#but I intend to upload a chapter once a week

[evilkaeya]

Should I start posting my skk abroad mission fic first or odaran mcd fic first

[reiding-writing]

erotomania [ s.r ]

01 - exhortations

Summary:

You’d found yourself with a stalker, one who seemingly had a romantic obsession with you, and you had no idea what to do, except maybe confide in one of your team members.

WARNINGS: Signs of stalking, mentions of break-ins, fears of violence, mentions of panic attacks

pairing: spencer reid x gn!bau!reader

genre: angst, hurt/comfort, mild fluff

wc: 6.8k

main masterlist!!

a/n: so… i decided to start a series- considering chapter length it’ll probably only be three parts and i hope to have them out once a week but knowing my college schedule i’m not sure about that 😭

<poem used - ‘my fire, my flame’ by ariana alonso>

thank you guys for all the love on my other uploads <33

series masterlist!!

01-exhortations, 02-avoidance, 03-revelations, 04-confession

It started with a rose.

A single white rose left haphazardly on your doorstep.

You didn’t really think much of it, your neighbours had a white rose bush they regularly pruned, and you figured the wind must have blown one of the loose roses cut from it over to your porch.

You’d often find scattered petals and wilting rose heads on your lawn, blown over by the wind to no fault of the old couple living next door. Although you did have to admit that a full rose was something that had never blown over before.

But hey, sometimes these things happen right?

That was the same rhetorical question you asked yourself two weeks later when a blank envelope was posted through your letter box alongside your regular mail. It looked like a birthday card, the envelope a pale yellow and closed shut with a small white sticker in the shape of a rose. Curious.

You debated on whether to open it at first, not wanting to accidentally intrude on somebody else’s private business, but after a few days of deliberating you came to the conclusion that reading what’s inside might help you find the intended recipient.

You didn’t find anything of note in the envelope, just a folded piece of white paper with a typed out romantic poem imprinted on its inner side. It was odd for sure, but it wasn’t anything to worry about.

You ended up throwing the envelope away. As much as you would’ve liked to have delivered it to its rightful recipient there just wasn’t enough information for you to do so. You just guessed that it was a teenager trying to romance one of their classmates and had posted their efforts through the wrong door.

It was harder to brush off the new succulent lining your kitchen windowsill.

You’d come home to your house after four days spend in Iowa on a case, absolutely exhausted. So much so it took you three separate trips in and out of your kitchen to realise that the three succulents usually lining your window had now been increased to four.

At first you just thought it was your exhaustion getting to you, but you knew for a fact that you’d only bought three. Garcia had made you pick them out specifically. And this new fourth one didn’t fit in.

You examined the new succulent closely, trying to figure out where it came from. It was a vibrant green colour, with small, round leaves that formed a rosette shape. Unlike your other succulents, this one had delicate white flowers blooming from its centre. It was a beautiful addition to your collection, but you couldn't help but wonder who had put it there and why.

You carefully examined the plant for any clues. There were no tags or labels indicating its origin, and it seemed to blend in seamlessly with the rest of your succulents, as if it had always been there. The thought of someone entering your home while you were away sent a shiver down your spine, but there were no signs of forced entry or any other evidence to suggest foul play.

You unfortunately didn’t have much time to mull over this new addition to your plant collection as the team were whisked away on another case, less than 24 hours after your last case finished.

Still, you couldn’t seem to get the small white flowers of the plant sat upon your windowsill out of your mind, and you were starting to question your sanity a little. Were you sure that you hadn’t bought four? Maybe you had. Maybe it’d been there the whole time.

“If it isn’t my favourite profiler, don’t tell Derek that,” Garcia almost immediately backtracked as she picked up the phone. “What can I do you for my sweet?”

“Hey Penny, just a random question, you remember when we went plant shopping a while back?” You held the phone up to your ear with your left hand, using your right to continue jotting down notes on the portable whiteboard the Montanna Police Department had provided your team with for the case you were working on.

“Oh of course I do my love. Why, Looking for a professional suggestion for your next addition?” You could practically hear Garcia’s smile through the phone as she spoke.

“No Pen, I just wanted to check something,” You let out a small chuckle at her exaggerated confidence in her knowledge of plants. ”Did I end up buying three succulents or four?”

“Three my love, two Chinese Jades and one Opalina I believe. Why’s that?”

“Oh no nothing, I was just checking which ones I’d bought with you and which ones I’d bought myself, thanks Pen,” You didn’t know why you felt the impulse to lie. Maybe it was your subconscious telling you that it was in fact you who had put the plant there. That you’d just been so busy that you’d forgotten about it. Either way you didn’t want to stir up the pot if you couldn’t prove anything was actually wrong.

But you also couldn’t rid of that feeling in the pit of your stomach that rose when Garcia confirmed you hadn’t bought the plant when out with her.

“Alrighty, anything else you need from her majesty of all knowledge?”

You give another small laugh at Garcia’s manner of speech. “No Pen, thank you.”

”Well then my dear, this lady’s got other fish you fry, I’ll catch you later,”

You hear the end dial through your phone before you can respond, a usual end to a phone call with Garcia, and whilst her little quips and jokes left you with a small smile on your face, it didn’t quite reach your eyes.

A pale yellow envelope.

You feel a sense of deja vu when you pick it up from the floor on the inside of your front door, seemingly slotted through your letterbox just like the former had been, white rose sticker holding it closed and all.

The difference this time however, was that when you turned the envelope in your hand it had your name inked on the front, scrawled out in a messy cursive that stained parts of coloured paper black, the ink having bled as the name was written from the sheer amount of pressure used.

That’s the moment that you started to panic.

You could put the signs together by now. A perfectly de-thorned rose on your doorstep. Messages posted through your door. A new succulent left in your kitchen after you’d expressed interest in them. It wasn’t just a series of coincidences, they were signs. Signs of something you didn’t particularly want to think about.

The last one was the worst. It meant that whoever had taken it upon themselves to form a fascination with you had somehow managed to get inside of your house whilst you weren’t there.

You triple checked the locks on your doors that night, leaving the new envelope unopened on your kitchen counter.

You ended up taking it to work the next day, tucked away in your messenger bag and left under your desk as you tried to distract yourself through with your files.

You tried to convince yourself that you were just overthinking. Maybe the indented recipient of the letter just happened to have the same name as you. Maybe this was just the last two weeks of continuous stress was just taking it’s toll on you and making you paranoid. You tried to convince yourself. But you knew.

“Excuse me,”

Your internal monologue was cut off by a soft voice, and your mind was momentarily wiped of your dilemma as you looked up towards the source of the noise, the small receptionist from the front of your floor.

“This was dropped off last night, I believe it was for you.”

In her hand was a small rectangular package, wrapped in brown paper, and she held it out to you with a small smile.

“Oh, thank you,” You return her smile with one of your own, taking the package from her hand and watching her retreat back to her desk. You weren’t expecting anything delivered, were you?

Unwrapping the package only left you more confused. It was a leather bound copy of Romeo and Juliet, the cover a deep red and embossed with with gold roses and an intricate border, the book’s name embossed in a similar fashion in the cover’s centre, although flaking in some areas from the wear of the book.

Your eyebrows furrowed as you turned the book over in your hands, but as you opened the front cover that expression fell straight back into concern. A small rose, etched into the inside over in a black ink pen, fit with a single letter, ‘R.’

“Hey Spencer, uh- can I- borrow you for a sec?” You stand from your desk, walking around the cluster in the bullpen to stand behind Spencer’s, head buried in the files he was working on.

“Of course, what’s up?” Spencer took a second to look up, folding the folder closed and leaving his pen inside to mark the page. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah uh- I uh- Were you expecting a book delivery?”

You held the book out towards him, eyes silently pleading for him to say yes. A part of your brain still denied the inevitable, that it wasn’t some outside person who had been leaving things around for you to find. That there wasn’t someone who knew where you lived, and now where you worked, sending you eerily creepy ‘gifts’.

Spencer inspected the book in his hands, examining it closely with narrowed eyes.

“Not that I know of...” He looked up at you, eyebrow slightly raised as he handed the book back to you. “I already have this copy at home,”

Your stomach dropped a little when he confirmed it wasn’t his.

“Right, sorry,” You take the book back from him with a pursed smile, holding it in both of your hands and tapping your nails against the back cover.

You logically knew it wasn’t for him, Spencer was all for buying things second hand, but he would never pick up a book with this much wear and tear unless was a first edition owned by some prolific scholar, the spine damaged and the pages folded and scrawled with annotations that you weren’t sure you wanted to read, but hearing the confirmation just made it sink in a little further.

“Are you alright? You seem a little tense.” Spencer’s voice cut you out of another internal spiral, and you gave him a quick nod.

“Hm? Oh yeah i’m alright, thanks anyway Spence,” You give him a small smile and a half wave as you retreat back to your own desk with the book in hand.

Spencer stared at you for a moment longer, watching as you sat back down at your desk, discarding the book behind your stack of files as if you couldn’t bare to look at it any longer.

Something seemed very off with you.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

My fire, my flame,

My one and the same.

