#I am actually very familiar with a lot of options this year thanks to my new BookTube obsession but still haven't read that many

[televinita]

Goodreads Choice Awards but the nominees are just the books I've personally shelved

I have a lot of thoughts about the options as they exist (mostly not that bad, except when it comes to the total elimination of children's literature, about which I am furious), but per usual I can't really articulate them in a coherent way SO I sorted my shelves by publication date, ignored the GCA requirement of a minimum 3.5 average rating, and am doing this instead.

[update: oops this did not turn out coherent either. but it got typed!]

Important Reminder: These are not all books I consider equal contenders for "best." I simply wanted to highlight every possible option I actually knew about and have read or am interested in reading.

YA

After the Sirens - Sharon Farrell

Begin Again - Emma Lord (forgot to add this one before)

The Brothers Hawthorne - Jennifer Lynn Barnes (actual nominee and I'm gonna vote for it even though it seems like it may be more of a filler book. The Davenports is the only other official nom to intrigue me, and its lower average rating + hideous cartoon cover isn't enough to flip me unread so sorry, we're going Basic Popularity Contest Pick)

Cleaning Up - Leanne Lieberman

Five Survive - Holly Jackson (definitely not a winner)

Gather - Kenneth M. Cadow (edit: National Book Award finalist?? like with the adult fiction??)

Good as Gold -- Candace Buford (definite contender for fave so far)

Holly Horror - Michelle Jabès Corpora

The Island - Natasha Preston (lol. lmao even. but ridiculous fun)

The Lake House - Sarah Beth Durst

A Long Stretch of Bad Days - Mindy McGinnis

The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway - Ashley Schumacher (here on author loyalty only)

Three Rivers - Sarah Stusek (THAT'S RIGHT. HER.)

Summer Rental - Rektok Ross (why am I this aware of brand-new ya horror??) (because I love horror and it's usually better paced and spookier and less shock-gory than the adult brand? fair)

YA FANTASY / SCI FI

Dream to Me - Megan Paasch (I think it would go here, anyway. but maybe it's just regular YA)

The Eternal Ones - Namina Forna (I gotta remember this series exists)

FANTASY

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries -- winner winner pick!! (no like officially)

Starling House - Alix E. Harrow (though this is a close second, and honestly, if they weren't both actual nominees I'd think The Unmaking of June Farrow has some potential intrigue)

ROMANCE

Hazel Fine Sings Along - Katie Wicks (no comment on its Wattpad origin. I didn't notice until just now. have not read it.)

Famous For A Living - Melissa Ferguson (popular enough for Once Upon a Book Club! but not for for an official nom, despite my hopes, in this fiercely competitive category. boooo)

Out On a Limb - Hannah Bonam-Young (damn I actually saw this one making rounds on BookTube, thought it might be here)

Something Wild & Wonderful - Anita Kelly (can't believe there's actually a queer romance I want to see show up and it doesn't)

(Bonus: legit nominees I am considering for validity include Happy Place; Yours Truly - I really need to figure out if Emily Henry and Abby Jimenez are in my wheelhouse or not - and Hello Stranger, though as much as I like Katherine Center this one does not call to me)

FICTION

This Bird Has Flown - Susanna Hoffs (might also have been under romance if picked for the actual GCA? feels more mainstream than that but idk. anyway HATERS 2 THE LEFT.)

^ also my pick for debut

The Lost Manuscript - Mollie Rushmeyer (dunno which category this would officially go in either. probably romance? maybe mystery? but it's got a lot more plot than the average romance)

HISTORICAL FICTION

The Echo of Old Books - Barbara Davis (holy crap this one's actually in the nominations?! Instant vote. Almost disappointing because there are some other candidates I would have felt fine voting for to block the worse ones, but this is the only one on my acute TBR. If I don't give at least 4 stars I will be shocked)

MYSTERY/THRILLER

Forgotten Trail - Claire Kells

The Hike - Lucy Clarke

The Only One Left - Riley Sager

Homecoming - Kate Morton (crisis alert! the latter two are both official nominees and I am equally interested in both/both have equally good track records with me) (probs. gonna vote Kate on the principle of female solidarity. even though this is really stretching the definition of "mystery")

HORROR

A Haunting on the Hill - Elizabeth Hand

(How To Sell a Haunted House is a hard maybe but also the only one I think I'd even consider trying from the official noms)

MEMOIR

Paris: The Memoir - Paris Hilton

The Woman in Me - Britney Spears

Grimoire Girl - Hilarie Burton Morgan

Tell Me Everything - Minka Kelly

If You Would Have Told Me - John Stamos

Goodbye to Clocks Ticking - Joseph Monninger (forgot I just stumbled upon this one recently! it's on my library list but not my GR account)

and one more except GCA put it in a different category hang on

Three of these - not Burton's, alas - are actually nominees. Britney is gonna win but not without a fight from me. Do I go with Paris, whose memoir impressed me even though I still don't care much for her as a person, or Minka, whose memoir I haven't read but whose reviews sound excellent and whom I like more?

HUMOR

Being Henry - Henry Winkler (there is absolutely no reason for this not to be nominated in memoir btw. I hope it wins Humor because nothing else appeals in that category and I have multiple vendettas (SAMANTHA IRBY), but it would be as misplaced a win as the Office Ladies book was last year. fully deserving of an award! actually the best of the given nominees! but also like an adult beating a bunch of children in a footrace.)

MIDDLE GRADE

(no longer a GCA category but it fudgin' should be)

Just Gus - McCall Hoyle

Falling Out of Time - Margaret Peterson Haddix (actually glad I don't have to choose between these two because like. dogs - but also boy MC - or author loyalty ft. sequel to my childhood fave??)

Rosie Frost and the Falcon Queen - Geri Halliwell The Spice Girl (no. 😔) (and yet it is still on my shelf)

I have no strong opinions for any categories I skipped.

[coeluvr]

I'm honestly kinda obsessed with this story. It's so fascinating and I have so many thoughts and theories rolling around in my head, I cant wait to see how things unfold!!

There is one thing I'd really like to see added, if possible, and that's just more uncertain or middle-ground options, you know? I feel like it would make sense for some MCs to be conflicted or have mixed emotions or just not know what to feel or think about certain things.

This stuck out to me the most when we had to choose whether or not we think our sister actually did poison the late consort. I had a hard time choosing an answer because i felt like my MC just wouldn't know. I mean, that's her sister. Nobody wants to believe someone they love is capable of something like that. And from a more logical perspective, if you actually look at the evidence, she easily could have been framed. At the same time, everyone thinks she did it, that is what MC's been told their entire life, and there's no real evidence to suggest she didn't do it. So... 🤷‍♀️

There were a lot of moments like that for me. Like when we had to choose how we felt about Helios coming back. Our relationship with him at that point is kinda complicated and weird no matter what you do. It'd make sense that MC's feelings regarding him/seeing him again would also be complicated and weird. Or returning to Vesphire, being torn between terror and grief from the trauma but also desperately wanting to go back for the chance to feel some semblance of home, to find a familiar face, or at the very least to lay a flower at their family's grave. And I could see some MCs going back and forth on whether they want revenge or not.

I know adding variations can be complicated and cumbersome to do, so I would completely understand if you didn't want to. Regardless I really appreciate all your effort in making and sharing this story!! You're doing incredible and I'm excited for what comes next 💕💕💕

Hello! I am happy to know you like this little story of mine. 🙇‍♀️💗

I can definitely try to add more variations regarding Helios' arrival + for how they feel about their future trip.

And while I can understand that a lot of people can't decide on a firm standpoint regarding Catalina, I can't add a neutral option.

No one is saying that what MC thinks is facts, it's just their opinion. I'm sure MC over the years has leaned toward one or the other and you simply have to pick the one that feels right to your MC. MC's viewpoint doesn't have to be "the correct one", MC doesn't even know the truth of everything, there's no harm in being wrong.

Just in case someone asks for a neutral option regarding the revenge or no revenge aspect of the story, I can't do that either.

Both the Catalina and Revenge choices will be set for at least a while but when MC gets new and more updated view of things, MC will be able to change it so don't stress.

Thank you for your kind words. 💗

[topazadine]

Writerly Questionnaire

Thanks to @the-golden-comet for the tag! I enjoyed reading your answers, especially the part about your characters!

Alright, here goes.

About Me

When did you first start writing?

I wrote my first story at age 7, started my first book at age 12 (no you can't read it, it's terrible) and published my first poem at age 15.

Are the genres/themes you enjoy reading different from the ones you write?

Despite writing fantasy, I actually don't read much of it myself. My undergrad career focused most on British literature (specializing in Victorian lit) so that's what I'm most familiar with and what I like the most.

Is there an author (or just a fellow writer!) you want to emulate, or one to whom you’re often compared?

I don't really seek to emulate anyone because I have my own unique voice, and I don't really get compared to anyone else either. If you have suggestions of what I might sound like, fire away lmao, because I don't really know who I emulate. However, I take a lot of inspiration from Willa Cather for atmosphere and Emile Zola for realism.

Can you tell me a little about your writing space(s)? (Room, coffee shop, desk, etc.)

I exclusively write at my desk. My setup looks like this:

I need my little guys and my Emotional Support Stuffed Cow (her name is Bluebell the Moobell because she has a little bell in her). Note the knitting I'm procrastinating on at the bottom right lmao.

What’s your most effective way to muster up some muse?

Funnily enough, I often get inspiration from my day job as an SEO writer, even though it has absolutely nothing to do with the types of stuff I write. Sometimes I'll just be hammering away at a Construction Accident Personal Injury Lawyer page and it strikes me that I need to kill one of my characters.

Did the place(s) you grew up in influence the people and places you write about?

Sort of. I have this thing I do where I like to mentally walk through buildings I used to visit as a relaxation activity, like my childhood elementary school, so that's given me a good memory of how places are laid out. As for actual settings? No, most of those are just made up of pictures I've seen of different places that I've never visited.

Are there any recurring themes in your writing, and if so, do they surprise you at all?

Some of my recurring themes include: Degradation/transformation of memory Struggling against fate/the unknowability of fate Found family Abusive relationships Moral relativism Satisficing (choosing between multiple suboptimal outcomes to pick the least harmful option) None of them surprise me; I recognize where they come from. For example, my obsession with the degradation and transformation of memory comes from my own struggles with dissociative amnesia, and my interest in satisficing comes from my International Relations degree. My concerns about the unknowability of fate come from the fact that I had a premonition that I'd die of a heart attack at 42. And I'm 32 right now. You can imagine that this influences my process lmao.

My Characters

Would you please tell me about your current favorite character? (Current WIP, past WIP, never used, etc.)

As a lesbian, I am not ashamed to say that I am deeply and passionately horny for Uileac (who you can meet in "Cachaille" or read about in 9 Years Yearning). Like how can you not go crazy for a man who thinks this is the perfect declaration of love?

He's so scary and so devoted, yet also very chill and laid-back? And funny? And athletic? And protective of his lil sis? He's just ... (screams into pillow)

Which of your characters do you think you’d be friends with in real life?

Ono. He's a Sinan royal guard who is just so sweet but also kinda dumb.

There's a scene where he has to ask Cerie what kind of menstrual products she needs for their trip, which is both mortifying and really adorable. He's just a really gentle and nice guy who I think would get along with damn near everyone.

Which of your characters would you dislike the most if you met them?

I think Mordrek would scare the absolute shit out of me ngl. Like ... bro just ... does this kind of shit on the regular

Tell me about the process of coming up with of one, all, or any of your characters.

Uileac, Orrinir, and Ono were heavily inspired by Uguisumaru, Ookanehira, and Omokage from Touken Ranbu and I don't apologize for that. Obviously they are a bit different, but their personalities are quite similar. Cerie was developed from a roleplay where I was playing as Uguisumaru's made-up sister, so that's why she's Uileac's sister in Poesyverse. Haniya, Cerie's love interest, was made up by using personality testing and astrology to come up with Cerie's Perfect Match. No one knows where Mordrek came from. He just kinda showed up.

Do you notice any recurring themes/traits among your characters?

They all have daddy issues. Every single fucking one of them.

How do you picture them? (As real people you imagined, as models/actors who exist in real life, as imaginary artwork, as artwork you made or commissioned, anime style, etc.)

All the art I have for my characters was made with AI before I realized AI was absolute garbage shit, so I'm not showing it, but I did commission a painting of Cerie from the amazing artist Caleb over on Twitter:

My Writing

What’s your reason for writing?

For me, that's kind of like asking why a bird sings. It's just what I do and what I have always done.

Is there a specific comment or type of comment you find particularly motivating coming from your readers?

Definitely when someone says that my writing helped them or resonated with them. My writing gives me catharsis and it feels really good when other people say they got that same sense of catharsis.

How do you want to be thought of by those who read your work? (For example: as a literary genius, or as a writer who “gets” the human condition; as a talented worldbuilder, as a role model, etc.)

As someone who takes risks that pay off.

What do you feel is your greatest strength as a writer?

Depicting trauma without being melodramatic.

What have you been frequently told your greatest writing strength is by others?

People have told me they like how meticulous and carefully set up my stories are without infodumping or being boring. They appreciate the work that goes into planning things, how it all pays off in the end and comes together nicely without plot holes.

How do you feel about your own writing? (Answer in whatever way you interpret this question.)

I think I've come a long way and continue to improve, which is what is most important.

If you were the last person on earth and knew your writing would never be read by another human, would you still write?

The last Kauaʻi ʻōʻō still sang until the end. So yes.

When you write, are you influenced by what others might enjoy reading, or do you write purely what you enjoy? If it’s a mix of the two, which holds the most influence?

I write whatever the hell I feel like when I feel like it. People tend to like it, but if they don't, I enjoyed making it anyway.

Open tag!

[zeawesomebirdie]

hi !!!! did NOT consider you might like to have the ask again to answer it. if you do:

seeing you post about your old west au is motivating me to at least draft my stuff out for my fic, too!!! so, firstly: good god thank you. secondly, what kind of drafting process do you normally go through? you don't have to answer this but everyone i know is pretty particular about how they write so i'm always curious!!!

Gosh okay I'm still so embarrassed about accidentally posting this before it was ready!! Lesson learned: only work on long posts on desktop (very affectionate). I'm going to copy paste what I had originally said, but there will be added stuff because it wasn't anywhere near ready to go (if you thought it was long before, honey you ain't seen nothing yet!)

Also I still am so proud of you for working on your fic, we are writing buddies now hand in lovable hand I love you thank you for enabling my rambling <33

Buckle in, here we go!

