#personally I think they need positive experiences when they're performing badly

[not-your-lifeline]

they were all downed at 4 GENS because they were 4 korean SWFs and kept swarming the hooked person.

so I picked up Dwight to let him struggle out and heal his team one by one, farm BP together, and let them all escape :)

(they kept failing skillchecks like crazy because of Coulrophobia lol)

[crystalelemental]

I remember reading about you saying something about the lack of IVs and EVs in Nexomon but now I can't find the post;;

Would you say it's a bad or a good thing?

That's correct! Nexomon does not have EVs or IVs or natures. Essentially, two of the same species of Nexomon at the same level have the same stats and access to the same moves. They are functionally identical. Whether that's good or bad depends on your stance on things. I'll go over it bit by bit under the cut:

In Pokemon, if you pick your Bulbasaur starter, you have to immediately contend with both a nature and the set IVs in each stat. Depending on what's rolled, your Bulbasaur may perform better or worse throughout the run. Those starting factors can have an impact on how it operates. Having this variance means no two playthroughs are exactly the same, because your stats are going to change how well certain options will work.

By contrast, if you pick Petril in Nexomon 1, it is the same every time. You know exactly what you picked, and every playthrough you use it, it will perform the same. There's no variance. This could be seen as kinda limiting to replayability, depending on your stance on its importance. It also means there's no reason not to just trade out something you have for a later catch at a higher level if it's the same species. Which can make it less about cherishing your specific monsters, in a way.

But on the other hand, depending on the Pokemon, variance is a huge problem. Bulbasaur can kinda get away with deciding between Adamant or Modest, you know what I mean? Hell, it can operate with Bold or Impish, or even Timid or Jolly. Flatlined stats worked in its favor. But something like Abra? Roll an Adamant and experience something that's just objectively worse for no reason. IVs are similar. Very little in the games really necessitates 31s in each stat, but rolling 0s? I had a Platinum run with a Piplup that had 0 in both offenses and speed. It was constantly outsped, and couldn't OHKO a Geodude two levels below it at the start of the game with Bubble.

While you never strictly need to concern yourself with the factors involved in Pokemon, I personally argue that most of them exist to be more of a burden than a boon, especially as new generations introduce more and more min-maxing of base stats. IVs only hinder when they roll too low. Natures effectively have four beneficial options, and at least eight that are devastating. Statistically, things are more likely to go badly for the player than positively.

I think there's something to be said for standardization. You don't even have to consider things beyond catching what you want to catch. It does mean that there's no way to power up weaker options that way...at least in the first game. Extinction has cores, which can be used to increase stats, and those are pretty flexible to use with whoever. They're percentage-based, so it's kind of a "rich get richer" situation like Z-moves were, but I didn't encounter much in Extinction that felt like...unusable, you know? That's a whole other post, but your moveset is just what you learn naturally, and as a result, type matchup is wildly more significant, and every tool operates well if you're using it where it can function. In comparison to Pokemon, where movepool bloat through TMs and egg moves have resulted in it being borderline impossible to work a type resistance in your favor.

Anyway, the short answer is I prefer it. It makes the game a lot more streamlined for me. But I'm also a lunatic who resets for Pokeon natures I want regardless of the game's difficulty.

[braintapes]

man i know ive been reblogging a lot of posts abt how awful the job hunt is but truly. genuinely. the whole thing is just so utterly thoroughly completely fuckin Borked dude. fully just Does Not Work

job listings are either fake, scams, inaccurate to the role they want filled, poorly written, written by someone who doesn't know what the job is supposed to entail, are either way too short or way too long, and/or by and large don't include the actual information you actually for real actually NEED to know whether the job is worth your time to apply for, such as, i dunno, the salary. your actual everyday job duties and what you Actually need to perform them. an absurd amount go out of their way to specify just how able bodied you need to even Think about Breathing on the job listing (very) even when that's blatantly false because fuck anyone with a disability i suppose.

assuming some of the jobs are, in fact, real jobs that someone would like filled by a human person to perform a series of tasks, you still may not have a good selection. depending on location you could be out of luck for any halfway decent work. there's a billion positions open for things you Know you can't do. the jobs all seem to come in the following flavors: entry level (but you must have 1-2 years experience in this field) entry level (must have a masters degree a phd and 6-10 years experience) and entry level (must have 5 years experience and be willing to lift an entire house's weight in manual labor every single day with no break)

if you don't have experience having a job well. sucks to suck i guess!