Swiftly swinging from life to end,

Through the times, we meet again.

My lover, my friend,

My mirror, my mend.

My fire, my flame,

No darkness can tame.

Ochre to blue, two as one.

Never unbroken, never undone.

Healing the hurt, flame dims down.

Fire prevails, doubt it drowns.

Forever and true, I am your blue,

The one you felt, the one you knew.

Drunken to sober, you are my ochre,

The one who inspires all my desires.

Over and over, we dance again,

Swiftly swinging from life to end.

It was nearly midnight, and yet you felt wide awake.

A part of you wanted to sleep, lay in bed and pretend that nothing was happening, but you knew that your mind wasn’t going to let you.

You’d sucked up the resolve to open the envelope you’d stored away in your bag, another poem left inside. Except this time instead of being typed out and printed, it was written in the same ink that had adorned its sleeve.

Some of it was barely legible, but you found the words ingrained in your mind almost as soon as you read them. They were sweet from a surface level, a message of true and eternal love, but under your circumstances the only emotions that it evoked from you was a mix of dread and fear.

Your mind soon flickered over to the book you’d left on your nightstand, and you soon found yourself curled up under your duvet with the book in hand, lamp left on both to aid your reading and provide you with a small sense of security in the warm light it cast over the walls of your bedroom.

The narrative of the story was what you’d expect, the traditional tale of Romeo and Juliet, but that wasn’t what you were interested in, it was the annotations, written in the same handwriting as the poem left discarded on your coffee table.

It seemed like a lot of references to love, mainly to the female protagonist in Romeo and Juliet, and you noticed that your initials and “R.” were written a lot.

It seemed that whoever had taken a liking to you really liked you... a little too much.

There were references to your personality, how much you loved things like animals, reading books and eating dark chocolate. They had even written that your favourite colour was burgundy.

You were starting to find this rather unnerving.

The part that really sent you over the edge into a panic was one line in particular, underlined so many times that there was a small rip in the page.

These violent delights have violent ends.

The book in your hand was soon replaced with your phone, held up to your ear as took in slow breaths through your nose.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” You heard Spencer’s voice ring through your phone.

“Hey uh, I’m so sorry to call you so late but uh- Can I ask you for a favour?” The tone of your voice wavered slightly as you spoke, not at all aided by the small tremble of your hand.

“Yeah of course, anything for you, what is it?”

“Can I uh,” You hesitate for a second. “Can I come over?”

“Yeah, of course,” Spencer responded quickly. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah I just, don’t want to be on my own right now,” It wasn’t exactly a revelation. There had been a few instances where tough cases left the team feeling more comfortable spending the time after in the company of someone else.

Most of them had family or lovers as their comfort, but in the case of Spencer, not having any contact with his father and his mother institutionalised, and your parents living across the country, you often found comfort in each other instead.

“Thank you,”

It seemed like you wouldn’t get any sleep tonight.

“It’s no problem at all, I’ll see you soon?” Spencer’s voice was soft and understanding, and you found yourself increasingly grateful for his insomniatic nature.

“Yeah, see you soon…”

You let out a small breath of relief as you hang up the phone, piling some things into a backpack, tattered book included, before locking up the house and driving to Spencer’s apartment

The drive there seemed to be one of the longest drives of your life, constantly deliberating with yourself on whether to confide in Spencer about your theory. Part of you wanted to tell him, you knew with an outside objective view alongside his intelligence that he’d be able to find you a solution, but you also didn’t want to burden him.

When you reach his apartment, you knock on the door twice. “Spence?”

The door unlocked almost before you’re finished knocking, and Spencer stands on the other side, dressed in tardis pyjama pants and a black t-shirt, his brown hair a little flattened, presumably from tossing around in bed trying to get comfortable.

“Hey,” He stepped aside to let you in, adjusting the crooked glasses sat over his nose.

“I’m so sorry for bothering you so late, thank you for letting me come over-“ You blurt out a hasty apology for your intrusion as you take your shoes off at the door and slump down on Spencer’s couch, dropping your bag on the floor next to you.

Spencer followed you with his eyes as he closed and locked the door behind you. “It’s totally fine, it doesn’t matter if it’s 2pm or 2am, you’re always welcome, you know that,”

Spencer smiles at you before asking, “So, what’s going on?”

“I think I’m being stalked-"

The words almost melded together with how fast you spoke them, and it’s only after the whole sentence leaves your mouth you realise that you’d blurted out the thing you’d been mentally fighting over telling him or not.

Well, so much for dealing with it on your own.

Spencer’s smile immediately disappears, being replaced with a look of concern. “Stalked? What do you mean? What’s been happening?”

You sigh softly at Spencer’s expression. There was no backtracking from this now. So you start right from the beginning.

“Well, a few weeks ago I found this perfectly pruned rose on my doorstep,"

Spencer listens to your explanation with a small nod. “Right…”

“But I wasn’t like concerned or anything because my neighbours have a rose bush, and I figured it was just the wind or something. You know, sometimes that kind of stuff happens right? But then over the last few weeks things keep turning up and I know that it’s not normal you know?”

Spencer’s look of concern only grows as you begin explaining, and he took a seat next to you on the couch. “What kind of things have been showing up? Apart from the rose?”

“Like two-ish weeks after the rose thing, there was an envelope posted through my door alongside the rest of my mail, and I ended up opening it because it didn’t have a name on the front and I wanted to to figure out who it was for right?”

Spencer gives you a small nod as a gesture for you to continue.

“I thought it was a birthday card at first, but I’m pretty sure it was a poem, it was just typed out and stuck in the envelope, no names or addresses or anything. So I just threw it out and moved on. I figured it was some teenager who’d posted a love note through the wrong door.”

You use your hands to gesture your explanation, your right leg bouncing absentmindedly as the nervous tension builds up in your body.

“And then after the case we had in Iowa I came home and instead of three plants on my kitchen windowsill there was four. And that was when I was like ‘okay something’s not right here’, and I even rang Penny to check and she confirmed that I’d only bought three,”

Spencer raises a brow, his expression furrowing further if that was possible. “Wait, it turned up in your house?”

You give him a small nod. “I checked all the doors and windows and everything but there was no evidence that anyone had broken in, and by this point I’m like genuinely questioning my sanity over whether I’d actually just bought this stupid plant myself and was freaking myself out over it, but then yesterday evening after I got home from the Airport I found another envelope by my front door, same colour, shape and everything, they even both had the same sticker keeping them closed, but this one had my name written on the front of it,”

By this point, your explanation had turned into more of a ramble, and by the time you had reached a comfortable place to stop, you were feeling short on breath.

“And you opened it?”

You respond to Spencer’s question with a nod, brushing a piece of hair from your eye. “I opened it an hour ago maybe?”

“And it was another poem?”

You give Spencer another small nod in affirmation at his prediction.

“Okay, what else? Did anything else happen?” Spencer’s hand reaches out towards the curve of your knee, effectively halting the nervous tic you’re using to release your tension.

“Well, I showed you this earlier-”

You bend forward to pull your backpack up onto your lap, rifling through it to pull out the worn copy of Romeo and Juliet to present him with it once more.

“it was left at the office’s front desk which half makes me want to believe that it’s not related, but I was reading the annotations earlier and they’re really specific and I freaked myself out which is why I called you in the first place-“

Spencer’s brows crease under the rims of his glasses as his eyes pour over the book’s cover again. “Who left it for you?“

“I don’t know Spencer that’s my issue," You sigh softly as you turn the book over in my hands. “Can you just read through this for me please? I didn’t finish it because I freaked myself out and then immediately came over here so-“

You over-explain your reasoning for wanting him to read through the book for you, figuring that if you could give him a valid reason then you would feel less guilty about asking him to do it in the first place.

Spencer takes the book from you hands whilst you’re still explaining yourself, beginning to flick through the pages one by one, pulling his middle and ring fingers down the page as he scans over the writing.

It’s times like these you’re thankful that Spencer’s reading speed is 85 times faster than the average person’s, and you find your eyes following his fingers as he traces them over the pages, taking note of how he bends his middle finger ever so slightly so that his fingertips are level with each other and how he keeps his index finger raised away from the paper’s surface. It was oddly distracting to watch.

It takes him little more than five minutes to have read through the whole thing, with him stopping a few times along the way to make a couple of comments as he does.

“Well he makes reference to your favourite colour, and your birthday...”

“....your job...”

“...and of course your name.”

“Jesus, the guy’s really obsessed with you isn’t he.”

You furrow your face as Spencer confirms your concerns, rubbing your hands over your legs as a self-soothing technique.

Spencer thinks again for a moment as he shuts the book in his lap. “I think you should spend the night here.”

You can see his gears are turning, the same cogs turning when he’s deep in a profile. He’s gone from being concerned to calculated. “No way in hell am I leaving you alone tonight.”

“I don’t wanna burden you this is a me problem-“ You immediately shut down his suggestion despite you having stayed at his apartment on multiple occasions in the past.

You’d gotten an objective opinion on the situation. That was all you wanted. You didn’t need to drag him any further into your personal issues.

