#I'm just fascinated at the difference in numbers from a year ago like it's so fucking wild and strange to us

[icewindandboringhorror]

I occasionally wish to reach out to old friends/acquaintances I haven't spoken to since high school/some other even earlier time in my life, but I have SOOO little social energy even for required tasks (like making dr phone calls or etc), I never have any leftover for extra ones, and it would be very odd to message someone I haven't spoken to in like 5 years out of the blue but then take 4 entire months to respond back lol.. My natural curiosity with nostalgia/collecting details of the past/etc. (literally if I were born a little earlier I would definitely do scrapbooking or something lol) is very strong, but, alas, not strong enough to beat out the Social Issues Demons apparently

[nexus-nebulae]

wow i WILDLY miscalculated the difference between kilograms and pounds

[nyoomerr]

Maybe some Omega Bingge for the drabble requests if you'd like? The ficlet you did of him making the nest lives rent free in my head

i'm glad you enjoyed it! i'd honestly love to do a longer omega!bingge thing some time, i love him so much... for now, here's something that's.. kind of the opposite of the one i wrote last time.

cw for omegaverse and Gender Stuff and mentions of female genitalia on a male character!

---

Proud Immortal Demon Way had many flaws, but top of the list had been that it had been an omegaverse - one of the few tropes in literature literally made for bad porn. It was a sellout’s last resort, and a reader’s most shameful pleasure, and -

“If you hate it so much, why are you still reading it?” Shen Yuan’s sister had asked him years ago, back when Shen Yuan had still bothered to complain to her about it.

Frustratingly, Shen Yuan hadn’t had much to say in response. He had reasons, but they were - not shameful, exactly, but the thought of speaking them aloud made Shen Yuan’s gut roil.

Luo Binghe was the picture perfect image of a stallion protagonist. Women fell to his feet with hardly a breath of effort, and his stamina in bed was unheard of, and he was naturally the best looking character Shen Yuan had ever laid eyes on. 

He was also, shockingly, an omega. 

An omega, someone born with instincts that would thematically tend towards feminine behavior, someone born with the bits meant for being bred, someone - someone altogether unfit to be a stallion protagonist, really. It was a massive subversion of the genres. 

Of course, Airplane never wrote it in such an interesting way. There were some interesting character arcs back in the disciple era chapters, but once Luo Binghe fell to the Abyss, they all fell apart. 

The very mention of secondary genders all but vanished. Sex scenes were as rampant as they were vague, enforcing the idea that Luo Binghe was a perfect stallion protagonist - always on top! - without giving any details about how the hell that worked. 

Useless! A waste of a perfectly fascinating subversion of genre and gender alike! Why bother even establishing an omegaverse world if you weren’t going to use the protagonist’s secondary gender at all?!

…Or so Shen Yuan had thought, until Luo Binghe himself had fallen straight into his bedroom out of a crack in reality. Because in person, Luo Binghe as an omega is - 

Shen Yuan swallows thickly, staring up at Luo Binghe with wide eyes. Luo Binghe meets his gaze evenly, his eyes half shut with a lazy sort of pride. His body is pressed close to Shen Yuan’s but not touching, and the mere inch between the lines of their bodies somehow feels more intimate than if Luo Binghe had outright plastered himself against Shen Yuan.

Shen Yuan can’t back up; his back is already against a wall. He can’t escape from the sides, either, because Luo Binghe’s arms are bracketing Shen Yuan in an honest-to-fuck kabedon, and - 

“Yuan-er,” Luo Binghe croons, jolting Shen Yuan’s attention back to him. “This Lord found your… notes.”

Shen Yuan’s mouth goes dry. “Ah… my… college notes?” He tries.

“Your notes about me,” Luo Binghe purrs. 

“O-oh,” Shen Yuan says, helplessly. He wrote… a truly horrifying number of things about Luo Binghe, before he ever thought he might meet him.

“It seems,” Luo Binghe says, leaning in so that Shen Yuan can feel his breath against his lips, “like Yuan-er has some questions.”

“Um,” Shen Yuan says, very intelligently. “Questions, uh, yeah, sure, right, like - uh, like I was wondering how you escaped the Crystal Bloodmoon Cave in chapter 347, because it just faded to black and -”

“Yuan-er doesn’t want to know how I might use an omega’s clit to fuck someone else?” Luo Binghe asks, voice low and dangerous. 

Shen Yuan’s mouth falls slack. What - what do you even say in response to that, ah!! Shen Yuan doesn’t swing that way!!

…Or, if Luo Binghe is an omega, that’s - it’s a bit different from just being a man, right? So maybe -

“I’d show you,” Luo Binghe whispers into the shell of Shen Yuan’s ear. “Anything Yuan-er wants to know about me, I’ll show you.”

Luo Binghe pulls back slightly, just enough to meet Shen Yuan’s eyes again. His expression is dark and intense and hungry.

“I’ll show you,” he says again, licking his lips, “so don’t you dare look away from me.”

Shen Yuan shudders, an electric shock running up his spine. Luo Binghe shifts, one of his arms moving away from the wall to curl around Shen Yuan’s shoulders, the claws of  his hand scratching lightly against the nape of Shen Yuan’s neck.

The touch is enough to shock some sense back into Shen Yuan.

“I’m not - I don’t have a scent gland, there!” Shen Yuan yelps, jolting away.

He doesn’t get very far. Luo Binghe’s feather-light touch turns sharp, a forceful grip on the back of Shen Yuan’s neck that keeps him in place. Luo Binghe’s other hand comes up to take Shen Yuan’s chin between his fingers, tilting it up to force eye contact.

“You don’t,” Luo Binghe agrees, his eyes glinting red. “But as Yuan-er has… so thoroughly written about, I’m an omega. I shouldn’t be scruffing anyone to begin with, regardless of what sort of scent gland they have. What difference does it make, if there’s no scent gland at all?”

Shen Yuan’s pulse is loud in his ears. He knows Luo Binghe must feel it under his hands, jumping like a startled rabbit.

“I - um, I don’t mean to imply you shouldn’t do what you want!” Shen Yuan cries. “I mean, uh - My Lord! My Lord, I - of course this lowly one wouldn’t know anything about what my Lord should be doing, so -”

“Shh,” Luo Binghe coos. “Yuan-er is right. I shouldn’t be doing this, and yet I am anyway. I always am.”

“Right,” Shen Yuan says nervously. He can feel the way his shirt is sticking to his back, wet with sweat. 

“But Yuan-er has questions,” Luo Binghe continues, his grip loosening on Shen Yuan’s neck but curling so that his claws are once more pressed into the skin there. “And I have answers. Isn’t it good of me to offer to show you?”

“Right,” Shen Yuan says again, barely thinking. Then Luo Binghe’s mouth splits into a feral grin, and his words process with Shen Yuan, and - “Wait, wait -!”

“No take backs,” Luo Binghe says, vicious and pleased, and proceeds to show Shen Yuan quite thoroughly what it means to be a stallion protagonist omega.

---

Later, staring up at his ceiling and feeling unfairly winded, Shen Yuan figures he doesn’t really have much left to lose.

“Do you want to be an alpha?” He asks the ceiling. “Er - did you? This whole time?”

Luo Binghe’s attention on Shen Yuan is as heavy and intense as if it were a physical touch; Shen Yuan knows without looking that Luo Binghe has not taken his eyes off Shen Yuan once since - 

Ahem. Since… finishing. What they had been doing.

Now, Luo Binghe reaches out to twirl a finger in Shen Yuan’s hair, round and round and round the short locks, tugging at it hard enough it’s nearly painful. 

“Being an omega was a very dangerous thing, in all three realms,” Luo Binghe hums. “It wouldn’t have been an advantage to me to act like one.”

Shen Yuan sits upright, quite suddenly feeling a bit panicked. “I - you didn’t have to - if you didn’t want to, just now -!”

Luo Binghe grabs more of Shen Yuan’s hair and pulls, tugging Shen Yuan back down into a prone position. 

“So earnest, little Yuan-er,” Luo Binghe croons, and Shen Yuan feels his face go blotchy and red. “You have no need to worry; if it’s Yuan-er, I’ll do whatever you’d like.”

“But if you want something different -”

“Then I’ll demand it,” Luo Binghe says quite simply. “I’ll do whatever you’d like, and you’ll do whatever I’d like; that’s what I deserve.”

Shen Yuan splutters a bit but ultimately fails to protest this in any meaningful way. Luo Binghe plays with Shen Yuan’s hair for another long moment.

Finally, he says: “If it’s you, I wouldn’t mind trying it the way it’s supposed to be, I think.”

Shen Yuan turns to bury his face in his pillow. What a terrible thing to say to him! What is he supposed to say in response! It’s too much, too much - Shen Yuan really can’t possibly be expected to know what the right reply is!!

“...Don’t force yourself,” he mumbles into the pillow. “It’s - like I said, I don’t have scent glands, or a secondary gender at all. There is no ‘way it’s supposed to be,’ if it’s with me.”

Luo Binghe hums. He leans onto Shen Yuan, digging his chin into Shen Yuan’s shoulder painfully. Shen Yuan doesn’t bother to push him off. 

“Good,” Luo Binghe says. “Then: whatever I want, and whatever Yuan-er wants, and nothing more.”

[bonny-kookoo]

Finish Line request!

I find the first meetings fascinating, so I'm sorry if I always ask for them... But if possible, first time nerdyJK and MC met, please!

"I think this one looks angry." You speak up, making Jungkook snap his head up towards you.

He's- a little taken aback. You.. do not look like the type of girl to really go to a motor show on your own accord. And, considering how utterly pretty you are, you're probably here with your boyfriend- who must be a total idiot to leave you alone like that, if one was to ask Jungkook.

"Don't you think?" You look at him now, curious smile on your shimmering lips. "It's frowning." You giggle, and he can't find words for a second, before he moves a little to stand next to you, looking at the front of the currently displayed race car.

It's a Ford Fusion- one of the cars with some of the most wins in Nascar history up until now. And now that he looks at it..

"It uh.. it does." He mumbles, making you laugh. At him? Or with him?

"See! Told you." You beam, swaying back and forth on your high heeled shoes. Your skirt is short, nails a pale pink. There's a hello kitty charm on your bracelet. Your entire outfit seems to be matched by the theme of that little cat, in fact.

"I guess.." He says, scolding himself. This is why he's fucking single. He just can't talk to girls at all, not at his school, not now. He's about to graduate for fucks sake, and he's still a virgin.

"Do you know a lot about cars?" You wonder, and he shrugs.

"A little." He admits. He actually knows a lot. But he doesn't want to seem nerdy.

"Heh, I don't buy that." You grin at him with a suspicious gaze. "I don't know shit about them. I'm scared to drive, actually." You admit.

"H-how so?" He asks. Keep the conversation going Jungkook, you're doing great!

"My dad and I went camping like, five years ago I think?" You say, tilting your head a bit in thought, before you lift your skirt a little- not enough to show off anything scandalous, but enough to show a clear scar, faded, but very visible on your thigh. "He crashed that car 'cause he was drunk. One of the metal pipes went right-" You turn your body and leg- another scar on the other side of your thigh, "-through my leg." You explain.

"Oh.." Jungkook doesn't know what else to say.

"I'm terrified of it now. My friends and I went here by train because I still can't stand driving in a car." You laugh.

"M-maybe.. you could start with slow steps?" He wonders. "Like- just sit in one for a bit. No driving, just.. I don't know, read a book. To.. make yourself feel comfortable little by little." He explains, muscles trembling a little as he forces his voice to stay strong.

"Huh. That.. sounds actually really smart." You pout to yourself. "I think I'll do that." You chirp, and he smiles in return, making you open your mouth to say something, when a friend calls your name, catching up to you, and taking your attention away as you wave at him as you walk away.

And Jungkook brushes it off in disappointment, unaware that just a year later he'd meet you again, at a coffee shop he'd visit with his friends.

"Oh." His eyes widen as he recognizes your pretty face, hair a bit different now, but still fitting you well.

You seem to think for a second, and then you smile that million-dollar-smile at him again, ceramic braces almost invisible to him if he wasn't so focused on details all the time.

"Oh, it's you!" You beam at him happily.

"It's me." He chuckles, friends behind him both confused and a little impressed that he seems to know you. "I uh.."

"Do you wanna go on a date?" You ask him boldly, and his eyes are as wide as they go. "I mean- this is the second time I meet you. Gotta be a sign from upstairs- or downstairs, I don't really care." You joke, leaning forwards a bit.

"I mean- yeah? Yeah! Yeah let's uh.. I don't know?" He stutters a bit helplessly.

"Cool!" You giggle. "That's.." You mumble, writing something down on his receipt. "..my number. Just text me whatever- just no dick pics please, those are kinda cringe." You say, making him frown a bit to himself before he laughs.

"Don't worry, I won't." He promises, before he pays for his drinks, and leaves with his friends-

His first date with you not even a week later, marking the beginning of a love that will last forever.

[apeekintothepantry]

Meet Violet Fielding, my original historical character from 1918 Boston!

I've been doing some workshopping with my custom historical characters because I've been a little bored with AG's historical offerings of late, and because it's a fun excuse to dig into moments in time that interest me personally, but AG probably wouldn't produce a similar character themselves. (I say that, but my 1940's Hawaii character predates Nanea, so who knows! Maybe I'm manifesting some future stuff I can borrow for my gals.)

Violet is the youngest of three siblings. Her older sister Alice is in her early 20's and either a nurse or a Hello Girl, leaning towards nursing because I'm not sure I want her to go overseas and she could work at a hospital in Boston during the war. Her older brother James is 19 and enlists in the Marines once the US enters World War I. I think by Violet Saves the Day, he's returned home dealing with quite a bit of "shellshock" and that becomes a somewhat major theme.

Her parents are pretty wealthy, and the family lives in a brownstone on Beacon Hill in Boston. Her dad is a doctor and mom is a suffragist who also gets involved in causes supporting the war effort. Both parents are very supportive of their kids following their passions and getting themselves out there in this still relatively new century, which is why Alice has been allowed to go to school instead of immediately marrying some wealthy guy.

Vi herself is a precocious and creative kid. I think she likes to draw and paint and generally be crafty and creative, which comes in handy when brainstorming ways she can support her brother overseas and the war effort more broadly. While she's not afraid to get her hands dirty, she does like typically girly things like having teatime and looking at catalogs filled with new dresses. Her book series would theoretically cover 1917 through 1919 or so, and touch on the war, Women's Suffrage, the Spanish Flu, shellshock, and possibly the Boston Molasses Disaster.

Currently I'm trying to come up with a best friend character for her, as she really needs a Nellie or Ruthie in her life with the age difference and both siblings being off doing exciting and scary things without her. There are a lot of different directions I could go in with said friend - fellow wealthy-ish kid feels boring, Boston had a lot of new immigrant communities in the 1910's, some of whom did live in a specific part of Beacon Hill, Boston historically struggles with insidious covert racism but was still a city with a number of prominent Black and Jewish communities - and nothing's quite clicked as perfect just yet.

