#kindness does not make you bland.

[actiniumwrites]

rant about nilou because i’m sick of people hating on her character:

nilou is not a bland character and i hate the way people constantly make her out to be one. the argument that she has no personality just because she’s kind and happy is so stupid to me.

she cares a lot about dance, she cares so much for the people around her, and she’s willing to fight for what she wants. some people say she did nothing in the archon quest. um, did we play the same quest? the arts were heavily looked down upon in sumeru and were on the verge of being banned in their entirety by the sages so academics could be the sole focus. the others could’ve never completed their mission had she not gone and danced in a public space (while it was banned) effectively drawing all the attention on her so she could help save not only the arts, but all of sumeru. she didn’t even hesitate to accept alhaitham’s plan if it meant she could save what she cares about, nor did she care about the possibility of getting arrested. not to mention, she literally got her vision because of how dedicated she was to her craft.

some people even have the audacity to say that kaveh would’ve done more than her. let’s be real here, i love that man, but he could not have done anything as significant as nilou. there’s a reason he only showed up at the very end.

just because she doesn’t have a super dark and angsty past like every other fucking character in this game, just because she isn’t hardcore or a badass like some of the other women characters like dehya, yelan, or beidou, and just because she’s a pure and happy soul does not make her bland or personality-less at all.

[aroaceleovaldez]

i would like to say my ideal PJO adaptation (if i was being physically forced against my will to have to pick a live action adaptation over an animated one for some reason) would be a combo like writing of the musical + casting of the show + visuals of the movies

BUT the show actually does have the playwright for the musical as one of the major writers for like three episodes and that did nothing for it. so...

[mashmouths]

so i started this show and it just gets worse and worseeeee not only did it lift the romance subplot directly from twilight (and not well) but they also are trying to play the forbidden love angle hard in the fantasy racism vein except it's a "cross-species" relationship between the two whitest people i've ever seen in my life and there are three people of color in the whole (first season of the) show who aren't villains and it seems that every other episode (and sometimes ebery episode and sometimes twice an episode!) there is a man physically or magically subjugating a woman and i keep waiting for the big reveal at the end to be stolen from fucking rainbow rowell

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

my 1 (one) stardew opinion is shane should not have won the bachelor poll

[thedrotter]

re:kinder doodle dump part three !!! drawings with wildly different moods www they are more polished ans complete than my other doodles because. why not🥺!!!

[perilegs]

I wish I could like inquisition bc it's technically a good game and I would love it if it was just a standalone game that had nothing to do with dragon age, but it just doesn't feel like a dragon age game to me.

[kkujo]

bruabba and fugio are good ships however 80% of the people who post about them are annoying about it. like. same with jotakak and kakyoin stans actually. the way ppl obsess over them and water it down until it's so uwuified and far removed from the source that the characters are just bland and boring. idk where i was going with this

[hidingoutbackstage]

I’m glad Mortal Kombat fans collectively came together to bully Megan Fox for her lack of any effort or emotion in her voice acting. I blame her, obviously, but I’m also just baffled by like, the people who were directing and recording her like. You’re just gonna call that done?

[overelegantstranger]

unpopular opinion slash hot take but i think if we're serious about slow fashion and secondhand textiles then we need to let go of this idea that our handmade projects looking handmade is a bad thing and that we need to concentrate on professionalism

[lesbianyosano]

i will never be able to draw dazai the way i actually think he looks like not bc of lack of skill but bc it’d be sooo boring

[maegalkarven]

I love how vastly different June and Levi are and how their relationships with Enver differ in so many ways.

If Levi is a guy believing he is equal to gods, then June is, at his core, a prodigal follower.

It's a pattern he doesn't break out of even as he betrays his father for Selune. Gortash didn't manage to shake this part of him, only created a push, allowing June chose a god other than Bhaal (i.e. June didn't want Enver to die, realized he didn't want to die himself and entered a pact-like relationship with the Lady of Silver to prevent these two things from happening.)

