#nothing can substitute

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

A new challenger approaches (slowly)

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[dummerjan]

emotionally I am always on a rooftop somewhere in Bangkok

[danothan]

everyday i log onto the internet i am forced to fisticuffs combat the halbarry default yaoi allegations. THEY’RE NOT A BASIC BRUNETTE/BLONDE JOCK/NERD DYNAMIC THEY’RE MORE THAN THAT (coping)

[roseverdict]

don't cry. pour a small-seeming serving of any pasta noodle you'd like in a deep microwave-safe bowl, just barely cover the noodles with water, microwave for roughly 2 minutes 30 seconds, stir, microwave for 2 more minutes, carefully drain the pasta water from the pasta, liberally mix shredded non-mozzarella cheese into the hot noodles, and pour small amounts of milk in (maaaybe a school milk carton's worth or two at most) to taste and to make it creamier, okay?

[gh-0-stcup]

Samwena is endgame to me.

[the-trans-dragon]

What if they didn't put ads every 3 posts. Three posts between ads, literally. Not even counting the ad for Tumblr Live.

Also what if tumblr didn't know what city Im in. I do not want my location tracked or stored anywhere unless I give explicit ongoing permission, like with my GPS app that I allow to track me only when the app is open, and then it deletes the data (allegedly) when I stop giving permission.

[brokenmachinemusings]

drinkijng water is so weird bc how do i know this isnt holy water meant to harm me

[thatlittledandere]

I love learning about regional differences within countries or even regions. It's an American internet so even I know that New Yorkers are on a whole 'nother level of exceptionalism and being from Brooklyn specifically Means Something. Tell me, how does the rest of Brazil feel about people from Rio? What sets the Quebecuois apart, aside from speaking French? Does South Africa have stereotypes about people speaking all the different languages they have? Does being closer to North or South America mean something in Mexico? Italy hasn't been one cohesive country for very long, how shattered is it still? Etc etc etc tell me about regional stereotypes in your dear homeland Ethiopia make it a fight if you have to. I want to HEAR

[yokohamabeans]

I refuse to pay for extra storage on Google and so I must purge my files. 🤡 Found an early draft for the first chapter of Past-Tense Events, my Rindou fic that unfortunately never went beyond its prologue. It was supposed to set up the childhood friends-to-lovers-to-strangers plot of it.

Really doubt I can continue it, considering my extreme focus on ROAC, but I didn't want to waste what I've already written, so I'm just gonna dump this here...

Characters / Tags: Kid!Rindou, Kid!Ran & Reader

Childhood meeting. No romance, not even a friendship. Nothing much is going on here, in fact. Dumb kids being dumb kids. Rated 'G' for your Grandma 'cuz there'll be no problem if she reads this.

1994

Your father warned you about boys like them.

Right before teaching you how to put someone in an armlock. It’s one of the few things he’s taught you before he left for prison.

He said to you: look, kid, when I’m up in the slammer, it’s on you to protect the old bat, ya got me? If you see any wankers looking for funny business around grandma’s shop, you tell them we ain’t sellin’ and you twist their arm like this. Ya followin’? You do this to anyone who’s mean to you too. I’ll be out in no time, so you just hold the fort down for a bit, yeah?

(In hindsight: the sensibility of telling a seven-year-old to physically take on threats is at best questionable, but your father was neither the brightest nor most responsible man. He was hardly even a good man. You, however, cannot decide if he was a bad father—you simply don’t have enough memories of him to make a fair judgement. But about the little ones that you do: when you think of them, you think of them fondly.)

Shortly after your father gave that lesson, the men in blue came and pushed his head into their car. His words made you feel important and you wanted to be important, so you spent your time after school perched on a tall stool behind the counter of Yoshioka’s Fruit & Vegetables, eyes peeled all the way back for the trouble you were prepared for. You waited and waited, but no one brought any ‘funny business’ to the shop: as far as you knew, the same farmers still delivered to your grandmother and the same housewives still bought from her, despite their whispers about her son. Grandma ended up making more use of you as a cashier than a bodyguard. Days passed like a slow summer afternoon, and you were beginning to think that the wankers were never going to come.