“Hey no,” Spencer shakes his head as he places the book down on the small oak coffee table in front of you. “You’re not burdening me, okay? You don’t have to be alone tonight, you can sleep here.”

“I’m not letting you leave now,” Spencer adds with finality. “You’re clearly anxious, and you look like you need to get some proper sleep.”

You bit the inside of your cheek at Spencer’s insistence, flickering your eyes over to the book on the table, its embossing glinting slightly under the warm overhead light.

He might not exercise it often, but Spencer definitely knew how to put his foot down when he needed to.

“Thank you…”

“Hey, look at me?” Spencer waits until you look at him, then he offers you a soft, reassuring smile. “...Everything’s gonna be okay. Okay?”

You give him a short nod with a pursed smile, not entirely convinced of his assurance but wanting to go along with it anyway for the sake of being able to calm down enough to at least get some sleep. “Okay,“

“Let’s get you set up for the night. We’ll talk this through in the morning.”

Spencer stands up, pushing himself up from the sofa with his hands and leaving into the bedroom. “Get as comfy as you’d like okay? I’ll be back.”

He turns to leave then stops at the door and looks at you one more time. “Oh, and... do you want to borrow one of my T-shirts?”

The invitation was obvious. “Uh yeah if you don’t mind…”

He gives you a small nod as he retreats into his bedroom, re-emerging a few minutes later with a fleece blanket, one of the pillows from his bed, and a black T-Shirt identical to the one he was wearing. “Here, my couch probably isn’t the comfiest place to sleep but-”

He hands the T-shirt over to you with a small smile, stacking the blanket and the pillow on the end of the sofa.

“Don’t be silly Spencer, I’m grateful for you even letting me in let alone letting me stay over on such short notice,” You return his smile with one of your own as you take the shirt from him, retreating into the bathroom to change into it.

You feel the soft cotton against your bare skin as you pull the fabric over your head, noticing that it’s been washed recently, and it still has a slight smell of Spencer’s cologne. It falls quite low, Spencer having to have bought a bigger size than he realistically needed due to the length of his torso.

Your mind continues to run rampant as you exit the bathroom, a mix of the overwhelming stress of your situation and the conflicting feeling of serenity from the solicitude radiating from Spencer.

It was a lot to process for it to be just 1am.

You basically collapse onto Spencer’s couch, burying your head into his pillow with a groan and unfolding the blanket to throw it over yourself.

“If you need anything, anything at all just wake me up okay?” Spencer continued to express that kind compassion that made your chest tingle a little, definitely not helped by the faint scent of his cologne radiating from his pillow, joined by a trace of lavender, most likely an essential oil he’d been using in the hope it would help him sleep better.

“Yeah, thank you again Spencer, it really means a lot.” Your voice is half muffled by the angle of your head against the pillow as you crane your neck to look at him.

“It’s really no problem. You’re always welcome,” He switched off the small lamp keeping the living room, dimly lit, allowing it to fall into a comfortable darkness. “Get some sleep okay?”

“Yeah, thank you Spence…” Spencer gives you one last smile, joined by a half wave that you found more endearing than awkward, before leaving for his bedroom and clicking the door shut behind him.

For the next half hour or so you lie awake on his couch, trying in vain to sleep despite the rampaging thoughts running through your head. It was only when you heard Spencer open the door and quietly enter the room that you finally turned your head to look at him.

The surprise on his face told you that he hadn’t expected you to be still awake. “Why are you still up?”

“My mind’s running a million miles a minute, why are you up?” Your voice is partially hoarse from tiredness, and you shift around on the couch until you are lying facing in his direction.

“Just wanted to get a glass of water…” Spencer purses his lips slightly as his eyes trail over the position you’re lying in, clearly feeling a sad-sympathy at your mind’s insistence at you staying awake. “Hey, can I try something?”

Spencer slowly makes his way over to where you’re lying, taking a seat on the edge of the coffee table in front of you.

“Sure?” You raise an eyebrow slightly, rubbing one of your knuckles over your eyelid. Spencer smiles at your reaction, extending his hand palm-up.. “Alright... can I have your hand please?”

“Should I sit up?” You extend your right hand towards him, using your left to prop yourself up onto your elbow.

Spencer shakes his head. “No, no, keep being comfortable... I think I know how to fix your problem.”

Spencer then reaches out and takes your hand firmly in his, holding it between both of his hands with your palm facing the ceiling. “Ready?”

You give him a short nod in expectancy, eyes flickering between the way his hands hold yours and his eyes as you lie on your back.

His hands were frigidly cold compared to the warmth of his apartment, but you couldn’t say that it was uncomfortable, it was actually quite soothing, a nice contrast from the small cocoon of warmth under the blanket.

Spencer slowly rubs his fingers on the inside of your palm, adding a gentle pressure first to the bases of your fingers and working his way down slowly, pressing the pads of his fingertips into your skin in small circles. “Close your eyes and breathe deeply.”

You follow his guidance with no hesitation, relaxing back into the pillow beneath your head and closing your eyes as you focus on the feeling of Spencer’s fingers dancing over the palm of your hand.

“Just breathe in and out....” You can hear the confidence in his voice as he continues to move the pressure downwards, pressing his thumb against your wrist and gently massaging it.

“A lack of sleep is usually the cause of delayed melatonin production, and studies have shown that certain pressure points on our bodies can help speed up the process.” Spencer begins to explain the reasoning and process behind the gentle hand massage he’s giving you, his voice soft and quiet.

“It was traditionally used in China as a part of acupressure, with six identified pressure points on our bodies that encouraged the production of serotonin and melatonin to help with relaxation and reduce chronic pain, but in the present day it’s been adapted into a massaging technique to help people fall asleep.”

The softness of his voice paired with the gentle massaging of his fingers on your wrist quickly left you feeling more relaxed.

“There are two pressure points on different points of your ankles, one point on each foot, one between your eyebrows, one behind each of your ears, and one on each of your wrists.” You find yourself nodding along to his explanation absentmindedly as you enjoy the gentle pressure of his fingers.

“Although, the only pressure points that have been reliably linked to melatonin production are those on your wrists and behind your ears, here, lie on your side for me.” Spencer gives your wrist a gentle pull to encourage you to turn over, which you very gladly oblige to, humming a soft agreement as you turn to lie of your side facing him with your eyes still closed.

He gently slides his hand up the side of your neck, the coldness of his fingers sending a small shudder up your back, and he presses his thumb into the small gap between your jaw and the rest of your skull, rubbing it in slow circles.

You let out a small, almost inaudible sigh at the gentle pressure he’s applying, and Spencer can tell that you’re quickly falling into full relaxation. “The best results from acupressure occur after 3 - 5 minutes of continuous pressure and…”

His voice trails off slowly as he feels the tension in your jaw release, and he glances down towards your face, a small smile adorning his features at your relaxed expression. “…is best done in a comfortable environment…”

He continues to rub gentle circles into your skin for the next few minutes before gently removing his hand from you, standing up from where he was sat on the coffee table with a soft smile still gracing his features.

“Sleep well..” He whispers the words under his breath as he slowly retreats back to his bedroom, the glass of water he originally sought after completely forgotten about.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

It’d been a few days since you’d confided in Spencer about the stalking situation and stayed the night with him, and fit with a new set of locks on your doors, you’d gone back home to stay on your own.

You walk into the BAU office expecting to see Spencer at his desk like always, ready to talk through your next steps forward with him, except he wasn’t there. You check the watch on your wrist. 7:45. He should’ve arrived by now. Why wasn’t he here?

"Hey uh, do you know where Spencer is?" You approach Morgan over at the kitchenette, leaning against the counter top with your elbow.

“Good morning to you too lover.” Morgan gives a half-laugh at your lack of your usual greetings, making sure to throw in a tease about how the first thing you talk about is Spencer’s whereabouts, not something entirely unfounded considering how close you and Spencer had been getting over the last week or so.

“Ha ha very funny, do you know where he is?” You respond to his quip with a slight roll of your eyes.

Morgan shrugs his shoulder slightly, taking a sip of his freshly made coffee. “Maybe he slept in,”

“Spencer Reid? The man with four wake up alarms?” You furrow your expression slightly. Something about Spencer not already being in the office didn’t sit right with you.

“Okay okay, maybe that was a bad guess, but I don’t know, who knows what he might be doing,” Morgan remains nonchalant if not a little heedless. “Maybe he stumbled on an antique Russian novel collection on the way to work or something,”

“He’s never late for work-“ You mutter to yourself under your breath, half-ignoring Morgan’s attempts at explaining Spencer’s lateness, and you pull your phone out of your pocket, dialling Spencer’s number and holding up the phone to your ear, the consecutive rings echoing out of your phone’s speaker.

Pick up Spencer.

If anyone on the BAU team would know Spencer’s whereabouts, it should be the two of you. And yet neither of you had any clue where he was.

The phone continues to ring until it reaches his voicemail. there’s no answer.

Something was wrong.

You try to call him again. Nothing. This was not like Spencer at all.

