#also irl learning how to manage time and motivation which is really important for me

[mysallyfaceblog-blog]

I’ve been a lot more busy with school and life than I ever anticipated

Good news is, once I hand in this assignment I will have some stuff I can break up and post here, because my project is something I could geek out with and went ham making a sally-face theme.

Obv I can’t post anything until it gets submitted and graded, because even if it is my own blog, if its found elsewhere online before its graded I could get dinged for it.

I am also hoping that my Sal n I can get some good photos done (maybe with our Ash and some other people, just no leads on that yet) while I still have access to all the cameras and lighting equipment through my program.

[constantlyunlightening]

Work, work, work

Day 15: Cockwarming

Warnings/Other Kinks: Anxiety/Depression implications and mentions (Doppo is just like thattt), Doppo kinda snaps at the end, office sex/sex at work, dubcon (there's not explicit consent in this so I'm going to put it just in case but the reader and doppo are in a relationship and I meant for this situation to be consensual, but Doppo's anxiety in this situation made it seem kind of sus)

I have nothing but Hypmic on the brain. I love feral screaming Doppo. Would highly recommend listening to him belly scream here. :D I really do want the best for this boy tho. I love him so muchhhh.

Disclaimer: 18+ years and older to read. All characters in this work are 20 years or older. This is a fictional depiction of a relationship and is not meant to be mimicked in real life. I do not condone cockwaming your partner in their place of work irl.

It was always work, work, work with him. Well, work and rapping but Doppo hardly ever talked about his Matenro. It was always about his balding asshole of a boss, his terrible coworkers and work, work, work.

You knew he was a workaholic. You knew that when you fell in love with the guy. But geez. Time for him to learn that self care was a priority.

You had stormed to his office after having spent two hours - past the time he was supposed to get off - waiting for him at home. This overtime was bullshit. The man worked himself to the bone. And he didn't know how to say no. You worried about him! It was the reason why you marched right over to the cubicle. The place was deserted, all except for poor Doppo, sitting at his desk pinching the bridge of his nose and surrounded by paperwork.

"What the hell is all this?" You asked as you came up behind him and you almost felt bad watching as the man let out a shout, jumping out of his seat and scrambling like a frightened rabbit. A few of the papers he had on his desk got caught up in his whirlwind and dusted around the room - a fact you assumed Doppo would be disgruntled about later, but he looked far too nervous right now as he took labored breaths and let wide eyes take in your form.

"Wh-what are you doing here?"

".... You're being worked too hard if the sound of your girlfriend's voice is enough to panic you," you quipped back, ignoring his question for now as you bent over to try to help organize some of the scattered documents that had fallen to the floor. Let him have the time to bring his breathing back to normal. You were mainly pissed at his job for overworking him - not so much him. Didn't need to go give him a heart attack. "You're here late again. I was checking in on you." A pile of paperwork stacked against your chest, you moved over closer to him to set it down on the desk and took your time eyeing the assortment of work he had lying around. This couldn't all be his. Some of them must be pawning off their work, and Doppo just so happened to be the biggest doormat around. A sigh heaved from your lips, and you didn't miss the way Doppo shuddered. How could you? The man tensed up like he was being shot by lightening. "Looks like it was a good thing I did too. This work would have kept you here all night if someone didn't come to stop you."

"I'm sorry!" You weren't surprised but the volume of his apology made you jump and as he started to spew off more and more apologies, you quickly grabbed him by the tie and yanked him in, pressing a quick kiss to his lips. You weren't trying to invalidate his feelings by cutting him off, but there was no reason for him to be panicking like he was. And luckily, kisses from you always seemed to soothe him - at least as soothed as someone like Doppo could be.

"Baby," you purred gently, pulling your lips from his and watching the way his cheeks lit up with a dusting of pink. Always so stressed, this one. But the face he made after you kissed him made your heart flutter. Dumbfounded but he still managed to swoon in subtle ways - those aquamarine eyes zoomed in on you like you were treasure. The simple strokes you gave to his hair made him melt - the tension zapped out of his shoulders and he almost started to slump into you. "You don't have to say sorry. But it's time to go home now. No more work."

That cute daze in his expression only lasted a moment more before it was like all that anxious energy plowed right back into him. The word 'work' was enough to flip a switch with him. "That's not right! I have a whole ton of it!" His arm extended outward, waving at the stacks piled high. "I'm sorry but I have more work to do. I'll finish as soon as I can but - I gotta do this or my crazy boss will pile even more work on me! Or I'll lose my job or worse I-ll-"

"Doppo!" You cut him off and tried to calm him down. It worked to some extent but only enough to keep him from screaming or spiraling into one of his crazes. You didn't convince him to stop working though and eventually you had to settle for watching him drown himself in the work in front of him, trying to suppress your groans.

You loved the man. But really?

Playing the waiting game wasn't something you were interested in though. Which is why, after a bit of working, you somehow managed to not only weasel your way into his lap but you also got his cock out of his pants, stroking it just enough to get him riled up as you watched him try not to panic.

"You can't just do that-"

"I just did. Don't worry. The cameras can't see in here. It's fine," you coaxed, letting him stay nervous anyway as you pushed your panties to the side from underneath your skirt causing him to visibly gulp. But he wasn't pushing you off.

"I have to work," he declared, whispers on the verge of being shouts fell from his lips but cut off into a whimper as the head of his dick was suddenly being warmed up by the heat of your body as you slowly sank down onto him - taking him in inch by inch. 

It wasn't until you were fully seated to the hilt, listening to his breath hitch that you gave a tiny huff. "Then work." And your body stilled. No movement other than the flutter and clench of your walls against your hung lover, letting your eyes watch his flustered face. He clearly didn't know what to say and you watched as his gaze flickered around like a chicken with its head cut off - to your face, to his paperwork, to where your bodies were joined and then anywhere but you. Good. Get him riled up. He was panicking but you could feel him twitch inside of you, like he was anticipating for you to move - waiting for it. But you kept your hips locked in place as you leaned in and rested your head on his shoulder. "Work, Doppo. Just giving you some motivation for when you finally get done." Your voice was much to kindly for someone who just pulled somebody's dick out in the middle of a public office. But it managed to keep him from tipping over his brink just yet. Poor thing always got so worked up. Your physical actions may not be helping that necessarily, but your voice always seemed to soothe him over, even if it was only a little at a time. 

"H-how?" You listened to him practically squeak, shifting under you and instantly giving a whine at the slight push against your walls. How was he supposed to work when you were on him like this? How was he supposed to concentrate when you were constricting around him? When you were filling him with molten lava from the bottom up?

With feather light kisses, you trailed a line across his neck, trying to remain still on the cock that was stretching out your insides - forcing the urge to bounce on him like a pogo stick until you both lost even the capability to think of work. You would behave somewhat for now though. Doppo could get his work done. You could get some form of closeness in the meantime. Besides, maybe a good vise grip on him could speed up the process? Or make him say 'fuck it' altogether - hopefully, literally fuck it. "Just work, Doppo. Since it's so important. Ill wait," you cooed, almost as if you were being thoughtful. Too sweet for him to argue and you listened to him give a defeated groan of a sound before he tried to level out his breath and refocus. 

Oh, but that was easier said than done. Doppo had restarted on the paperwork, working around you as your warm body nuzzled into his chest. He usually felt like he was suffocating at work but right now, it felt like your body was trying to strangle the life out of him from somewhere other than the neck. How were you so tight? How come velvety walls were squeezing down on him over and over again without either of you even moving? You were starting to leak out around him, a sticky mess starting to spill out onto his lap slowly - torturous. Maybe you were actually trying to be sweet. Maybe you were actively trying to mess with him. But either way, it was kicking up a bad habit within him. He would reach for another stack, shifting in the chair and causing the tiniest of mewling to escape from your lips. It was a blissful sigh here, a hitched breath there, a tiny hum into his chest and it was going to break him. He was supposed to be focusing but at this rate, he was going to start making mistakes on his work.

You were causing him to silently work himself up. Each climb of his emotions resulted in a string of jitters, and in return had your body clenching even tighter on him. How could you even feel like that? He choked, tugging at his tie to try and gasp for air. You were messing with him. You had to be. You must be mad he wouldn't leave. This was his retribution. To be strangled by your wet cunt over and over without reprieve- without any motion for relief. Well, fuck that. He may love you. But he worked far to hard day in and day out. Pent up didn't even begin to describe it. If you were going to try to rile him up like that, then he would give you riled up because he couldn't take it. Not a second longer. Not with that familiar primal darkness beginning to flare inside him.

His body rocked and you instinctively lifted your head from his chest to peer up at him, the first actual movement he had made since you had sat on him. "Are you okay?"

"O-okay?" He was stuttering his words but unlike his panic from before, this time he sounded angry. It wasn't a tone he took entirely too often. But you knew Doppo. You knew if his buttons were pressed enough, he would snap. He was tea kettle, getting hotter- "how do you except me to be okay-" and hotter "- when your purposely trying to make me-" until he screamed "-loose my fucking mind!?"

You only had enough time to widen your eyes before he flew out of his chair, taking you with him and slamming you onto his desk. The noise he made was positively feral - teetering between a growl and a scream - and without a warning, he was wrecking you, bludgeoning into you with a speed you hadn't even been aware he was capable of. 

"D-D-Doppo!" You were trying to talk but the sudden thrusting was knocking out your capabilities to think. You had been stretched out and horny for a while now but at this pace you couldn't keep up. You were trying to grip at his shoulders for some type of stability. "H-hang on a sec-"

"Hang on?!" He sounded unhinged - a growl ringing in the back of his throat so different from his usual meek - if not panicked - composure. "I've been hanging on! I've been hanging on this whole time! You just had to be on me huh? When I'm at work!" Papers were tossing up into the air around you and you could hear the clatter of the cubicle as he knocked you into the desk over and over. Oh, you couldn't even keep your eyes opening with the way your senses seemed to overload. "All this work - all these damn excuses to pile it onto me - and then you still come in here and give me more work. Too needy? Need my to pound you senseless before I can finish my work? Then that's what I'll do. I'll take you over and over and over again until you're out for days!" He declared, his hands clamping down on your hips and you could already feel the bruises even as the head of his cock shifted up enough to find your sweet spot, leaving you wailing out. "Again and again and again!" He got louder and louder with his sounds, growls and grunts turning into wanton groans and gasps as he split you in two. 

This would teach you not to mess with him at work. Or maybe it would teach you to mess with him more.

[nefoe-dd]

SO SMT AU AM I RIGHT GAMERS

I mentioned this in the tags of another post and joked about it in Discord but my brain went brrrr during my last class of the day and now I lowkey have a full plot starting to form lol.

Keep in mind the only Shin Megami Tensei game I’ve played myself is the Nocturne remake, plus I only really remember bits of the plot of 4 and whatever we’ve been given so far of 5 so I’m not super well versed in the series.

Also I’ll add this to the tags too but DSMP Spoilers specifically for the contents of Techno’s Will exist in this post, because that is where the idea for this came from. A lot of other JRPGs have similar plotlines but I specifically thought of SMT because its kind of a meme specifically for that at this point how the plot always seems to have the same type ending bosses. 

Also some spoilers for Shin Megami Tensei IV

ANYWAYS

Now Presenting: An AU where Techno’s Limbo is an SMT Game lol

(Under a ‘Read More’ because it got way ahead of me)

An Introduction to Relevant SMT terminology:

Demons: Makes up a large majority of the characters in the game. They are the enemies that you face in combat, and its possible to recruit them to your team through various means. Some demons exist in the overworld though, and can be talked to normally, they’re chill most of the time, unless you do something to tick them off. ‘Demon’ is not taken literally by the Christian definition, they are based off of various figures in folklore and religion around the world, some are even based on Gods and Angels.

Law vs Chaos: Many SMT games have multiple endings based on these two alignments, along with the neutral alignment. It is usually decided by some important decisions the player makes throughout the game. I’m most aware of the SMT 4 ending, in which the route you are on decides the final dungeon, the character you team with for the ending, and the final boss (its either Satan or the in-game version of God). It’s based off of the traditional interpretation of these two, where Law represents the importance of authority, and Chaos represents the importance of freedom. 

Another note is that a lot of SMT games take place in a post-apocalyptic world of some kind, which, spoiler, is the case here.

General Plot Details and Worldbuilding:

- Techno dies in the prison. The stasis chamber fails and Quackity succeeds in killing him. Permanently. 

- Despite dying, he wakes up again in the main prison cell, but things are different. The lava isn’t blocking the entrance anymore, (in fact there isn’t any lava at all), and he’s alone. Upon peering outside the main cell, he notices a bit of sky peeking through the prison ceiling, like it had been broken into. 

- The drop down to the bottom floor is long, but he’s dead, so he just shrugs and jumps down so he can see what’s going on. Turns out there are several holes in this part of the prison, in fact there are multiple on the ground, likely where the lava had escaped from. (Obviously Minecraft lava specifically doesn’t work like that, I’m pretty sure in the DreamSMP the bottom is all source blocks, but just ignore that bit). 

- He exits from the back wall of the prison, and everything there so far looks normal, except for the fact that there appears to be less trees than normal. Of the trees that are still there, many of them were cut down and never collected, and some appear to have fallen over due to some damage.

- Techno goes around the prison to the front, and that’s when he notices some things that are very wrong. Various parts of the prison, not just the main cell, are also sitting destroyed. Many cracks, scuff marks and full-on chunks are missing on the walls. The usual entrance which houses the nether portal is hardly still standing, and he can see straight into the main lobby where the portal would lead into once you were let through. 

- The surrounding areas are not much better. Tommy’s outpost is toppled over in the distance, only the base and bottom floor are left standing. The tents near the beach are collapsed and destroyed, the only remnants of one of them is a small piece of fabric ripped from the main bit and laying on the ground. Skeppy and Badboyhalo’s mansion is crumbling where it stands, half of the back wall and ceiling are gone. And that’s only what’s visible from here. 

- The rest of the server is also in various states of destruction, the spawn walls are hardly left standing, the main nether portal area is covered in potholes, none of the portals are active. The prime path is rotted and broken in most areas, the buildings along it are not faring much better than the ones he’d seen before. And the further he gets away from the prison, the more the plants themselves appear to be dead or dying. 