SO! My drafting process is always a moving target. I do what works best for the work in question, and things change depending on my energy and fatigue levels plus my motivation and interest levels

So that said, right now my process usually looks like:

ramble at someone in DMs, copy and paste rambles into a google doc for safekeeping and marinating

zero draft, aka word vomit until a plot forms, block out actions and the occasional dialog, determine chapter and story arcs

first draft, aka Where The Real Writing Happens

optional second draft, but only if the fic is under 10k

line edits

post :)

find a bunch of typos that I somehow missed during line editing, fix those before anyone notices

I will be showing examples because this is a bit hard to explain and Extremely Intense to a lot of people, and yeah that's because it is! I approach writing fanfic the same way I approach writing original fiction, and I find it works best for me as a plotter

If you are metaphorically inclined and familiar with oil painting: I write the way an oil painter paints. First I block in the big shapes, the gestures, and the colours. Then I come back in subsequent drafts and increase the detail until I'm done!

Further information and actual examples of my drafts will be below the cut, because this is gonna be super long and I love talking shop ^.^

And general content warning for non-graphic violence and graphic smut (and shitty early drafts); the examples are from Bruce Wayne/Dick Grayson fics

So before we get into the zero draft, I want to point out two things: first, I do full rewrites. This is why writing takes me one million years. I retype each and every word in each and every draft. Second, I'm actually trying something new with the Old West!AU, for reasons I will explain in a moment!

I started doing full rewrites in 2019 after a college writing course, in which we read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott; she encourages the reader to embrace the shitty first draft. I ended up really benefiting from a zero draft too, something I first learned about in 2020 from someone on authortube who I no longer remember the name of. The zero draft is essentially a pre-draft, in which one gets the gist of the story out of their system before the prose clogs up the spigot

For me, zero drafts are something that need to be finished as fast as possible in order to get done at all, so due to the sheer length of the Old West!AU, I'm trying out writing little bullet points instead of my full zero drafting. Right now this fic is at 27 chapters, and this is part 1 of 3 total. I will be going back and filling in the actual blocking once I have all the scenes roughly accounted for

Context for the Old West!AU: Bruce is the Bat, a vigilante gunman who only kills when he needs to but still has the fastest draw on this side of the Mississippi. Now that he's taken care of the man who killed his parents, he's returned home to his Uncle Alfred and gone straight, meaning that he's hung up his guns and gone back to homesteading the family land. He adopts Dick and then a year later Jason as well, when small burglaries start happening in town, so he takes the Bat out of retirement and goes to investigate.

My bullet points started out like this:

Open on comparison between Bruce's first gun and the Bat's guns. Introduce Joe Chill, general drunkard. The Bat calls out Chill, shootout, Chill is killed. Chill drew first. Moment of reflection between Bruce's first gunfight at 15 to this one, at 21. Bruce goes home.

And that's the whole entire first chapter!

However, now they look more like:

The Sheriff runs up and shoots at him. The Bat has him disarmed with his own gun barrel to his throat in an instant. It doesn't take the Bat much time to get info out of him either. The burglar is only going after small change, not enough to be noticeable. That rules out the gambler, easily. The Sheriff can't do shit about it, because no one is willing to start an investigation for such small change. The Bat shoves the Sheriff to his knees and is gone before he notices. Alfred is waiting for him when he gets home, and asks. Bruce tries to deny it, but the clothes are in his hands and he can't. So he sighs and says he may have made a promise, but… there might be more to this than there seems, okay? He just… has a bad feeling about it. Alfred can't accept this, what about his sons? Bruce can't take this, and tells him he doesn't have to. Their yelling wakes up Dick and Jason, who stand in the doorway to their bedroom and look on with the door mostly closed.

Eventually both Alfred and Bruce yell each other out, and they sit down for coffee as dawn breaks. Bruce breaks the silence first, saying Alfred is right. Alfred tells him he understands. Bruce decides to let the Bat go for real now.

This is about half of the chapter, and closer to the blocking I normally do in zero drafts

So far this pre-zero draft seems to be working, given I've already finished part 1, but I also can't wait to come back and do the blocking in because that's when the fic really starts to take shape!

Usually though, I just start with a zero draft. I'm going to show you two different fics for the zero draft examples, because they were done differently, and like I said at the beginning, I try to adjust my process based on what is called for by what I'm writing

This first is from the fic I'm writing for @ful-crum. It's a 5+1, in which it is five times Dick fucks Bruce to distract him from discussing his emotions plus one time they actually discuss their emotions and then fuck about it.

Tim and Jason turn up an hour later, and they're incredibly concerned. Dick waves them off. Tim takes him at his word and heads to bed (he has a meeting with Wayne Tech at 8am tomorrow, ugh), but Jason sits down next to the bed and asks Dick what he thinks Bruce is going to say. Dick tells him he's not sure, I mean, it's B, y'know? Jason just nods, and they lapse into silence. Then Steph and Cass come in, and Bruce is most noticeably not present. Cass signs something about bed, and Steph tells Dick that she's worried about Bruce, to which Jason snorts and says they all are, but she insists that Dick talk to him. Dick doesn't even need to take more than a moment to decide that won't be happening. But Steph goes to bed, and it's nearly 04:00 when Jason heads up too, saying he'd love to help Dick lecture Bruce about staying out late but he's got stuff to do tomorrow. Dick asks if he wants to know what stuff, and Jason gives him a smirk and says ask him no questions and he'll tell him no lies. Dick can live with that.

As you can see, this is just general staging directions and vibes

This second example was supposed to be for BruDick Week 2024, but I accidentally got carried away and ended up deciding to write a longfic for it instead. The prompt was "brudick meet their AU!selves," so I did 66!brudick meets the Gotham Rogues Polycule, an AU in which Bruce, Dick, and Clark are in a very elaborate polycule with half of Gotham's villains.

Batman and Robin were on a normal mission in the middle of the day, on the trail of Catwoman, who's been stealing from the Gotham Museum of Art again. One moment they were walking into the museum, the next they were in a weird swirl of energy. Robin clings to Batman and asks what's going on, and Batman tells him steady Robin, we just have to stay calm and see what happens. The energy clears as someone calls out “incoming! Clear the floor!” and they find themselves in what is clearly the Cave, except it's even more high tech than anything they've ever seen. There's three people in suits like theirs standing in front of a massive screen, and Robin identifies the Riddler immediately, even if he doesn't recognise the other two. Before Batman can stop him, he charges the Riddler, who jumps behind the man in black and blue with a laugh. Batman does call out for him to stop, but he ignores him. The man in black and blue meets his every move, almost like he's fighting himself, and he calls out to the man in red and blue “a little help here, Supes?”

The biggest difference here is how drastically these fics changed from their zero draft to the first draft rendition, and that is entirely because of how fleshed out they ended up being (or not being, lol)

When I zero drafted the 5+1, it was with the intention of that specific part simply being a chapter, whereas my original zero draft of the 66! meeting the polycule! fic was actually intended to be a two shot at most. I unfortunately lost control of the plot during the first draft of that one, and it spiraled into a longfic, which will become more clear in a bit!

Basically though, the goal of the zero draft is to know who's where and why at all times! With longfics, there is often a restructuring that happens after the zero draft is written, where I move scenes and sometimes whole chapters to their best locations. This is where I make the most use out of a beta! Pacing is a big struggle for me and it is easier to fix at this stage, before I have all the prose and have become attached to what I've written

Next up is the first draft, and this is a whole new document. This is where I write The Actual Words. This is more or less the final version of the fic, for longfics, give or take a few paragraphs and a shit ton of line edits. Having said that though, I write in fits and bursts, because y'know disabled and stuff. So I write a paragraph or two at a time, and I am constantly adding and subtracting words and lines and sometimes whole paragraphs while I am actively working on a chapter

I'm going to show the first draft versions of both of the above fics, and due to the length these will be extremely excerpted but they should serve as examples regardless. Generally speaking, my zero drafts are about 1/3 of the length of my finished fics, however the 5+1 is currently proving to be an exception so that number may not be super accurate

First, the 5+1:

“You did take care of them, right?” Dick asked, groaning when Jason’s mouth thinned as he looked away. “Is Steph at least still with him?” “Last I heard, they were—” Jason started, cutting himself off when the Cave’s alarm signaled the arrival of newcomers. A moment later, two muddy bikes roared into the garage, leaving dark tracks behind them as they parked haphazardly together on the far side of the garage. With the return of Black Bat and Spoiler, the only empty place on the garage floor now belonged to Batman himself. Dick tried to catch Jason’s eyes as they waited in the med bay for Cass and Steph to strip off their suits and join them, but Jason turned away from him, though he didn’t rise from the bed. Something must have gone down after he’d fallen unconscious, Dick was sure of it. Why else would Bruce have sent everyone else home early on a patrol night? He could already see it in his mind’s eye, Batman doing God-knew-what out in Gotham alone, Bruce coming home with a busted lip that Dick would have to personally clean up before they went to bed, how that lip would scab over and feel under his tongue when he kissed Bruce the next morning after waking up in their bed—Bruce’s bed—on accident. How that scab would stretch when the ghost of a smile caught Bruce by surprise after one of Dick’s terrible puns. “You okay?” Steph called across the Cave as she and Cass walked toward the med bay. “Never been better,” Dick replied, trying not to be put out at Jason’s eye roll. He put up a hand for Cass to inspect when she came up to his bedside, and after she had nodded her satisfaction of his health he smiled. “I’ll be right as rain in no time.”

And the 66! meets polycule! fic:

“You!” Robin shouted, not waiting for Batman to back him up as he charged toward the Riddler. Riddler didn't move—in fact, none of the three moved—then Robin was on him, punching his face hard enough to hear a distinct crack. That startled all three into action, Riddler swearing up a storm before throwing himself behind the blue masked man, who blocked Robin's next hits without hesitation. “Robin!” Batman called from somewhere behind him, but Robin ignored him, focusing his energy on striking past the masked man's defenses to get at Riddler. “I know you're behind this, you– you scum!” Robin snarled in Riddler's direction, placing a perfectly timed jab toward the masked man's left cheek and then feinting to the right. But the man met him easily, as though they were merely sparring. “I'm not who you think I am!” Riddler exclaimed, his hands cupping his face but doing little to staunch the blood streaming from his nose. “Let's slow down for a minute, okay?” the masked man said, his voice maddeningly level as if Robin wasn't trying every trick he knew to get past him. “We can explain.” “Yeah kid, there's a good explanation here, we promise,” Riddler added. Robin growled and spun around the  masked man's reach only to find him once again directly blocking him from Riddler. How in the dickens did he know exactly where Robin was going to strike before Robin himself knew? And why on earth was he protecting the Riddler? “Supes, we could use a hand here,” the masked man said, still obnoxiously calm, once again blocking Robin's fist and this time circling his hand around Robin's wrist to twist his arm behind his back. In a blink, Robin was lifted into the air by his collar, the blue and red suited man holding him at arm's length. Robin continued to struggle for a moment, but finally Batman came into view, frowning up at him. Seeing Batman's disapproval took every bit of wind from Robin's sails, and he deflated instantly. If Batman didn't think he needed to fight, then he probably didn't need to.

So as you can see, I just kinda fill in the details with each draft!

Which is where we come to the optional second draft. I try, I really do try, to do a full second draft of everything I write. I always am glad to have done one, once it's done. The problem is, I really do have very limited energy, and anything longer than a chapter or two just doesn't get finished if I try to give it a full second draft. I've instead been doing really vigorous line edits, which I don't have an examples of because those are done in the same document as the first draft!

Now, you're probably wondering why on earth I gave a smut content warning at the beginning of this post. WELL.

I am calling myself out as a newbie when it comes to the art of smut writing. My 5+1 fic, the one where literally every single part has extremely explicit smut, has the following in the zero draft:

Yes, that is not one, not two, but three "cue smuts." Clearly I was new at this (affectionate)

Shout out to past!me for this in the last part though, because at least it actually has some semblance of blocking even if it is still extremely lacking:

The kissing escalates (as it often does) to smut over the desk (though Dick does try to move the documents out of the way, even if Bruce is growling at him to leave it alone; he doesn't want to be the reason Tim has another caffeine-induced breakdown).

I didn't figure this out until I was actually writing this fic, but it turns out I not only need to block in regular action scenes, I also need to block in the smut, because otherwise I will be sitting there having no fucking clue what to write (very affectionate)

So I now present what a zero draft of smut looks like! This is from a 5+1 in which there are five times Bruce and Dick fuck because of Poison Ivy's sex pollen and it "doesn't mean anything," plus one time they fuck because they actually want to:

Dick asks if they can take off their suits, it's too hot he's too hot, and Bruce says okay, that's a good idea, and internally he's panicking because oh no. Oh no. But the moment the words are out he sees the relief in Dick's face, and realises Dick needs to be told what to do right now, so he tells him clearly to strip, it'll help. Once Dick is fully naked in the other seat, he turns to Bruce and asks if he needs help with his armor. His hand is tentatively, almost shyly stroking his cock, and Bruce is really struggling to not watch. He tells him no, he doesn't, and takes off the chest plate and arm armor, but leaves what's left of his leg armor on. He decides he can safely put his hand under his boxers, but Dick makes a little noise, and when he looks over he can clearly see Dick watching him stroke himself. Oh fuck. He's cumming before he even realises it, his boxers getting wet and sticky and his cock still so maddeningly hard and he strokes himself through it, unable to stop himself from moaning even as he tries to keep himself in a clinical mindset. Dick asks to see him, and Bruce, despite knowing what a bad, horrible idea this is, pulls down his boxers to reveal his cock. Dick shifts his hand on his own cock to mimic what Bruce is doing, and Bruce has the horrible realisation that he doesn't even really know how to jerk himself off. Dear God, hopefully Alfred stays the fuck out of the Cave tonight.

So it's really just more of the same general blocking directions and vibes!

Another thing of note for zero drafts, I try to use as few words as possible to get what I need across. These are only ever intended to be seen by myself and a beta, assuming anyone else besides me even sees them at all, so I use slang and shorthand and leave notes for myself in the text itself

This can be a bit weird for when I show it to betas (or anyone else, for that matter!) because there are some fics where the tone or the vocabulary in the zero is incredibly modern despite the fic being in a historical or pre-modern setting!

And I have yet to actually write the first draft of that one, so I'm going to give you the first draft of the "Cue more smut (but this time against the batmobile 😌)" scene so that you can see the difference between the blocking and an Actual Scene:

Bruce had turned his back to him, bracing himself against the batmobile, and Dick took hold of Bruce's hip to hold him steady when he slid a finger into his hole. A soft moan was all he got in verbal response, but Bruce pushed against Dick's finger despite Dick's best efforts to do this slowly. Chuckling under his breath, Dick slid in a second finger, relishing in the clench of Bruce's muscle as he began working him open. “Easy, B,” he said softly, leaning over him enough to move his hand from Bruce's hip to his cock. Bruce growled and arched into his touch, taking in Dick's fingers completely. “Someone's in a rush tonight, huh?” He didn't get a verbal response, not that he ever did. Bruce rarely spoke while full, relying instead on nonverbal communication to indicate his needs. It hadn't taken long for Dick to become acquainted with his movements back when they started this; after all, fucking was no different from fighting, not for them, not when they had flown side by side across Gotham for more than half of Dick's life. And Dick knew Bruce would always try to get him to rush just a little, knew he'd give in like he always did, wanting to have his cock inside Bruce as soon as physically possible just as much as Bruce did. He wasted no more time, sliding his fingers out and releasing Bruce's cock just long enough to slick up his own. The small whine from Bruce at the loss of contact ought to be ignored, ought not be acknowledged, and Dick knew that, but he couldn't resist leaning over to kiss the small of Bruce's back. Bruce huffed at him, glaring over his shoulder. Dick met his eyes with a grin. Then Dick gripped Bruce's hip again, holding him steady while Bruce leaned back to meet him, and slipped into his tight heat. There was a soft moan from Bruce the moment he bottomed out; Dick leaned forward again to kiss up his spine, keeping his cock buried deep even while Bruce began to rock back into him.

