#Do they keep track of it in their notes app or is it just internalized

[p0tatogirl]

Shout out to whoever calculated how much hinata + kageyama talked while they were separated because now I have a clear mental image of them doing rock, paper, scissors over facetime. What we're they even competing about??? Did they have some weird thing where they would compete to see who could call earlier in the day??? I can kind of see them both getting a videogame for the sole purpose of trying to beat the others score. That stuff is insane.

[ferrstappen]

Max the wag (again)| Max Verstappen blurb

love note: I’ve loved the response to gossipy Max and (y/n) that I came up with this little piece 💘

YOU CAN FIND THE REST OF MAX THE WAG SERIES HERE

summary: a new break up hits the paddock and Max and you are the best investigators.

Canada GP, 2023

Max didn’t mean to overhear whatever was going on inside the four walls of Ferrari’s place on the track.

But if the information came his way, who was he to deny it?

He was mildly bored in between interviews and before FP1, not caring about interacting with people because you weren’t there, too many things to take care of, studying and being an intern didn’t allow you to be there with him. Still, he sent you silly pictures of him walking by himself (metaphorically since fans and workers were all over), he smiled at the WhatsApp sticker you sent him along with a picture of you, papers scattered all over your desk, iPad showing the F1 app.

While walking by Ferrari, he really really couldn’t help walking a bit slower as three engineers were enjoying a cigarette while loudly speaking to each other, motor and tool noises were ambient noise.

I heard she’d forgiven him once, after São Paulo last year.

What happened there? I keep hearing about it but i left to Abu Dhabi right after the podium.

Carlos and Norris contacted some girls and left with them or something along the way, kept it under wraps though but now? I think it was too much for her.

Shame, she was always polite and nice to everybody. She even knew our names!

And Carlos’ sister is getting married soon, he ducked it big time. I heard someone in the garage she decided to not go and his family is pissed.

It caught Max’s attention… he instantly recalled the conversation with you, trying to figure out if Carlos and Isa were still together. Clearly, they weren’t and the entire paddock was aware of it.

Maybe Christian could have more information about it.

But the first thing he did was to text you, announcing he had more information.

Info about what? Was your response, making Max’s eyes roll…

Sainz and girlfriend!

Max didn’t hear it, but you gasped at the simple text message. Max was very selective with the information he actually took seriously, and for him to tell you he heard something meant it was probably real.

Shut up! What did you hear? Who told you?!?!?

Max smiled, a smug grin knowing you were dying for the information, but he’d keep it for later, when he was laying on the hotel bed, fresh out of the shower, white t-shirt and shorts and ready to fall sleep. That’s when he was sharing the information.

He was surprised when you called him out of the blue and he chuckled, his gorgeous blue eyes getting smaller, little wrinkles forming, dimples showing.

“Hello schat, to what do I owe this pleasure?” Max teased, instantly taking in your neat hair, neutral make up and deep red lipstick… oh, what would he give to bite your lower lip and have his face and chest covered in faint red lipstick.

”don’t be coy! What did you hear? I heard the snippet of an interview and she sounded so broken it was so sad, but what did you hear?!” You rambled, making Max’s smile even bigger.

“I told you I’m sharing my discovery later, i’ll have to be in the car in thirty minutes or so,”

“I hate you so much, you can’t leave me hanging! I don’t want to ask her directly!” You complained like a toddler, noticing Max was just staring at you through the screen.

“I love you, I have to go,” Max said after he noticed part of the Red Bull PR team approach him. He was waiting for you to tell him you love him too, but your words weren’t exactly what he was expecting.

“Max babe, try to get info on Shakira and Hamilton!”

Honestly, you and Max were a match made in heaven.

[hotchnerwrites]

Nightmares

Pairing: Toji x reader

Warnings: SFW, hurt/angst, hopeful ending, internal monologue, Toji POV

Word Count: 0.5k

A/N: I wanted to do some kind of a character study on guilt catching up on Toji. It's not my best work, but it's helping me warm up my writing skills for better. I wrote this in my Notes app in the middle of a store haha. My requests are open. Please send me stuff!

There is blood on your hands.

The thought pinged around Toji’s head. In the silky silence of the night, where the only noises were your soft breaths against his neck and the faint ticking of a clock from another room, these thoughts seemed to echo around the refuge of your bedroom. 

He hadn’t been sleeping well lately. When the evenings fell and you’d cleared the remnants of dinner away, he found himself dreading the thought of sleep. You had no idea Toji’s dilemma just yet. He had done his best to pour earnestness into his smiles. He kissed you more under the pretext of feeling your soft skin on his for longer. He hoped it would be enough to spare you from the ghosts haunting him, and for now, it seemed to work. He’d tell you, of course, in due time. But you had always been a worrier, especially when it concerned Toji, and he didn’t feel it was fair to rope you into this vicious cycle just yet. 

There is blood on your hands.

Toji couldn’t even remember how many lives he had taken anymore. He had lost count. Their faces were all a blur. There was nothing left to remember them by either. Most of his targets had no family. The ones that did, he’d been paid to kill them too. He hadn’t even put the money to good use. He’d find liquor stores and he’d drink them. He’d gamble and pick fights with the debt collectors. Just because. 

But Toji was used to these feelings. It wasn’t his first rodeo. So what made it so different this time round? Why did it keep him up at night? As these thoughts plagued him, you stir in his arms. A whisper of a question in the form of his name escapes your lips. You reach your arm across his chest as if to make sure Toji’s still there. And he is. He always will be. He turns his face to get a better look at you. Your eyelashes fan across your cheeks and your lips are slightly parted. He leans down to sneak a small kiss and he looks at you fondly. 

There is blood on your hands. 

Maybe that’s why he was thinking of those people again. Because deep down, Toji knew he hadn’t done anything to deserve you. He got to keep you after all he had done meanwhile there was no one left to shed tears for the bodies left behind in his wake. Deep down he knew this was a part of him that would remain with him forever. No amount of talking about his feelings or spending his days in the sun would take away the guilt he felt. But for you, he would try. For you, he would fight. For you, he would learn to live with the guilt, and maybe, just maybe, one day he would forgive himself. 

There is blood on your hands.

That night Toji slept for more than four hours at a time in a long time. Perhaps it was the acceptance of his actions that let the whispers in his mind rest. Perhaps it was you waking him up with a kiss and a cup of coffee. He didn’t know. But the thoughts in his mind were calm this morning. And something told him he was on the right track.

Thank you for reading! Likes, reblogs, comments and follows are appreciated! Constructive criticism is welcome :) Do not plagiarise my content and/or post it anywhere without crediting me.

[sihtricfedaraaahvicius]

Mechanic chapter 13

Note: follow up to chapter 12.

Warnings: same as previous chapters.

pairing: Modern!Sihtric x you (f) x modern!Masema

summary: Masema took you to church while you stayed in touch with Sihtric.

wordcount: 4,3k

Masterlist

You'd been going to church with Masema for a few weeks now, although you couldn't really call the building a church. It was an abandoned farm on the outskirts of town and it looked like it could collapse any second. One stormy night and you were sure the farm would be gone the morning after. The inside of the church didn't look great either, but at least there was electricity and a bit of warmth by candles. Dirty looking blankets covered the concrete floors you sat upon while you listened to Masema with the other church goers. Masema was apparently some self-proclaimed prophet, whatever that may mean, and at first you thought he was absolutely batshit crazy by the way he was preaching about the end of the world. Masema said the end of times was approaching and he promised that those who followed him would die with honour and march into Heaven like warriors of the Light, and a good afterlife would be waiting. Masema had a way of being very convincing, and he convinced you to keep coming to the church even when you weren't so sure yourself. He'd persuade you by kissing you and telling you how important your presence was. And so you kept going, and after a few church sessions you started to think that there might be some truth in his words. You weren't sure about the end of the world, but you started to believe that following Masema might mean you did something for the greater good eventually.

You had also kept in touch with Sihtric, texting him every day to let him know you were doing okay. And you couldn't lie, you missed your mechanic a lot. Masema gave you that thrill of being alive, because he had only eyes for you when he took you for a ride on his motorcycle. But you began to see that in the church he seemed to have eyes for all the other ladies present too, who all believed they were special to him. It made you insecure, but Masema had a power over you that you couldn't seem to defeat, and you even entertained the idea of marrying Masema when he asked if you wanted to be one of his wives.

