#essence challenge

[saturngalore]

my version of penny pizzazz!!! 🩵

[creativepot4to]

Trollstober Day 5 ~ Funk Trolls

Y’all I think I ate

Like I lowkey really like this one!!!!

Trollstober list by @lavandermix

[someguysart]

Week 2: Anima Banner

Upon each page is written a scandal, a cipher, the key to a mystery, but they're all moving too fast, converging in a whorl on the Sidereal. Wherever one makes contact with him, dark green ink begins to spread, blotting out any useful information. Pages blackened with wet ink cling to his form, an increasingly obscured silhouette, but for his wicked grin. Those too leaden with ink to stay aloft pool at his feet and disintegrate in his wake.

Made as part of theuncrucified's Exalted Art Challenge

[chipou-art]

Oops i almost forgot to post it! I'm slowly but surely catching up with Essence of October 2024, the prompt for day 5 was Autumn Festival! I bet Majima and Makoto are going to buy some good takoyakis :)

[mxdhatt]

been thinking of posting my reactions to reading Red Hood and the Outlaws here... I've been a DC fan for a while now, but I haven't actually read that many comics tbh (and when I got into it I first read a handful of The Flash comics before drifting to the batfamily). so I think it would be fun to register my reading experience here idk

anyways, I'm on issue 7 already but this fugly mask keeps bothering me

why tf is this metal mask or whatever showing his whole face????

another thing, if it isn't a crime to kill an alien, why couldn't kori kill that thing?

Is he like a transformed human or something that I'm forgetting? bc i could swear he was an alien too...

the mask is still pmo btw, but roy is so witty i love him

to me, this means black starfire is canon idc

and if they're normal, the rest of the people jason knows are?? but he's sweet for worrying even after all this

love her already

but jason, can you stop being such a downer? geez, you clearly want her bro AND SHE WANTS YOU TOO

anywaayys these were my thoughts if anyone cares lol

[penthousedragon]

The final piece for the Alphabet Art Challenge: Zhao the White serpent~

A NuCarni oc belonging to a friend of mine

[trans-mouse]

Exalted Art Challenge Week 4: Beastpeople

The Amoda mothfolk are mentioned in passing as one of the Caulborn beastfolk clans… But I need way more information about them. They get two sentences, one of which says they don't believe the sun exists! What does that mean? Well, I'm a writer, so I get to make it up! This is my week 4 exalted art challenge. I couldn't really think of a way to make the weekly topic work, but the 24th was "beastpeople," so I figure that's good enough justification to get all this lore from my head onto the page!

The dozen clans of the Amoda worship Luna as the greatest of all gods beside the Caul itself, and view the sun as a feeble reflection of her divine power. She is regarded as a trickster god by them, but also as a protector against the predations of the wyld and the dragonblooded. So long as they live their lives in the moon's light, they keep themselves safe from most external threats. But walking in the moonlight means more than just keeping from sunlight; the Amoda practice trickery, and particularly theft, as a game. When not at war, practically all Amoda, from their first steps, wear lots of jewelry and adorn themselves with dangling pendants, all to be stolen. While these are meant to be protected, they are also meant to be stolen, so they tend to be crafted from pretty rocks and twists of hide and hair, rather than precious metals or gemstones. Any stolen are worn by the victor, and a pendant gains meaning with each owner attaching another adornment. Amoda folk tales regularly speak of pendants stolen a hundred times being used in battle, or in clever trades with deadly fair folk hunters.

Aside from these pendants, the most commonly stolen thing among the clans are their nocturnal cave-yaks. Boasting smaller horns and lighter but longer fur than those found elsewhere in the world, they make up the primary form of wealth and food for the clans. The most precious of them are brought with the clans, their horns decorated with charms like those they wear, while thousands more roam atop the hilly region beneath which the Amoda make their homes. It is these most precious that are stolen by other clans, rustled by night when they are grazing upon the grasses of the hills. The yaks make up their primary source of food, clothing, and tools.