but whatever. okay. find some promising (read: seemingly not fake/scam) listings. go to apply. upload a resume you spent hours poring over to make sure ATS wouldn't mangle it while also keeping it professional and with all the relevant information to make you look as good as possible to prospective employers. the company website then takes the resume you uploaded (in the correct format) and dumps it in the trash. manually write down all of the information in their little text boxes please! oh and also make an account with all your personal information to even have the privilege of getting to fill out this application. mandatory work history information required. fill out this questionnaire - just be sure not to step on the mines and answer a question Wrongly. "why do you want to work at this company?" write an essay for us detailing the most personal aspects of yourself. dont click the buttons that masquerade as offering accommodations and diversity inclusion because theyll actually just set all of this on fire if youre actually honest. grovel in our uncaring text boxes about how badly you want to be part of our team and how YOU can best serve US you worthless dog. slowly crawl your way out of the last circle of hell so you can be done with the application. click the last button. write the last bit of forced-smile text so your teeth dont feel like they're going to shatter apart anymore

wait for weeks. then for months only for a rejection long since youve moved on. assuming you get a response, as the standard now seems to be ghosting. repeat process again and again and again and AGAIN. endlessly. scraping and clawing and begging. youre not grovelling enough. youre not kneeling and cowering and pleading hard enough. the people in your life who Do have jobs cant seem to understand why youre so distressed by it all because, well, They got jobs so Why Can't You? repeat process. repeat process. repeat process.

on a rare occasion, get a response (!!) and make it to the interview stage (!!!!!) which as it turns out is not actually a discussion about the job and how youd fit into it but a vibes check where you prostrate yourself once again to the hiring manager and they decide if they personally like you enough as someone they'd want to hang out with on the weekends to let you in. high chance to fail this immediately if you are some kind of minority, but because they dont want to get in trouble for discrimination, they instead Make Up A Reason not to hire you which then makes it perfectly fine because you can't prove the real reason. browse through your email to see the other rejections. repeat process.

remember that for every application you send out youre competing with hundreds of other desperate people who just need some money to god damned Survive. try to go find advice and find that everything is so heavily weighted in favor of employers it might as well be a fucking black hole (which would be apt considering everyones applications magically disappear) so the only advice anyone can give is pithy little platitudes about how you should look and act and speak and dress and behave and make sure youre grovelling! have you tried grovelling!! are you doing that enough because if you arent well it really is your fault isnt it then!

god and like even if you GET a job it's still a shit job and there's still no ladder any more. there's no Progression it's just moving horizontally across various shit jobs. even the "easiest" jobs to get hired at, customer service jobs, retail, food service, etc, are so terrible you arent treated like a human being by basically anyone from customers to managers. you arent allowed to sit down. you need to grovel STILL. to your boss. to customers. constantly. for 10 dollars an hour, probably less depending on location. but you have to agree to work all their horrible shifts for 10 hours a day on your feet no sitting 2 15 minute breaks fuck man. fuck. FUCK. WHAT IS ANYONE SUPPOSED TO DO AT THIS POINT?????

[devilinsheepswool]

Obey Me! MC Character Sheet

Thanks to @kyungi-i for the spred sheet! I've seen others do it and thought why not me?

Name: Alisa Moreno

Nickname: Ally, Lisa, Li-Li, Al, Isa, Moreno

Age: 18

Height: 5'3

Weight: 170

Race: Human

Gender: ♀️

Birthday: April 13

Star Sign: Aries

Hair Color: Brown (pink streaks)

Eye Color: Brown

Skin: Brown/freckled

Demon brother, she is most to least like:

1. Levi

2. Belphie

3. Satan

4. Lucifer

5. Beel

6. Mammon

7. Asmo

Personality: she's pretty cynical and pessimistic, she also seems very aloof but somehow has a way of knowing a little bit of everything that's going on. When she wants to be she can be very observative and dedicated to her work, otherwise, she can come off as lazy, or disinterested just as much as aloof. Her snide personality comes off subtle mostly due to her wallflower and nerdish appearance. And she does have trouble getting to know other people due to her self-consciousness, low self-esteem and social anxiety; all of which she masks under witty remarks, jokes, and sarcasm. She puts up walls and its difficult to get to know her past surface level, despite it all Lisa does have a soft side and softens up around people that have a natural kindness and positivity about them or are straightforward. She has a good sixth sense, which helps her be an extremely good judge of character more often than not she is correct about her intuition regarding others' intentions towards her. Lastly, she has a bad habit of acting out and deliberately going against authority, she doesn't like feeling controlled and being told what to do. She'll usually follow the rules because she can't be bothered with the effort to break them but if she feels like someone's trying to control her or that she's being patronized then she will deliberately go out of her way to break the rules.