- L’manburg’s crater looks much the same as it once did right after its destruction, albeit with more debris at the bottom which had fallen from the sides as they slowly eroded. The flag at the bottom is torn up and discoloured, honestly its hardly recognizable. The nature that had finally begun to reclaim the land has slowly been dying instead over time, and the bridge overtop has completely collapsed. The only thing still standing, is the ever present obsidian grid that looms over it in the sky. He supposes that whatever disaster had caused this wasn’t able to reach that high up, or that it was at least in part done by someone that liked the way it looked. Not that there seems to be a need for the reminder anymore. 

- Something something, he finds out DreamXD is here, and that he might have had something to do with how this world looks. And as much as it shouldn’t matter in the afterlife, he did promise Phil he would be killing God sooooo he goes on a mission to do just that. He can do pretty much anything now that he really doesn’t have to worry about dying, so why not. He has no reason to care about some God, especially when they’re the only ones left.

- Some DSMP people hang around the world and are represented by certain demons, the mostly chill ones that kinda just hang around in the apocalyptic scenery. They don’t recognize him, it isn’t really the people he knows after all, but they are willing to talk to him since they can tell he isn’t human either. He learns little bits of what happened through them, and learns where DreamXD resides, that being one of the strongholds that’s a bit further out. 

- Unfortunately, due to the portals being inactive, and his inability to break anything efficiently, or even at all, he has to travel using the overworld. Along the way he manages to speak to some others, this allows him to better locate where the God is, although it doesn’t seem to be hiding out. He even sees it sometimes flying around, which he uses to follow where its hiding. 

- Some of the random demons he runs into recognize that he’s not supposed to be here (according to them at least), so he has to fight his way through them. Luckily, many of the friendly demons that he talks to end up tagging along in order to help, thus making up a team he can use to get through them instead.

 - There’s probably a demon that seems to resemble Phil somewhere, living alone (alone for so so long) away from everyone in an arctic house perhaps. If I wanted to really up the angst, the demon takes a liking to Techno right away, which is partly how Techno is able to tell its him so quickly. The more they talk, the more Techno realizes how lonely the Phil he knows must be without him there, how upset he’d be once he reads the will and finds out what happened to him. Thus he’s more motivated to, you know, fight God, in an attempt to figure out what the hell happened. (DXD is the only entity existing here that also exists where he’s from, he can guess pretty easily that maybe, just maybe, they are one and the same). Thus, he is given a choice that he knows he will have to make in the future. 

- Eventually he manages to find the stronghold and comes face to face with DreamXD himself. DreamXD is just kinda chillin there, they fight, through DreamXD doesn’t seem to be putting in too much effort, almost like it does not want to win. 

- Techno wins (duh), and he is left with a choice, a choice to finish the job, or spare the god and allow it to go free. And, well, he feels that he doesn’t really have the right to decide whether it lives or dies, and while its possible that DreamXD caused whatever disaster created the current state of the world, but he doesn’t know that for sure. DreamXD has done nothing this whole time he’s been here, and its done nothing to him or his companions.

- He chooses to leave it alone, and DreamXD seems to know that it was always going to end that way. 

- DreamXD disappears, and Techno wakes up in the cell again post-revival, the prison and the world around it is the same as he remembers

(I don’t remember the exact real-world to limbo time difference but I imagine that it felt like, a day, maybe half that, while irl it was only a few minutes to an hour.)

Some other notes/details:

- The other possible ending would have resulted in Techno killing DreamXD and being given ANOTHER choice to take its power over the world, or just leave and stay there forever. Basically DreamXD’s existence is vital to the power of the revival book, and it’s death would have resulted in Dream not being successful in his revival attempts. Obviously we have no idea how the powers actually work yet, but I just came up with an explanation because I thought it would be interesting. You can decide on your own which of these endings fall into Law, Chaos or Neutral because uh, its complicated given the scenario. You can also decide if letting DreamXD live even fits into his character! Idk! But its not like DreamXD’s being oppressive by any means, not that there’s anyone to oppress here anyways. That’s my logic anyways.

- I don’t know what demons would represent specific people, I’d like to use one of the Angels for Phil but the Demons based on Angels usually have an important role in the plot that is in line with the Law alignment and like, protecting god or whatever, so no. There are a couple bird ones but idk if they fit the vibe, idk it could work, I’d have to look at a list if I want to go into this further.

- I kinda want Eret to be an Inugami because it’s body does that thing that ferret’s do when they’re all stretched out :) The only reason I’m hesitant is because Inugami is a dog, and Goose deserves representation.

- The reason I imagined for why Techno can’t break anything is because the mining fatigue lasted throughout this because he died with it, it’d get in the way of fighting too but at least it isn’t weakness, and he’s not alone either.

Uhhhhh that’s it for now I think!

(will potentially add to this if I figure something else out in the future)

[ephemeral-afterlight]

Mourning at Midnight

(UwU so Hey. i’m back with some more trash)

Word Count: 7480

Summary: It’s scary, in a way, how in moments like this one, Logan feels as if his consciousness floats away from him, leaving behind only a wave of white-hot, searing anger that drains out of him just as quickly as it comes. There’s sleet running through his veins, and his brain has frostbite, and his fingertips are numb in the face of the ringing resonance after his outburst. The pain comes next, a simmering heat blistering below his fist until it’s coated and red and the beginnings of a bruise are starting to form. He can’t help but stare helplessly in front of himself, eyes burning and filling and blazing with how much they beg to close.

He doesn’t want to look up, to face the suffocating silence that’s fallen over the room. He doesn’t want to see their faces, their disappointment, their anger, their contempt. He wants to yell. He wants to sleep.

Logan sinks out.

Warnings (could potentially be small spoilers, nothing too big, but if you don’t have any triggers I’d suggest you skip reading this!):

There are no u!sides in this, nor does anyone have malicious intent, but the other main three (Virgil, Patton, Roman) and Thomas, to a lesser extent, treat Logan unkindly (not on purpose) and don’t realize their errors. This will be resolved! Just… not yet OwO

Being ignored/talked over

Mental/emotional breakdown

An unidentified illness with symptoms including: [extreme persistent nausea (lots of mentions), vomiting (once), bile, weakness/weariness, shaking, lightheadedness, double vision (once), headache, body aches/pains, breathing difficulties]

General negativity including: [self-doubt, self-deprecation/depreciation, feeling worthless or unloveable, self-hatred]

Anger management/temperament issues

Unintentional self-harm (not anything like c-tting, Logan gets a bruise as a result of an angry outburst)

Separate small, vague allusion to self-harm, but it’s not outright and not detailed in the slightest. Could be read as not even talking about self-harm

Potentially triggering descriptive imagery (metaphors and similes to describe how a character feels or percieves a situation, not anything that actually happens) including but not limited to: [glass, sharp things, blood, injection, live wires, loud noises, screaming, general mentions of pain, masochism, sound torture, knives/blades, wounds, drowning/suffocating, pressure]

Temporarily unresolved tension between Logan/Deceit/Remus and the other sides/Thomas (there will be a happy ending in the next fic, though, don’t worry!)

A few vulgar threats of violence (somewhat explicit, be careful) to the other sides from Remus (out of protectiveness; Remus means well but he does Not express it in a healthy way) that is not carried out or even humoured

Remus’ morning star and descriptions of its destructive capabilites

Loceit as a romantic pairing (for now…. UwU)

Sympathetic “dark” sides

That should be it for warnings! Let me know if I need to add anything!

A/N: So! This is finally done :D !! I’ve been working on it on and off for the past week or so, and although I know it could be way better, I think this is where I’ll keep it! This is technically a sequel to my other fic Tea at Twilight and it takes place in the same universe, and although you don’t need to read that before this to understand the story, I strongly suggest reading that first to get more of a feel for the dynamic! 

This is inspired by @illogicallyinclined and her absolutely amazing Disaster Trio™ headcanons/au, and was prompted by this post so I just started writing! I meant for it to be a bit shorter, but of course my brain would Not let it go, even despite my ADHD, executive dysfunction, and massive amounts of writer’s block. 

This is also unfinished! It is the second of three main works, all happening chronologically in the same universe. The first one is Tea at Twilight as stated previously, then this one, and there will be a third and final installment added to finish off this short little trilogy! I’ll be adding this to the series on AO3, so when the final fic is up, it’ll all be together for an easy reading experience. It is also possible that there will be other small fics in this universe (UA, as has been recently coined) that operate outside of the timeline of the main story, so be sure to watch out for that! 

Thanks to Jay once again for creating these lovely headcanons that haunt my dreams every night, and for inspiring me to get back into my writing groove despite a writer’s block that’s lasted for over three years! Hope this isn’t too terrible, Jay! ilyy <333</p>

Also, a huge thank you to @illogical-anxieties for being such a good cheerleader/enabler! You really do help to keep me motivated and on track (and keep my ADHD in check), which is probably why this was even able to become a full-fledged story rather than a WIP to be buried where unfinished fics go to die T~T Love you tons <3</p>

(If I’m being honest with myself, this is just an excuse for me to live up to my IRL title of “Living Thesaurus”, coined by a friend many years ago and has since spread around to other friends and family. My title is thriving, and I suppose that means I should actually have proof of it, so there’s that.)

(Cross-posted to AO3)

(Read Part 1 here)

He can feel it building.

There’s far too much left to be desired when it comes to frustration. The natural helplessness that makes way for anger when you try so hard to do something or be something for someone and you’re pushed down by anything and everything between ignorance and antipathy. The fear that nothing you can do or say will ever be good enough. The buzzing, ticking, pinpricks upon pinpricks of heat injected into you until your blood and heart have been replaced with glass, fragile as a crumbling stone wall. It’s not as if he hasn’t had his outbursts before, spurred on by the familiar sharp pulse of rage that courses through him in a split-second whirlwind. It builds inside him, and he can feel the pressure in his limbs expand until it feels like his muscles are being squeezed out of existence and then he snaps like a rubber band that’s been pulled too taut. He’s not in denial of the fact that his impulsive, blinding reaction when met with frustration is not okay, and only detrimental to the demeanour he’s trying to retain. He knows it’s childish. He knows it’s immature, and pathetic, and wholly invigorating, at least until the adrenaline has worn off and he’s in the aftermath of his knee-jerk reaction to the tension coiled in his arms and legs and head.

It doesn’t mean that Logan is particularly in control of it though, despite his self-awareness being far above the level that most people with anger management issues are at. Maybe there’s a certain quality to it that allows for growth; it’s not as if Logan stays angry, or that he wants to hurt people. He loves the others, painfully so (as much as he loathes to admit it), to the point where he’s so desperate for their approval that he tampers down his passion, that spark that used to drive him to learn and speak and be happy just to avoid being cast out and abandoned, alone in the way he never wants to be. He wants to find a way to temper the fall into those dark, consuming waters, a way to mute the buzzing and ticking. He wants to seal those exposed live wires and release the tension to the point where he never lashes out ever again. He wants to, and he doesn’t know how to, and that fact infuriates him in an ironic, endless cycle of self-imposed and self-directed enmity.

Logan still thinks on this often, even now, wracking his brain for solutions to problems that realistically won’t be solved as easily as he wishes they would. Excerpts and quotes and data and statistics from many different studies about anger and temper management and irritability and everything in between seem to figuratively run amok through his brain, a screaming crowd of witnesses to the chaos and failure found in his ability to filter through the nonsense and come to a satisfying conclusion, any conclusion at all. He notices how his fingers tremble as they slip into the handle of his coffee mug, endures the dull ache in his mid-to-lower back from falling asleep at his desk for the majority of the day under the guise of work so important he holed himself up in his room to complete it. He ignores the way his head pounds, how he feels so dizzy that he might fall over and pass out any second from lightheadedness. He suffers through the loud conversations between the other three that are typical to the dinner routine that Logan cannot deal with today, not with this headache poking at him like figurative needles in his head.

When he senses the summons from Thomas stirring up the familiar but nonetheless odd ticklish sensation on the back of his neck, Logan can feel the tension knot up his muscles, and the combination of the two just makes him want to growl in irritation. The others, having also felt the summoning, seem to get impossibly louder, ringing and stinging and singing in his head. He still persists, despite the fact that he knows he shouldn’t be out doing anything today that’s likely to exacerbate his sickness, because Thomas is important, more so than Logan himself. No matter how much he wants to hole himself up in his room and sleep the day away, his host needs him, so Logan simply forces his mask of indifference to melt into steel. He refuses to budge, not for the first or last time, and he rises up in the real world standing straight and rigid and as put together as he’s always expected to be.

When he’s finally settled into his usual spot, as still as he can possibly be to not exacerbate the roiling nausea disquieting his stomach, he’s able to take in the other four arranged in their usual positions in Thomas’ living room, already having begun a conversation that Logan has missed the premise of entirely through his all-eclipsing, obfuscating malady. His vision doubles, like broken fractals of glass reflecting onto themselves, and then it pulls back together, merging back into something visible, something manageable.

“Well, I’m sure Danny likes you, too! You just gotta ask him, kiddo!” Patton exclaims, high voice pushing through the heavy, suffocating cotton in Logan’s ears, and the words snap the bespectacled side to attention. He needs context, needs to know what they’re talking about, needs to be able to help for once. Maybe he has to endure the bad to be able to put out the good, and this is where the climax is, the top of the rollercoaster at such a high altitude that oxygen is thin and dispersed before he shoots down the tracks in a rush of fresh air, relieving and calm and sanguine as he’s finally able to ground himself. A shiver runs through Logan’s body, between his shoulder blades and down his hip and through his leg, and his eyes flutter under the weight of consciousness. It recedes, the flow is ebbed, and his head clears to a more sustainable level.

“Oh, that’s so boring, Padre! Thomas should hire a band to play! And we can rig up streamers and confetti and there can be a cake and dancing and a party to celebrate!” Roman crows, throwing his arms and hands up into his signature pose to match his full, booming tone. Patton squeals, clutching his cardigan in his hands to pull excitedly at the sleeves as he bounces giddily on his feet. At the suggestion, as the polar opposite to Patton’s reaction, Virgil grimaces, hunching over even further in his jacket as he protests with every way he can think of that the situation could go wrong. Unsurprisingly, Roman takes personal offense to it and refutes Virgil’s points with the same intensity and fervour that’s been present in himself and his interactions with the anxious side since day one. Logan sort of understands, can infer that they’re discussing how to ask out Danny, a new friend of Thomas’ who has very quickly turned into a crush. In that case…

“If I may interrupt? While I don’t share all of Virgil’s worries, I do agree with his position in regards to the fact that there isn’t a need for such extravagance. It might embarrass Danny, for one, and for two, there are many ways such an excessive venture could backfire, such as technical difficulties or general human error. The idea is, while exciting, frankly outrageous,” Logan says, his role as the voice of reason renewed once more. It’s his job to sift through the conversations they have and get to the important parts, and he likes his job. He’s good at micromanaging, mediating the chaos, good at storing information to sort and consider and veto and bolster. It’s how he operates, how he copes. “We can think of something else to–”

“Oh, shut it, Pocket Protector. We all know you don’t care about romance, but this is important! Thomas wishes to find love with the second most handsome prince in the world! After me, of course,” Roman exclaims, in that boisterous, self-aggrandizing way of his, the way that hides his real insecurities he buries so deeply in himself he doesn’t know how to find them again. Oddly enough, it’s not Roman’s defense mechanism that throws Logan off, it’s the way that Logan stopped talking almost reflexively to allow the other side to finish his statement, as if the prince’s words were more important than his own, and it speaks as testament to how much Logan’s been conditioned (or maybe he’s conditioned himself all on his own) into putting everyone else before himself, even when it hurts him or Thomas. Logan is ignored in the face of his implicit trust, and he hates that even as it pours salt in the open wound, he finds himself taking a depraved, spiteful comfort in the familiarity of it all.