In the caves beneath the hills are dozens of semi-permanent camps, and hundreds of miles of tunnels, each with stars painted on the ceiling to navigate by. These are used as the clans' primary means of travel during twilight hours, and during the summer when night hours grow scarcer. Within these camps and tunnels, the clans are at peace. While jewelry and pendants are stolen during meetings, yak and trade goods are held sacred beneath the hills. Every clan wants the others to survive, and trades are often lopsided, a clan receiving more than they offer if the other knows they need the help, in exchange for a few extra stolen trinkets.

Aside from tricksters and herders, the Amoda are expert navigators, experienced beyond simply the hills they call home, and are often hired as guides by visiting lunars; they refuse any business with the dragonblooded, preferring to keep their distance from powerful groups and stealing from weaker ones. For the most part, the Amoda clans abhor violence, preferring to lose their enemies in woods and tunnels, or to demoralize them with trickery. There are two clans that boast great warriors, often found in the employ of lunars, and they stray the furthest from their hills the most often.

Their legends are kept by priests, who have cast off their clan and family name, visiting all clans, spreading news and legends with them. While their most sacred legends are recited word for word with allowance only for dramatic sounds or gestures, any younger ones are changed to focus on favorite characters or further dramatize actions. Most of the sacred legends center around Sword-Eater, the Lunar that blessed them with their moth form, and who fought duels against hundreds of dynasts, claiming their swords as prizes. The shattered remains of these jade swords mark each camp within their caves. From Sword-Eater, they inherited fighting techniques based around disarming and humiliating their foes, as well as a hatred of the usurpers. Many newer legends center around mortals besting dragonblooded, and young and foolhardy warriors often make this their goal. The priests are also primary in dealing with the fair folk and gods that are so abundant on the Caul, though the clans typically make no rules forbidding others from doing so. Indeed, tricking a god or fae is held in high regard by every one of them. Priests are the only Amoda that do not wear pendants or jewelry, eschewing wealth and marking themselves as somewhat apart from the rest of society.

Sorcery is practiced by the sages of the clans, who practice ecstatic deprivation, gaining insight from dreams after sleepless days or feasts after a week without food. Their spells tend to resemble those cast by the dragonblooded, focussing on manipulation of elements and nature. They use these to shape the weather, ward off intruders, and in dire cases, fight those who would prey upon them. Each clan has one sage, and when they die, they select a youth to train under another clan's sage. A new sage's training complete, they return to their home clan, joining the two clans in a great feast.

Physically, the Amoda are tall, thin, and, unsurprisingly, mothlike. Their heights typically surpass those of the tallest humans they meet, thanks in part to the extra set of shoulders (and arms) they possess. They sport fluffy fur, with a soft peach fuzz over their whole body, with tufts around their wrists, legs, and neck, giving them almost a mane. The color of this fur, as well as their hair, are widely varied, seemingly not carried over from parents to children. In the rare circumstance that their hair is exposed to sunlight, it changes color, reflecting a much brighter version of their "true" colors. Their eyes are large, and they have antennae that are essential for speaking their language, which is made up not only of phonemes, but of twitches of their antennae and subvocal trills that are practically impossible to notice or hear by outsiders. Their names are made up of a personal, family, and clan name, and pronouncing them in languages aside the native tongue of the Amoda takes quite a long time. Because of this, they almost always go by nicknames to non-Amoda, who cannot hope to pronounce their names, though they appreciate lunars and gods who can speak their names.

The majority of Amoda do not have wings. They are born without them, and the process to obtain them is both exceptionally difficult and unspeakably painful. This is done via a month-long ritual of self-deprivation, drinking only water dripped from within their caves and eating nothing. As Calibration begins, the hopeful wraps themself in a handmade chrysalis, which is coated internally with a concoction that dissolves their skin and much of their muscle, reforming themselves thinner, taller, and with newfound wings. At the end of Calibration they emerge to a grand feast, where they, starved and scarred, eat their fill a dozen times over for several days. This ritual is mostly undergone by priests, all of whom must undertake the process as symbolic of Sword-Eater's ancient blessing rite that first created them, but a select few others, particularly noted duelists and sages, undergo the same process. The wings gained are not fit for flight without an enormous amount of effort and training, which many who attain them never undergo.

