#Salt Box

[inspiredlivingspaces]

IG countryhomemagazine

[tristanheelys]

Honeysuckle, 2023

A drawing based on the memory of the first time I tasted honeysuckle

[ekowkumasi]

Traditional Wine Cellar - Medium Inspiration for a mid-sized timeless medium tone wood floor and brown floor wine cellar remodel with storage racks

[grimae]

our lady of the salt-crusted shores

[knific]

happy anniversary ii!

credits to @cakebrunch / @worldsfirstgayknife for the original :)

[norazingrid]

sorry if u cant read the text,this brush is so hard to work w

[bigb-enthusiast]

Yall dont get them like i do

[ninadove]

So. There’s this show I really hate.

I didn’t even want to watch it, but I was forced to sit through literally all of it because my parents liked it for some reason that completely eludes me. Not only is the plot catastrophically bad and the characters inconsistent — it’s also very, very misogynistic in essence. Just thinking about it now makes me want to chew on the writing team’s bones.

I genuinely have nothing good to say about this show.

So. Do you know how many posts I uploaded to the corresponding tags?

ZERO (0)

Because there’s no point in spending energy on a thing I hate so passionately, and even less in ruining it for other people.

Don’t get me wrong — it’s OK to point out irregularities in writing, and to talk about specific aspects of a story that upset you. But uploading dozens of posts about how you Hate The Thing, Analysing The Thing Is Pointless, Everyone Who Worked On The Thing Is Stupid, and Everyone Who Loves The Thing Is Delusional, is maybe not the genius take you think it is.

It doesn’t make you smarter than everyone else. It just makes you boring.

[riacte]

Alright I love love love Skizz but why did people for FALSE & Skizz instead of False & H???? What???

It is because False gets overlooked even in a False centric poll. This is a pattern. Also sorry for using your ask as a vent post lol.

I love Skizz and his energy, I think he's awesome with people, he is certainly good at the whole "duo thing" buuuut this is not a Skizz duo poll. Or even a Hermitcraft duo poll. It is a False duo poll. I think people voted for Skizz because of Skizz, not False, or even Skizz-False. Like yeah it was funny when Skizz held False hostage in the charity event. But are people voting for moments like that or do they just like Skizz in general?

This was also what I was trying to see with the False MCC poll— 17 is of course iconic as a whole, and especially for Grian, and I would definitely rank it very high in a Hermit MCC poll (possibly right behind Blue9, sorry Orange10). But False had better performances in 29 and 10, and 9 had better chemistry than 17 because she didn't really get spoken over in 9. Or 10 and 29. (Whereas in 17 it was a Thing enough for Pete to mention it afterwards apparently.) 17 has cool False moments of course— SG the one I remember the most— but people don't really bring that up. So did people vote for 17 in a False centric poll because they liked False's performance in 17 and overall team chemistry (things related to and influenced by False) or because they like 17 in general?

It is not that deep but also seeing False's diminishing relevance in the mainstream HC fandom over the years is kinda... disappointing. Someone who's never watched a hermit on MCCReddit will mention False Supremacy. HBomb's chat loves False. Like I don't even know what happened?? False has been posting regularly, always have, she does her builds and collabs and pranks and infrastructure, she won the first event of the season, outsiders love her, and...? Like don't we love our slay cool #girlboss queen of hearts? Or does she need a different fanon archetype now? The mischievous prankster? The silly wet cat? The healer type who loves animals and gives them stupid names? The competitive warrior? Would you still love me when I'm no longer the designated girlboss of the group or whatever

Like ok yeah this is me being bitchy and a gatekeeper and False isn't even the most underrated hermit and she gets her share of love in fanart and stuff but yeah I've noticed the decline. You've got Redditors mentioning Empires people in the crossover in response to someone asking about Empires but not mentioning one hermit who was actually also in Empires. You've got people talking about "Hermitgals" but they replace False and Stress with Lizzie. You've got the fallout of Demise 2. You've got Redditors talking about Rendoc in relation to Ren like his only relevance is being Doc's friend/collab buddy when False exists and she's his favourite hermit. And you've got the False duo poll. Won't even go into the view counts/ sub counts because that's depressing for what feels like at least a third of the hermits (Cubfan you deserve way more). Doesn't feel good.

Back in 2020/21 she got shat on and her achievements ignored by some DSMP fans and now the same thing is happening but it's worse because it's from some HC fans. The call is coming from inside the house. And once again False isn't even the most overlooked hermit. For example Iskall STILL gets horrific hate comments about how he doesn't "deserve" to be a hermit because he plays VH more.

Hermitcraft is popular. I wish the other third of it is more popular.