Background: Before coming down to Devildom, Lisa, despite only being 18 had already finished all her schooling, including higher education. Back on earth, she was recognized as a child prodigy in her research on historical documents and records, despite her early achievements at such an early age, the pressure of being placed on such a high pedestal career-wise eventually got to her and she fizzled out. Growing up an orphan without a past or family, the academy she worked for and her work was all she had, after she cracked due to the pressure she ran away hoping to live out the youth she felt she had never experienced in childhood. At age 16 she was a runaway and going under a different name. She lived on the streets and squatted in abandoned buildings for a few months before she met some people that offered to help her. During this time she developed an interest in music seeing as the people who helped her were a musical band full of teens just like her.

In order to stay with them, she lied to them about the truth of who she was and why she ran away. She stayed with one of the band members she had become close to during her initial days of having met them. While she stayed with them she learned how to play several instruments and eventually sing as well. She went on to perform with them but after two years of playing with them musical difference surged and a fight broke out, after which Alisa decided to run away again. It was during her second night of squatting in an abandoned house that she woke up in Devildom.

Hobbies: Music; Singing, Electric Guitar, Violin.

Likes: Sweets, Reading, Music, Animals, Writing, Video Games and drawing.

Dislikes: Liars, being lied to, math, meddling (Ironically), cruelty, injustice/unfairness and short tempers. Words that sound one way but are spelled another, or that sound like they mean one thing and then mean something else.

Appearance:

She's fairly average height. She's on the plump side, with a rounded face that makes her look baby-faced. She has freckles but due to her brown skin they're difficult to notice. Her eyes are rounded and large despite the dark circles brought on by years of bad sleeping. Her hair is short in a bob cut and wavy/curly, usually, she has a singular braid running down her left side. She wears glasses to see and prefers to wear loose-fitting clothing except for at performances. She tends to dress on the nerdy side.

Casual Clothing -

• Top: Sky Blue sweater rather loose fitting sweater over a white button up blouse.

• Bottom: plaid moss green skirt. Over the knee length, style is somewhat pencil skirt. Black tights under skirt.

• Shoes: Brown Boots.

• Accessories: star-shaped hair clip, silver necklace with a star pendant, a bunch of woven, or leather, or beaded bracelets. 

• Glasses: Yes. Black plain.

Uniform:

Alterations?

Not many, she wears the uniform properly a skirt version with the same black tights underneath the skirt. And a light blue tie on her uniforms blouse.

• Mother: N/A

• Father: N/A

• Siblings: N/A

• Pets: A black cat she adopted during the first time she ran away, she found her in one of the abandoned buildings fed her and the cat kept following her after that. Her name is Pandora.

• Friends: Prior to joining the band Alisa had none, after joining the band she made 2, Lydia and Florence. The lead singer and drummer of the band, respectively. She stayed with Florence and her grandmother during her time in the band.

• Past Relationships:

She had a mentor/advisor who eventually became a colleague when she finally started working with the academy. She was very close to her and was her only actual relationship. Her relationship with Dr. Aver was the closest she's ever had to a familial relationship. In the early stages of their relationship Aver became endeared with a rather small and young Alisa and tried to offer her the closest thing to a family she could through her and her husband. While they had a solid well-going relationship, they hit an obstacle when Aver was offered a position teaching at a highly prestigious institution abroad. Aver tried to keep connected long distance but it all came to an end when Alisa ran away.

Alisa dated three times during her time in the band the first relationship was bad from the start and ended badly, the second and third one ended with Alisa self-sabotaging herself due to the first bad experience. All occurred relatively back to back during the first year and half of her being in the band.

The first one though was the longest one, which lasted for 9 months. The last two were relatively short-lasting about a month to two each.