Your anxiety spikes as your subconscious links his lack of answering back to your stalking situation, What if Spencer was in danger? What if this stalker had followed you to Spencer’s apartment that night you stayed with him and now knew where he lived?

The minute your brain made the connection you were turning on your heels to exit the office, grabbing your car keys from your desk as you did so.

“Hey-” Morgan follows you over to your desk, putting an arm out as you try to walk past him. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to Spencer’s apartment.” You try to push Morgan’s arm out of the way, only for him to block you with his entire body instead.

“Slow your roll there turbo, everyone is late every now and again, that doesn’t mean we have to turn up to their house out of nowhere.” Morgan’s explanation would be logical under normal circumstances, but he didn’t know that you were being stalked. Nor did he know that this stalker had possibly found Spencer’s address due to your own stupidity leaving him in potential danger.

“Listen Morgan I appreciate your apprehension but I do not have time for this right now.” You manage to swerve your way around Morgan and push your way out of the glass doors of the BAU office, bee-lining it down the stairwell instead of waiting for the elevator.

“Hey! Wait up!” Morgan’s voice echoes down the stairwell as he runs out of the office after you, only managing to catch up to you as you stop to unlock your car, and he blocks the door from opening with his hand. “What is going on?”

“Morgan, if you want to ask me questions, get in the car.” The tone of your voice leaves no room for argument, and Morgan can tell be this point taht you’re not alright, so he gives you a short nod and goes around the front of the car to get in the passenger’s side.

Please be okay, please be okay...

That’s what’s going through your mind as you leave the BAU building, running the speed limit as you drive towards Spencer’s apartment with an awful feeling in your stomach.

“So are you going to tell me what’s going on or what?” Morgan begins his questioning as soon as you hit the main road.

“I think Spencer is in danger.” You keep your eyes trained on the road, both hands braced against the steering wheel as you turn a roundabout.

“Okay, listen.... I’m with you in the fact that this is very out of character for Spencer... but there’s no use in jumping to conclusions, okay?” He puts a hand on your shoulder, clearly concerned at how fast your mind linked Spencer being late with him being in danger. “Let’s just approach this calmly and rationally.”

“I am being rational.”

“No you’re not, you’re panicking,” Morgan gives your shoulder a squeeze before letting his hand fall back into his lap. “Just take a deep breath and a second to think.” Morgan’s voice was full of a calm, soothing reassurance even as you were clearly anxious. “You’re gonna give yourself a panic attack if you don’t.”

“I know I know I’m fine-“

You open your palms against the steering wheel as if to emphasise your point, exhaling heavily through your nose as you pull into the parking lot of Spencer’s Apartment building, leaving your car parked at an angle across two parking spaces.

You’re thankful in this moment that Spencer lives so close to the office building, and you shut off the car quickly, exiting it with the same haste.

Morgan follows closely behind you as you jog across the concrete towards the entrance of the building, locking your car remotely as you pushed the outside door open and started your ascent of the stairs.

“Come on, calm down you don’t need to run-” Morgan called after you as he followed you up the stairs, continuing to try in vein to get you to take a step back and just calm down a little.

You didn’t listen of course, and you only come to a halt once you’ve reached Spencer’s apartment door.

You reach out your right hand to knock as Morgan reaches your side, but as your knuckles come into contact with the wood of the door it creaks open, the hinge pin of the door not fully closed.

Oh no.

[astarionancuntnin]

here's my masterlist with everything i've written! note that:

all fics are explicit and astarion x fem!reader unless specified

series and multichapter fics have their masterlist linked with all chapters and ao3 links

one-shots/requests will have their main theme mentioned in parentheses next to the title, and the full lists of content warnings are available on their linked post/ao3 page

Requests: OPEN!

Current pending requests: 5

- i am more comfortable writing astarion (spawn or ascended) and halsin, but im open to get out of my comfort zone and write other characters! - i write in third or second POV (more experienced with x reader/tav) - comfortable with most types of writing (fluff, smut, angst, hurt/comfort) - i am willing to go extremely dark and kinky (basically ask and if its above my limit ill tell you, but if ive already written about it, im cool with it) - send an ask and ill get started on it! (i am quite busy recently, but i promise to get around to your request sooner rather than later)

fics are posted in chronological order of creation

this list will keep getting updated as i upload more

full list below the cut!

she was a wildfire that couldn't be tamed; he was the night star admiring her ruthless dance

Undisclosed Desires (Denial of feelings, rivals to lovers) (part 1)

Masterlist

astarion and you, along with your other companions, have been traveling together for a few weeks now. he gets on your nerves at least once a day. but as much as you hate to admit it, your late night activites are plagued by him. little do you know, hes aware of the effect he has on you and intends to use that to his advantage.

Bad Blood (Mature, Angst, follow up fic to Undisclosed Desires, Astarion POV) (part 2)

Masterlist (not posted yet)

it was meant to be a nice, simple plan. get the sorceress to fall in love with him to assure his safety. what he didn't plan was to fall for her as well, and all the complications that came along with it.

A Lesson in Taming Your Dark Consort

(all fics in this series are one-shots that surround the dynamic between Ascended Astarion and his consort Malva (my oc evil tav), heavily BDSM driven)

Taming a Tempest (spanking, semi-public sex)

oh, to be the Vampire Ascendant's dark consort. to have eternity and enhanced powers right at her finger tips - only to be denied. but two could play this game, and Malva would make Astarion regret witholding anything from her.

read on ao3

read on tumblr

Dancing on the Edge of a Knife (knife play, orgasm denial)

ever since his ascension, Malva was convinced that Astarion was the only person who could understand her every twisted desire. well, almost. there are some things she still keeps to herself, he simply wouldn't understand this part of her, the one who dances on the very edge of her knife.

read on ao3

read on tumblr

Contributions to Angels of The Night Collection

Blood Sisters (MalvaxMerelind)

Die For You (Lovers to Enemies to Lovers, Ascended Astarion) Completed work!

contains some Shadowheart x fem!reader

Masterlist

the ascension changed the person Astarion was, or so you believed. you broke up and parted ways after defeating the netherbrain, thinking it was for the best, but when you see him again 6 months later at the reunion, you realize you never truly moved on. and neither did he.

Meet Me In The Woods (predator/prey)

read on ao3

read on tumblr

it's astarion's turn to keep watch for the night. everyone's off to bed and he's still gone hunting and nowhere to be seen. you refuse to be the one to fill in for him again, so you venture into the woods looking for where he was last seen.

Midnight's Embrace (weed, polyamory)

astarion x female!reader x halsin

read on ao3

read on tumblr

you can’t recall the last time you had a real, good night of sleep. your fight with the nether brain is approaching fast and your anxiety is only increasing. halsin proposes to try a special brand of herbs to alleviate your mind. turns out this herb also awoke something else in you.

Nothing But A Dream (somnophilia)

read on ao3

read on tumblr

you've agreed to take things slow with astarion, only partaking in nighttime activities when he specifically desires them, and this morning, he wants you. but he would hate to intrude on your precious beauty sleep.

Run, Little Fox (predator/prey, hate sex, mildly dubious consent)

read on ao3

read on tumblr

this brat of a rogue questioned your leadership one time too many, it is time he learns his place, and youll do it the only way he'll listen to you: with a challenge. if you win, he will be held accountable for his actions, but if he wins, he gets to use you every night. it doesn't matter anyway, you'll win... won't you?

Public Display of Affection (A!A, jealousy, semi-public/loud sex, hints of voyeurism feat. Gale)

read on ao3

read on tumblr

his consort - his beautiful, too kind for her own good - forever young lover. she was his, and his only, and he believed it was long overdue to make that statement clear among the rest of their group. after tonight, the only name spiling from her luscious lips would be his.

Death is Not an Escape (Mature, Dead By Daylight AU, heavy angst)

read on ao3

read on tumblr

it wasn't supposed to end like this, they were supposed to get out and defeat the absolute - together. but as a dark fog swallowed them whole, their fates changed drastically.

The Ways of Worship (Priest/Modern AU, Corruption)

read on ao3

read on tumblr

this faith was all you've ever known. so when you wake up a morning with the dreadful feeling that you've lost it, you do the one thing that makes sense - confess to your local priest. when he offers his guidance with the promise of making you whole again, you accept without a second thought. your first lesson begins tonight.

Remember Me (Angst, Audio adaptation)

read on ao3

read on tumblr

you can't make sense of where you are or even how you ended up in this cell - hells, you're not even sure of who you are at this point; any memories of your past are a blur. it's all the more confusing when a group of adventurers come to rescue you, and a particularly worried pale elf takes it upon himself to help you remember who you are.

