#just a pinch of salt

[uchiha-itachi-amaterasu]

Just a pinch of salt by StingCunha on deviantart

[elismor]

Three things I wish All Fic Writers Knew About Sex

1. 5ml.  That is the high-end average volume of semen released when men come. For those of us who are metrically challenged, that equates to about a teaspoon (aka the amount of vanilla extract you put in a batch of chocolate chip cookies). Some will have more. Some will have less. Point is: it's not as much as you think it is. 

2. Vaginas are built to allow a whole ass baby to pass through on its way into the world. That dick? It WILL fit. It will be more comfortable if the woman is relaxed and wet, but this is not a multi-minute process requiring specific prep (foreplay is the prep).  At least, not on average. Some women are smaller than others, some women are harder to get aroused than others. 

3. There are positions that are more conducive to deeper penetration. One of these is from behind (vaginally, I mean). To get deep penetration in the missionary position, a woman's legs must be spread quite wide (think about pelvic exams) and/or her hips need to be angled upwards.

Bonus Thing: Women should not taste sweet, yeasty, or fishy. These are all signs of vaginal infection.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[edgybutnotveryedgy]

Ooof. Okay. So i do see where he's coming from, but like... Yea.

I definitely feel like this is coming from a perspective where he probably sees things as very black and white. On one hand, i do agree that one's past shouldn't always justify their actions etc. On the other hand there are some traumas where no matter how "good" life might be, the trauma will always manifest in some way, and affect how one sees the world.

I've seen up close, the trauma that comes from being abandoned. Especially by a mother who is supposed to care for and nurture you. I was fortunate in that i always had my mom, but my oldest brother didn't really get that. His mom was supposed to have full custody, (because the legal system at the time decided that a mom is always a better nurturer than a dad), but he was always left with my mom and (our) dad. She would sometimes take him for a bit, or do some fun activity, etc, but in general he wasn't raised by her.

Of course i don't think she was a terrible person, and she and my brother have a great relationship now, but even then the damage was done. My brother spent years with abandonment trauma, and it wasn't until he was in his 30's in therapy that he realized that's what had been hurting him for so long. That trauma has absolutely had effects on the choices he makes, and the relationships he has. Otherwise he had a pretty normal healthy life. You could say he even had a privileged life.

Because of that, seeing ta claim that Chloe wasn't traumatized is completely bonkers to me. Like literally she shows so many symptoms of abandonment trauma. You could say that her bad behavior is even stemming from her need for attention. Like literally i could go through all of her actions and point out how her choices and actions demonstrate that.

Not to mention the excuse that others have gone through similar experiences and have turned out fine feels very dismissive of those very same peoples life experiences. Like trauma doesn't affect everyone the same way. Humans are all different. We all react to things differently.

At the same time, he is right in that trauma should in no way justify her bad behavior or her treatment of others. But just... Insinuating that chloe is irredeemable feels very dismissive of a lot of things. She should be called out on her actions, but she also should get the chance to have a good support system.

tweets by @Thomas_Astruc / audrey & chloé bourgeois, style queen & queen wasp

[vanlegion]

[selkiewife]

[babyblueetbaemonster]

Local Alchemist needed to be stopped.

My formula of restore fatigue:

Spring salad: lettuce, radish, potato, (optional: apple, orange, watermelon). Unfortunately it has Burden side effect. (if choose orange, you'll get a bonus Shield effect) Can also side with Ranch dressing: cheese wedge, leek, onion, garlic. And this one has Damage Agility side effect. It can be fix by removing the garlic.

Potato soup: potato, garlic, leek. This recipe has Frost Shield side effect. Perfect choice for a cold weather.

Corn salsa: corn, tomato, onion, garlic. Unfortunately it has Damage Agility side effect, but you can get Detect Life in the process.

Grilled cheese sandwich: bread loaf, cheese wedge, cheese wheel. Unfortunately it has Damage Agility side effect. I should have removed the cheese wedge. Sorry Baurus :(

Classic ham sandwich: bread loaf, cheese wedge, ham, lettuce. Unfortunately this recipe also has Damage Agility side effect, but bonus Fire Shield woohoo!

Gyudon: beef, onion, rice

Mix berries: blackberry, strawberry, (we only have two kinds of berries?) (optional: apple, orange, pear). Actually, don't put apple or pear in it. They will cause Damage Health.

Crabby corn soup: crab, corn, onion. You can add cheese wedge for bonus Fire Shield (and Damage Agility) effect.