Violet is a Marie-Grace doll with a Nanea wig. Someone was selling her on a Facebook group a few years ago and I immediately felt like she was a Violet and needed to join my crew. Her last name was inspired by Lady Dorothie Fielding, a British woman who drove an ambulance during WWI and received several awards for bravery and service. Fielding's letters home were published after her death and are a really fascinating look at what it was like on the front lines doing this incredibly dangerous and important work. I used it as a major primary source for an educational interactive I helped develop in one of my previous jobs.

[canon-in-too-deep]

Free Phantom of the Opera Typeset

Free typeset #34: The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux! Sized for half letter (letter folio), this was a pdf I'd been meaning to finish up for a while now. I definitely leaned more into the horror elements of the novel (it's fascinating to compare to all the different interpretations and adaptations that have spawned from it), and was somewhat inspired by the mask Charles Dance wore when he played the Phantom.

You can find the free pdf of this story here on my slowly growing library of public domain works. About half a year ago I struggled to finish up twelve typesets, and I'm so excited to have managed to almost triple that number. Hopefully the inspiration keeps coming!

Anyway, feel free to tag me if you use any of these typesets, and please consider liking/reblogging if you can! And don't be afraid to let me know if there's any errors! Curse doth typos. How they plague me so.

More interior pages of the book shown below the break!

(I went with Georgia this time for the body font. Not more normal go to, but Georgia has that darker, more condensed look, which I thought complimented the horror aspects of the story, as well as the gothic ornaments I picked out to decorate the typeset. Also, Georgia is one of the easier fonts to read at smaller sizes. Not that I went below 10pt font, but, just a nice characteristic of it. Georgia. It's a bruiser of a font. Like a featherweight boxer with a heck of a punch.)

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

I want harry back and selfishly need him to be wrong but let's ignore that. If he doesn't release hs4 until 2026 I'll be genuinely surprised by that. Harry is at his peak now he shoul be striking while irons hot. I'm not saying he can't get even bigger but why hold off for now. He talked about wanting to be the kind of artist that can go away for a while but I thought he meant like when he's 40 and he dissapears for a decade, not now. For the past two years we got multiple sightings with his producers so I just assumed he was recording and would be releasing soon. I wonder if Liam changed all that.

I am also genuinely surprised and I think that surprise is a useful place to start. It makes perfect sense to be surprised, because whatever Harry might have said - he has shown very little interest in going away - ever.

It is now 17 months since Harry last performed. It was 16 months between 1D's last performance and the first promo performance of HS1. It 16 months between the last date of Love on Tour and the first promo performance from Fine Line. It was 18 months between Harry's last promo performance of 2020 and the first show of love on tour. Whatever happens this will be the biggest break in Harry's live performances since he was 16 - and will be longer than the time he stopped for the global pandemic. The fact that he might wait another year, or even another 10 months before performing live is surpising, because it is unprecedented.

I think we have every reason to believe that Harry was very driven to perform before. I am personally obsessed about the time where he talked about how importance performing was to him with his therapist from stage, but there are obviously other signs.

To me, the break is a sign that something has changed something quite fundamentally for Harry. I don't think he can be driven to perform in the same way he was.

But that shift was not necessarily the cause of the gap in touring - it's what made it possible. But a necessary precondition is not the same thing as a cause.

It is possible that this is all about touring - he toured for two years straight under very intense circumstances (first with the pandemic, and then with the very strange media hype). It may be that he recognised that it wasn't good for him, he wanted to do something else.

But there are so many other possibilities about what could be going on. It could be the music - he might want to make a different album from the one he wanted to make a while ago. It might be about his personal life - all sorts of things might be going on that he wants to spend time on away from the spotlight - his wellbeing, the wellbeing of people he loves, relationships more generally. He might have another project he wants to work on.

I think you're absolutely right that Liam's death might have had an impact - in all sorts of ways. As well as any changes that Harry might want to make in his own life, next time Harry releases something he will have to be able to perform grief in a really narrow way. Quite frankly it would be enough to stop me ever releasing music again (but obviously I am not Harry Styles).

For me the most compelling question is part of what's up in the air is how he's going to present himself. I was quite sceptical that he could release another album where the main thing he has to say is that this was the freest he's ever been and he had been holding himself back, but he didn't this time - and have someone else give an anecdote about his life and not answer questions about his sexuality.

But I think there's real risk in doing anything else - I think it's reasonably clear that large numbers of people who spend money for tickets like who Harry is - they want to have someone to project fantasies onto. Saying something about who you are is a very big deal if you're Harry Styles. It wouldn't surprise me if they took some time to get it right.

Anyway I find all the options fascinating. I find it fascinating that something has changed around his drive to perform. And there are so many possibilities for why that change has lead to a long break. The options for what comes next are wide open.

[why485]

I went down another dubbing rabbit hole. I am utterly fascinated by Glitter Force right now. Glitter Force is a hacked up Americanized and censored localization of Smile Precure. Before I continue though, I need to preface with: I have not watched Glitter Force or Smile Precure. I am not an expert! This is all coming from what I've read while researching the topic and hearsay!

Just like Robotech for Macross fans, the majority of Precure fans seem to hate Glitter Force. In fact, many cheered when it was announced that it was to be removed from Netflix, sentencing it to "abandonware" oblivion. However, just like Robotech, there are a decent number of fans who were introduced to Precure (or anime in general!) through it. Similar to Robotech, it's also arguably an interesting historical artifact and so on some level worth preserving.

So despite all that, there is a bit of nostalgia for it even if the Precure fandom generally regarded it as terrible, creating legal issues, and totally botching the franchise's introduction to the west.

What's most strange to me about this whole story though is that an anime getting this kind of treatment would be normal 20+ years ago (i.e. the 4kids era), but this is so recent. This was only 2015, but they went the whole 9 yards with "4kids names", changing many scenes around through edits, cutting many episodes (48 -> 40 episodes), and a totally new soundtrack. I know less about the Doki Doki sequel, but apparently that one got even worse treatment (49 -> 30 episodes!) from Saban, who were obligated to make the series due to a deal with Toei.

Glitter Force wasn't the first Precure dub though. Ocean dubbed the original series, Futari wa Precure, for Canadian YTV. I actually have seen a couple episodes of that one, and it's honestly pretty good? I mean, it's still very localized with the changing of names (Nagisa -> Natalie) and food (e.g. Mepple wanting "chicken noodle soup"), plus other random lines occasionally get a different meaning but it's nothing like, too crazy, and as far as I know nothing is censored/cut.

I really like Nagisa's VA in the dub. She does such a good job, and the way she bickers with Mepple is fantastic. From what I've heard (shout out to Plum🌸Rose!) the OG Precure dub is considered a bit cheesy, but it's really not that bad, especially considering what came later.

From what I can tell, Toei and friends have no interest in further dubbing Precure. It's a pretty niche series in terms of the west, and I'm sure they're doing just fine with their many other massive properties to not feel like they need to make any more inroads.

If this post somehow finds its way to people who have watched Glitter Force or the OG dub, I'm curious to hear your thoughts!

[sixty-silver-wishes]

Okay I Could do work but instead I'm going to write about the time shostakovich had the worst time in america

(So, despite the clickbaity title, this will be more of a serious post. I wrote about the topic a few years ago on Reddit , and I'll be citing a lot of the same sources as I cited there, because there are some good ones, along with some new information I've gathered over the years. This was going to be a video essay on my youtube channel, but I sort of kept putting it off.)

The Scientific and Cultural Congress for World Peace, held in New York in 1949, is a particularly fascinating event to study when it comes to researching Shostakovich because of just how divisive it was. True, the event itself, which only lasted a few days, doesn’t get as much spotlight as the Lady Macbeth scandal or the posthumous “Shostakovich Wars,” but you’ll find that when reading about the Peace Conference, as I’ll be referring to it here for the sake of brevity, many of the primary accounts of it never quite tell the full story. The Peace Conference was held during a volatile time, both in Soviet and American politics, as Cold War tensions were on the rise and an ideological debate between capitalism and communism gradually extended to become the focus of seemingly every factor of life- not just politics and economics, but also the sciences, culture, and the arts.

While artists on both sides were frequently cast in different roles in order to create or destroy the image of Soviet or American cultural and ideological superiority, the image either government sought to cast was sometimes contradictory with the sentiments of the artists themselves. For instance, while the CIA-founded Congress of Cultural Freedom (CCF) sent African American jazz musician Louis Armstrong on various tours around the world to promote jazz as American culture and dispel perceptions of racism in America, Armstrong canceled a trip to the Soviet Union in order to protest the use of armed guards against the integration of Black students at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. Meanwhile, the Soviet government’s use of international diplomatic missions by artists as cultural warfare also reflected a desire to portray themselves as the dominant culture, despite the tensions and complications that existed for artists at home. When the Soviet Union sent Dmitri Shostakovich to New York in March 1949 for the Peace Conference, such cultural contradictions are why the conference occurred the way it did, and why Shostakovich’s image has received so much controversy, both in Russia and in the west.

If you’re familiar with Soviet history, you may be familiar with the term Zhdanovshchina, which refers to a period of time between 1946 and 1948 in which Andrei Zhdanov, the Central Committee Secretary of the Soviet Union, headed a number of denunciations against prominent figures in the arts and sciences. Among musicians, Shostakovich was one of the most heavily attacked, likely due to his cultural standing, with many of his pieces censored and referred to as “formalist,” along with his expulsion from his teaching positions at the Moscow and Leningrad conservatories. During this time, Shostakovich often resorted to writing film and ideological music in order to make an income.

Meanwhile, in the United States, as fears of nuclear war began accumulating, peace movements between the two superpowers were regarded more and more as pro-Communist, an opinion backed by the House Committee of Un-American Activities (HUAC). The Waldorf-Astoria Peace Conference, to be held from March 25-27th 1949, was organized by the National Council of Arts, Sciences, and Professions, a progressive American organization, and was to feature speeches held by representatives of both American and Soviet science and culture. Harlow Shapely, one of the conference’s organizers, stated that he intended for the conference to be “non-partisan” and focused on American and Soviet cooperation.

On the 16th of February, 1949, Shostakovich was chosen to be one of the six Soviet delegates to speak at the conference. This was largely due to his fame in the west, where both his Seventh and Eighth Symphonies met a mostly positive reception. Shostakovich initially did not want to go to the conference, stating in a letter to the Agitprop leader Leonid Ilichev that he was suffering from poor health at the time and wasn’t feeling up to international travel and performances. He also said that if he were to go, he wanted his wife Nina to be able to accompany him, but he ended up being sent to New York without any members of his family- perhaps to quell concerns of defection (recall the amount of artists who defected around the time of the 1917 revolution, including notable names such as Rachmaninov and Heifetz).

Stalin famously called Shostakovich on the phone that same day to address the conference, and again, Shostakovich told him he couldn’t go, as he was feeling unwell. Sofia Khentova’s biography even states that Shostakovich actually did undergo medical examinations and was found to be sick at the time, but Stalin's personal secretary refused to relay this information. Shostakovich's close friend Yuri Levitin recalls that when Stalin called Shostakovich on the phone to ask him to go to the conference (despite the fact he had been chosen to go in advance), Shostakovich offered two reasons as to why he couldn't go- in addition to his health, Levitin claims that Shostakovich also cited the fact that his works were currently banned in the Soviet Union due to the Zhdanov decree, and that he could not represent the USSR to the west if his works were banned. While accounts of the phone call vary, the ban on Shostakovich's works was indeed lifted by the time he went to New York for the conference.

When Shostakovich arrived in New York, general anti-Communist sentiment from both Americans and Soviet expatriates, as well as media excitement, resulted in a series of protests in front of the Waldorf Astoria hotel where the conference was to be held, with some of the protesters directly referencing Shostakovich himself, as he was the most well-known Soviet delegate on the trip. In 1942, Shostakovich's 7th ("Leningrad") Symphony was performed in the United States under Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra to high acclaim, helping to promote the idea of allyship with the Soviet Union in the US during the war, and Americans were aware of the Zhdanov denunciations in 1948, as well as the previous denunciations that Shostakovich had suffered in 1936 as a result of the scandal surrounding his opera "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District." So by 1949, many people in American artistic circles had a sympathetic, if not completely understanding, view of Shostakovich during the birth of the Cold War. They viewed him as a victim of Communism and the Soviet state, who was forced to appease it in order to stay in favor, and as a result, could potentially voice his dissent with the system once in the west. Pickets visible in footage from the protests outside the Waldorf Astoria carried slogans such as "Shostakovich, jump thru [sic] the window," a likely reference to Oksana Kosyankina, a Soviet schoolteacher who had reportedly jumped out of a window in protest (although the details of this story would be found to be highly dubious). Meanwhile, another sign read "Shostakovich, we understand!," a statement that would prove to be deeply ironic. At the conference itself, Shostakovich did not jump through the window, nor did he attempt any form of dissent. Instead, an interpreter read through a prepared speech as he sat on stage in front of a crowd of about 800. The speech praised Soviet music, denounced American "warmongering," and claimed that Shostakovich had accepted the criticism of 1948, saying it "brought his music forward." Many in the audience could see that Shostakovich was visibly nervous- he was "painfully ill at ease," and Nicholas Nabokov (brother of the writer Vladimir Nabokov) remarked that he looked like a "trapped man." Arthur Miller recalled he appeared "so scared." As they noticed how nervous he looked, some of those in attendance sought to make a demonstration of him in order to illustrate Soviet oppression in contrast to the freedoms supposedly enjoyed by American artists, asking him intentionally provocative questions that they knew he would not be able to answer truthfully. From Nicholas Nabokov:

After his speech I felt I had to ask him publicly a few questions. I had to do it, not in order to embarrass a wretched human being who had just given me the most flagrant example of what it is to be a composer in the Soviet Union, but because of the several thousand people that sat in the hall, because of those that perhaps still could not or did not wish to understand the sinister game that was being played before their eyes. I asked him simple factual questions concerning modern music, questions that should be of interest to all musicians. I asked him whether he, personally, the composer Shostakovich, not the delegate of Stalin’s Government, subscribed to the wholesale condemnation of Western music as it had been expounded daily by the Soviet Press and as it appeared in the official pronouncements of the Soviet Government. I asked him whether he, personally, agreed with the condemnation of the music of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Hindemith. To these questions he acquiesced: ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I completely subscribe to the views as expressed by … etc….’ When he finished answering my questions the dupes in the audience gave him a new and prolonged ovation.