I do think the fic for @ful-crum would be easier if I had proper blocking for the smut, but also I do love a good challenge and you live and you learn, so I'm not super invested in going back and blocking in the smut at this point in time!

And honestly, once the line edits are done that's pretty much it!

I keep a little "posting info" doc for each and every fic I write, to which I add tags as I come to them in writing, so that I don't have to think about what needs to be tagged at the end after I've already forgotten what I've written. That has saved my butt so many times ngl, especially for longfics!

But really what keeps me from posting more often, despite how much I write, is that I fully finish fics before I post them, even if I'm posting them on a weekly or whatever basis. This is mostly because I can't guarantee when I'll need to randomly take several months off of writing, and I don't want to leave anything unfinished, but also because I don't want to actually end up leaving something unfinished for a few years until I cycle back into the fandom

And that's it!! Thanks for tuning in to this little master class :) If I can clarify anything please let me know; I tried to explain everything that I thought needed it but I can never tell what others will need more clarification on!!

And also, thanks again for asking this!! I don't know many people who do full drafts, or even many people who don't completely pants everything they write, and so I'm always excited to discuss my process!! I also am a firm believer in "take what helps and leave the rest," so if you find something in my process that sounds like something you'd like to do, give it a whirl!! I think it's super important to share the different kinds of processes there can be for writing, because everyone really writes so differently, you know?

Anyway, thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed my shitty early drafts (very affectionate)!!

[prototypelq]

DMC Questions Anon here!

Create a crossover! What is Devil May Cry crossing over with? How does it work? How do the characters from each world interact with the characters from the other?

Hi Ember, thank you for a very creative ask!

This is simultaneously the easiest and the hardest ask out of all of them for me pfff. I am not really a crossover person, I’m much more an AU person. AUs heavily inspired by other medias or the like can be carefully picked to enhance the specific aspects of existing things in canon to tailor it to your liking. Full on crossovers to me looks more like… mashing dolls together to imitate kissing basically. Weird, forced and doesn’t really work? I’ll try thou

In terms of classic crossover definition the only one I can come up with, and the one that I found art for Right on the day you sent the ask (there are no accidents) – is with Darksiders. You know. Another series of games based on Angelic and Demonic imagery, which thematically hold family in high regard. Though,  DMC doesn’t have Riders of the Apocalypse OR, more importantly, their horses. (I love darksiders for lots and lots of reasons but also like half of them can also be summarized by saying magic horse knights, it’s hard to put into words exactly how majestic powerful and appealing a war horse concept is to me, even more so because I’ve had some experience with them, a war horse is an actual Tank I am not kidding)

This will mostly work for laughs, because siblings bickering and demon trouble will be familiar to all the characters. I’d love to see them all spar actually, cause if anything can rival overpowered twins of DMC, it would be the Riders of the Apocalypse. Plus they could work as actually really cool bosses (imagine a combination of crazy hitboxes of Maplphas chicken rush attacks, with a finesse and speed of Angelo, and that would probably be the skeleton the Riders will diverge from, and the situation works in reverse, but the Lucifer fight from Darksiders 2 (actually my fav fight in the series gameplay wise) is pretty much already Dante&Vergil movesets combined – incredibly fast teleporting chains of attacks, and an array of ranged options to boot, great fight)

Actually, If I were to play against those I would probably be scared for my damn life if I saw War&Ruin rushing full speed to my location on screen, no matter how badass the character I play as would be. Have you seen Ruin? That horse is built like a goddamn truck, is just as powerful AND IS FAST. The only way to disrupt this attack would be to like perfect-parry War’s slash and powerful enough to dismount him, or at least dismiss Ruin (who can actually fight on his own too).

Sorry for focusing so much on War&Ruin, it’s just these two are an actual battering ram combined and that’s so cool. I love all the Riders and horses of Darksiders. You could probably see where my headcanons for ‘demonic pets au’ or the like come from. That said this is the only specifically a crossover I can think of.

Now, If I, per chance, were to take some Creative Liberties TM with the ask… and perhaphs add some AU thoughts here… Ooh boy

First of all, the family drama focus of DMC means that, story-wise you can insert them EVERYWHERE.

Pacific Rim copilots au where Vergil went missing during a last-stand kaiju fight and Dante had to operate the jaeger alone, Vergil to be found and rehabilitated by the locals but forgotten and lost to the whole operation, and Dante who managed to pilot the jaeger back to base alone, mourning his brother for the last 20 years, only to find out a nephew in a new pilot candidate? Done.

RDR cowboys on the run from the gang that had personal history with their family, constantly traveling and trying their luck where they can?Maybe with Nero growing up to join the bounty hunters that are looking for the twins? Done. (Rebellion and Yamato as horses...)

Dishonored AU because I really really want to see the setting of these games more but the story in them is always lacking? Twins trying to out-asassin each other? Or they could be on different sides of the conflict, or Anything it would be very cool!!!

Hitman games twins insert! The second twin is the bot you play against, and need to eliminate the target faster or prevent each other from achieving their goal. Vergil is the Silent Assassin, perfect eye sniper, Dante is the Master Infiltrator that can and will get past any security right under their noses.

Okay so wild fantasizing almost over, what crossovers/heavy au I can imagine that would benefit DMC?

Bloodborne or ResE, though Blodborne would be my preferred option, and my knowledge on ResE begins and ends with those twins insert skins.

I Love Love Love Love Love the family drama in DMC, but I wish the setting has also got some much, much needed attention, it is severely lacking is every possible area that does not concern the twins. Bloodborne AU fixes that. Suddenly twins are not overpowered to an extreme degree so nothing ever could present a danger to them, and this only adds pressure to the family drama we have going on (which is why ResE would also work). We get info on how other humans deal with the supernatural bullshit around them, background story for the demons and more information on them in general.

Bloodborne vibe is arguably what DMC5 was, at least partialy inspired by – the blood splashes that remain stuck to the characters, the blood fountain Urizen uses for teleporting around, the illusions the fruit created… Only body horror remains unused, but those Empusas certainly do try. Item descriptions are my least favorite narrative tool out of them all, however I would take even that for DMC, because right now we have bare minimum worldbuilding, which is held up by the fic writers and theories authors (Legends) more than the actual canon.

Gameplay-wise? I think just adding some unique mechanics from other slasher games would work nicely. Vergil could very much do with the slashing mechanics of MGRR, it would probably be the only thing that could make him even cooler than he already is really.

I would love to get some sort of Hi-Fi Rush or Audiosurf musical mechanic implemented, or add them as additional rhythm challenges. Dante Must Style kind of already does that – the mode forces the player to play not just good, but stylish and be effective about it. I can imagine a challenge mode where you get bonus points for executing certain moves in rhytm with the music. Or, a discount version of this – add Audiosurf algorithm so you could feed the game any song you like and the mod will layer it to work with the style meter. To be honest, I am not sure how coding-wise hard this task would be, but that never stopped modding communities before and I am honestly surprised there aren’t already mods like that.

Another thing DMC5 could benefit from gameplay-wise is additions to V gameplay. I have mentioned Astral Chain before, and I will again (partially because I am a little jealous of people who did play it), somehow Nintendo got their hands on a Platinum game and people are really sleeping on it for some reason (only a million copies or about sold what the hell???).

Astral Chain is built upon the concept of V – summons combat, and I am sure there are mechanics in that summon-exclusive game that dmc5 would benefit from (sadly I have a harder time pinning them down, but I know there are some parkour moves the player can do witht the help of their summon and there are combo-attacks with the summon so those would be a great start).

I could also add Honkai 3d (also known as the mihoyo anime lovechild, btw look up animatics for music for the game it is SICK, not all seasons of anime can reach this level of quality) to this section, because it has a great mechanic I really missed in my time playing genshin – ultimate attacks leave characters on the battlefield and will allow you to switch to another character without breaking the ultimate. (DMC5 COULD ALSO USE AN ACTUAL COOP)

This means you can proc BIG DAMAGE animation, enjoy it from the sideline and switch to another character while not losing your momentum and seeing your faves gang up on enemy – I think it’s not hard to see V could have been much more entertaining with this mechanic. This could be expanded into full on combo attacks between your summons (ex. launch enemy with shadow and cast v-lightning to proc a cool double attack move), or combo attacks with V himself. This could be animation heavy though, and might get repetitive to see, but I still think it will be a very solid addition.

This reply is all over the place, but I hope at least the Darksiders answer remained somewhat on point xD

[napo-leo-art]

Hi! From the OC asks: 7, 17 and 23 for Gavin? No pressure though!

Of course! And no worries, I love answering these. Thank you for the questions! (Under the cut for length)

7. What's one way your OC has changed since you first came up with them?

I haven't really changed Gavin all that much, but I do have one bit! TBH, the first time I played him was Book 2, and I hadn't played him in Book 1 (I did one of those "make a new character with summary" things). And then I ended up really liking him and went back and played 1 with him LOL. So, I am very into things like musicals and dancing and singing, so I have the tendency to lump those onto my OCs. Gavin was the most recent one of these! And then I realized that trait combined with his skills and his general attitude was pretty similar to another OC I had*, who I really love and have had for several years, so I thought I should explore some other options. I especially wanted to do stuff that I'm not familiar with, so I fell into frat boy stuff and sports LMAO. I'd love to draw some shit for that, but I'm really not a team sports kinda person.

*Jesse Acevedo, he's my Breach: The Archangel Job oc and I've rped with him quite a bit.

17. What is the worst thing you have put your OC through story-wise?

That's a great question. I'm gonna avoid anything that happened in the Wayhaven books, since a lot of characters went through that and I'd like to give more info LOL.

Outside of Wayhaven stuff, it would probably be the experience that led him to quit law school. This is a sensitive topic so I don't want to add a ton of details, but in short he (as a defense attorney*) was legally on the side of a defendant who really did commit the crime that was alleged, which was already terrible. Then the defendant physically attacked the plaintiff (accuser) in the trial, between actual court appearances.

Gavin (and myself) would put priority on the victim of this attack, but it still was the sort of experience that was life-altering for him, and a terrible twist of his good intentions. His goal was to provide a good defense to the accused who couldn't afford a good attorney, but the reality of having to defend the people who actually did commit the crimes they were accused of had a much bigger toll on him than he expected, and it felt wrong to keep pursuing pretty unfiltered cases.

*this is not the correct term, but I can't think of the right one at this moment- in the US, the court will provide you a defense attorney if you can't afford one, and that was the job he was going for. District attorney? Point is, they are a defense in criminal cases for people who do not have the resources to defend themselves legally.

23. What emotion is the hardest for your OC to process? How about express?

I almost said 'vulnerability', but that's not strictly an emotion LOL. It's the most "true" answer, but let me give a bit more.

I think maybe lovesickness? is the hardest for him to process. He's had a lot of shallow relationships and hookups and he gets into them completely willingly, even considering he knows he'll get his feelings hurt. The part where it *actually* hurts is the worst, because he has nobody to blame but himself. Like, let's say Mason didn't have feelings for him. Mason made it completely clear, and he caught feelings anyway. So why is he hurt? He knew what he was getting into.

But really, he can still be hurt by that of course. He made a bad decision, but it still hurts.

As for expressing? Probably sadness, it's one of those emotions where people feel the need to protect or help you in some way, and he always feels very weird not dealing with those things on his own. He's definitely not the gossipy type, and sometimes the kinda sadness you have really needs to be explained to get it all out. It's easier not to express it.

I think anger could very easily be the replacement outlet for him, but he's not an angry person in the least. So he buries it under a lot of other emotions, or just hopes it'll go away on its own.

[firecoloredwater]

For the ask meme: 8, 12, 25, 29

Well! This is phenomenally late. But thank you for asking! I have been slowly picking away at this by which I mostly mean the list in 12 for uhhh Too Long.

8: Do you have any rituals or habits that help you get into the zone?

Hmmm. I tend to have snacks + water with me when I write. That's less an intentional ritual and more so that I can tunnel vision on writing for five hours straight without getting dehydrated, so really it's more about not getting out of the zone, but it's as close as I've got. Music used to be really helpful, but it just sort of randomly stopped working a few years ago and I'm not sure why.

12: Are there any clichés or tropes that you actively avoid in your fics?

Kiiiinda all of them? But not in a "I refuse to write this" way, just like....

Okay so, the thing is, cliches (and tropes, when people are complaining about them in a way equivalent to cliches) are familiar. We've seen them a thousand times. They feel natural. They don't feel like a trope, they just feel like How Things Are. And that's why people end up writing cliches when they don't work well, because they feel like they work. And in a sense they do; nobody's going to be confused, relatively few people will be bothered, we can get to the next bit quickly. You just don't get much of anything out of them other than being able to move on quickly, most of the time.

Buuuuut I am kinda Invested in characters and characterization. (And worldbuilding, especially culture and society, which is basically just characterization at another scale). So whenever something feels too neat/happens too smoothly I go "wait, no, that's just the first thought, that's not the best option, that's not how individuals work" and then like... chew on the characters and the situation a bit more. And almost always I end up with something less cliche.

(If you have noticed me going "Maybe, but maybe (more complicated thing here) instead" in discord that's usually what I'm doing.)

...this might explain why I can write nothing short ever. Hm.

So the point is: I actually do like playing with cliches and standard tropes, but I do that after lots of breaking them down and examining all the pieces and doing some remodeling. And that is how we ended up with things like BSAU and tech AU.

Also technically there are a lot of tropes I avoid but that's like, the queercoded villain, the girl who's supposed to be powerful but is only ever helpless when the boys show up, etc. Cliche is not the reason I avoid them, is what I'm getting at.