Chili con carne: beef (/boar meat /mutton /venison), onion, garlic, tomato. Side effect is Detect Life. (Beef flavor will grant you Shield effect. Unfortunately Boar meat will have burden side effect and Venison is Damage Health)

Pumpkin pie: pumpkin, sweetcake (/flour /sweetroll). Unfortunately both flour and sweetroll has Damage Personality side effect

Carrot cake: carrot, sweet cakes

Strawberry cheesecake: strawberry, cheese wedge, flour (/sweetcake /sweetroll). The flour version has Reflect Damage side effect. I highly recommend it.

[laughhardrunfastbekindsblog]

A few thoughts about Crosshair's and Hunter's argument on Barton-IV in "The Return" -

- I completely sympathize with Hunter reaching his breaking point and demanding answers. Unlike us, Hunter had no idea what Crosshair had been through - the last he had personally seen of Crosshair before the prodigal brother unexpectedly turned up with Omega, his brother had been acting violent and unpredictable (to say the least), and had literally said that if the rest of the squad didn't join the Empire, he considered them his enemies.

- At the same time, Hunter had no idea what Crosshair had been through that led him to Tantiss, and he pushed before Crosshair was ready to talk... With the result that Crosshair, understandably, became angry and defensive and lashed out. (Come on, Hunter, what else did you expect?)

- When first watching the episode, as Crosshair began blaming Hunter for Omega's imprisonment, I was bracing myself for the inevitability of Crosshair blaming Hunter for Tech's death... And was so relieved but also very surprised that he didn't cross that line. Now, I am convinced that the reason Crosshair didn't hold Hunter responsible for Tech's death, was because Crosshair completely blamed himself for it.

- Given the above, I'm also wondering if that's why Crosshair was so quick to find a way to change the subject when Echo mentioned Tech, yet spent a meaningful moment honoring Mayday: painful though Mayday's loss had been, Crosshair had done all he could to save him. But he hadn't been there to help the squad and try to prevent Tech's death - indeed, he was the main reason (not the only reason, but the main reason) the squad had been on Eriadu in the first place. (You know one thing that would have made this interpretation of events even clearer? One small moment (a Mayday moment, if you will) of all Tech's brothers honoring him at the end of the show, where Crosshair and the others finally get some real closure over Tech's death. And no, I'm never letting this point go. Ever. Mini-rant over.)

[carlyraejepsans]

ok i was gonna take a pic like look at my sad pathetic noodles boy but i took one bite and inhaled them so fast it completely slipped my mind. this is the best textured thing i have ever tried it's like ricecakes but long and potatoie

[zoe-oneesama]

So what are your thoughts (and salt) on your research re-watch on Queen Wasp?

This episode is annoying because it tries to play both sides - it is very much NOT a redemption arc episode but at the same time tries to make you feel sorry for Chloe after she fucks shit up, which has tricked some into believing this actually WAS part of Chloe's redemption arc.

As @hypexion laid out in a full essay, there never was a Chloe redemption arc because Chloe never thought she did anything wrong and never thought she had to change. In "Queen Wasp", she refuses to return the Miraculous on the grounds "finders keepers, losers weepers", deliberately causes a crisis in order to try and FAIL to save the day just to show off, and when confronted with her deeds only has this to say:

See, I didn't pull Scarlet Lady's complete disregard for human life out of my ass, it was canon all along! 😈

"Who cares"?! "Who CARES"?! Putting aside that "WE" did not save them, Ladybug and Chat Noir saved them from YOU, I'm pretty sure the people's who's LIVES you endangered "cares"!

Thing is, if you just watch this episode and put the entire idea of "redemption" or "hero Chloe" out of your mind, this is 3/4ths of a good episode. Pretty fun, actually, with Chloe just...being Chloe. And getting to hit Chloe in the face with a trash can ❤️.

So what's with all the audience emotional manipulation at the end?

Why is Chat Noir making soft face and using soft voice at Chloe at the end, commiserating that she STOLE a Miraculous (because once she decided not to return it when asked, yes, that's theft at that point), crashed a train, and ran away from the consequences just to ImPrEsS hEr MoThEr? Guess that makes it alright then, right Adrien? 🙃

(If it was just meant to be an Adrien Character Moment, they would've had Ladybug counter him by point out that her motivation doesn't make what she did okay, but instead they have Ladybug ALSO commiserate with Chloe)

As a character beat, I get that Adrien is channeling his daddy issues through Chloe's mommy issues, but I mean for the audience: why are they having Ladybug admit to "making mistakes" and Chat Noir comfort Chloe when SHE MESSED UP THIS BADLY except to manipulate the viewer into feeling sorry for her?! Her mother didn't ASK her to do any of those things, she did them all on her own, so why are the heroes giving her a pass, ie. why are the writers wanting the audience to give Chloe a pass???