Sexuality: Unsure, possibly Pan.

Have they been in love before?

Because of her first toxic relationship and overall young age, at the time Alisa is hesitant to say that she ever was truly in love in any of her past relationships. But she was the most heartbroken with the ending of her 3rd relationship. Prior to her third relationship, the other two were mainly out of curiosity for exploring with dating than actual love.

How easily do they gain crushes?

Not easy, she wasn't aware of her feelings towards her third (future) partner until she was in her second relationship, her feelings for her 3rd future partner had started amidst her 1st relationship when it started going downhill.

Do they believe in love?

She doesn't really have an opinion on it, she's rather cynical and with her negative past experiences you would think she doesn't believe in it anymore if she ever had, but honestly, it's not something she's thought about that much. She's just experiencing life as she goes, maybe someday...

What's their type:

Alisa is the type of person to look for what she's missing in her life in someone else; she's typically drawn to kind, warm-hearted people, more likely than not optimists with positive personalities. You get the sense that she's into the "angelic" type (thus her third ex/first love) with a strong moral compass always set on doing right. Of course, this being her type doesn’t mean it’s what suits her the best. Mixed with her low self-esteem, a relationship with her ideal type may turn out to be hazardous as she might end up over-idealizing the person or self-sabotaging once again due to low self-worth as well.  

Which of the 7 brothers is her favorite?

That's a tough one she likes both Mammon and Levi but couldn't pick a favorite between both. Although Beel is also a strong contender for her favorite.

Why?

Mammon, despite not being honest about what he truly thinks about her is easy to read and has always been there for her when she's truly needed him, he's stepped in to save her multiple times and she knows he clearly worries about her. She's grateful to him despite his antics, and is able to look past the big cool guy/bad boy facade he puts on and appreciate him for being there when she really needs him.

Levi, she actually sees a lot of herself in him. Especially, a lot of her from prior to her first run away. She relates to his hermit-like personality because prior to running away she was like that as well. She can also sympathize and empathize with his obvious insecurities and wants to more than anything be there to reassure him and help become more secure of himself. Despite not being a total weeb like Levi, during her time in the band she did develop some interest in anime and manga, just not as passionate as Levi's.

What do they look for in a partner?

Ideally, she likes kind-hearted, empathetic people but speaking practically she'd prefer an honest straightforward person easy to read that doesn't try to play mind games or control her. Someone patient and that can reassure her when she doubts herself, and most importantly someone that will call her out when she needs to be. She doesn't want someone that will coddle, pamper, or try to spoil her like a little doll and let her get away with things that are prick-ish. She's good at keeping herself in check but she'd like the reassurance that someone will call her out if she slips up without noticing.

General -

Fav. Food: Tamales, but she also loves Cheeseburgers and Milkshakes.

Least Favorite: Meatloaf, Eggnog, Rasin Muffins, Salmon.

Favorite color: blue & green

Least Favorite: White or Neons

Sociable or Recluse? Both, she can be something of an ambivert but prefers to be more reserved due to her majority introvertness.

Favorite Movie Genre: Droll Comedy, or Action Political Thrillers/govt. conspiracy, K-drama's

Reader or not? Very much a reader, liked it and eventually it was what her job required of her in order to conduct her research.

Favorite Animals: She likes cats and dogs, but she also has an ample love for animals of all kinds but especially the ones that can be found in the woods; Owls, Raccoons, Wolves, Crows. Her favorite however has to be the Fox.

Favorite Music Genre: Rock, though she's big on ceremonials and sea shanties as well, and loves testing her vocal range with gregorian chants and Hymns.

Least Favorite: Country

Do they like sweets?

BIG YES.

Do they like spicy food?

👌👌👌👌

Do they like school?

Not so much like but she was good at it, and a majority of her life was dedicated and depended on it, overall she doesn't have bad memories about school perse, so I guess you could say that she does.

Pet Peeves:

Loud food chewing, bad breath, meddling in her business, being patronized, people pointing out her baby face, people trying to manipulate, use or lie to her.

[anettrolikova]

A day in my life really depends on what's happening. That said, usually I have themes. For instance, I have a priority list, and I have decision logs that chronicle all the things I am trying to figure out.

