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Remember that if you want to do more of something, you have to do less of something else. It's that time of year where people set goals for the new year and they have plans and hopes and it's always focusing on what they want to do more of. More studying, more exercise, more crafting, more socialising, more making things from scratch. Okay, great. What are you going to do less of in order to have the time and energy to do more of those things you really want to do?

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So, just finished FGO Lostbelt 7 and the Ordeal Call Prologue last night. I know the themes of most of them cause of JP fandom so here is something I have to say.

WHY ARE WE GOING AGINST RULERS AND AVENGERS?

Like those two and Moon Cancers are literally part of the Proper Human History’s Classes at different points in time.

Rulers and Avengers especially when you realize that Jeanne D’Arc and Angra Mainyu are the first Ruler and Avenger introduced with very specific circumstances summoning them.

Then with Moon Cancers, it is part of a future Class thing involving Extella. But I can understand with the present but not future

Why must Chaldea go around assuring PHH that these three Extra Classes are part of Humanity?

Personally I would have thought the test would be for Alter Egos, Foreigners, Pretenders, and Shielder

Alter Egos are also introduced in Extella, so it is more along the reason of Moon Cancers with me. But the Foreigners and Pretenders feel like there should be some kind of trial just cause it’s Chaldea that has encountered them? (With the exception of Faker)

Then for Shielder, it will be a heart wrenching trial we only know Mash and Galahad as representatives of that Class. So if something were to happen to Mash and Galahad is summoned, then it is Horrific

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hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

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Friendly reminder that Guzma accomplished his childhood dream before you even finished your trials. You know, how he wanted to be a Trial Captain and all, but was rejected? Yeah. He accomplished that. Don’t believe me?

Po Town was his bug trial. Consider this: the player goes to Po Town as a distraction so Skull could escort Lillie back to Aether. In order for this to work they had to know where you were, what you were doing, and have a plan to keep you busy long enough to keep you out of the way. So what does Guzma do? He sets up barricades. Trial barricades. And puts grunts out at strategic positions. And lets his grunts keep running their Pokemon Center. Well, that’s all incidental, you might think. They make money from running their center, anyways, so why not let them keep on with it? Besides the part where it would be infinitely easier to let you exhaust your pokemon with your limited resources and have all of his grunts hold you hostage with their healthy, energetic pokemon.

Of course, then you get into the mansion, and that’s when the trial really starts. Every trial in the game has you complete a certain task. You know, defeating a bunch of pokemon, taking pictures, answering quizzes… or finding passcodes. I mean, let’s be honest, here. Team Skull probably doesn’t use passcodes to get to Guzma. They can all tell they’re Team Skull. They have very specific threads. and they don’t ever stop moving their hands. They know when they’re talking to another grunt, and if there’s something urgent they have to tell him there’s no time to have to sit and go through his whole dumb password routine—and even if they did, remember, this whole thing was planned ahead of time. Guzma could have easily coerced his grunts into not saying shit about the passwords and make you waste more time going allllll the way up only to figure out you had to go running around to figure that shit out. But nope. There was one grunt, who decided to tell you very loudly about oh man these passwords are so hard to remember you know those two entire things about Guzma that anyone living in that mansion would know, plus making sure to say no at the end aw jeez aw man whoops I guess I just lost this information somewhere in the mansion and am making no move to try and head you off before you find it haha. He told you what Guzma wanted him to tell you.

So you get the passwords, and you head on up to see Guzma, but he doesn’t have a totem pokemon or anything, so for your trial you just have to beat him, instead. This isn’t the first time you fought him, and it hasn’t even been very long since the first fight, either. He knows you’ve beaten him before. He knows you might very well beat him again. And he has this entirely inconspicuous treasure chest filled with Buginium Z. You know. That Z-crystal he stole from EVERYONE ELSE IN THE ENTIRE GODDAMN REGION because he didn’t want anyone else to have it. That Buginium Z. “Well obviously he wants to show it off since he thinks he’s hot shit!” you say, and yeah, that’s probably why he usually leaves it out. Except, remember, he knows you’re coming. He knows he may or may not win. And even then, if he didn’t want you to have the Buginium, he could have just hidden the chest or closed the lid and sat on it. You’re eleven. He’s twenty-something and the tallest character in the game. He could have just put his hand on your forehead and you wouldn’t have been able to reach it. Instead, he leaves it out. Leaves it open. And leaves you alone in his throne room after you beat him. You know. With his prized treasure that he thinks says he’s the most badass Bug trainer in Alola. If he didn’t want you to have a Buginium, he would have damn well made sure you never even saw it. You beat him. He lets you have it.