No pass! She sucked! And she deserved her classmates ripping on her in "Malediktator", but then the story had the balls to try and make the audience feel bad for Chloe for that too!

Speaking of that, it's really weird that they ended "Queen Wasp" with Ladybug being so soft on Chloe at the end, only for Marinette to turn around at the beginning of "Malediktator" and go back to being really annoyed with her. Especially after she went out of her way to reconcile things between Chloe and Audrey.

Even the way they did it - equating Ladybug accidentally dropping the Miraculous in the middle of the battle and then relying on the Miraculous Cure to return the Miraculous to Fu, (something she'd have no reason to believe shouldn't happen), to Chloe deliberately causing a disaster in order to fail to impress her mom and refusing to return the Miraculous that she Was Not Given? Those are not the same! An honest error that Ladybug fully intended to rectify vs. Chloe disregarding other's safety and the right and wrong of keeping something that never belonged to her are not on equal footing.

Oh and then there's this gem:

Giving back an item that never belonged to you to the rightful owner isn't "exceptional", it's basic human decency. Good Lord Chloe is not "exceptional" for finally adhering to the code of conduct the rest of us learned in Kindergarden.

All this pushing the viewer to feel some type of way and it's all for nothing. Feeling sorry for Chloe just leads Ladybug to giving her another chance in "Malediktator", giving Chloe entitlement to the Bee Miraculous, facing the issues of the enemy knowing her identity in "Miraculer", having to flat out retract Chloe's access to the Bee Miraculous which Chloe responds to with a full on tantrum in "Miracle Queen", leading to Fu giving Guardianship over to Ladybug.

Woooow, real glad we were told over and over again by the narrative to go easy on Chloe, sHe JuSt NeEdS a GoOd InFluEnCe and a SeCoNd ChAnce. That sure ended well for everyone.

Also this is just me being a nitpicky asshole, but if Chloe didn't out herself right in front of everyone (ie. GABRIEL), the Hawkmoth era of the series would've been over. After Style Queen failed, Gabriel had completely given up since his "Masterpiece" failed. If Chloe hadn't revealed herself, Gabriel wouldn't have been inspired to akumatize a Miraculous Holder and might've gone into retirement long enough to return the Miraculous in secret or reveal Emilie to the public in search of other methods before he could've been "inspired" by something else.

The villain defeated by lack of motivation, lmao.

(Also also obviously this could've been doubly avoided by Ladybug not losing the Bee Miraculous or taking the Bee Miraculous out in the first place, but we could've had Anti-Hero Bee Chloe with an actual secret identity paired with a new antagonist to go into a new era of Miraculous, so I would've considered that a win)

MY main gripe with the three Chloe centric episodes "Style Queen", "Queen Wasp", and "Malediktator" is all the pointless, blatant audience manipulation. They went so far out their way to make the audience side with Chloe against Ladybug and feel bad for her only to turn around and call us stupid for doing so. I want my time back and I never even believed in the Redemption Arc. I can't imagine how much worse it was for someone who actually believed what they were selling.

And obviously it was terrible for the thing that brought Chloe and Audrey together is how they're horrible people who torment the working class, but maybe we should've taken that as a sign as to where this was going. Way to immediately resolve Chloe's mommy issues as soon as they were brought up.

Wait...is that why they made the problem in "Malediktator" Chloe's usefulness?

[defunctdrone]

in honour of the alien audiocommentary confirming that everyone's having rampant gay sex in space, behold: I have made... a chart

[f1-obsessed333]

Rachel Brookes just casually throwing it out that she heard that Helmut Marko is out of Red Bull next year and that Daniel has two races to prove himself?

WHAT???? No one followed her up on it so I’m not sure how true it is but she managed to knock me on my ass twice in 30 seconds.

[doctas-blog-of-stuff]

Starbound is a game that breaks my heart. It's this close to being a really great game, but almost all the few mechanics it has are half-baked, except for the exploration, which sadly only surprises the first time around. Yeah, you can mod in Frackin' Universe to try to spice things up, but it has the opposite problem of making it bloated as fuck.

All this combined makes for a game with a shit ton of vibes and potential, but that falls flat in its execution, making me want to love it, but I can't.

