#spiralling is to methodically destroy the spiral and not give up after just one chunk. stay there and don’t leave. like why is it so fucking

[pepprs]

it’s actually fucking stupid that journaling actually makes me worse now. like what the hell else am i supposed to do

#purrs #writing (or reading my writing) about bad things that have happened and trying to make sense of them and see how much distance ive gotten #from them now only makes me feel miserable because i was suffering horrors and was literally right about everything and also nothing has #changed or the same patterns are showing up or whatever. idk. it’s fucking annoying bc i only have myself now and i can’t even be there for #myself in the way iknow i need someone to be there for me. relatedly when im experiencing horrors beyond belief i just want to take whoever #im mad at into a giant field and scream at them where no bystander can hear us or intervene or get their feelings hurt. i want freedom and i #want energetic reciprocity. i want to express myself and be met with equal expression. the most helpful thing people can do when im #spiralling is to methodically destroy the spiral and not give up after just one chunk. stay there and don’t leave. like why is it so fucking #hard to… idk. that’s neither here nor there im getting in the weeds. my mental health was doing better for a few days bc i was pretending #none of the horrors happened but i tried to reflect on them tonight and now it’s 1:33 and im spiralling and i have to get thru the rest of t #week and probably be alone and i only have myself now.a nd i always only did i guess. so whatever. i don’t want to be miserable and surly at #work tomorrow but i probably will be and i don’t want to say it’s gonna be a bad day before it’s even started but it probably will be. augh. #delete later

[twitchesandstitches]

Miscella Vs the Fleet: old wounds

Spinel was something of an outsider to the Fleet, and walking through the rubble that had been a street market only a few hours ago, she felt that she was missing out on a lot of context.

Robots, humanoids, chimeric mash-ups and the periodic holographic manifestation of digitally encoded mind-states sat against the wall, nursing their wounds, wincing as medic-clerics carefully extracted acids specifically designed to counter the most common methods of regeneration against the Fleet. People who had chitinous bodies or alterations had watched their armor melt and then screamed as the acid had bitten at flesh and blone; those with powers centered around manipulating energy had been hit by anti-magic devices that disrupted the delicate flow, causing their bodies to break apart and explode on the spot, surviving only through sheer bloody-mindedness.

Gems weren’t immune. Spinel vaguely recalled agonizing pain before she poofed, and whatever it did had set the delicate balance of mutagenic forces plaguing her into overdrive; even now, the corruption raced through her, her projection slowly warping and turning acidic, spiritual pain sliding inward. And her Gem, mounted between breasts so large they made up a massive chunk of her entire mass, was a mass of jagged mineral, her rosey-red tinting into a dark and horrible shade of purple...

She heard it. The call of, of the thing from beyond the stars. The slow whisper, sliding into the back of her mind, drowned out just barely by the voices of other people.

But there were warm hands, kneading into her projections weak points where she got too rubbery to even move, pumping enough magic to stabilize it. It was a magic like fire, warm and, and kindly.

“Can you move?” Said a deep, rumbling voice that almost all solid baritone.

Spinel nodded, painfully standing up. She looked up into a tall and imposingly massive figure that could have been an ogre, or perhaps a goat, depending on how you looked at it. Perhaps even a nicer variety of demon.

The massive and exceptionally masculine figure sighed in relief; muscles individually larger than Spinel herself shifted beneath shaggy white fur, and a long face crowned by huge horns smiled softly. “That’s good. Please move carefully; I’m not sure how your magic might have been compromised.”

Asgore, she’d heard him called. The King of the Monsters, and a whole lot of other titles that made it sound like he’d seen a lot of extremely nasty things, and it was strangely appealing that he’d taken a bit of a shine to her.

Spinel frowned at the soldiers being led away; they weren’t local. None of them looked particularly modified on a biological or cybernetic level, though their fancy uniforms (very sleek, with a bit of an angular vibe to them) were definitely performance-enhancing exoskeletons. Power armor, she supposed, though not as clanky and ritualistically maintained as the sort you saw in her new group. The soldiers were a mixed group, of all manner of species, but whether it was a primate’s face or an avian turian’s mandibles or a glowy energy monster, they all had the same shut-down look of someone who was just doing a job and considered your presence to be beneath them; small time bullies who used what power they had to humiliate anyone they felt like.