“That’s not what I–”

“Awe, c'mon, Logan! Thomas deserves to have a happy relationship and someone he can live out the rest of his life with! Doesn’t that sound nice, to grow old together with someone you love? Isn’t that romantic? Oh, it just makes me so warm and fuzzy thinking about it!” Patton interrupts, hands clutching each other over his heart as he swoons. Logan knows Patton doesn’t mean to be rude, but he still can’t help but be a little hurt by it, especially since he’s now been ignored twice consecutively. He’s just trying to help, and if that means reigning in Roman’s exorbitant ideas that border on egregious at times, then Logan knows it must be done. Although he encourages Thomas to seek a relationship to improve his mental health and provide more financial stability, there is a limit to how much he can disregard himself and others in doing so, and that doesn’t mean that Logan is the bad guy for pointing that out. He knows that. He knows that, so why does the dismissal still feel so sharp in his chest?

“Yeah, romance is cool and all, but what if it doesn’t work? What if Danny actually hates us? What if we ask and he laughs at us or says no and then we’ll be standing there like an idiot and then he’ll never wanna talk to us again because he thinks we’re pathetic and stupid and–”

“Hey, now, don’t be such a Debby Downer, kiddo! I’m sure it’ll go just fine! We’ll just ask him. The worst thing that can happen is he’ll say no, right? Shouldn’t we give it a shot?” Patton consoles before Virgil can go into a spiral. Although his well-meaning reassurances are meant to be comforting, his voice just grates on Logan’s ears, tinny and hollow and misdirected.

“That’s what I’m afraid of!”

Logan wants to keep listening, he really does, but the noise is rising to levels where it’s too much to handle. He’s already sensitive from his illness, but the discussion that is very quickly turning into an argument falls in pulses through his head, sound torture to the broken, hopeless masochist. He’s barely holding onto himself at this point, consciousness like a dangling thread that swirls and dances and twirls with even the tiniest breeze, a hint of movement sending it shivering and quivering as it spins. It wouldn’t take much for the thread to fray from the weight pulling it down, or to saw through it in a clean slice that leaves it floating feather-light upon air currents, petals spiraling to the ground.

Petals. Flowers. Thomas could bring Danny flowers! It’s perfect! Danny is especially predisposed to gardening, and he frequently talks about different flowers and what they mean based on the type and colour. His interest in botany could make this a sweet gift, to show that Thomas pays attention to what Danny enjoys, and can be the perfect segue into asking him on a romantic outing. Yes, this could work! It would appease Roman’s inclination to classic romanticism while still being practical and not unreasonably expensive, give Patton his ideal relationship fantasy (and a “warm and fuzzy feeling”, apparently), and allow Virgil a little more breathing room, so-to-speak. This is something they all should be agreeable towards, and that confidence is enough to supply Logan with enough energy to push past his lightheadedness and offer a solution. He’s proud of himself for taking the others’ feelings into account, something he knows he’s not always been the most proficient at, and for coming up with a compromise that will likely satisfy everyone’s wants and needs.

“What about bringing him flowers?” Logan asks, pleased and antsy as he feels hope well up in his chest. He doesn’t push it down this time, and he thinks maybe, just maybe they’ll finally listen to him, that they’ll tell him that he did well, that he’s being considerate and maybe even say thank you–

“How would you even know, Roman? It’s not like we just go out and hire mariachi bands every Saturday!” Virgil says with furrowed brows, and Roman huffs in indignation, and Patton sighs as he looks between the two of them, and Logan’s words fall on deaf ears. They didn’t even hear. They didn’t listen. They didn’t care they didn’t care–

“Uh, hey, Virgil, what if–” Logan tries once more to speak, nausea rolling angrily in his gut, head spinning dizzy round and round and round and round and Virgil flinches.

He flinches. Because of Logan.

Virgil hasn’t been afraid of any of them for a long time. Sure, in the beginning, when they fought one another on nearly a day-to-day basis, there would be a moment before he could pull on his figurative mask that a flash of fear would go through Virgil’s eyes, and the sadness kept within wouldn’t subside even when he growled and snapped and blustered whichever side had the misfortune of picking a fight with him during a time where his first instinct was to keep away the pain and longing and loneliness the only way he knew how. Over time, that flash of fear dulled, morphed into something more manageable, more trusting. The sadness never really went away, but it was met with warmth, a soft contentedness that danced in his eyes when he realized he had a family to turn to. He hasn’t been afraid for a long time. And yet, he flinches away from Logan, just from him speaking.

Is he really that bad?

Does even simply the sound of his voice have such a negative association for Virgil that it prompts genuine fear and discomfort? Has he really scared Virgil that much? What did he do? How can he fix this?

Maybe he shouldn’t.

Logan’s felt disconnected from the others for quite a while now. He loves them, of course he does, but he doesn’t feel like he fits. He’s the metaphorical jagged puzzle piece, the one that should snap into the final vacant space but is so broken beyond repair that it doesn’t fit quite right. He wants to belong, to feel at home whenever he’s with them, but he doesn’t. He yearns for the acceptance that Virgil earned, the support that Roman is held up by, the respect and adoration Patton seems to acquire so casually and naturally that it’s like he doesn’t even have to try. Logan wants to be like them. He wants to be loved, but… that isn’t really his place, is it?

Love is not an inherent thing. It’s something that’s earned, by doing good things and being important enough to someone that they give it freely. It’s something Logan doesn’t understand, but despite that, still desperately, painfully yearns for. He wants to be loved, the way he loves the others. He wants to be a part of their famILY, to have that implicit trust in each other that only comes from acute, profound, deep-seated love. He wants that fondness directed towards himself, that devotion borne from hapless, radiating appreciation. The humbled esteem, the maudlin, theatrical longing, the passion and yearning and helpless, acquiescent love that bursts from the seams in a manner that will never diminish or fade. He wants that. Badly. And he’s finally ready to accept that he will never have it. He’s okay. He’s okay. He just needs a moment. He just needs to breathe.

The others must have continued with their arguments long ago, seemingly unaware of anything outside of themselves. Logan supposes he shouldn’t really berate them for that since he often falls victim to getting lost in debate as well, but something is wrong with Thomas, going by his expression and demeanour and the logical side can’t ignore it anymore. It’s highly unlikely that the other three will come away from themselves for long enough to notice, and it doesn’t sound like they’re anywhere close to coming to a conclusion amongst themselves, so Logan is perfectly fine with bearing that responsibility upon himself to check up on his host and make sure he’s okay. He’s the most important one here, after all, and it’s Logan’s job to help him, guide him in his life and decisions.

“Thomas? Is there something wrong?” Although the words come out clear and precise as usual, Logan’s throat burns, and he can barely breathe. He wants to sleep, he wants to sleep, but Thomas needs him, and that doesn’t happen often nowadays, so Logan does nothing but wait impassively. His host bites the inside of his cheek, then sighs as he stares off at the wall, lost in thought. Since he says nothing, the logical side assumes he will continue to say nothing for a few more moments, and decides to give him a once-over to gather more information and any possible context. Thomas’ eyebrows are furrowed, and his posture far from adequate. His expression is troubled, and his arms are crossed loosely, a pointer finger scratching at his elbow unconsciously. There is no obvious cause for his confusion and/or upset in himself or anywhere in the room, apart from the current dilemma, but he was fine before, so something must have changed to distress him now. Logan cannot ascertain what Thomas needs simply from observing him, so he concludes that the best thing for him to do is wait.

So he does. And he does so for a minute, two, five. Every second that ticks by feels like a needle is being shoved into his eyes, his brain, his legs, his everything and it takes more effort to stand than he’s used to. Breathing is difficult, but that isn’t exactly a new development, so at least he knows how to ignore it. Eventually, ten minutes pass with only the sound of the other three arguing in the background, and it doesn’t seem like Thomas is really all there. Although the action makes him want to throw up, Logan shifts forward, moving out of his usual spot and into Thomas’ own. He still doesn’t acknowledge any kind of input outside himself, so Logan lays a hand on his host’s arm gently, which snaps him out of his trance in a slow, unhurried kind of way. Thomas gives him a glance when his logical side sighs, tampering down any audible signs of his nausea in a manner that is unbeknownst to the host, but returns to staring at the wall without a second regard.

“Thomas?” Logan murmurs, bile rising in his throat and shoving his hidden suffering even closer to the forefront of his mind, as though it hasn’t been there all along. It’s hard to think, through all of the white noise and weary irritation and the tiniest sliver of hope that he crushes immediately, but thinking is his job, and he needs to help. “Are you alright? You can talk to me.”

And then Thomas is shrugging him off, turning away as he tells him he should “just stop” with piercing words, that he “can’t do anything to help”, and the rejection feels like a metaphorical knife has been shoved into his gut. Logan can feel the pain and the heartbreak and the insecurity materialize into a cold blade, twisting and twisting just to make him hurt more. Logan is ignored for the fourth time today, by the person it hurts to come from the most, and he can feel the sun whipping and screaming in his chest. His breath is stuck, sucked down into his throat, a sharp pain localizing in his neck, and he can’t help but bring his hand up to rub at the spot with trembling fingertips as he unsteadily lurches back to his regular spot. The others don’t notice, of course, or if they did, they don’t care. Then the nausea he’s been fighting against surges like a violent wave at full force, drowning him and the hurt is forcing its way into his mouth, his throat, his lungs, and he can’t breathe–

His fist flashes down from his neck to the banister, punching the railing so hard it echoes in the reverberation created from his vicious, angry snarl.

It’s scary, in a way, how in moments like this one, Logan feels as if his consciousness floats away from him, leaving behind only a wave of white-hot, searing anger that drains out of him just as quickly as it comes. There’s sleet running through his veins, and his brain has frostbite, and his fingertips are numb in the face of the ringing resonance after his outburst. The pain comes next, a simmering heat blistering below his fist until it’s coated and red and the beginnings of a bruise are starting to form. He can’t help but stare helplessly in front of himself, eyes burning and filling and blazing with how much they beg to close.

He doesn’t want to look up, to face the suffocating silence that’s fallen over the room. He doesn’t want to see their faces, their disappointment, their anger, their contempt. He wants to yell. He wants to sleep.

Logan sinks out.

There’s a very short window of time where the logical side rushes into the en-suite bathroom after rising up in his bedroom, trembling legs aching with exhaustion. Barely a second passes between him falling to the floor and emptying the meager contents of his stomach into the toilet, the bile burning in his tender throat as a reminder of his failure. The floor is cold and hard beneath him, ridges of tiles pressing unrelenting into his knees through his wrinkled jeans. His head spins, unbalanced as it whirls through itself, words and thoughts and ideas that mean nothing and everything simultaneously existing hollowly in a falling echo. There is pain, and aching, and soreness, and exhaustion, and Logan wants to sleep.

It’s hard to rise to his feet, head throbbing and knees shaking as he wipes the spit from his mouth on a folded square of toilet paper. The pain nags at him, persistent and irritating in its attempts to shut Logan out, almost clear in a way that belies the foggy haze blanketing his nearly incoherent thought process. Marking a clear vantage, a faultline to anchor onto is no easy task, and all Logan wants as he stumbles over to his bed is a landmark to pinpoint and find his way back to. He careens toward the mattress once he’s close enough, finally letting his legs give out underneath him when he’s as near as he can bear. It’s so difficult to stay upright in stiff misery, pangs and twinges of sharp pain coursing through his limbs and his back as his muscles are forced together under pressure.

In another familiar, frustrating bout of anger that seizes his breath before it can escape his lungs, Logan shoves his fingers in the knot of his tie, yanking it forcefully even as the motion jerks his own head forward uncomfortably along with it. His fingers run down the length of the fabric, and it falls apart at the end of its cycle, much like Logan has, and he snaps his arm back to chuck the dark blue, silky length to the ground in a motion that does little to relieve the rage built up inside him.

He can feel it building. The buzzing, the pressure, the glass in his veins running on shards. He feels the pinpricks upon pinpricks, the fire burning in his lungs, and the stone crumbles, and tumbles down, and he’s like a rubber band pulled taut.

He cracks, shrill pressure in his knuckles and head and torso, and nothing happens.

Then Logan hears the telltale squeak of his door swiveling on mildly rusty hinges, and a familiar voice echoes right through his bubble, shatters the stone wall like a bulldozer running at full speed, and then the wetness spills over his lashes and over his stony, impassive face.

“Oh, Lo,” Deceit murmurs, sad and tender as the breath rushes out of him and Logan can’t do this. He wants to throw out his fist in a wide arc and pummel the wall next to him until his knuckles are raw and bloodied and bruised beyond repair. He wants to scream until his throat is torn and his voice is gone, lost in the uncaring, empty void that coldly swallowed up his passion. Happiness has never seemed further away, and he knows he deserves it. But then he remembers all of the times where the pressure in his limbs and the buzzing in his brain forced him to lash out, to hurt others, and he thinks that maybe it’s okay for him to hurt right now to even the score. With the last of the metaphorical wall around him in tiny pieces, fragments of a life he never wanted to live but he desperately fought to keep, he lets his guard down for the first time in years.

Logan’s face crumples under the weight he’s burdened his being with, body immediately drooping under the heaviness that he’s forced himself to fight through. He finally submits, and the tears come in an endless stream over his cheekbones, itchy and hot and terribly, mindlessly relieving. It feels so good to finally let the negative emotion he’s pent up inside him out, to fall out of his cage he’s lived in high above a swirling ocean of release and fear and freedom. And he’s so, so lucky because he has someone to save him from the fall.