Anyway though this question is an invitation to kick the hornet's nest, so a list of things that ping the "wait this is too easy, let me try again but better this time" bells in my head:

Tobirama deliberately endangering himself for enemy children with no hope/plans to gain anything from it

basically anyone falling in love while they're still enemies trying to kill each other (does not apply to HashiMada though because they have the whole river thing to like each other pre-murder attempts)(also to be clear this is about Being In Love not just thinking the other guy's hot)

Izuna is bratty and whiny and dramatic because That's Just How He Is (but if bratty little brother is a role he deliberately leans into around Madara, that's Delicious)

Hashirama being cruel to Tobirama

but also, Hashirama not taking Tobirama at least a little bit for granted

also vice versa for both of those

Butsuma being... hm, pointlessly cruel? Like I think he was absolutely an awful father and abusive, but I don't think he meant to be. I don't think he was looking for opportunities to be cruel for the sake of cruelty, he was just Immensely Fucked Up himself and his best was not very good. Which is a very different flavor of awful than if he just, like, enjoys beating up children or something

Mito having 0 reservations about marrying Hashirama (and in particular the 'go live with the Senju forever' part)

Izuna being just, way more invested in Their Rivalry than Tobirama

being a genius means knowing everything and always being right (not actually very common in this fandom but "how does being really actually very brilliant affect how Tobirama fucks up" is a fun thing to think about)

Hashirama actually being dumb

[insert Uchiha] sees that Tobirama is being abused/neglected/hurt/taken for granted/undervalued generally and deciding that this is Wrong and Must Be Fixed/they need to rescue him/etc. even though they're at war

Tobirama gets taken prisoner/hostage and wow turns out he gets treated so much better as an Uchiha prisoner than he did at home (as a result of the above or otherwise)

both of those would also apply in other configurations but I only recall seeing it as Uchiha rescue and are kind to Tobirama

honestly basically any popular trope will end up here because like. you can make any of these work very well. But once tropes hit a certain level of popularity people start just writing them without putting in the work to set them up properly and that is where I start going 'if I wrote this I would do X and it would be so much better.'

25: Are there any specific writing tools that you find helpful?

I have not had a properly functional laptop for years now and the instant I get one again--

But other than that, no. I guess I use random.org and fantasynamegenerator fairly regularly? Also Wikipedia for names and bare minimum glance at research. But those aren't really what most people mean by this question I think

29: Are there any characters, relationships, or general character dynamics you’ve never written about but would like to try?

...I mean, yes, for sure, but I have immediately forgotten them all. What's a character.

I think basically every possible version of Mito going to marry Hashirama and live with the Senju is fascinating, but I will probably never write it because I do not have the time to do the research I'd need to or to write the fic, much less both.

I'd also like to explore, like... Hashirama and Madara were both really young when they became clan heads, right? We don't get a number but they were in their early 20s at best. And that's kind of expected in that society generally and probably those clans in particular, but still, they were not prepared and I bet a lot of people wouldn't have taken them seriously. And their main backups/supporters were... their little brothers. What was going on there. I know canon assumes they just had automatic full control of their clans because clans are basically just fancy protagonist accessories at that point, but what actually happened. If this has been normal for generations, did the Senju and Uchiha even ever expect their clan heads to have actual power, or have they basically always been figureheads because they never even hit middle age? Were Hashirama and Madara (and Tobirama and Izuna) even aware of the actual political dynamics in their clan, or were they just raised and trained to be generals on the battlefield and someone else handled everything else?

Once again on politics but: yeah yeah protagonist power do we get how big a deal it is that Hashirama restructured an entire continent's whole society by building Konoha. It didn't work out exactly how he wanted (see: war still happening) but he still did it! Entire economies and cultures uprooted! So I like to think that, maybe, actually, society was already going through huge upheavals for... whatever reasons, history is always complicated, and that creating Konoha was about navigating and taking advantage of the changes that were already going on in order to like, shove Konoha in there as well. Maybe the elemental nations were dealing with economic shifts like the rise of the middle class and also a feminist movement and also advancements in farming technology have tripled crop yields and that means societal demographics have changed overnight and society is not prepared to accommodate any of it. Konoha gets built because when Hashirama proposes it society collectively goes "life is already so weird recently, this might as well happen."

[astriiformes]

Hi! I’m a different person asking about applying for herbarium jobs. I actually followed you a little bit ago specifically because I saw you post about working in one, I just hadn’t gotten the courage up to ask about it.

I’m in college now, with plans to go into plant research, and I’m probably going to graduate with a good amount of lab experience. I recently realized though that herbarium work might also be a good fit for me. I’m not quite sure what to ask here, but is there anything that would make that transition difficult? Or anything I should know or focus on before I graduate? I saw you said you had more of a science background so maybe you know what I’m getting at here

Thanks!

So, full disclosure, my herbarium position was a work-study job last year (I have had a.... winding and tenuous path through college and am currently going back to school at 26 to attempt to finish my Bachelor's by doing a weird syncretic individualized degree instead of a standard biology one) and I do not have experience with applying for similar positions as a graduate or more standard professional candidate, which can obviously be quite different for some jobs.

That said, I don't know how long you have left in school, but looking to see if your own university offers any similar options OR if there's a local herbarium or museum where you could volunteer in your (limited, I imagine) free time would probably serve to make you a good candidate for herbarium work. Even working or volunteering in non-herbarium collections may help -- I know one thing that came up as a positive in my interviews was that I already had a lot of collections experience on my resume, even though it was all in zoology and paleontology collections. Any collections job will get you acquainted with basic curatorial duties and procedures, and may even familiarize you with specific methods of data entry or other skills you can namedrop on your resume. Even if it's volunteer work (all of mine was -- my herbarium position was my first ever paid collections job) it's a great thing to be able to show you have experience in.

As far as particular difficulties go... nothing particularly glaring is coming to mind. Working or volunteering in a collections job as a student before you graduate would also probably help you figure out if it's the right field for you, which is always another bonus. If you've largely got lab experience I'm sure you're very familiar with the tedium of data entry even when you're doing cool research (although there is the occasional entertaining error message, haha) and a lot of collections work is pretty data entry-heavy, though with the immense bonus that you are entering data about some pretty fascinating things and may find yourself crying over the human experience while handling lichen specimens that were collected in the mid-19th century (I speak from experience).

Best of luck with whatever route you go down, and I'd love to be able to consider you a collections comrade. Folks who make the jump from research science to museums are sometimes particularly great advocates for the importance of specimen collections, considering how useful they can be to researchers and having the background to explain how collections are used for contemporary science and not simply kept around as relics of the past, which may be an angle for you to consider if you dip your toes into the field.

(And don't be shy if you ever have other questions! I love talking about this stuff.)

[bonesandthebees]

Some random questions xd (optional dw)

do you like hermitcraft? cause im brainrotting abt it lmao

what is your fav color? mines green!

if you could pick any power in the clinic!universe what would you pick and why? personally i would pick Phils powers cause i want to flyyyyy

What DND moral alightment are you? if u dont know what this is dw, im a true neutral

what is your answer to the trolley problem? i think i would move the lever but idk

If you had to pick one persons lore on dsmp whos would you pick and why? i think i would chose quackity's

What is a fic idea you have but dont think would do well/ isnt something you feel like writing?

what is a comfort movie/show/video? mine isnt a movie but its a 3 hour long techno vid haha

given the chance to be in MCC who would you pick for your team?

i just felt like this btw:) you dont have to answer any of them btw^^

-👑 (king)

oooo these are fun questions!!!

no I don't watch hermitcraft, but I hear bits and pieces from the people on my tumblr dash and my twitter tl who do watch it. also, I've watched 3rd life and last life (and part of double life) which have a lot of the hermits in them, so I'm mostly familiar with the hermits through that (I will say that I am not immune to good times)

yellow is my fav color!

oooo I'd probably pick wilbur's power. siren abilities hello?? insanely powerful man. if not his then I'd go with niki's because I always wanted to be a waterbender like katara when i was a little kid

uhh I'm either neutral good or true neutral, not exactly sure which

I have no idea what my answer would be tbh

if you mean pick someone's lore as in my favorite lore, it'd be wilbur's hands down. he created such a complex and fascinating character who was incredibly consistent in his characterization, I brainrot over c!wilbur so often so everything from him is my favorite

oh god most of my google drive is full of fic ideas that either wouldn't do well or I just don't feel like writing lmao. one example is that I love coming up with aus of movies but rarely do I actually wanna write them out entirely. one movie au I think about so often but would never get around to writing is an au of the movie Push. Push is not a very good film. it's fun! but it's not good lmao. the concept was SUPER cool to me though. it's a movie about people who have psychic powers that are hunted down by an evil government organization yknow the drill, but the plot is about a guy in his 20s who is a 'mover' (has telekinesis) that's kind of down on his luck and doesn't have much of a life. he gets dragged into a plot to steal a metal briefcase because a 13 year old 'watcher' (sees the future) shows up on his doorstep and tells him she sees the two of them teaming up to find this case and she's convinced it has a shit ton of money in it. a lot of other stuff happens but the main two characters have such older brother/little sister energy that i literally can't stop thinking about crimeboysing it. it would be so fun but I'll never write it unfortunately.

hmm... one of my favorite self indulgent movies to rewatch just for fun is a super cheesy 90s film called hackers. the fashion is peak bad 90s fashion and the plot is so stupid, it's so much fun I adore it. I love rewatching it to cheer myself up

OOOOO GOOD QUESTION! ok i'm assuming you mean cc's I can pick. now the thing is, I suck at minecraft. so while I'd love to give myself a goated team so i can win, I don't think I'd have much of a chance of winning either way. but I'll give two teams anyway, one for a chance at the win, one just for fun content. so for a chance to win: tommy, phil, and shubble. for content: wilbur, wisp, and jack manifold. it'd be terrifying but also hilarious.

thank you for the questions these were really fun!!

[sweetmage]

Hi I would love to hear more about Celestine and Sebastian’s dynamic 👀👀

Hi hi! I am sorry for the late response. But oh gosh, thank you!!! 🥺I am a chronic over explainer though + the background stuff is long (probably just as long as the actual stuff with him and Celestine, whoops…), so I’m very sorry if this becomes a whole novel! 😅

Edit: I meant for this to just be a brief overview, but it did, in fact, become a whole nove (it’s like… 2k+ words almost, with some of it expanded from an old post. Even with that I skipped over/condensed a lot of things, heh. I am soooo sorry💀) Absolutely no pressure to read all of this!!!😅

I’ll put it under the cut! Also TW for mentions of alcoholism

I suppose I will start at the beginning!

So to begin with, Hawke and Anders become fugitives and Sebastian retakes the throne. This works off of the AU detailed in the thing I drew the other day.

Upon his return, he struggles to reintegrate into a culture that is no longer familiar to him, engage with people who are quite dissimilar to him in nature and priorities, and thrive in a position he was never prepared for.

With wounds fresh from his many losses and betrayals, he struggles to trust and relate to his fellow nobility, leading him to strike up a friendship with one of the palace servants, a Dalish woman whose clan was murdered when she young leading her to step into life she she did not want (serving nobility). Developing a sense of kinship with her, he makes impulsive decision number two and abandons his position without warning after only a few months to live a quiet, simple life.

This goes well for a while (roughly a year and a half), a little chaste romance something something happens, but after some time she begins to question if this is what she truly wants. It is a marked improvement over her prior life, but she feels as though she lost herself somewhere along the way. She tells him this honestly and says that it’s not necessarily permanent goodbye, she just wants to see what else is out there. Of course, he understands and he’d never hold someone hostage so he encourages them to do so, even though he’s kinda torn up about it.

She leaves, he waits, then the letters slow and stop coming all together. After a time, he accepts that she’s found a life outside of him and he has no better option than to return, utterly disgraced, surrounded by scandal, and alone once more. Around this time he also returns to an old vice: Alcohol. Which is… ~quite good~ for a man two for two on poor, impulsive decisions and with his career hanging by a frayed thread. /s

By this point, the events of Inquisition have rolled around. He opens himself up to allyship and, depending on the AU, the Inquisitor either accepts or denies but the later events are always roughly the same. For simplicity, we’ll just go with my canon Inquisitor Kest, a former knight from Starkhaven who, despite his disdain for Sebastian, accepts the offer out of loyalty to his city and his own diplomatic mindset.

More time passes, he’s still a mess of a ruler, struggling with the drink, etc. etc. He then moves on to impulsive decision #3: He has decided to move forward with his plans to annex Kirkwall. Initially, when first returning to the throne post-Chantry explosion, he had cooled down enough to not pursue something so foolish and cruel despite his threats. But now, jaded, bitter, and impaired, he’s brushing off the words of his advisors and going for it.

He requests aid from Skyhold, but the Inquisitor who was once known for throwing soldiers around willy-nilly has just taken a huge blow to his religion during the fade and has changed radically and he flat out refuses to help.

Seb goes along with it anyone, soldiers die, he loses a major ally, the plan is a humiliating failure, and if he wasn’t hated before he certainly is now! The situation is quite dire and he knows his time is limited. He’s essentially a tyrant and everyone wants his head. He kind of just becomes reclusively and silently resigns himself to that fact.

This is when he receives an offer. (Now for the stuff that actually involves Celestine):

Celestine has spent much of her life trying to sink her own image in the hopes of avoiding marriage and bowing to the whims of her family. Though she outwardly portrays herself as impulsive and prone to scandal, she is just fast tracking her way to exile and living a quiet, modest, and unbothered life.

However, after Sebastian’s latest scandal her family proposes that he marry her in exchange for a few boons. They will voice their support to bolster his influence at the risk to themselves and provide other political and trade related things that I am too lazy to explain atm. Since he is essentially the last of his lineage they kind of prey on his sense of loss and the futility of the situation and skew it as a “we want to help you ensure the Vael family continues, this way you can produce more heirs” sort of deal but obviously they just want their family to have claim to the throne in some way before someone finally gets bold enough to chop his head off.

As he has essentially thrown every other one of his vows out the window at this point, what’s one more? He agrees impulsively (#4 now…) but regrets his decision pretty much the moment he meets her. She had been pretty much home free on the whole marriage thing, being 30 at this point with almost as many scandals to her name as he had (though nothing nearly as bad, of course) until the most ineligible bachelor came along and her parents started rubbing their greedy little hands together.

At first she is rightfully terrified, having been handed off to a strange man who reeks of booze and, by all standards, appears to be nothing short of a tyrant. However, the moment they are alone together he immediately regrets his decision, feeling as though this is the most immoral act he has committed (which is… kinda saying something at this point). This is much to her relief, of course, because she would not touch this man with a 10 foot pole. However, this just embitters her further. She is now locked into a commitment that neither of them want with the duty of doing something neither of them want to do, and that infuriates her.

They kind of coexist awkwardly for a few days. He sleeps in an armchair across the room and lets her have the bed, they don’t really talk to or look at each other, and it remains uncomfortably tense. Since she no longer feels threatened by him at this point (he is actually kinda pathetic, she thinks) she reaches her boiling point and finally snaps. She tells him bitterly that this never would have had to happen if he hadn’t made so many foolish mistakes which she is happy to list off in lurid detail, stating the logical solutions as though they were obvious.