During the discussion panel on March 26th, music critic Olin Downes delivered yet another provocative statement towards Shostakovich:

I found both of your works [the 7th and 8th Symphonies] too long, and I strongly suspected in them the presence of a subversive influence—that of the music of Gustav Mahler.

For Shostakovich, and anyone knowledgeable of Soviet politics and music at the time, it's not hard to see why Downes had explicitly mentioned Mahler. Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was a highly influential composer when it came to 20th century western music, particularly with regards to the avant-garde movement pioneered by the Second Viennese School- Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg. Shostakovich was also heavily influenced by Mahler, but such influences were frowned upon in the mid-30s to 50s Soviet Union. Mahler's style was decidedly more "western," and it's potentially for this reason that Shostakovich's 4th Symphony- perhaps his most "Mahlerian," was withdrawn from performance before its premiere in 1936, having followed the "Lady Macbeth" denunciations. To tie Shostakovich to Mahler would be to point out his direct western influences, while he was being made to issue statements that rejected them. During his speech, Shostakovich made statements criticizing Stravinsky and Prokofiev- two composers who had emigrated and adopted western-inspired neoclassical styles (although Prokofiev returned to the Soviet Union in 1936). Stravinsky had taken insult to Shostakovich's comments against him, and carried an animosity towards Shostakovich that appeared once again in their meeting in 1962, according to the composer Karen Khachaturian.

On the last day of the conference, March 27th, Shostakovich performed the second movement of his Fifth Symphony on piano at Madison Square Garden to an audience of about 18,000, and had received a massive ovation, as well as a declaration of friendship signed by American composers such as Bernstein, Copland, Koussevitzky, and Ormandy. He returned to the Soviet Union on April 3.

In addition to the 1948 denunciations, in which Shostakovich was pressured to make public statements against his own works, the likely humiliation he endured at the 1949 conference played a role in cementing his dual "public" and "private" personas. For the rest of his life, Shostakovich displayed mannerisms and characteristics at official events that were reportedly much different from those he displayed among friends and family. For the public, and for researchers after his death, it became difficult to determine which statements from him reflected his genuine sentiments, and which ones were made to appease a wider political or social system.

Both the Soviet Union and the west had treated Shostakovich as a means of legitimizing their respective ideologies against one another, a trend that continued long after his death in 1975 and the fall of the USSR in 1991. The publication of his purported memoirs, "Testimony," allegedly transcribed by Solomon Volkov, fueled this debate among academics and artists, becoming known as the "Shostakovich wars." The feud over the legitimacy of "Testimony," however, stood for something much larger than the credibility of an alleged historical document- as historians and musicologists debated whether or not it was comprised of Shostakovich's own words and sentiments towards the Soviet Union, its political systems, and its artistic spheres, they were largely seeking to prove the credibility of their stances for or against Soviet or western superiority. "Testimony" helped evolve the popular western view of Shostakovich as well, from a talented but helpless puppet at the hands of the regime, to a secret dissident bravely rebelling against the system from inside.

Modern Shostakovich scholars, however, will argue that neither of these views are quite true- as more correspondence and documents come to light, and more research is conducted, a more complete view of Shostakovich has been coming into focus over the past decade or so. Today, many academics tend to view Shostakovich and the debate over his ideology with far more nuance- not as a cowardly government mouthpiece or as an embittered undercover rebel, but as a multifaceted person who made difficult decisions, shaped by the varying time periods he lived in, whose actions were often determined by the shifting cultural atmospheres of those time periods, along with his own relationships with others and the evolution of his art. We can be certain Shostakovich did not approve of Stalin's restrictions on the arts- his posthumous work "Antiformalist Rayok," among other pieces of evidence from people he knew, makes that very clear- but many nuances of his beliefs are still very much debated. There has also been a shift away from judging Shostakovich's music based on its merit as evidence in the ideological dispute, and rather for its quality as artwork (something I'm sure he would appreciate!). As expansive as Shostakovich research has become, one thing has become abundantly clear- none of us can hope to truthfully make the statement, "Shostakovich, we understand."

Sources for further reading:

Articles:

Shostakovich and the Peace Conference (umich.edu)

Louis Armstrong Plays Historic Cold War Concerts in East Berlin & Budapest (1965) | Open Culture

Biographical and Primary Sources:

Laurel Fay, "Shostakovich, a Life"

Pauline Fairclough, "Critical Lives: Dmitry Shostakovich"

Elizabeth Wilson, "Shostakovich, a Life Remembered"

Mikhail Ardov, "Memories of Shostakovich"

HUAC Report on Peace Conference

Video Sources and Historic Footage:

Arthur Miller on the Conference

"New York Greets Mr. Bevin and Peace Conference Delegates"

"Shostakovich at the Waldorf"

"1949 Anti Communism Protest"

"Battle of the Pickets"

[burningdarkfire]

nearly just hit the unfollow button instead of the ask button . N, R, & U?

awww thank you for the ask (and not unfollowing!) 💕

N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice)

N really is my lucky letter because i've gotten it three times thus far so your theme is going to be really specific wants i have about my little guy caleb widogast:

moooore blumendrei; the wizards definitely do have a small and loyal fanbase that i am very happy to be a part of, and also this fanbase is always welcoming new blood 🤗 i think caleb as a character is haunted so much by his past, it's odd to me that so many of his fans don't contend much with it directly

caleb actually being a middle-aged man and everything that entails; i don't think the fandom is really that bad about randomly twink-ifying him or anything, but i do feel like we could often be a little more specific in describing his body, and also i feel like hardly anybody ever deals with what it must feel like to finally have a life again for the first time since you were 17 and now you're like 34. i mean happens to all of us but i do want to read more of it

shadowgast breakup taken seriously; this is very specific because i was spinning ideas for it today but i really do want to read a fic where caleb and essek break up on purpose and it is not actually a grand misunderstanding where if only they had clarified that they still love each other it would all be fixed!

R - Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

my hobby is staying up late blurring the already non-existent line between platonic/romantic/sexual relationships so i don't have a real answer for this! and tbh the more i think about it, the more i realize that there are very few "strictly platonic" relationships in critrole that compel me - it's often the mess that makes them attractive

outside critrole my default answer would probably be campal from the locked tomb series, but i would go on record saying that they're the ideal platonic relationship and i think they become very slightly more interesting if we assume there was a sexual component involved

U - Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites

well we all know who number one is going to be

caleb widogast; you were not born with venom in your veins, you learned it!! you learned it!!!!! it's actually almost ridiculous to look back in time at the person i was four years ago before i knew that this fictional character was going to save me. i was a shitty teenager and i hurt a lot of people and i'm going to carry that with me forever! but also maybe there is still a life for me even after all of that! and also he has beautiful hair and unmatched hubris

iron man; i've been casually dipping back into the mcu so thinking about him again and unsurprisingly i'm also here for the unrelenting guilt and incalculable hubris (with bonus daddy issues!) but part of what i like about tony stark so much is that he takes all of his personal problems and makes it the whole world's problems. the whole universe's problems. and i just think that's fascinating

cersei lannister; every single hotd thought i've had this year has inched me ever so slightly closer to reading got again, because sometimes i'm reading fic about women in horrible situationships and thinking about how i could just be reading about cersei instead. like unfortunately tywin lannister's trueborn son and heir was born a girl and she proceeded to make that everybody else's problem as well, and in this way, we are sisters

(send me an alphabet fandom ask!)

[fatecantstopme]

I Can't Lose You

PART ONE

Pairing: Aaron Hotchner x reader

Summary: The BAU team is hunting a sadistic murderer and you go undercover to reveal his identity and catch him in the act. Things don’t go according to plan and so much is revealed about you, your team, and your boss…things that will change all of your lives forever.

Warnings: Mentions of murder and prostitution. Cursing. Kidnapping. Use of pet names.

A/N: The reader in this story is named Isabelle Heywood. I needed to name her for ease of writing purposes. You'll see what I mean and I'm sorry if this bothers anyone. This will be a series because the story completely got away from me...but I'm obsessed with it. Please read the warnings for each part individually!

Part Two

You woke to the sound of incessant wringing. You rolled over and stared at the glowing numbers on your alarm clock; it was only 3am. You sighed in annoyance and picked up your still ringing phone. You squinted at the bright screen and saw the name “Aaron Hotchner” across the screen. You knew why he calling you, but you wished it was for a different reason. 

You sighed again as you answered the phone, “Hey boss. You do know what time it is, don’t you?” 

The voice on the other end of the phone made your heart flutter. “I know it’s really early, but we’ve got a case. It’s urgent.”

“Define urgent.” 

“We don’t have time to brief at the BAU. The case came directly to me from Strauss. Wheels up in 30 minutes.”

You swore under your breath. “On my way, sir.” 

You hung up the phone and dragged yourself out of bed. You had about 15 minutes to get yourself together before you had to leave. You headed into the bathroom and looked at yourself in the mirror. You looked completely exhausted. You regretted letting Morgan and Garcia goad you into going out last night. 

“So much for having Sundays off,” you muttered to yourself. Your only consolation was that Morgan and Garcia would be equally tired. 

You pulled your hair into a bun and jumped in the shower. You were used to getting ready in a hurry and 10 minutes later, you were ready to go. You’d learned not to bother with a lot of makeup when you first joined the BAU 5 years ago. It was rare that you were given much time to get ready in the morning, so you cut out the nonessentials. 

You took one last look in the mirror, running your fingers through your hair to smooth it down. “Good enough,” you sighed. 

You grabbed your go-bag and headed down to your car in the apartment building’s underground garage. The drive to Quantico was quick and 10 minutes later, you were pulling into your usual parking spot. 

You got out of your car just as Morgan pulled up. He got out of the car and turned towards you. “You look like shit,” you said lightly.

“I feel like it too,” he grumbled. “Why’d you let me drink so much?”

You laughed. “No one ‘lets’ Derek Morgan do anything.”

He chuckled. “You have a point.”

The two of you walked into the building together and met up with the rest of the team waiting in the lobby. You smiled at everyone in acknowledgement. 

“You two look awful,” Emily Prentiss said with a knowing smile. 

“You’d look just as bad if you’d have come with us last night,” you said playfully.

“I had a hot date with Sergio,” Emily joked.

You rolled your eyes and turned to Reid. “What’s your excuse, Spence? Too cool to hang out with us?”

“I was at a live reading of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’. It was actually quite fascinating, they—”

You held up your hand to silence him. “I’m sorry I asked.” 

The group laughed. David Rossi looked at you and Morgan and shook his head. “I’m too old for those late night shenanigans.” 

“Nonsense,” Morgan started. “You’re only what? 85?”

Everyone laughed, including Rossi. “Just wait, Morgan…revenge is a dish best served cold.” 

“He’s Italian,” you joked. “Better watch out.”

“Hey guys!” JJ said brightly as she walked up to the group. 

Garcia trailed behind her looking much worse than you and Morgan. She had sunglasses on and she shushed everyone when they said ‘Good morning.’ “Too loud. Too bright,” she mumbled. 

“Yikes. I think she had too much wine,” Morgan said. 

You nodded your agreement and looked around. “Where’s Hotch?”

Rossi shrugged. “I think he’s still dealing with Strauss. You know how she can be.” 

You scoffed. “Do I ever.”

Just then, Hotch came striding up to them from inside the building. Even with the dark circles under his eyes, he was still incredibly handsome. You felt your heart begin to race and your stomach filled with butterflies. You got that feeling every time you saw him, even after all these years. 

You would never tell him how you felt…you couldn’t. Hotch was a strict, by-the-book kind of guy and he was your boss. You knew nothing would ever come of you telling him, so there was no point. Plus, you could even lose your job. No one else knew how you felt…even though you were dying to talk about it. You’d loved him for the last 3 years of your life. No one else could ever compare. 

“Alright guys, we’re a go,” Hotch said as he joined the group. “Garcia, you can get started on the files I left in your office.” 

Garcia nodded. “Yes, sir.” She headed into the building while the rest of you headed towards the tarmac.

Hotch was walking behind everyone else, so you slowed down to match his pace. “Hey,” you said softly. “Did you sleep here?”

He looked at you and sighed. “Yeah, I had a lot of paperwork to do.”

“Hotch. The paperwork can wait. What about Jack?”

“Jack’s with his aunt this weekend.”

“Still…please tell me you didn’t spend your entire day off in the office.” 

“I didn’t,” he insisted. “I went out for lunch.” You glared at him and he sighed. “It really was important.”

“Nothing’s more important than family, Hotch. And that means you need to actually get away from this place occasionally.”

“I know.”

You shook your head and walked up the stairs and onto the jet. You chose the seat beside Morgan, Emily and Reid sat across from you. Hotch took a seat toward the back of the plane by Rossi and JJ.

Hotch waited until after takeoff to begin the briefing. Once the plane was comfortably in the air, he moved closer and perched on the arm of an empty seat. 

“This case is highly sensitive,” he began, “and it’s likely that the locals don’t really want us there.”

“What happened?” Emily asked. 

Hotch passed out files and continued talking. “Three months ago, a prostitute was brutally murdered, her body dumped in an alley.” 

You opened your file and began looking at the pictures within it. “She was completely nude, stabbed multiple times, and thrown away like garbage,” you said.

“The unsub likely views her as garbage,” Morgan added. 

“There’s been an identical murder every week since,” Hotch said.

“Every week?” you exclaimed.

“Why weren’t we called in sooner?” Rossi asked.

“Why wasn’t this in the news?” asked Reid. 

“The locals have been keeping the murders under wraps,” Hotch answered. “They’ve had a suspect since the third killing, but they don’t have enough to arrest him.”

“Who’s their suspect?” JJ asked.

“Senator Mark Jacobs,” Hotch responded. 

“The Senator Jacobs?” you asked.

“None other,” Hotch said.

“I’m assuming that’s why we’ve been called in,” Rossi commented.

“Yes…we’re expected to rule out the Senator’s involvement unless there’s irrefutable proof he is responsible.”

“That’s not how this works,” Morgan said angrily. 

“I agree,” Hotch’s frown deepened. “Which is why we’re going to work this like any other case. We’re the fresh eyes, so let’s see what we can find.” 

Everyone settled in and started reading through the files. Hotch went back to his seat in the back of the plane. He was facing your direction and you could feel his gaze on you. You pretended to be focused on reading, but it was impossible to concentrate under the circumstances. 

After a few seemingly unbearable moments, you felt his gaze leave you and you instantly relaxed. You glanced up at him and found that he was writing intently, his focus entirely on the paper in front of him. 

You got up and went to sit across from him. He looked up at you and covered his notes in a not-so-subtle manner. You raised your eyebrows, but didn’t say anything. 

You sat down and asked, “So if the locals don’t want us there, why are we going?”

“Politics,” Hotch answered simply. “As much as I hate it, we don’t have a choice in the matter anymore than the locals do. We’ll have to make it very clear that it’s their case and we’re only there to help…we want to catch this guy regardless of who he is.”