I end up trying to insert themes into my days. Like today, for instance, I have a meeting with my small team to begin the week; I reserved my afternoon for product reviews—what we call “greenpathing exercises”—where, oddly, I'm trying to discern how everyone is thinking about the main things we're working on. I do this because oftentimes I feel as though I am the connective tissue combining operations, finance, and more formal business functions with the product itself. This connection helps me to make good decisions.

A lot of this is almost automatic by just having a good color coding system, which is really fun

I made two decisions: one, I'm going to try to learn as much about business as possible. But, if business is very different from software architecture, I'm going to be no good no matter what I do. And so, I ran an experiment to treat engineering principles, software architecture, complex system design, and company building as the same thing. Effectively, we looked for the business equivalent of just turning off servers to see if the system has resiliency. For instance, we used to ask people to use their mouse on their non-dominant hand for a day. We introduced these little nudges to ensure that people didn’t become complacent.

I believe that the job we all have in life is to acquire knowledge and wisdom and then share it. I just don’t know what else there is. This is the bedrock of my belief system.

When I get close to any field, I think about how far I want to go. I'm probably further along with programming. I don’t know if I want to get from 90 to 91% in programming when, with the same amount of work, I could figure out the first 60 to 70% of UX or even something like drawing. There’s a recent book about this called Range, which I really like. The book pushes in this direction and explores this topic a bit more than I do. But I just found myself nodding throughout reading it, because it turns out that very often—really, every field has fundamental wisdom that you discover when you're learning and talking to the people who have mastered it. I find that going wide and learning the best lessons from the people who have dedicated their entire lives to a certain pursuit gets you really, really close to mastery.

people show up with a mastery of certain instruments. Someone ends up being the jazz director and the rest of the band follows

I've always gravitated towards competing against myself in most things.

I really love failing. I feel so good when I do something, and it just doesn't work; especially if I get the feedback about why it didn't work. That gives me a project to work at to improve. And so maybe that's sort of interesting regarding losses.

the major reason why video games are valuable is because of this concept of transfer learning. For instance, people who are good at chess understand when it's time to perform tactics, and when it's time to focus on positional development. Not just in chess, but also in life.

I have found it really, really useful to be able to reason about a relationship without getting egos involved too much. I can have a conversation with someone saying, “Hey, you made a commitment to ship this thing, and you did. That's awesome. That's a super big charge on the trust battery, but you’re actually late for every meeting. Even though that's relatively minor—like it decreases 0.1% on your battery—you should fix that.”

It plays a role like that. That said, it's not useful to talk about trust as a binary thing. People are quick to say, “You don't trust me!” And it's actually more, “Well, no, I trust you to a certain level, but you would like more trust; you want trust at a completely different level.”

if your cell phone is 80% charged, you're not worried about finding a charger. But when your phone in your pocket goes into low battery mode, you're thinking about your phone a lot. What people want to do in a company is get to the 80% or 100% level in the area that they run. You gain full autonomy this way. It’s a process that cannot be given to people by title or something like that.

The reason why it was the best thing for me is because it's almost the perfect counterfactual to how you should run a company. I honestly think that, you know, a coin flip has a batting average of 50%. If you just do the perfect opposite of literally everything about that place, you would probably clock in at 60 to 70% of getting everything right, which would mean you would outperform probably 90% of all companies in the world.

Among other things, almost every incentive system was just wrong. For instance, there was no way you would get a promotion or recognition if you weren't dressed in a suit or if you didn’t use slides in a particular way that resembled the legal profession.

It's infantilization because you literally have a policy about how to dress. If you have a policy on how to dress, that means you don't trust people to dress. It was a pretty stark experience.

We are building hopefully amazing software for absolutely amazing people, like people who are unbelievably brave and really adaptable. Society tries to talk people out of this, like no one wants other people to be successful building companies. Silicon Valley might have gotten to a level of enlightenment where company building is actually encouraged, but the rest of the world isn’t like this.

The learning curve of being a great executive is a lot less like learning the guitar, and a lot more like skydiving. It’s the kind of thing you should not do without an instructor. A coach is probably one of the highest returns on investment anyone can do with their attention. An hour spent with a coach has a 10x, 50x, 100x potential return on time spent.