You didn't know that Sihtric was still keeping track of you through your phone. You had never deleted the app he had installed, and Sihtric also never deleted it off his own phone. He had fought the urge to use the app at first, but he just couldn't help himself and often checked where you were, just to get some peace of mind. But that peace he longed for was nowhere to be found once he began to notice you spent a lot of time in some near deserted area in the the weekends, late at night. Once again Sihtric had fought another urge, but he still loved you and wanted you to be safe. He just had to know what you were doing out there, so one evening he rode to your location and found the abandoned farm after he'd passed a bunch of large cornfields. When he saw lights burning inside the farm from a distance, as he approached the building, he shut down his motor engine and got off his bike. He carefully walked towards the farm, quietly pushing his brand new bike through the mud and puddles, cursing internally that it would be a pain to clean his bike after this. Once he was close enough he parked his bike and spied by peeking through one of the cracked windows. Sihtric was appalled when he saw Masema standing on an improvised platform, spewing words of damnation and God and the end of the world. And then Sihtric found you sitting on the floor, amongst Masema's other followers, looking up at him and listening carefully like he was some sort of… prophet. Sihtric slowly began to understand that Masema probably stalked people, mainly women, and simply persuaded them to join him to whatever this place was, but what exactly Masema was preaching about was beyond him as it made no sense at all.

Sihtric paced back and forth outside the farm, contemplating his next move. He could simply ram the door and run in, punching Masema in the face and picking you up in his arms to take you home. But you looked rather comfortable, Sihtric thought, and there were too many people. It would be at least thirty to one if Sihtric would pick a fight. Sihtric saw some men too and, even though they didn't look very intimidating, he knew getting into a fight now was a bad idea as he only just healed from the wounds he had gained during the crash. He then decided to push his motorcycle away from the farm and hide it behind a few trees further up the dirt road. Sihtric then walked back, his leather boots collecting more dirt and mud, and he waited behind one of the smaller abandoned buildings across the farm, until people began to leave the wreckage of a building you were inside of. Sihtric waited and waited, and then he finally saw you. You left the farm alone and you walked up to a seemingly random car. Sihtric then snuck up behind you and covered your mouth as he circled his arm around your waist, preventing you from screaming, and he pulled you with him behind the farm, hidden away in the shadows.

'It's me,' Sihtric said quickly when you tried to fight his grip, 'I'm not here to scare you, I'm sorry I had to get you like this.'

You stared at him with big eyes, taking in his appearance. His half shaved hair was a little messy from the helmet he had been wearing, and he was dressed in a black leather jacket and black jeans. Sihtric then slowly removed his hand when you understood who had just grabbed you.

'What the fuck!' you hissed and punched his chest, 'what the fuck are you doing! Why are you here-'

'What is this place?' Sihtric cut you off and cornered you, 'and Masema?' he scoffed, 'you're really out here with your stalker? What the fuck does he want from you?'

'This is a church!' you snarled, quietly, not wanting to alarm anyone.

'A church?' Sihtric frowned and looked up at the building that looked like it came straight from Hell, 'I didn't know you were religious.'

'I'm not… at least not really,' you mumbled, 'Masema asked me-'

'When did… why-' Sihtric stammered, 'how the fuck did you get in contact with this guy? You do know the cops are looking for him, right?'

'I walked into him after our fight at the repair shop,' you confessed, 'he's not… he never tried to hurt me, Siht. He took me on a few dates and-'

'Dates?' Sihtric almost shouted, then lowered his voice again, 'you're dating that psycho?!'

'No! I mean… I… I… we kissed, yes, but that's it. We never did anything else.'

'You kissed?' he scoffed, 'so… what about us?'

'We're on a break,' you mumbled, knowing you were the one who screwed up.

'On a break my ass,' Sihtric shook his head, 'we are not Ross and Rachel, sweetheart. You said you needed some space, which I gave you, and now I find out you've been happily seeing that freak of a guy!'

'It's not like that! We're not dating, we're not exclusive or whatever, we're not even together! He has like five wives or something and asked me to be his wife too!'

'What?!'

'The others,' you cocked your head towards the barn, 'all the ladies are like… like… his wives or girlfriends, whatever.'

'Oh, great,' Sihtric scoffed and then threw his hands up, 'so you're part of a cult now.'

'What? No, Sihtric-'

'This is exactly what this guy does then, stalking women and sweet talking them to join his cult. Fucking ridiculous,' Sihtric huffed and kicked at the sand, 'you're a perfect example of stockholm syndrom, lady.'

'No, I…,' you sighed, 'I'm here out of free will.'

'You're not,' Sihtric argued, 'but you can't even think straight anymore. You know, whatever, I don't want to hear about this anymore. I just want to know where this leaves us then. Because if you decide you want to be a sister wife then I can't stop you. I've tried everything to protect you from this maniac but it seems I pushed you right into his web. So I guess that's on me then. So what about us, princess, what about you and me?'

Sihtric stared at you, his mismatched eyes and scarred face illuminated in the silver light of the moon, and he had never looked more handsome, you thought, it left you breathless for a moment.

'I don't know,' you whispered after a long silence and sniffled, 'but I know I miss you.'

Sihtric's stern look softened and he exhaled sharply, regretting for going off at you like that.

'I miss you too,' he whispered and fought his tears, 'a lot.'

'I'm not… I don't think I'm in love with Masema,' you said, 'because I still love you, I really do. I can't forget you,' you lightly touched his hand, 'but… something keeps pulling me here.'

'You need to leave this guy,' Sihtric urged and took your hand, 'I'm serious, you have to leave this place and that freak. Come with me, I'll take you home, please,' he pleaded, 'just come home with me, we can leave right now.'

'I can't,' you whispered and pulled your hand away, 'I can't just leave. These people are like… depending on me to be here. I… I have to go, I'm sorry.'

'Hey,' Sihtric called after you when you turned to walk away, 'just… promise to stay in touch.'

'I will. I always will.'

'And be safe,' Sihtric looked at you with big, pleading eyes that broke your heart, 'I- I love you.'

'I know,' you smiled weakly, 'and I love you too.'

Sihtric felt hopeless when he watched you walk to the car and unlocked it to take out a large bag, and then walked away around the corner, disappearing back into the farm again. He left on his bike with a heavy heart, knowing he was leaving you behind with a psychopath. But he didn't stand a chance against him right now. And you both didn't know that Masema had gone through your phone already days ago, finding the texts between you and Sihtric and finding out you still had photos of Sihtric on your phone, and you both didn't know that Masema had heard you talk outside the farm.

The uneasy feeling never left Sihtric in the days after he had confronted you at the farm. It had unsettled him so greatly that he decided to go back one afternoon to check out the place in daylight, and it was even more haunting during the day than it had been at night. The huge cornfields surrounding the farm were even larger than they had seemed in the dark, completely secluding the building from the outside world. Sihtric wanted to call the cops to warn them about Masema's whereabouts, but when he peeked through the cracked window again he saw the place simply looked abandoned and there wasn't a trace to find of the sermons Masema held there. He only saw the large bag you had taken out of the random car and it looked like it was stuffed with the blankets that had been on the floor, making it look like a homeless person lived there and nothing more. Sihtric was torn, because also knew that if he'd alarm the cops you would know it had been him, and he was afraid he'd completely lose you if he did, and you were also there out of "free will", so what could he possibly tell the cops? All he could do was wait for you to come back to your senses and keep track of you through the app.

You kept going to church in the weeks after your encounter with Sihtric. You had shrugged off the mechanic's concerns at first, but when Masema began to teach you and his followers how to use guns and make improvised hand grenades, because Masema was afraid that the non-believers would want to harm his church and his people, you slowly began feel and realise that Sihtric had been right. This indeed was a cult, and Masema was the cult leader, preaching how everyone who is against his word should be either converted or killed, and his followers blindly believed him and felt he was right. 

You slowly began to snap out of the state you were in, and every time you saw Masema preach you realised how deranged he was and everyone who believed him. Msema himself truly believed he was a prophet and he had everyone who followed him under his power. And the men, you later understood, who were part of his following were actually the husbands of the ladies Masema had taken as his wives. The husbands were so blinded by Masema's charm and the convincing power of his words that they had just let their wives share a bed with their leader and let them marry him. And you started to see that this was not something you wanted to be a part of, at all. You began to feign your interest in Masema and his cult, pretending to be a good member and a potential new wife to him, but after a few more preaching sessions you knew you had to get out of there, especially because the training of how to work with weapons and his intentions to seriously harm people intensified every week.