The hardest thing for him is to go back on his word/dismantle the existing alliance. His mortal flaw is loyalty, blind loyalty.

So at some point his story comes to a crossroads.

He can either reaffirm his alliance with Gortash, unknowingly dooming him a Gortash himself, not to mention death of Duke Ravengard and many other casualities.

In this scenario Gortash dies from the psyonic command of the Nether Brain and June becomes the hero of Baldur's Gate and the new archduke.

Which sounds fun and games until you realize it also includes him becoming a new Chosen of Bane, because June might have learned how to break out of his father's chains, but he doesn't know what to do with himself and, after his and Selune's ways part, is an easy prey for gods with less than honorable plans.

The other road comes with stabbing Gortash in the back, metaphorically speaking. It includes the wicked choice of putting a tadpole into his head and making him cooperate because "oh, but I can just relinquish the protection astral prism bestows on you. I am sure you'll love being Elder Brain's thrall".

It's a choice what leaves absolutely everyone (well, not EVERYONE) horrified because not only they did not expect that from June, but also looking how pleased June is with himself by walking Gortash into the corner opens their eyes to the fact what he is not, in fact, a hero. He was a villain in the past and some of this past still lingers, even more after Selune's cold soothing light has left.

And, ridiculously, it's the choice what saves everyone; gondians, Ravengard, Karlach, Gortash himself.

[nil-the-glitch]

actually yknow what, no. this is not being limited to discord, yall get it too.

some general cooking tips (in which there is a brief senshi posession):

moisture is the enemy of crispy skin. pat dry with paper towel, and if you have the time and spoons, give a thorough but even coat of baking powder and let sit uncovered in your fridge overnight. this will dry out the skin nicely. for pork belly, create a tight foil boat so that only the skin is showing, and cover in salt to draw out moisture, repeating a couple times if necessary.

furikake seasoning, for the fellow rice lovers, is just nori (seaweed), sesame seeds, sugar, and msg/salt. you might have most if not all of these things already in your kitchen.

chai spice mix is just cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, & allspice.

pumpkin spice is just cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger.

to cure your own bacon, you only need water, white and brown sugar, and a non-iodized salt - himalayan pink salt is not iodized, if you cannot find butchers curing pink salt. from there, you can add any seasoning/flavoring you want.

the truly adventurous may cook their rice in green tea for a fresh clean taste.

you can tell if a fish is truly fresh by their eyes - clear and bright is fresh, while cloudy is older or potentially has been frozen.

it's cheaper to buy a large block pack of ramen from your local asian market and repackage the bricks into sandwich bags, than to buy a box of individually packaged ones such as maruchan or top ramen.

when buying meat, look at it's fat content - more fat marbling usually means more tender + flavorful.

you can save onion skins and other vegetable scraps to make your own broth with. you can also save bones for this. mix and match ratios to create your ideal flavor.

bay leaf will always make a soup or broth taste better, but Watch Out (they are not fun to bite into on accident).

msg is, in fact, not The Devil, that was just a racist hate campaign against the chinese and other oriental races. it's literally just a type of salt. it is no more dangerous to eat than any other type of salt.

washing your rice is important because it not only improves flavor and texture by removing excess starch, but it also helps reduce any residual pesticides or dirt, or even insect fragments (please remember that rice paddies are essentially giant ponds that all kind of things live in and swim around. you should also be washing all your produce in general.)

please salt your cooking water for pastas, it just tastes better and you will be happier for it.

boiled potatoes are also improved by salt water.

if you hate vegetables, please consider trying them fried in butter or perhaps bacon grease. it is healthier to eat them fatty than not at all.

healthy food does not in fact have to taste miserable. thats a lie. they are lying to you. free yourself from your blandness shackles. enter a world of flavor.