To him they hadn’t been though. Like, of course he could see in retrospect why throwing all his eggs in one basket to run off with someone he hardly knew or sending an army on a suicide mission to Kirkwall for more or less no reason were terrible ideas, but he had failed as a ruler in other regards as well and the advisors he had in place currently did not exactly have his success or the nation’s best interest in mind.

I think a little remorseful/overwhelmed breakdown happens here (very unwell atm, as one could imagine), but, much to her surprise and whiplash he actually agrees with her and asks to hear more about his failings. He was fully aware of his incompetence and the fact that he was in way over his head, but this is the first time since he had taken the throne that anyone had been completely blunt and honest with him instead of sugar-coating things or playing yes man to stay in his graces. Aside from that, this was probably the most genuine anyone had been to him in a long time, even if it was unpleasant, and there was something comforting in that.

Now, she was not a leader by any means, but she came from a military family and had lived her life immersed in the politics and culture of both Starkhaven and Val Royeaux and was, for that reason, a little more knowledgeable on such matters.

From there they do a little bit of plotting and scheming and try to work out a compromise for the horrendously sticky situation he’s gotten them in. After all, she doesn’t particularly like the idea of being murdered, but she also does not wish to leave the city to rot under his ruling and live with blood on her hands (<-how she views it). So, In lieu of producing an heir, they begin to explore the possibility of shaping him into a better leader as both a form of image restoration and as atonement for his many egregious scandals and missteps. She offers his assistance to him in exchange for having their marriage annulled and an agreement to no contact when they’re through. He agrees to this readily, grateful beyond words.

She first instructs him to throw out the whole council. They are holdovers from when the Harimanns commanded the throne and are disloyal and corrupt. It’s a risky move, but the new council will handle recourse. She, alongside a handpicked group of advisors, acts as a buffer for his ideas and works to educate him on proper leadership and restoring his image. Some of his first courses of action include compensating the families of soldiers he'd so carelessly sacrificed as well as providing aid to Kirkwall.

Behind closed doors, they keep their relationship to strictly business, a boundary he has no desire to cross. She wishes to smooth things over quickly and rinse her hands of both him and this life she wants no part of.

However, despite themselves, in a few months time they sometimes begin to find their lessons devolving into conversations about their lives, idle gossip, or amusing stories from their pasts, sometimes getting lost for hours before remembering the task in front of them. She comes to realize that the man she once assumed to be an egotistical idiot is, for all of his problems and his traumas, is actually surprisingly humble, charming, and polite. Moreover, he has been working tirelessly to address his grief healthily, make amends for his actions, and prevent any repeats and he seems to take those matters seriously beyond simply restoring his image.

As the months become a year and he is finally coming to competency, she finds herself dreading the end of their time together.

As a result, she begins to find more and more reasons to insist that he still has much to learn, despite him reassuring her that he has it under control now and she is free to leave.

He is not totally oblivious to her intentions to stay, though he believes that she is worried about having nowhere to go or facing backlash from her parents. After all, while her image was improved as a result of his image being restored, if she were to leave she may have to return to a life of scandal and exile. As a result, he offers to take the public blame in their annulment and arrange her stable living conditions so that she won’t suffer further because of his decision.

With this offer in front of her, she has no other reasons to stay. She packs the few belongings she has and prepares herself to leave by the end of the week. On her final evening, however, he joins her on the balcony where she stands overlooking the garden (which she will miss greatly). They speak a bit then, though it is stilted and they both seem to dance around the topic of her departure. At last, he goes quiet, becoming withdrawn so, naturally, she asks him what’s wrong wrong. He is reluctant to tell her, telling her instead not to trouble herself. When she presses, he insists that it is the very sort of selfish thinking he is hoping to overcome, something he doesn't wish to subject her to. And when she presses further, he finally admits that he is sad to see her go.

He reiterates that he never has any intention of keeping her there, but a part of him enjoys her company, especially seeing as she is his only companion.

She responds with the same sentiment, though assures him that she will not remain to burden him longer or distract him from his duties.

To that they are… confused. But when it clicks for them… laughter, tears, dumping everything out of her packed bags, tossing their annulment papers into the fire, kisses, etc. etc. etc.

They later go on to renew their vows, a more genuine and happy affair this time. She receives the quiet, peaceful life she longs for, away from the public eye, and enjoys the safety of knowing she has not lost her autonomy in this relationship. Sebastian also mellows significantly over time, becoming a more competent leader, a healthier person, and he really benefits from having someone he can confide in and who will address him honestly. Two jaded, bitter people who only want peace and stability and are happy to share their precious solitude with each other.

[chloemarievaughan]

Scotland with Grey- Trains, the Highlands, and Whisky! May 1-2

I asked Grey earlier this year if he would be interested in doing a trip with me somewhere… without any hesitation he immediately said, “Scotland!” And so I planned our next adventure! I did the lions share of the planning as I enjoy planning my Europe trips, but to check with grey about my planned itinerary, I texted him “shall I assume your Scotland requests are: trains, the highlands, and whisky haha” And he replied “💯” and so that is much the theme of our trip :)

Grey is living in Denver now, and so I looked for flights for us with the same layover so we would arrive in Edinburgh together. there was only one option; we would meet up in the toronto airport. The downside was that I was planned to have a 5 hour layover which is definitely on the longer end. So I bought our tickets and then not two weeks later my flight was rescheduled to an EIGHT hour layover which was pretty excessive. I got pretty familiar with the international departures terminal at the Toronto airport, spent time walking laps back and forth, sitting in a variety of chairs for about 45 minutes each. I did get one short nap in which I imagine looked odd laying my head on the table where I was sitting 😂

I am currently getting over a nasty sinus infection and will spare you the gory details but I did drink a lot of tea in the airport, and ate some spicy curry soup for lunch in the hopes it would clear my nose. I also brought the 4th Harry Potter book in French that i am STILL trying to finish- but I read French way slower than English so I would probably finish most English books in 8 hours. I did read like 200 pages of the book over the long day and some on the plane!

Grey showed up after I had been in the airport for about 5.5 hours, by which time I knew all of the best places to sit and the variety of dining options and art installations in the terminal, so we found some dinner and then it was time to board the plane! For some reason, my ticket would NOT let me choose a seat but grey was able to: so he elected to sit next to me, even sacrificing to sit in the middle seat. The Toronto to Edinburgh flight is Very short for an international flight, under 7 total hours. This doesn’t leave much time to actually sleep. Grey and I strategized this oppositely; Grey has a two hour longer time difference to Edinburgh than I do, and so he was essentially planning to push through the flight, sleep a bit on the train the next morning, but more or less doing an all nighter. I need my beauty sleep so I planned to close my eyes the instant the meal was served and keep them closed for 4 hours until breakfast was being served. I am not sure how much I actually slept- thanks to two crying babies that seemed to be keeping each other awake all night on and off, and one crying would usually set off the other one. but Grey only slept for about 30 minutes. Getting off the plane in Edinburgh made me glad we weren’t meeting in the Edinburgh airport- lots more to distract you in the Toronto airport. We then took the tram to the Haymarket train station about a 25 minute ride away and had another wait for our train which left at 10:37 to Inverness. The train left at 8:37 or 10:37, but 8:37 seemed like too tight a connection so I booked the later train. We would have made it in plenty of time, so had to kill like 2.5 hours: went to a little Turkish cafe for breakfast- had some excellent avocado toast, grey had a traditional English breakfast, and I had some delicious lemongrass ginger tea. I was testing a theory about the timing of my caffeine consumption on adjusting to the time difference so I didn’t have coffee on the plane, waiting until about 9:30 am. We went to a cafe next to the Turkish place that had cozy armchairs and Delicious filter coffee- usually I don’t like the actual coffee in Europe, preferring to get espressos, but it was very tasty. There were two Giant very friendly dogs wandering the cafe wanting to play fetch and get pet. It was finally time for our train and both grey and I fell immediately asleep the second we sat down. According to our booking, our seats were forward facing, but when we got to the seats they were backward facing and grey was a little motion sick, but surprisingly I was okay with it. Train seats aren’t That comfortable for sleeping but it still was so much better than the plane!

I slept for about the first hour of the four hour train to our first city, Inverness. I woke up and peeked outside and saw spectacular rolling hills and farmland with sheep, horses and cows and I was suddenly full of energy and enjoyed looking out the window and seeing the sights. I bought more tea when the trolley lady went by on the train with her cart. We went into the highlands, seeing the Cairngorms National Park (which we are visiting tomorrow!) past tons of little towns and villages dotting the hills, and there are yellow gorse bushes that are blooming now and dotting the hills. The trees are *just* starting to bud; another week or two it will really be spring.

I sent my friend Bridget a picture of me wearing my trusty sun hat on the plane and she replied “Yay!!!!! :) I love how you have a sun hat for Scotland! Is it supposed to be sunny at all when you’re there??” which the answer is no, it really was not supposed to be sunny. However I would feel incomplete traveling without a sun hat and also this one is a new one I just purchased for $6 on clearance at target because I left my old one on a train in Amsterdam 😂 however, it actually was sunny for our first day here! Not a cloud in the sky sunny! Not usual for Scotland and likely to be rare for the rest of my trip but now my hat is justified :)

We arrived in Inverness and our air bnb was a short walk away. Not obvious from google maps is that it was a short walk straight up a ton of stairs! Though I crammed everything in a carry on, I did not exactly pack lightly; I was definitely out of breath by the top of the stairs!

Our air bnb is a cute tiny apartment on a quiet residential street a few minutes from the city center. There is a bedroom and a pullout couch in the living room, so Grey doesn’t have to endure my snoring from my sinus congestion lol, and a tiny cute kitchen. our air bnb host sent some welcoming messages and left us some treats and small breakfast items and some milk in the fridge for our tea/ cereal which was nice!

After a quick shower- 24 hours of traveling and I felt like a human being again after that shower! And then we went for a walk around Inverness to kill some time before dinner. This was Beautiful- we walked along the river, past churches, parks, flowers, restaurants, and trees, back and forth across some bridges on the river and winding up at some creatively named islands on the River Ness called the Ness Islands. The sun was out and the people of Inverness were all walking their dogs, strolling along the river and out on bikes, but we were walking away from the city so it wasn’t too crowded. Grey is a very brisk walker so we were booking it around the river, a good reason that we have planned to go on separate hikes later in the week haha. The second half of our walk was significantly less scenic; Grey doesn’t like to walk the same way twice, so we tried to walk back along the opposite bank; an unfortunate construction detour meant we walked most of the way back around a large set of soccer fields and past the construction instead of back along the scenic riverwalk. We then made it to our dinner reservation, which was a sort of trendy American restaurant that served interesting cocktails and burgers, and wouldn’t have felt out of place in Columbus. I had my first scotch of the trip in cocktail form, essentially a scotch and soda with apple, and a pretty solid Mac n cheese. The neighboring table ordered a drink that was poured over a cotton candy base to dissolve, and they had a smoked cocktail that looked incredible but I can’t smell out of my nose so I felt it was a waste to buy a fancier drink if I can’t fully taste 😂 grey had a Scottish beer. When we finished there it was only 6:00, so while I didn’t particularly want another drink, we wound up at another bar for a nightcap. The place wasn’t really our style but we were too tired to find someplace better haha, it was kind of frou frou and looked like a great place for happy hour with the girls haha, and all the cocktails were super sweet and fruity. Grey ordered some scotch and I ordered a fruity cocktail that I did NOT enjoy and still could not taste/ smell so grey also drank that one. We made it back to the apartment at 7, got ready for bed, and chatted until we both crashed at about 8 pm, excited for the trip ahead!

[more-than-a-princess]

So, it's already 2023 but I just wanted to send you something anyway!

Getting to develop and build Ryuji and Sonia's bond has been absolute joy - I just love having someone who is as passionate about it as I am and seeing our threads always brings a smile to my face.

You've really given me an appreciation for Sonia and it's mostly because of you - and a few others - that I do want to play the game in the near future so that I have a chance to know and appreciate Sonia, though in my mind, she probably won't ever measure up to the wonderful and dorky and endearing image of Sonia you've crafted through your portrayal and your writing and our interactions together.

Sometimes, it feels like we've only just recently started interacting, other times it feels like we've been writing together for years. I love that we can share dorky things about them and gush and agonize about them from the sidelines. I think you are an incredibly patient, kind and open-minded person and a really good friend who deserves all the best so I hope 2023 gives you just that - all of the happiness and luck and good vibes that you deserve. I hope we'll get to write lots of Ryuji/Sonia stuff together!

Send me your end of year/beginning of year thoughts or just shitpost with me on dash - Accepting

Jassi, thank you so much! You've stuck around since the very beginning, and I'm so happy you're here and we've continued to build our interactions! Even though I don't know much about P5 beyond the anime and you're not familiar with Sonia's game, it's still cool because we just build our own universe that's probably less depressing than our muses' canon verses. And they deserve to have some joy in their lives honestly.

All I can say about playing Danganronpa is:

Lower your expectations in pretty much every way. You'll have a better time. I write a Danganronpa muse but that doesn't mean it's a great game in every aspect.

A lot of the characters are not very fleshed out, thus many of us canon writers in the DR RPC have to make up a lot of headcanons to make them believable. Or at least give us material to work with beyond silly tropes.

The order goes: DR1 (or if you want a perfect run-through with a heck of a lot less character building, the DR anime), SDR2, DR: Ultra Despair Girls (technically optional), DR3 the anime, DRv3. If you find you love the DR1 and SDR2 stories, watch DR3: it concludes the story that was built over both games + UDG. v3 is completely different. I'm very biased and will say SDR2 is the best of the games.

Honestly, I tend to feel like I'm a terribly impatient and snarky/cynical person at times, so it helps to hear from others that I'm not quite as sharp-tongued as I think I am. I hope this is an excellent year for you as well!

I have hope for Ryuji/Sonia finally confessing feels this year. For mutuals, this is probably the most slow-burn ship on this blog: it's probably close to 3 years by now, if not more?

In any case, have this very incorrect quote but actually probably correct, considering Ryuji and Sonia:

Ryuji: I’ve been dropping them the most insanely obvious hints for like a year now. No response. Sonia: Wow. They sound stupid. Ryuji: But they’re not. They’re really smart actually. Just dense. Sonia: Maybe you need to be more obvious? Like, I don’t know… “Hey! I love you!” Ryuji: I guess you’re right. Hey Sonia-san, I love you. Sonia: See! Just say that! Ryuji: Holy fucking shit. Sonia: If that flies over their head then, sorry Ryuji-san, but they're too dumb for you. Ryuji: SONIA.

[faioula16]

Fate brough us together again Chap 1

It was an ordinary dark night in a forest area of London. The moon is painted in red, brightly lighting the dark night sky. It wasn't a good time for the world, especially for the people of London, to move safely since the ghouls and vampires were circulating out, hungry for human flesh and blood. Deep inside the forest, you were running as fast as you could, being chased by the hungry ghouls who had now surrounded you, smelling the fresh blood that has leaked from the wound you had acquired on the right side of your waist before you managed to escape and run away from your cruel and distrustful father.