Deceit’s kneeled down in front of him, wiping away the tears as they fall with uncharacteristically degloved thumbs, and Logan can feel the smoothness of the scales twisting and trailing down his fingers. Every so often, Deceit’s pointed thumbnails catch lightly on the skin of Logan’s cheek, and it just causes him to cry harder. The vulnerability in the room is palpable, a wispy breath of worry and insecurity and trust trailing over their skin, blanketing the room in a warmth that runs even warmer when Logan reaches up to gently lay his hand over Deceit’s own. He shows his appreciation through tactility when the words he so desperately wishes to say are lost in his throat, blocked by the barrier that separates his newfound submission and the part of him that’s still clinging to the feeble grasp at acceptance he craves so dearly.

Logan can barely tell what’s in front of him through the kaleidoscope in his vision, but he doesn’t really need to see to throw himself forward off the bed and bury himself in Deceit’s chest, of whom lets out a surprised noise but doesn’t hesitate a single second in wrapping his arms tightly around the other side. He strokes Logan’s back comfortingly and offers him whispered reassurances through the heart-wrenching sobs and broken, croaky whines that disappear into his cloak, hand coming up to cradle his head in the overwhelming reflexive instinct to keep the logical side safe and happy. It feels like a dagger has gone through Deceit’s chest at the knowledge that Logan has been suffering for so long and hasn’t been able to let it out or just simply be held, the self-preservation that is at the core of his function as a side going off like alarm bells with every sniffle. Logan curls into the first person who’s ever offered him physical affection and emotional safety, and his fists clench the fabric at the snake-like side’s shoulders as tightly as he would if he were to never, ever let go.

Logan is out of breath even as his heart begins to calm, beating and beating in his ribcage and in his lungs. The lump in his throat prevents him from speaking, but he figures it’s okay to not be heard audibly, just this once, and speak with his actions. Although he doesn’t know what he’s saying when he pulls back and wraps his arms around Deceit’s neck, laying his face in the crook of other side’s neck like a small child would, not really, he hopes that his intent still comes across in some sort of intelligible, hopeful way. Deceit seems to take this as a request, a promise, and slides his grip to a point where he can hoist the smaller side up in his hold, carrying him just like a parent carrying their kid to their bed after they fell asleep during a visit to a friend’s house. This situation is much more loaded, stained with impurities and unsure withering, but it’s just as raw, just as real, and Logan finds himself feeling safer than he ever has before.

At some point, they end up on the bed, Logan having been manhandled into a more comfortable position for both of them, which is laying across Deceit’s lap without ever having let go of his neck. The logical side feels small and vulnerable, something that he would normally hate, squash down, bury so deep within himself that he doesn’t even have to acknowledge it. But honestly, right here, right now, he’s so goddamn exhausted, and forcing himself back into the state of repression he’s been in for so much of his life would take too much of a toll, more than he already has on himself. The wetness rolls down his cheeks, bold, blue precipitation falling in droplets onto his skin and the fabric of Deceit’s cape, sinking and spreading and thinning out into airy nothingness. And the nothingness enraptures him, pulls him in even as he breaks and whimpers and spills wisps of forgotten feelings into empty space, at least until his bedroom door opens once more with a loud click, because nothing Remus ever does is truly quiet.

“Hey, are you guys having a sexy party without me? How c–… are you… crying?” Remus asks, suggestive tone split and watered down into something confused, and surprised, and angry. The younger twin kicks the door shut behind him with his foot, more out of muscle memory than conscious forethought, something that stands with nearly every action Remus executes. Logan turns his head wearily, not lifting it from where it rests on Deceit’s collarbone. The latter of the two takes that chance to clear away some of the tears that didn’t get absorbed into his clothing, hoping that since the stream is slowly dispersing, his cheeks will stay dry this time. Remus slowly approaches, body tense and eyes piercing as Logan’s face is wiped off for the nth time, offering no other sounds or words as he crouches down to examine how the bespectacled side’s skin is rubbed red and sensitive.

Logan just whines softly, stare falling to the bedsheets, observing nothing in particular as he tries to figure out why words are failing him. Something that’s such an intricate part of himself, the communication of thoughts and ideas and knowledge that defines so much of who he is and how he exists, it’s dwindled and diminished into nothing. Deceit seems to understand, he always does, and reads him so perfectly it’s a wonder the two didn’t become closer in the beginning, with how much they truly are alike. A scaled hand makes it’s way up to Logan’s head and cards through the soft, disheveled hair there, scratching lightly at his scalp in a motion that seems to draw the aching tension caused by his distress out of his body, leaving his muscles to relax and melt into the chest that holds him upright.

“Something happened before I came in here. I assume it has to do with the others,” Deceit murmurs into thick, heavy air, stale with shame and tired hopelessness. Remus’ eyes flick to Logan’s own, actively searching for some sort of confirmation or denial. There’s a beat of silence, and Logan’s eyes flutter in a fatigued attempt to stay awake, and the nausea creeps its way into his stomach once again like a predator stalking its prey. Deceit repositions himself quietly, pulling the smaller side impossibly closer, as if he knows that he’ll need the added comfort. With his body squished into a protective embrace, and his tie laying flat on the floor below, forgotten and scorned for what it represents, Logan swallows hard around the sharp block in his neck and nods through his nonverbal affliction.

At the minimal admission, something in Remus’ eyes darkens, bathing the bright craze that typically resides there in something hateful, and vicious, and dripping with chemical absolution. He shifts away, rolls onto his haunches in a way that doesn’t read as entirely intentional, as though he’s been physically forced back with the weight of the confession. There’s so much there, in the way his breath comes out shallow and gravelly and low like a beast biting and snapping at the bars that contain it, fighting against the cage it’s locked inside. Nostrils flare, and jaw sets, and fists clench white as bone, and Remus straightens up to his full height, intimidating and looming and dangerous.

“Who?” he spits, venom coursing through the single word in molten streams. It’s a protective fire, serious in a way Remus rarely is, and the storm in his eyes and aura only becomes more turbulent and intense and solid as he reaches behind himself to slowly seize his morning star from where he keeps it at the ready. Pulling it to the front of him is an unexpectedly slow event, yet still ferocious in its quiet, cold fervour. The silver weapon swings in a steady arc around the side of Remus’ body, catching the dim light in a threatening glint, the gleam alluding to its deadliness in a way that’s almost unexplainable. The spiked mace finally comes to its resting point, hovering in the air just beside the fierce side’s leg, unassuming and ready to drive its way into an unlucky antagonist’s skull.

“I’ll cut their fucking throats. I’ll rip off every single limb from their bodies until they’re nothing but a pile of flesh and blood. They’re gonna pay for this,” Remus snarls, each threat bathed in acrimony and malice and choked by fury ripping through the tempest. Logan stares through misty eyes, half-lidded and concerned but too out of it to muster much of a coherent thought. Thankfully, Deceit is still there, soft and warm and well-equipped to deal with Remus and his behaviour. The snake-like side sighs, reaching out to just barely snatch up a frilly black sleeve, tugging him closer and meeting surprisingly little resistance despite the rigidity of the tallest side’s posture. Each breath from Remus comes out like a bullet, brisk and arduous and punctuated by a pang of impermeable guilt.

Even as Deceit motions Remus to lower himself onto the bed in front of them, the latter of the two is still apprehensive, terse movements and restless eyes that flit between anything and everything they can to avoid stagnation. It’s almost fearful, in a way, primal in its aptitude to think, and cultivate, and vindicate a wrongdoing that was never his fault or responsibility in the first place. Logan hates that they need to save him, hates that he doesn’t truly believe they actually care. There’s a level of certainty with himself and with others that the logical side hasn’t reached yet, and it feels too close and yet too far, kept obscure and secluded and almost clandestine in the way it’s ostensibly unreachable.

With the help of Deceit’s hand to guide his way, Remus slowly lets go of his morning star, tossing it to the side with a pensive, trembling swallow. It clatters to the ground, metallic clang resounding in vibrations, tilde-shaped waves that bounce off the façade and yell out to one another. Muted shrieks upon perfect, flat, neutral paint, sepulchral oscillations attacking the drywall.

“You can’t hurt them. I know you’re angry. I am too. But hurting them won’t solve anything, Rem, you know that more than anyone,” Deceit says meaningfully, smiling in a way that’s sad and distant but caring and compelling and relaxing for the tension wrapped so tightly around the three of them. The snake-like side lifts the hand that’s not in Logan’s hair and reaches out to grab Remus’ own, firmly but gently as he squeezes his fingers in a way that reassures, and consoles, and reprimands, not unkindly. He admonishes, and breaks that anger and frustration, and builds up positivity and alleviation and reprieve from everything that allows that buzzing, ticking, those pinpricks upon pinpricks. His care and concern washes over you, paternal in a different way than Patton operates, and it’s why Deceit is so comforting to be around. He manages a respite from vexation, a refuge in sanctuary, discreet freedom for the flawed, defeated dreamer.

“I’m mad. I’m mad that they hurt you, Lo-Lo. I want them to feel the pain you’re feeling,” Remus mutters, frigid and defeated, head bowed and gaze distant in that transparent manner of his that easily broadcasts all of his thoughts and feelings and wishes. Logan feels the pride welling up in his chest without even realizing it, quietly delighted at the progress Remus has made in being clear and forthcoming with his emotions and impulsivity. A weary grin makes its way onto his face, predictably aggravating the soreness in his cheeks, yet he finds himself indifferent to it, unperturbed by the plight that’s ravaged his body for the day, and probably longer without his notice. He wants to reassure the younger twin, to smile and laugh and brush all of it off, but his eyelids droop, and a pathetic mewl is the only thing able to escape his lungs. Of course, since there’s something Logan wants to say, Deceit somehow knows how to communicate it, just as prompt and courteous and perceptive as always.

“We can talk about this later after Logan has slept. Don’t worry too much, Rem, and don’t do anything stupid. If you get angry again, please go to your paints instead of your legs,” Deceit instructs, more of a suggestion than a demand, but he hopes Remus will listen and be mindful anyway. The latter of the two bounces his leg anxiously, grumbling unintelligibly under his breath as he stands up in one swift, fluid motion. As Remus makes his way over to exit the room, Logan nudges Deceit’s hand with his head gently, trying to bring his attention back to the massaging motion that ceased sometime during the conversation. The snake-like side’s eyes flick downward to meet the smaller side’s own half-lidded, teetering gaze, and he huffs a laugh after a moment of searching. Logan doesn’t know what he finds, but he realizes that he doesn’t really care that much about worrying over every little interaction anymore.

Remus finally turns and glances back as he swings the door open, brows still furrowed and shoulders still hunched, but simply shakes his head and leaves. The door closes much softer than before, thankfully, so as not to be too harsh on Logan’s migraine, an unusually conscientious thought from someone that rarely shows consideration to the needs of others that the logical side appreciates that much more. As the sound of Remus’ footsteps slowly fade with his retreat down the hallway, the two of them left are bathed in silence, one that is marginally less heavy and thick than before.

A small while passes afterward, only punctuated by soft breathing and light scratching noises from nails trailing through messy hair. Logan feels like he might pass out any minute, what with the comfortable, quiet understanding the two have come to rest at, but some part of him says to wait, to push through the mind-numbing exhaustion for just a little while longer. That part of him is probably just being considerate toward Deceit, who Logan can’t imagine would be very comfortable with another side falling asleep on him and laying on him for an extended period of time, but he figures that it’s a good of a reason as any. It’s not about him feeling like a burden. It’s not.

Eventually, Deceit must start to get tired as well, or maybe he’s sore from Logan’s weight on his legs, so he sits forward, apologizing quietly for disturbing the peace, and he moves them into a more comfortable position. The new arrangement is far more snug and cozy than the previous one, Logan thinks drowsily, as his head hits the pillow across from Deceit. They lay there on top of the blankets but make no move to pull them up, just content to stare lazily at one another in the dim, ambient light cast by the desk lamp in the opposite corner of the room.

“Why?” Logan finally asks, and although he loathes disrupting the silence, he needs to ask. The words are scratchy in his tender throat, a charcoal whisper on a steel canvas that scratches and sketches away with nothing viable left to keep through the wind that blows the dark dust off the surface. “Why are you helping me? Why do you care?”

Deceit just hums, sending Logan a weak, distracted smile. He mulls over the words, tossing about the meaning and possibilities in his head and on his silver tongue, rushing in an uncertain river through valleys of golden sand.

“I am self-preservation at its core. I exist to keep Thomas safe and healthy and thriving, and that also means you and the other sides by extension. But… it’s not just that. Even though I feel physical pain whenever one of you or Thomas is hurt, I specifically want to help you because… I care about you, Logan. I love you, and want to see you healthy and happy. I haven’t really been doing a good job of that lately,” Deceit mutters, gaze somewhere on their shared pillow, and there’s a quality to his tone that’s bitter beyond the line of frustration. Although Deceit doesn’t expand on it, doesn’t offer up a single clarification despite the heavy air and his resigned demeanour, Logan gets it. He understands, and he wants to prove him wrong.

So he does.

And that comes in the form of surging forward, fighting against the current, the pinpricks in his stomach and shoulders and abdomen, disregarding the exhaustion for just a little while longer so that he can let Deceit’s lips meet his own. Logan’s so close he can feel the shocked rush of air leave Deceit’s nose, feel the vibrations through the air as his body trembles in fear and anticipation and relief. The other side eases in, sinks closer, closer, and finally moves his lips in a careful, emotional dance that leaves Logan dizzy and breathless, for entirely different reasons that have plagued him for the past day.

“Lo,” Deceit breathes, low, wanting, and he pulls back to give Logan a chance to catch up. A scaled hand comes up to caress the logical side’s cheek, a soothing, cool balm for the raw skin beginning to heal there. “I didn’t… I didn’t think…”

“I love you,” Logan breathes, the words he’s refused to say, to acknowledge, to confront welling up through his throat and for the first time, he lets them spill out. The dam has broken, debris left to descend and submerge in the depths of the sentiment crashing through in a roaring, passionate rapid at the narrowest point yet. The words come, and they don’t stop, and Logan almost can’t believe how right they feel on his tongue. “I love you, I love you, I–I love you so much, Dee.”

Logan is like a rubber band, pulled taut and still and trembling under the pressure. And maybe he’ll split, shoot apart, torn in two pieces that will never fit back together again. But maybe he won’t. Maybe instead of snapping in half, he’ll snap back, and that thought alone gives him a quiet comfort that he’s not used to allowing himself. He’s waiting, hoping, and he’s okay enough for now.