Our strategy was to hire as many high potential people as we could and have them get to their potential much faster than they actually imagined was possible. Personal growth has no real speed limit. It's more dependent on how often a student is ready, and that often depends on the environment and the norms of a culture around the student. For instance, how often is the teacher appearing when the student is ready? If you can line this up at a fairly high hit rate, then people can go through nearly ten years of career development within a single calendar year. I know the 10x thing is overplayed now, but I have absolutely seen it.

Hey, the reason why you've got this job is not because of everything you know, but because you seem like the kind of person who can figure it out when you need to know something.” That's very basic but also very liberating.

One thing that really makes it work is that we are just extremely different. Almost the only overlap we have is in how much we care about the mission of this company. Outside of that, his skill set is extremely different; his input is extremely different; his life experience is very different. It's very intuitive for us when to go with one of our ideas because this is what a relationship with a 100% trust battery looks like.

I had the source code for Linux, I signed up for the Linux kernel mailing list, and I listened to how they talked about computer architecture. I then spent all my time trying to figure out what these terms meant.

The meaningful thing about this story is that it points at a fallacy. The other important thing is it implies that people in groups end up really cancelling each other's good parts and exposing one another's downsides.

why are technical founders overperforming the market right now? I don't actually think it's because they're technical. I think it's because of a very specific childhood experience that a lot of the people running technology companies have had. Most of us grew up in a world which we knew would change significantly because it was really badly designed given what we knew about the potential coming soon. And this potential coming soon was the march of computers and digitalization. I think that a lot of us, including myself, have leveraged this insight into significant enterprise value.

Norman gave permission to really hate the door instead of hating yourself when you push it instead of pulling it. That is not your fault. No human has ever been at fault for pushing instead of pulling. That has always been the fault of the people who designed the door.

People who learn how to think about how to do things in their environment better, and to understand that the objects in their everyday life have not been designed or created by people who are smarter than they are—they are the people who will become entrepreneurs.

[imagineyourstars]

Hey there >.0 Can I request how the Knights react to their s/o overworking so much to the point that they're worried for her but she's too stubborn to rest?

first knights request ! i took it as the s/o being the tenkousei and working hard on producer stuff, i hope that’s what you wanted ! if not you can still send another request;;;;; - admin mademoiselle

Izumi

Izumi’s the hardworker type himself, so he won’t especially notice you’re overworkingyourself at first.  He’ll just act as though it’s natural for Knights’ producer to work a lot.

It doesn’t helpthat he tends to add more work for you, by planning more idol jobs ortasking you with things he can’t do, like outfit making. He’ll getangry if you don’t answer your phone within two minutes, or if youtake too long on some odd job he sent you away for. Overall, he tendsto treat you as his personal assistant.

Soon, the things you had to do piled up. You had to work hard on costume making, concert planning and let’snot even mention your homework. This caused you to stress yourselfquite badly, and one day during costume fitting you couldn’t help butburst into tears when Izumi’s jacket wouldn’t fit.

It was the firsttime you saw Izumi be confused about a situation. He quickly got ahang of himself but you witnessed him being at a loss for words for amoment. Ultimately, he decided to take you out of Knight’s small andstuffy studio for some fresh air.

Izumi understandswork can be a bit too much sometimes, but he’s afraid to give you advicewithout sounding condescending or like he’s lecturing you. So he optsto just shyly hug you. It’s a very brief hug, but you felt better allthe same. When he finally speaks, he’s not lecturing or being mean,but whispering in a gentle voice.

“You can relyon me a bit more, you know. If too many people give you things to do,you can just tell me. I’ll make sure they won’t ever charge theirwork on you again. Count on me like you’d do with a big brother,would you ?”

He sweetly kissedyour forehead and made you promise to never overexert yourself againbefore the two of you went back to work. But this time, he was the one who ranabout as everyone’s assistant, and you were allowed to sit in acorner and take a nap.

This you didn’tknow, but he was watching over you with a smile as you slept.

Ritsu

Sometimes, Knightsbeing so popular can be a pain. Especially when you have to make allthe goodies they’re going to sell at their concerts. The othermembers tried to give you a hand, but they were so terrible at itthat you decided to take care of it all by yourself.

As the live concertdate got closer and closer, you started to panick. There was no wayyou were going to be able to finish all of the goodies in time. Soyou started to stay at school after class for longer and longer, andsometimes only went back home when Kunugi-sensei forced you to.