 Your eyes widened, 'This is it, is this my end?' You thought as you saw the monsters encircling you, sprawled by their hungry stomachs. Poor girl, you closed your eyes tightly in fear as one of the ghouls opened its mouth wide and was ready to take a bite out of you...Till a gunshot rang in the night sky, hitting the ghoul between his cold lifeless eyes and killing him instantly by turning him to dust. As all the bodies of the other ghouls fall down to the ground, you could hear a sadistic laugh coming from the shadows.

You used your last strength to stand up due to the pain you were feeling from your wound. "Who's there? Show yourself!" You demanded firmly, looking right into the red eyes that were staring at your own. You could swear that the figure's sinister eyes winded for a short moment before they softened, looking at you in a familiar loving manner. As if someone used to look at you like that a long long time ago.

"Beautiful night, don't you think?" A deep soft male voice echoed in your head as the figure finally reveald itself and came from its hiding spot and stood some meters afar right before you. Silently you looked at him in shock and a bit wary. It was a tall, long-limbed, broad-shouldered adult man of indeterminate but reasonably young age, 

The man has short jet black hair and his bangs fall slightly in his red glowing eyes, with strands on the sides of his bangs framing his face. He was dressed in a charcoal suit, leather riding boots, and an intricately knotted red cravat, covered by a full-length, red frock overcoat with a short cape surrounding a bit his broad shoulders. He also wears a red fedora with a wide, floppy brim and a pair of circular, heavily tinted, wire-framed orange sunglasses with goggle sidings. His gloves, which are engraved with a seal are also thought to be part of this mechanism. 

"Never seen a vampire before?" He placed his gun in his coat and slowly walked closer. "Don't be frightened, I am not hungry for innocent people's blood...not for tonight at least" His grin was wide, revealing his pure white teeth along with his fangs.

"You're...the one people call Alucard, aren't you?" You pointed out as you watched the vampire taking down to his one knee to reach your height level as if he was a knight bowing to his beloved princess. Little did you know this was actually the case. That the vampire king has finally found the very dearest person to him his enemies had killed back in his human years.

His head rise up slowly to look at you as your heads were facing each other, well compare to the much taller form he was forced to lower his head a bit in order to have a better look at you. "So you have heard of me I see. Well, would you like to tell me what your name is then?"

"My name Y\N L\N. A lot of people have spoken of you and that you work in an organization that kills vampire and supernatural creatures"

"Huh, and you find it disgusting that I kill my own kind I assume" His eyes glowing no more however his sunglasses were preventing you from being able to see the way he was looking at you right now.

"I have no option about this matter as long as it has nothing to do with me be certain about that. But thanks to you and your partners' help London is not completely lost. I might even admire such a job"

He hummed in response a bit surprised by your answer. Then a girn appeared across his face once again, but this time was a happy one like a child had the most brilliant idea that had ever crossed its mind. "Do you wish to become my partner then?"

"What?" You stared up at him a shock. "No I don't wish to become a vampire like you, two things I will never abandon as long as I am alive are my humanity and the persons I care about. I see you can sense I am injured but also I have to inform you that am not a virgin so even if you would force yourself on me I would only turn into a ghoul....you are not the one to want such useless minions. Am I right?"

His long arm reached out to cup gently your left cheek to his large palm, making you blush lightly to his touch as a result. "I would never do this to you" His voice sounded so ever soft and honest. You could see it hid so much emotion behind his words that even you weren't able to describe it completely. With his free hand he took off his sunglasses and you were finally able to see his eyes clearly for the first time.

"I know you...but how and from where?" You questioned mostly yourself as you were thinking out loud. His touch itself made you feel pure bliss and that nothing could ever harm you. His eyes...such a beautiful ocean of sunset.

"You're hurt, let me help you" Alucard tried to bring you closer to him in an attempt to lift you off the ground but stopped once his ears perked the sound of your groans of pain. "I know you may suffer right now but you must remain strong and come with me otherwise you're going to bleed to death. you don't wish to die tonight, do you?" He sounded very serious but also the tone of his voice hid real concern too. Alucard stood up straight with you in his arms in bridal style. "And the night has just begun, my princess"

[spilledkauffie]

Game Night

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader Word Count: 2.2k T/W: fluff A/N: Part 2 of Bingo — a few months later

I am SO SORRY this took me way longer to post than it should have!

Bucky Tag List: @anreeixcobra ❤︎ @tsnelf7 ❤︎ @fandom-princess-forevermore​

It was Friday night, which meant one thing: Game Night. Ever since Yori introduced you at Bingo, you made it a tradition in your relationship to play board games on Fridays. For the most part you kept it to fairly modern games, but tonight was going to be a surprise.

Tonight it was your place, 8 o’clock. Bucky showed up with a six pack of root-beer in glass bottles. You added a few to the fridge as he found his usual seat at your apartment table. He waited for you to round the small apartment’s bar and join him. Sliding the glass bottles across the table to Bucky, you smiled, biting in your bottom lip, as he slid your bottle back, now without its top.

Easily he popped the top off his own bottle with his left hand; it was as he was about to take a sip that he caught sight of your look, “what?” he furrowed his eyebrows, questionably. 

“So. . . tonight,” you tried not to giggle.

“What?” Bucky asked again, this time finding himself following your smile despite his will not to.

“Tonight is going to be special,” you clasped your hands together, “because I found some stuff that’s as old as you.”

“Wow, thanks,” Bucky said sarcastically, taking a sip, shaking his head, blinking softly as he saw you rush to convince him it would be fun. Sighing deeply, he gave in, “alright, what is it?”

“I’ll be right back,” you twirled on your heel and left the room.

Returning to shaking his head and the glass bottle, he paused after settling the bottle on the table. It’d been a long time since anyone cared about anything actually as old as him. He’d been pretty good at keeping up with the times, a lot of things he knew just got an upgrade, but the thought of something from his actual childhood felt a little heartwarming. 

“Okay,” you declared, reentering the room with a stack of vintage boxes in your arms that made Bucky lean back in his chair out of shock, “here we are.” 

His jaw dropped a little at what you had brought out as you set the stack on the table. Watching you take a deep breath and exhale with a smirk, he shook his head, this time silently asking “how?” You set your hands atop the stack, rapping your fingers across the top box as you smiled again. 

Smoothing your hands out across the box top, you cleared your throat, “no peeking,”  bringing Bucky’s attention entirely to you. 

“Option number one,” you held up the rectangular shape with severely faded letters across it, “Scrabble, released 1938.” The box very gently met the table, “option number two,” you looked at him attempting not to giggle as you saw him cross his arms over his chest, genuinely listening to you intently, “Sorry! released 1934, Battleship, original pen and paper game,” you clarified, he lifted his eyebrows, impressed, “and last but not least, Monopoly, released 1935.”

“Wow, you uh- you really did your research,” he commented, looking over the stack of authentically vintage boxes.

“Of course,” you shrugged with a smile, “my boyfriend’s 106, if I want to bring back some childhood nostalgia, that requires some research. . . and late hour ebay bidding in our case.”  

He nodded, a faint smile showing, before it faded with his next words, “I hope you didn’t do too much research on me,” he looked up, hand resting on Monopoly.

You calmly slid down into the seat across from him and stared with a kind smile still on your lips, reaching to touch his hand, you stroked your thumb against his knuckles, “I’m more of a first hand account, direct source, kind of girl when it comes to people,” the corner of his mouth tugged into a smile. 

You knew, just not everything, and he wasn’t sure he was prepared to have another living soul know it all quite yet. Luckily, you were someone who seemed to actually understand that.

“Or,” you announced, lifting a pointer finger, as if requesting a pause whilst you went to a nearby drawer, returning with a much smaller box, “we can get really really old school, even for you” the box met the table top, “standard 52 card deck, English edition, circa 1516. . .obviously not original.”

Bucky chuckled, looking to you, tonguing his cheek, before picking up the cards, “I hate to tell you, but that’s just a little before my time,” he squinted at you, teasingly.

Biting your lip, your shoulders shifted with the giggle that came after his comment, “so, come on,” you sat back down, this time with your elbows on the table and hands laced, to support your resting chin on top of them, “what should I beat your butt in?”

“Oh,” Bucky, attempting to appear insulted, began raising his eyebrows, “you think?”

“Yeah,” you laughed your words while looking at his serious face, “I think, better yet, I know.”

“Well, I don’t know where you get your confidence from. You know you are talking to a local senior Bingo night champion,” he shrugged with a head tilt, as if that was supposed to be a big deal.

“Woooow,” you drew out, smiling uncontrollably.

“But,” he sighed, “okay,” he shook his head once, accepting your challenge, “let’s go, you’re on! Monopoly,” he brought the box towards himself as you set the others on the floor next to your chair.

You watched as he picked up the little metal pieces, examining each one individually. There was an expression you’d never seen before, he was remembering something positive from his past. A memory that sparked a smile that you helped bring about. He surveyed the board, with all its bright colours and familiar street names.

“It’s been-” he paused, looking upward, doing the math in his head, “it’s been 85 years since I played this game,” setting each piece he stopped at the boat, laughing to himself, “you know, Steve used to always be the battleship.” 

A soft smile came across your lips, while you watched him remember exactly how to set it up. You picked the Scottie dog and he picked the vintage race car piece.

“Were you always the race car?” you ventured, wanting to know more about his childhood, you knew he didn’t talk about it often.

“Oh,” he glanced to the piece he had just naturally picked up without a thought, “yeah, well, I think,” he gave a quick, but somber smile, before clearing his throat, and actually looking up, “and my sister, whenever she’d actually manage to get mom and dad to let her stay up with us, she’d always be the thimble,” he leaned back in his chair, smiling, “whenever it was her turn to move she’d put it on her finger and hop it down the street names.” He leaned back to the table, “we never made her go to jail, even if she landed on it, Steve would make up some rule that let her skip it.” 

“That’s really sweet of you guys,” you said, looking softly at his smile.

“Yeah,” he swallowed, “but don’t think you can skip jail,” he changed his tone, preferring not to dwell on the past even if it was positive. 

“Don’t think I’ll be visiting,” you smirk confidently, “better watch out for the money man yourself.” 

“Wow, who is this?” he dropped his jaw, “she’s so sarcastic, does Yori know this side of you? Do you sneak jellybeans under the table or something evil like that?”

Laughing, you took your root-beer, “just give me my $1,500 so the smack down can actually begin.”

Two hours later, after a long battle between Boardwalk, control over the railroads, and many, many visits to jail, you sat back, lips quirked, arms across your chest as your little Scottie sat in jail.

“And three thousand, six hundred, and five. . . I’m sorry, but that leaves you,” Bucky set his elbows on the table, wincing at you, “bankrupt.”

“Fine,” you huffed jokingly, giving your best pout,“you win.”

“Aww, c’mon,” Bucky reached out a hand to touch your forearm comfortingly, accompanied by a smile you couldn’t deny.

“You wanna go again?” You offered seriously, resting your hand on top of his tenderly, happy to see him so happy.

“It was really fun, but let’s play something else, this time you pick,” he offered.

Breaking into a smile, you gave a nod, and he asked what you had in mind. It took a moment, you wanted to make this good, and you wanted to see it be a little more of a struggle for him, if you were honest. 

“You know, I know it’s later than your. . .original timeline, but there’s this fantastic game called Twister,” you smirked, perking an eyebrow to ask if he was up for it. 

“Twister?” He repeated you, tilting his head like a confused puppy, “what’s Twister?”

“I’ll show you, but,” you glanced over to your small apartment living room, “we might need to arrange the furniture a little.”

“Don’t worry,” Bucky stood, “I can handle that.” 

Smiling, you stand, “okay, just push it all to one side, I’ll get the game.” 

Ten minutes later, shoeless, you both stood looking over the polka dotted sheet on the floor. Nodding happily to yourself, Bucky shook his head almost in fear. 

“Make sense?” You asked, having just explained the very simple rules, you turned to face him.

“Oh, I’m sorry I asked,” he sighed, shouldering off his jacket and tossing it onto the couch along with his glove, “yeah, it makes sense,” he set his hands on his hips, pondering this new game intently. 

“Okay, you first,” you held up the spinning arrow, and began.

One hand and foot at a time, sometimes struggling to reach the spinner, but you both made it work pretty well. Having kept to one side of the sheet, it came time to get a smidge more twisted.

Bucky managed to keep balanced and spin a green dot with his left arm, conveniently it placed him right over you. As he began to reach for green, he carefully calculated how best to approach the green dot in order to keep his balance. It was a pretty far reach and he’d need to balance himself whilst reaching over you. 

“What’s the matter old man, can’t quite move like you used to?” you shamelessly giggled. 

Raising his eyebrows at your tone, “ohhh, wow,” Bucky said sincerely, finally placing his left arm over you and to a green dot, now above you he tilted his head sassily, “respect your elders.”

His last sentence only made your giggle turn into a genuine laugh. You closed your eyes and threw your head back a little. Admittedly, Bucky thought it was funny too, but he didn’t laugh, he just took in your smile and the sound of your laugh, enjoying every single moment of it.

When you brought your head back up, you were about to respond sassily, but instead you found his lips meeting yours. With a small squeak of surprise, you relaxed into the kiss, glad that he was finally confident enough with you to take a chance now and then. He tasted like vanilla root beer, which mixed wonderfully with the scent of his cologne you were finally close enough to smell. 

It was soft and slow at first, but slowly, with his right hand palming the arch of your back, you eased into his touch, lower back almost meeting the floor as you both sunk down a little. You completely forgot about the game, as you reached your arms around his neck gently. Keeping the kiss close, you felt him hesitate to deepen it, so you gave him a small sign of encouragement, by moving your hand to the side of his neck, naturally bringing him even closer. 

You had no idea how long you’d been there, on that polka dot sheet, but it was such bliss that you didn’t even care. Smiling into the kiss, you felt him smile back. 

Parting, he pressed his forehead to yours, “I win,” he whispered, lips in a smile. 

“What?” was all you could ask, still mesmerised by the kiss. 

Bucky motioned his head to his left arm which happened to have been keeping the two of you steady. . . all the while remaining on the green dot. You dropped your arms from around his neck, to the floor, elbows supporting you as you looked up at him, shaking your head. 

“That does not count, Bucky,” you tried not to smile as he kept his arm as still as possible.

“What? But my hand’s still on green,” he dramatically gestured to it, making you bite your lip to repress a giggle, trying to match his seriousness.

Shoving his chest directly above you, he feigned an ‘ow!’ before you softly pull him closer again.

“If I kiss you are you gonna hit me again?”

You smirk, “I might if you don’t.” 

Bucky smiled, lips almost touching yours, “alright, sorry,” he smiled, voice almost a whisper as his lips brushed against yours, “I’m still learning the rules to this game.”

