#lifes stressful alongside college moving in with a relative work and a bunch of other stuff

[vilelittlecritter]

If I wasn't so busy all the damn time I'd do commissions, and also the fact I suck major ass at digital and don't have a printer/scanner.

One day, one day I'll steal people's money with mediocre art.

[44-mr-midnight-44]

Whoops, I didn't see that you added a comment to this, I just thought it was the tags!

Ya ya!!! Their relationship gets a lot better as time goes on. :)

There's a really rough patch around the point where Heart moves out as he doesn't tell Mind or Soul and they get really really stressed out. It's following a fight where Heart threatens to leave and one of them [either Mind or Soul, haven't decided which yet} tell him to "{[just do it]}", so over the next week or so Heart starts booking a bunch of appointments and scrounges together money, then silently leaves to a new apartment, staying at hotels for a little while before he can move in.

He does NOT actually ever cut off Mind or Soul but does ghost them, refusing to pick up their calls (as, he knows they will look for him and/or try to stop him), but once he's moved in he finally picks up one of Mind's calls, who's greatly surprised and frenetically (half-furious, half-relief-horrified) starts questioning him on where the cluck he went and why on EARTH would he do that.

Heart explains everything; he got a good job as a barista, has disability benefits, is working with a few non-profits to get on his feet, went to SO many appointments to get a government ID, a social security number, a physical, etc., and was now a legal citizen even despite the fact that there's no evidence he's human or functioning like one.

Mind is greatly surprised, and it just has to sink in that… Heart did it. He actually left, just straight up made up his mind and stood up for himself for once. It's tough for him, and it gets tougher when Soul finds out Heart finally picked up and sobs into the microphone about how he thought he would never hear from again, either from running away or worse, making "(true)" on his threats.

It's a little bit rough for a while. Heart's working relatively long hours and has to have a LOT of meetings with a lot of people for things like food cards and medical assistance, and every now and again gets a phone call from Mind whom is not even HALF as rude as he used to be. It's clear Mind's making a genuine attempt to rekindle, but Heart doesn't know how much he wants it, seeing as how Mind waited until Heart actually had control over his life to apologise.

Mind and Soul are also continuously pushing to find Heart's location, and Heart doesn't know why but he just doesn't trust it. He doesn't think they'll kidnap him or anything (although doesn't believe it to be past them), but he does believe they'll come back in his life and likely either try to take control over it again or be a bigger part of it than he wants them to be right now.

Heart visits during holidays (alongside the rest of Soul's family) and it hurts for Mind and Soul to hear he's doing so well because they think it's "{[obvious]}" that his life is better without them in it, but that's not really the case.

Heart's relationship with them benefitted from some "(time alone)", away from them; as, the amount of power and reign he had over his own existence was lacking and it was undoubtedly painful for him. He needed independence, and to be in-contact with other people than his only two immediate family members, whom were clearly too unstable to have a healthy relationship with in the moment, especially with their dynamic.

One day, Mind manages to get a scholarship; he'd passed a GED for a while now but hadn't left the Mindscape much as he feared change in the world, much more than Heart did. He ended up getting one due to Soul's proof of disability, and since the government counted Soul as the closest thing Mind had to a parent they allowed him to have one which made college plausible; something Mind desperately wanted.

The problem was that dorms were not included; and Mind had no feasible way of getting from point A to point B, and it also did not help that Mind lacked the same "existence legality" that Heart had.

His only hope was staying with Heart.

Heart had bettered himself a lot being independent; he'd learned more about how the real world worked and had been in the process of getting an art therapy degree through online classes, aiming to work with foster homes. He'd become much less spiteful, much less resentful, and allowed Mind to stay with him, letting Mind bunk on the living room couch and making a few short ground rules about staying there.

It was the first time, one of, at least, that Mind had ever experienced Heart having more control over him that he had of Heart.