[fiercelittlestudyblr]

I read of your break down. I had never heard from others that they couldn't read and I though I was the only one who has these attacks. When I'm too stressed and haven't relaxed for a long time I become too tired to read also elementary texts, to understand what I read, to think or talk, sometimes even to keep my eyes open and I need to sleep for days. On that days I'm extremely slow and everything is muffled and blurred around me. Do you also have such attacks? How do you cope with them?

Hi, just first off I’m really glad you might feel less alone in reading about what happened to me, but I need to preface my reply to you that this only happened to me in one extended period of the summer of 2018, and it isn’t a recurring thing for me. Also, that I can’t give you advice as I don’t know your specific situation and I’m not any more qualified in this than you are really. Unfortunately. 

Okay, with that out of the way I think it’s important I say the story.  It was following a long term of self motivated study as there were strikes on where my lecturers were giving us reading and assignments without teaching us the material. Throughout the year I had been going through a lot of blood tests (I’m needle-phobic) to track every one of the nutrients in my body because I was seeking help through the NHS for my eating disorder, which I also, at the same time, refused to accept I had. I wasn’t doing as much work as I should have during the term and realised very close to exams that I didn’t know most of the material, and was running out of time. The closer the exams got, the more i convinced myself that everyone was doing way better than me and I was going to fail. Then, when the exams got even closer, I realised I was completely right.

I was either sleeping, or crying. I wasn’t showering or eating, I lost weight quickly, and then gained weight quickly, I wore the same clothes on circulation over and over. I was worried and guilty I was holding my boyfriend back because he was having to look after me at the same time as doing his own exams. About two days before my first exam I went to the senior tutors office and i sat in front of him and tried to explain that I wasn’t functioning and really was breaking down. I remember the relief I felt when he said ‘I can see you’re not functioning. You look terrible. Do you want to do all the exams in August? Or shall we take it exam by exam? At the end of the day what we want is for you to graduate, your results, looking at you now, don’t matter. Keep checking in with me and don’t harm yourself.” So I crossed each bridge when I got to it, and in the end only took one of the exams, which I failed badly. They were really kind and pretended it hadn’t happened, so I wasn’t capped at a pass grade for a retake. 

But what happened while I was trying to revise for my second to last timetabled exam, is I had a real attack, I would sleep, cry, and then I tried to cram and I realised I had forgotten how to read. As in I actually didn’t understand even the word ‘the’. I was terrified, and worked up the courage to go back to the senior tutor then for the fourth time and said ‘I just can’t do it’. And he agreed. 

But he said to me that we had to have an agreement. I guess he figured out that part of me is very... noble? Always a Gryffindor. The agreement was that I would go to the counselling that I had been trying to set up and I would definitely be in a better place by August. Thank God I was, I spent the summer doing nothing but working on my self worth, defeating the anorexia voice in my head (a bit) and spending a lot of time self-caring and revising on my own at my house in Bristol. I ended up averaging a high 2:1 instead of.... failing. 

So thats the story. What really made the difference to me was seeking professional help, from both my senior tutor to almost, give me permission to get other help, and giving me a support system where I didn’t need to feel like a burden for unloading my breakdown. The counselling was transformative and I know I’m supposed to think it was all me, but I couldn’t have managed otherwise. I actually ended up with a diagnosis but it wasn’t related to the breakdown. What was related, was my self worth, and my coping skills. My way of coping is shutting down, and refusing to eat. 

You need to find out what your coping skills are and why they’re not working for you, or to find that point of stress and learn either to manage it, or drop it altogether, focus on yourself, and pick it back up in the future. Because if this is happening to you a lot, I really worry for you. It’s so mentally damaging and scary, and you need to make sure that you can look after yourself. Please try to find someone irl you can reach out to to offload and seek real time advice from. I would also recommend seeking medical advice, they might prescribe you antidepressants (they did try to for me, but my dad responded badly to them, and I knew it wasn’t depression) and they might be right for you, but I would recommend you try to dig deeper, see a therapist or psychiatrist, who will be able to much better analyse what might be causing you to go through bouts of this and help you work through it. Please stay in touch. I thought I was the only one too...

[belabee]

Productivity Master Post

So, I realized recently that I’ve tried a lot of different things to try to manage my executive dysfunction. Not all of them have worked for me and some of them I’ve tried and love but can’t find a way to make it actually fit into my general life schedule, or tried and didn’t really like at all.

I figured I’d share them. The ones that worked, the ones that didn’t, and the ones that I love but don’t know how to yet implement. Since everyone’s different and what works/doesn’t work for me, might work for others. 

This will get updated as I remember things/try new things/etc. Each of the things will have links so you can take a look into them yourselves :) 

Right now I’m just listing them out - I’ll probably edit this and do some pros and cons as well.

I’m gonna put it under the cut though cuz it’ll probably get loooong

I’ll start off with some Productivity Methods

Getting Things Done

Book by David Allen

Process:

1) Collect tasks

2) Process

3) Organize

4) Plan 

5) Do

What started me on trying to figure out a productivity system for myself. In my experience, each person’s system looks different. It’s all just based on what works for you.

The two main concepts that I got out of GTD are

Being specific with my tasks with what needs to be done and when and by whom

Reflecting and Strategic Reviews: Looking at my system and seeing where my bottlenecks are, coming up with solutions, and being specific about it

Pomodoro Technique

Time management technique developed by Francesco Cirillo 

This one I will swear by forever. Basically it helps me focus on my tasks. The typical Pomodoro technique looks like: 25 mins of Focused Work time (1 pomodoro “pomo”), 5 minute break, and then after 4 pomodoros - one long break. 

Can be used to help you focus with anything - writing, cleaning, homework, anything that might end up taking a long time. 

I use Complice and the Captains log to help me with this one. 

Captain’s Log

A self-reflection method that I learned from the founder of Complice (linked above)

Basically if I’m doing a pomo, and I find myself getting distracted, or I said I’d do a thing and I find that I’m not doing it - I’ll whip out my captain’s log and note down what distracted me or what’s getting in my way of doing the thing.

I tend to use this when I’m doing my weekly/ review to help troubleshoot what I should try in the upcoming week or if there’s other areas that I need to work on first before doing the thing. 

Eisenhower Decision Matrix (aka the Urgent-Important matrix)

This one helped me out a lot at school. Basically it’s a 4-quadrant decision making system that helps organize and prioritize tasks. The 4 quadrants are:

Urgent-Important

Less urgent-Important

Urgent - Less important

Less urgent - Less important

Eat That Frog

an Anti-procrastination method

Concept of doing the least pleasant very important thing first, or if there are multiple unpleasant important things - do the biggest one first.

So far, I’ve found it works best if I add some social accountability to it - like, letting someone know that this is a Frog for me, and I will do it today. 

Things that work for me/I’m currently using:

Complice.co

https://complice.co/?r=ael4x5dmam (gonna plug my referral link :P ) 

This one I use to sort out my projects and goals. I currently have 8 goals - 2 of them are work related, and the rest are personal goals. When I was in school, I had a different goal for each course I was taking

Basically you list out what you want to get done on your goals that day - your “Intentions” - and at the end of each day you check off what you got done - your “Outcomes”

Complice has ready made spaces for weekly and monthly and yearly reflections, as well as integrated Pomodoro options and coworking rooms.

They also have a Goal-Crafting Intensive Workshop that they do at the beginning of the year which I found super useful and highly recommend. 

Passion Planner / Bullet Journaling

I only recently discovered bullet journaling, but I’m finding that I like the method because it can be as simplistic or as all-encompassing as you want/need. It appeals to the wouldbe-crafter in me, and I love stylizing my monthly/weekly layouts.

Passion Planner I’ve been using since I was in school. I find that that it works well with Complice, and provides me with an easy portable hard copy of my Tasks and Goals and Reflections. I used to be very online about my GTD system and relied heavily on my smartphone to manage my system. Over the years I’ve discovered that I get distracted way too easily using my phone for it to really be my main productivity management item 

A con to bullet journaling:

Super easy to get lost on pinterest, instagram, etc., looking for inspiration for your layouts. I’ve wasted many a day doing this :P

Habitica

Gamifying your tasks and habits. Basically - you’re a character in an RPG, you gain points and gold for completing your ToDos, Daily Habits, and  

I find that it helps with providing a certain level of social accountability (Guilds, Challenges, and Parties)

Workflowy

https://workflowy.com/invite/ff47f75.lnx (another referral link plug :P)

Started using this one when I started bullet journaling, it helps that it integrates well with Complice.

What I currently do - I use Workflowy to collect my tasks for the individual goals that I’ve laid out in Complice, and then I put what I need to get done Today into my day’s Intentions on Complice.

Beeminder

Accountability that stings.

Basically, I make a commitment, I lay my credit card on it, and if I don’t do the thing that I said I’d do - I get charged for it.

Provides pretty graphs to see your progress on doing the thing, is basically a free service if you do the things you said you’d do. 

Super helpful for eating frogs - if I can’t motivate myself to eat the frog on my own - you can bet that I’m more likely to do the thing if it means that it’s gonna take it out of my credit card.

Super good if punishment motivates you more than reward does.

IFTTT - If This, Then That

Love this service. It syncs services to other services that might not have a good integration with your fave apps on their own. 

Works well with Google Home devices

Google - Gmail, Calendar, Drive (Docs, etc.), Hangouts, Groups

Our overlord has so many things - tbf, it’s competing with Microsoft Office, so it’s kinda gotta. 

Gmail can integrate with so many different apps and services, and can be used for a GTD management system as well. 

Calendar - my favourite part is that it’s shareable. When I did shared living, I could easily know my household’s schedule without having to ask them every time. I’m also polyam, so when I had multiple partners and was living with half of them - it made scheduling time together easy.

Hangouts - super useful for staying in touch with peeps. It’s been phased out of my life a little with the introduction of Discord. and I hear that Google might be actually discontinuing it soon (just like they did with Inbox - I’m still mad about that)

Groups - I mostly use this in my inbox. But good as a forum option. I know of shared house dynamics who use this to stay up to date with each other - do house announcements (i.e. when the plumber will be here, etc.) This one has also been phased out with Discord for me

Discord

Great communication service for groups - I haven’t explored it’s integration options fully - but I definitely like it better than Slack

I currently use it for my house (in addition to various fandom groups) - to let my family know if we need to buy x grocery/house item, or let them know I’ll be going away for the weekend, or won’t be home on time for dinner etc., I also use it with my IRL friends - we use it to plan get-togethers, share memes, etc. 

I think most peeps know about this already - but shoot me an ask if I need to elaborate more.

Things I’ve tried but haven’t been able to successfully implement

Asana

A teams/group project task manager - used it when I use to do group living (i.e. a bunch of roommates). I’ve found it less useful now that I live with my family - mostly because it’s doesn’t mesh well with my family dynamic - but I can see how other families could make it work.

Trello

good project board - but it’s definitely more of a teams thing - or a group project thing. I haven’t been able to make it work for my own personal projects and goals. But that might be because of how my brain visualizes tasks - so it might work for others.

RememberTheMilk

This integrates super well with David Allen’s Getting Things Done.

I’ve found that it was good when I was using my phone as my main productivity management item - but I’ve found it less useful now that I use my passion planner.

if you purchase the Pro subscription you can use the location tags to get reminded of tasks when you’re at a certain location (i.e. reminded to submit x paperwork when you get to your head office, reminded to buy x item when you’re at or near x store)

Works well with Google assistant as well so if you have a Google Home device, you can sync your reminders.

Slack

Communication service for teams, groups.

different channels etc.

Good integration with different services (see Beeminder in particular)

I don’t find it as intuitive as Discord though. But I know tons of groups find it helpful and useful for planning and organizing. 

Microsoft Office365 (Outlook, Teams, Sharepoint)

A lot of businesses, organizations, etc., use these - but I find that unless you’re pretty tech savvy already, learning how to use it is pretty hard. It’s not the most userfriendly and it definitely doesn’t play well with others. If you don’t already have an Office365 account it won’t work well for you, and everyone on your team needs to have an Office365 account too. Not to mention you need to have the appropriate Office365 subscription to get access to all the best apps.

But if you do have the money and everyone on your team has an Office365 account, it’s super useful - Sharepoint is great for sharing info to the team, sharing and editing documents, integrates well with Teams which now has a Shifts app (which replaces the old StaffHub app). Teams is good for having the more informal chats with the team.

I find that if you know how to use all the apps and services, it makes it super easy to work at any location. I have multiple locations at my work - and I find it really easy to continue working even if I’m not at my main desk.

[orderuponthe99prettygrimmdiaries]

Epiphanies 💭

Decided to try to post weekly again, or more likely, monthly. Still working on my resolutions for this year, but I guess most of which are those carried over from the last. 

But anyway, this week I’ve been having a bit of an identity crisis. I realized that maybe sometimes I am a hypocrite, and maybe sometimes a little of an asshole too. But coincidentally, came across a post on reddit that says we’re all hypocrites, and the important thing is to be aware of it. I guess that’s kinda true, and of course it’s best to work on it so we aren’t hypocrites. 

Anyhoo, came across this article on B99 Season 6 as I had an epiphany of how scared I am of being open, especially with friends. I realized I’m able to dump everything on some stranger online or like here on Tumblr, but I’m almost unable to do it with any friend irl. Maybe except my university friend.

But, I think I’ve been trying to be a little open now. At least I did admit some stuff to my middle school friend. I did want to try to be more open with my college friend that I met with this week, but every time the opportunity comes, I end up not saying anything. The meet up was great though, we talked for hours, and I did finally confide to someone irl about my flakey friend (our mutual friend). She also mentioned her boyfriend was with our other classmates, including him, and after a bit I managed to ask why she didn’t go with them instead. She said she wasn’t close to him, and that made me realize, was I ever? The more I think back about the times he and I shared, the more I realize that I might just have been in love with an idea of him. But anyway, I do feel like i’ve moved on now. I don’t think I was too affected when he was mentioned, maybe I did show a little panic on my face or something though. Gah, I’m not even sure anymore. 

And it seems I might have a little problem with commitments too. At first with relationships (which might have been due to what happened in middle school), and then now with work. During New Year’s I mentioned about getting a new role in my job, and a few days back my colleague was telling me that they’re considering converting me to permanent for said role. Honestly, the entire time I thought I could just do the new job without having to commit to their company. It definitely freaked me out, but my colleague seemed to assure me that it’s gonna be pretty much the same, just that now if I decide to leave, I gotta tell them a month earlier instead of just 3 days. 