[interact-if]

Day 3 of our Arab Heritage Month Featured Author Interviews, starting with Spectra!

Spectra, author of Sand Through Glass

In another world, in another life, here you are. An adult trying to live their life to the best of their abilities. You are busy preparing for the wanderer’s festival to be held soon in honor of a hundred years old peace. As the Third moon rises in the sky signaling the beginning of the festivities, screams echoed through the city. Blade clashing and blood gushing. Several leaders of the city have been murdered, and you are a prime witness, for you have seen things you should not have. And thus you must save yourself and find out who wants you dead so badly and save your home.

Read more about Sand Through Glass here. Tags: Fantasy.

[INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT!]

Q1. Tell us about yourself and project(s)?

Hello and thank you for having me for this lovely event! I am Spectra (I go by she/they) and while I have dabbled on and off for a long time in writing and drawing.

For a long while it was one of my only escapes from the harshness of life. And through these years, what stuck in this little corner of my mind, never wanting to go away. This fantasy world which is largely inspired by Algeria in the Middle Ages. And for this story, we will be confined to the happenings within the city. Though I may plan other stories within the same universe, I am not sure yet whether they will be a direct sequel, but I keep my options open maybe there will be more to this story after the main character solves the mystery and manages to save their hide, their companions, or the city.

Q2. What excites you most about using interactive fiction? What are some of the biggest challenges?

What excites you the most is the interactivity with the story. How the reader can discover other sides to the world that is being currently explored. You can have dramatically different playthroughs depending on your choices and can discovers some secrets left out for the reader from the writer and I just love this concept a lot. Which can also apply to interactions with the other characters within the story and I personally like how it gives more depth and allows you to learn more about them as a person within the story rather than a character.

Some of the biggest challenges (at least for me) would be two main things. Coding because while I am familiar, I am pretty much a beginner in this and the road to learn coding will be I think a long and hard one. Good thing that in my next semester I’ll learn about python so maybe that will help me a bit. The other big challenge for me would be myself even though that may sound a bit cliché. I am a bit of a perfectionist and that more often than not gets in the way as even if this is supposed to be a first draft, I want it to be perfect, when I know perfectly that it should not be the case and that I should actually take this chance to do my best and learn from my mistakes as I go. It will be a challenging exercise to force to pace myself so, but one I want to overcome. All the different choices! All the different results! As a writer, I love seeing what different readers do. And then all the different ways I can have the story react to them. It’s exciting but also one of the biggest challenges, if not the biggest. Compared to a regular story, it can get overwhelming very fast - especially when you want to accommodate a large amount of play styles. Just having to accept I can’t include everything is a challenge itself.

Q3. Do you use your identity/heritage as inspiration? How is it reflected in your project?

Yes absolutely. Especially since the pandemic started, I sadly had to deal with some loss, not once but twice. I want this story to reflect the good memories, the positive, the hope that tomorrow will be good. It is really rare to see good representation of Algeria and I wanted to change that. Even if it’s a little, I just hope that my story will be compelling and would bring more interest into Algeria and especially how diverse it is! There is a great diversity within the country and with their differences and what they happen to have in common!

Q4. What aspect of your identity would you like to explore further in your project?

Pretty much how diverse it is and the culture! Both of my parent’s background while both Algerian are very different from one another and that’s just an inkling as to how diverse we are!

Q5. What is something about your project that you love or make you excited?

I want to convey through this story my love for my home but also, I want to share this feeling with others, North Africans, West Asian and Arabs. I want to write a story in which we can feel at home and are represented as people and celebrate who we are. If only for a moment I want this story to bring comfort. That’s the challenge I set for myself but also one I am excited to write for.

Q6. What would you like to see more in interactive fiction/the IF community?

I might sound like a broken record, but I personally would like to see more body diversity in the If community. I want to see a diversity of bodies, facial features, skin types, not only for the main characters but also reflected in world around them ( by that I mean the other characters within the story). Sure, its fiction, everyone can look like a supermodel, I just think it’s a bit sad that such characters sometimes feel more out of the story rather than being in it and living it.

Q7. Do you have any advice for your fellow authors?

Keeping an open mind and always do some research. We never stop to learn after all and I think that’s one of the beautiful thing about writing, its bound to broaden your horizon.

[fortheloveofwonderland]

A Memory Locked In The Heart - Spencer Reid x fem! Reader

A/N - Requested by the lovely @overduelibrarybooks I hope this was the kind of thing you were looking for!

Find my masterlist here.

My taglists are open and requests are open.

Requested: Yes l No

Request: "could u ever write a spencer reid x reader where reader def works for the cia but more as a translator who’s kinda forced into doing agenty things in order to gather intel and on a mandated break she finds out the UNSUB before the team does so she uses herself as bait, and shoots the guy all very badass fashion n then gets interrogated bc ms girl just shot him coldblood and halfway thru she recognizes spencer bc her mother and his mom lived in the same care facility??? idk sorry my mom has paranoid too so it just hits different but u don’t have to write this if u don’t want to i love ur writing <3"

CW: disclaimer: I know next to nothing about the CIA and what they investigate so please go easy on me here. This is all made up so hopefully it makes some kind of sense. Mentions of violence and sex work, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, some swears. Mentions of drug use and overdose. Spanish used towards the end is from Google Translate so I apologise if it isn’t completely accurate. Italics indicate flashbacks.

Plot: Eighteen years ago you met a boy named Spencer Reid whilst visiting your mother at Bennington Sanitorium. This time you are meeting under entirely different circumstances; across the table of an interrogation room.

WC: 5.3K

—————————————————————

How did I end up here?

That was a question you kept asking yourself as you rolled into your third hour of sitting in that cold, dimly lit interrogation room at the FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia.

Well you supposed you’d have to go back to the beginning to truly work that out.

The CIA and FBI joint task force for a country wide sex trafficking ring they believed to be operating out of DC.

When your team at the CIA had started investigating it was estimated that the ring had close to a hundred women who had been abducted and forced into the sex industry.

A lot of women were believed to have been taken trying to cross the border. Your job as a translator had involved spending a lot of time in Mexico, helping interview witnesses and family members who didn’t speak English.

The FBI involvement had come when women believed to have been part of the trafficking ring started turning up dead.

At last count they were up to twenty bodies. The Behavioural Analyst Unit had given their profile of the man they believed to be running the show.

White male in his mid to late forties. Bilingual. Possibly born in Mexico or an area surrounding the border but grew up in DC, they assumed based on his knowledge of the area. He’s attractive, charming and has a good level of education, he’d need to be able to charm the women into trusting him. He doesn’t have a full time job because he wouldn’t have time for one. All his time and focus goes on his girls. He was tech savvy, incredibly so, he’d have to be, to be able to set up the network on the dark web which enabled his customers to pay for his services.

It hadn’t been going well. Bodies kept dropping and the task force was no closer to catching the person responsible.

This went on for six months. Everyone was exhausted. You kept hitting brick wall after brick wall. It was demoralising.

Your boss had called for mandated time off. You’d all argued but she had been absolutely adamant. You’d all been working yourselves to the bone and she didn’t want you burnt out entirely.

You’d argued but your words had fallen on deaf ears.

“Can I get you a glass of water or something?”

The voice startled you out of your thoughts. You looked up to see the lanky, messy haired agent who called himself Doctor Reid, sticking his head through the door.

“Is coffee an option?”

He smiled brightly at you, a smile you swear you’ve seen before.

“Coffee is always an option.” He told you. “How do you take it?”

“Strong and black. Please.”

“I’ll be right back.”

With that the door closed leaving you to your thoughts once more.

There was something so familiar about the Doctor. His dark yet sparkling eyes, his awkward smile and the way he dressed. You couldn’t place it. But there was definitely something about him that stirred some memory buried deep in your brain. You just weren’t sure what it was.

He returned a few minutes later, bringing your coffee into the room and placing it on the table in front of you.

“Hopefully you won’t be stuck here too much longer. It’s just standard procedure.” he spoke sweetly, his voice stirring the hidden memory.

“Yeah I know. I get it.” you sighed as you spoke, wrapping your hands around the coffee. “Thank you for this.”

“You’re welcome.” he smiled before he started backing out of the room. You wished you could ask him to stay because you felt so much more at ease with him around. But you knew you couldn’t.

He turned to you in the doorway.

“You look cold in that.” He smiled a little sadly at you.

You’d forgotten about your outfit choice. No self respecting CIA agent dressed like you were right now.

“I guess I am a little.” You shrugged.

Spencer instantly shrugged his blazer off of his shoulders and laid it in front of you on the table.

“Thank you Doctor Reid.” you spoke again before he disappeared out the door.

“Goodbye Agent Y/L/N.”

The door closed, his voice reverberating in your ears, dragging you into a long forgotten memory.

As you slipped his jacket on, your eyes fluttered closed, his scent wafting up your nose.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Spencer. Spencer Reid.”

“Y/N. Y/N Y/L/N.”

Your eyes shot back open, a frown on your face.

“Spencer?” you muttered under your breath. “Spencer Reid.”

Where had you pulled that name from? And why did it feel oddly connected to Vegas?

You tried to push the thought away, you already had enough on your mind. There were much more pressing things to deal with than a vague memory from your hometown an undetermined amount of time ago.

***

You’d been instructed to switch off. Your time off should be used to recoup, relax and not to think about the case.

Easier said than done you thought.

Before you’d left the office on your mandated leave you’d taken photocopies of some files and slipped them into your bag. You knew you’d be in trouble if you were caught but you couldn’t help yourself. You wouldn’t be able to relax with this case still open.

As far as you were aware the BAU was still working on it but it provided you little comfort. In your time with the CIA you’d never gotten to be involved so heavily in a case. Your skills were mostly utilised in interview capacities and then you were sidelined.

You’d never had the privilege to work on a joint task force or investigate a crime so brutal.

You felt personally invested in this case. You thought if you could just find that one missing puzzle piece you could crack this case wide open.

And then you’d found it. The golden ticket. The smoking gun. The missing piece.

It had taken five days of your leave and copious amounts of coffee but you’d connected the dots no one else had.

You knew how to draw the unsub out. And you were going to do it tonight.

***

“Let’s start again from the beginning shall we?” Agent Rossi linked his fingers together on top of the table as he looked across at you, still slowly sipping your coffee.

“Oh goody.” You sighed. “Could Agent Jareau not fill you in what I’ve already told her?”

“Humour me.” The old man shrugged.

You didn’t have any ill will against him. Far from it. You were actually a big fan of David Rossi. But you were sick and tired of being treated like a criminal.

“Tell me how you managed to work out how to find him.”

You took another long sip of the coffee.

“All the pieces were there, they just hadn’t been put into place.”

“And how did you piece them together?”

“There was a pattern to where the women had been last seen. It was a guess more than anything. A lucky guess.”

“And the pattern was?”

You sighed in frustration.

“As I told agent Jareau,” you sipped your coffee. “The bars they were last seen in all had ties to Mexico. I’m not a native to DC but I know the area like the back of my hand. They were all either Mexican owned, had a Mexican name or were previously establishments such as Mexican restaurants. I made an educated guess that he frequented places such as these looking for his targets. I just got lucky I picked the right one.”

***

You felt incredibly exposed, but you supposed that was the point.

If you were going to get this guy's attention, you had to do this right.

It was a long shot. Just because Western’s bar was known for its famous tacos did not mean it would be the place he chose to pick up girls.

You just had to hope.

You wore a skimpy skirt that barely covered your ass, knee high boots and a crop top that accentuated your assets.

Your firearm was hidden in your left boot.

Your outfit garnered a lot of looks as you headed through Westerns towards the bar.

You felt men’s eyes on you from every angle, making you feel extremely self conscious. But you needed to keep your cool, exude confidence.

If your guy was here he needed to see you shine.

You ordered a soda to keep your head clear and sat at a table over the far side of the bar. From there you had a good view of the entrance and most of the room. And more importantly, the room had a view of you.

Three hours you sat there nursing your soda. It was a huge stab in the dark, you weren’t really surprised.

You finished your drink and headed out onto the cool DC street.

You made it five steps before you felt a presence behind you.

Just as you were about to turn, something covered your mouth.

You struggled against a pair of strong arms.

A smell wafted up your nose seconds before you lost consciousness.

Chloroform.

***

“Why didn’t you tell your unit chief before you went in?”

“Because I thought it was a long shot.” And because she would have been furious I was working the case.

“So you chose to use yourself as bait?”

“Yes.” You shrugged nonchalantly.

“Do you know how dangerous that could have been?” Rossi raised an eyebrow at you.

You had to refrain from rolling your eyes.

“Yes agent Rossi, I’m well aware. But I had a lead and I wasn’t going to ignore it.” You pulled Doctor Reid’s jacket tighter around your scantily clad body.

You caught his scent again. Coffee. Old books. A hint of peppermint.

Another long shut off memory wormed it’s way to the surface.

“So are you here visiting someone?”

“Yeah.” You smiled sadly. “My mom.”

“Oh.” He returned your sad smile. “Me too.”

“Agent Y/L/N?”

You were brought back by Rossi’s concerned voice.

“Hmm?”

“I said, what happened next? You were chloroformed and then what?”

You shook your head, your mind clouded.

“Can we take a break? I could really use some air.”

Rossi sighed with a small nod.

He stood from his chair and motioned you to follow him.

You got some odd looks from his fellow agents as he led you to the elevators. They all recognised what you were wearing as Spencer’s jacket.

You followed Rossi into the elevator and he pressed the button for the ground floor.

“Agent Rossi, can I ask you a strange question?” You asked as the doors closed.

He gave you a curious look.

“I suppose.”

“Doctor Reid. As in Spencer Reid?”

“The one and only.” Rossi frowned unsure what you were getting at.

“Where is he from?”

Rossi’s frown deepened, not sure he should tell you such things about his team. But you were an agent and you didn’t pose a threat to the team.

“Vegas I believe.”

Vegas. Of course.

“Ok.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I don’t know.” You chewed your lip. “I think I might have known him.”

“Oh?”

You wished you hadn’t opened your mouth. This was not the time or place.

“I’m probably wrong. Just forget I said anything.”

The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. As you stepped out you pulled Spencer’s collar to your nose and sniffed it.

No you weren’t wrong.

***

Las Vegas, Nevada - 1999

“Hi again.” You smiled at the lanky man, Spencer you’d met a few days ago. “How’s your mom?”

“Still angry at me.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and stubbed the toe of his shoe on the floor.

“She came in recently?”

“Yeah a few months ago. I turned eighteen and I was able to have her put into care.” He blanched, clearly feeling guilty for his decision.

“Do you want to grab a coffee?”

“Uhm sure.” He shrugged.

He followed you through to the day room. It was late and there were only a few patients inside and a few nurses milling around.

You got two cups of coffee from the machine and the two of you sat at a table together.

“Do you mind me asking what’s wrong with your mom?” You dared as you slid him the drink.