The Amoda have tense relationships with neighboring groups. While they are good-natured and friendly, anyone who visits them comes away with lighter pockets. When approached for trade, they are genuine and fair, but this is rare. They tend to have better trade relationships with Lunars, who either don't bring much but their necessities, or don't mind a few trinkets going missing, understanding it as the cost of doing business. While they rarely make craft with them, each clan maintain enormous underground stashes of jade and precious gems, squireling them away in hidden passageways, magically concealed from other clans. For those willing to do business with them, they offer shocking riches.

(If you've read this far, you should read my other stuff about exalted (click the tag!) and check out my patreon, https://www.patreon.com/c/NotSoLuckyLydia

It helps out a ton, and there's a bunch of free stuff on there, both about exalted and about other games!)

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

one of the delights of writing your characters into a large family is that you can't simply say, "What's her relationship with this daughter, and what's his relationship with that son?" and be done with it, because even though we use that shorthand in our own lives, none of those relationships exist in a vacuum. the dynamic between the second son and the youngest daughter affects the dynamic between the mother and the firstborn. the way the two parents interact informs the interactions of the siblings who witness it versus the siblings who don't, and so forth. every member of the family is always creating one another.

[shibaincubus]

How to use time efficiently with many interests and work commitments.

⋅•⋅⊰⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⋅•⋅⋅⊰⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∘☽༓☾∘∙•⋅⋅⊰⋅•

Being productive, making the most of the 24 hours of our day and getting a high ROI back is your goal, but your daily schedule and the endless appointments that you have make you too tired to get work done, let you feel like you have no free time, no time to even study, and you have to spend countless all nighters to get your work done questioning yourself why you chose so many activities/ extracurricular's etc. in the first place and all the free time you have your essentially doomscrolying it away making you more unmotivated.

This is a guide on how you can use your time efficiently and get a huge ROI back without feeling exhausted/tired and finding enough time to study thoroughly, getting your work done without loosing your passion for other things and doing your hobbies.

So the first thing you have to do is to go to a regular week and observe when you have free time, when you are binge-watching shows, doomscroll or when you are so unmotivated that you don't want to do your work, study, do your homework etc. and also what tasks do you have when you go to work/school when you come back, clubs meetings etc. So everything you do regularly in the week

Lastly in this week you have to identify a Prime time where you are the most productive so you can plan your tasks around it.

A list can look like this:

Observation

Monday: Going home from work/school at 16:30 - one hour free time - until I have to go to extracurriculars/ course etc.

Tuesday

Wednesday

….

Prime time: Weekdays 10-12pm Weekend 9-12am

₊˚ ‿︵‿︵‿︵୨୧ · · ♡ · · ୨୧‿︵‿︵‿︵ ˚₊˚ ‿︵‿︵‿︵୨୧ · · ♡ · · ୨୧ ₊˚

So, after you got the times where you are doing nothing/ wasting your time you have to start listing all the tasks and events you have, then categorize them based on importance and urgency.

For this you can use the Eisenhower-matrix

where you organize your work and projects into four categories: Important and Urgent, Important but Not Urgent, Urgent but Not Important, Not Urgent and Not Important.

The Eisenhower matrix, also known as the Urgent-Important matrix, is a time management strategy that helps you prioritize tasks based on urgency and importance.

The matrix has 4 quadrants or sections:

Important and Urgent: These tasks need immediate attention.

Important but not urgent: These are high priority items.

Urgent but not important: These are things that are time-sensitive but can often be delegated.

Not urgent and not important: These are activities that can either be delayed or removed from the list entirely.

example:

Planning your week in a strategic way

First you should Collect your observations in a 24 hours weekly planner like this and highlight the free time zones you have and also plan your regular sleeping time mine is from 10 to 5:30 am

How to fill the free-spots:

Start by allocating time for high-priority tasks, then move on to lower priority ones, and finally use remaining time for recreation.

Place the high priority task in the (near the) prime time

If there are regular recurring tasks like homework hobbies etc. you should put it in a designated time slot

Try to avoid overworking yourself and prioritize your mental health.