So you take the Buginium that he’s left sitting out on “accident” and head back out through the mansion, maybe taking one last look for shit before you go because you steal everyone’s things without remorse, and on your way out of Po Town, you notice the barricades are gone. The trial barricades that you can only pass through when you’ve defeated a captain’s trial, like they told you wayyyy back in the very beginning of the game. They could have left those up to slow you down a little bit more, give Lusamine a little more time without having to worry about you getting in the way, but instead Guzma’s let you waltz out without having to jump through any hoops—he left before you, remember. He’s the one who had them taken down.

You have to keep in mind that all of this was planned. That they needed a way to keep you busy so they could take Lillie. That Guzma knew you were coming and had plenty of time to prepare. So you leave Po Town, continuing on your adventure under a little bit more pressure than before, but Guzma? Jackass he may be, for one pokemon battle of one hour of one day, Guzma did the one thing he’d ever wanted to do in the first place:

Guzma was a Trial Captain.

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One thing I wish was understood a bit better about Twisted Wonderland.

Everyone in this game has trauma or personal struggles and it's NOT a competition of who has it worse. Honestly, sometimes I wish everyone's traumas were discussed more in depth in the game like we get with each person who Overblots, but we don't have time for it. With the Overblot boys, their trauma is shoved directly into the spotlight and we hear exactly how their situations make them feel. But the rest of the cast, ALL of them, have personal struggles and/or trauma. This is just a small list of some of the issues each non Overblot student has.

Ace masks the fear he feels in a lot of situations, and he's got an inferiority complex on some level. Notice how he bullied the player and Grim in our first interaction? That is a sign of someone who is looking to feel better by pushing someone else down because they don't feel good about themselves.

Deuce grew up with a single mother who had to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, which causes him to worry about her, and he was a delinquent in middle school, which made his mom, the one person he worries over, cry. He lives with those regrets, but he's still got those old habits and he agonizes over the fact he's not academically where he'd like to be and his behavior regresses when in heated situations.

Trey has severe trauma at being screamed at for FIVE HOURS over giving Riddle ONE slice of tart, so much that his vitals are severely affected at the thought of Mrs. Rosehearts and he's heavily conflict avoidant.

Cater has had to move all the time and as a defense mechanism, refuses to be honest or get close to people because he doesn't want to get attached only to be ripped away from them.

Ruggie lives in EXTREME poverty when not at school. He struggles to make ends meet and he has to work so hard in a system that is DESIGNED to keep him in poverty, because many beastmen still prefer segregation in the Sunset Savannah.

Jack has one of the healthier mindsets, but he still struggles with being open and honest about his feelings, which makes it hard to have friends, and he struggled with watching Leona, someone he's idolized, fall short of what he believed of Leona.

Jade and Floyd are implied to have grown up in some form of crime family and both seem to have handled the fact their lives could be in constant danger differently. Both like things being interesting, but Jade seems to prefer seclusion and control, while Floyd enjoys scaring people off and having as much fun as he can before he goes.

Kalim is someone who has had multiple assassination attempts on his life, even from his own family. He masks behind a smile, but he's afraid to trust people, and when he DOES TRY to talk about it, it gets brushed off because he has money. Also, he has to deal with the fact Jamil has been undermining his ability to progress by not treating him as if he's capable at all.

Epel has been teased and bullied on how he looked to the point where he started instigating fights to ensure he wouldn't be teased. He also has to fall in line with what Vil wants because he made the error of picking a fight with Vil and getting his butt HANDED to him. To further add, Vil is NOT NICE about it when Epel resists, with one example being Vil grabbing him by the ear and pulling hard as a form of punishment.

Rook has deal with the fact that for being someone who is super perceptive and can notice details, he didn't realize Vil's feelings around Neige, likely because he was blinded by his own admiration for both of them and that's a bitter pill to swallow.

Ortho has to deal with being basically created as a replacement for dead Ortho Shroud, trying to figure out if he's just really a robot made by Idia with really good AI or more than that, and dealing with the fact he loves his brother so much, but his brother doesn't take care of himself and it's disheartening to watch Idia's self-destruction.

Lilia has so much war trauma, losing his loved ones, having been exiled, and so much other crap. Even so, he forced himself to put the war and his trauma about it in the past, where it belonged for the sake of his two sons who both lost so much to war, which is something Baur/Baul could NOT do which was to Sebek's detriment.

Silver has had to live with the idea that his adoptive father would likely outlive him, then is faced with the fact that his father is basically abandoning everything about their life in Briar Valley before he learns that his biological parents were the enemies of the person he serves and cares about, Malleus, and the only father he's ever known.