One night, after you had attended yet another sermon where Masema raged on and on about how he was spreading the word of God of how everyone but his followers was doomed, you secretly texted Sihtric while Masema drove you home, as you were absolutely frightened.

You: hey, are you home?

Sihtric: at work x

You: this late?

Sihtric: I couldn't sleep… why?

You: can I see you? I need to see you…

'Who are you writing?' Masema asked sweetly, but a threatening tone lingered after he had caught you texting.

'Oh, just a friend,' you lied, 'maybe, eh, I found someone who wants to come to the church too next week.'

'Really?' Masema glanced at you and placed his hand on your knee as he drove his car, 'that would be great,' he said and squeezed your knee, a little too hard to be flirty.

'So,' Masema continued, 'have you heard from your ex?'

'What? Oh, no,' you said, nervously, 'no, he's out of my life.'

'Is he?' he squeezed your knee again, harder this time, and it was painful.

'Yes,' you chuckled anxiously and tried to pull away from his grip, to no avail, 'why are you asking?'

'Just making sure you're all mine. I'm not the type who shares.'

'But,' you chuckled, 'your wives-'

'Are my wives,' Masema said curtly, 'I do not share them with their husbands. They are my wives. And you will be my wife too. And if you try to leave,' he chuckled to make it come off as a joke, 'I'll find you.'

You feigned a smile and nodded, then looked out the window and tried to keep your cool as the drive continued. Once you were home you reluctantly kissed Masema good night and you closed the front door behind you. You waited until he drove off in his car and then you took out your phone again.

Sihtric: of course. Do I need to pick you up?

You: no, it's fine, I have a new car now

Sihtric: you know you don't have to wreck it again to see me, right? ;)

You: I know ;) 

You smiled at your phone and told Sihtric you'd be at the repair shop shortly. But your emotions took over before you could even start your car. Your new car. The stupid brand new car that Masema had bought for you. You were overwhelmed with a sudden fear when you felt your knee hurt. The bruise Masema left was clearly visible once you rolled up your jeans to check your knee, and you wanted to get to the mechanic as fast as possible.

—-

You found Sihtric at the repair shop in the middle of the night, fixing up his new motorcycle after dirt had gotten stuck in all the wrong places because of his visits to the farm. His overall was dirty but his face was remarkably clean, because he had cleaned himself up as best as he could when you told him you were on your way, and he had fixed up the curls on the one side of his head. Sihtric looked tired, but the dark circles around his eyes and his pale face didn't make him any less handsome, and he listened carefully while leaning back against his bike when you told him everything that had happened after the last time you had seen him, and you showed him the bruise on your knee.

'He what?!' Sihtric raised his voice, 'do you even hear yourself? Can't you see he is brainwashing you! He's literally hurting you!' he threw the dirty rag he had cleaned his bike with onto the floor, 'that guy is abusing you!' he snarled with wild and fury filled eyes, 'and you're letting him!'

You froze at his sudden anger and you shut down. Sihtric stared at you, realising he frightened you with his outburst, and he felt his heart break inside his chest when your lower lip trembled as your eyes welled up.

'I- I'm sorry,' Sihtric said, 'I'm sorry, come here,' he whispered and pulled you in his arms, your face pressed against his chest, into his dirty work overall, 'I'm sorry I snapped. You have to understand that I'm not mad at you, I promise. I'm just mad at this entire situation and that piece of shit you keep seeing, who is clearly not good for you.'

'He won't let me leave him,' you said with a sob, 'Masema… he said he'll find me. He didn't specify what he meant with that and he said it almost sweetly, but-'

'That is just what he does,' Sihtric said as he held you in his arms, 'he wraps his followers around his finger and if they try to leave he'll wrap them even tighter, suffocating them. And I just handed him the rope to tie you with by becoming obsessed with your safety and pushing you away, right into his arms. And I'm sorry, princess, I'm so sorry.'

'I'm sorry too. I'm sorry we fought, I never meant to explode like that but I felt trapped and I panicked. But now I'm really trapped.'

'I know,' Sihtric hushed you, 'I'm not mad, sweetheart. I could never be mad at you. I just… I've been trying to understand why Masema? Why did you fall for him? You knew he was bad news.'

'Because he… Masema made me feel alive again,' you sniffled, 'like the way you used to make me feel alive before the accident,' you pulled slightly away and looked up at him with tear stained cheeks, 'you changed, Sihtric, after that crash.'

'I almost died,' Sihtric murmured as he pulled you back in again, 'and you almost died because I crashed. Of course I changed, darling,' he said and began to cry, 'you don't understand what it did to me.'

'Then talk to me,' you sobbed.

'I'm just terrified to lose you,' he whispered, 'I'm terrified you'll get hurt again and taken away from me. And that is why I became so overprotective.'

'I understand that, I do,' you sniffled, 'but you can't trap me like that. You built this… this fort around me, to protect me, but in reality you trapped me. I understand it was never your intention to make me feel trapped, but you did, and it changed me too. I started to long for excitement. I wanted to feel alive again and feel the thrill of being alive after that accident, while you trapped me in a boring life. It changed me and it changed you. It changed us, Sihtric. I miss the sweet boy who was disguised as a bad boy when we met. I miss that flirty and slightly cocky mechanic who made me feel so alive when he kissed me endlessly on my driveway at night, and who took me on exhilarating bike rides. I miss him, Sihtric. I miss you, the guy I fell in love with.'

Sihtric looked down into your eyes and wiped the tears off his face, then took a deep breath.

'The guy you fell in love with died that night,' he said in a broken whisper.

'Did he?' you looked up at him with hopeful eyes, 'because sometimes I get glimpses of him. I've gotten glimpses of him after the crash, before you pushed me away. And even after that, when you found me at the church… that thrilling and adventurous part of you, it's still there,' you poked his chest, 'I know it's still in there.'

Sihtric swallowed hard and shrugged lightly.

'Maybe, little lady,' he said, 'but maybe he's afraid he'll get you hurt again.'

'You don't get to live your life without getting hurt in one way or another. And I would choose to get hurt every day if it meant I could have that slightly cocky and cheeky part of you back again,' you chuckled through your tears.

'Is that really why you went with Masema?' Sihtric asked after a moment, 'because he made you feel alive? Because he was dangerous?'

You nodded and wiped a tear off your cheek.

'I needed that thrill to feel alive, and it felt like you couldn't give it to me anymore.'

'Only because I have your best interest and want you to be safe. You had to safely heal.'

'I know… but I… I need some kind of excitement in a relationship.'

'What kind of excitement?' Sihtric furrowed his brow, 'you want me to be a cult leader?'

'No,' you snorted, and Sihtric smiled, 'not like that.'

'Like what then?' he asked and took your hand, pulling you to sit on his lap as he sat down on the chair next to his messy work desk, which had all kinds of tools piled up on each other.

'I don't know… just… something,' you sighed, 'I don't want a boring and safe relationship. I mean I want a safe relationship, but not a standard one. I need a… a thrill of sorts. You kept me on my toes at first, you know? All the teasing you did. Even in the hospital, you were always so cheeky but then after everything with Masema became known, you know…'

'Who said I want a boring relationship?' Sihtric frowned, 'you never really gave me a shot. We were both healing and recovering from the crash, of course our relationship was different. We had a lot to deal with, there was no time to be cheeky when a psycho suddenly forced his way into our lives. I don't want a boring relationship, trust me, I don't like that either.'

'What do you like then?'

Sihtric chuckled and shook his head lightly, then looked at you with a soft smile and he bit down on his lip.

'I'm a dom, princess,' he explained with the hint of his cheeky smile, 'a soft dom.'

'Oh,' you breathed and your eyes widened, then you smiled, 'but… you're too sweet to be a dom?'

'Don't be fooled by the soft part,' Sihtric smiled slyly, 'I don't want boring either, trust me. Listen,' he sighed softly and buried his face in your neck for a moment, 'I'm sorry I pushed you away and that I installed that app without telling you.'

'I'm sorry for my behaviour too,' you said and cupped his cheeks, 'I don't know what I was thinking. How I could be so foolish to listen to him and push you away.'

'You weren't thinking. Masema had you wrapped around his finger like he does to everyone he has his mind set on. It's not your fault.'

'I'm scared,' you suddenly whispered, 'he… he's not going to let me leave like this. He'll come looking for me when I don't show up at church-'

'I know, baby,' Sihtric hushed you and pecked your cheek, 'but you're here, with me. You're safe now and we'll figure it out.'