Remember to take breaks in between tasks and give yourself a reward after completing something difficult or time consuming.

It's basically time blocking which is a method where you divide and schedule your day into focused intervals with no distractions

How to do the most in the weekend

After such a full week doing all your tasks you're obviously going to be tired and unmotivated to do anything. But the workload isn't going to get smaller but bigger in the next week, so you have to at least get something done. But do not force yourself to be 100% productive in the weekend because we all need some rest and constantly overworking yourself is unhealthy and also doesn't give you a good ROI in the long run.

Here are some methods that I've tried categorized in three levels: high; medium and low level depending on the mood you're in.

High level methods

The first method I suggest you to do is a method that is called Batch Tasking by Grouping

With this technique, you group similar tasks together and complete them in batches.

For example, you can have a morning batch of 'work-related tasks', an afternoon batch of 'personal tasks', and an evening batch of 'leisure tasks'.

This method can be useful for individuals who are motivated by completing multiple similar tasks at the same time, and it helps to avoid task switching and maintain a clear sense of purpose in your workflow.

The second method is the the "Marathon Mindset" technique

It's a method where you set a specific amount of time, say 3-4 hours, to focus intensely on completing your tasks. During this time, you can take short breaks (around 10 minutes) to prevent burnout, but the focus is on maintaining a steady work rate for the entire duration.

This technique can help you complete difficult tasks, and it's excellent for individuals who get into a 'flow' state when working on a project.

Medium level methods:

time boxing

This involves setting a timer for a specific amount of work, and once the timer goes off, you move onto the next task, no matter how much work was done. This helps create a sense of urgency and focus.

Time Boxing and Activity Swapping technique

Here, you set a short amount of time, say 15 minutes, for each task you want to complete. Once the timer goes off, you take a 5 minute break before moving onto the next activity.

But here's where it gets different: Each time you finish a task, you swap to a completely different activity than the last one. For example, after writing an email, you could do some calisthenics, then after that some cleaning, and so on.

This technique is great for individuals who struggle with task boredom

Low level methods

Focus on your "1 Thing"

it means working on the most important task each day, the "one thing" that'll move you closer to your goals. Once you've completed that 'One Thing' you can move onto the next.

This technique will help you to avoid multitasking and stay motivated, focusing your energies on completing the most crucial tasks first

Focus Sprint and Rest

Here, you work in intense 15-minute sprints, followed by a short 5 minute break. You repeat the routine 2-4 times before taking a longer break of around 15-30 minutes.

You can alternate between tasks or stay focused on one, depending on your preferences. This method is great for individuals who prefer shorter bursts of intense work, with short but regular breaks for a quick boost in energy.

Priority Power Hour

Using this technique, you dedicate a specific time of day, say 1 hour, to working on your most important and difficult tasks. Optimally this should be your power hour During this power hour, you commit to nothing else except completing these high-priority tasks.

The rest of your day can be spent doing less important tasks or working on other passions. The key benefit of this technique is that it allows you to stay focused and productive during your most efficient times of the day, while avoiding burnout.

Some last general tips

First, you should set achievable goals. This means breaking big tasks into small ones. This is very helpful if you have a big project that you have to do because the task load doesn't overwhelm you as much when you break aspects e.g. research as doing the whole project in a couple days and being very stressed.

Then you should limit distractions like your mobile etc. I would pack those things to another room so that they are not in front of your eye which makes you less likely to use them and get distracted. Also you should try to minimize multitasking because it diverts your attention on too many tasks and topics which makes your work imprecise and actually costs more time because you have to get into the thought process of topic 1 again.

Start with the end in mind. Define what you want to achieve during your sessions. Having clear goals helps you stay focused.

It's also important to schedule short breaks in the work session especially if you have many things to do to prevent burnout.

You should also have a monthly overview of important tasks separatly in a calendar

Regularly review your time management strategies and adjust them as needed. What's working? What needs improvement?