He sighed heavily, gnawing on his bottom lip as though his life depended on it.

“She’s a paranoid schizophrenic.” He spoke clinically, words he’d had to say too many times in his life. It was as though he’d distanced himself from it. Like he was giving a patient a diagnosis rather than talking about his own mother.

“Mine too.” You gave him a wry smile. You had something in common, just not something you would like to have in common.

“How long has your mom been here?”

“Three years. She got really bad and my dad couldn’t take care of her anymore. She’s been doing much better since she moved in here.”

“That’s good.” Spencer nodded. “I hope my mom realises I did this for her. For her well being. At the moment she’s just so...angry.”

You reached across the table and placed your hand on top of his. He seemed a little startled by the physical touch but you didn’t move your hand.

“This is the best place for her. I assume from what you said earlier your dad isn’t in the picture?”

He used his free hand to sip his coffee with a sad shake of his head.

“He left when I was ten. He couldn’t handle mom's illness.”

You gave his hand a small squeeze.

“I can’t imagine what it was like for you to have to look after her by yourself. It was hard enough with my dad there. Really makes you grow up fast.”

“It really does.” He agreed. “I’m not sure I ever got to be a kid.”

“I know that feeling.”

After that you spent hours chatting about anything and everything until way into the night. It wasn’t until a nurse came and asked you politely to leave that you realised how late it was.

“I’ll probably see you around?” You spoke as you stepped outside together.

“Maybe. In a few weeks I’m heading out of state. I’m working on a PhD.” He didn’t want to tell you it was actually his second PhD.

“Oh. Ok.” You tried to hide the disappointment from your voice.

Despite the circumstances you’d enjoyed talking to someone like minded, someone who understood. You didn’t have anyone else your own age you could talk to about this kind of thing.

“Maybe we could exchange numbers?” You blushed a little.

“I don’t have a cellphone.” He shrugged.

“Oh.”

“It’s not an excuse.” He sensed you didn’t believe him. “I’m not so into technology. I don’t even have email.”

Normally you would have thought it was just a bad excuse to get out of seeing you again but the look on Spencer’s face told you he was being genuine.

“Ok.” You gave him a shy smile. “Well maybe I’ll see you again before you leave.”

“I hope so.” His eyes sparkled as he looked at you on the dark street.

There was an air between you, some kind of thick tension but you didn’t know what it meant.

“If I don’t see you again,” you spoke trying to ignore whatever it was. “It was really good to meet you and I hope your mom gets used to the facility.”

“You too.” He smiled so genuinely at you, it made your heart skip a beat.

And then you went your separate ways.

***

“Ok, so what happened next?” Rossi wasted no time once you were back in the interrogation room.

“Well I blacked out after I was chloroformed so excuse me if I don’t remember.” You gave him a sarcastic smile.

“What’s the next thing you do remember?” He reworded his question.

“I woke up in a large basement. It was gritty and dingy. And there were other women there too.”

“How many?”

“At least twenty.” You sighed letting your mind travel back to the basement you never wanted to go back to. Not even in your mind.

***

You woke with a start, your head pounding. You gasped for air as though you’d been drowning.

You blinked your eyes trying to adjust to the dark room you found yourself in.

It was cold and damp and you could hear a pipe dripping in the distance.

You tried to roll over but your arm wouldn’t budge. You were met by a loud clanking sound when you tried.

You tugged your arm, hearing the same sound and being met with a sharp pain in your wrist.

“Good luck.” A woman’s voice scoffed. “They don’t come loose.”

You blinked a few more times, looking over to your left arm. There was a heavy metal cuff right around your wrist that was attached to a metal bed frame.

That’s when you realised you were laying on a small cot on top of a ratty, itchy blanket. You were still dressed, thank god.

You suddenly remembered your firearm concealed in your boot. You patted your left calf and sure enough you felt the hard weapon still inside.

That was something at least.

Oversight on their part.

You remembered the voice you’d heard before and turned as much as you could with your arm cuffed to take in the rest of the room.

There were at least forty other cots close together lining the walls, with at least half of them containing the body of other women.

The voice you’d heard belonged to a woman in the cot next to you. She gave you a smile but it didn’t reach her eyes.

Her eyes were broken.

“Hi,” you croaked. “I’m Y/N.”

“Delilah.” Her accent was Spanish. You were sure Delilah wasn’t her real name either.

“How long have you been here?”

She sighed, playing with a strand of curly black hair.

“What month is it?”

“September.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “Not that long then. I’ve been here since July.” She looked confused as though that couldn’t be long enough.

“Delilah?” You narrowed your eyes on her. “What year do you think it is?”

“2018…” she saw your face drop and knew instantly it was no longer 2018.

“Oh gosh.” You felt for her, tears welling in your eyes. “It’s 2020.”

“Oh.” Her face fell. “Wow.”

“It’s ok.” You lowered your voice. “I’m CIA. I’m going to get us out of here. I promise I’ll keep you safe.”

***

“Delilah.” Rossi opened the file in front of him. “Was that Roberta Suez?”

He pulled out a photograph and slid it across the table. You averted your gaze.

“Yes and please I don’t need to see it, I was there.”

“How did she end up in hospital fighting for her life?”

“You know how.” You huffed. “Look I’m starting to get fed up with this now.” You folded your arms. “Carlos Ramirez was a sick son of a bitch. If I hadn’t done what I did he would have killed all those women. I don’t regret what I did.”

“How did she end up in hospital?” He repeated.

“Good lord.” You grumbled. “I’ll talk but I don’t want to talk to you.”

Rossi narrowed his eyes on you.

“No? But I’m so compassionate.” He spoke sarcastically.

“I won’t say another word unless it’s to Reid.” You looked up to the two way mirror. You didn’t know why but you had a feeling he was there.

Sure enough it was barely twenty seconds before the door opened and Doctor Reid himself stepped in the room.

“I got this Rossi.” Spencer told the older man who stood up with a shrug.

Rossi left the room while Spencer took the seat he’d been occupying.

Did he remember you? It had been close to twenty years since you’d last seen each other. Had it not been for the olfactory memory that struck you when you put on his jacket you might never have remembered him.

But you knew the rest of his team was behind the two way glass, or at least some of them were so it didn’t seem an appropriate time to ask such things.

“So agent Y/L/N,” he smiled softly at you. “Can you please tell me how Delilah ended up in hospital?”

“You already know the answer to that Doctor but since you asked so nicely,” you leant your elbows on the table, entwined your fingers and rested your chin the little bridge you’d created. “She had a drug overdose. But you and I both know it wasn’t her who administered the drugs.”

“And who did?”

“I did.”

Your words hung in the air between you and Spencer. He knew the answer, the whole team did. You’d already told Agent Jareau everything.

This was a huge waste of time.

“I administered the drugs because he told me if I didn’t he would kill me. I needed to stay alive so I could save those women.”

“Who said he would kill you?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“It wasn’t Ramirez?”

“No.” You shook your head. “If it was Ramirez I would have shot him. But it must have been one of his right hand men.”

“How would you know that? You’d never met Ramirez correct?” Spencer had a soft tone to his voice which made his line of questioning easier than Agent Jareau’s.

“I’m not a profiler but I’ve been to enough seminars over the years. He didn’t fit the bill. He was young, scatty, he didn’t strike as much fear into the other women as I thought the boss would. I made an educated guess and I was right. If I’d shot at him I would have blown my chance at getting Ramirez.”

***

“Shit shit shit!” You pulled yourself as close to Delilah’s cot as possible with your restraint. “Delilah, keep breathing, try to breath. Fuck I am sorry.”

Tears rolled down your cheeks, the empty needle you’d been made to inject in her vein between your cots on the floor.

He’d held a gun to your head and said he would shoot you if you didn’t do it. You didn’t think he was bluffing.

“It happens a lot.” A woman opposite spoke up. “You’ll soon find out. If she wakes up she’ll have the pleasure of returning the favour.” She gave you an almost manic grin.

If she wakes up. It was the if you were having the issue with.

“Who’s in charge around here?”

She shrugged.

“Don’t know his name. Big guy. Tattoos. Mustache. You can’t miss him.”

“Does he come down here often?”

Again she shrugged.

“Being down here you have a way of losing track of time.” She clicked her tongue. “But he’ll be here for you later. He has to test his new girls.”

Your blood ran cold.

“Test?” You swallowed, pretty sure you knew what she meant.

“He can’t very well expect you to make him money if he doesn’t know how good you are.”

Oh god.

Your heartbeat raced. No, it was not going to come to that. You were a CIA agent and you were armed.

It was not going to come to that.

***

Spencer’s face paled a little at your words. You hadn’t told Agent Jareau that part.

“He was going to...he didn’t…”

“No.” You cut him off, pushing the memory back down. “I had a gun, remember.”

You offered him a wry smile.

“So you know what comes next.”

“I’d like you to tell me.”

The way he said it was more like he was a therapist than an FBI agent. As though he wanted you to tell him so you could get it off your chest, unburden yourself, rather than for interrogation purposes.

“Ok.” You nodded. “He came for me later that night. And that’s when it happened.”

***

“Ahh look at you.”

A deep, Spanish voice woke you.

Your eyes fluttered open and landed on a strong, tattooed man with a mustache standing over your cot.

This must be him.

“Tan hermosa.”

So beautiful.

You tried not to shudder.

You sat up wiggling your legs in your boots to make sure you could still feel your firearm. You could.

“Su nombre es Rosa.”

Your name is Rosa.

Guess again.

“Su nombre es Y/N.”

“Tú hablas español?”

You speak Spanish?

“Si.”

“Eres perfecta.” He grinned menacingly. “My clients will love you.”

He reached in his pocket and fished out a key chain. He reached over you and unlocked your cuff.

You rolled your wrist to try and get your blood circulating again.

“On your feet.”

You complied and stood up. Your legs were shaky.

He grasped your wrist, hard enough so you couldn’t wriggle free but not hard enough to leave a mark. He started dragging you across the room.

With his free hand he undid the four locks on the large steel door and pulled your through it. Once on the other side he took care to lock them all again, keeping a firm grasp on you the whole time.

You were dragged down a long, narrow corridor towards another steel door, this one with just one lock on.

He slid the key in and opened it, pulled you inside and locked it behind him.

The room was much smaller than the one you’d been held in and only housed a single cot.

He licked his lip as he looked at you. His large, thick fingers stroked your cheek and you had to try and hide your disgust.

“En la cama. Ahora.”

On the bed. Now.

You had to pick the opportune moment. You had to plan this just right. You had no doubt he had a gun on him so if you faltered even slightly, he would kill you.

“Qué tal esto.”

How about this.

You made a show of licking your lips and then dropping to your knees in front of him.

“Whoa, feisty. I like it.” He grinned, his meaty hands going to his belt buckle.

Yes. Right where you wanted him.

While he was fumbling with his belt, you reached your hand back into your left boot, drawing your gun in one swift move.

You head butted him in the crotch, sending him stumbling backwards, crying out in pain.

“Mierda!” Shit. “Usted puta!”

You whore!

You were on your feet in a second, your gun trained on him.

“You will never hurt another woman again.” You spat, furious tears suddenly streaming from your eyes.

He looked up at you, his mouth opened to speak.

But the words didn’t come out as your bullet hit him between the eyes.

“Who’s the puta now?”

***

“I would say,” Spencer chewed his lip. “You did what you had to do to survive.”

You breathed a sigh of relief.

Thank god.

“Thank you.” You smiled softly. “And I did. If I hadn’t shot him, who knows how many other women would have died.”

Spencer pushed his chair back and stood up.

“Just so you know, we got word from the hospital a little while ago. Roberta Suez, Delilah, is going to be just fine.”

“Oh thank god.” You felt tears brimming your eyes.

He opened the door and turned back to you.

“Are you coming?”

“I can leave?”

“You were never under arrest.” He smirked at you.

You couldn’t help but laugh.

You got up from the chair and Spencer motioned you out of the room.

“I’ll walk you out.” He showed you across the bullpen towards the elevators. There was an awkward air between the two of you.

Did you say anything? It didn’t seem as though he remembered you, was it worth reminding him?

He motioned you into the elevator first and he followed, pressing the button.

The elevator started its descent.

Time was running out.

“So uhm…” Spencer turned to you and turned too. “How’s your mom?”

A smile broke out on your features.

“I didn’t think you remembered me.”

“Are you kidding?” He laughed. “I recognised you the second you walked in.”

“It’s been twenty years.” You laughed.

“Eighteen years, seven months.” He corrected you. “But I could never forget your face.”

You blushed a little, averting your gaze.

“My moms doing ok. Thanks for asking. How’s your mom?” You looked back at him.

“Recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.” He told you sadly.

“Oh gosh I’m so sorry.”

“It’s ok. These things happen.” He shrugged. “Made it to thirty without having a schizophrenic break but now I have to wait until I’m older to find out if I’ll develop Alzheimer’s.”

The doors to the elevator opened and you stepped out, Spencer close behind.

“I really am sorry Spencer.”

“It’s ok.” He shrugged. “Is your mom still at Bennington? I used to see her when I went to visit my mom but I moved her out a little while ago.”

“Yeah she’s still there. She likes being close to my dad.”

You both hovered by the exit, not ready to say goodbye.

“Can I take you for coffee? If you don’t have anywhere else to be.” Spencer blushed as he spoke.

“I’d like that. A lot actually. But I’d really like to shower and change out of this getup.” You laughed. “How about dinner?”

“Dinner sounds perfect.” He grinned at you.

You gave him a smile and turned to leave but before you made it to the door Spencer spoke again.

“Y/N,” he called your name, his voice cracking a little. “You uh...you forgot something.”

You turned to face him curiously.

He walked closer to you and without a second thought, placed his hands on your face and kissed you.

For a second you stood frozen, in shock of what was going on.

But after a few moments you wrapped your arms around his neck and opened your mouth to deepen the kiss.

When the kiss ended you were both smiling at one another.

“What was that for?” You asked softly.

“Oh you know…” he shrugged with a coy smile. “Just something that needed to be done.”

“I’ll meet you back here in a few hours.” You told him, touching his chest briefly.

“Ok.”

“Bye Spencer Reid.”

“Bye Y/N Y/L/N.” He croaked.

And with that you sauntered out the doors but not out of his life.

***

Las Vegas, Nevada - 1999

“Spencer?” You’d only made it a few paces away from Bennington before you stopped in your tracks, calling his name. “You uh...you forgot something.”

He turned to face you curiously.

You walked closer to him and without a second thought, placed your hands on his face and kissed him.

He stood frozen, in shock of what was going on.

It was just a brief kiss, Spencer was too confused to do anything but stand there dumbly.

“Wh-what was that for?” He swallowed.

“Just something that needed to be done.” You smiled. “Bye Spencer Reid.”

“Bye Y/N Y/L/N.”

And with that you sauntered back down the street, hoping that one day, the universe would lead you back into each other’s lives.

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