You smiled at the passion in his voice. “You don’t have to convince me, Hotch.”

He gave you a small smile. “Sorry, I get carried away sometimes.”

“You’re a passionate person, there’s nothing wrong with that.” 

He blushed and looked down. You loved it when he did that. His usual stoic expression quickly returned and he looked up at you. “What do you think about this case, Heywood?”

“Honestly, sir, I’m trying not to form an opinion before I get all of the facts.” If he was going to be professional, then damnit so would you.

He nodded. “Smart. As always.”

You blushed at the compliment and looked down at the file in your lap. “I need to go through this,” you said before making your way back to your seat. 

Morgan looked up at you and smiled. He patted the seat beside him and you plopped down in it. You opened the casefile and began to acquaint yourself with the facts of the case. You tried to push all thoughts of Hotch from your mind, but you found it exceedingly difficult. 

You could feel his eyes on you periodically and it was just enough to keep you off your game. You thought it was strange behavior for him and you were unsure of why he kept looking at you. Normally, Hotch was completely focused on the case, but something was clearly on his mind. 

You started to wonder if you’d done something wrong, but you figured he would have just told you. Maybe it had nothing to do with you at all and you were just making things up because you wanted it to mean something. 

Then the worst thought occurred to you…what if he knows? Your mind started racing and you began to analyze every interaction you’d ever had with the man. You couldn’t think of any time that you had tipped your hand. The team was family and as such you cared deeply for each other. As far as you knew, you’d never done anything that a family member wouldn’t do. 

You sighed inwardly and tried desperately to clear your mind. You needed to focus on the case. You finally managed to relax and absorb what you were reading. 

An hour later, your thoughts were interrupted by Hotch’s voice announcing that the plane would be landing soon. “Now that you’ve all had a chance to go over the details of the case, I want to hear your thoughts.”

“This unsub is definitely angry at someone. There’s a lot of overkill,” you began.

“The victims are all high-risk, which makes them easy targets,” Reid added. “But other than their occupation, the victims don’t seem to share any other similarities.” 

“There’s no DNA evidence, despite the fact that all of the women had sex shortly before they died,” Emily said. “The unsub is careful; cleans up after himself.”

“He views these women like garbage,” Morgan said, echoing his earlier statement. “He might think he’s cleaning up the streets.”

“Isn’t Senator Jacobs all about crime control?” Rossi asked.

Reid nodded. “His campaign was run on a tough-on-crime platform. He focused primarily on drug-related offenses, gangs, and prostitution.” 

“I think that warrants looking into the Senator,” you said to Hotch.

He nodded his agreement. “Reid, JJ, and Morgan, I want you to go to the most recent crime scene. Rossi and Prentiss, I want you to canvass the streets. See if any of the other girls in the area have seen anything. Heywood and I will get set up at the station.” 

You felt elated at the prospect of working with just Hotch. You looked up at him to find him gazing at you with such intensity that you were certain he could see straight into your soul. He seemed to realize you caught him staring and he frowned before looking away. You felt your heart sink a little, but you push down any feelings of sadness and put your focus back where it belonged. 

When the plane landed, the team separated, heading to their respective destinations. On the drive to the station, Hotch was completely silent, which was normal for him, but something about this silent felt strained. 

“What’s up with you?” you finally asked. 

“What?” he looked at you in confusion. “I’m fine.”

“You’re acting strangely, so I wanna know where your head is at.” You could practically see the wheels in his head turning as he tried to make up an excuse. “Don’t bother trying to lie, I know you too well.” 

He let out a long sigh. “Today is Haley’s birthday,” he said slowly.

Your eyes widened. “Oh Hotch. I’m so sorry, today must be tough.” 

He shook his head. “That’s just it. It’s not tough. I don’t feel sad. I mean, I do miss her, but it’s not like it used to be. Today is just a day to remember her, not mourn her. I—I just don’t know how to feel about that.”

You looked at him with a reassuring smile. “It’s okay to not feel sad. It means you’ve finally healed. Haley will always be a part of you, but it doesn’t have to hurt.” 

He looked at you with that intense expression again and you felt your pulse quicken. When the light turned green, the moment passed, and he looked away. You were both silent for the rest of the drive to the station. When he parked the car, he didn’t get out right away.

“Hotch?” you prompted gently. 

“I need to tell you something,” he began. “It’s important.” 

“Okay…”

He shook his head. “Not now. Tonight. When we get to the hotel.” 

You stared at him and your mind raced. You had no idea what he wanted to tell you, but now you needed for it to be evening. You desperately wanted to know what he had to tell you. You did your best not to panic as you got out of the car and followed him into the station.

A detective met you inside. Introductions were made and you were shown to the conference room where you could set up. You and Hotch worked in silence as you set up the boards and got everything organized. Your nerves were starting to get to you, so you took a few deep breaths to try and relax. 

“Are you alright?” Hotch asked, looking at you with concern.

“Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” you lied. 

He raised his eyebrows and looked at you skeptically. “You just took several deep breaths. That’s not exactly ‘normal’ behavior for you.” 

“Profilers,” you mumbled under your breath. “You can’t just drop a bomb on me and expect me to function properly,” you said louder.

“Drop a bomb on you?”

“The whole ‘I have something important to tell you, but not now’ bit you pulled in the car.”

He looked down. “So I shouldn’t have said anything?”

You sighed. “That’s not what I’m saying. I want you to be able to tell me anything. I just can’t help but wonder what’s so important and why it has to wait.”

He looked at you almost affectionately, his expression catching you off guard. He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped when the lead detective walked into the room. You saw Hotch’s mask slide firmly back into place and it was clear that he was once again in work-mode. 

The detective glanced between the two of you as if he could sense that something was up. After a glare from you, he cleared his throat and said, “My guys would like to brief you on the case as soon as possible.”

“Is there more that we need to know that wasn’t in the files?” Hotch asked.

“Not necessarily, but they’d like to ensure you’re up to speed and on the same page as them.”

“On the same page, referring to Senator Jacobs?” Hotch asked.

The detective caught the tone in Hotch’s voice. “I think it’s important that you understand all the facts.”

“And I think it’s important that we find the facts for ourselves. It won’t do any good to have fresh eyes if they’re all biased,” Hotch argued. 

You could see that the detective was going to argue back, so you stepped in. “What he’s trying to say is that we need to remain the impartial third party. We want to catch this guy as much as you do, but we need to be certain of who the unsub is before we go after a sitting Senator.”

Hotch looked at you and you couldn’t quite tell if he was grateful or annoyed, or possibly both. 

The detective, on the other hand, nodded in agreement. “I see your point. I’ll tell them to cool their heels until your team has a chance to come to your own conclusions.”

“Thank you, detective,” you and Hotch said at the same time.

Hotch shot you another look and you blushed and looked down, clearly deferring to his seniority. After all, he was your boss. 

The detective left the room and an awkward silence settled on the room. It made you crazy because things were never awkward between you and Hotch. You’d been friends for too long for there to be any awkwardness. 

The silence was broken by the ringing of your cell phone, which you gratefully answered, “Heywood.”

“Hey it’s Morgan. This crime scene is definitely just a dump site. There’s nowhere near enough blood for her to been killed here.”

“That’s not a surprise. Thanks, Morgan.”

“Anytime, hot stuff.”

You chuckled as you hung up. Your banter with Morgan rivaled Garcia’s, which was why the three of you were so close. Derek Morgan may have been one of the most attractive men you’d ever laid eyes on, but he wasn’t the one you wanted. He’d never hold a candle to Hotch.

Speaking of Hotch, you looked up at him, intending to update him on what Morgan found. His frown had deepened and his expression was cold. It surprised you, but you carried on. “That was Morgan, he said—”

“I heard what he said,” Hotch cut in icily.

Surprise lit up your face, mixed with hurt.

Hotch seemed to realize that he’d been unnecessarily harsh and his expression softened. “Let’s get to work on the profile, okay?”

You nodded and sat down on the edge of the table. The two of you bounced thoughts off of each other as you waited for the others to return. 

**********After Profile Delivery

“You literally just described Senator Jacobs,” one of the officers called out.

“The Senator does fit the profile, yes, but he’s not the only one. A number of people in this room also fit it,” you said. 

“Are you saying one of us did it?” another officer accused. 

Hotch stepped forward. “That’s not what Agent Heywood is saying. She’s simply pointing out that members of the law enforcement community also fit the profile, which means you can’t single out one person.” 

“Just because someone fits the profile, it doesn’t mean they did it,” Reid added.

“That being said,” Rossi began, “we do believe Senator Jacobs warrants further investigation.”

“We’ll be looking into him, as well as pursuing some other leads,” Emily said. 

“What other leads?” someone asked. 

“We’ll discuss those when we have more information,” Hotch answered. “Thank you.”

It was quite clear that the discussion was over, so the crowd of officers began to disperse. You looked around at the faces of your team. You could see the exhaustion on everyone’s faces and you, yourself, were starting to feel it too. All the coffee you’d been drinking all day had finally began to wear off. 

Hotch apparently noticed the same thing and said, “Let’s call it a night. We’re all exhausted.” 

Everyone agreed and began to pack up. Within 5 minutes, the whole team had piled into the Suburbans and were on the way to the hotel. Thankfully, the drive was short and you arrived within minutes. 

You checked in at the front desk and headed up to your respective rooms as a group. Everyone said goodnight to each other and headed off to their rooms. You tried to catch Hotch’s eye to see if he still wanted to talk, but he didn’t even look at you. You sighed and headed into your room, shutting the door behind you.

You started to get ready for bed, washing your face, brushing your teeth, and letting your hair down. You changed into shorts and a t-shirt for comfort. You were about to crawl into bed, when there was a quiet knock at your door. 

You crossed the room and opened the door to see Hotch standing there, still fully dressed. He’d taken off his suit coat and his tie, but that was it. You suddenly felt very exposed, but there wasn’t much you could do about it. 

You let him in and quickly grabbed a hoodie from your bag. It made you feel a little better about your current attire, given the company. 

Hotch was eyeing you with an appreciative expression, but it was mingled with something else you couldn’t quite place…nervousness, maybe? You’d never seen Hotch nervous, and that made you nervous. 

After a few moments of awkward silence, Hotch began to speak. “I didn’t want anyone else to know I was coming over here.”

“Okay…”

“I—uh, I wanted to talk to you about something.” 

You nodded, but remained quiet. 

He took a deep breath and looked you in the eyes. “This is very hard for me,” he began. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this for quite some time, but I never knew what to say.” He paused and looked down. “From the moment I met you, I knew you were different. You have the kindest soul out of anyone I’ve ever known. You have this strange ability to make me laugh and you always know exactly what to say.” 

He finally looked up at you. “When Haley died, you were there for me…more than anyone else. More importantly, you were there for Jack. He adores you.” 

That made you smile, but you still didn’t say anything. 

“What makes all of this so complicated is that you’re my subordinate. I shouldn’t look at you as anything more than a great coworker…but I can’t help it. You make me feel things I never thought I’d ever feel again. You’re the reason that I’ve been able to accept Haley’s death and even move on from it. My life is better with you in it.” He paused. “But I understand if this is too much for you, or if I’m overstepping, I apologize. I just can’t keep going on like this and pretending everything is normal. You need to know the truth.” 

Your breath caught in your chest as you waited for him to continue. 

He took a deep breath. “The truth is that I’m in love with you, Isabelle Heywood. I’ve been in love with you for a long time.”

Your eyes widened and you stared at him in surprise. “You…you what?”

“I love you,” he repeated softly. 

You exhaled sharply. “You love me?”

He nodded. “With all that I have.”

You continued to stare at him, still in a state of shock. You’d wanted this moment to happen for years, but now that it finally had, you had no idea what to do. 

He shifted his weight and you realized you hadn’t actually responded to his declaration.

“I’m sorry,” you blurted out. “I’m just really surprised.”

He nodded and waited for you to continue. The hope on his face warmed your heart. 

“When I first met you, I thought you were way too uptight. You never smiled, you rarely joked, and you spent more time at work than you did at home. Honestly, I didn’t like you that much.” You paused. “But then I started to get to know you. I pushed you to come out of your shell, I learned more about you, and I quickly discovered you are so much more than you seem. You’ve got a big heart, you’re passionate, you’re brave and heroic, but you’re also kind and gentle. You love your job, your team, and your family in a way that I deeply admire.” 

You smiled at him and he smiled back. “What I’m trying to say is that I’ve loved you since the moment I realized what kind of man you are underneath the gruff exterior.”

His eyes widened and he grinned. The smile lit up his whole face. Suddenly, he pulled you into his arms and kissed you passionately, sucking the air from your lungs. Your heart pounded in your chest and you couldn’t breathe. 

You wrapped your arms around his neck and deepened the kiss. The feeling of his hands on your body drove you wild and you desperately wanted more. Eventually, you had to come up for air, but it wasn’t long before his lips found yours again. 

The kiss was even better than you had imagined, and lord had you imagined it. He gently pushed you up against the wall and trailed kisses down your neck. You were both breathing heavily and you could feel the desire radiating off of him. He kissed you again and your body responded with a hunger you didn’t know you had.

“Aaron,” you whispered as he kissed your neck.

He smiled against your skin as his lips caressed your jaw, your cheek, and your lips again. He pulled back and stared at you, his eyes heavily lidded and full of desire.

With his mouth away from your skin, you had a moment of clarity. You gently pushed him back and said, “We can’t do this here. Someone might hear.”

Realization morphed his features and he stepped back. “I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean—”

Your smile silenced him. “You have nothing to apologize for. We can pick this up later.”

He smiled too, causing your heart to flutter.

You stepped forward and gave him another kiss. “By the way,” you said softly. “I love it when you smile. There’s nothing hotter.”

He smiled again and returned your kiss. “I’ll keep that in mind.” 

You chuckled softly and took a step back. “So…what exactly does this mean?”

He looked perplexed. “It means I want to be with you.” 

“Even though it’s against the rules?” you asked softly.

He took a step toward you and grabbed your hand. “I’ve spent my entire life living by the rules; following all the policies. I can’t live like that anymore if it means living without you.”

“But Hotch…you could lose your job.”

“Call me Aaron, Isabelle,” he said gently. “And I hope it doesn’t come to that, but I’m willing to step down if it means I can be with you.”

You gasped. “I would never ask you to do that. This team needs you as its leader.”

He smiled. “You’re not asking, I’m just putting it out there.”

You looked down at his hand entwined with yours. You desperately wanted to be with him, but not at the expense of his job…or yours. “Maybe we should keep it a secret.”

“What?” he exclaimed.

“Just for a little while…until we decide what to do.”

“Are you sure that’s what you want?”

You nodded. “Absolutely. It’s safer for both of us this way.”

“Alright,” he paused. “Does that include the team?”