They all had the same logo on them, which looked a bit like an infinity symbol surrounded by a spiral branching off into arrows pointing in multiple directions. “Who ARE those guys?”

“Miscella Incorporated soldiers, I believe,” said Asgore. “They have many private armies, of mercenaries and other such ruffians, but I suspect these are one of the in-house special forces they employ for touchy situations.”

Spinel blinked slowly. It had been a long day, not helped by a war rapidly escalating from a minor argument all at once. As best as she could tell, there HAD been a ship arrivng earlier, apparently to discus some trading rights.

And then there’d been yelling. And some of the Fleet members got way more intense about it than she’s ever seen, and they’d thrown punches after someone called them ‘disgusting mutants’, and then things really got out of hand.

At one point, a two-mile long ship had crashed right onto a city.

“So what the hell happened!?” she asked. “It was just a business thing; why’d they make it personal?”

Asgore sighed, looking very tired. “You should know... I’ve been with this group for a long time. Ever since we were nomads, roaming from world to world and fleeing our many enemies.”

Spinel glanced at him. Now did not seem the time for a history lesson. “Sure. You weren’t really the Fleet yet, right? You and your monsters joined up early on, then I guess Gems started finding you, and lots of other people... but it wasn’t like the way it was today. Things were a lot more fractious, you were always in danger, and the guys who’d form the Cobalt Stinger pirate empire were still with you.”

“Yes. Back then, we hadn’t run into those brutish sorts of the Imperial Commonwealth either. Our main enemy was... well. Miscella Incorporated.”

“...Why?”

“We passed near their worlds, and they took offense to us. You see, we didn’t use any of their currencies, we weren’t interested in buying any of their stuff save supplies or interesting gear, and most of all, we didn’t want to settle down in their lands and submit to their restrictive policies.” Asgore frowned. “Mega corporations, like Miscella, institutes some very harsh restrictions for their people. Depending on how the local branch implements it, they can often be little better than legal slavery. People are legally the property of whatever sub-corporation that has them employed, and they cannot move to other planets, change careers, or gain additional income without approval. Sometimes, they are even forced to have surgery and monitoring devices installed so they cannot think thoughts that Miscella would disapprove of.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yes, that’s what we thought. We told them no. We said, on many ocassions, that our pride wasn’t worth whatever profit they offered. So things got much worse from there; Miscella is a bit of a control freak, as a whole, and since we would not comply, they tried to force us into either compliance, or to wipe us out and indoctrinate us.” He shook his head. “I honestly don’t know if this kind of policy is company-wide, or if we were simply unfortunate enough to be in the crosshairs of a particular branch that hated people who were from social margins... but they killed us, hounded us, chased us across hundreds of worlds. We fought back, and killed lots of them. At times, we were a roaming horde, destroying their towns and claiming the ruins as loot, just to survive. Revenge, and so on. And it wasn’t the Stingers alone that did such a thing, I can tell you.

“So blood for blood, and then both sides wanted revenge for the revenge we’d already taken, and so on. And so forth. It went on for a long time.” He sighed. “And so, now, there is a lot of bad blood.”

“Ain’t you guys ever tried to make peace, or at least force a cease fire?” Spinel asked. “We’re one of the biggest, baddest societies around; a single one of our heroines could clobber a whole army of theirs, I’m thinking.”

“True enough, but force alone is not a terribly attractive notion to all the clans, and given the scale of Miscella’s holdings, such total war would require absolute agreement among all the clans... and you know we argue far too much for that!” Asgore laughed, and then grew serious again. “But, miss Spinel, it’s not just revenge. Even if we didn’t have generations telling us, with bloody stories, not to trust them or give them an inch, our philosophies are wholly incompatible. You know, I think, that we in the Fleet believe that life, absolutely all forms of sapient existence, has the right to be free and become whatever it chooses, and to help all others prosper and live in contentment?”

Spinel nodded. “Yeah. I suppose that’s a reason I’m still here.”

“Indeed. Well, Miscella, I’m sorry to say, largely regards all people as resources. Sometimes... literally. Sometimes simply as markets to tap, or employees to use. But inevitably, they see people as tools and assets, fit only to serve their interests. Almost like a divine right of kings, but based on their own existing wealth and power; they consider themselves to be the rightful rulers of all existence, and all us must fall into line with how they think the world ought to be. They treat deviance from their cosmic agenda - which is an actual thing they have, some sort of flow chart of ultimate heirarchy and organization - as a personal affront. And we are nothing but deviants, you know!”