[psalmsofpsychosis]

[ angry rant ahead ]

you know, i usually dont talk to other people much in real life right now, even less so on the internet, it takes a lot to get me on the case of disco horses and other variants of supposed "discussions". It's a strange thing because i'm actually a quite talkative person, but also in the recent 5-6 years any and every kind of expression i've had, no matter how mild or colorful it was, people [who had already decided they hated my guts] used as an excuse to justify why "they were leaving me behind". It was always my fault that i was being treated like shit; they were just reacting sensibly to me being a fuckhead.

So i learnt to control and manage and frame and reframe my expression, not because i wanted to and liked it, but because of necessity— you can only afford to be left behind so many times before it starts damaging you emotionally, mentally, and physically in many aspects.

And i actually started developing severe physical symptoms because of how much i curated and leashed in my self expression— eating up 3/4th of what i actually wanted to say and spend so much fucking energy trying to script my thoughts and opinions in a way that would be oh so accomodating and considerate and soft-spoken and mild and non-threatening and harmless and agreeable so paper-skin-and-glass-bones fuckers online and offline dont feel threatened and start crying, or start biting me for "being rude" when all i did was to literally just open my mouth and form one or two sentences.

And i'm so insanely resentful about this. I'm resentful about constantly self censoring and watering down my expressions and forcing myself down to the level of other people the way grown ups squat to talk to a child so the child feels less threatened. Constantly writing and rewriting what i want to say so it's not "too antagonistic, too angry, too vicious, too confident, too anything" —"make it friendly, light, no-big-deal, agreeable, appropriate, acceptable to the rock bottom level boundaries of this context," the voice in my head says— when the truth is, i'm so so so much more than anything i've ever shown to people online and offline in the past 6 years. I'm full of hatred and rage and i'm shameless and i enjoy it too, i can hurt people terribly and i'm good at it and this is why i'm hellbent on kindness. It's a choice, i wake up and i make this choice every fucking day, and i dont like being taken for granted. I dont think most people truly understand what "where the light is brightest the shadows run deep" means, like no, you dont understand the depth of how fucked up i can be, you take my joy and delight for granted, and you cannot live up to either. You're not my equal on either front and you lack the substance it takes to mirror my happiness or my rage– and i get very irritated when people think they're on the same ground with me, "we're so alike!" no we're not, you just feel connected to the super mega easy digestable non-threatening responses i craft for you because i know you can't handle any more than this without having a mental breakdown and making me mom you.

Like, i solid feel like everytime i want to talk i have to put on kiddie gloves and do the kiddie talk, patting people's heads like "dont be scared, dont be scared, i'm a friend, no need to panic, now we're gonna play a game in which i give you super easy hints on life being more complex and deeper than you percieve it on a surface level and you proceed to think about that for 5 seconds everyday, easy, easy." Because that's what they are to me, children. I feel like i'm talking to children all the time, and no it's not about age, it's about the way most people are so incredibly shallow and superficial and simplistic and are so depth-averse it's kinda astounishing??? Like you'll find them hanging 6475378 adornments from every branch of a tree and thinking a tree is "a collection of leaves" and they never see the roots, or water them.

And yeah i'm so incredibly resentful about all of it. I feel like i put people in cute fun little floaties in the shallow end of the pool and stay with them and we play simple games and splash water at each other and they dont know the deep end of the pool exists, they dont care, they think everyone and them and me are kiddies playing in the shallow part, "oh you're just like me, we're all the same and having so much fun here," no, i'm so much more than you at any given point in this interaction, and what you sound like to me is a child mistaking their mother as "another playmate in the kindergarten".

And i'm super fucking tired of defanging and declawing my expression all the time so i dont spook the little dainty shallow people inside or outside my phone. "but they'll get scared and they'll leave!" and you know what? good. I want them to get very, very scared. And i want them to fucking run. I'm tired of trying to cater to simple people who i dont give a fuck about, people who are merely contemplating whether i'm worth loving or not. You walk into a haunted house only when you love ghosts and want to see one, this is not a space for the faint of heart. i am not a space for the faint of heart.