Lastly you should give yourself some rewards if you completed a difficult and important task to make you more motivate for more tasks

[peachie5000]

request for @qutiepai 's lovely OC Deltie <3 More passes under the cut

[baekhyundaily]

250531 - Elevate What You Do!! with UMI on Youtube Shorts

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Truly reading fundamental academic literature is a humbling experience of intellectually mining for gold. Yes, past a certain point in academic life you'll feel like a whole lot of it is just dust, and then suddenly the author will hit you with a very enlightening passage that leaves you reeling a bit.

[crypticbeliever123]

Decided to draw Allura on a whim. Don't think I did her hair justice tho.

[nogenderonlychair]

Contrary to popular belief, my gender was not stolen. It ran away in fear.

[sheepaleepz-but-art]

did the evil art style challenge cuz i thought it'd be funny. this is so fuckin cursed get me outta here HEKRHWKHWKG

i figured emory would be a fun guinea pig for this because he's kind of the epitome of my art style. and boy did he not disappoint. the other candidate was winter but alas

[trans-mouse]

Food Charms!!!

I lied. I said I was going to write fiction for this week's art prompt… But then I got upset when I realized how little love there is for food in every charm set that isn't Janest's 3e charmset! I just had to do some work to undo this terrible injustice, and make myself hungry in the process. These charms are for essence, because that's what I've been designing for lately, since it's… What I'm playing.

I didn't include conversions of any of Janest's charms, because... I kinda don't think they need it? If you're playing Janest, you've probably already read the 3e Exigent book cover to cover, and have converted the charms you want from her set. If you haven't... Send me a message and I'll help you convert all her food charms. :)

A new mode for Manifold Hunter's Tactic: Taste of the Pomegranate: Copy the shape of someone with whom you have formed a positive intimacy forged through the sharing of food.

Perfect Host Technique: (Prerequisite: Craft 3 or Presence 3) Spend 1 mote when undertaking a mundane venture to create food or host an event. In addition to functioning as equipment as usual for social actions, all attendees of the function are subject to the social influences the exalt makes, so long as she wishes it to extend to them. -Sharing the Hearth (Dragonblooded): Rather than influencing her companions, once per story the Dragonblooded may count any allies that share major positive ties with her as though they were Hearthmates for a single session. -Staple Crop Glorification (Alchemical): By celebrating a culture's food or art, an Alchemical may degrade negative ties towards a culture to which she has a positive tie at a cost of only 1 excess success. This influence must be one-on-one, rather than enacted against a group. -Matchmaker's Meal (Sidereal): Without effort, the Sidereal pairs two or more at the table, entwining their fate. By spending 1 additional mote when using this charm, the Sidereal can create an automatic minor tie of romantic fascination between two or more compatible characters. This does not guarantee a match, nor does it compel them to act on it.

Celebrant's Insight: (Prerequisite: Craft 2 or Embassy 2) Invoke this charm when you spend a scene immersing yourself in the culture of a region, via art, food, or festival. During this scene, you may spend 1 mote to ask one of the following questions. The Storyteller will answer truthfully. Additional questions cost 1 mote each.

What is the dominant faith in the region, and how closely is it followed?

What could I change about myself to better fit in here?

How well off are the locals?

Am I going to alienate people if I take a particular described course of action?

Is it safe for me to be open about my exaltation, heritage, and station? -Forsake Tradition (Lunar) Ignoring all information gained by this charm, the Lunar can instead choose to ignore any penalties caused by breaking with traditions of any kind by spending 1 mote.

Impeccable Taste: (Prerequisite: Awareness 2 or Craft 2) Upon tasting a food or drink, the exalt immediately knows all of the ingredients in it, as well as where they originated. -Genius Palate Summation (Solar): Upon tasting a prepared dish, the Solar understands the mental state of whoever created it, such as whether they are troubled, if the dish was made with love, or if their heart is filled with malice. If this state is tied to an intimacy, the Solar learns of that as well. -Heritage-eater (Lunar): This charm can be used when drinking someone's heart's blood at the culmination of the Sacred Hunt, and in addition to learning the person's origin, the Lunar learns all of their intimacies, and can adopt one, qualifying as the intimacy that must be gained to obtain a human form.