Silent Night (Somnophilia, Heavy Non-Con, Breeding)

gale x tav

read on ao3

read on tumblr

gale's one dream with Tav is to have a family - something she's been teasing for too long now. something gale is done denying himself. tonight, whether she wants it or not, he'll make her the mother of his children.

sleeping next to astarion

A!A's children

your short future with astarion

A!A being possessive of his consort

reflection on revenge with astarion

[broccolicheddarchicken]

Title: You Would've Been the One

Chapter One - Prologue

Relationship: Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Rating: Explicit

Word count: 2,568

Tags (some of them): Break Ups | Angst with a Happy Ending | Jealous Shane Hollander | Jealous Ilya Rozanov | Explicit Sexual Content

Summary:

Shane would always be yearning for something with a man who didn't want him, wouldn't he? A little positive attention and he'd folded like origami. Pathetic. "Stay," Rozanov said. It almost sounded like pleading. That trick had worked on him, once. “Why?" Shane's tone was more biting than he'd intended. "What do you think is going to happen if I stay? Are you gonna make me a goddamned tuna melt?” Rozanov, to his credit, took the words like the blow they were. His eyes widened, then he covered his face with his palms and muttered something in Russian. Shane had never seen shame written across those features before.

In April 2017, Shane Hollander suffers the most painful not-breakup he’ll ever experience. Months later, he's outed. Two years after that, a broken knee ends his career.

When Rozanov unexpectedly crosses Shane's path at a hockey camp six years later, Shane resolves to be courteous but keep his distance. But Ilya is just as beautiful and charming as he ever was, and he seems determined to give what they'd once shared a second chance. A real chance.

It's a bad idea. Shane knows it's a bad idea.

The terrifying thing is that it doesn't feel like one.

Broccoli's Comments: Hi everyone! This is my very first multichap offering for this fandom! The basic premise is "what if Shane didn't get that concussion in April 2017", since Ilya was intending to break up with him that night... and then a couple other things happen, lol. For now, I'm just starting with the prologue, but in a few weeks I'll start uploading for real, weekly on Sundays. Keep your eye out for it!

Here's the link!

NEXT CHAPTER

[trappedinafantasy37]

Today is a sad day. I have officially written the last chapter of To Be Free From the Gods. Three full notebooks in which I wrote every single chapter, and roughly 60GB of video footage for references, and now it's finally done. I actually cried while I wrote the last few paragraphs. I've been working on this since March, bridging from one single thing that I had wished was different in the base game. I honestly never really intended to post it anywhere. And when I did, I did not anticipate anyone actually liking it. Nor did I anticipate people falling in love with Daedra, and her relationship with Minthara. Already had a couple people tell me that Daedra and Minthara are on their lists of favorite ships.

To everyone who has followed me through the story and kept up, thank you. There are not enough words to describe how much I love you and appreciate you. All of the feedback I have gotten has only encouraged me to do more, and I want to do more. Even though I am good at writing essays, I've never really considered myself to be much of a creative writer, nor particularly good at it. So, it makes me happy that people do like my creative writing, just as much as my analytical and argumentative stuff.

With that being said, there are still plenty of chapters left for me to publish so it's not over quite yet. Once I finish publishing TBFFTG, uploads on I Want This One will be more frequent as I will soon have the time to put more attention to it. But uploads will not be as frequent as TBFFTG, nor will I stick to a strict schedule like I used to. I want to give each chapter the proper attention and care, and will upload them when they are done. It will also be a long fic, but I don't intend on it being as long as TBFFTG (although, I never intended for that one to get as long as it did either).

I also do intend on getting over to my Shadowheart x Minthara fic. I have the framework written out for it, but only up to Act 3. I still need to finish my Shadowheart origin run before I start writing anything for it, which I might get back to within the week. I also have a small queue of stories that I do intend to get to as well so.

Love you guys!

[frodo-with-glasses]

25 Questions with Phil Dragash: YES, SERIOUSLY!

So y'all know how I was reviewing Phil Dragash's audiobook of LotR last year, but kinda fell off somewhere in the middle of Rohan?? Well, guess what! A couple weeks ago, I received a tumblr message from the man himself, saying he'd read through all my reviews, had really enjoyed the little blast from the past, and was open to answering questions if I had any!

So of course, I had LOTS of questions.

The first one being: "Are you actually the real Phil Dragash??"

But I'm delighted to say that after exchanging emails with the work email listed on his website, I can confidently say that it is the real dude, and I've had a blast chatting with him! So for those of you who urged I listen to this audiobook—especially @laurelindorenan for her glowing recommendation—and for everyone else who likes the audiobook and/or enjoyed my reviews: I am delighted to present, ladies and gentlehobbits, this peek behind the curtain!

But of course I'm putting it all below the cut, because this man rambles like I do 🤣

Obligatory disclaimer: All opinions presented by Mr. Dragash are his own, I am not necessarily condoning any of them; please do not come after me for his opinions regarding pineapple on pizza.

25 QUESTIONS, LET'S GO!

1. Tell me how you got into Lord of the Rings!

I was ten years old when my dad took me to the library, and found a VHS copy of Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 animated Lord of the Rings film. I was already a fan of the “Chronicles of Narnia” and my dad just handed the tape to me and said “Look, C.S. Lewis’s friend made this”. I watched it, and had no idea what was going on. It was so hard to understand.

Fast forward to the year 2002 when “Fellowship” was out on DVD, and we had a movie night at my older cousin’s place, and watched the film for the first time. My 13 year old self was enraptured by it. Dad bought the DVD first thing the next day, and I’ve been a fan ever since! I, my brother, and our dad watched “Return of the King” in theaters four times, which was saying something, considering we only ever saw a movie once in cinemas. Between “The Return of the King” opening in December ‘03, I picked up the books and read (as well as I could) through them. A lot of friends kept joking “tell us how the damn story ends!”, good times.

2. When and how did you decide to make this audiobook? What’s the story behind the entire project? 

I was a very ambitious lad, and my first and biggest interest was filmmaking. I used to direct short films with my friends ever since my 11th birthday, and was the youngest in class at the filmschool I attended a few years later. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I had massive ambitions to direct “the Hobbit”, which is silly in retrospect considering I was 16 years old at the time. I even sent my portfolio and DVDs of my films to Peter Jackson’s manager (who actually got back to me with a wonderful response, despite not being able to accept my ‘completely reasonable’ offer) When I was heartbroken and torn to pieces knowing I wouldn’t be directing the movie, a few more years went by, and I decided to reread some chapters of the “Lord of the Rings” books. I remember really well that this was late at night, laying in bed, and going through “King of the Golden Hall” and seeing how close to the movies it was, but also far more expanded. I thought “my extensive home-made short movies experience with sound design and sound mixing could work here, and I could just read a few chapters and try to make the soundscape as realistic as possible. Why not try it?” 

So, the next day I tried. The first two chapters I tried were “King of the Golden Hall” and “A Journey in the Dark” (which partly answers your other question about that chapter). I was so absolutely surprised by how well it was going, that I decided to upload them onto YouTube in March 2010 I think. I got a fairly good response, and I was planning on doing a few more random chapters. I never intended to do the whole thing. But this one comment on YouTube I’ll always remember, it said: “I think you should go from start to finish, because you’ll probably get used to the characters and sounds and people can also follow along in the story gradually”.

Taking that suggestion to heart, in August 2010 I went from Chapter 1 onward. 

3. Were you inspired by any other audiobook versions of LotR (such as the BBC radio drama)?

I was not, I actually haven’t listened to the BBC Radio drama until far ahead into the project I was doing. I did some research on what other audio productions anyone did with LOTR, from The Mind’s Eye edition, to the ‘60s Hobbit Radio Play; so I felt pretty confident. I just fell in love with the way the films brought Middle-Earth to life and seeing their incredible dedication for authenticity (from the props department, to the music), you really couldn’t do any better than that visually or audibly - at least in my opinion. I just wanted to hear Tolkien’s text but with the realisation of the films. 

However, if you listen to Chapter 1 of TTT, and hear how Legolas laments their absence from not being there to help Boromir at Amon Hen, you can clearly hear the inflection from the BBC Radio play’s version. I just lifted that because I thought it was a fantastic way to deliver the line.

4. Did you have any rituals for “getting into character” before recording?

If I were to show you the raw unedited recording sessions, you’d probably be surprised at how underdeveloped it is! I had no real rituals or warmups, I just went for it. Usually went in cold, and tried reading the entire chapter and doing all the voices at once. Then I’d be exhausted, and afterwards start cutting all the mistakes, and separating each character into different tracks – and then re-recording 50%-70% of it, as I was laying in the sounds. 

I think any character just needs a few words for me to say in their voice, and that helps for the rest of their dialogue. For Aragorn it was usually: “You cannot wield it! None of us can.” for Pippin it was: “Sometimes”, just random things that make things ‘click’ in my head. If I got lost or didn’t feel like the performances were working, I’d simply just watch scenes from the films to hear the real actors again!

5. Who was your favorite character to voice? Who was your least favorite? And why?

People who know me, know I love doing the villains. Sauron, the orcs, the Nazgûl, etc. I just love the idea of personifying things that scare you. Something completely the opposite of who you are. Always a fun time! Any character I can nail extremely accurately always makes me happy, but I’m always very critical of my own work, so it’s a rare thing.