[medicinemane]

There's something for pretty much everyone to hate about me

It varies what it is from person to person, but I see people's posts, everyone has something they don't like about me, they just don't realize I fall into who they're talking about (or maybe they do but they're making an exception for some reason, but don't do that)

That's just how it is, that's just the truth of things

[homunculus-argument]

I don't know if different muncipalities having their own coat of arms is a thing outside of Finland, but I rather like many of them. Like, the only way to go wrong in a coat of arms is to make it boring, the best ones are the most memorable ones. Have a collection of the few that I consider the least aesthetic, most boring coats of arms of all finnish muncipalities. If you see your own hometown coat on this list, do not come at me - fix your own problems first and move somewhere else.

Bland, generic, tells no story. Unfuckable. The kind of shit you'd see on the shield of an enemy that's getting their ass kicked by the Cool Sexy Woman Knight in the first round of a jousting event in a corny but riveting fantasy movie. Now, let's look at some of the cool ones:

Striking. Distinct. Tells you a story, gives you some clue about what this place is and what is the story of the people who live here. Can occasionally afford more than two colours per coat. Now that's sexy. These, these are good. I had a hard time choosing only nine that I liked best, so I decided to divide the examples of Sexy Coats of Arms into non-animal and animal cathegories. These are examples of the cool ones with animals on them:

And as a final special mention we have Kouvola. The city of Kouvola largely doesn't deserve the bad rep it has - the crime rate isn't that high, the title of "the ugliest city in Finland" is a bit harsh since it does have some vaguely soviet/dystopian grunge brutalist aesthetic if you're into that sort of thing, and in my experience the friendliest crackheads in Finland. But all those things said, their coat of arms does kinda feature this thing eerily similar to the symbol of Chaos

[going-to-ikea-for-the-fries]

It's a Match! || 141 x reader

[ Chapter 7 ] || [ Chapter 9 ]

Pairing: Ghost x gn!Reader || 141 x gn!Reader Words: 1.1K~ Summary: While overcoming recent heartbreak, you decide to join Tinder in search of a rebound. Your friends advise to just Swipe Right indiscriminately... What happens when 4 soldiers from the same squad match with you? a/n: ghost is making a move.

Chapter 8: Awooga?

Surprisingly, your one-night stand with John last night did wonders for you. You felt energized all day and made it a point to clean everything instead of moping about like you have tended to do since your break-up with Ethan.

There were days when you considered texting him, neck deep in feelings you couldn’t quite move past, trying your best to stay afloat. Four years by his side couldn’t be forgotten in the blink of an eye, even if neither of you wanted anything to do with the other and had each other blocked on every platform imaginable.

It’s 4 P.M. on Saturday and you’re laying about in your living room wearing lounge clothes, your legs spread over your coffee table, eyes lazily locked on the TV as you fiddle with your phone, twirling it in your hand.

Eventually, you find yourself getting bored… So you decide to open Tinder one last time. You got what you wanted out of it. John scratched that itch… There’s no need to keep it. But it’s still funny enough to judge the men on that app even if you’re no longer doing anything with them.

You start Left Swiping on every profile that comes onto your screen, silently judging each one and murmuring to yourself. You get about 15 profiles in before you find yourself bored of even that.

Sighing and getting peckish, you decide to order yourself something good for dinner from a delivery app. Then, while waiting for the notification that your driver is on his way, you return to Tinder.

You open the DM tab, finding dozens of new DMs from guys and skim through them, none of them catching your eye. If you were in the mood, you’d maybe engage in convo with one of them, maybe annoy them a little… But they all seem so… bland.

Then you find Simon’s chat lost in the influx. You click on it for a moment, smiling a bit as you spot his politeness and excess professionalism for someone that’s on a dating app looking to get laid.

Biting your lip, your fingers glide across the keyboard as you shoot him a quick message.

you: so… are you thinking of ever uploading a new pic of yourself?