Your expression was pained as you nodded. There was no one on this earth you wanted to tell more than them, but you didn’t want to put them in a compromising position. 

“It’s safer for them…plausible deniability and all that.”

“You know they’d never tell anyone.”

“I know…but I don’t want to put them in that position. It’s not fair to them.”

“Okay.” He kissed your forehead affectionately. “We’ll keep it a secret.”

“Thank you,” you whispered.

“Anything for you,” he whispered back.

He wrapped you in a hug and you laid your head on his chest. The two of you stood like that for a while, just enjoying being near each other.

“You should probably be getting back to your room,” you said regretfully. “We’ve got a long day tomorrow and we’re all exhausted.”

He sighed. “You’re probably right…I just don’t want to go.”

You laughed softly. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t want you to go either.” 

He smiled down at you and kissed the top of your head. “I think that actually makes it harder.”

You reluctantly separated and he headed for the door. You followed him to close the door behind him. He paused and turned around to give you one last kiss goodnight. “I love you, Isabelle.”

You smiled warmly. “I love you too, Aaron.”

He smiled one more time before slipping into the hallway, shutting the door quietly behind himself. 

You locked up and slid into bed. Your mind was racing and you had no idea how you could possibly fall asleep even with the exhaustion. You couldn’t believe what just happened…you were so excited you could hardly stand it. You were dying to tell Morgan and Garcia, but you knew you couldn’t. 

You sighed and closed your eyes. You could feel the tiredness creeping up on you and you began to drift off to sleep, your last thought was of Aaron and the way he smiled when you told him you loved him too.

**********

At 6am there was a knock on your door. You groaned and dragged yourself out of bed. You threw the door open to find Reid standing in the hall, fully dressed. 

He walked right in and you grumbled, “Do you even know what time is it?”

“I’ve got an idea.”

“An idea so important you have to barge into my room before dawn?”

Reid looked at you in surprise. “It’s almost dawn?”

You raised your eyebrows. “It’s 6am.”

“Oh.”

“Spence…” you began, “did you even get any sleep last night?”

He shook his head and you sighed. “You can yell at me later, Iz. This is important. I think I know where the unsub is taking his victims.”

“How? Where?”

“Well, I was studying a map of the area where the bodies have been found. The only place that’s near all the dumpsites is an old abandoned warehouse. It’s be the perfect place to torture and kill these women.”

“I’m going to ignore the creepiness of that last statement and just say ‘good work, Reid’.”

“There’s a problem though.”

“And what’s that?” you asked.

“Senator Jacobs owns the warehouse.”

You inhaled sharply. “Shit. Well we can’t just go barging in there without probably cause. It’s private property owned by a freaking Senator.”

“Exactly, which brings me to my idea.”

You nodded and waited for him to continue. 

“We need a reason to enter the building…and it would make matters easier if we could catch him in the act.” Reid paused. “I think you should go undercover.” 

You took a moment to process his words. “You want me to pretend to be a prostitute?”

“Only until he takes you to the warehouse.”

You thought for a moment before nodding. “That actually might work.” You jumped up. “Come on, let’s talk to Hotch.”

“Uh, Izzy.” Reid points to your wardrobe and you realized you were still in your pajamas. 

“Right. Let me change first.”

Five minutes later and the two of you were knocking on Hotch’s door. 

He answered the door looking mildly annoyed. When he saw you, his expression softened. “What are you guys doing up?”

“Reid found something.” 

Hotch stepped back to let the two of you enter. Reid explained what he found and Hotch listened intently. “So we can’t enter the premises without a warrant,” Reid concluded.

“And no judge is going to sign a warrant based on Reid’s intuition, no matter how good it may be,” you added.

“So what do you propose we do?” Hotch asked.

“We catch him red-handed,” you answered.

“How?”

“By sending Isabelle in undercover,” Reid responded. 

Hotch looked between you and Reid in surprise. “No—no, absolutely not.”

“Hotch, we don’t have any other options,” you pled.

“I’m not putting you at risk.”

“It’s my decision.” 

“I’m the Unit Chief and what I say—”

“No one else can do it,” Reid interjects. “JJ doesn’t have the necessary field experience and Emily isn’t the unsub’s type. It has to be Isabelle.”

Hotch looked crestfallen. “There has to be another way.”

“I’ve thought of every possible variation. This is the only way.” 

Hotch looked down and shook his head.

“Please, Hotch. People’s lives are at stake,” you said softly.

He looked up at you, his face a mix of emotions. He sighed and his mask slid firmly into place. “Fine. We’ll need the day to prep you.” 

You nodded. “I can do this.”

“I know you can, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

**********

“Hell no,” Derek said emphatically. “No way in hell, over my dead body…need I continue?”

“Come on, Derek,” you began.

“No, Izzy!” He looked over at Hotch. “You can’t seriously be okay with this.”

Hotch’s face remained impassive. “I’m not, but Reid makes a good point.”

“I don’t care what Reid says, we’re not sending Isabelle into the den of a sadistic serial killer,” he argued.

You sighed. “It’s not your decision to make, Morgan.”

He glared at you and you returned the stare. Neither of you backed down until JJ stepped between you. “Okay, both of you need to relax.”

“Relax? How am I supposed to—” 

“Enough,” Hotch cut in aggressively. Morgan shut his mouth mid-sentence and watched his boss. 

Hotch sighed. “Look, I know this isn’t the best idea, but it’s all we’ve got.” He looked at you and you nodded. “And Isabelle is okay with it. So instead of arguing about this, let’s prepare her to make this mission a success.”

Rossi stepped forward and looked at you closely. “I have the utmost faith in you, Isabelle. I just want to make absolutely certain that you are completely comfortable with this.” 

You looked at him and gave him a small mile. “This isn’t my first time undercover, Rossi. I’ll be fine.” 

He nodded. “Okay then. We should get started.”

Everyone gathered around the conference table. The next three hours were spent going over the plans for that evening. You could feel your anxiety ramping up as more time passed. This certainly wasn’t the most dangerous undercover mission you’d been on, but it had been years since you’d last worked incognito. You knew your team would be there and they’d have your back no matter what, but this was still extremely dangerous and there were a lot of unknowns. 

“Hey, gorgeous. You still with us?” Morgan asked. 

You looked up at him and nodded. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”

You could feel everyone’s eyes on you and you knew they were all profiling you. Especially Hotch. The intensity of his gaze made your skin feel like it was on fire. 

“Guys, stop,” you said firmly. “I can practically feel you all profiling me.”

Most of the team had the decency to look embarrassed, but not Morgan. He continued to give you the same concerned look.

“D,” you said gently. “I’m good.”

It was a few moments before he finally nodded and you released a breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding. 

“Is everyone clear on the plan for tonight?” Hotch asked. 

“JJ and I will be on the street with Isabelle so we can see who picks her up,” Emily began.

“Rossi and I will be parked down the street to keep watch,” Spencer added, “We’ll follow at a safe distance once Isabelle gets picked up.” 

“Morgan, you and I will trade off with Rossi and Reid to make sure that the unsub doesn’t realize he’s being followed. Once they get to their destination, we’ll keep watch and wait for the signal,” Hotch finished.

“I’ll have a tracker in my shoe so you’ll know where I am at all times,” you said. “Once I’m in the car, JJ and Emily will get into the surveillance van with Hotch and Morgan.”

Hotch nodded. “Good. As for the extraction plan—”

“Wait for my signal, then infiltrate,” you said. 

Hotch nodded again. He peered at you intently. “If we don’t hear from you in thirty minutes, we’re coming in.”

“An hour,” you countered.

“Isabelle—” Hotch began.

“We need to catch him doing something other than sleeping with a prostitute, Hotch. Give me an hour, okay?”

Hotch closed his eyes briefly. “Fine. One hour.”

“Hotch—” Morgan started.

Hotch cut him off with a look that clearly said who was in charge.

“Easy boys,” Emily said to ease the tension. “Us girls need to go shopping. We need appropriate outfits for tonight’s…festivities.” 

JJ nodded her agreement and the three of you practically raced out of the room. The men began to bicker the moment you’d shut the door behind you.

“They’re being way too overprotective,” you said.

“They’re your family, Izzy. Of course they’re being overprotective,” JJ insisted.

“I think they’re worried that I can’t do this.”

Emily shrugged. “They don’t get it. Derek and Hotch are alpha males. They instinctively want to protect their female.”

“That’s a disturbing way to put it,” you said with a laugh.

“Eh, you know what I mean.”

“How do you explain Rossi then?” JJ asked.

“His concern was more compassionate. He’s worried about the girl he sees as the daughter he never had. I think that’s an acceptable reaction,” Emily replied.

“And this whole thing was Spencer’s idea, so it’s no surprise he’s okay with it,” you said.

“Doesn’t mean he’s not worried,” JJ said softly. 

You just nodded. 

Emily picked up on your mood and said, “Alright ladies, enough about them. Let’s go get us some skanky clothes.” 

You and JJ laugh. “Garcia would love this,” you said.

“You know she would find you the most outrageous outfit,” JJ said.

“Yeah she would,” you paused. “She’s going to worry about me.”

“She always does,” Emily said softly. “The only thing you need to focus on is keeping yourself safe.”

You nodded. “I know, I know. You’re right.” You took a deep breath. “Okay, where do we go to find prostitute-worthy clothes?”

Emily gave you a wry smile. “I know just the place.” 

You and JJ exchange glances and a chuckle as you follow Emily out into the parking lot. 15 minutes later, you find yourself in a Target parking lot.

“I figured Walmart would be a bit too trashy,” Emily said with a shrug.

You rolled your eyes and JJ laughed. The three of you headed into the store and began to scour the clothing section to find just the right outfit. After trying multiple items on, each of you walked out with the perfect ‘never wearing this again’ outfit. 

“You know, the boys are going to die when they see us in these outfits,” you said.

“Especially Hotch,” Emily said with a laugh.

You raised your eyebrows questioningly. “Why Hotch?”

“Well for starters, he’s a bit uptight,” Emily said. “A little bit of a prude.”

“He is not a prude,” you said lightly. 

Both Emily and JJ stared at you. You laughed and said, “Okay, he’s rather uptight. This might give him a heart attack.”

“Just wait until Morgan see you,” JJ teased. “He’ll die of delight.”

“Oh stop.” You gave her an affectionate swat on the arm. “It’s Spence who will really freak out.”

“Oh my god,” Emily cracked up. “I’m picturing his face and it’s gold.”

The three of you laughed all the way back to the station. You left your bags in the car and headed inside. 

Rossi, Reid, and Morgan were still in the conference room. They were all talking animatedly and laughing. You looked around for Hotch and finally found him in the Captain’s office. It looked like they were having a very heated discussion. It was clear that Hotch was agitated. 

“That can’t be good,” you said, nodding toward the office. 

“Hotch looks pissed,” Emily agreed.

The three of you entered the conference room to try and get the scoop from the others before Hotch came back. 

“Hey boys,” you said. “What’s up with Hotch?”

“Apparently one of the idiot goons out there was chatting with a member of Senator Jacobs’ security team. He mentioned that we had a plan to catch this serial killer in action,” Rossi answered.

Your jaw dropped. “Shit. Did he tell the guy our plan?”

“Thankfully, no,” Rossi said.

“We’ve kept to ourselves most of the day,” Reid added. “No one but us knows what’s going to happen.”

“Still…” JJ started. 

“I think we should call it off,” Morgan said.

“Morgan, no,” you said.

“It’s too dangerous, Iz! What if Jacobs is the unsub?”

“As long as our plan isn’t compromised, then we’ll be fine,” you said. “Maybe the security guy didn’t say anything to Jacobs.”

“Oh he told Jacobs everything,” Morgan said.

“How do you know?” Emily asked.

“Because Senator Jacobs called Hotch to personally congratulate him,” Rossi said.

“Holy mother…I can see why he’s so pissed,” you said.

You heard a door slam and the entire precinct looked up to stare. Hotch had just stormed out of the captain’s office and was headed outside.

“I’m going to go check on him,” you said.

“You’re a brave, brave soul, Isabelle Heywood,” Rossi commented. 

You rolled your eyes and hurried out after Hotch. He almost never lost his temper, so this intense display of emotion surprised you. You found him around the side of the building, pacing back and forth. 

“Hotch?” you called out tentatively. 

He looked up at you and the cold fury in his eyes made you take a step back. He realized it was you, and his expression softened. He stopped pacing as you walked towards him. 

“What happened?” you asked, even though you already knew.

“One of those idiot cops jeopardized the entire operation!” Hotch said angrily.

“Jacobs doesn’t know the plan,” you said softly. 

“Does it really matter? If he is the unsub, he’s going to be on high alert.”

“You’re right, he will be,” you agreed. “But if it’s him, then he’s also a sadistic killer. He won’t be able to resist his urges.”

Hotch looked down at you, and you were surprised by the fear in his eyes. “How can I put you in danger when I’m so terrified of losing you?”

You shook your head. “You’re not gonna lose me, Aaron.” You reached up and gently rested your palm against his cheek. “I’ll come back.”

He closed his eyes and leaned against your hand for a moment. “You can’t promise me that,” he said softly. He took your hand and pulled it down, but didn’t let it go.

“You’re right, I can’t make that promise, but I can promise that I will never give up. No matter what happens, I will fight to come back to you.” 

He inhaled sharply and nodded his head. “That’ll do,” he whispered. 

You’d never seen him so vulnerable before and it was pulling at your heart strings. You could feel his love for you. It was so intense that it overwhelmed you. It was also a testament to his ability to hide his emotions. You’d never noticed and as far as you knew, no one else had either. 

Aaron Hotchner hid himself away from the rest of the world and you worried that if something happened to you, he would never show his vulnerable side again. Your heart practically ached with all the years of unexpressed love that you’d kept bottled up inside. 

“When all this is over,” you started softly. “I want to tell you something.” 

He raised his eyebrows. “You can’t tell me now?”

You shook your head. “You’ll have to wait until we catch this guy. It’s just a little incentive.” 

“You’re right…” he said softly, “that is cruel.”

You laughed and flashed your brilliant smile. He leaned down and kissed you gently. Butterflies floated around in your stomach and your heart beat faster. When you parted, both of your faces were flushed and his eyes were burning with desire.

He took a deep breath and pulled you into a hug. “Thank you,” he whispered into your hair.

You pulled back and looked up at him. “For what?”

“For coming after me. For calming me down. For being you.”

You laughed softly. “You’re quite welcome.” You squeezed his hand and let go as you made your way back to the front of the building. “So what did you say to the captain?”

“I told him that his officer put one of my best agent’s lives at risk. Then I yelled a little bit.”

“A little bit?” you asked skeptically.

“Okay, probably more than I should have.”

You nodded. “Go apologize.”