'I'm sorry I fucked up.'

'We both did.'

'I'm sorry,' you said again.

'I'm sorry too.'

'I… I love you,' you whispered and slowly moved your fingers through his dark curls.

'I know,' Sihtric smiled sweetly, 'and I love you too.'

'I only want you… I really do.'

'And I only want you,' he said and took your chin gently, 'you're my girl.'

You nodded shyly. 'Yours only, I promise.'

'Good,' Sihtric smiled, 'because I'm yours only too. And with that I should confess,' he cleared his throat, 'that tracking app still works.'

'I know,' you smiled, 'I never deleted it. I wasn't aware of it anymore at first, but when you found me at the church I later understood the only way you knew I was there was because of that app. And because Masema started to frighten me lately I kept the app, and I hoped that maybe you would check it sometimes.'

'You knew I would check it, little lady.'

'I knew.'

You both smiled and leaned in for a kiss, but you were stopped when a sudden clattering sound startled you both. And when you both looked into the direction the sound had come from, you saw the shadowy figure of a man standing in the door of the repair shop.

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[rin-and-jade]

Who am I.. : A post about being blurry

I got a few things to talk about here, while some of you are already aware of its struggles and have experiences around it, i’d love to add on more about this (it’s a long post) so don’t mind if i do;

To reiterate, being blurry means you’re in a moment where identifying who is out (at front) and who is currently talking (in co-con) takes huge effort or near to impossible in resolving this cloudy situation,, as well as having hazy + worser memory and lastly, bad internal communication that may occur.

There are some factors that are not limited to:

Exposed to stressors

Exhaustion

Lacking restful sleep

Dissociative mechanisms

Being overwhelmed

etc..

People may have different tolerance level and frequency that also could be out of natural reasons and lifestyles (as well as periods of alertness, yes, it shifts in different hours of the day), when having this once in a while its not a prob at all.. but what if it became more frequent than usual? Do you know what to do? If you do please reblog your own approach so it can help others. And for those who don’t i do have my own and i’ll give some of my approaches after i tell some potential effects that can happen when being blurry:

Having inconsistency in portraying outside

Dealing with confusion, can cause conflicts inside

Harder time in deciding or responding

Trouble around communicating with parts effectively and clearly

Memory gaps and losing track of time

These things aren't lovely, not even a bit.. so i have two ways to deal with it depending on context and situation,, Solve or Adapt. Solve is where you want to end the blurriness for good and Adapt is when Solve does not work or can’t be bothered to at first place.

Choosing Solve:

Using list of alters (especially pk bot) and go through each of them, seeing which one resonates.

Same thing but with music, make sure its the songs you know they (your other parts) listen to or from the provided playlist already.

Pay attention to a distinctive trait that pops out from all the meshed stuffs going on (specific way of talking or thinking or vibes, anything else)

Think of what clothing style you’d like to wear? Then check that with who would dress like that.

Choosing Adapt:

Give up with demanding tasks (unless if it’s important, just use your energy efficiently) and consider relaxing. This helps keeping mental load at bay.

Feeling unsure about who you are can be uncomfy, doing some comfort activities might do the trick.

Prepare a notes app and jot everything down to keep track of chores or work to do or remembering important things, don’t take it lightly because memory won’t be as helpful as usual.

Keep workload and stress at minimum, if it can be done later then put it aside, if not,, try breaking it to easier bits and commit to it with breaks if needed.

Last thing i want to tell is that I’ve seen my friends being blurry but not wanting to resolve it either due to not having enough mental capacity to deal with that, or having brain fog which makes it harder, or having way too much overlapping traits/identities that is beyond confusing which demotivated them, or not cut for it due to not enough understanding yourself/others to discern at the first place.. and thats okay, because im here if you need some help (or you can ask your trusted friend) and i hope this post is informative, stay slay guys.

- j

[multifandumbmeg]

I was about a year late to the party and wrote this hoping to post it when season 2 was announced but uh... Anyway I'll just go ahead and post it because it lives in my brain space. What follows is primarily a breakdown of the queer subtext in Begins Youth, particularly Cein, Jeha, and Mingook. And also reminder that you can't apply your own cultural lens and norms to another culture's media and complain that it doesn't measure up to your standards of those norms or topics because it's not following your rules, you were not the target audience.

This is about the rumblings I keep seeing about Cein and Jeha's relationship being "queerbaiting". Hello all, I have lived in Korea, I speak Korean, I went to Seoul Pride and have interfaced with the actual queer community in Korea. This is absolutely NOT queerbaiting. It almost never is when people say queerbaiting, but 1) you can't really queerbait in a country that's hostile enough to gays that don't and can't represent a significant enough population (including allies) to be a marketing niche. You not only can't make money by appealing to them, you stand to LOSE a lot of money by outright supporting them, and the actors involved are likely to receive a ton of hate that could potentially ruin their careers even if they maintain that they're just acting. And 2) this situation could be described at best as queer-coding, but frankly I'd argue it goes farther than that, most westerners just aren't familiar enough with the very underground Korean queer scene and all the subtler insinuations Koreans would immediately pick up on.

I will explain! First, I was very disappointed by the scene between Hwan and Cein wherein it seems like Hwan is confessing to Cein and Cein's response is very "haha GAY"/doing that "ew dont touch me perv" motion. I was like damn, we're really doing that kinda joke in 2024? In the HYYH DRAMA? WITH MIN YOONGI'S CHARACTER?? BUT. My opinion changed later on. I still think it would have been funnier for Cein to just kindly decline him, but the way they did it was likely either for plausible deniability later (again, rather than queerbaiting, they actively CANNOT confirm a gay relationship because it would alienate a lot of viewers) or to show Cein's internalized homophobia/him hiding his sexual orientation with strong, fear-based rebuttal. Note that he doesn't know Hwan well yet at this point. Note that they're IN PUBLIC. Moving on to my evidence the show was actually being very progressive.

On a subtextual level, you have Jeha stalking Cein on his phone like an overly attached girlfriend, hanging off his arm (like couples) and even barging into his- specifically HIS out of all the friend group's- classroom to flip out because he hasn't been answering his texts. You could take these all at face value. Take it or leave it, that's how subtext works. Straight people would see one thing, harmless, queer people would read it another way.

But then the show continues and I was very surprised. Cein finds out about the tracker and truly I think he was just pissed that it tipped off the principal about his investigation, but he texts Jeha that it's creepy. Again, subtext. Gross, people might get the wrong idea, but he doesn't go any further and call Jeha any names like many Korean men would. Then Jeha comes to his classroom to apologize, and here's where it gets interesting:

It's not about what they say to each other at all, rather it's about what the people AROUND them are saying. As this is happening, as Cein storms out, onlookers begin asking, "are they dating or something?" and talking about the tracking app, just like an overly attached girlfriend, just like the subtext led us, only now, they are VOCALLY telling you that is behavior is aberrant, that this would be viewed as homosexual in their own society and the world of the show. If the show doesn't acknowledge the behavior is strange, but the audience may or may not take it as such, it's subtext. If the show outright tells you, this shit is pretty gay,

It's fucking gay, and they wanted you to know that. But the scene doesn't end there. No, then we hear Jeha's stepbrother responding to hearing about this decidedly gay behavior by referring to him as cute, which his own friends are like, "... Huh? Also I thought you hated him?" and what follows is the scene in Cein's old house.

Holy jesus, the entire scene in Cein's old house. I have never seen a more homosexual display in my life. We need to talk about Mingook again.

Mingook has it out for Jeha. This was about his place in the family, trying to maintain his own father's love, or so we thought, but suddenly he starts monologuing and a different picture emerges. He says he hates Jeha and he wants to, needs to make him miserable because he couldn't stand the thought of them being happy together. Them meaning Cein and Jeha. But wait, there's more.

If you felt like Mingook was make some insinuations about their relationship in this scene by saying things like, "what are you to each other?" congratulations, you were right on the money. But did you know he makes a very pointed statement using a known Korean gay organization?