Sebek has grown up with internalized racism/speciesism against humans thanks to his upbringing and he basically rejects half of his heritage with how he treats his father. He does not even realize how hurtful his comments are until he's faced with those remarks being directed at him by a younger version of his grandfather.

And this isn't everything each student has to face. This is just broad strokes. Yana Toboso wrote a story about flawed people who all have gone through really hard and difficult things because that's the point. As Toboso said in a 2023 interview:

“Happy endings in Disney works come from righteous actions and love, but I believe that the villains are characters who do not get saved during the story. That is why, through this game, I want to portray the message that even if you get beat up all the way to a bad ending, you can grow from it and live your life without feeling discouraged.

Acting lame, obstinate, without hesitation, being open and honest—it’s not as bad as it sounds. 

I would like to paint a positive picture of living honestly with yourself and not worrying about others.

In today’s society there are so many people who live in fear of failure and are always walking on eggshells, but nobody’s flawless. It is exhausting to try to live your life so that no one will hate you.”

Everyone, even people you don't know or do not like, have gone through things that shaped who they are. Sometimes, how we've adapted to handle the bad things that happen will force us to hit rock bottom. But you don't have to die when you hit rock bottom.

You can have terrible things happen to you and have maladaptive strategies to handle your experiences, but you aren't stuck that way forever. You can learn how to change your habits, learn to be okay with yourself, and work at being better than you were the day before.

Human growth is not linear. It's a bunch of taking steps forward and backsliding and learning and making mistakes over and over again and accepting failure, not as a testament to your character, but as part of the process of growth... and that's something all the students have to learn, not just the Overblot boys. Because all of them, every single one, are handling their own personal issues, even if it isn't shoved right in our faces.

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Beware!

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Hey, married women: Go apply for your passport.

The SAVE Act has passed in The House. It makes it illegal for a woman whose last name does not match her birth name to vote as a "citizenship verification measure." The main way around it is being able to present your passport at the polls since that proves your citizenship.

Look up your Senators here and raise hell on their phone lines about this blatant attempt to disenfranchise millions of women:

https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

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Promare x DCU Bits

A/N: This all just popped up while watching Promare again

——

Just set in or teleported into the Promare world where certain DzcU characters are Burnish and the others on the different factions of the Burning Rescue/Freeze Force.

Like Richard “Dick” Grayson being a Burnish who likes using the constructs as acrobatic equipment while decked out in a Burnish suit

Or Hal Jordan vs Barry Allen in fake Burnish Battles in their city to make sure that there is enough disaster relief flowing in the somewhat underdeveloped city they both live in.

Diana teaching safe ways to calm down or restrain a Burnish person if their powers are going out of control.

Jade and Dinah finding out separately the mistreatment of Burnish in prison and sneaking in then teaming up on either giving relief packs or releasing those captive

Heck, Jason with those ice guns using it on other non-Burnish assholes (ex: Joker) that worsen the divide between Burnish and non-Burnish people

Lex Luther being competition against Kray Foresight in the beginning of the distribution of those ice weapons. He uncovers Kray’s backstory in the process and dangles it as blackmail to be in the competition as long as possible while expanding other business ventures

—-

These are just bits that popped up and I need to get them out

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Jason, who starts gaslighting his family members by saying that All Blades were always a thing and that they just didn't take him seriously, once they found out about it.

Bruce, frustrated: If you yielded a magical sword in the past, I would know, Jaylad.

Jason: Jesus fucking Christ, I told you, I don't use it often, since it uses my soul. But I did mention that I have it!

Dick: You did not!

Jason: I said that Robin gives me magic! I said I *am* magic!

Bruce: That's—

Dick: But—

Bruce and Dick, turning to Damian helplessly: Your verdict?

Damian, who got already paid by Jason (price was two sneaked in rabbits): That's true. Mother said Todd had always had them. He only ever was sent to All Caste because he needed to be taught how to use it correctly. Didn't Dulcra say that you were the chosen one, Todd?

Jason, intentionally irritated: Exactly! Thank you.

The rest of the family: ●○●

Bruce, sitting in the Cave, in the middle of his 300th existential crisis: I— If Jason is the chosen one, was I technically wrong in our argument?

Dick: ...I can't believe that this is what takes you to accept that you were wrong, and not the fact that— Dunno, he is your son— And you kinda failed him—

Tim: On the more important note, should we call Jason Harry Potter now or something?

Stephanie, snickering: Jason... You are a wizard!

Bruce, sniffling: He did like these books as a child. Perhaps it was his way to try to tell us the truth.