Spinel laughed. “I know!”

“So, our ideals and views are... too different. We see people and want them to be free. They see resources, and want to bring them to heel. Even if not for our mutual resentment, that would breed other problems. But ultimately, they are our oldest enemies.” He sighed. “And sooner or later, there will be war.”

“...We’d win that one. Right.”

Asgore looked troubled. “That’s the problem, though. I’m sure we’d win. The question is, how can we decisively win a war against such a powerful group, with our honor intact?”

#my writing #fics #crossthicc AU #twitchy!spinel #twitchy!asgore #twitchy!su #twitchy!undertale

[expertbacklink-blog]

How to stop procrastinating and start doing?

Whether you planning to go to the gym, starting a new business venture, finishing that important project or undertaking any sort of “strenous task”, you usually just keep it on hold for some other time. This is the habit of procrastination and it would spiral you down to the bottom and you regret wasting opportunities after opportunitites. According to Mel Robbins, the motivational speaker and the author of the “5 seconds rule”, there’s a difference in being a procrastinator and dealing with a habit of procrastination. When it’s a habit, then it can be changed and made favourable for your own benefit. She also mentioned in one of her speeches, that you’re not a procrastinator, but dealing with a habit of one. We’re here to help you break this daunting habit that’s destroying your life. Since, everybody’s not same, so for this, we’ll mention different ways you can try and cope with it. Try and find out which works best for you. 3..2..1 method Simple yet effective, this method is a 4 step process. First, pick up a task that makes you think twice. Start counting down from 3..2..1 Stop whatever you were doing And now, go & finish this specific task It is often said that, it takes 21 days to build a habit. But this method can be developed within just a few days to weeks. Let’s say you see that the dishes are dirty, 3..2..1 go wash it. This will serve as a countdown for you and will force yourself to act without giving it a second thought. Use this to do little things at first, like brushing your teeth at night. The true potential of this method is that it will form positive new habits in you. By doing this trick again and again, this method will be ingrained in your mind and you start acting within a few seconds. Take the first step now! Get smart method According to a survey it is said that 20% of all surveyed are chronic procrastinators. So, for them and all the other procrastinators we present you with this next method, which is a 3 step program. First, you need to understand that procrastinators are liers. Lying to themselves. “Oh, I’ve got plenty of time to do this act”, sound familiar? There was a study that was conducted between 2 groups. 1st group was to submit the paper anytime within the 3 weeks period. 2nd group was constantly checked and was given strict deadlines for each week. Surprise-surprise the 2nd group faired better than the first, all acing in their projects. Step wise process of this method follows: Step 1: Eat an elephant. You heard it right. That’s what you’re supposed to do. But where will you start? Step by step or the whole elephant? Unless you’re a giant monster, which i hope you’re not (for the sake of humanity), you’d divide the task within chunks. That’s the same methodolgy you should use to complete any major project. Try and sort things out in chunks and bits. Easier to chew and easier to complete right? Step 2: Pick off the goblins. In the game of Zelda, fighting the goblins was the easy and the fun part. Hence, you’d start doing the same at first. So, for the project you want to complete, start with the easy part at first. This way, your brain would release dopamine, a reward hormone (more on this on later articles), and you feel genuinely good about the project. Step 3: Ignore the siren’s song. Let’s not get too much into the story of the title, but understand that you should aim at avoiding all the distractions along the way. Switch off your phone, let someone change the password to your computer, etc. Also, change the environment all together. This will help you significantly. Mel Robbin’s method Pressure of work makes you believe you need to find a way out. Moreover, habits are formed in 3 steps. Trigger: In case of procrastination, stress is the trigger. Pattern: So due to stress, you avoid doing something. Reward: Hence, the stress relief. Now, this stress relief is actually an escape from that act. Hours and hours on social media, playing video games and so on. The first part is what we can’t change the stress, as it will always be there, so we should focus on the 2nd part. Acknowledge the stress at first. Take deep breaths, interrupting the habit of procrastination. Do that thing for just 5 minutes, stopping the habit of avoiding stress. Talking about reducing stress, reduce your stress and use our services to register your LLP now. Psyche method. You chooses short term gains over long term benefits. That’s the human brain analogy for you. The only cure for this to work, is for you to work. Yes, act on the decision. There’s always some resistance for you to cope with. Act inspite of resistance. Resistance is the fear, the doubts, the negative feelings you feel towards an act. Once, you break the resistance cycle, things start to go sailing. Resistance have the following vocabulary attached with it: I should I must I have to I need to Instead, change it to I could I want to These are basic pschology tricks that will create a shift in mindset. Life’s all about making choices, so at first when you say I could, you’re basically giving your mind a fake choice. And then, slowly saying I want to, will shift the mindset into postive towards the action. You should at first, feel the resistance before going for this. After properly observing this, you can try and shift this feeling around. How to go for it? Consider our next method. Sedona Method/Positive sedona method First let’s go for a quick overview in sedona method. Allow yourself to feel the negative feelings towards any task. Feel it in your body. The next step is to ask yourself: “Could I let this feeling go?” If yes (which is usual), again ask “Would it let it go?” Positive response from both the questions mentioned above will bring you to ask yourself the final question “When would I let it go?” Let’s consider the Positive sedona method In this method, just ask this question from yourself, “could I get myself excited about this task?” And any form of excitement will do wonders in the long run. Let’s say you’re supposed to do your taxes, fine. Let’s get excited about it as it might enable you to get some return. Or, you want to go to the gym, get excited about the music you’ll listen to while you’re at it. And just visualize yourself doing this task.   Hope this article helped you. That’s the objective of my content. This article is written by Anubhav, who is a Content Writer at Legalraasta LegalRaasta provides tons of legal services like Income Tax Return Filings, FSSAI Registration, Trademark Registration, and many more. Read the full article