He paused and stared at you. The two of you were right beside the door and you could feel the stares through the glass. 

“I’m serious, Aaron. It’s not his fault one of his officers is an idiot. Plus, yelling never solved anything. So, go apologize, please.”

He looked at you and sighed. “You’re right.”

You smiled. “I know.”

He rolled his eyes before he once again slid his mask firmly into place and entered the building. You followed, but headed towards the conference room as he headed to the captain’s office.

“What did you say to him?” Emily asked, staring across the room.

“Is he apologizing?” Morgan asked incredulously. 

You laughed and punched his arm. “Yes, he’s apologizing. Not all men are savage animals who can’t admit when they’re wrong.”

He rolled his eyes and crumpled some paper into a ball, which he proceeded to throw at your head. You ducked and the paper hit Reid, causing him to jump and the whole room to laugh. 

“Rude,” Reid said to Morgan. 

You bent down and wrapped your arms around Reid’s neck and kissed his head. “Come on, love. It was pretty funny.”

Reid laughed. “Oh, I will get you back, just you wait.”

“I’m trembling,” Morgan joked.

You straightened up when Hotch entered the conference room. He nodded to you and then addressed the rest of the team. “I’m sorry about that everyone. But the plan is still on for tonight.”

“Are we sure this is still a good idea?” Morgan asked.

“Isabelle’s still okay with it and Jacobs, if he is the unsub, has no idea what our actual plan is.”

“We profiled that the unsub would kill again, so it’s a safe bet that his urges will have him on the hunt tonight,” Reid added. 

“Alright. Let’s go over the plan one more time just to be sure,” Morgan said. 

The room groaned, but Hotch agreed, so everyone sat down to discuss it.

**********At the hotel

“I’m pretty sure I’ve never shown this much cleavage in my entire life,” you said with a laugh.

“Girl, I used to go to clubs practically naked in Europe,” Emily said.

You all laughed.

“Not all of us can be as cool as you,” JJ added.

“Aww, you think I’m cool?” Emily asked with a grin.

“Doesn’t everyone?” you joked.

“You’re right,” Emily said as she dramatically flipped her hair over her shoulder. 

The three of you burst out laughing. You grew sober again as you looked at yourself in the mirror. “I look like a prostitute.”

Emily came over to stand beside you. “A very high-end prostitute,” she said. “And besides, isn’t that the point?”

You sighed. “I know. It’s just slightly horrifying.” 

JJ laughed. “Honey, we all look like prostitutes. I’m just glad Will isn’t here to see it.” 

Emily nodded. “Perks of not having a boyfriend. I don’t have to worry about what anyone thinks.”

You blushed slightly as you thought about Hotch’s reaction. You didn’t really want him to see you dressed like this…but it was for the job. He’d have to understand.

“You’re blushing,” Emily pointed out.

“Thanks for the info, Em.”

She laughed lightly. “Anytime. Now, who are you thinking about?”

“Spence,” you answered automatically.

“Reid?” she asked in surprise.

“He’s like my little brother,” you said. “I don’t like the idea of him seeing me dressed like a hooker.” 

It was true, but it wasn’t exactly the answer to Emily’s question. She, however, didn’t need to know that. 

“Don’t worry, Iz. I doubt he’ll judge you. Besides, I don’t think there’s anything you could do that would ever taint his view of you.” 

“He looks up to you,” JJ added. “You’re the big sister he never knew he wanted.”

You smiled. “Thanks guys.” You took a deep breath. “Are we ready to do this?”

“I think the more accurate question is, are you ready to do this?” Emily corrected.

You nodded. “I think I’m ready.” You straightened your shirt and headed for the door. 

The three of you went across the hall to Hotch’s room, where the rest of the team was gathered. You took another deep breath and opened the door.

Four heads immediately swiveled in your direction. Your entrance was met with stunned silence. 

Rossi was the first to recover. “You guys look…”

“Like 2 dollar hookers?” you asked.

The tension in the room lifted and the boys laughed. 

“Well I was gonna say ‘nice’, but I doubt that’s an accurate term,” Rossi said with a smile.

You made eye contact with Hotch and you were surprised to see the discomfort on his face. You gave him a small smile, which he tried to return, but it looked forced. He looked away and you glanced around to make sure no one saw the exchange. Everyone was chatting, not paying attention to the two of you at all…or so you thought. You were unaware, but Emily had seen the exchange and she filed it in the back of her mind to bring up to you later.

Suddenly a phone started ringing. Morgan looked down at his and smiled. “Hey baby girl, what’s cooking?”

“Well, my chocolate delight, let me tell you. I’m a bit peeved that you haven’t called me all day. I’m wasting away at my keyboard, feeling useless,” Garcia whined. 

Morgan laughed. “Sorry, sweet cheeks. We got a little busy over here.”

“Fine, fine. You’re forgiven. Now, let me talk to Izzy.”

Morgan looked surprised. “Okay, hold on.” He handed the phone to you. 

“Hey, Garcia,” you said. 

“Take me off speaker.”

You did so before putting the phone to your ear. “What’s up, PG?”

“You’re going undercover?” she demanded. 

You sighed. “Who told you?”

“Reid called me.”

You shot a glance at Reid, but he was blissfully unaware. “It’s not a big deal,��� you began. 

“It’s a huge deal, Isabelle Heywood! You could get yourself killed!”

“I know, Penelope. I’ll be careful, I promise. Trust me, I know what I’m doing.” 

“I worry, you know that.”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you. I didn’t want you to worry.” 

“Well don’t do it again. I need to know what’s happening to my family, Isabelle.”

“I promise I’ll keep you in the loop.”

“Good,” she paused. “Stay safe, Iz,” she said softly. 

“I will, Penelope.”

“Okay. Now give me back to Morgan.”

You handed the phone back to Morgan. You didn’t hear what was said, but you could assume. You sat down and took a deep breath. You did your best to focus on the task ahead of you. 

On the phone, Garcia ended the call with, “Keep her safe, Derek.”

“I’ll do my best, baby girl,” he said before hanging up.

“Alright,” Hotch said. “We need to get moving. Is everyone ready?”

A mixture of nods and ‘yes, sir’s’ answered his question. Everyone filed out of the room, you and Emily at the back of the group. 

“Hey,” Emily says quietly. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

“I—uh—I saw you and Hotch…”

You tensed up. “What are you talking about?”

“When we first came into the room…the way he looked at you.”

You sighed. “It’s nothing, Em. It’s just Hotch being Hotch.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He didn’t look at me or JJ like that.”

You shrugged. “Nothing’s going on, Emily. We’re coworkers—friends. That’s all.” 

She didn’t look convinced, but she nodded. “Okay, Isabelle. If you say so.” 

The two of you moved quickly to catch up with the rest of the team at the elevators. Once you were down in the lobby, you got a lot of judgmental stares from both guests and hotel staff. The men gawked and the women looked at the three of you with disgust.

Hotch led the group, with the girls in the middle, Reid on one side, Morgan on the other, and Rossi bringing up the rear. Each of them had a protective stance as if daring someone to say something. 

At one point, Morgan yelled at an especially creepy man, “What are you looking at?” The man backed up and you managed to get outside and into the vehicles without further issue. 

Hotch drove the three of you downtown. He didn’t look at you the entire way down. As you neared the destination, he pulled over. “Okay ladies. You’ll have to walk from here. The van will be parked down the street, so as soon as Isabelle gets picked up, start moving.” 

JJ and Emily nodded.

“Stay safe out there and watch each other’s backs.”

“We will,” you said as you opened the door. 

JJ and Emily got out and you were halfway out of the vehicle when Hotch grabbed your arm. You turned to look at him and found his face filled with emotion. 

“Come back to me,” he whispered, too softly for Morgan to hear.

Your breath caught in your chest and all you could do was nod. He released you and you slid out of the car and shut the door. You smiled at the girls and pretended that everything was fine. 

“Let’s do this,” you said as you started walking down the street. Your high heels were uncomfortable and your skirt was so short, you were afraid that your underwear was hanging out. The three of you remained silent until you could see other street-walkers just up the road. 

“Get into character, ladies. It’s go time.”

The other two women nodded and you all headed into the lion’s den together. A couple of the girls eyed you suspiciously, but no one said anything. You paid attention to your surroundings without being obvious, absorbing everything you saw and heard.

You paid strict attention to the Johns that pulled up, having to quickly assess them to determine if they could be your unsub. An hour in, and no one had stuck out to you.

You walked over to Emily and said, “Hey Casey, got any bites?”

She sighed and shook her head. “Nothing good yet.”

JJ slid up beside you. “Nothing good for me either.”

“Well don’t give up just yet, Vikki,” you said cheerfully.

JJ smiled. “How ‘bout you, Lilly?”

“Not a damn thing,” you responded. 

You parted ways again to continue your observations.

~In the van~

Hotch and Morgan had been sitting in silence for most of the previous hour. Hotch was too busy trying not to worry about you to have a conversation. He couldn’t quite make you out from this position, but your tracker placed you across the street.

Morgan had been fidgety for the last half hour. He was clearly restless, but Hotch had a feeling he was really worried about you too. 

Finally, Morgan couldn’t stand it anymore. “What if something happens to her?” he blurted.

“Nothing’s going to happen to her, Morgan.”

“You don’t know that for sure, Hotch.” 

Hotch sighed. “I’m worried about her too, you know. We just have to trust her skills. And we’re all here with her.” 

“I know. It’s just…” he trailed off. “She’s just so incredible. I can’t help but adore her.”

Hotch glanced at Morgan, but his focus was across the street. He felt a surge of jealousy, which he pushed down immediately. 

“I love her, Hotch. I really do.”

Hotch took a moment before he responded. “I didn’t know the two of you were together.”

Morgan barked out a laugh. “No, no. We’re not together. Isabelle’s too good for me, but that’s not what I meant. I love her like family. Sure, I’d date her if she wanted, but I’m not quite her type.”

Hotch visibly relaxed, which didn’t escape Morgan’s notice. He raised his eyebrows, but decided not to say anything. After all, Hotch was his boss. He was a little surprised that Hotch had feelings…in general. So it was almost shocking that he had feelings for you specifically. Not because you were unlikeable or anything, but because you were Hotch’s subordinate. Morgan knew Hotch was a rule-follower by nature. There was no way he would break the rules, even for someone as incredible as you.

Hotch was about to say something when a large SUV pulled up across the street. “We’ve got movement,” he said. 

Morgan lifted his binoculars to try and get a better look. “The windows are tinted. I can’t see anything.”

“Damn,” Hotch said. “Reid, Rossi, do you have a visual of who is in that SUV?” he asked over the radio.

“Negative, Hotch,” Rossi responded. “We can see the girls though. Izzy’s going up to the passenger window now.” 

~Back on the street~

A dark SUV pulled up to the curb and you took a step forward. The windows were tinted and you couldn’t see into the car at all. You could see Emily and JJ out of the corner of your eye. They were watching you like hawks and you were glad for it. 

The passenger side window rolled down and a man leaned his head out. He pointed at you with a smile. “Hey there gorgeous. Come a little closer.”

You smiled and walked up to the car. “Hiya handsome. What can I do for you?”

The man smiled. “Well darling, it’s not for me. I’ve got a very special client that wants to meet you. You have to be very discreet. Can you do that, baby girl?”

You bristled at the nickname, but you didn’t show it. Instead you gave him a seductive smile. “Discreet is my middle name.”

“Perfect,” he grinned. “Get in the back and tell me your name.”

“Lilly,” you responded as you opened the back door. You could see JJ and Emily move closer, but you didn’t look at them. It was important not to attract attention.

You slid into the backseat and shut the door. You were quite certain these men weren’t your unsub, but you had a feeling they were going to take you to him. “Who’s this special client?” you asked sweetly.

“You’ll see real soon, darlin’.”

You smiled and sat back. You calmed your nerves by taking in everything about the vehicle, the two men, and the landmarks you passed on your way to meet this client. You remained silent and that seemed to suit both men.

~In the van~

The moment you got into that car, the rest of the team sprang into motion.

Reid and Rossi followed the SUV while Hotch and Morgan picked up JJ and Emily. Hotch’s grip on the wheel was so tight his knuckles were turning white. No one spoke until Rossi radioed and said the SUV was heading west, which meant it was their turn to follow.

“Copy that. We’ve got them,” Morgan responded.

The SUV traveled west for about 1.25 miles before turning into the drive of a luxury hotel. It was the kind of place where the staff were paid to be discreet and the rich came to do the things they couldn’t do at home.

“They’re at the Conway Hotel on Pike,” Hotch said to the team. “We’ll set up down here and watch the front. Rossi and Reid, you watch the back. Wait for Izzy’s signal and we’ll all go in.”

“Roger that, Hotch,” Rossi responded.

The nerves in the van intensified. They were all wishing they had eyes on the situation. For now, the best they could do was wait. Your tracker said that you were in the hotel. They just had to have faith you would be okay. 

~In the hotel~

You stared at your reflection in the metal walls of the elevator. From the outside, you looked completely composed, as if this was something you did every day. On the inside, however, you were nervous, and frankly a little scared. You had a good idea about who this ‘client’ was and you hoped your team made the same assumptions. 

You were led off the elevator and escorted to a room at the end of the hall. The door opened almost immediately after your arrival. You stepped into the room and gasped in surprise. Sitting in a chair in the front room was none other than Senator Mark Jacobs.

The Senator stood up and walked toward you. He was a very imposing man. Roughly 6’2”, former football star, and still in excellent shape despite being almost 50. Most women (and even some men) would say he was very attractive, but all you felt when you looked at him was revulsion. You did your best to hide your true feelings and focus on your persona.

“Do you know who I am?” he asked you. 

“Yes, Senator, I do.”

He smiled. He walked around you. You pretended to appreciate his gaze, even when it lingered on your ample cleavage. 

Once he’d finished his inspection, he turned to his security personnel. “She’s perfect, boys. Wait for me in the other room while I get down to business with our guest.”

The guards left and all of his attention was on you. “What’s your name?”

“Lilly,” you replied with a sultry smile. “And what would you like me to call you?”

“You can call me ‘sir’.” He took a step towards you. “I’ll give you $5,000 for the night if you let me do what I want with you.”

You were surprised by the amount, but you didn’t let it show. “$8,000 and you can do anything.”

He smiled. “I like a woman who knows how to bargain. You’ve got yourself a deal, Miss Lilly.”

You bit your lip and took a step towards him. “Okay, handsome. What do you want to do first?” You placed your hands on his chest and fiddled with the buttons on his shirt. 

He said nothing, just watched you with hungry eyes, so you began to unbutton his shirt. Your hands slid down his smooth chest to his muscled abdomen. You pushed him onto the couch and climbed on his lap. 

“Kiss me,” he demanded. 