Dick: Damn... Once we were arguing, and I told him that he had no magic... How foolish I was.

Jason, pressing phone to the shoulder, while cooking: ...And now they are staring at me, like I am about to do the whole Enchantix transformation, lol

Talia: I admit, that's amusing. Damian did a great job at supporting this circus.

Ra's voice on the background: Enchantix? What is it? Had that boy found ANOTHER magical device plot?!

Talia: ...Do you think I am too old to pull the same move you did on my father?

Jason: Nah, it is never too late to trick your dad. Get his ass.

Talia: You are absolutely correct.

Talia, screaming to Ra's: He did, father. It is related to the constant cycle of being brought back alive.

Jason, turning around to Damian, who is playing with rabbits on his couch: Prepare, little gremlin. You are about to testify falsely again, this time to your grandfather.

Damian, snorting: Two golden fish and one parrot.

Jason: I will warn your mother.

Tim, with Excel Chart open: Okay, so we figured out that he has All Blades, strange version of immortality, quick recovery thanks to Pit... What other magic Jason can have we don't know about it yet?

Cassandra: Cooking?

Stephanie: ...I think he is just a normal person, Cass.

Dick: NO, no, listen, it is one thing to cook normally, another to be trusted by Alfred.

Duke: ...You are reaching, guys. I think he is just a good chief.

Bruce: He always makes me laugh.

Tim: That's not— B, no one laughs, but you, so what kind of magic power is that?!

Duke: Listen, y'all, what if he sees ghosts?

Everyone: (pauses)

Stephanie, hitting Tim on the shoulder: WRITE IT DOWN, WRITE IT DOWN—

Tim: I am putting it in the "unclear" column, but good idea, dude.

Alfred, glancing at all of this sceptically: Dear Lord, this family is not your brightest soldiers...

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Robin! Jason: Robin gives me magic! :D

Constantine: *suspicious side eye glaring* Hm....

Bruce: oh come on, just because I have a high chance of being consumed by evil if I do magic -which is why I'm not allowed to do magic- doesn't mean he will! That's just a kid's saying! Constantine: uh huh -------------------------------

Red hood! Jason: *all-blades in hand* Sup motherfuckers guess who's back Constantine: I FUCKING KNEW IT

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passages that make you whisper "oh my god"

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jason to bruce: i was skipping around all of gotham saying that being robin gave me magic, so why are you so surprised that i can summon magical swords to fight evil?

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Reminds me a bit of the ending of the “Gotham by Gaslight” movie but modern.

Batman is so focused on losing his tiny shadow that he doesn’t realize there are actually three of them.

aka wanted to play with dynamic duo dynamics and i couldnt decide whether to give bats a kid, a preteen, or a dick hilariously close in age, but then, epiphany: all 3 at once. batdad speedrun

btw timmy got the other two interested in following batman around so they basically adopted batman, really

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One thing that has made me a much more well-adjusted person is a clip I once saw of Hank Green saying that anyone can be in amazing shape as long as being in amazing shape is one of their top three priorities.

(This is obviously a generalization that isn't true for everyone. But it is true for most people and I'm proceeding from there.)

This "top three priorities" framing has genuinely reduced my tendency toward jealousy and self-comparison a lot. Now when I feel envious of someone’s spotless, aesthetic home, I think to myself, “Having a spotless, aesthetic home is probably one of their top three priorities. It’s definitely not one of mine, so I shouldn’t expect my home to look like that.”

Or when I see an influencer with a body that takes a ton of work to maintain: “Maintaining that body is obviously one of her top three priorities, because it’s her livelihood. My livelihood is my brain, so I’m never going to prioritize my body like that.”

It also helps me to identify areas that I actually DO want to prioritize more. I realized in recent years that my envy for my friends who prioritized writing more than I did was NOT going away, so I started to prioritize writing more. (Not top three, but higher priority than it has been in the past.)

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Bruce: Did you text Jason about the family dinner?

Tim:

Dick:

Stephanie:

Cass:

Damian: Does he have a phone?--

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“In 1404, King Taejong fell from his horse during a hunting expedition. Embarrassed, looking to his left and right, he commanded, “Do not let the historian find out about this.” To his disappointment, the historian accompanying the hunting party included these words in the annals, in addition to a description of the king’s fall.“

LMFAOOOOOO rip to that guy

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Can't Have Nice Things

The Ketamine King Musk has shutdown the IRS's Free Tax Filing system.

Of all the things a government could off, a way to Freely calculate and file your taxes seems like a good one. But the richest man in the world thinks we shouldn't have that.