#Business #Companyregistration #startups

[solotheloso]

A BOON BARELY GIVEN - CH. 3

I pulled myself carefully through the gaps in the shelves, inch by inch, placing every limb with care to avoid the equivalent of a cave-in. Dying like that, in this place? Undignified at best. I tried not to think about it as I crawled among the rusted metal. Whoever had constructed this had known exactly where to place each and every shelf for just the right amount of stability, ensuring that anyone who blundered their way through on brute force alone would be entombed under thousands of pounds of corroded steel.

I proceeded through the makeshift tunnel at an agonizing pace, zigging this way and zagging that until I had absolutely no idea which direction I was facing anymore. It seemed like hours before I finally emerged from the other side and tumbled onto the floor, sweaty and exhausted. I lay there for several minutes, slowing my breathing and just enjoying the feeling of relatively open space. When I sat up and looked around I was hit with an immediate wave of wrongness.

Like some twisted sword of Damocles, the rusted metal of the shelves loomed over me in a jagged dome. I had the creeping feeling that they were going to come down on my head at any second. There were strings and bands tied to the metal every few feet, all hanging heavily with bits of torn cloth and what looked like various personal effects. Buttons, ties, one of them even held an engagement ring. They were fetishes, I realized, some sort of half-assed juju. Or maybe not half-assed, considering the dark, creeping power I felt here. The few spots of metal shelf that were still clean sparkled and shone eerily in the flickering light of the low fire at the center of the space. It nested in a shallow pit that seemed to have been punched directly through the concrete. A scant few flames licked at the air, and much of the illumination came from embers that glowed in rolling waves as oxygen played across their surface. The lack of smoke and the telltale wash of magical energy told me that the fire was most likely magical in nature, created and continuously fueled by a spell. It was absolutely sweltering in here, so much so that it wouldn’t surprise me if the fine hairs on the back of my neck-- upraised as they were-- curled and turned to ash. I wiped the sweat from my brow and beheld the shrine itself.

It was an unassuming thing at first. For a moment I thought I was looking at was a smudged ring of charcoal encircling the fire pit, but as I slowly drew closer, I was able to make out more and more detail. What looked like a simple dark blur from afar revealed itself to be an absurdly dense web of thin black lines, each one tracing out a wide arc from the outer edge and falling in towards the center, like some demented artist’s interpretation of a whirlpool. At various points the lines warbled and wavered, but they never once touched. At the outermost edge I could see tiny shapes inscribed with such precision that they seemed machine-made. Try as I might, I could barely focus my eyes on them long enough to decipher them, my gaze sliding off like grease.