You felt your heart begin to race and bile rise in the back of your throat. You swallowed it back down and pressed your lips to his. It disgusted you to be intimate with him, but you had no choice. His hands slid up your ribcage and under your shirt. He yanked your top off over your head and buried his face in your breasts. You ran your fingers through his blonde hair and let out a fake moan.

Just then, the door to the room opened. 

“Oh shit!” a man’s voice said. “Sorry, Senator. I didn’t know you had a girl with you.” 

You turned around and your heart stopped. The man’s jaw dropped when he saw your face. You scrambled off the Senator’s lap and took a step back. 

The man standing before you was Detective Brady, one of the officers working on this case. “Do you know who she is?” he demanded.

“What are you going on about, Brady?” The Senator asked in annoyance.

“She’s an FBI agent! She’s one people down from Quantico working the prostitute case!” 

Your heart was thudding in your chest as you thought about your options. You could feel the disposable cell phone in your back pocket. All you needed to do was hit the call button and it would connect directly to Hotch. 

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” you said as your hand slid into your pocket. You tried to press the send button just as the Senator took a step towards you. 

“What’s your name, girl?” he growled. 

“Lilly!” you said emphatically. 

He squinted his eyes at you and you stared back at him in defiance. At least, you hoped that was the expression on your face. 

“Her name is Isabelle Heywood,” Brady insisted. “I can prove it to you.”

Your heart continued to thud as Brady pulled out his cell phone. He pushed a couple buttons before handing it to the Senator. You heard Hotch’s voice, then Morgan’s, and then your own. You realized Brady must have filmed the presentation of the profile. You took a step back and tried to determine your next move. 

The Senator handed Brady the phone and looked at you again. Your hand was still in your back pocket and you just managed to press send before the Senator grabbed you.

~In the van~

Hotch’s phone rang and he glanced at it to see who was calling. “It’s Isabelle,” he said aloud.

Morgan nodded and the van fell silent as Hotch answered the call. He put it on speaker so everyone could hear, but muted his end.

“Now, what are we going to do with you, Isabelle?” a man’s voice asked.

“Get your hands off me,” you said angrily. 

“Oh my god,” Emily said.

“He made her,” Morgan added.

“We need to move, now!” Hotch yelled as he jumped out of the van. “Morgan, you’re with me. Emily and JJ, stay out front in case they try to come down.”

He and Morgan ran into the building. “Rossi!” Hotch yelled into his radio. “They know who Isabelle is. We’re going in. Stay in the back and make sure they don’t escape that way.” 

“Got it. Go get her Hotch.”

They ran up to the front desk. The woman behind the desk eyed them warily until Morgan flashed his creds. “A woman escorted by two men came in roughly 15 minutes ago. We need to know what room they’re in.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t give you that information.”

“She’s in danger. We need to know,” Morgan insisted.

“I can’t, I’m sorry.”

“She’s an undercover agent!” Hotch said angrily. “If you don’t tell us what room they’re in right now, she’s going to die.”

The clerk turned white and glanced down at her computer. “Room 305.”

Hotch was already running towards the stairs. Morgan thanked the clerk before chasing after him. When they reached the room, they didn’t even bother to knock. Hotch kicked the door in and the two men rushed into the room. It was completely silent, not a soul in sight. 

Hotch went to check the bedroom while Morgan checked the living area. “Hotch, you need to see this,” Morgan called.

Hotch came into the living area. On the floor was a pile of clothing…your clothing. Your shoes were off to the side and the disposable phone you’d used to call Hotch was sitting on top of the clothes. 

“No…” Hotch said softly as he took in the scene. He seemed to be frozen in place as he stared at your shoes. 

“They’re not here,” Morgan said into his earpiece. “Anyone have eyes on them?”

“Negative,” Emily responded. 

“Negative here too,” Rossi said. 

“Call in back up. They’ve gotta be here somewhere,” Morgan said.

“What about the tracker?” Reid asked.

“Her clothes, shoes, and phone are all here,” Morgan replied.

“Shit,” Emily mumbled.

“We’re going to search the building. Cover every entrance and make sure they don’t leave,” Morgan ordered. He looked over at Hotch who was still frozen in place. “Hotch?”

“She’s gone. The unsub has her,” he mumbled.

“Hotch, snap out of it. We need to look for her,” Morgan insisted.

Hotch looked up at him in surprise. For a moment, Morgan could see the vulnerable man underneath the hard outer shell, but his normal stony face returned almost instantly. “It couldn’t have taken us more than 3 minutes to get up here, so they can’t have gone far,” he said.

“Agreed. Maybe they took the other stairs. I doubt they would have taken the elevators,” Morgan said.

Hotch nodded and the two of them rushed out to the other staircase. There was no sign of anyone and they made it all the way down to the lobby just to be sure. 

“Shit!” Morgan exclaimed. “Hotch, there’s an underground garage.” He pointed to a sign and the two of them ran down the final flight of stairs. 

“What if they have a second car?” Morgan asked.

“We have to hope they don’t,” Hotch answered. 

One minute later and they’d found the SUV…it was completely empty. Hotch cursed under his breath. They went back up to the lobby and met with the rest of the team. 

“I think they had a secondary vehicle,” Hotch said.

“What--are you saying they got away?” JJ exclaimed. 

“Yes, and they have Isabelle,” he responded.

Reid went pale. “But…I promised her we’d keep her safe.”

“We all did,” Morgan said gently.

“We have to find her,” Reid said urgently.

“I know kid, but we have no idea who has her, what they’re driving, or where they’re going,” Morgan replied. 

“We know who took her,” JJ said. “We heard his voice.”

Hotch nodded in agreement. “It was Senator Jacobs.”

“Are you positive?” Rossi asked.

“One hundred percent.”

“Then he’s taking her to the warehouse,” Reid said.

“Let’s go,” Hotch said and the team raced to their vehicles.

[hylianengineer]

Have you ever wondered how scientists know what earth's climate was like in the past? Thousands of years ago, long before humans started to measure and record these things?

It's a really fascinating question with a VERY cool answer! Ice cores! Basically, they go to someplace cold, like the Arctic or Antarctic, and drill really deep into the ice to take a vertical section of it.

[ID:A cylinder of ice, about an inch in diameter and perhaps a little over a foot long (that's around 2.5 centimeters in diameter and over 30cm long, for those of you sensibly using the metric system), held in thickly-gloved hands. End ID.]

Here's what they look like. Kind of - they're a lot bigger when they come out of a glacier, but they get broken down into smaller pieces for transportation and study.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a cool article on it here, but I'll go over the basics because tumblr science communication has a uniquely fun dialect, and I much prefer to learn things that way. I'm also putting it under a read-more because it got long.

If you've ever taken a geology class, you probably know that rock gets deposited vertically over time, with the newest at the top and the oldest at the bottom. In places where ice stays frozen for a long time, it's basically the same principle - year after year of snow and ice layered on top of each other. Ice cores can include stuff that's been frozen for perhaps thousands of years - including air bubbles, dust, sea salt, volcanic ash, etc. Both those and the ancient ice itself can tell us things about what earth's climate was like when they were first frozen.

The water in the ice cores contains, just like water from today, varying ratios of oxygen isotopes: oxygen-16 and oxygen-18. Remember, the difference between isotopes is the number of neutrons in each atom - oxygen-16, with 16 neutrons, is the 'normal' one, which makes up over 99% of oxygen atoms. It's also lighter than oxygen-18, which has two extra neutrons, and that means that it's slightly more difficult to get out of the atmosphere via precipitation - and this is easier at colder temperatures. So, as global climate gets cooler, the ratio of oxygen-16 to 18 increases, and as global climate cools, it decreases. We can measure those ratios in ice cores to figure out what Earth's climate was like in the past - as far back as we can find ice. How far is that? Up to 800,000 years. Yeah, that's some fucking old ice.

That's a lot of ice, I can hear you thinking. You're right - the deepest ice core ever collected was 3769m - 3.7 kilometers of ice (for my fellow Americans, that's over 2 and a quarter miles). That is a stupidly long piece of ice. Now you know why they have to break it up to analyze it.

Also, remember those air bubbles I mentioned? We can measure the concentrations of gases in those to learn about the composition of Earth's atmosphere a long fucking time ago, including the concentration of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. (How do you get air bubbles out of ancient ice you ask? NOAA has the answer: crush it under a vacuum hood. That means there's no other gases around to contaminate your sample while you put it in an airtight vial.)

How do we know how old the ice is? Same way we date other ancient stuff - there's two main methods.

Radioactivity and radioisotopes! Mostly naturally occurring, although for recent ice, radioactivity from nuclear testing can also be used. Carbon dioxide can be radiocarbon dated, volcanic material can be argon/argon dated, etc.

Layering! Especially looking for distinctive stuff like volcanic ash from significant geological events. This can be used to synchronize ice cores from different places, or for relative ages (i.e. this section is older than this one).

These are far from the only things ice cores can teach us, but this post is already very long so I'll leave it here. Check out the NOAA article for more details, and a fun anecdote about how no fieldwork project ever goes entirely according to plan - especially when there's polar bears.

Sources: 1, 2

[donotstealoc]

Blorbo Spotlight: Trynnt

Howdy gamers! In today's spotlight we have a character from Pip/Pyppyn (he/they) @pyppyn. Go check out their blog!

Who do we have the pleasure of speaking with today?

Excelsior! I'm Trynnt! That's Explorer or Artificer Trynnt if we're using titles, but I just like my name.

What's your background? Where do you come from?

I'm from a smaller settlement on the Tarnished Coast called Rata Kasus. It's a good way away from Rata Sum but there are just as many krewes and labs at work out there. Fishing too, your regular coastal town. I graduated from the College of Synergetics and apprenticed with a few different krewes before making my own way in the world. These days I live in Lion's Arch with my family!

What are some important relationships in your life? (romantic, platonic, familial, etc)

I'm lucky to have two romantic partners - my wife Seffi and our other partner Welxx. His name may not be on our marriage contract but he's every bit important to us. They both mean the world to me and I'm glad to have made a life with them.

My other closest relationship would have to be my older brother Czoll. He and Seffi always looked out for me when we were little and to this day he's the kindest, most caring person I know. I love 'ya, big guy.

I have some great friends as well! i could talk to Zexx for hours about jewelcraft and chronomancy and the same goes for Neffh's understanding of the magitechnical use of necromancy. It's been a delight to work and learn with them and I'll always enjoy the time we spend together. True geniuses and great people, both of them.

This ah- this list would get really long if I kept going, so I'll move on!

Have you done anything you'd like to brag about?

You're giving an Asura an opportunity to brag? You're either very brave or very foolish and will regret this by the time I'm done!

I'm an elementalist - a weaver specifically - and I've always been fascinated by the way different kinds of magic interact. It all exists in a kind of balance across a broad spectrum. Not just the four elements, but everything! It's always changing, working in harmony at one point or total dissonance at another. That kind of ordered chaos got me thinking.

I'm also an artificer - an inventor. I make machines and technologies that I hope to use to better the world around us. Tyria's changed a lot in the past decade, and now more than ever is it important that we rebuild and we've been given an amazing opportunity to do that thanks to Aurene and Her unique fusion of different magics that should react violently - but don't!

-ah bolts, I'm rambling. I made a machine that uses prismaticite to alter the state of magic from one input to another! I call it the Prismatic Aetherconverter. Turns out if you cut those crystals in the precise way, you can alter their output of magic. Put that assembly in a channel and feed magic through the whole system, you get a means of shifting its attunement to your exact specifications.

I use this for my other craftwork. It's a great way to speed up enchanting or charging magitech and it's a great source of magic for study in lab environments! I hope to improve its scalability and introduce a number of different form factors in the coming years, make magic more accessible to the masses.

What's your profession? What does a typical day look like for you?

I'm an explorer with the Durmand Priory. I joined almost ten years ago now and my responsibilities there vary from day to day.

If I'm out in the field it probably means I'm part of an expedition or a Pact taskforce looking to discover something or solve a problem. For me that often means I'm a small part of a much bigger team. Excavation, ruins-delving, anomalous materials handling. Everybody's important and everybody's got their role to fill. What we uncover tends to end up in my lab for analysis and adaptation into artifice.

If I'm working back at the Priory proper, I serve a logistics role. Any equipment requests for advanced technology, enchanted items, and specialized tools flow through me and artificers like me - a golem suit for hazardous environments, a camera designed to look into the Mists, or special munitions for use against dragon minions, for instance.

I find the work to be quite fulfilling!

What are some hobbies you enjoy?

I like to collect and restore old technology for starters! Really old - stuff my grandparents would have used. Datapads, audio devices, communicators, golems and golemites, that sort of thing. A lot of it doesn't work but it has a history all the same. We Asura don't have many connections to our past because of the Elder Dragons, so it feels like a way to look back on where we came from.

I play Polymock too. I was never good enough for the pro leagues but what could be more fun than some simulated holographic violence between Tyria's deadliest monsters? There's a card game variant too that makes for good entertainment on longer expeditions.

If all of that wasn't enough, Seffi's good at keeping me active! We swim or go on hikes or head out to Tyria's different mountain ranges for rock climbing. We don't bother with climbing back down though - that's what gliders are for! She calls me a cheater for using earth magic to speed my way up the cliffs, but she sure doesn't complain about more airtime after the fact. The Festival of the Four Winds is the best time for it - tall rocks, strong currents, and the summer sun? Alchemy, that's just perfect.

-

That's all for today! If you're an UWU guild member and would like to put your character in the spotlight, use this form!

[all-eyes-lead-to-the-truth]

All Eyes Lead to the Truth | Biogenesis (6x22)

In the past, Chuck Burks always got the call from Agent Mulder. His partner, ever the skeptic, had never requested his services. Chuck’s methods were, after all, a bit freaky-deeky for her. So when he heard Agent Scully’s voice on the other end of the line, full of concern for Mulder, he knew something was different. 

Before, it was always about solving the case; this time, it seemed personal.

“So, uh, what exactly are you experiencing?” he asked Mulder, who was a little caught off-guard seeing Chuck and Scully discussing the artifact they’d discovered, but happy to see him nonetheless.

“Noise, aural dissonance,” Mulder replied, indicating his head. “It comes and it goes.”

“Is it happening right now?” Scully asked.

“No, but it was a few minutes ago.”

“And it's only affecting you? Triggered by the rubbing?” Chuck asked. Mulder nodded. “Wow. That blows me away.” 

“Why?”

“Because the rubbing is a fake,” Agent Scully piped up. “And I'm not the first one to say so.”

It was true; Chuck’s findings did, for once, support her down-to-earth read on the situation. But as usual, with the X-Files, there was always more to the story. Chuck explained to Mulder everything he and Scully had found, including the fact that their suspect, Dr. Barnes, had a particular interest in debunking artifacts exactly like the one that was affecting him.