My least favorite characters to voice are: Imrahil, Denethor, Arwen, Celeborn, Galadriel, Erestor, Lindir, Haldir, Goldberry, Gildor… I think the pattern is pretty obvious if you realize that I am incapable of providing a satisfactory voice that feels unique enough. They just sound to me like “I wish I had a broader range. They weren’t done justice.” I have feelings for most of the characters in this situation, but I’m a mere mortal. I can’t do all of them as well as I wish I could. I wish Aragorn was more like Viggo Mortensen’s voice (I tried with the nasally yells you mentioned!), I wish Gandalf had a richer tone, I wish Saruman sounded more majestic, and I wish Frodo was - in retrospect- more older sounding, too. There’s so much I wish I could do better, but to hell with it, I tried.

Fun fact: my least-favorite to voice are also Orcs because they destroy my throat after a while. Which is ironic, because of my first statement.

6. I noticed that you gave the men of Rohan and Gondor slightly different dialects! Are you pulling from any real-world accents to make that happen?

I did try to listen to Anglo-Saxon, and ancient norse but I just tried to make Rohan and Gondor slightly distinct in any way I could. I never really tried to make things too obvious, but admittedly, I think I just used my intuition (smoothing the R’s for the Rohirrim, making the Gondorians more ‘proper’, etc.). I do want to emphasize that this was a one-person project and keeping things together or consistent is definitely an extraneous exercise when you’re just trying to get something finished by yourself! 

7. Some characters (like Beregond and Quickbeam, to name a couple of my favorites) aren’t in the movies, so they don’t have an actor for you to imitate. How did you decide what they would sound like?

Well, in the case of Beregond, I realized he was just “your ordinary guy”, and seeing Minas Tirith through his eyes (and Pippin’s)  is such an amazing and interesting opportunity. It made the city feel so real, and I wanted to take advantage of that. I think I started with a ‘generic’ voice, but when I re-recorded him knowing more and more of the context and what he was saying to Pippin, and as a result who he is, made me adjust what I felt were more his personality. But still that ‘ordinary guy’ idea was the bedrock, and it’s been years since I heard that chapter, but I hope it holds up! (I just remembered Bergil is in that too, another voice I wish I could have done better) 

Another fun fact: when Pippin scares the kids in Minas Tirith, the audio was from something I videotaped when I was 10 years old with my friends, it had the perfect “kids-going-aaah!” sound.

If I had it my way, I’d have a cast of dozens in this Audiobook, so a lot of times I never felt like my voice was enough to truly capture the “We’re in Middle-Earth, we just have microphones to record it” idea. So I have to make compromises since I was the only one doing the voices. That being said, Quickbeam was a fun surprise because he felt like, as you said “young treebeard”, and these things just worked out through experimentation! I think Quickbeam turned out pretty nice. I like Quickbeam.

8. HOW—I ask with great enthusiasm—DID YOU DO TREEBEARD’S VOICE? How did you get that resonance and woody sound? Did you send your voice through a wooden box and re-record it on the other side like they did in the movies?

It’s really great that you know all the behind the scenes stories from the films! Especially what Ethan Van der Ryn, David Farmer, and the late Michael Hopkins have done with their incredible creativity. I had no such resources to produce Treebeard’s sound. What I did was a digital facsimile: a special ‘room’ reverb, with some other equalizing effects to boost the bass and (maybe, I can’t remember) another higher pitched track of the same voice faintly in there. 

You won’t believe this, but I was not going to do The Two Towers audiobook unless I could do a good Treebeard voice. In 2011 after finishing “Fellowship”, I was on the fence about continuing, and only committed once I knew I could do Treebeard right. Treebeard was the key to all this. This should come to no surprise to the ones who played the game, but I used a lot of sound effects from ‘Battle for Middle-Earth’ which contained a lot of clean sounds for ents, trolls, the balrog, the ringwraiths, and other monsters from the films. I used the ent’s footsteps from the games, and recorded my own foley for some of the trees snapping and leaves rustling as well. The “fart” sounds were the low creaking of tree branches, and - as they stated in the making-of for the films - very pitched down cow moos. 

9. Tell me about the foley work! Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been that nerd who watched the Behind The Scenes featurettes for fun, so I’m very interested to hear how you made the sound effects for footsteps and whistling arrows and jangling horse harnesses and such. 

I’m glad you are! I’ve collected sound libraries (ripped from video games, and finding and buying sound packs) for a literal decade, because I always needed sounds for the short films I made when I was younger. I just kept learning about how to mix sounds together, and it’s very creative and very enjoyable! That being said, the foley work itself is mostly recorded by me. If I can’t find a sound in the library I have, I will record it. Clothing rustles, and touch are all recorded while I listen to the audiobook playback and ‘perform’ each character. It’s a really arduous process, but I think it adds so much life into the sound. 

I went out into the woods (or backyard) with my mic to record footsteps, sometimes I would listen to the audiobook with headphones while performing the footsteps. When I would have traveled somewhere with different terrain I would be sure to record more foley (rocks being moved, or pebbles being stepped on) knowing I’ll use it for certain chapters. I do not want to reveal a huge secret about the predominant foley for the character's clothes, but an old backpack I used were 90% of the characters’ ‘movements’. Some wingflaps of the fell beasts were just my jeans. It’s a really creative process trying to find things that ‘sound’ right for an environment or action. The magic is putting them all together and hearing the result. Also, yes Sam’s pan is my grandma’s frying pan, and I know it’s sometimes annoying, but - look - Sam has a lot of stuff to carry.

I start with the background sounds (wind, tree rustles, water if there is any, etc.) lots of layers of them just to make them sound unique and not the same. Then I move to selective and nearer environmental background sounds. Then, the ‘hero’ sounds, the effects that are integral to the story (if it’s sword clashes, or an explosion, or who knows what), and finally the foley (footsteps, clothing rustles, breaths, etc.) - I had a friend record her own horses breathing and moving for a lot of closeups of the horses in the audiobooks. I think even if you can’t really hear some of their low breaths, their presence is still ‘there’. I personally think I got a lot better by the end of LOTR than when I started! 

I wanted to add, the sounds for little Elanor in the very last scene of “The Return of the King” (the baby sounds), I was not happy with the stock baby sounds I had, and asked my older cousin (an audio person too!) to send me recordings he made of his then-1-year-old daughter in a studio. So, my first-cousin-once-removed is Elanor! She’s 22 now. I feel old.

10. Do you have a favorite sound effect from this project? Mine is the “pat-pat” against cloth that’s used to denote a hug.

Absolutely, do you remember the two “watchers” before the tower of Cirith Ungol? The vulture-like statues that block the hobbit’s path out? The alarm sound is a wholly original sound design I did, and I’m really happy with it. It’s just ugly sounding, and that’s the point. I always wished I had more Nazgul, and I think the worst moments I had with mixing were the battle scenes. There’s just too much to handle and make it sound good. But I really tried.

I’m very glad you heard the ‘pat-pat’s. I try my best to perform every character when recording foley, and want even some of the sounds to convey something in the telling of the story.

11. What's the thought process behind your use of the various musical motifs from Howard Shore's score? (Read: Why do you use the Shire theme so often, and why does it get me in the heart every single time?)

I want everyone to know that this is a really important and valuable question, and one I never really get to talk about: To me, Howard Shore’s music is one of the very best things to come out of the films. He truly made an opera out of the story, and all his leitmotifs and orchestrations are a stroke of genius. They work on their own, and when reading the books as well, and as a nerd for films and all that stuff, I wanted to put a lot of care into how I’m placing the score, and for what scene, emotionally and leitmotivically, if that’s a word.

The Audiobook I did is obviously a ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ situation, so I can’t credit myself for the majority of the Audiobook I did, but I wanted to use all my filmmaking intuition to properly use the music to enhance the telling of the story. So, just like the filmmakers had to change and mix lines from the book, or make changes to make it work as a film, I felt like a lot of instances happened with the music for the audiobook. Obviously, I used the score when applicable to the intended scenes, but there are very often cases where they won’t work. I read as much as I could in the past about what the motifs were and where Shore used them in the movies, so I followed that trajectory for the most part. Gondor is Gondor, Rohan is Rohan, Mordor is Mordor, etc. 

Changes happen when I feel the emotions for a scene in the books do not match up to the ones in the films, and then there are brand new scenes and characters not in the movies at all, that I have to figure out! Take the pause from music between Gandalf falling into the chasm with the Balrog, and the fellowship successfully escaping. It’s perfect in the film, but I knew I couldn’t put the lamenting heartbreaking music in there yet, since the descriptions all drive the idea that escape is paramount. So I treated it as a ‘shock’ moment. No music until they’re completely out of the mountain, then the grief comes in. Things like that, a lot of fun creative thinking to get those emotions working!

I recall you mentioning the ‘Gimli / Legolas drinking game’ statement and how I used the hell out of it throughout the Audiobook, which is a good example. I pitched it up and down, for different moments, and it just has that hobbit mundane and jolly quality to it. So, in it goes to fill moments from the books. 

