Sophomoric

Right well half of their clients are nonhumans in their original form that want a break from their human lives. At first it's all normal pets, dogs,,, cats,,, maybe a bird or two... Nothing abnormal.

Things are all fine and dandy until a nonhuman--a dog demon--gets the genius idea to hire a petsitter...for themselves. Her entire train of thought was "I want to be pampered, and I'd also like a break from my responsibilities." so she hires many different pet sitters for herself, trying to find one that sticks.

Most of the ones she finds aren't bad--definitely not--they take all of the safety precautions that they would for a normal dog... Even when she gives them special instructions on how to treat her the dog they aren't attentive as she'd like. I mean, who's letting a dog watch tv and laze around all day? Who's going to give a dog a full night-routine? There's a ton of limitations that she has when it comes to the pet sitters, and she can't really blame them for treating her like,, well.. a pet.

Well she's running out of hope and she randomly hires these decently rated pair of pet sitters, two guys that look like they rely on energy drinks to make it through the days. Her hopes aren't high but holy hell they do the best job out of everyone.

She hires them twice, the first time she calls it's Shen Yuan that comes 'round. He looks over the instructions and raises an eyebrow while muttering something about rich people... BUT HE FOLLOWS THEM. He turns on her TV show at the time she specified in the letter, he brushes her from head to toe--so thorough with it that she feels like a brand new dog at the end, he doesn't question when she sits to eat at her own table. He does everything on the instructions left behind and he does such a good job (except for the cooking bit, but she can excuse that) that she can't help but brag about it to her fellow dog demon group.

Word gets around, and after a few more suspicious hires with oddly intelligent pets SY and XF have made a name in the spiritual beat/demon community. Nobody expected to get such good treatment from the two, but like they are broke college students trying to get a bit more cash, why wouldn't they take these easy jobs? It's not that hard to pamper animals anyways.

ANYWAYS ANYWAYS SO AFTER WORD GETS AROUND SUDDENLY THEY'RE PET SITTING FOR THESE HIGH END NAMES LIKE.. /THE/ LIU QINGGE, A WORLD RENOWNED MARTIAL ARTIST, ASKED THEM TO PET SIT? (LQG didn't need to be pampered but he does enjoy it. He really just wanted to run around in his original form but he didn't want to get photographed and targetted or something idk) SY and XF don't question the fact that LQG's pet is a.. giant wolf thing, the rich live in different worlds than them anyways.

QI QINGQI ASKED THEM TO PETSIT FOR HER??? LIKE ONE OF THE MOST WELL KNOWN FASHION DESIGNERS THAT CLAWED HER WAY TO THE TOP IN A CUTTHROAT INDUSTRY? Do they care that they're watching over a ... weird horse..? NO. MONEY IS MONEY. (Qi Qingqi says that her 'pet' is a rare horse with,,, odd skull growth, which resulted in the weird horn like structure on the head and the abnormally long tail for a horse. SY and XF don't question it actually)

SY and XF had a whole motto of just.. not questioning things above their paygrade. AND THEIR CLIENTS LOVE IT. LIKE whoops, XF saw Liu Qingge's "pet" fly! Oh XF said "huh, that was a long jump. Must be a special breed..." and kept it pushing... PERFECT

2) any vegetable is better than no vegetable

Anyway. If you struggle with negative self-talk I feel for you. It’s hellish, and it’s not something that can just be bludgeoned out of someone by telling them it sucks. We know! I’m not out of the weeds just yet by a long shot, but here’s some of the stuff that’s been helpful for me:

Fake it til it’s real: cliche, I know! but it really has helped for me, even though it makes me suuuuper uncomfortable at times. but literally tell yourself that you’re super charismatic and sexy and everyone loves you. or whatever version of that feels good for how you’d like to be seen. it’s gonna feel silly and untrue for a really long time, but it helps!

Reframe: I struggled to phrase this one, but what I mean basically is like… taking that notion of “hey negative self-talk sucks for the people around you too” and turning it into “wow, it is kind of mean to my friends to just assume they’re lying when they say they love me. I don’t want to be mean to my friends. I’m going to take the risk of trusting them”. Try not to go too far in the direction of “oh god I’m being mean to my friends” and stay on the path of “I want to and CAN do right by them”

Separate from it: I like to kind of act like my negative self talk is something of a different entity from me. Your mileage may vary on this one. I was a really mean really sad teenage girl once, and for me that kind of feels like the place the negative self talk comes from. So instead of being like “I guess I just hate myself and always will”, I can be like “I have this wounded inner child who is lashing out. I’m going to be gentle with her, but I’m also not going to listen to the things she tells me we are, because she is 16 and hasn’t experienced anything good yet.”