[ninyard]

just the thought of them trying to make it seem consensual makes me SO mad because ANDREW WAS SO INJURED!!! HE HAD A CONCUSSION!!! HE COULDN'T SIT DOWN WITHOUT PAIN!!! HE MUST'VE BEEN COVERED IN BRUISES TOO!!! KILL THE PROSECUTOR!!!!!! Anyway just casually getting mad as if this is a real case oopsie

YUP!!!! yupyupyup

and Andrew is probably going to have to hear them try to make it seem like Aaron didn’t know what he was really looking at <3 that he could’ve misunderstood <3

[hippopotatoe]

I only know about ö, æ, and å from the song~ If it pleases you, tell me about their history?

i have literally no idea what song you're talking about but okay, buckle up, long semi unhinged rant abt letters ahead!

so. the alphabet. what a concept. we learn it, we love it, blah blah blah. let's not get into the history here, just accept the latin a-z modern alphabet with it's 26 letters. well. some countries have more than 26 letters. many countries have extra letters (usually existing letters with addendums) which have their own unique sounds and are learned as if they were their own unique letters (which they are!) but not officially part of the alphabet. why? eh, varies. some languages have so many extras to so many letters that it simply would be too much of a trouble to separate what are unique letters and what are pronounciation guides. some probably have other reasons. i mean, some countries have 26 letter simply because of tradition (ask any swede to say the alphabet and they'll miss w 99% of the time, because it's a completely surperflous letter which should stop existing in our alphabet and just file under v. but whatever).

anyway. some countries have extra letters. german have ä, ö and ü, which are learned as their own letter bc of their unique sounds, but are filed under a, o and u in the dictionary. scandinavia have å, ä/æ and ö/ø, and they are treated as separate letters in the alphabet, which gives our alphabets 29 letters (should be 28 but WHATEVER). they have completely unique sounds in our languages, so why should they be treated as anything but unique letters? please note that ä and æ are literally the same letters. same with ö and ø

and here. HERE is where i get emotional: the differences in how and why sweden and denmark+norway write their "extra" letters

for as long as people have had writing, we have changed how we write. fonts are nothing new. every day we read three completely different looking version of the letter a without batting an eye. the way letters look are constantly evolving. and once upon a time in the 1500's there was a style called fraktur developed in germany. nothing new under the sun, someone wanted a font that looked cool, the style continued to develop alongside the "normal" looking latin alphabet, and eventually fraktur was seen as obsolete and phased out. but one thing fraktur was very good at, was combining letters into one to save space. it made sense for letters that was often written next to each other to make certain sounds to be written as one symbol. in fraktur there is a symbol that means tz, there is one that means ck, one that meant sz and so on... and some combos stuck. the symbol that simply was a space saving mashup of s and z eventually became the german letter ß (which is now being phased out afaik). however... fraktur wasn't the first style to do this. we already had æ

at some point, someone in germany decided that you know what? æ and œ actually still takes up unnecessary space. we want them to be even more compact; out with the middle ages, in with the new. we have a writing style that is so fucking good at mashing up letters and we don't like how someone else have done that already, we want to be the best. the best way to do this was apparently by looking at another old way of giving letters unique sounds by drawing lines above them, and modernized it by put e above o and a. like just. a teeny tiny e floating above a and o. which sweden thought was kinda cool looking. we were a very modern and cool country after all. this eventually resulted in people writing two lines or dots above them rather than a full on e, which became the ä and ö we know and love today. but in denmark and norway people apparently was fine with the way æ looked (or they were just really really conservative and didn't want to throw out a several hundred year old letter), but they agreed that œ was a waste of space, but that swedes were tools for following germany, and they came up with their own solution by shoving the letters together completely. e overlayed on o became ø. æ stayed as æ. and then all three of us turned our heads to germany and said "but you know what? we DO have a sound which kinda sorta sounds like aa or ao, but we have no way of really writing that beside á which could also have other sounds which just makes things kinda confusing. and germany do actually have a neat little thing going on with the lil' e on top of another letter. should we maybe... invent the letter å?" and then we did

and i just find it beautiful how swedish, norweigan and danish, three languages that are so close they would be dialects if we weren't separate countries, looked at the same unique sounds which we wrote in the same way, and said hey. let's make them into proper letters. and then we solved it in two completely separate ways.

next up: watch me cry over how different languages pronounce the same letters

[m3nt4llyr4v3d]

It honestly kind of baffles me how some fans (mostly the narrative itself) used to say that Chloe was acting “exactly the same” in Seasons 4-5.

Like… wha?

You can say she’s been a bad person for about the whole series, I get that, but huh??