Until one day, they do.

You were chewing on the tip of your pencil, trying to count all the notes and coins in the cash drawer, when the rough sound of metal on asphalt fills your ears. You peer over the counter: there are two boys standing outside, scowling so deeply that it shocked you. The taller one between them is bouncing the end of a steel pipe on the ground, and something about the way it glints makes the hair at the back of your neck stand up.

Wankers! You balk. They really are here!

“Oi, where’s your mom?” the shorter boy drawls. His hands are in his pockets, shoulders round in a slouch. Didn’t anyone tell him that is bad posture? “We’re here for the protection money.”

“Protection money?” you ask, voice loud from being behind the counter still. “What’s that?”

“Get your mom. She’ll know.”

You frown, brain whirring. Who does he think he is, ordering you around when he doesn’t even look any older than you? And everyone in the neighbourhood knows that you don’t have a mom—for a period of time it was the only thing anybody talked about. Even the kids at school know about it, which is why they speak to you as little as they politely can. This boy must not be from the area. You’d remember him if he was: you’ve never seen such angry eyebrows on anyone before. How are they so arched? They look like the McDonald’s sign! What kind of business do kids like him have with a grown-up, anyway?!

Funny business, that’s what!

“Noone’s in now,” you tell him cautiously. Your throat is dry because that is only partially true; your grandma is not in the shop but at home on the second floor above it, boiling soup for dinner. You’re praying that she stays up there. “Go away. We’re not giving you any money.”

“Ha?” he raises an eyebrow obnoxiously high, then turns to the taller boy. “Aniki, did I hear that right? Did she really say she ain’t gonna pay?”

The way he rolls his tongue reminds you of the way your father did (which grandma told you to never imitate because only ‘hooligans’ talked like that). Perhaps because of this, you are a tad bit less afraid of him.

“Yeah, you heard it right, Rindō,” the other boy, his older brother you presume, replies. You think you’re seeing double until you notice that his eyebrows are way less mean than the other’s. He raps the steel pipe in his hand harder against the ground. “And that’s a problem, isn’t it?”

“Go away!” you yell again, trying to drown the noise by chanting your father’s words in your head. “We ain’t got nothing to sell to you!”

“Look, girlie, it’s simple.” ‘Rindō’ growls, stepping into the shop. He’s two fruit-racks away and way too close for comfort. You don’t even realise you are backing off until your spine hits the wall behind you. “If you don’t pay your protection money, you don’t get protection! From us!”

Then, to your utter horror, he picks a tomato off a rack and flings it to the ground where it bursts in a bloody splat. You gasp at the audacity of this boy, struggling to grasp how anyone can be so offensive. Your face grows hot at the thought of your grandma finding out about the mess, then even hotter when you realise that Rindō is eating up your fear and anger with a grin. What an absolute wanker!

“We don’t wanna do this, you know,” his aniki says, swinging the pipe to rest it on his shoulder. “Just pay us the money and we’ll leave.”

“Stop it! Leave us alone!” Water breaks out of your eyes and it humiliates you. “Stop throwing my grandma’s tomatoes! They’re expensive!”

“Oh yeah?” Rindō sneers. Another tomato down. And another one. “Make me.”

So, you make him.

It all happens in a flash. You lose all senses to a mad rage, figuring you’d rather be angry than afraid and ashamed. You leap over the counter, snatch a carrot off its basket and lunge at the boy with everything you’ve got. Your scrawny body, electric with excitement, slams into his and you bulldoze him to the ground. “Get out of our shop! We ain’t sellin’!”

“What the fuck?!” he yells.

“I! Said! We ain’t sellin’!” You manage to get three hits in before the carrot breaks in half. Rindō starts to ball his fist underneath you, so, like how your old man always did, you grab his arm, push his cheek to the floor and swing your legs over his head and torso.