[immaturityofthomasastruc]

Andre is a complete and total coward! Even when he ‘turned over a new leaf’ is BS! He can blame Audrey all he wants, but in the end, he was still Chloe’s primary caregiver most of her life. He was the one who spoiled her rotten and saved her butt from any punishment she deserved, all the while not disciplining her himself. Oh, but then when the monster he created goes out of control, that’s when he cares. Oh, and then instead of actually doing something to help Chloe break these awful habits or attempt to be a better father, he ships her with her emotionally abusive mother who brings out the worst traits while adopting the 'good’ child who isn’t even his kid (BTW doesn’t she already have a dad). To me, that honestly looks like, he’s trying to save his own reputation and doesn’t actually want to any heavy-lifting when it comes to bringing up a child. 

Seriously what the heck was Astruc and his team thinking with this?!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remember, Astruc said that Chloe was at the age where she was supposed to “build her moral compass away from her parents”, which pretty much shows how little he understands personal growth.

But then again, the only time the show ever actually condemns a bad parent for their actions is when they’re already dead, as we’ll see in “Representation”.

[akalikestodraw]

Man this took longer than it should have

But here's mine :]

In terms of similar personalities I just went with the characters I saw myself in at some point

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

i'm not one to assume things about the creators but based on catra's creepy and uncomfortable interactions with adora AND based on the way the crew talks about this ship, i'm almost sure that if spop was an adult cartoon, c//a would include SA.

[museaway]

what would you take from my room?

I was tagged by @rosemirmir, tysm!! This is adorable. I'm in my kitchen right now so the items are from that room.

tagging anyone who sees this & would like to play!

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

Thank you for answering my Origins Dragon!Marinette and Turtle!Adrien question! Please don’t worry about disagreeing with the idea; I asked for YOUR opinion and analysis on why it would OR wouldn’t work, and that’s what I got. 😌 It also made me consider meta and in-show stuff that I hadn’t before, which is cool. You mentioned wanting all of the Kwamis to be part of some sort of set of two or more, and I’d love to hear what those sets are in your head going down the full Chinese Miracle Box list and why you’d pair them together with consideration towards both the Kwami themselves and their Powers.

(Post this ask is referring to)

Oh good, I'm glad that you found it useful and not discouraging!

Talking about how to pair the Kwamis is a little tricky because of an issue that I've discussed before. That issue being that the "Chinese" miracle box seems to be about as Chinese as fortune cookies. That makes me uncomfortable because - as far as I'm aware - the Chinese zodiac is a major part of Chinese beliefs and traditions. As such, I personally feel like the box should reflect those beliefs and traditions, but I also don't know those beliefs and traditions, so I can't tell you how I'd effectively group the zodiac Kwamis in order to honor their cultural origins. I can't even be sure if my criticism is valid or just me being overly cautious!

In an ideal world where I had money to invest in this sort of thing, I'd hire a cultural consultant to work with me to design a Chinese miracle box that feels Chinese (or to tell me that I'm overthinking this and to just do whatever I want). Assuming that I'm not overreacting, this would probably mean redesigning a lot of the powers and looks so that they honor Chinese lore and not Western lore.

For example, one thing that I know for sure is that black cats are not unlucky in China. They're actually symbols of good luck (all cats are), so a Chinese box would not have the implied good luck/bad luck thing that we get with Ladybug and Chat Noir. My limited research has also raised some doubts about ladybugs being a go-to symbol of good luck or creation in China, but I'm a lot less confident about that one being a bad choice as the association may exist. I couldn't find anything definitive one way or the other. This leads me to think that, if the association exists, then it's probably a bit obscure, meaning that a Chinese box would probably go with a different animal if we were trying to be culturally accurate to what a Chinese-inspired box would really look like.

I can say with reasonable certainty that Creation is associated with the masculine yang and Destruction is associated with the feminine yin, so Tikki should possibly feel masculine to feminine Plagg. At the very least, their spots in the miracle box should probably be reversed with Plagg in the black and Tikki in the white since yin is black and yang is white?

[Image Description: center of the original miracle box showing that ladybug earrings are placed in the black part of the yin yang symbol while the black cat ring is in the white]

I also known that white rabbits being associated with time, watches, and umbrellas comes from Alice in Wonderland and not China. Are you starting to see why I'm doubting the cultural accuracy of the miracle box?

The alternate way to approach this is to remove the possible issue of Chinese culture being treated as "mystical" or nothing more than ornamentation by making the Chinese miracle box into the miracle box of no specified culture. Since that's kind of what the box already is in terms of deeper meanings and cultural ties, I think we can go that route for this discussion since we have taken a moment to acknowledge the potential issues with the box's existing design and why that's leading me to take this route as - to me - this seems to be the only way to stick to canon's lore while avoiding potential further insults to Chinese culture.

If we went to my ideal extremes with this approach, we'd actually massively cut down the number of miraculous in the box because I think that there are way too many miraculous! Who needs nineteen "unique" powers to arm and fight one villain? This is extra true since there's no real theme to the miraculous beyond the initial setup of Creation/Destruction + five random powers followed by the addition twelve more random powers with no clear ties to any culture or theme other than the look of the Kwamis that grant the powers.