But I realize I need to stop worrying so much, especially about what others think. Let them judge you for your coping mechanisms with shows and movies (came across some beautiful comments written by redditors about how shows/movies/music/fandoms etc are all part of life. They might not be the important bits, but the most important of the unimportant ones. If it makes you happy, that’s all that matters.) So, let them judge you for your thinking or whatever else. You do you. 

Another bit I found from reddit (credit to the user): 

And today, I overheard this line from a motivational video that my dad was watching: “don’t let anyone rush you with their timelines”. It really hit me. Hard. Though I guess no one is really pressurizing me with their timelines, maybe my mom a little, but they’re right. As they said, everything happens on their own time, own pace. Your own clock.  

And looking at the brighter side of things this week, I do feel a little more motivated. Yes, freaked out about everything too, but also oddly motivated. Finally got back into learning German and Spanish again, and even found out they do meet ups! Very interested in going to one, which I might have to check out the next after I’ve brushed up on my Spanish (or German if they have one soon)! Also started trying better self care techniques like taking care of my hair and skin more. And also tried to get back into reading. 

To end off... 

X

[sanguinesprout]

Thunderstorms and rainbows all around! (Job things, update blah, perfectionism sucks and what even is communication)

Pheeeew! The past month has been a lot more busy and stressful but I’m finally kinda getting myself closer to getting a job! So I actually managed to apply to 6 jobs so far! Six! I mean, to most people that’s probably nothing, but that’s a lot for me that would normally only apply to like... 1 or probably nothing lol @w@” So yay and keep going me! ^^ I’m really thankful to my sis for encouraging me, even though she loses her patience sometimes, but I really am such a weenie baby x.x

1 job rejected my application, 2 jobs I didn’t hear from, 1 I only just applied to (which is actually the same as the very 1st one I applied to last time, hah!) and 2 I did hear from. Those two are ones set by recruitment agencies and are warehouse/factory type jobs where they hire in bulk. They both don’t have any formal interviews or anything like that but they had this registration form filling kind of appointment. I mean, it wasn’t retail like I was aiming for, but maybe this would actually suit me better maybe? Baby steps!

I decided not to do one of the two that I heard from (a warehouse one) because it was too far away and also it sounded too physically demanding for me. The second (factory) I’ve been debating whether to go through with or not for like two weeks since I’ve been accepted because my health problems may make it unsuitable for me, but there’s gonna be an induction day sometime soon hopefully and maybe I can make a good decision then. Travel to the second job is much less a hassle than the one I rejected too, here’s hoping it’ll be okay! And if I never try I won’t know!

The one I applied for today... it’s retail just like the others I unsuccessfully applied for, I wonder if I’ll be successful this time, who knows! I feel it’d be a much better way to grow and learn to face people even better and would definitely be much more varied than the factory job which is just robot-like repetitiveness but that may be more comfortable in regards to predictability. Either way I’m gonna have to start talking to at least co-workers and stuff, ahhh I’m nervous, but I need to get outta my comfort zone! Onwards!

Until then, gotta keep applying and trying, maybe neither of these will be suitable or possible, or maybe I’ll find something even more awesome! It’s both really scary and kinda exciting. I want to finally show some independence, that I’m capable of working and talking to people and most of all help my family some, because right now and well, for ages we have been struggling and there’s alotta stressful stuff happening for them >< C’mon, I can do it!!

In general other stuff, I am almost at the end of my online course thing!! I wouldn’t have expected to get here but it’s all because of my sis helping me out a lot ;w; I can’t help but feel I’m being bad ahhh like I’m a super law abiding kind of person, I feel like I’m cheating! But then again the course material is impossible to complete with only my noob knowledge, it was false advertising! W/e when the course is done I hope I never have to do another like that again!

Uhhh anyways, besides that ball of stress I actually managed to do some more baking with my sis and sewing and it was all kinda last minute stuff, which usually freaks me out! I mean, I kinda got moody and needed some persuading by my sis but I did it!! :D I went shopping a bunch and didn’t feel too anxious except for that ‘oh no, I didn’t buy anything, now the shop people will think I’m stealing’ kind of paranoia... I’m slowly kinda getting over it, it’s just having that open shopping bag clunking around on my shoulder with stuff from a previous shop makes me extra nervous around staff OTL. It’s okay, think more rationally! There’s nothing wrong with not buying anything! Plenty of people do this and are fine!

There were also some important family days, but Idk why... I was really irritable and moody and messed one of them up and had a massive falling out with my sis. She said a lot of harsh things and I was being kind of cold and unresponsive but also critical, there was crying and anger on both sides. I guess my depressive feelings just got too deep and I was getting to cooped up and stressed in my head to be able to think or do anything else... I had been feeling even more low those few days, it was my fault. It’s just so difficult to control sometimes, but I gotta keep trying to stay out of my head, quit overthinking and falling into the negative and keep it that way some more.

Anyways, we managed to reconcile some while later and everything and the rest of the days were good! I bonded with my family with a game of charades, which they were reluctant to play at first, but warmed to it and smiled and laughed a lot! The things I baked and sewed were for them and it made them happy too! It was nice, I was happy too, I hope there will be more times like this more often! c:

In regards to blog stuff and art stuff, it really hasn’t gone anywhere yet still. I’m hoping that when I get the job thing sorted, maybe I will feel less guilty about doing things like that which I consider as leisure stuff. But is this unreasonable? I don’t want to keep pushing it back and delaying it but I just feel too overwhelmed, it’s like I can only focus on one thing at once, but I know I am capable of doing more..! I just need to push myself!

I also keep being too much of a perfectionist, it was even a big part of the reason I had a falling out with my sis :c I’m so critical of myself all the time and others sometimes, it’s just so frustrating and incomprehensible. I’m so scared of doing things wrong or imperfect, it’s definitely unreasonable and unrealistic of me to keep thinking this way ;^; It’s so hard to just ignore these feelings. It’s really hard to get me to do something in the first place, I’m just giving myself unnecessary grief. 

Failing and flaws are part of learning, I’m setting myself too high expectations, I need to not be so hard on myself. What I’m doing is just fine, as long as I keep going, I’ll keep improving! If something doesn’t go so well this time, then I’ll just do it again next time but better! I’ll try to keep these in mind more!

I haven’t really been interacting with anyone or commenting at all in general other internet-ness which is well, not so good. I hope I can become comfortable enough to do things like commenting and following people and posting soon! Hoping probably isn’t good enough though, it’s all about foregoing the comfort zone again and just doing! I’m too ashamed of myself ahh

Oh! To the lovely person that liked and left a small but kind comment on my last post, even though you probably won’t see this, I want to say thank you!! When I did see it later on, it really made me smile! <3 

I guess this must be how people feel when I gave them comments in the past, it really is motivating! Giving someone a smile is definitely much better than giving in to fear!

I feel really bad because this one online friend that popped up since last time, I made sure not to just ignore them but I’ve kinda been less responsive to them... in the hope they message less frequently at least... gah! Idk... I feel kinda uncomfortable that they tried to speak to me everyday, like I had nothing new to say to them and it made me feel even more anxious. Even more so when they tried to compliment and get closer to me... ack! *sirens blaring*

Though I have had a lot on my plate to do and think about lately and I’ve told them this many times and I have been polite and friendly to them... I’m just scared I’ll come off to them as a jerk but I just kind of want some space and it really just ahhhh idk how to respond? My own awkwardness and inability to just communicate without freaking out is killing me..! Am I being unreasonable here?? T^T;;; OTL OTL OTL

Hm, I think that’s enough of my derpy flailing for today, I’ll stop here but Imma keep goin irl! Yeah, do the stuff!! Go go go! 

After a thunderstorm a rainbow can appear, and one really did the other day!

May everyone see rainbows after their thunderstorms too! Good things can follow times of struggle or great effort!

Let’s go be productive and be good to ourselves! 

Have a great week! ^^

[soft-slow-blue]

happy 2018! read below for some end-of-year thoughts, a lot of sappy btob love, and shoutouts.

2017 was a hard year, in more ways than one. it was certainly a very tough year, globally speaking, but it was also very hard for me personally. I moved back to my home country after over two years abroad. I started a new job in a new city. I ended a six-year friendship that had turned toxic. I poured too much of myself into my work, suffered several mental breakdowns because of it, and had to come to grips with the fact that, despite my best efforts to pretend otherwise, that I was not okay. I learned the hard way that refusing to seek help is not a sign of strength - it’s just another way that we continue to hurt ourselves.

outside of regular therapy, I coped by getting back into kpop. since college, kpop had been a way for me to escape when my problems become too much. watching these beautiful celebrities with their carefully manicured personalities allowed me to pretend everything was fine, even when it clearly was not. the fact that I was using these groups as a distraction from my real life meant, though, that I was not particularly attached to any of them. sure, I liked some groups for their musical talent and their humor, and I would support and applaud them in their endeavors, but I never felt the need to declare myself as a fan, or to talk to other people about them.

then, in mid-september, I encountered btob for the first time, and that all changed.

I didn’t find btob the way that I usually discover new groups. I didn’t click on one of their music videos or hear a song of theirs on spotify. instead, I came across them while watching monsta x-ray. at first, I was confused by their guest appearance. monsta x is already so loud and funny, I thought. what can this new group possibly teach them?

yeah. they proved me very wrong. and that was with only five out of seven members present.

after that, I was intrigued, and kept looking into the group. I watched a few music videos and enjoyed them, and giggled at their appearance on amigo tv (sungjae catching the gummy that was meant for ilhoon is still one of my favorite moments, hands down). but it wasn’t until I came across their appearance on “hello counselor” that I realized, this group is different.

I watched the episode avidly, charmed by peniel’s personality and the easy way that he joked with the hosts about his hair loss. I laughed, along with everyone else, as he exposed (?) eunkwang for calling him a football and a globe (sidebar: when will btob ever let eunkwang live?). then, as eunkwang, minhyuk, and hyunsik expressed their genuine concerns for peniel, I found myself tearing up a little bit, though I am usually not a crier. the level of care that they showed peniel, and the candidness with which they revealed the unseen challenges of the idol industry - it affected me very deeply. by the time that their segment was over, I knew that I was a goner.

(it was also the moment that minhyuk cemented himself as my bias, but that’s a story for another time).

this was the first time I wanted to support a group beyond just streaming their videos from time to time. this was the first time that a group motivated me to actually participate in the fandom. this was the first time that I pushed myself to connect with other fans, and made friends who also loved btob.

it has now been just over three months since I first got into btob. every day, I think that I could not possibly love them any more, and then they do something to prove me entirely wrong. I have never laughed more deeply with any other group, nor felt as fiercely proud and protective. their music reassures me that things will be alright when I cannot tell myself the same. the love that they show each other and their fans inspires me to offer the same to the important people in my life.

I will remember 2017 as a year of challenges. but I will also remember 2017 as the year that I fell in love with btob, and for that, I am incredibly grateful. thank you, for continuing to make the music that you care about, for giving so much love to your fans, for being a close and affectionate family. you surprise me daily with your talents, your humor, and your willingness to just be your strange, wonderful, lovable selves. I have learned so much from watching you. you make me want to be a kinder person, to reach out to people, to celebrate the things that we love.

you have done so, so well this year. I am so proud of all of you, and wish you nothing but the greatest happiness and success. see you in the new year.

and finally, thank you also to everyone on tumblr who has made my experience in the fandom wonderful.

shoutout to @kwangie for putting up with my awkward first forays into tumblr messaging and introducing me to btob’s excellent japanese discography. @ddonggeun, thanks for responding to my weird asks and sharing my (poor) sense of humor ^^ at least we can forever agree that hyunsik...could be making better fashion choices. @softki you are super super kind and caring and your posts about kihyun (aka my monsta x bias) always make me smile! @irishthanhy we haven’t talked much, but I really appreciated you reaching out to me and telling me where to find subbed episodes of “unexpected heroes”! I hope all these minhyuk gifs continue to brighten your day~ @sungjaesgf you are the sweetest spreader of btob love ever, and I always enjoy talking with you! I don’t know how you managed to tell that I have an intimidating stare (confirmed by irl friend) by simply chatting with me, but I guess sungjae isn’t the only psychic out there, hehe. @eunk1 seeing your messages always makes me happy when you have time to drop by tumblr, and you always say the most lovely and caring things! @riversonfire, my fellow minhyuk lover and pretzel sister, I love our long convos about btob, suju, and just about everything else.

further shoutouts to mutuals (apologies if I missed anyone - please let me know if I did!): @hyunsiks-eyesmile @squirrel-minhyuk @withyook @lovebtob @meloversee I am a grandma when it comes to tumblr and I often forget to press “like” (it’s nothing personal - I also fail to do this on instagram all the time), but I love and appreciate all of you so much.

and thank you to everyone for 300 followers!! I never thought I’d get this far when I started this blog about a month ago. please feel free to message me anytime, and I hope I can continue to make content that makes your day just a little bit brighter. 

[velkynkarma]

Get to Know the Author

@bosstoaster has been tagging me all night :P

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

I’ve had the name ‘Karma’ for about 17 years now? I don’t even remember where it came from. The ‘Velkyn’ got added a little over 10 years ago when I decided I wanted to get back into fic writing. But I was still in that phase where you think you’re supposed to ‘grow out’ of fandoms and writing fanfiction, so I didn’t want any of my friends to know I was doing it. I was embarrassed. It was silly. I picked a different handle, VelkynKarma, which actually means ‘hidden Karma.’ Later I just liked the name and also got over my embarrassment for fic writing and just started using it everywhere.

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos).

No matter what statistic you look at, Routine Maintenance wins across the board by a large margin. Parasite Knight only has 1 less subscription, though, so I guess it’s a fair contender on subs.

3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

Same as my tumblr icon, it’s one of my OC’s, Morrigu Lovel. He is a little smartass and I love him.

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

Oh for sure, there’s a few lovely readers that come back every time and always have something to say. I love you guys :) And a few others that don’t comment on every chapter or every work, but the comments they leave are always phenomenal and make my day.

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

Depends on my mood, and I don’t necessarily read the entire fic, just the paragraphs/scenes/chapters that really stick out to me. But yeah, I’ve got some favorites I return to a lot.

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

Oh geez. This one’s hard to say since I watch stuff on AO3 and FF.net. A lot? I think a lot of those fics are dead now though.