It kind of helps him have a greater change in perspective, and understand what that feeling of dependency, and desperation, felt like. If Heart didn't want him to stay, it wouldn't be hard to get him to leave; and Mind, being an anomalous logical half of a depressed person's brain, didn't exactly have great legal rights, either, considering he'd still been in the long process of getting them, with much less knowledge on the process that Heart had.

Heart and Mind had started to have the kind of relationship that you'd imagine tense siblings begin to have in adulthood; they had inside jokes, they had banter, they'd have bad movie nights with cheap caramel popcorn from Walmart, they'd spend time with one another's friends as a combined friend group, they'd share each other's makeup and drinks, they'd gossip at unsightly hours… they'd started to become what they started out as, brothers bound by unusual circumstance.

Heart and Mind being gone helped Soul, too; once again, "{time alone}" was very beneficial, and Soul and Whole had begun to "stabilise". In the coming short months Soul would have odd sparks of "double-consciousness" before he and Whole become one-and-the-same; albeit, Soul did retain attributes of his nonhumanity as a side effect. The Mindscape island was closer than ever to Long Island, and Soul had decided to use his land that the government couldn't really stop him from owning (it was quite literally made of his consciousness and he could manipulate it as he pleased) into making a small farm; due to his pleasant childhood memories of working on a farm in his youth.

Eventually, Mind moved out, getting a good apartment in an alright part of town as had gotten a pretty good job and Heart had ended up agreeing with some online friends to split rent and live in a larger apartment together. It kinda just… all worked out in the end.

Heart, Mind, and Soul all had a very positive relationship at this point and made it a mark to spend time together doing something, even if it's just a movie or laser tag, once a month; they regularly call each other, share a lot of Discord servers, and visit from time-to-time. Sometimes they bicker, and banter, but it's fine. It's apart of family.

Mind also got uncle status and Soul got "{grandhost}" status when Heart ended up having kids later on in-life, to add to the sappy fire.

Hope that appeases you, my friend. :) I think of only the SAPPIEST most CORNIEST happy endings for my stories.

All of my stories (that I show to the world consistently) have some sort of "moral" to them, like a good kid's story, and I'd say that this one is that time alone, and time together, can be perfect in the right scenarios and destructive in the wrong ones, and that everyone needs solitary sometimes and every needs company other times. Hope you enjoy!!!

( i feel bad for being so bad at healing )

This piece is very personal to me as I've been going through an extremely tough time and Heart is an extremely personal character to me, so making an art piece about my specific AU of him's rough healing journey really helped despite the VICIOUS "(bad thoughts)" as Heart would call it going through my head.

Because of this, just this once, I want to reiterate that I do not want any Jashshippers, pro-shippers/dark-shippers of any kind, conservatives, TERFs, or anyone who takes pleasure/pride in being a bad, mean person (bragging about doing bad things, loving arguing, boasting about trash-talking, etc.). This art means a lot to me and these types of people are the exact types of people that made me spiral while drawing this (mostly pro-shippers), so please, I request that you leave this alone if you are one of those people. We don't have to fight, just please respect my boundaries.

With all that being said, I would be head over heels if any of you were to gush/over-analyse this art immensely. There's a lot to it.

General context: Lost at Sea is about as close-to-canon as my CCCC AUs get, and it's not close to canon at all. It takes place within a condensed Mindscape-island far off the coast of Long Island (formerly Australia, before Soul broke even more) where Heart and Mind had grown up in-isolation. It is generally inaccessible but there is a bus that can go to and from the island, which is how Heart and Mind had interacted with Soul's family and later on leave the Mindscape island itself. For most of Heart and Mind's life, they had only known each other; initially very close, before Soul's self-loathing had spiralled so far that Heart and Mind broke their oath to attempt to make Soul be "whole" again {unknowingly to Soul, Whole already exists; Whole is Soul when he's asleep, and Soul is Whole when Soul's asleep} and begun to become viciously at war with one another, in an attempt to repair Soul with their own ideals.