“Barnes has made something of a career exposing science and religious fraud,” Chuck told them. “Name your wonder of the world. He's been there, debunked that.”

Mulder wasn’t convinced.“Yeah, but wouldn't it be in his great interest to hide something that he couldn't disprove?”

“Mulder, if it were real, why would an American Indian artifact be fused in rock on the west coast of Africa?” Scully interjected.

“In 1996, a rock from Mars was found in Antarctica. How did it get there?”

Scully gaped at him. “It was from outer space.”

Mulder threw up his hands. Exactly! He tossed a triumphant grin at Chuck, who put up the image of the artifact on the overhead projector one more time. As he did, however, Mulder doubled over in pain. 

Chuck was absolutely stunned. He was witnessing its power in real time and he was fascinated.

Agent Scully gently ushered Mulder outside the room, her voice laden with concern. Chuck considered following to see if he could help, but decided against it; it seemed rather clear Scully had it under control, and even if she didn’t, it was even clearer she wanted to be alone with him.

Chuck had only met Agent Scully a couple of times, and despite her repeated blunt shutdowns of his and Mulder’s wild theories, he liked her. And he could see why Mulder liked her, too. She was a tough cookie, and just as passionate about science as he was. There was a reason she’d stuck by his side for so many years, though, and as he watched them conversing intimately in the hallway, he couldn’t help but wonder if that reason was a bit personal, as well.

After a minute or so, they came back into his office. Mulder got right to the point. “Hey Chuck, have you ever seen anything in your work regarding… well, mind-reading?”

Scully let out a loud, exasperated sigh, touching her hand to her forehead.

“I’ve never seen it demonstrated,” Chuck replied. Was Mulder suggesting….?

“Let’s just do this. Pick a number between one and a hundred.”

Scully appeared to have had enough. “Mulder, this is ridiculous. We need to get you to the hospital.”

“Just wait a minute,” Mulder said to her. He turned back to Chuck. “Pick one.”

Chuck was game. He thought hard. Nineteen. Nineteen.

“Nineteen,” Mulder responded immediately. “Was that it?”

Chuck could barely speak, he was so shocked. “Incredible!”

Scully furrowed her brow. “Enough,” she said. “Mulder, if you want to play fortune teller games later, I’ll be all ears. After you get examined.”

He turned to her. “Scully, I know Barnes killed Merkmallen, and he framed Dr. Sandoz. I can prove it to you because I heard it in his head, back at the lab. He hid the body at Sandoz’s place. Before I do anything else, we have to find it.”

Scully regarded her partner, and Chuck watched an entire story cross her face. Frustration at his stubbornness, but a similar desire to solve the case. Above all, he could see how worried she was about him. But if she knew Mulder the way he did —and he suspected that to be true— the resignation he now saw in her expression indicated that she knew arguing was futile. Mulder on a mission was as unstoppable as a freight train.

Mulder didn’t look away from her for a single second as they engaged in what Chuck could only describe as an entire conversation using only their eyes. It was almost more fascinating than the mind-reading, the way they operated.

“Okay,” she said finally. “We’ll check it out. Then home to bed, Mulder. I mean it.”

He gave her a smirk. “Understood, Doc.”

They looked at each other for another moment, and although Chuck’s forte was graphics analysis, he needed no expertise (or mind-reading abilities) to analyze the heat drifting between these two. 

“Thanks, Chuck,” Mulder said, shaking his hand. “Until next time.”

Chuck observed their body language, the way Scully was watching him closely, the gentle hand Mulder laid at the small of her back as he led her towards the door. There was something different about them, and he dared not speculate how their relationship had evolved since he’d last seen them, but they’d come a long way, that was for sure. 

Chuck took one last look at the garbled Navajo on the screen, then shut off the projector, following them out and closing the door behind him. 

He wondered how much further they’d go before he saw them next.

Read the rest of All Eyes Lead to the Truth on Archive of Our Own!

@admiralty-xfd

[thatgirlonstage]

One of the craziest things about EoA backstory is they needed to abide by the previously established StF lore that Aunt Tilly had the amulet before Sofia. But even so.. the Dark Times still didn't have be 41 years long? Tilly is at *most* in her early 40s and the earliest she likely got the amulet was age 7-8. They could've gotten away with like 15-25 years of Shuriki and still would've made sense. But no, must extend Elena and Esteban's respective traumas as long as possible. smh.

I haven't watched any of Sofia unless you count the Elena backdoor pilot so I wasn't aware that was where they got the 41 number from. I don't object to it as premise — I mean, fuck, I'm writing a fuck-off massive fic about it because I'm obsessed with it — but I do just find it funny that the show... clearly thinks about and uses it sometimes (eg: Elena's friend, I forget her name but the one who liked dancing, who's now a middle-aged woman) but then sometimes just. Forgets. Or seriously doesn't think about the ramifications of what that number means. My two examples off the top of my head being 1) Antonia's entire backstory, because the only way the math works there is if her dad worked for Shuriki, which makes the whole aspiration-to-be-a-royal-guard extremely awkward lmao, and 2) anytime they talk about holiday traditions, like in the Navidad episode they talk about all these big public parties they always have and I'm just sitting there. No you didn't. Shuriki banned parties and signing. You haven't done this in decades literally what are you talking about XD

It's fascinating to me partially because like. That's a whole lifespan. It's a short lifespan, that's young for a human to die (even in Ye Olden Days, lifespan averages that land in the 30s are generally failing to exclude infant & child mortality, humans hundreds of years ago did regularly survive into their 50s or 60s or older if they made it to adulthood), but you could grow up and get married and have a child that you raise to adulthood in that span of years. It's a really long time. But it's also not the stock fantasy, "the evil ruler has been here for 500 years." It's not an "it's always been this way" kind of thing but it is something that whole generations have grown up under, not just a "this was a few horrible years but everyone except toddlers still remembers when things were better" length of time. Forty-one is such a real number, and that's what can make it realistically horrifying.

Of course, that kind of goes over kids' heads, because when you're eight years old there isn't a ton of functional difference between forty-one years and four hundred, they're both just way, way longer than you've been alive. And I think the writers know that, which is part of why they skate over it a lot. But it's so fun to play with in fanfic land and this is what sends my brain spiraling about Esteban, just the, okay. You had a whole life for forty-one years that included all of the mundane things that you can't exclude from that kind of length of time. You had head colds and discovered a new food you like and did boring mundane paperwork and got used to it, because that was just your life for a really long fucking time. So what the fuck was it like surviving all that time?

[theredengineapologist]

Introducing the world of TTTE: Sudrian Boys [TTTE: Sudrian Boys AU Worldbuilding, Pt. 1]

Now that I've worked out exactly what I want from my AU, I believe it is finally time to share the lore with all of you (one month after I initially promised it OOPS).

The lore of this world is a bit HEFTY to explain, so I'm breaking it into multiple parts. This part mainly goes over the history and background for my Humanized!TTTE AU, TTTE: Sudrian Boys. In later parts, I plan to cover things like Sudrian vs Non-Sudrian Engine culture, how the engines differ from humans, and more info about how the shapeshifting works in my AU, so stay tuned!

Also! Information regarding specific characters will be included in separate character sheets I will be posting at a later date. I'm also currently working on some fanfics that I hope will expand my AU further. But feel free to ask me any questions you may have!

This is going to be a VERY long post so read on under the cut!

Before we begin, some key things to keep in mind:

I am still actively catching up with the canon source material at this point in time! Thus, aspects of my AU are subject to change as I read/watch more of the source material and incorporate it into my AU.

This AU is primarily based on TV series canon (both model and CGI), as that is what I am primarily familiar with. Some aspects are also taken from the Railway Series to help estimate an approximate timeline of events.

At this current point in time, BWBA is NOT canon in my AU. This is mainly because I have not watched it yet and have no plans to watch it later (with the exception of the Michael White episodes that everyone says are good). The episode "A Shed for Edward" from Season 21 is also NOT canon in my AU. This is to say that in my AU, Edward and Henry still live in Tidmouth. It's my AU. I do what I want.

On that note, Thomas and the Magic Railroad is partially canon in my AU. I haven't gone back to re-watch the movie yet (I do plan to at a later date), so I'm going purely off of memory and what I hear other people say about it. Because of this, I've decided to basically just take parts that I like and leave behind parts that I don't. In regards to the canonicity of the film itself, I consider it as a dream Thomas had (that may or may not have actually happend. It'll all make sense later).

With the exception of Philip the Diesel Boxcab, ALL of the engines are adults in my AU. Yes, that includes Thomas and Percy.

With that out of the way, let's start at The Beginning:

A long time ago, when humans were designing the first steam engines, a young faerie fell in love with them. Her true name is beyond mortal comprehension, but engines of today refer to her as Lady (or alternatively, the Lady of Legend).

Though fae are usually associated with nature, this faerie in particular was fascinated by machines and the ingenuity of mankind. And so she used her magic gold dust to breathe life into the machines that she loved so much.

And thus she became Lady, Goddess of Steam Engines.

For many years, engines and humans lived together in harmony. The engines found purpose in being useful, and humans were able to travel longer distances and distribute supplies amongst each other. It was a mutually beneficial relationship.

But then, everything changed when the fire nation attacked dieselization happened.

Lady watched in horror as humanity turned their backs on the steam engines that worked so hard for them. In increasingly larger numbers, engines were getting scrapped for as petty reasons as "not being useful enough". In an effort to protect her beloved machines, Lady imbued them with more powerful magic.

As much as Lady wanted to, the Fae Court wouldn't allow creations of man to be taken in mass to the fae realm. So if she couldn't offer her engines salvation, Lady would at least give them a means of escape.

By around 1960, as steam was getting phased out, Lady blessed her beloved machines with the ability to shapeshift. If an engine ever had a desire to leave the rails, all they had to do was imagine themselves doing so and they could walk the Earth in a human-like form. This would allow them live lives completely independent from mankind. Being "really useful" was no longer a requirement to have a right to live, now they could simply exist and pursue goals of their own choosing just as any human could.

For steam engines all around the world, shapeshifting became a secret and closely guarded practice that they would only discuss amongst each other. Humans were not to be made aware of this under any circumstances.

Unfortunately, even after Lady bestowed the gift of shapeshifting upon her engines, hundreds of them were still killed under the cutter's torch. Steam engines are proud entities after all, and many of them preferred to die upon their rails than to live in hiding as something foreign. And since shapeshifting was such a closely guarded practice, not every engine who may have wanted a way out was able to be taught.

Even so, there were still reports circulating of engines vanishing from scrapyards without a trace, almost as if by magic. These were the engines that managed to escape and are now living secretly amongst humans to this day.

Fast Forward many, many decades later. We return to the Island of Sodor:

It is now the late 2010s to mid 2020s. The entire Island of Sodor basically runs as a giant heritage railway.

The NWR is currently run by Sir Topham Hat III, who is at the strapping young age of 83. (I saw this tweet from someone who asked Christopher Awdry if STH III is still running the railway and he said yes so we're going with that.) STH III loves his engines very much, which is why he has no plans on retiring any time soon. Still, he has STH IV shadow him closely in order to prepare him to take over the railway some day.

Because of the success of both The Railway Series books and the Thomas and Friends TV show, tourists flock from all over the world to get a look at the famous engines. Plus, being one of the few places to still have steam engines in operation (and so many of them in fact), you can count on many of the tourists being train enthusiasts too.

Basically, the engines of Sodor are all treated like celebrities. They are FAMOUS and are generally adored by the public. Whenever they go anywhere, you can count on someone knowing their names.

And because of just how many tourists come to Sodor every year, the economy is thriving and the engines are all very, very busy. Everything is pretty idyllic.

But sometimes, prosperity can get pretty boring.

And now, our story begins:

As with many Sudrian Shenanigans, everything starts with Thomas the Tank Engine.

One night, after Thomas delivers passengers to a carnival, he makes a wish to leave life on the rails, even if only for just one night.

As much as Thomas loves working on his branch line, delivering goods and passengers from place to place, and meeting tourists, doing the same routine for literal DECADES can get a little dull.

While waiting for his driver and fireman to return from a short break, Thomas let his mind wander. He imagined himself as a human person taking part in the festivities with the passengers he just delivered. In doing so, Thomas accidentally activated the dormant shapeshifting magic Lady had blessed him with many years ago.

When Thomas opened his eyes, he was literally much closer to his rails than he had ever been. The station platform was much higher up. And Annie and Clarabel were much bigger than he remembered. Thomas had accidentally turned himself into a small human man, just like he had seen in his imagination.

He freaked out a little at first. When they returned, his driver and fireman didn't recognize him. It was only after Thomas started going off about things that only he would know, details about events that happened decades ago, before they were born and had only heard about in stories, that they realized that this small human figure really was Thomas the Tank Engine.

They called Sir Topham Hatt III at once, explaining the situation. And while baffling and unbelievable, the truth was right before their eyes. They were at a loss for what to do, especially since Thomas didn't know how to turn back yet. They concluded to allow Thomas to enjoy the festival for now, let Edward take the passengers home that night, and have Thomas stay with STH's family until he could figure out how to return to normal.

While scary at first, Thomas did enjoy the festival that night. And he went home with STH in Annie and Clarabel. He got to see the island from a new perspective, and he very much enjoyed that.

STH III made Thomas's driver and fireman promise to keep this a secret for now until they could figure out what happened. But that ultimately didn't matter because Thomas went to say "hello" to Edward that night. By the next sunrise, every engine on the island heard exactly what happened to Thomas. Some told their crew, but most weren't believed. Even some of the engines didn't believe each other. But at the very least, every engine on the island knew something strange was afoot.

The news eventually reached Donald and Douglas, who swiftly made their way to Tidmouth Sheds. Coincidentally, STH was bringing Human!Thomas to Tidmouth to inform the rest of the Steam Team about what had happened.

It is at this moment that Donald and Douglas reveal that they knew about shifting for decades. It was how they managed to get to the island under the guise that there would only be one of them. They would take turns, one traveling as an engine while the other hid in their cab. The reason they both appeared on the island as engines is because they hoped the controller would be kind enough to keep them both (and he was!). If it hadn't worked out, they would have run away together as humans. Since things worked out in their favor, they didn't see a point in shapeshifting again. But now that their secret was out, they needed to keep it safe.

Donald and Douglas taught the Steam Team how to shapeshift, and the engines continued to teach each other until basically every engine on the island knew how to switch between the two forms comfortably. In exchange, however, only a limited number of humans could know about engine shifting. These include STH III, STH IV, and the engines' drivers and firemen. Basically, only those who really needed to know.

Nowadays, STH gives the engines a little extra time off during the day to explore their new forms. The Steam Team also has an apartment where they can live together as humans if they choose. Within a few months, most of the engines have gotten in the habit of shifting back and forth, exploring their world and learning new things about themselves.

Now in a new perspective, the adventures continue. 😉