Probably not. Because the translation you're given is "birds of a feather". Exactly written as that, with quotations in the official sub. Two things struck me immediately: 1) the quotation marks really weren't necessary, or were they? Everyone knows birds of a feather, similar types of people, it's a very common idiom so unless it was an approximation and the korean was different, a different idiom with the same meaning, it wouldn't need quotes because no one would misunderstand. The translation isn't direct, in fact, but I'll explain that in the second part. 2) I recognized the Korean itself and thought I'd heard it before specifically in a queer context, like this was one of those euphemisms that everyone knew meant gay. I was right. I looked up the actual Korean phrase and found this:

Mind you it was pretty buried, but I'm relentless like that. Anyway, the term Mingook uses is 끼리끼리, which can be used to mean similar people, basically the same as birds of a feather, but it also just so happens to be the name of the first Korean Lesbian organization ever established. If he just wanted to call them similar, losers, equals at the bottom of the social ladder or what not, there are maaaaaaaaany alternative phrases, but he uses that one. In quotations. And he does because 1) he's trying to force Cein to get so angry he hits him, or have to defend his own honor, and perhaps 2) Mingook sees shades to their relationship that he can't stand. Shades that make him jealous. And that's where we move on to my last point.

Another subtextual thing I'd like to point out is that all three of these boys have similar family dynamics which also deeply echo the gay experience- they were or are closer to their mother, and their current father figure is a strict, hyper-masculine person they don't know how to relate to or stop disappointing. Cein's military dad is the emotional equivalent of a rock, he may as well be a wall, and he was hard on his mom about her depression, which now he has. Mingook's dad is patriarchal, rich, competitive- and violent. Everything (barring the last one, technically) a traditional Korean man should be. Jeha's dad is AWOL, abandoned the family in HYYH lore. Now he has Mingook's dad in his place. But see, there's weight to this interpretation because Cein even points out that Mingook's reasoning makes no sense. His story about his mom dying- ok sure, great sob story and we've all got one, but Jeha could make the exact same argument about his dad. Only he's not doing all this psycho stuff.

So then what is the underlying message about Mingook's reasons here? Well from Mingook's perspective, he's done everything right. He gets good grades, he puffs his chest out and bullies weaker men to assert himself, he does sports with dad, he has friends at school. He should be fine. But Jeha? Jeha is a waifey twink that neurotically follows a group of upperclassmen around. He gets terrible grades and he has no dad. He clings onto Cein relentlessly, even stalks him, but they still don't cut him off. Cein still showed up to protect him. He's somehow becoming dad's favorite. He should be bullied mercilessly, he should be friendless and unable to smile. But he isn't because somehow he's made friends that accept him as he is. Somehow he's endeared this upperclassman to him so much that he lets him get away with behavior that makes everybody wonder in public and will drop anything to come protect him.

I can't stand to see you two happy together.

Happy "together"? Why these two?

I strongly believe it's because the show wants us to know that all three of these characters are gay. And they have gone out of their way to more than queer-code it with flamboyant gestures or haircuts, but to thoroughly and frequently imply as far as they possibly can without saying the word.

Oh and the nail painting? Gay. Unless you're into glam rock, men in Korea do not do that. Idols get enough flack for admitting they get manicures.

Cein getting drunk and hallucinating Jeha smiling at him because they've been separated for a while?? I think you'd be very hard pressed to find a heterosexual explanation for that.

In short, for this ridiculously long post, there's a whole boatload of Korean cultural context that is SCREAMING these characters are gay, but they are unlikely to come right out and say it. Especially in season one, not because they're queerbaiting and they want to cultivate a gay audience for profit, but because the culture is genuinely anti-gay enough that if they did, it would be a mess. Also, the actor playing Jeha was under 18 when they filmed and is just now nearing 19, so there is absolutely no way they would have him say, kiss the adult male actor playing Cein. FOR OBVIOUS REASONS. I still doubt it would happen in future seasons if we get them, but perhaps we'll get even more delicious subtext until all the characters and actors are older and then, if Hybe has some big ole balls, maybe they'll say fuck it we have enough money to fund this ourselves and make a canon queer couple but eh... It's not likely.

All that said, I'm not a homegrown Korean gay myself, so correct me if you are and I got anything wrong, but from everything I can glean it seems it was entirely the intention of the show writers to tell this story within in the constraints of threadbare plausible deniability. And I think they did an absolutely brilliant job at it.

[multiplicity-positivity]

Is it okay that we've never known the real count of our head mates? We have very heavy barriers between us + aphantasia and as a result even though I'm always in front (idk why? I've just never ever been able to leave the front, I'm not always in control though, when I'm in front and not in control t feels like I'm watching the body from above) and sometimes I'm aware that someone is in front with us, I still am not aware of how many of us there are or what most of them do. There have been many times where I can look back and say ohh someone else was in front w/ me and that's why we behaved that way but I cant easily identify anyone at all especially when I don't even rlly know what makes me "me"? All of us refer to the body as "I" frequently but it's more like different versions of the same person with different likes/dislikes sometimes and things like that, and I have some of that stuff in my notebooks but I can just never actually talk to them much at all and have no idea how many of us exist

hey, this is totally fine and tbh we feel like this is a normal experience for many systems, especially those who are newly discovered or still trying to make sense of their plurality. it took us over 2 years to get more or less of an accurate headcount of how many alters we have, and that was with a ton of work internally and pretty intensive therapy every week. and tbh there are probably even more alters that us in the main fronting group don’t know about… it comes with the territory of having dissociation issues.

it’s okay to not know how many headmates are in your system. maybe that answer will come with time and effort, or maybe not, but we think what’s more important is showing respect, kindness, and acceptance to the headmates that you do meet.

if you’re not already, you may find it useful to start using the simplyplural app to keep track of the headmates you know about. you can leave notes in some conspicuous place to urge the other members of your system to use it too. that way, y’all can collaborate to start building a database of your headmates so you can at least start trying to get a better idea of how many members your system has. of course, you could alternatively start keeping track of this information in a notebook or document. hopefully, with time and patience, you’ll be able to get a better idea of the size and scope of your system.

we hope this helps… we know trying to learn how many members are in your system can be a daunting task, especially if you have strong dissociative barriers between headmates. but we’re wishing you the best of luck with figuring this out! rest assured, your experience is pretty common, especially for those of us who struggle with heavy dissociative barriers between members.

[rockyroadkylers]

🕯️🌻🍬🍬🐚🍅🐝🧩📚

thank you for the ask and the low-level anxiety (you'll see what i mean)

🕯️ ⇢ on a scale from 1 to 10, how much do you enjoy editing? why is that?

i mean, it's not my favorite part of the process, but i don't mind it. i like being able to fine-tune to make sure everything is just right.

🌻 ⇢ tag someone you appreciate but don't talk to on a regular basis

hmm... can i go for an easy out and say the mods at @thebrownstone? 😂 i do genuinely appreciate them, they work really hard to keep that server running, which is so admirable because it is a HUGE server.

🍬 ⇢ post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

perhaps not unpopular, but certainly not common: june is a lesbian

🍬 ⇢ post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character

ok i do have. an actually unpopular opinion. but i don't want people to unfollow me for sharing it, because i do think everyone is entitled to their own, this is just mine 😩

i think junopez was an unnecessary addition, and it's kind of annoying how fixated the fandom is on it... please don't unfollow me - threesomes in general just aren't my cup of tea, which is apparently a minority opinion in this fandom and i'm not trying to hate on anyone else for liking those things, i just kind of groan internally and duck out of the conversation whenever it gets brought up because i think it's overrated

🐚 ⇢ do you like or dislike surprises?

depends on the nature of the surprise 😅

🍅 ⇢ give yourself some constructive criticism on your own writing

learn to end a sentence 😂

🐝 ⇢tag your biggest supporter(s) and say one nice thing about them

well. my best friend, first of all, but she's a private person and probably wouldn't appreciate me tagging her 😂 she does not wish to be perceived. that's not the nice thing though !!! the nice thing is that she's not even in any of the fandoms i write for, but she'll still read most of my writing anyway to encourage my interests.

i'm also gonna tag @user-anakin because bec is always there to yell at me when i share a new snippet <3

and @gayrootvegetable too because i cry every time they say they're rereading my fic

EDIT: I FORGOT TO TAG MY BETA/SIDEKICK IDK HOW but omg @44whispers is always there to yell about my WIP with me and help me iron out the kinks, ily muah <3

🧩 ⇢ what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?

bad grammar/the whole fic being published as one paragraph/clunky characterization

📚 ⇢ what's the last thing you wrote down in your notes app?

i don't really use my notes app for writing purposes… the last time i did was to keep track of all the overly-pedantic google searches i made while writing It's Nice to Have a Friend, including but not limited to:

whether or not the cowboy emoji existed in 2011 (it did not)

the difference between MI5 and MI6 (national vs international)

how long does a wedding reception take (up to 10 hours depending on the planned activities 😳)

line dancing (i spent over an hour going down this rabbit hole)

[system-comforts]

hey, im having trouble with contacting other alters in my system. i recently discovered that im a system (specifically OSDD-1B), through a ton of research, and i, the host, want to initiate contact with others in my system. how can i do this? id love to talk with them. -sincerely, a host of a OSDD-1B sys

Hi there host anon! I think it's wonderful you've been exploring this and doing research. I can do my best to share some tips for communication.