I also edited and modified existing motifs for completely different scenes and ideas. One of my favorites is when Treebeard talks about the Entwives. I needed this melancholy yearning sound that was really essential, and found it by reversing Eowyn’s theme, and pitching it down so the violin sounds like a cello/bass. To me it just felt extremely appropriate for the sound of a long-lost relationship while portraying a larger-than-life creature. 

Let’s also say Bombadil. I made up the idea that the last statement in the credits for “Return of the King”, was Bombadil’s theme. It’s actually just a reference to Der Ring des Nibelungen by Wagner, a very verbose beautiful crescendo, but I thought “I’ll pretend like it’s Bombadil, he’s last in the score even though he’s the first in Arda”. So I used that musical progression in his songs, that’s his leitmotif now (to me, anyway) He sings in that wavy up-and-down melody. Which is why you hear a lot of that in those chapters.

I also try to use recordings not from the original score: I looked far and wide for alternative recordings, predominantly the album by the Royal Prague Philharmonic, and the “LOTR Symphony”, just to make the Audiobooks feel different. I pitched down and moved and reassembled a lot of different cues for different scenes as well.

There are not a lot of instances of music from other movies, however, they do exist! I used music from “Battle for Middle-Earth”, the game “War in the North”, and for the last few chapters, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” since it just came out at the time. I used a lot of music from Howard Shore’s “Seven” and “The Game” during Shelob (I think), and for the Barrow-Downs. I used a tiny bit of underscore from the brilliant Don Davis’s “The Matrix Reloaded”, it had a really eerie choir which made me feel like it would be perfect for the fatigue and dizzying unreality of Mordor when Sam and Frodo were on their last leg, trying to get to Mt. Doom. Lastly, I used a little bit of music from Howard Shore’s “Twilight: Eclipse” for some dialogue scenes during Return of the King! And music from the independent film “Mongol” by Tuomas Kantelinen for the Woses when Theoden has to get help from Ghan-Buri-Ghan. Also the ending of ROTK has a few cues from “The Lord of the Rings musical”, lovely stuff.

It may surprise you that there is a small amount of score I actually ‘wrote’ with help from my brother (he’s a musician). It’s in the coronation of Elessar. It’s not very good but I needed something. There is also a cello version of “to the edge of night”, which I kindly asked permission to use by YouTube celloist, but I sadly don't think that video is up anymore.

Lastly, I use the Shire music so much because - just like Howard Shore said - it becomes a ‘hymn’ or an ‘anthem’ for the hobbits as they leave their comforts behind and are in a wide and unfamiliar world. Every little bit that reminds them of home, or relates to each of them, usually deserves a little ‘shire’ statement here and there. I feel if it’s in the characters’ hearts and minds, it has to be expressed in the music!

12. Out of all the chapters I’ve listened to so far on the Internet Archive, “A Journey in the Dark” is the one most plagued with editing issues; Sam’s temper tantrum over leaving Bill the Pony is cut out entirely. Which is a shame, because I was really looking forward to hearing your take on that. (Is it strange to say that I wanted to hear you break down into blubbering tears? Probably. Let’s ignore that and move on.) Is there any chance that you have a cleaner edit of that chapter somewhere?

I think you’ll be very unsurprised to know that “A Journey in the Dark” is the first chapter I ever recorded. I think you’ll also need to know that I did FOTR when I was 21 years old, and my grasp on doing better sound mixing or even getting the characters right was still a work in progress. I learned so much going chapter-by-chapter and felt that each succeeding one improves from the former. As a demo-run, I did “King of the Golden Hall '' and “Journey in the Dark” in early 2010 (in fact, I did only the first half of “JITD” back then. Stopping right after they are barred inside the mines, as the Watcher destroys the gate. I did the second half once I caught up with the story going chapter-by-chapter.)

There are so many issues with it, and I haven’t listened to it since. If you have headphones you’ll also notice that none of the voices really pan from left to right, or feel like they’re ever anywhere else except the dead-center. I was lazy back then. 

When I read the chapters, at the time, I was sharing an ‘office room’ with my younger brother, and as a teenaged younger brother does - continues strumming his guitar no matter what the other brother is doing. It was really fun, and funny and I was extremely sloppy with editing things out, and taking it too seriously. So, for sure you can hear ‘someone’ in the background during the early parts of FOTR, and I was too lazy to re-record or edit out the noises that weren’t supposed to be there.

Forgive me if this part is a lot longer, but now that you mention it, I want to get on my soap-box and rant about how many things I agree with about the Audiobook’s shortcomings and how many things have changed since the wee days of 2010: 

I didn’t really get a grasp on the characters, and I had no idea I was going to do the entire book. I did not take enough care with sound mixing (it’s a highly technical and rigorous practice, I’ve discovered. Even now, ten plus years later - it’s too technical for me to fully understand yet), and I did not thoroughly re-listen to the chapter when I was done with an edit or a sound-effects pass. Therefore there’s always been mistakes still in there, and just unpleasantly careless placement of sounds and music. I have often thought about re-recording it to get it up to scratch, but it’s been over a decade and I haven’t properly preserved all the sound stems without having to re-sound-mix the whole chapter again, and there is that little thing called ‘burnout’ which is hard to ignore. So, I apologize to everyone who has to suffer through that huge drop in quality with “A Journey in the Dark”. It quite literally was my first attempt, and it definitely shows. 

The good news is that a fan asked me the same thing about the missing piece in that chapter (the one you mentioned! With Sam and Bill!), and I’ve heard the same comments about it throughout the years. Why is it missing? I don’t know why! I recorded it, but in my loose run-and-gun past when I was a wee lad, I was careless, and just had the mp3 with that part missing. A rendering error, perhaps! Stupid 21 year old Phil just hodgepoging everything.

A Few months ago, I did get another email about that missing piece. I thought “okay, once and for all, I’m going to find that missing part.” - and I searched my old harddrives for some kind of archival copy with that part in it. Amazingly, it was a lot harder to find than I thought. Every rendered version of JITD either stopped right before that scene, or had it omitted. I actually found one half of it as a ‘demo’ piece I rendered years ago for a ‘sound trailer’, and then I finally found the original YouTube video I made - which had it intact! Now the hardest part was stitching it together with the rest. Took longer than I thought, but I finally amended this horrible incompetence. And yes, I will share the link to you! And be prepared to be disappointed at the 2010-era quality!

I don’t know if anyone knows this, but with the mp3s circling around, I have taken the liberty of re-recording and re-working some chapters from their original versions. I try my best to preserve the originals, but I also wish people to listen to the re-records. I have actually re-recorded and re-mastered “A Long-Expected Party” three times. 2011, 2013, and 2014. I re-recorded “King of the Golden Hall” in 2013, and “Shadow of the Past” in 2014. I usually try labelling the dates on the mp3 files themselves. The one I’m most proud of re-recording bits of, is “The Pyre of Denethor” as the first time I had Denethor say his last words he was mildly raising his voice, but I listened to it again one day and went “this man should be at the edge of sanity.” - so he absolutely yells now, and it’s such a night-and-day comparison.

Another addendum: I completely understand the complaints about ‘the sound/music drowning out the dialogue’. It’s been the #1 complaint over the decade. I completely understand. I never had professional sound mixing gear, nor did I have proper mixing headphones or speakers or a proper studio (most of the audiobook was recorded at my grandmother’s house!). The balance of the audio making it sound immersive, (like you are there!) and having clear dialogue to hear is - like I said - an extremely technical and complex process that I’ve never had the ability or tech to master. Let alone for a book that’s 48 hours long, and has so much sound and music to it. Nothing would bring me more joy than to work with an experienced sound mixer, and find all my audio stems, and for us to work together to clear up any and all issues. But as this project was a simple fan-made work, and I haven’t distributed it myself for a decade, who knows?

This is also why I never went on to do “The Hobbit”. Burnout is real, and I’ve never recovered from LOTR. The burnout… “it’s never really healed, Sam.”

13. What was your favorite scene to record and mix?

Mount Doom. Can’t get better than trying to make the climax as horrible and eucatastrophic as that. It all led up to this, and it was such a rush to work on. I remember how I was at the edge of my seat watching ROTK in cinemas for the first time, and how amazingly they pulled it off, and I wanted to definitely imitate that, but using Tolkien’s own writing. Just so cool.

I have two favorite chapters: The first one is “The Scouring of the Shire”. I remember well, when I was working on it, I realized this has never been ‘dramatized’ before. At least not in full. I felt so special being the first one (probably) to do it. I could imagine the entire chapter in my head like a film, and I could bring it to life with very little outside influence. Such a poignant and shocking chapter. 

I don’t think I would have done it as well without the experience I gained doing the rest of the Audiobook. Showing the strength of the four hobbits, portraying the dignity and resolve of their kind, giving that pathetic yet dangerous authenticity to Sharkey, and the ruffians, illustrating the battle of bywater with sound… this was done in 2013, so we all were able to listen to new music by Howard Shore (for The Hobbit), and I would be able to transpose motifs from that, into “Scouring”, and honestly I wouldn’t know how it would have worked out if the Hobbit films didn’t come out just at the right time. I think the score fits so well with the events of “Scouring”, there is a ‘mordor’ theme but it feels ‘unfinished’, like the remnant of an old defeated foe; there’s that wily progression for Radagast in the films, that I used for the hobbit’s rebellion and the conflict, and there’s a new ‘hobbit/shire’ motif that worked so perfectly for a ‘wounded, but recovering’ Shire. I feel so silly talking about decisions I made for this, but I always wanted to share some thoughts I had! 