But that's getting real extreme, so for this ask, we won't go there. Instead, I'll talk about some general ideas for grouping the powers that we already have and some ideas for how you could fix the randomness of our current powers to make them feel like they make sense.

To start, I love the fact that our two main heroes are supposed to be a pair power wise. That's a lovely way to approach your lore and is why I think that they should have grouped the other miraculous, too. Why are Creation and Destruction the only set? Why aren't the others in any sort of group? Why do these miraculous have the powers they do? What ties them to this box and not another box?

There are a few ways to approach pairing the other miraculous. You can come at it from a theme perspective such as the fact that both the snake and the rabbit are all about time. You can also look for opposites such as the turtle being all about defense and the dragon being more about offense. You can even go more broad and say that a given group of miraculous is all aspects of one type of power such as the peacock, the goat, and the ladybug all feeling like aspects of creation. There's really no clear way to go about this because the current powers are so freaking random!

When I approach this stuff, I don't just come up with powers. I come up with the lore and let that help guide the powers or I shape the lore around the powers I want to use until both things make sense. For example, it makes sense that Creation would have some magical being guiding it. It also makes sense that Creation would either create Destruction for balance or that they both popped into existence together so that there was always a balance. Once you have that, you say, "Okay, what other Forces would these two want in order to help guide the universe? What can't they do or what do they do consistently enough that they might want to hand it off?"

Going from there, you start to come up with ideas like maybe they wanted Time to have a physical embodiment so that they could get some guidance on the long term effects of the things that they were making, so that's Fluff coming online. But Time is a lot and they liked their balance, so maybe Sass was brought online too in order to balance Fluff with Fluff being focused on what was and what could be while Sass is focused on what is, thereby giving Fluff someone to ground her. Or maybe you even add in a third Kwami to be some sort of historian who remembers the past while Fluff is the future and Sass is the now.

Another thought path is that most things are not pure Creation or pure Destruction. You must destroy to create. When you make bread, yeast consumes sugar to create air bubbles. Creation and Destruction working together. So maybe Tikki and Plagg wanted to make "children" who could do what they couldn't do solo and that's how we got the peacock?

No matter how you go about this, I really don't think that there's a great way to explain/group all nineteen miraculous, especially if you add in the eagle and Fei's wacky prodigious with it's animal abilities. It's just too random! But I do think that there's a lot of potential in strong subsets of the ones we get in canon, especially if you're allowed to edit the powers or the Forces a bit to make them fit their supposed Force or granted power better. I've talked before about how I'd mess with Lucky Charm to remove the odd Luck association and focus on Creation and that's what I'd do with most of the miraculous because, right now, most of them don't make much sense.

For example, Ziggy - the goat - is supposed to be the Kwami of Passion and that somehow gives the power to create anything you want? I know creatives are passionate, but that still doesn't fit in my mind. It would make more sense for this to be an inspiration power like the pig or for the Force to change to Creation and Ziggy is just a lesser ladybug for some reason? And Stompp - the Ox - is Determination, but I'd actually label his shield power as an aspect of Protection, making him in some sort of pairing with the turtle. Self defense verses defense of others?

In short, the canon lore is a disaster that needs major work to feel solid which leads to lots of paths for fixing the mess. In my opinion, the best way to go about fixing it is to take the element that worked best - the Creation/Destruction pairing - and expand that out to make strong, logical lore for the other Kwamis and their associated powers. Lore that probably won't be rooted in any one culture because no culture seems to be a solid match for the lore that canon is using, which is only concerning because of the current obvious associations with China and that's not even touching on the whole Tibetan monks + Chinese culture issue. Go check out the post I linked at the start for my thoughts on that which basically sum up to, "I am not even remotely qualified to talk about this one, but it seems like a terrible idea."

(Once again, reminder that I'm not Chinese or otherwise deeply informed on Chinese culture. I'm just a person who tries her best to respect other cultures and the miracle box sets off a lot of warning bells for me. Those warning bells could always be a false positive, so you shouldn't take my thoughts as some sort of final say on this topic. Please feel free to look into this on your own and form your own opinions.

If you are Chinese or otherwise educated in these topics, then please feel free to reblog this or send an ask giving me some additional context as I really do love learning about this stuff, but it's near impossible to research! I spent a good hour talking to a local librarian trying to find books or articles in our library that talked about the Chinese zodiac from an academic perspective and we found nothing. I've got a few interlibrary loan requests out to academic libraries in our library network though and I'll follow up on this if those books end up having information that adds to the discussion.)

[morethansalad]

Vegan Cauliflower Fried Rice Bento Box

[ego-osbourne]

I love the way you draw old men so cunty

Thank you :3 Have a slightly cunty Caspian who got a little bloody in the process of me drawing this

An attempt on his life? That’s a normal Loredas for him.