I've shared a few tips on communication before, but let me try to sum up. There are many ways to try and contact other alters. Internal communication methods can include simply thinking at them and calling their name. Communicating through music or visuals or sounds can also be helpful, especially early on in communication. Sometimes people communicate by having a shared mental space to meet, a headspace. This allows for visualization and to "see" how your alters may present. Some alters may also communicate emotionally. If one doesn't like a certain situation or activity, you might feel that emotional push back, and that's also communication.

There are also ways to communicate in the physical world. Keeping a journal can be helpful for those who have a lot of amnesia between alters or who can't communicate internally. We find writing smaller notes on sticky notes or in our phone to be more helpful, especially for everyday tasks. Some systems will set up personal discord servers to share information and communicate. There are a few other apps that can be helpful for this too, like Simply Plural (it has a text feature and can also track fronting times). It's not as common, but communicating by moving objects around is also possible. Seeing a teddy bear move onto the bed might be a sign a little has been out, etc.

As a final note, be aware that some members may not want to talk. It might be they just don't want to, they might have painful memories, or they might need more time to trust you. All of these are valid. Communication will take time and patience. We wish you the best of luck!

-mod neptune

[vatsalaishwaryaqmt]

Boosting Asset Profitability with Logistics Software: A Smart Business Move

In logistics, every vehicle, warehouse, and piece of equipment represents an investment—and that investment must deliver returns. That's where asset profitability comes in. It’s not just about owning assets; it’s about how effectively you use them to generate revenue and reduce costs.

With the right technology, logistics businesses can track, measure, and improve asset performance in real time. At QuickMove Technologies, our integrated logistics software solutions are built to help companies unlock maximum value from their assets.

What Is Asset Profitability in Logistics?

Asset profitability refers to how much profit a business can earn from its physical resources. In the logistics sector, these assets include:

Vehicles (trucks, vans, containers)

Warehouses and storage space

Tools, equipment, and inventory systems

Improving asset profitability means ensuring each asset is used optimally, maintained well, and contributes positively to the bottom line.

Why It Matters

Inefficient asset usage leads to increased downtime, higher maintenance costs, and missed revenue opportunities. When your trucks are underutilized or your warehouse isn’t optimized, you're leaving money on the table. That’s where QuickMove’s solutions come in.

How QuickMove Helps You Maximize Asset Profitability

QuickMove’s logistics software empowers businesses with intelligent tools that automate, monitor, and analyze asset performance across the supply chain.

1. Real-Time Transport Asset Tracking

Our transport management software gives complete visibility into your fleet. With GPS tracking, route optimization, and auto-scheduling, you can ensure each vehicle is making the most of its time on the road—cutting down idle time and improving delivery efficiency.

2. Smarter Warehouse Asset Use

Using our warehouse management system, companies can track the flow of goods, optimize shelf space, and automate put-away/pick-list tasks. This maximizes space utilization and minimizes labor costs, boosting asset ROI.

3. Freight Asset Coordination

With our freight forwarding software, you can consolidate shipments, optimize container usage, and handle international documentation—all of which contribute to better asset usage and lower operational overhead.

4. Mobile Inventory & Condition Reporting

The digital logistics inventory app allows your team to perform real-time asset checks from the field. Whether it’s verifying goods received, noting damage, or updating locations—this tool ensures better control and faster turnaround of physical assets.

Data-Driven Profitability Insights

QuickMove software doesn't just track asset activity—it helps you analyze it. Through our smart reporting tools and customer service portal, you can view job profitability reports, identify underperforming assets, and adjust your strategy.

Other value-added features include:

Automatic invoicing & cost tracking

Job-wise profitability dashboards

Asset lifecycle analytics

Paperless record-keeping and real-time alerts

Conclusion: Profit-First Logistics Strategy

In today’s highly competitive logistics landscape, businesses must do more than just move goods—they must move smarter. Improving asset profitability is a key step toward building a lean, agile, and profitable logistics operation.

At QuickMove Technologies, our all-in-one logistics software equips you to control costs, increase output, and drive ROI from every asset you own.

👉 Book a Demo to discover how our tools can transform your asset performance—and your bottom line.

[brocoffeeengineer]

Journaling Your CFA Journey: Why It’s More Powerful Than You Think

It is all about accuracy and discipline in finance. All the intensity of the CFA exam process, in which understanding financial theory is merely part of the equation, is to test whether you've got the discipline to go through with it under pressure. So, you do mock exams, draw flashcards, stay reading till late at night—somewhere along the line, there is one powerful thing that gets overlooked. Journaling.

Sounds more like a mindfulness hack than finance prep, yet it proves to be one of the most effective strategies for CFA candidates. An intentional journal serves as a bridge from knowledge to performance—internalizing concepts, tracking progress, and maybe even on occasion helping you with stress.

How Journaling Gets Results

Jam-packed with ethics, economics, corporate finance, portfolio management, derivatives, and so on, the CFA curriculum presents a vast ocean of information. With all that information thrown at you, mere reading and rote memorization are not sufficient to retain it. Journaling, therefore, requires your active input: Writing in your own words what you have learned reinforces your understanding and pinpoints areas of confusion.

Journaling also fosters metacognition: thinking about your thinking. Through tracking your study habits, energy levels, and understanding on a daily basis, you create a view of what works for you. Are mornings more productive? Does retention suffer if studying takes place after work? What topics keep appearing as weak? A journal will tell you all.

Journaling Goes Digital

Today, when apps like Notion, Day One, and Evernote present digital alternatives, journaling need not be pen and paper. Many candidates these days opt to create digital study journals, organizing notes, thoughts, charts, and daily goals while maintaining a visually clean and easy-to-search format. Even students in a CFA course pune setup have started integrating digital journaling into the prep routine, synchronizing study notes with spaced-repetition tools and goal trackers.

Digital journaling is now integrated into study platforms, facilitating the mapping of long-term learning goals and linking theoretical concepts from varied subjects. This not only eases consolidation but also enables candidates to distinguish between the interrelations of portfolio theories and practical case studies—an essential competency in making investment decisions.

Stress Management and Emotional Tracking

The CFA exams not only challenge your brain but are also exhausting emotionally. There is anxiety, feelings of burnout, and common imposter syndrome. Journaling creates a space where candidates can vent, think, and realign. Whether you note how a tough mock ethics exam made you feel or how a concept came together at a group study session, such things help make that rollercoaster of emotions feel normal.

Expressive writing has been shown to enhance cognitive performance in the experience of pressure. A CFA candidate doing 5-to-10 minutes a day of reflective journaling sees with clarity such improvements as focus or reduced anxiety on test days. Study habits tend to be around mechanical grinding and not quite mindful processes.

Personalize Your Journal Towards CFA Study Success

Each candidate's experience is unique, and such is your journal. Below are some formats you may find helpful:

* Progress Logs: Document daily, weekly, or even monthly achievements. For instance, “Completed Quantitative Methods: Time Series. Had trouble understanding autocorrelation but dominated the practice set.”

* Concept Translation: Just writing a tough topic such as fixed-income duration into your words isn't going to simplify it; it somewhat pays off in long-term memory.

* Mock Test Postmortems: Analyze your performance after each mock test. What parts put a time crunch onto you? Which tricks worked? Did stress impair decisions?

Some aspirants even keep a "wins journal," in which they enter tiny wins, like: finally getting swaps/ more than 70% on ethics. Keeps a strong motivation going through the longer cycles of preparation.

A Rising Trend with a Competitive Edge

Increased CFA candidates across geographies are feverishly keeping journals as a soft skill strengthening hard outcomes. So is the CFA Institute on the bandwagon in that it has included metacognitive soft tools and emotional resilience within the brackets of professional development, as financial wisdom requires clarity of thought as much as quantitative skills.