Heart had been so tired of never having been listened to by Mind or Soul and being simply rejected for being weaker and technically the cause of Soul's dismay that he had led Mind to a gap in the island's earth to shoot him, having come to the last resort that if he were to ever be understood it would need to be through intense violence. This… backfired, with Heart missing and Mind compromising the hole in-order to imprison Heart at the bottom of it; trapped in a large pool of water with chains forever attempting to pull him under, and Heart had fought for many weeks before giving up; allowing himself to "(die)", believing he could never make it and it was for the greater good.

This failed. Heart did not die and was retrieved several months later. He had developed severe pneumonia from the amount of fluid in his lungs and his muscles were severely atrophied, as he had already had underdeveloped muscles in his unique biology but they were now torn and damaged, meaning Heart could never be physically the same again.

Heart was emotionally damaged almost beyond repair. Mind and Soul believed it had "[{fixed}]" him in a way, albeit Soul was much more empathetic than Mind was; Mind was in-denial over how much it hurt to see his sister gone. Heart responded poorly to the coming months of healing, haunted by unending hours spent convincing himself to not give up only to slowly wear down his will and accept that his life was not worth the effort. The pain, the suffocation, the exhaustion, the hunger, it had all worn on him so much, and following his escape he'd lost over a dozen kilos and found little motivation to do much more than sleep and aimlessly scroll on social media.

All of my stories have some sort of sappy happy ending at the end of them because I just can't help myself, they gotta be happy eventually, and Heart does become happy in this AU eventually (he becomes an art therapist in New York City and lives with a few online friends in a cosy apartment!), but the process to recovery is often times harsh.

(REBLOGS > LIKES I WILL ACTUALLY CRY IF THIS FADES TO OBSCURITY BC IT ONLY GOT LIKES)

[aliferous-ly]

Ambitious

this was a fic long in the making.... it’s,,, pretty personal but i want to post it so lol. me in math

Summary: “Virgil, ironically, religiously completed his homework while Logan finished much of it two or one night before the test (when the homework packet was checked to gain the option of correcting a test). Logan’s approach was not at all systematic, but had worked thus far. 

Well... until, that is... calculus.”

Words: 1860

Genre: it’s angst. not like, heavy themes angst just... yeah. 

Pairing: platonic analogical ig, mainly none

Warnings: LOTs of self deprecating thoughts in here. incompetency , etc. mentions of thorns (metaphorical), sharp thorns. virgil forgets to take care of himself. it’s not a satisfying ending, and if there’s anything else please tell me!

Tags: @sassy-in-glasses @rose-gold-roman @justanotherpurplebutterfly @anxious-but-whatever @echomist13 

“You’re too ambitious for your own good.”

Logan blinked and frowned, hands curling into the fabric of his backpack. “Sorry?”

“Dude, TA? What are you even doing with your life?” Roman said, laughing and shoving grapes into his mouth at the same time. “You barely have enough time as is, I can’t imagine yet another responsibility...”

“I’m fine, I have plenty of time,” Logan said, waving his hand. He spent needed time on classes, yes, but no more than he should be.

“Yeah, I don’t doubt that,” Roman said. “You’re crazy good at managing time.”

Logan nodded uncertainly. “I keep a planner and don’t procrastinate.”

“That is such a lie and you know it,” Roman said, laughing. “How many social studies essays have you bullshitted on the last day?”

Logan sniffed. “I’d say about five.”

Roman snickered and knocked shoulders with him. “Alright, Einstein. How’s math with the Virge?”

“Calc is... fine,” Logan said. He stared at his sandwich, a gross knot of feelings tightening in his gut.

“Calculus sounds so hard,” Patton said, entering the conversation after watching their back and forth.

“It is hard.” Logan sighed, and leaned his cheek on his palm, elbow propped up on the table. “I don’t understand anything. The lessons are quick and complex, it’s hard to keep up, especially with everything else going on right now.”

“Yeah, you have a busy week,” Patton said sympathetically. “But you’ll be okay! You’re our smart Logan, you’ll get it!”

