho, neverland would be pretty sweet)

Apparently I have to come up with questions sooo...

1) If you could hang out with ANYONE right now, who would it be? 2) Your opinion on pineapple on pizza? 3) Do you have a bucket list and, if so, what's on it? 4) What do you think came first; the chicken or the egg? 5) What's your favourite possession? Is there a story behind it? 6) When faced with naming a character, how do you go about it? Or do you use the default if there is one? 7) Where is your happy place? 8) What do you think is your best feature? 9) Everyone around you hates something you enjoy. How do you react/what do you do? 10) Whats that song you have on repeat right now? 11) How are you feeling?

I’m not entirely sure who to tag on this so @therealsenpup and anyone who feels like it feel free to have a go!

[tlarso-blog]

Nutrient Intake Tracking with MyFitnessPal

Hello everyone! My name is Trent and over this last year I’ve gotten really into weight lifting and I’ve been focusing on gaining muscular strength. One of the major problems I’ve encountered during my training is my diet. During the summer I lived at home and my mom cooked most of my meals so I didn’t have to worry about eating enough because there was always food around. Thanks Mom! Now, I’m back in school and I don’t always have time to cook a good meal for myself. This means that I’m not always getting enough to eat in order to gain muscular strength because I’m in a caloric deficit. In my Intro to Health Informatics class assigned us with the task of using one fitness application for a month I thought this was the perfect opportunity to get a better picture of my nutrient intake. I decided I would use the MyFitnessPal app to track my nutrients and evaluate my diet and see if there were any changes I could make in order to better supplement my workouts. 

My experience with the app:

When I first started using MyFitnessPal I was really into tracking all the foods I ate because I’ve never really known how many calories I ate on average per day. I had always thought that I was eating enough. The first thing you do when you start using the app is set a goal and I set mine as I would like to gain a half a pound a week and the app gave me a calorie count that I should be hitting which was 3,390. Which at first didn’t seem like that much and I felt like I easily ate that much per day. 

The application has many useful features for tracking diet and it was relatively easy to add new foods. I could manually type in foods that I ate, search for the food in the online database or I could scan the bar code of the food item. One big problem that I found when I would scan certain bar codes was that it wasn’t always accurate. I scanned multiple items and they found them in the database but the nutritional information on the label would not match up with the nutritional information in the app which I thought was very odd.  Additionally, I was able to find most of my foods when I didn’t use the bar code scanner and used the search feature. My favorite part about the recording system MyFitnessPal uses is that it kept the recent foods I tracked and I found that very helpful because I eat the same breakfast every morning and it was easy to add. 

I’ve never used this app before so I’m not sure what the difference between being a premium member and a normal member is. They offered my a free 1 month membership which I used and that opened up the whole app for me but I focused more on the nutrition side of the app and tracking my diet.

When I have the time, I love to cook. When I cook some of my meals I do not know the exact portion sizes so that made it hard to track homemade meals because I would have to guess about the serving sizes. They have a feature to create a recipe but that still requires knowing the serving sizes of the food used or finding the recipe online. 

Another issue I ran into was recalling the certain foods I ate. I’m not always on my phone and I did not always track my food right after a meal. Sometimes it would be the next day when I tracked the foods and I’d have to recall what I ate. Also, when I went out to eat at restaurants and to social events where I ate food I would not pull out my phone and track my food when I interacted with others because I think that is rude. Therefore I would track the food at a later time and I wouldn’t always remember exactly how much of some food I ate or what exactly was in that food. An issue that I had that is similar to this one was tracking alcoholic beverages. I’ve been going out at least 1-3 times per week and I don’t really track the amount of drinks I consume and I certain drinks can contain a lot of calories and sugar. This means the amount of calories I drank was not accurately depicted in my tracker making it hard to determine the actual number.  Going along with going out to restaurants, I go to Chipotle at least once per week and it seems like every time I got I get a different amount of food depending on who is making my bowl. This made it hard to track my food and I found it hard to track my chicken bowl because of all the different foods I get in it. I later went to search for the chicken bowl but it was hard to find one that accurately portrayed the bowl I got and I was not about to attempt to log each individual ingredient in my bowl because that would have been a hassle. I just settled for a default chicken bowl on the app that I thought seemed bout right. 

My favorite part about using this application was that it discouraged me to eat unhealthy foods because I did not want to have to track them in my diet tracker. For example, I had candy corn laying around and I really wanted to eat some on multiple occasions but I knew that if I tracked it, it would not have any beneficial nutrients. I eat pretty healthy to begin with but tracking all the food I ate through the app encouraged me to eat even more healthy because I didn’t want unhealthy foods in my log. A cool feature MyFitnessApp has it that when you put in foods it can give you helpful information. When I would track my morning whole wheat bagel I would see right underneath it “This food is low in saturated fat” which I found useful because it made me feel like I was making a good choice because the text was in green. When I would add a food like chicken fettuccine alfredo, it was really good btw, I would get the message “This food is high in unsaturated fat” which made me rethink eating it again at another time because I knew it wasn’t the best for me because the text was orange. 

The most useful feature of the application for my tracking needs was the macro nutrients feature which allowed me to look at the breakdown of all foods I ate. They showed me the carbs, protein and fat in all my foods. 

I found this very useful because normally I would not know how much of each macro nutrient I consumed. During my time using the app I was able to see how much of each I had ate and from there I could make the choice of what food to eat like something high in protein to reach my goal or something high in carbs to help reach my goal. There was another feature that allowed me to look at the all the nutrients I consumed but I mainly focused on the macros because those would help me with my health behavior change of consuming more macros. 

Because I workout 5-6 times per week I burn a lot of extra calories and MyFitnessPal helps keep track of how many calories are burned during a workout but a problem I had was that I focus on muscular strength and not as much cardio and when I would track my workouts they did not have any information on how many calories were burned doing a certain exercise. However, if I did do cardio for a certain day they would be able to roughly calculate the number of calories I burned during the duration. I think that it would have been very beneficial for me to be able to see how many calories I burn during a workout but I understand that there are different intensities that people workout with and that makes it hard to generalize calories burned doing a certain exercise. Whenever I would workout I would try to account for at least 300 more calories in my daily intake. 

My Takeaways:

After the first couple of weeks, I became less motivated to track my diet because I had thought I was always eating more than what I was tracking. More often than not I would not reach the calorie goal when the calories burned during my workout were accounted for which was discouraging. The good thing is that more often than not I would go over the amount of protein recommended which I thought was a helpful to produce muscular strength gains. Overall I would say that using the app was helpful because it allowed me to get a better picture of the nutrients that are in the foods I eat and I now have that information in the future. Also, it would sometimes act a reminder that I need to eat more if I want to reach my goal. 

As far as the app goes, I found it helpful with all the different information that it gives. As far as changing my health behavior goes, I was able to add on average about 200 more calories per day than when I first started using the app. I attribute the gains to actually being able to see the amount of calories I ate in one day and realizing that I need to eat more in order to reach my goal for the day. Going into the assignment I wasn’t sure what to expect because I’ve never tracked my diet before but I thought I always ate a lot. Come to find out, I don’t eat that much after all and I don’t need to feel bad about eating more because its necessary for me in order to gain more muscular strength. 

I would definitely recommend this app to anyone who wants to get a better picture of the nutrients in their diet!