You also took a bitof your sleeping time to work on goodies-making. Sometimes you didn’tnotice how late it was and only had a couple hours of sleep beforeyou had to go to school again.

Ritsu wasunderstandbly confused upon seeing you groggily wandering down thehallways during lunch break. “I thought I was the vampire here”,he slyly remarked. When he noticed you were too tired to even answerback with some wit of your own, he started to realize how wrong thesituation was.

He offered some ofhis soda to you (the truth is, there’s too much for him to drink).The sweet, fizzy drink didn’t even help ; you were dozing off all thesame. Ritsu then decided to switch to plan B and took you to hissecret room. Before you knew it, you were laying in a dark andcomfortable place, Ritsu’s hand gently stroking yours as he murmuredsweet nothings.

“Don’t worry,I’ll be watching over you. You can have some sleep. I hope you dreamof me…”

When you woke up,classes were already over. You got up in a panick, only to see Ritsuhad fallen asleep too, next to you. You tried to go back to youroriginal position to avoid waking him, but he lazily opened one redeye.

“Is sleepingbeauty awake yet ? It’s boring watching someone else sleep,y'know….” He smirked and hugged you close, leaving you nopossibility to move away from him.

And that’s how yougot trapped into Rei’s spare coffin with Ritsu for far longer thanyou intended. But hey, he brought some snacks and drinks. Andarranged for someone else to work on the goodies for the concertinstead. You deserved some rest, and he was more than willing tohelp you get it.

Arashi

Being a producerwas a fulfilling job. You got to do many different things, meet alot of people and try so many new experiences. And one of them wasreviewing a new choreography for Knights’ next concert.

Of course, you hadto practice it yourself, to see if it was feasible. Then you had tolearn it, to teach everyone what they were supposed to do. Then, youhad to change it, because Leo would always fuck up at some point andrun into the others.

Dancing is a lotmore physical than you’d thought. You’re not an idol, so you don’thave to be perfect at it but you must know your idols’ dance moves byheart and be able to teach them. As you were a bit insecure overbeing able to do that, you practiced a lot by yourself. Including atnighttime.

Stress and lack ofsleep made you physically weaker, which in turn prompted you tobecome more frustrated at yourself and then train harder. How couldyou be Knights’ producer when you couldn’t even perform simple dancemoves well…. ?

As you were mopingin one of the dance rooms, Arashi allowed himself in. He felt youwere upset the past few days, and didn’t even have to inquire aboutthe cause. It was all too obvious.

Surprisingly,Arashi’s a very good teacher. He helped you memorize some of the moredifficult moves and perfected the choreography with you. He praisedyou a lot, smiling brightly whenever you’d get a hard part right.

“Wow, you’reso good at it ! See, I’m sure you can do anything when you give ityour best !”

He also is a goodlistener and you both sat down after practice, you saying how hardthe last couple days had been for you and him listening. He waspractically offended you didn’t come to him earlier for help. He alsotold you how worried he’d been over you, and made you promise tonever do that kind of thing again.

“I know I saidI love hardworking boys and girls, but I didn’t mean it like that,you know~  You should treat your body with respect and allow it somerest !”

Only one ofArashi’s warm and nice hugs was enough to make you feel instantlybetter. He also insisted on lending you his favorite concealer,saying with a wink that dark circles could ruin your pretty face.Arashi’s kind of like the resident big sister : you can and shouldcome to him for advice or help !

Leo

One of the thingsthat perplexed you the most about your new producer job was writingsongs. Lyrics were one thing, but writing one entire song by yourself? That sounded like a challenge.

At first, youdidn’t have to worry about it. Leo would take care of it all. Butthen, after one particularly nasty cold that lasted over a week andprevented him from coming to school, he decided he should name asuccessor who would make songs in his place from time to time.Obviously, you were chosen.

Leo did give youlessons on music and composing in general, but he’s so vague you canhardly make up what he’s saying. And he often gets distracted, eitherby something or someone else, or by himself. He always ends thelesson writing his new song in a frenzy anywhere he can, all thewhile excitedly mumbling stuff about “inspiration” and“fantasies”. Needless to say, he didn’t help you much.

Being stubborn asyou are, you still decided to work hard on it. For days. And nights,especially. But no matter what you’d come up with, it would alwaysseem tame and lazy compared to Leo’s songs. You couldn’t help but getfrustrated and unreasonably angry at yourself.