The Read indicator popped up under your DM almos instantly, and the bubbles indicating Simon was typing soon followed.

Simon: Look who it is. Simon: Hello to you too. Simon: No, I don’t intend to do that. you: hi, sorry. x you: why not? Simon: I don’t take this app seriously enough to want to show off what I look like. you: was that a dig at me for having a whole gallery? Simon: No. Simon: Unless you want it to be. 😉 you: 😱😱 you: SIMON DID YOU JUST USE AN EMOJI? Simon: I regret doing it now. you: NOOOO pls don’t! you: it was fun!!!! Simon: Alright then. Simon: How are you feeling today?

You’re genuinely shocked by his question and you find yourself smiling a bit.

you: i’m okay hru? Simon: Just okay? I’m fine thanks. you: yeah! feeling lazy. Simon: You had me worried you weren’t feeling well after last night.

Your cheeks warm up so quickly that you even sputter and sit up on the couch with a start.

you: you know?? Simon: Of course I know. Simon: John’s my captain.  you: he told you??????? Simon: No. John’s old school. No kiss and tell. Simon: But we were all expecting he’d go home with you. Simon: Kind of an open secret. you: oh Simon: Does that bother you? you: i don’t think so? you: i guess i should’ve expected you would realize it Simon: I’m sorry. Simon: To be fair, I can tell you that you did a great job, he’s in a much better mood. you: that is not the praise you think it is 😭 Simon: I’m not used to giving praise, cut me some slack alright? you: right. i can see that. you: the whole - my team would say i push them - thing Simon: I stand by that. Simon: I’m not very good at talking. Simon: But I’m not a liar. you: i’ve noticed you: you tend to hate being called that. Simon: Lie enough on the job. Simon: When I’m talking to people outside of that, I like being as honest as I can be. you: i see you: sooo does that mean i can ask you things and you’ll be honest in the answers? Simon: About? you: you Simon: Within reason. you: what do you look like Simon: 6ft4, blonde, brown eyes. you: that’s it? Simon: I said ‘Within reason’. That means I won’t give you more than I think I should. you: infuriating 😤 Simon: That’s life.

Just as you’re about to answer, your doorbell rings. You were so absorbed in Simon’s chat that you didn’t notice your delivery driver arrived.

You slip on some shoes quickly and dash downstairs to the front door of the building to receive your food.

Once upstairs, you set your food on the table and unwrap everything, beginning to eat your Nando’s chicken as you try to resume texting Simon one-handed.

That’s when you spot the message he sent you while you were busy.

Simon: Added some new pics. Simon: Don’t say I never did anything for you. Simon: But I’ll take them down in 2 minutes so you better hurry up.

Eyebrows raised, you quickly click on his profile and rush to tap through to the new pictures.

The first one makes you chuckle. Of course, it’s him wearing a hoodie and a stupid mask… But the second one? Your jaw drops open and you find yourself swallowing dryly.

“Awooga…” You quip to yourself and giggle, amused at your own silliness as your eyes trail over every inch of exposed skin in Simon’s chest. Even if that’s not him, even if that’s just some… bloke he found online, it’s still a bloody fine picture.

Returning to the chat, you type a quick reply.

you: not bad Simon: Answered your questions? you: raised a couple more. Simon: Good. Simon: You keep them in your mind for later. you: why does it feel like you’re leaving?? Simon: Because I am. Duty calls. Simon: I’ll tell John you said 'Hi'. you: okay... you: be careful!

As soon as you sent that message you found yourself facepalming. Why do you sound like a concerned partner? You don’t even know this man. Any of them really. Even if you had one of them inside of you less than 24 hours ago.

You don't dwell too much on it because soon there's a message from Simon on the screen.

Simon: Always am. Don’t miss us too much.

Shaking your head, you set down your phone, locking the screen, and turning back to your peri-peri chicken and chips, eyebrows furrowed in contemplation.

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