For interesting reasons, this approach resonates very well in India's learning ecosystem, too. The other region-wide expansion in finance education is that known for its academic rigor-normalized structured approaches like journaling are being included as part of the mainstream. In cities where the demand for CFA talent is growing like fire, candidates are quickly adopting holistic methods that include technical knowledge as well as that of mental well-being.

Conclusion

Journaling is not part of the CFA syllabus; however, it cannot be overstated in terms of success rates and personal clarity. It is more than a diary; it is a roadmap, reality check, and sometimes a much-needed pep talk.

There has been a trend in some ways that affect future candidates facing these fast-paced cities with dramatic financial industries. With such changes in the patterns of candidate populations, we find more and more introspective and smart forms of learning emerging in history. The aspirants taking their CFA Training Program in pune are now increasingly attracted toward journaling as a strategic lever, not just to pass exams, but to acquire a reflective edge that pays well in the real-world finance roles for which they are preparing.

[whyamidoingthis-imdone]

On the one hand, it’s really nice that we get to see what would normally be internal company material, and I want to encourage Tumblr to continue be this transparent in the future. However so much of this strategy is backwards thinking that is impossible to ignore and very deserving of the criticism that will take over the notes and dwarf the few positive things the original post has shared. It actually does hit on Tumblr trying to solve some of the fundamental problems with its platform. Unfortunately, almost every time it does this, it is presented at the end like an afterthought when it should be the highlight. Instead, the majority of the post highlights what they are doing to attract prospective new users, which are some of the least likely people to actually see this post and be in the audience.

This is a guide for product improvement, not a full implementation plan, so it makes sense not to actually list the ways the app will change. Yet most of the strategy focuses on things that historically have been implemented in ways that go against Tumblr’s strengths and actively rely on what it is weakest at. The ambiguity of a guide here is not helping at all. There are ways to increase user sign up without artificially forcing user logins and Tumblr doesn’t collect enough data analytics to sell that would make that worth it, but that seems exactly what they are hinting at doing with their first point since that’s what the majority of social media does. Tumblr has stated they aren’t getting rid of of reverse chronological dashboards but no one is convinced because how else are the going achieve their goal of promoting new creators? I can think of a few inefficient ways like improving the recommended tag system, but if they are going to take these angles, Tumblr needs to be more explicit here than a guide. It just doesn’t explain enough.

One of the most notable positives listed here to me is fixing the bugs in the app. Leaving tumblr open on my iPhone causes it to rapidly heat up to the point that my phone screen will dim and the interactions to lag by several seconds all in order to keep the entire phone from overheating and shutting down. I couldn’t even create this post in a single session without the keyboard lagging so long it became impossible to type. No other app I have used does this consistently to this degree in such a short amount of time, even when sharing video. My guess is that ads aren’t being managed properly and causing memory and processing leaks, since the settings to not play videos or audio don’t apply to them. I hear even more complaints of bugs and crashes on android since the OS isn’t as standardized. Fixing these should be top priority and benefits new users as well, since no one wants to use a completely nonfunctional app. Even though bug fixes basically got its own section, it feels like it was just thrown in at the end since you had to read 5 even longer sections before it.

In my opinion, what Tumblr should have done and failed to convey with this guide is focus on creating a consistent experience between non-users and users along with more robust and easier to use settings for a better onboarding process. It’s easier to use a product when you can see how it works before investing in it. Most users here hate the hard to find settings that are inconsistently placed across devices too, and when basic functionality, like the ability to create a post, keeps moving around nonsensically and without purpose while other features they don’t want take their place. Users don’t even trust new features they do want like alt text on images given Tumblr’s terrible track record.

With all the other social media and public small creator sites imploding, all Tumblr need to do is not fail alongside them to come out on top. It would be even better if they actually improved the site. The whole “if you build it, they will come” philosophy. But maybe that’s too much to ask. They seem to be under the impression that they have already finished building a complete product and just need to add more bells and whistles on top to make it more attractive, when there’s still a lot of gaps in the foundation to shore up before more people are convinced it actually works (I’m looking at you tumblr search function).

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[david-johnson-001]

Top Reasons to Partner with a Salesforce Development Company

Salesforce In Brief

Over the period, Salesforce has become a widely popular and reliable customer relationship management system for businesses across the world, especially the ones running their online market platforms. 

Customer relationship management systems, popularly known as CRM, that help businesses store, manage, and optimize user data along with managing great relationships. It’s also useful for tracking sales and marketing activities to improve customer service by keeping track of all previous consumer interactions to help them grow better in future.

Salesforce, unlike regular CRM systems, provides cloud-based solutions for various departments like sales, service, marketing, and analytics. It is also worth noting that Salesforce is widely used due to its cloud-based features. This means it does not require any physical installations, and the data that is stored by it can be accessed by huge sizes of teams across the globe with the help of tools it provides. It can be worked upon by a large number of people bringing greater efficiency, expertise, and ease in the process.

Defining Salesforce Development

Salesforce is a strong customer relationship management system, and salesforce development company entails deals with creating unique, tailored solutions designed to meet the specific needs of a business. While Salesforce offers numerous built-in features, companies often require additional functionalities or customizations that are usually unavailable out of the box at the very onset. 

There are a lot of things or features that set Salesforce apart from other CRM systems, but the most prominent and significant of all has to be that it is a Cloud-based system. 

Not only this, but the best part about Salesforce is that it supports third-party extensions and apps flawlessly. Mindfully utilizing Salesforce’s capabilities to meet business requirements is where custom development comes in, and the same requires assistance and expertise from the Salesforce development company in making customizations that are relevant and essential to achieving business goals.

. Even though Salesforce development is highly accessible and user-friendly, having a dedicated team to do these customizations and maintain them always pays off better.

What All Salesforce Development Company Delivers

To bring the best out of Salesforce CRM, it is prudent for businesses to have a Salesforce development company by their side. Let us delve into various aspects that can make It can even more efficient with the help of a Salesforce development company. 

The topmost reason has to be the fact that a company dedicated to Salesforce development will have certified experts with deep knowledge of the entire ecosystem that can help customize and integrate all elements to maximize the results. 

It is essential to bring the best out of the CRM system, one needs deep knowledge and understanding of the complexities of its various modules of salesforce (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, etc.).

Every business has different requirements, and to use this platform according to the unique needs of a business, a Salesforce development company can provide customized CRM solutions that can help maximize the platform's potential by adapting it to the specific workflows, processes, and goals.

The third aspect to be listed has to be efficient maintenance because just the correct execution and implementation are not enough, as Salesforce requires continuous regular updates, maintenance, and troubleshooting. A Salesforce development company offers ongoing support, ensuring that the system is always optimized, secure, and up to date.

Hence, partnering with a Salesforce development company can save you money in the long run by reducing internal staffing costs, avoiding mistakes during implementation, and optimizing processes for better ROI.

Salesforce is well known for the data optimization and useful analytical tools. The expert development companies can help businesses leverage Salesforce’s powerful data analytics tools, enabling better decision-making through insights from customer data, predictive analytics, and reporting.

In the modern age of E-commerce, cyber attacks have become quite prevalent, and data security is highly critical for a commodity. Without the security of their data, customers can never feel comfortable using a business’s online shopping platform, and to counter this, a Salesforce development company ensures that your CRM is compliant with industry standards and regulations to safeguard your data and ensuring business continuity. 

With all these functions listed, it is prudent for a company to work with a Salesforce development company for better results and long-lasting performance of their CRM goals.

[horizon-forbidden-sheesh]

Writing Process: Preamble

*Ahem* SO! I was recently honored with a question about my organization process for writing. And, boy howdy, am I just tickled pink to tell you! I've never felt so seen!! Let's do this thing.

Let me start by sharing that IRL, I'm a copywriter/project manager for print & digital design work. So when I started writing my first-ever fic, I organized it much in the same way I would a website build.

But tbh, when I started The Marshal, I didn't really know I was writing a fic. In fact, I was only working through my typical video game process. In that I'm extremely anal note-taker, and it's just the way I live my regular-degular life. All my books are annotated to the Nth, I’ve been keeping a (rather inconsistent) diary since I was 17, and I’m a religious bullet journal-er with very specific journal preferences (grid paper, always).

My practice of video game note-taking goes all the way back to drawing maps of Luigi's Mansion as a kid to try and optimize my speed runs, and progresses into tracking daily decisions for BG3. I’ve also got entire pages in my bullet journal dedicated to developing backstories for all my Cult of the Lamb cult members, and my Notes app has several installments of history & lore from various Civ V games. It’s simply how I prefer to play.