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

Mmmm I don’t really have a tendency to stick to any particular series or AU for very long? I guess in terms of general themes I’ve done zombie AU’s the most, between Age of Heroes for Young Justice and Road Trip to End Times for Voltron...something about zombie apocalypse scenarios just fascinates me, especially since it can be done so many different ways.

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

252 user subs, 444 work subs, 2039 bookmarks. I didn’t even know that until now, huh

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

There’s some character interactions that are such hot-button topics in the VLD fandom I’m cautious about approaching them because I don’t want to deal with people complaining or begging for things to get escalated. Like, I love Keith and Lance’s interactions in canon, but don’t have much fic centered around them because ship lashback is real.

10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

Short fic. What is brevity even? I can’t do zines or commissions because I can’t figure out how to manage a damn word count.

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

Nope! I don’t write any ships at all. I just write platonic interaction. Though I guess I wouldn’t be adverse to a platonic ‘rarepair’ as long as I liked the characters’ interaction potential.

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

So far, 25. 23 of those are Voltron, 1 is Young Justice, and 1 is Supernatural (experimenting with cross-posting on both of those last two, some fandoms are just hard to break into or not on certain sites).

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

Oh boy. In progress? I wanna say 3. Notes? A lot, lot more.

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

I jot down notes! Or email myself ideas if I’m at work/out and about. Or speak them into a little portable digital tape recorder I keep next to my bed, if it’s the middle of the night and I have an idea, but lack dexterity to type.

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

Not in a long, looong time.

16. How did you discover AO3?

Through TVTropes. Every time I finished a new series I’d swing by to read tropes pages and see if there were any decent fic recs. At first they all went to Fanfiction.net or livejournal but, over time, this ‘Archive’ thing kept showing up. I made an account to lurk or subscribe to things but didn’t actually start posting to it until at least a year later.

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

Moderately well known in the platonic corner of it probably assuming people know bosstoaster and I are not actually the same person lol but probably not well known outside of that. Once upon a time I was a Big Name in the One Piece fandom, but after the timeskip I fell out of the fandom and lost my pirate king throne. That’s okay, it was fun while it lasted.

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

No but you all are too kind

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

In terms of ‘official’ authors, Brandon Sanderson is everything I ever aspire to be as a writer, and I take a lot of inspiration from that. For fic? My buddy BlackFriar was super helpful during the Young Justice era. More recently in the VLD fandom, @maychorian was big for just...getting me to stay in the fandom at all? One of her fics got me hooked and I stuck around, and then felt compelled to write, instead of just drifting off to the next interesting thing. And the Think Tank ( @bosstoaster @butteredonions @ashinan @mumblefox ) have all been huge for getting me to keep writing, between writing sprints and interesting discussions and a lot of encouragement, so that’s been huge for me this past year.

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

At the risk of sounding like that one video...just do it. It’s scary to put yourself out there, but just do it. You learn by doing. You also learn by absorbing new things around you, so read a lot and try new stuff; you never know when something completely random or a personal experience might actually add a lot to your story. And finally, write for you, first. Write the stories you want to see. Writing for comments/bookmarks/reblogs only goes so far. It means your motivation is reliant solely on people liking your work, which means you start writing for other people and not for yourself...and if reception is lackluster, it can kill your ability to finish a project, which hurts your practice at follow-through. It’s a slippery slope and starts to make the whole thing a lot less fun and a lot more of a chore. Write things you want to read, and if you feel like sharing them after, other people might like them too, but it’s important that you like it, first.

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

Has to be plotted completely. If I try to wing it I meander or get hung up on trying to keep track of details. Turns into total garbage.

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

A few times, sure. Happens to everyone. Most often, it’s people begging, demanding, or insinuating that my platonic fics should include a ship, especially if the fic focuses on the interactions of two specific characters. Those are very frustrating because I’m always upfront about the fic being friendship only, and there are usually a million other ship fics already out there. Leave my platonic fic alone! I usually ignore the comments, or just politely remind people it’s friendship only and will remain that way. In one bewildering instance in a different fandom I had somebody who had been thoroughly enjoying the fic up until the climactic battle, whereupon they were furious at how it was resolved, and took great pains to tell me just what they thought. That one stung. I had to sit on it for a few days before I worked up the nerve to respond, and chatted with a few friends over it too. In the end I realized that it was more comparable to a fan really enjoying a canon work but being mad about a sudden twist that just didn’t seem right to them. It happens. I thanked them for reading, explained that I disagreed with their comments but did hear them, and thanked them for their time. Best I could do.

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

I am straight-up incapable of romance, period. Even so far as to slide into ‘fake’ romance (I once got prompted for fake marriage/dating and literally couldn’t envision how to do it? It’s just so foreign to me). Or flirting. I can’t even identify flirting IRL. Basically anything in that general area of writing is completely out of my league. I can write intense scenes that are intimate in non-romantic, non-sexual ways, but those are really difficult for me to do too and I’m constantly second-guessing myself in case it’s maybe too much.

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

If I told you I’d have to kill you. But no, srsly, I don’t like to share ideas in progress until it’s almost done, just in case. Sometimes I share and then immediately lose interest, but I’ve already raised peoples’ hopes, and that’s just a dick move.

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

I’ll have outlines, or sometimes need to plan around prompts. I don’t usually do series, so I never really need to plan too far ahead though. Sometimes if I’m plotting a crossover/AU I’ll obtain the source material and read/watch/play it to start gathering notes for that fic while working on a different fic, so that by the time I’m done writing the current story, the AU’s skeleton is plotted out and I have a place to slot in all the characters.

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

No. I’ve gotten better habits since working with the Think Tank but I still tend to be more of a ‘burst’ writer (no activity for days or weeks, and then suddenly word vomiting 100K in a month).

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

By a HUGE margin

28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

Oooh, that’s a toss-up between Phantasmagoria and Prince of Memory. The former because I love writing horror and it’s an idea I’d wanted to tackle for a while. The latter because it was a personal writing challenge to myself that I honestly wasn’t sure was going to go over all that well, but the response was stunning, and I was quietly surprised.

29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

Caged Bird, from a different fandom. I make it a personal rule to never delete stories that I’ve posted, but ooh man, I wanted to get rid of this one really bad. I was happy when LJ gutted it. I actually don’t have any real dislike for any of my Voltron stuff.

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

Still writing because I’d die if I stopped. Like a shark. But with writing.

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

That flash of inspiration, when you get an idea and suddenly it’s building itself almost too fast for you to keep up. Dialogue. Action sequences.

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

Getting started. Titles. Editing. Research. Any particularly emotional moment.

33. Why do you write?

Because fandoms are fun but I have so many questions after. “What if X happened? What if Y was a factor? Why not Z?” I try to hunt down answers to these questions in fandoms and if the fic isn’t already written, I write it. Also to challenge myself to do things that haven’t been done in the fandom yet, or to tackle things I haven’t tried yet.

I think everyone’s been tagged already so...feel free to play if you want, I guess!

[igumdrop]

WOAH, it’s october?!

hmm...october...was a weird month. i think the first two weeks were super chill, and then the last two weeks came crashing down on me. i also went to twitchcon which was an AMAZING experience! i’m sure you guys have seen a ton of photos and videos of it on social media already, so i won’t talk about it too much, but it really was amazing meeting any of you guys in real life :) my line was filled for my meet & greet and it shocked me...in a good way of course!

here’s a really janky picture of my twitchcon day 2 outfit (i trust you guys don’t share these outside the sub community...i post the photos that didn’t make it here HAHA) 

i had midterms surrounding twitchcon, so i flew back to new york with lots of studying to do with very little time! i managed, though, here’s some photos from my studying sessions/relaxing boba walks:

i honestly felt so much stress during study week, i can’t even talk about it because it makes me feel the stressed again...HAHA, i’m sure you guys can understand though. luckily i got an 85 for my discrete exam (which i swear i was going to get a 30 on) because of my op friend seean who cram studied with me and taught me everything. i’m so used to studying alone irl and not really making a lot of friends in my classes so it was a blessing to be honest T_T...

i honestly had a pretty boring month other than twitchcon...sorry my life isn’t more exciting HAHA, but i did take a lot of selfies this month. here’s me extremely bored on campus even though i have tons of work to do:

i realized that even though i’m so extremely extroverted at events, on stream, or just in my normal element in general, i seriously crave my alone time and need it desperately or else i’ll collapse, HAHA. i used to hate living alone in new york being away from all my friends, and of course i’d still love to be around them any opportunity i get...but i’ve made the best out of it and have come to appreciate the alone time! i think something that’s taken for granted is just being able to walk around alone outside while listening to our favorite playlist. i just love watching the world alone..what do you guys think?

i’m sure you guys all know that my monitor broke along with my laptop, especially during a stressful af week T_T but honestly streaming made me feel so so much better. it’s such a huge stress reliever for me to be able to stream and talk to you guys. also big thanks to johnathan (even though i feel like he really doesn’t like the spotlight but i can’t help it) for being so generous and helping me in my time of need. i cry everytime...and shout out to everyone of you who give me so much emotional support in chat, it really means the world to me.

i bet a lot of you guys are working super hard and not getting the credit for it...i was talking to raigee about his schedule and holy crap he told me he works 12 hour shifts 6-7 days for the past 3 weeks. isn’t that crazy? but it made me think about how much hard work everyone else is putting into their jobs or school, and i just wanted to tell you guys i’m so proud! i really am. here’s a quote i like(but please don’t feel like you have to go through things alone, it’s just a motivator for self-encouragement...i probably would have worded it differently but the meaning of the quote still reaches me): 

sometimes, it’s not even that we don’t have people to go to for encouragement, but we can’t just expect people to say the things we want to hear. that’s why i think it’s important to remember to motivate ourselves, compliment ourselves, and really try to encourage ourselves to keep going. but i do think it’s much easier when you’re not alone... i kind of want to make a channel in discord (maybe a private one) for anyone who wants to share their feelings and confide in others, and for anyone who wants to help out whenever they can with full sincerity. i feel bad if you guys pour your thoughts out in a random main chat where the dynamic can be half joking, half serious. do you guys think that’d be a good idea? let me know <3 

there’s been a lot of shootings recently, a lot of horrible events happening. i won’t talk about it too much because it does get me emotional since it’s a topic i feel like i can do nothing to change, but...it made me realize how kind each and everyone of you are, and how you guys must not be aware of how much you already contribute to the world. this is probably my favorite quote of the month hehe: 

so thank you guys for being so kind, soft-hearted, and considerate of others. we are a reflection of those around us, so if you guys just feel ‘’normal’’ and don’t feel like you’re doing anything special, just remember that you really are. it’s easy for us to feel like we blend in or are just average, but on a global level you guys are seriously amazing and i hope you know that. 

i have lived a lot of my life being somewhat of a pushover, or giving away time and effort that hasn’t been reciprocated. i have been backstabbed or turned against as well, and it makes me feel like wow...what is even the point of being nice, kind, or giving? but you guys take those thoughts and doubts in my head. i don’t ever want to stop loving people or giving to people because you guys have shown so much love to me. i’ve learned to give by embracing the appreciation i get back, and i think that’s more than enough to make me happy! but i do hope you guys prioritze yourselves over giving to other people: please remember that. just like how you guys wouldn’t want me to give away myself completely to the point where i’m losing out of it or hurting myself, i want the same for you guys. 

oh god this post was so rushed, i have to go to sleep because i have class early tomorrow. i usually grammar-check my post and delete unnecessary sentences (i tend to write TOO much and it waters down the meaning) but it’s already 4:28 AM and i must go! hopefully i can edit this tomorrow or something because i feel bad for making you guys read this horrible jumbled mush LOL okay well, i love you guys! bye! 

xo

jaime

[five-guns-days]

tagged by: @timesvigilante tagging: @theidealiist  @soldier306  @thiefofnobility  @americanparamedic @latiimer @friendoftheood @mrtimeandspace @floriistry @fiiveroundsrapid @chipconnoisseur

four similarities between mun and muse:

1. That a harsh reality to say but I feel like someone temporary in people's life, which appears suddenly into their life, managed to make these people/friends better before saw them move on. This is a horrible feeling. Pre-Tumblr, I have kept only one treasured friend meeting on the Internet, then IRL, inside a period when it was both complicated and the contact had remained with a friendship as strong as before years later (who is likewise to the Fifth Doctor & Nyssa to be honest: we share lot of common points, we move on both without mean to before we find each other again). Thing is...I don't want to be temporary into people's life. However, it's happens. Time and time again. Most of time it's because they move on, change of the fandom and quit the platform they were when I didn't take the occasion to express how I cared about them or wanted to know them as the reunion in IRL life with oldest friends; either it's because I lost interest or the interest of question had being broken by the fandom so I need a break when it's a the flaw of mine to run away when the context is uncomfortable for me...and when I come back with emotional strengths it's too late...either they were toxic people when the friendship I thought existed wasn't here. This had left me a wound of loneliness that is hard to heal & to cope with, when I do my best.

2. For added the first point, I have difficulties to connect with people. I'm exactly like the Fifth Doctor who didn't ask questions about the past of his companions or try to instruct himself into another people's life by imposing himself, let them a huge privacy --- I'm the same. I have the tendency to stay in a corner during a long time, watching and bring positive vibes without get the feeling I want to impose myself. I also don't say much about myself, that true. It's not because I have something to hide, no, it's either because I don't have a big deal to say either it's because it's full of emotional trauma / past betrayal / many disappointments I don't see the point to bring that up. For resuming talk about my feelings, I have also difficulties to cope with them. I'm not the person who cry outside when I breaking down (which had happen when really it's was too hard) and generally speaking, without being heartless, I don't express my feelings openly. I feel lot of things, but all these emotions are buried into me, when I rather expose them though words and inner monologue.

3. The past haunt me. It's also horrible to say but I have a perfect emotional memory. That mean, even if it's years after, even it's a century had passed, the memories of the past hadn't be forget. Lost contact with my high school friend and remember all the time we had passed together and regret to don't have more time with her while being the one trying to kept the contact? Check. Being able to make a difference between the pressures you get before a certain event and now? Check. Regret every time you had hurt someone without mean to and be scared to never being forgiven? Check. Remember all the time you had suffered mentally even when you had move on of that pain? Check. It's pass though nightmares, though remembrances of things you had but you had lost, of comparison of yourself though before/now, though thoughts sometimes you can't put behind...I had been literally the naive & full of joy & full of enthusiasm & full of discovery of the season 19's Five...and I feel like now like him after Warriors of the Deep: full of regrets, damaged by life, somehow regret to had been so naive before and hadn't try harder. The good news I tell myself is I do hope this bring me sort of wisdom after all my bad experience with life. Also, like Five, the past isn't only an engine of regrets; it's also a motive to be a better person. I still try. I still hope. I still help people selflessly. I'm aware the return might or might be not here, still learn to live with it, as I hope to be forgiven for my past mistakes.