None of my training had prepared me for such a construct. If it weren’t for the sinister mana that clawed at my skin and raked across my eyes nonstop-- and those goddamned shapes-- I would have dismissed this whole thing as some painstaking art project. It was utterly foreign to me. It was a nightmare of magic, and it was all I could do not to throw up. Out of some stubborn sense of professional pride, I endured the feeling and swept my eyes across the whole thing, searching for whatever abnormality had rendered the shrine defunct. I walked its perimeter almost like I had with the sentinel, scouring every inch for irregularities or flaws. My gaze kept returning to the fire, almost as a sort of respite from the hellish tangle of the lines. It was only after many long minutes of this that I realized that it was the pit itself that contained the abnormality. The embers shifted here and there, the flames spitting and flicking, but one mass within the coals refused to budge. I had taken it for a chunk of wood before, but it dawned on me that if nobody had fed the fire for over a day, that sort of thing was unlikely to impossible.

Muttering in consternation, I slipped off my left shoe and leaned precariously over the inscribed circle, placing my right foot in the small ring of untouched concrete before the fire pit. Before I could get the chance to doubt myself, I used the shoe to carefully knock at the embers around the lump, withdrawing each time before the leather could get too scorched by the heat. My suspicions were confirmed shortly, when the lump flipped over and tumbled towards the edge of the coal pile. It was the charred and crumbling remains of a human skull. The flames had been hot enough to damage it but apparently not enough to cremate, even after more than twenty-four hours. I withdrew and put my shoe back on, then sat facing the fire. Things were starting to come together.

With any sustained magical construct-- guardian spells being the most common type-- the basic structure of the spell is provided by the mana of the wizard who created it and provided direction by their will. With enough prep work, maintenance and good old talent, a lot of constructs can go for years or even decades. A thing like this shrine did indeed require frequent maintenance to stay in tip-top shape, but even without that it could go for months without spiralling into disaster. If you’re an enemy who absolutely, positively has to take down a mage’s construct as soon as possible, there are really only three ways to do it.

The first way is to destroy the construct with sheer force of magic; overwhelm it with massive amounts of mana bent toward nothing but destruction. This generally does the job but has the nasty side-effect of significant collateral damage, if you can even pull it off in the first place. Considering the mana saturation of this construct and the fact that my surroundings hadn’t been turned into a crater of glass indicated that this probably wasn’t how it had been done.

The second way is to defuse the construct manually. A mage with enough know-how and patience can probe an active spell for weaknesses and pick it apart like threads in a quilt. The spell is disarmed and the mana inside it drains into the environment, usually harmlessly. This is considered the most optimal way for a mage to take down a hostile spell, but it’s not known for being easy. It was also obviously not the technique the culprit had used, given that I was practically bathing in bad mojo at the moment.

The third method is something that most mages only use in the most dire of circumstances. Many spells can coast for a long time off of the initial mana invested in them, but if you can disrupt that mana, you can cause the spell to short out, enter a terminal spiral and collapse under its own weight. It essentially rots from the inside out. Severing a mage’s link to the spell and then destabilizing the construct by suddenly infusing it with a huge dose of their mana would certainly count as a disruption. This is not something a mage typically does willingly, so a long time ago some enterprising individual figured out that you can force this sort of thing with a sacrifice to the spell. A sacrifice of flesh and blood, which are inextricably linked to the mage’s mana.

The skull told the tale. It reeked of the same mana that was all around me, so the logical assumption was that it had belonged to creator of this spell and the watcher of the shrine.  I hadn’t seen the rest of the body or any signs of violence, so the murder probably happened elsewhere.

It was interesting to know that the sentinels charged custodians and didn’t handle the shrines themselves. Were the aberrants teachers? Liaisons to the Blessed Black? And was the relationship mutually beneficial, or were the poor folk Renfields to the sentinel’s Dracula? The thought of giving my loyalty to one of those things left a bad taste in my mouth, but people are prone to doing crazy things for a taste of power.

I spent the next hour searching the area around the shrine and warehouse, but I didn’t turn up anything new. I left the building with a fragment of the shrine watcher’s skull in my pocket. The protective spells in the area didn’t harass me as I passed through them; they were intended to be one-way deterrents. I cleared the fence just as the clouds opened up and the first drops of rain began to fell. The clouds were too thick to allow the sun any passage, but dawn came all the same. The storm poured down as I started walking home. There was work to be done that day, and I needed to sleep.

#writing #urbanfantasy #magic #fiction #prose