(Side note: No, I am not technically diagnosed with anything. Yes, I have found myself in repetitive, furious spirals, tearing out pages of my notebook over-and-over when the map I HAD to draw in pen was not 'perfect.' 💁🏻Is this OCD?🦋 Who knows. Who cares.)

Game Timelines have always fascinated me, pretty much since Ocarina of Time. I want to know how exactly long something took, what order it happened in, and whether it's technically 'feasible' within the parameters of the game. Peep my post about 'realistic' gameplay for more deets.

Mostly, I was trying to track where I 'camped' each night, because it was SUPER IMPORTANT that the events of the game took place within the ~3 month timeline GAIA sets before the environment collapses (super casual). So, the notes from my first play-through looked like this.

And then I met Kotallo.

And I started drafting journal entries from Aloy's POV to explore the internal monologue behind all those ✨faces✨ she was making.

(These ones. Infinite credit to @Diviner-Alva for doing the LORDT'S WORK.)

They looked like this:

If you've read 'The Marshal,' you'll notice some similarities.

After a few weeks of gameplay, I was pushing 20k words in 'journal entries,' and it just... wasn't cutting it. That was around the time I knew I had an bona fide obsession on my hands.

Writing exclusively in Aloy's POV left out SO MUCH OF THE STORY that was developing in my li'l head alongside my gameplay. I was imagining a whole burgeoning, slowburn romance as I picked my way across the Forbidden West. It mirrored the side quests (That Talanah convo??) and overall themes of HFW perfectly. (Also, um, the consistent controller rumble during the Scorcher cut scene?? Like, WTF? You're telling me Geurrilla didn't know EXACTLY what they were doing? Pfft.)

I can't tell you when exactly I finally took to the internet to feed my hyperfixation, but let me tell you that it was my first time discovering Ao3, and I spent the summer of 2022 devouring every fic in the Aloy/Kotallo tag. I felt like I had finally found my people. It even worked for a while! But the story playing in my head didn't exactly match any of the stories 1:1, and I realized after a while that no one else could write MY headcanon.

Still, there's a TON of overlap in a few of them: Medicine by HIMLuv is by far the closest, and my personal fave. I love basically everything Garbage_Dono has written. Obviously, I've developed a massive crush on Pikapeppa. (How does she do it so FAST? *awe, amazement, un poco envy*) There are some truly incredible writers out there, and I'm genuinely grateful to every one of them for creating a foundation that gave me the permission I needed to finally fucking WRITE. I denied myself fanfic for probably 20 years, imagining all the ways I would be ruthlessly mocked if anyone ever found out. I've had a-lot-a-lot of shame blocks to work through as I've been writing over the past year, and this story about opening up and trusting others feels deeply personal in a way I can't quite put into words.

That's how I made the decision to begin adapting the journal entries into a more organized fic. So, I started my second play-though and created this account around that time. It would be probably be another ~6 months before I got drunk enough to just press 'publish' on the first chapter in April of this year, over a year after the game came out.

Every other reference tool I've made, I created along the way. I intended to post more of them here on tumblr, but hey. Life Happens.™ And even tho it feels like the fandom had moved on post-DLC, there's still pleeeeenty of time. 😘

Anyway, I'm gonna clip this here, and get more into the weeds on organizational tools in another post. But it felt like I needed to talk about this first, because when I started really writing in the Fall of 2022, I already had a lotta documents under my belt that I needed to wrangle.

If you got to this point, thanks for reading this entirely self-indulgent post.

xo, Sheesh. 🖤

[multiplicity-positivity]

Hey, looking for advice I guess?

A few days ago we/I had a blackout and ended up like 2 hours from home as a result, and it was very stressful trying to get home, we've had similar blackouts but most of the time we don't have a total blank, there's usually for most of us some level of awareness of what happened to the body even if it wasn't "me", but this time there's nothing at all, no memories and no clue of what happened except for some marks on the body and a cryptic message in our notebook, how would one go about trying to figure out who was in front for this blackout? Or at least measures in place to prevent things from going that badly? I think it must be a new alter we haven't met yet or explained how things work and that's why but it's just so difficult :(

-john

Hi, John - we’re sorry to hear y’all went through something so difficult and scary! Unfortunately, this sort of thing can happen, especially for folks with DID or who are prone to full amnesia and blackouts. This has happened to us a handful of times in the past, and it’s always terrifying and disorienting!

As far as figuring out what happened, or determining which alter had been fronting during the blackout: We’re sorry, but we don’t have an easy answer for you here. Perhaps you could try asking any trusted loved one if they know what might have happened to you during this time (in case that alter had gotten in touch with anyone while they were fronting). You could also try asking around in your system, to see if one of your alters knows who had been fronting or whether that particular alter is willing and able to come forward. However, dissociative barriers may be keeping y’all from each other! So there’s a chance this alter couldn’t get in touch with y’all even if they wanted to.

As for preventative measures… here’s what our system does to help minimize the negative effects of blackouts. (Note: our blackouts are usually, but not always, due to a young, traumatized part fronting, so that impacts the safety measures we take. Our system’s methods may not work for your system - we’re just sharing what we do in case something here could be helpful!)

1 - Simply Plural and a logbook.

We have two methods for keeping track of who fronts: the app Simply Plural, and a physical notebook which we leave in a visible location on the desk in our bedroom. Some parts of our system don’t or can’t use the app, so the book is there for them. Not every part is on the same page with logging their fronting history, but since most of us are, we are able to work together to keep a general idea of who was fronting when.

2 - Contact with loved ones

We try to keep in touch with our partner system regularly, even when we’re apart. We let her know who’s fronting, where we’re going, and what we’re up to as our situation changes. If she goes too long without hearing from us, she’ll try to text or call us to get in touch. With her help, we’ve been able to fill in the blanks for some of our blackouts, even if we’re not able to actually remember what had happened during the blackout.

3 - Internal communication

Building up our internal communication has been incredibly difficult. It’s taken a lot of time, patience, and work in therapy in order for us to reach the levels of communication we enjoy today. However, it really has been so necessary for us to spend that time and energy focusing on connecting with each other inside! Because of this, we’ve been able to lower some of the dissociative barriers between us and more effectively get a clear idea of what happens when one of us isn’t fronting. We’re able to keep each other informed and try to piece together events that took place when some of us weren’t in the front. So while it’s been hard work trying to build and maintain communication between us, it’s been quite useful for figuring out what’s happened during a blackout, at least sometimes!

4 - Managing triggers

This one has also been quite difficult, but through therapy and work inside, we’ve been slowly learning what triggers particular alters to the front and what causes barriers between us to grow stronger. Certain sensations or situations that remind us of our trauma tend to do this, and it can cause a switch to happen automatically that isn’t handled by our gatekeeper. We’re much more likely to have blackouts due to a negative triggers than we are due to positive triggers or certain parts switching out according to our routine! So learning more about what triggers us can help us learn how to avoid these things when possible.

We often recommend therapy, but it could probably help a lot with managing blackouts, mitigating harm, and ensuring your system’s safety during and after a blackout. So if your system isn’t in therapy, it would probably be a good idea to try and find a therapist. Of course, we know not everyone has the ability and means to access therapy, but we feel it’s worth mentioning!

Gosh, we hope that something here will be useful for you. Coping with blackouts can definitely be challenging, but we hope that things will get easier for you and your system with time!

🌷 Corrie and 🐢 Kip

[planetarymetals]

we simply Do Not.

like, okay, yes, we do keep a vague track by having headmates logged into something like pluralkit or simplyplural or lighthouse or even just our phone's notes app. but that's really it. i know that it gets really overwhelming for us to continuously try to keep track of everything, especially with how quickly our system can change (the majority of our headcount can be attributed to fragments, who show up once before fusing or going dormant completely).

we know a vague number (i.e., right now, we're somewhere within the 90-100 range, give or take, due to how inconsistent our communication between internal parts and external parts can be sometimes) but that's really the best we've got, and we don't try to stress ourselves out over it too much :~)

focusing on the "here" and the "now", y'know? whatever happens outside of whatever we're dealing with externally just sort of Happens without much input from the current "outside" parts.

Questions for systems: High alter count

Just one question that could have a couple answers because I can't understand this. Anyone can answer no matter syscourse stance

If you have a high headcount (like 100+ to 1k+) how the hell do you track that and count it? Especially if you have an exact number

I can't be bothered to count something if there's more than 50 of it lmaoo

This is in no way fake claiming people with high alter counts