Chloe, in Seasons 1-3, wasn’t great (understatement). She was a bully, furthered insecurities of her classmates (Juleka and Mylene come to mind), Sabrina was her lapdog, she used her dad’s power to get anything she wanted, etc. She’s not good.

But.

Seasons 4-5 have her act like a straight up Saturday morning cartoon villain.

I’ll be in the camp to say that I was disappointed she wouldn’t get a redemption, but eventually came around to a proper damnation arc (or an arc like Zuko’s where he fell from grace before becoming good again). But the way the show treated her after the season 3 finale was so???

She didn’t have a graceful fall or a plummet down, she was teleported to the bottom and the show acts like she was there the entire time. One thing I remembered was in season 4 where she broke off her friendship with Adrien and a few episodes later brags about him being caged up in his house by his father?? Because she didn’t want the classmate’s fantasy of Marinette swooping Adrien’s off his feet to come true (pls tell me I’m remembering this right)??? Or when she got akumatized because she… didn’t wanna play soccer? She doesn’t even care about Sabrina in the slightest and is keeping her in her closet (where is her father!?) Then in season 5 she’s being a dictator??? And she caused Marinette trauma before all of this happened??? Like, cmon!

Even if you think she was bad the whole time, the show literally goes out of its way to show her being the spawn of Satan! The characters, even when they were being bullied, didn’t take her that seriously in the earlier seasons! They could even joke at her expense!

But honestly, this is how I viewed the show’s treatment of her character from season 4 onwards.

[sparkysxi]

Alien Stage Predictions

so ROUND 6 dropped. As an Ivan fan I am DEVASTATED. but we must move on (have copium he and sua are secretly ok) (this is VIVINOS we’re talking about those bitches are dead) so I decided to have a little speculation about future content in order to strengthen myself against the inevitable heartbreak I will feel

ROUND 6 is the official halfway point of the series, so here are a few things I think could happen/future videos likely to drop:

An IVANTILL video like MIZISUA explaining their backstory (the lab/adoption center) 

A solo Luka video and a solo Mizi video 

perhaps a video for Isaac and Dewey. I just think they deserve a duet but I am not as confident in this prediction 

A video about the human rebellion (perhaps rescuing Till?) 

A video in the style of TOP 3, as an in-universe advertisement for the Finals/ROUND 7 

Speaking of the finals, that’s literally going to be a self-harm-off. 

Till has lost two of the most important people in his life and was already Not There during ROUND 6 he is not doing well, and I think Luka only really feels “alive” on the Alien Stage, so he may be trying to kill himself through entering the competition multiple times 

Or Luka is fucking insane and wants a mountain of bodies behind him to prove his worth to the aliens

maybe because of his laundry list of physical illnesses-perhaps Luka is scared he will be abandoned or killed for being a burden to his owner?

I think I will go INSANE if Mizi manages to rescue Till, like they get out of the arena, but Till’s crazy ass goes BACK INSIDE, like how he did for Mizi all those years ago, because he’s not leaving without Ivan’s body to at least bury him properly 

like the cinematic parallels that could be achieved here UGH *chefs kiss*

also I think it would be really cool if Till’s character became an exploration of heteronormativity-he’s been pining after Mizi after all this time, but he realizes that the admiration he has for her is not the same as the love she shared with Sua or the love/obsession Ivan had for him 

maybe Till is gay/bisexual-or on the ace/aro spectrum 

regardless of what he is the societal expectations are likely that girl humans like boy humans and boy humans like girl humans 

Till enters his queer rebellion era how DARE these aliens expect him to do ANYTHING

alien historians will call MiziSua and IvanTill “just really good friends”

anyway I also expect more Sua and Ivan hallucinations 

perhaps they’ll act as “guiding spirits” from here on out??

wouldn’t it be cool if we got a post-death Ivan and Sua duet? maybe they’re singing to Till and Mizi from the afterlife 

I’m less confident about that one as well but I think it would be neat 

a video of saving the children from Anakt Garden-with Till at the helm using skills Ivan taught him-less confident here again but would be fun nonetheless

I think it’s pretty likely BOTH Hyuna and Luka will die by the end of the series-Hyuna’s already injured and Luka has death flags (wearing all white and having feelings of love/affection/obsession towards another who does not reciprocate it equally) 

The non reciprocated love appears to be a common thread between our male contestants, doesn’t it?

However Hyuna may survive-half the cast lives, half the cast dies kinda thing 

They all end up missing their counterparts

I think ultimately the final scene of the series will be very melancholy-they’ve won, but at what cost 

And a lot of choking 

Also: one very emotional scene where the characters actually talk to one another. Not singing: talking to one another