A thorn jabbed into Logan’s chest at the statement, a growing vine of sharp points twisting and squeezing. “...Yeah.”

He tapered off and took a bite of his sandwich, letting Roman take the wheel of the conversation and explain the newest drama between Remy and Nate, who everyone thought were going to get together despite Remy’s obvious infatuation with band nerd Emile Picani.

Logan listened attentively, the thorn twisting deeper and deeper.

—

“See ya after school,” Roman said, waving as he left for spanish.

“Bye,” Logan said, heading off to class. He moved around a line of girls walking on the wrong side of the hallway.

Roman’s earlier statement kept bouncing around in his head – was he too ambitious? He knew he was ambitious, yes, but...

Well, as least he wasn’t actually a TA, just a helper around his old english teacher’s class in his free period. Many times he was there to receive help from her for his new, more advanced english class.

But... he would spend more time teaching other kids, helping around a classroom, than he would studying, which cut into more time at home...

Logan mentally shook himself. No need to focus on that now.

“Hey.”

Logan glanced to the right and saw Virgil meandering alongside him, a crooked grin set on his face.

“Hi,” Logan said back, nodding his head in greeting. “Ready for calc?”

“No,” Virgil said, snorting. “Never.”

“That’s fair,” Logan said. His hands clenched a little tighter around his backpack straps. “How do you think you did on the test yesterday?”

“Dude, you should’ve seen me taking it,” Virgil said, spreading his hands in front of him, palms down, as he spoke. “My hands were clutching the pencil so hard. If he can read my equations it’s a miracle. I think I almost passed out.”

“That’s... not good,” Logan said. He frowned in thought. “Was the stress that much for you? Perhaps a different form of test could be done...”

“Nah, just a lot of little things, y’know? Didn’t eat or drink much, got maybe three hours of sleep from studying all night...”

“Oh,” Logan said, falling silent. “That’s... still not good.”

“Yeah,” Virgil said, screwing up his face. “I know.”

“Did you eat breakfast this morning?”

“No.”

“Water?”

“...also no.”

“Have my water bottle,” Logan said, reaching behind himself and hooking his finger on the loop of his water bottle. “I think I have an extra in my locker from last week.”

“I...” Virgil stared at the bottle shoved into his chest and grabbed it to stop it from crashing to the ground. “I can’t take this.”

“Then throw it away,” Logan stated firmly. He walked into the calc room, cutting off the conversation for a few seconds. Virgil mumbled something, playing with the hard plastic of the bottle absentmindedly.

He and Virgil had been in the same math class since sixth grade, save the last year when they’d been devastated to learn they’d have to take pre-calculus without one another. They knew each other’s ups and downs, they knew how the other functioned in relation to math.

Virgil, ironically, religiously completed his homework while Logan finished much of it two or one night before the test (when the homework packet was checked to gain the option of correcting a test). Logan’s approach was not at all systematic, but had worked thus far.

Well... until, that is... calculus.

Calculus.

How he hated calculus.

The test had been more difficult than any test he remembered in math, and it was only the first one. His teacher was more than understanding. In fact, Logan had spent an hour and a half with him after school, working through homework problems and such, and his teacher had – on multiple occasions – mentioned that it was okay to not do well right off the bat. It was okay to not understand.

Calculus was not like other math.

“Are we getting the tests back today?” Logan said numbly, sliding his backpack off his shoulders and settling into the chair.

“God, I hope not,” Virgil mumbled, face down on the table. “I don’t want to face my failure just yet.”

“Ugh, yeah,” Logan said, wrinkling his nose. “I just want to know what I got and be done with it. I’ll be stressing all weekend otherwise.”

“Even if you get a bunch wrong?”

Logan laughed. “You mean when I get a bunch wrong?”

Virgil grinned at him. “Oh what a mood.”

Logan cracked a smile back, but before he could reply, the teacher was talking and class had begun. They exchanged a few more quips in lulls or when they were working on problems.