It is the smoothest armlock you’ve ever manoeuvred. Papa would’ve been proud.

“Rindō!” the other boy shrieks. He drops the pipe and digs his hands into his hair, petrified and completely lost about what to do while his brother is shouting and thrashing in pain under your grip. “Get off him! You’re gonna tear off his arm!”

“Get off me, damnnit!” Rindō yelps, his eyes dewing. A stream of what you’ll later learn to be expletives spews out of his mouth. “Get off! It hurts!”

You don’t hear him—you don’t hear anything at all, only the mission your father left you with. But it isn’t easy: Rindō is much stronger than you imagined. It’s taking every single muscle in you to keep him locked between your limbs. You don’t even remember breathing this hard when you performed the armlock on your dad! This Rindō may very well be stronger than him; you absolutely cannot let him go.

“Aniki! My arm! It’s breaking!”

“Hang in there, Rindō!”

“It’s gonna snap! It’s gonna snap!”

“Let go of my brother!”

"Aniki! Help!"

And you’re just screaming hysterically through the chaos.

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

gasp

i could be both iko and greybird

[bothzangetsus]

do you ever see tags that you disagree with on such a fundamental level it makes you see double for a second

[lucagrumbles]

I have ONE safe food that takes a good chunk of energy. I take a lot of pride in making it. and I fucked it up.

[imwritesometimes]

absolutely love looking at a recipe (esp ones I've made myself successfully) and seeing reviews of it like "this sucked it was awful had to keep adding corn starch and it just wouldn't turn out"

like... the recipe calls for dark corn syrup not corn starch so I mean I'd start with reading comprehension and go from there, bud

[two-calicos-in-a-trenchcoat]

So most recipes for watercolor binder recommend using clove essential oil for its antimicrobial and antifungal properties (so your paints dont start growing mold)

Well I could not find clove oil for a reasonable price anywhere near me

I did however find cinnamon essential oil at walmart

So I did some digging and cinnamon oil can be used in place of clove oil for antimicrobial and antifungal properties. SO im not sure why all the watercolor binder recipes that tell you to use essential oil specify clove oil. I thought maybe other oils might make the paint weird? But I figured it was worth a shot to try the cinnamon oil. So far the paint seems to work just fine and its hardening nicely.

So if youre making watercolor binder but can't find clove oil (and you want to have an essential oil in there for the added antifungal properties) just know that any with antimicrobial and antifungal properties are likely ok to use. (This note isn't the point of this post I just feel the need to put it cuz I had a very confusing week of digging around online to figure out if I could substitute clove oil for another type of oil because literally every single recipe that recommended using an essential oil said CLOVE oil which makes me think that clove oil must have something about it that makes it different from other essential oils with antimicrobial and antifungal properties thats making all these other people use it specifically and was finding NOTHING and decided to just say "fuck it" and see what happens-.....anyway.)

This has had the lovely effect of making my paints smell very strongly of cinnamon

Which is definitely an upgrade from how I imagine they wouldve smelled had i not added essential oil at all. The gum arabic solution smelled very bad lol. The cinnamon oil helped quite a lot.

[bunnyb34r]

Welp it's a great thing they cut my hours I guess bc I feel like hot garbage today and if I had to work tomorrow I think I'd cry

[hugepolecat3298]

prefacing this by saying i know there are some sane ones that do it just as a personal choice and dont put down others etc etc etc but the way online vegans talk about animal products is genuinely so concerning. ive seen them call normal ass meat ‘rotting/decomposing flesh’ and milk ‘mucusy secretions’ and the obvious intention is trying to gross normal people out of consuming them but like ??? What ??? i liked milk before, i knew what it was and where it came from before, why would you describing a secretion as a secretion (where the hell did they ever get ‘mucusy’ from anyway have they ever even drank it) somehow deter me from drinking it or consuming other products that use it