Leo’s prettytactless. You knew that already. But you weren’t expecting him toshout “Whooaaa, you look like a zombie ! Zombie-chan, pleasebite me~” when he ran into you. Did you really look that awful ?

As you hesitated between being offended and actually indulging himand biting him hard enough to teach him some manners, he took you bythe hand and dragged you to an empty classroom.

Once he closed thedoor, he looked at you dead in the eye. He was incredibly serious,for once. His eyes were grave, and his eyebrows tightly knitted. Whenhe spoke, his voice was considerably lower compared to his usualhappy pitch.

“Listen. Iknow you’re working too hard. It just shows on your face. But pleasedon’t. Work is for serious people, and serious people are not reallyfunny. Besides, I don’t want you to work yourself to death !”

Before you couldeven answer anything to that, he shoved a handful of papers inyour face. You took a moment to realize they were music scores. Leowas looking at you expectantly, and when he understood you weren’tgoing to say anything, he sighed dramatically.

“They’re songsI wrote thinking of you. You know… You don’t need to work harddoing the same thing as me. I just need you to be there, and smile asusual, and make everyone happy. Please be my muse !”

As soon as he’dblurted that out, he gasped, his face lit up by his latest idea. “Amuse ! That’s it, the inspiration is flowing !" 

You spent therest of the afternoon babysitting Leo and trying to prevent him fromwriting on the walls and floor, but you felt like a heavy weight hadbeen lifted off your shoulders. Just by being himself, Leo had thatkind of effect on you. Maybe that’s the power of love.

Tsukasa

If there was oneword to explain what your producer job mainly consisted of, it wouldbe : phonecalls. So many damn phonecalls.

Planning concerts,photoshoots, meetings with the fans and radio interviews took a largechunk of your day, everyday. Maintaining a busy timetable for theboys was already hard enough, as you also had classes of your own toattend. But Leo seemed to think it wasn’t enough and often would planmore idol jobs on a whim, or ruin your plans by deciding at the lastminute that Knights wasn’t ready for their studio recording sessionand it would have to be postponed.

So, yeah.Phonecalls. At some point, you and the secretary from the nearbyrecording studio would become best buds if things went on that way.

As you tried beingthe best producer Knights could hope for, you had to dabble in a lotof stuff, like planning activities, managing Knights’ official socialmedia accounts, negotiate for a spot in a commercial…. The pressurewas considerable, but you kept pushing yourself further and further,even waking up in the middle of the night when you had a photoshootidea to take some notes of it.

During lunchbreaks, you could often be found in Knights’ studio makingphonecalls. Or finishing up new outfits. Or planning a dance routine.But never eating. You took a nasty habit of skipping lunch to favorwork instead. No one noticed, anyway.

Except someday, asyou were helping Tsukasa put on his new outfit for a music videoshooting, your stomach rumbled. Loud and clear. Your cheeks wereburning red and you were positively glowing of embarassment butTsukasa, being a gentleman, feigned to not having heard a thing. Butthen it growled again. Ten times louder.

As much as you weretrying to get out of this situation, Tsukasa wouldn’t have it. He wasvery polite, but also very firm.

"Onee-sama,may I wonder…. if you’re sustaining yourself properly ? It is veryimportant to eat three meals a day. Have you eaten yet ?” Youcouldn’t remember when your last meal was. You’d skipped breakfastthat morning, since you were late for class, and now you were alsoskipping lunch…

Seeing you sounsure of when you last ate, Tsukasa felt heartbroken. He ran to hisbag and gave you all the snacks he kept for later, urging you to eatsomething before you feel faint. He even went to buy you a drink andcame back in a heartbeat. Before you could even thank him, he’d leftagain and came back with your favorite sandwich from the schoolstore. You tried to resume your outfit fitting session, but he was adamant aboutwanting you to eat.

As there was waytoo much food for you to eat by yourself, you offered to share withhim and he shyly accepted. You two then snacked on pocky andcrackers, chatting about various things. Tsukasa inquired about yourhobbies and your family. You did the same. He also told a few jokes,and as much as you were surprised, they were good.

By the end of lunchbreak, you were feeling relaxed and happy, and your stomach was too.You’d managed to forget a bit about work, and all thanks to Tsukasa.