4. For ended the feelings novel alike...I share the same no-interest of sexual entanglements as Five, and when I did fall in love, it's complicated. My real first IRL crush when I was young was with one of the former bully in the high school, when it's just happen, and despite my efforts to try known him even if it's was close to a disaster or at least have some contact with him (I literally screaming internally when we got friendly words on Facebook once upon a time) it's was one-side way. It's even more real today even though he gets a special part of my heart even today. For put it even more simply, I have a libido inexistent (when people doesn't understand this tbh), any interest to put my body forward to attract someone, any interest to sex...and the vision of a family can wait. It isn't I don't want this one of these days...I'm not ready for it.

  four differences between mun and muse:

1. I was unaware of cricket until Five come into my life. Since I knew him, I had read the Wikipedia page, researches cricket matches and try understand the rules.

2. I'm not as cultivate as the Doctor is, whatever it's the scientist matter or the historical matter. He knows definitely more than I do, especially when it's concern the US/UK history (even if he does know the history of my country as The Church and the Crown play back confirm me) when, on my side, I need to carry on many researches for didn't say a mistake and being historically accurate. I have many things to learn and the Doctor being in my life is mostly an occasion of cultural matter.

3. The most important point of divergence: I'm nicer than the Fifth Doctor. Far more kind. Five hadn't have a behavior easy, since time to time, without reason, he love trolling you or he can get irritated for whatever reason and not really grateful time to time...he is a also a sarcastic man who make me thing of a beautiful puppy you await the right moment for bite you or/and eat you like a Rottweiler. I'm not the sort of person who will attack you without warning. And I'm not an asshole. Like NAH.

4. To the displeasure of my muse, I'm mostly a cat person when he is a dog person.

[chaddicus]

I’m gonna go to bed real soon but just a quick wow update, today I scrounged up the nerve to queue for emerald nightmare/xavius lfr (how does one phrase these things???) and it went actually super smoothly. I swapped to dps because even if I was willing to queue with a bunch of other random ppl, I was NOT ready for my first at-level (mostly) raid experience to be tanking. no thx. but I’m apparently a higher ilvl than was even possible when emerald nightmare was first released, and lfr is as easy as raids get, and it was way less intimidating than I thought it might be -- mostly I just attacked things after the tank pulled them? I mean I say mostly but that was literally the whole thing. and tbh it went by quick enough that while I’m not willing to tank anything that srs just yet, I feel like tanking’s probably less scary than I expect it to be? which is good because I’d like to actually learn how to do it.

anyway so as a result of that I’m now moving forward in the suramar questline again, because apparently the rep gates actually WERE removed and I don’t have to hit 20k revered just to move on, and I can hopefully work on boosting my rep to exalted while I continue the story. the raid thing was the biggest block for me moving forward, and after overcoming it I’m now much more actively on my way to maybe unlocking nightborne!!! but I also just really love the story and I’m so excited to see it through!!!

tbh though I’m. not 100% sure I’m gonna get battle for azeroth any time soon. like preorder gives me allied races, sure, but I have a lot of alts I want to level and if I haven’t hit 110 on them by the time bfa is released, I’m probably gonna struggle to feel motivated to keep leveling them when I could instead be playing the new content. I want to be able to commit to all my alts & I don’t want to feel like I’m split two ways, like I am right now, pouring myself into finishing legion & unlocking nightborne (& also argent tourney on marg) when I’d really like to be able to play around with the new leveling, but I only have so much free time. I mean with how little obligations I have irl it seems like it should be more but like. I can’t manage to play kae AND marg AND spend time leveling alts; if I’m playing on an alt, I’m either neglecting legion or skipping my argent tourney dailies, which are really delaying progress on things I’m dedicated to accomplishing.

on the other hand, after my hiatus from legion I found myself a bit disappointed that the world had moved on before I was ready for it -- I popped over to the broken shore the other day and illidan was there, twice as tall as my belf dh and very much alive, and I still haven’t completed the questline to bring him back, bc it requires heroic dungeons which I have. not managed to queue or otherwise gather a group for. and the barrier around suramar has been destroyed since the second I showed up! I could just fuck off to argus right now if it would please me and the story wouldn’t bother checking if I’d actually played through the events that lead up to it! it would be nice to play through an expansion & its story as it’s released, so the world actually exists as it should around me.

anyway that ramble isn’t really that important, I’m just feeling really good that I got through the raid part and am now getting to actually continue the story in suramar. I didn’t want to really move on to legionfall or ESPECIALLY not argus when there’s still so much for me to do here!!! also I really want nightborne. ever since I met them I wanted to play them. I’m v happy I’ll be able to at some point.

this is the end of my wow update ramble!! positive emotions!!! good things!!!!!

[usabilityrocks]

Personality Breathes Life Into The Customer Chatbot Experience

Make those interactions with chatbots come alive. Here’s how…

If legendary actress, chanteuse, comedienne, and style icon Mae West was an expert in user experience (UX), she might now be famous for the chatbot design principle: “It’s not the bots in your life that matter, it’s the life in your bots.”

Mae West in 1936 (Wikipedia public domain image)

Actually, both parts of that would-be statement are correct:

The work that your chatbot will carry out is vital because it provides the reason for the botification of that task in someone’s life.

But the style, tone and attitude of the chatbot — the personality — that is defined during the design process is what will determine the success of the chatbot. This personality is the key to bringing the chatbot user a great experience, and not there is nothing better than a reputable experience to get more customers and retain existing ones.

Exploring the fascinating personality of the Spanish language Politibot.io chatbot for Facebook Messenger and Telegram. That’s a great introduction to the start of a beautiful chatbot relationship!

Personality: an uninterrupted series of successful gestures

 — F. Scott Fitzgerald (“The Great Gatsby)

Yes, friends, personality is the new user experience. But, designing that personality to resonate with the chatbot user is a science and, at the same time, an art.

“It’s no coincidence that both Howdy and X.ai , a startup whose robot intelligently schedules e-mail meetings, will hire writers with performing arts funds to help define the UX of their products.” — The next phase of UX: design of Chatbot personalities .

Fortunately, little by little we are experiencing the death of that hostile concept of “the user” and of “using” a “system”. Instead, we’re see the emergence of a human design narrative focused on the dialog between people and machines by having a natural conversation .

Personality, therefore, is fundamental to the success of this seemingly natural interaction between the human and the machine. Personality, like true user experience, goes much further than the transaction.

For UX professionals, what we are talking about here is anthropomorphism(not to be confused with personification). In general, you can think of anthropomorphism as the attribution of human motivations, beliefs and feelings to inanimate things like computers, vehicles, robots, and so on.

Herbie the Love Bug . One of the most famous anthropomorphic vehicles. The concept of anthropomorphic vehicles has been around for a while; all have different personalities. (Image shared via Wikipedia )

It is important to realize that anthropomorphism does not mean the application of every subtle nuance and whim of human personality to the human-machine interaction. Rather, it means focusing on the dominant, memorable, and more key personality traits that are useful for the chatbot interaction in that particular context.

Ah, there’s that critical UX concept again: context. Or if, you like, “it depends”.

Therefore, for chatbot developers it is vital to make use of important and contextually relevant anthropomorphic principles to create solutions that resonate with customers in the moment, at the right time and in the right place .

When we interact with machines, we tend to project human emotions and beliefs into the inanimate computer. When the interaction is simple and pleasurable, we attribute the pleasure to the machine in the same way that we blame it when things do not work as we wish. — Don Norman, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things.

To a certain extent, anthropomorphism of chatbots and participation in a digital conversation is determined by the artificial intelligence capability that your chatbot platform can provide. However, designers (or artists or performers if you wish) now have a central role in creating the attitude, style and tone of chatbot to reflect an appropriate personality to suit the user’s intent, either by writing prompts or messages or by recording the voice of the chatbot.

Make that personality truly personal

I have already outlined how language development and conversational scripting skills are at the center of the UX design of a chatbot, but I would like to mention some key considerations in the design of personality.

Determine the appropriate attitude, tone and style of your chatbot (i.e., the personality). This means understanding what the personality of your chatbot is, based on the context in which it will be used.

Writing about personality design is worth another article in its own right, but you can check out this piece on Medium and this webinar on how companies can create a tone and voice that really connects with their customers.

If there are toolkits available to help you craft an online personality, then explore their use to do some heavy lifting. Check out the Apple Magic Sauce tool from the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre for example, to see what a derived digital personality might look like, but remember to refine and then test your chatbot’s personality with real customers in real situations.

Introduce your chatbot conversation saying “hello”, “hello”, etc., and respond to greetings, ask how people are doing today, and so on.

Bae by PayPal: A “quirky” fashion chatbot on Facebook Messenger. Bae ?

Remember that the chatbot is not a human and therefore cannot do the same things, therefore, so do remind customers at all times what the chatbot is capable of. Know your limitations!

HubSpot ‘s GrowthBot on Slack introduction

After the user’s “why are you here?” question is answered, ensure your chatbot stands out from the competition by using those personality traitsto create an memorable user experience. True, there is a debate on whether it is necessary to name a chatbot or not, but again, that is another article!

Avoid lazy, tortuous, and repetitive responses. At some point (perhaps the second attempt at the customer asking a question of the chatbot), admit defeat and seek clarification of the user intent. Imagine how a person would react if you did not stop repeating the same phrase to them constantly!

Learn from past conversational interaction decisions and behaviour, and make recommendations accordingly. For example, how your server in your favorite restaurant recommends the new specialties that they have on the menu as well as remembering your “usual”. But do this sensibly. Context is the key to achieving an excellent user experience.

Indicate that the chatbot is reflecting on a question raised, instead of giving a rapid quickfire response. Considering that, the “ I’m thinking”indicators are important. After all, chatbots are still based on emerging AI and ML technology …

Use humor (perhaps the word “wit” is better) wisely, in context, and in places and ways that make sense. Although us Irish like to say “I was only joking!” when things get complicated, I can tell you that most of the time we’re not kidding. That said, without context, sometimes chatbots making a joke about a transaction can be a little unnerving …

Hipmunk on Facebook Messenger “just kidding”. Your mileage may vary on that kind of joking! Use humor wisely.

Manage the usual chatbot interaction chit-chat (“tell me a joke”, “what is the weather”), answer the question “what can you do now?”, and participate in topical events. This apparently “disposable” part of the a chatbot conversation is also an important part of the personality. For example, know which team won last weekend’s game or certain dates such as when International Women’s Day or Christmas is. These kind of issues seem boringly normal, but they are also a UX vehicle to get customers engaged and to smooth the path of the chatbot conversation towards their main intent.

GrowthBot on Slack: Cartoons and jokes are provided regularly.

Try to be somewhat tolerant of chatbot input errors such as typographical mistakes and grammatical blunders, as much as how people talk and write IRL, ways to which people are already accustomed.

Be able to process jargon, abbreviations, urban lingo, emoji, and so on. This part of personality design may depend on customer tolerance and require more research and is something of a a black art. Emoji are now in use frequently in business and in everyday life, almost as a second language, so we should not lose sight of their importance and potential. Obviously, the capability of your chatbot platform again will determine to what extent you can focus on such aspects.

Donut.ai bot on Slack : Talking in emoji. Could emoji be considered anthropomorphic in their own right?

Respect some basic rules of conduct and manners such as the expressions that we take for granted, like saying “thank you”, and recognizing when something is done. Also, do not forget to include clarifications to help the chatbot’s comprehension of the customer intent (“help me out here!”). In the end the goal is to recreate familiar, decent human behavior without being too human.

VHI’s Vee on Facebook Messenger : Scarlet for me. This is Dublin, Ireland slang for embarrassment!

Be polite and understanding. For example, Amazon Alexa (Echo) can diplomatically tolerate many daft and even rude conversations, more so that real people can. It has been programmed to deal kindly with profanity or user frustration, regardless of age and expertise! You can learn from that design decision!

VHI’s Vee on Facebook Messenger handling the more profane language aspect of runner frustration!

Avoid prolonging the conversation and try to connect with the customer intent at all times. Do not forget the problem that the customer brought to the chatbot in the first place, but also know when to close the conversation. Ask if the customer has finished with their task or if they want to continue exploring other features of the chatbot .

Avoid open questions; give options so that the user can choose. “Do you prefer Hip Hop Beyoncé or Glamor Beyoncé?” is a much better way to garner a response and to shape the customer intent that an open question like: “What do you like about Beyoncé?”

PayPal Bae fashion chatbot on Facebook Messenger: Those Beyoncé options

Direct the conversation. Remember that the goal of the chatbot conversation is to solve a problem, so keep on guiding the conversation tree towards the objectives that the bot has . And when will you know when the conversation is really over for now? When the user problem or the intent is resolved.

VHI Vee chatbot on Facebook Messenger adds value to get that running conversation to get you across the finish line. Until the next time!

Lead by example

In conclusion, the design of a chatbot conversation as a natural way of interacting with technology means that we are now in the era of a human-centered design approach in the digital space, and beyond a mere user-centered design. And personality is at the core of that interaction.

Who wants to be called “user” in any context?

Just imagine. What would happen if Amazon “Alexa” were an “Alex” or if all the digital assistants were of a single gender and each had the same personality, style and tone? Think about how this might change your experience and your willingness to engage, depending on the context.

A post shared by Ultan Ó Broin (@dublinrunningdad) on May 5, 2018 at 10:13am PDT

Or would it?

You must investigate and test the impact of personality nuances and differences. Very often a gut feeling based on UX guerrilla research and simple observations about how we live and work with real people with real personalities in real situations is a good starting point to understand how chatbot personality can shape the digital experience.

The personality design side of shaping a chatbot conversation is a true skill and talent; a commodity that is booming in demand. This area is a dynamic space, with many ideas that cover many domains and disciplines, but one thing is clear: thoughtful design of your chatbot’s personality is critical to making your user experience shine.

As Mae West herself said of communicating with your audience:

Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is.

Your opinions and comments on the subject are welcome, hopefully reflecting your personality!

Ultan O’Broin ( @ultan ) is a senior customer experience journey professional in the technology industry and also communicates at events, and on blogs about UX and technology. He is a member of the editorial board of MultiLingual. His opinions here are personal and not necessarily those of any employer.

All screen images are by Ultan O’Broin.