Only... Logan didn’t get it. He didn’t understand any of the problem... sure, he could type it into his calculator just fine, and sure, he could calculate the height and time and so forth, but he didn’t understand what his teacher was actually trying to teach – the theory behind it. The why. Normally Logan’s favorite part.

“Any questions? You’re good?” the teacher asked the class, examining everyone to make sure he’d gotten through to them.

Please repeat that entire explanation but slower and more thoroughly, Logan thought pitifully.

“Alright, then, with that...” he continued on, writing on the smartboard. Every so often he would pause and ask for the answer to a particular question and someone would shout it out. Only heaven knew how they knew the answer, because Logan felt like they could’ve asked what seven minus nine was and Logan would have to take a dozen seconds to figure it out.

He struggled through the three simple practice problems and when the teacher went through them he numbly wrote the answers and the process, trying trying trying to comprehend what it all meant, what the numbers on the page equated to and which belonged to where and how this all applied –

“Now, I won’t be giving this equation twice. This is the only time I’m giving it to you,” his teacher said, laughing a bit. Logan felt like weights were slowly attaching themselves to the vine around his lungs, dragging his heart lower and lower.

Virgil was dutifully jotting all the notes down, handwriting a little jumbled. Logan tried to focus on his paper, the lines starting to run together and his hand shaking between his fingers. I don’t understand. I don’t understand. Why don’t I understand?

Logan wrote down a few more notes, trying to make sense of the equation set before him, the equation given at the beginning of class, the equation he’d learned all about not five minutes before. I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand

I’m stupid. Logan was familiar with the voice in his head and he made sure he copied everything from the teacher. Maybe he could relearn it in another hour. Maybe then he’d be okay. Why did he take this class? I’m stupid, why did I take such a hard class?

Logan considered himself relatively smart, all things considered. He managed to get into many advanced classes, shooting himself two years ahead of his peers in math. Virgil, along with other math students his age whom he’d learned to recognize relatively consistently, had also been thrown forward two years.

One semester of calculus in two semesters or two semesters of calculus in two semesters?

At the time, it’d barely been a question. Of course he’d take the most advanced class – he was Logan Sanders. He didn’t shy from a challenge, and wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he took the one in two. He needed max college credits.

I don’t understand I don’t understand I don’t understand

Too ambitious for my own good

“Ha, I barely understood any of that,” Logan said weakly as they were packing their things.

Virgil shrugged. “Yeah. It’ll make sense soon. You’ll probably learn while taking the test, knowing you.” He ended the statement with a quick burst of laughter and Logan smiled back, lips wobbly and nervous.

He had a tendency to do that in pre-calc, not quite understanding the content until the test itself, but even he could realize that calculus – at least, the one he was taking – was on a completely different level.

I don’t understand I don’t understand

Logan was crouched by his backpack, zipping everything back up, when the thought struck him like a bullet. I’m not smart enough for this class.

He’d never been not smart enough for a class. Teaching incompatibilities, perhaps, or the content needed a bit more work than instant comprehension, but never completely missing the lesson, the point of the lesson. Math built on itself; losing a lesson was like losing a vital block while building a tower, and when a great wind blows the tower must stand strong.

The thought struck him so strongly and quickly that he couldn’t move for a few long seconds. Virgil rustling around in his bag brought him back to the present and he stood, long legs shaking imperceptibly.

Logan shifted on his feet. “Ready to go?” At least his voice sounded natural.

“Yeah,” Virgil said, slinging the bag over his shoulder and stalking out the door, eye on Logan.

Logan followed but couldn’t bring himself to speak, a lump settling in his throat and refusing to budge.

They walked in silence.

Logan could barely breathe.

I’m not smart enough for this class.

A bit too late, huh?

Too bad if you drop you’ll be the utter disappointment. You want to go into a math career, and you’re going to fail calculus? What a joke.

Logan shuddered and parted from Virgil, who was headed to his chem class.

I’m not smart enough for this class.

Too ambitious.