Fun fact: I had a wonderful person ask if she would be able to play Rosie Cotton back in 2013, and I asked her to perform her lines. She was great, but I realized a very strange thing: when I put her in the audio mix, it would actually break the immersion, because you can hear a voice that wasn’t mine, and as a result - I couldn’t help but keep thinking - my voice for Rosie’s mother sounded like a Monty Python skit in comparison! And thus her lines had to be unused. It kind of just opened the fourth wall, breaking the illusion. Which is a shame, because I always dream of having a fully-cast LOTR Audiobook, maybe someday officially.

The other favorite is “The Tower of Cirith Ungol” just because I listened to it one day in 2014, and heard no errors. I was so proud. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to change substantially. No one dislikes all the errors more than I do!

14. What’s your best memory from this entire project?

My late dad drove me and my brother out into a clearing at midnight in the forest. The sky was so clear and starry. And we were here simply to just yell at the top of our lungs to record material for “Helm’s Deep”. All the clear yells: “Elendil!!!” “Gúthwinë! Gúthwinë For the Mark!”etc. Etc. - I lost my voice, it was a fun time. He held the microphone for me as I splashed around a stream (for Gollum), once again at midnight since there were fewer background sounds.

I also tell this story a lot: A friend of mine who was listening to the chapters as I finished them - she hated the sound of knuckles cracking. And hated spiders. So, obviously, Shelob would have to have knuckle-cracking sounds for her limbs. So I recorded my own knuckles cracking and tried using it as much as I could for Shelob’s legs moving about. My friend was soooo ecstatic to know this fact.

15. If you could do it all again today, what would you change?

I would consider doing a ground-up re-recording of everything. With a budget, with a cast, with a lot more understanding of the story and intentions behind them. With VR sound options. With extra original music. That’s the dream. 

If we’re back to reality, I guess I’d just re-record a bunch of chapters since they could always be better, and tighten all the technical errors. But that would require a lot of assembling of the raw archived files, and re-building of sounds, and re-recording of lines. Also, as I stated before, I do not want to distribute my unofficial fan work just because I know that it’s a copyright nightmare. And burnout… “it’s never really healed, Sam.”

I like taking other people’s opinions to heart, such as the issues with Frodo’s youth or inflections and intonations for certain scenes that I didn’t quite fully grasp the first time. I would love to adjust things and make it closer to the book now.

- - - - -

And now! The Silly Questions Lightning Round!

(With thoughts from Lady Glasses in parentheses and italics!)

1. In Fellowship, long stretches of dialogue would often have someone randomly cough in the background. Tell me about the Cough. Why is the Cough there?

No one hates the coughs more than me. That’s either my brother minding his own business in the other end of our ‘office room’. I think you now know I was 21, I didn’t care, so these things are just left in because I was careless. However, sometimes there are intentional coughs to make it feel more realistic. It’s been years since I listened to it, so unless I somehow do a massive commentary stream someday (thinking about it), your guess will be as good as mine! The coughs heavily subsided once I did Two Towers, since I was by myself.

2. During the dinner scene with Farmer Cotton, someone burps. Who was that?

Mine. I have no regrets with that one. Or Pippin. I guess it could be Pippin.

(Darn! And here I thought it was Farmer Cotton, LOL)

3. How did you manage to make Bill Ferny’s voice so perfectly obnoxious?

I imagined Bill as an obnoxious guy. The image in my head gives me a good idea of what he’d sound like, and I’m so glad he’s so obnoxious that you had to mention it.

(He sounds perfectly punchable. Thanks, I hate it.)

4. Did you crack yourself up at any point in the recording?

Oh yes, in fact I have a whole outtake reel just for you!

(Warning to anyone who clicks the link: the April Fool's audio had me ON THE FLOOR)

5. Voice acting aside, who is your favorite character in LotR and why?

If you asked me in 2002 it would be the Balrog, if you asked me now it would be difficult because so many of them mean so much to me, and each of their aspects have something to aspire to. Gandalf, Aragorn, Sam, Frodo, Galadriel, the list goes on and on.

(That's beautiful, and so true. The story really grows with us, doesn't it?)

6. What’s your favorite color?

Blue. Always has been.

(Blue is a good color! 💙)

7. Political question: Pineapples on pizza, yes or no?

Yes, I still don’t get what the fuss is about

(Oooh, controversial)

8. Is a hotdog a sandwich?

No, it’s a hotdog!

(Counterpoint: A hotdog is a taco.)

9. What’s your opinion on geese?

They’re racist

(Racist against the entire human race, apparently)

10. How much would I have to pay you to say “I love boats!” in Merry’s voice? (It’s an inside joke with my friends.)

Nothing, it’s on the house!

(HOLY CRAP I LOVE YOU)

- - - - -

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us! What are you working on nowadays?

I’ve actually had a few people ask me if I’ll ever do more audiobooks like this, and I seem to have tapped something. Yes, in fact! I’m working with a few creative collaborators on a small company to do the exact same sonic experience with other books! Since we’re very small, we are starting with stories in the Public Domain, and have successfully kickstarted (and finished) “The Jungle Book” by Rudyard Kipling. Which will be out (hopefully, officially) by early September! I’m really excited and hope this will lead to more projects, and - hopefully- back to Tolkien someday, in an official manner. Please follow my Instagram or Facebook for more info about it. (I also have a Twitter and Tumblr and more, but they’re all completely unrelated to LOTR and are just me drawing doodles and being a nerd, very unlike the Audiobooks I did, which is a bit confusing, I admit.)

- - - - -

And that concludes our interview! As I told Phil, it was so much fun to discuss a fellow fan's passion project like this. The more I read about it, the more I realized just how similar it was to my own experiences as a fan creator. We all start out as just a noob with a few unpolished skills, making something because we love it, and we learn and grow and hone our talents along the way. It's legitimately inspiring.

Needless to say, I am stoked to finish listening to the rest of this audiobook! Is it a bit weird knowing the creator of the thing might drop in and read my reviews?? Yes. Yes it is. But I'm gonna do it anyway. No holds barred! If I hear another cough, you're gonna know about it, Phil!

Also I may or may not do something with that audio of Merry because I'M STILL DYING OF LAUGHTER HELP

Anyway! If you made it to the end of this, you deserve a cookie! Everybody say thank you to Mr. Dragash, and go check out the other stuff he's doing nowadays! Namárië!

[cosmicalart]

Finally making a proper post.

Hello, it's been awhile. I think in my last post (not a reblog) I had mentioned not having a six sentence/wip post as I was burnt out and behind on Baz to The Past. I hadn't intended for the burn out to take so long, maybe take a break for a week or two and then get back to it, but I was working to jobs, having mental break downs and stopped going on tumblr at all. Well, I ended up losing my main job, got severely depressed and had the holidays and such, but that's all done and I had time to take care of my mental health so I'm back. Don't know if people notice me reblogging again but I started getting back into tumblr and even started drawing again which I haven't done in almost three years (which was a shame as I put ART in my username for a reason and then never shared anything) and used that momentum to get my creativity going again. Which leads me to what everyone's probably been waiting for, I am working on Baz to The Past again, I don't know when chapter 4 will be up but it isn't abandoned and will be completed.

That's pretty much all I wanted to say, I'm happy to be doing well and be returning to the Fandom after an apparently much needed break. Under the cut will be the art works I've been working on and a link to Baz to The Past for anybody interested or wants a re-read while they wait for the next upload.

This was the first piece I did just to get into the flow of things again. I used a random reference off of pinterest as I really liked the contrast.

Unfortunately tumblr won't let me add the video for this one but this is a current wip of mine. Again just another reference from pinterest I thought looked neat. If people are interested I can share the time-lapse video of it once I finish it (if I finish it lol)

And now the link to Baz to the Past

[crossroadsdimension]

Fanfic Writing Update

Been a hot minute since I've done one of these....

Distant Cousins -- Chapter 53 of this Trigun/FFVII fic is currently in progress and will be going up late March 2025 (chapter 40 went up last week). My focus has been turning me away from this fic for the last couple months, though, so it might take a while to get back to working on this one. I absolutely intend to finish it, it's just going to take a while to get there.

Parallel Worlds, Different Paths -- a Dissidia/Strangers of Paradise/Mobius Final Fantasy crossover I decided to write on a whim. The last chapter is going up the morning of Oct 17th (so tomorrow, as of posting this). It hasn't gotten a ton of attention, but that wasn't the point of writing it. I just saw similarities and differences between the characters of the different franchises and wanted to just run with something for a little bit.

FFXIVWrite 2024 -- All the Tumblr posts I made during the month of September are going to be edited and posted to AO3 starting in 2 weeks. I've managed to fit them into my every-other-Thursday schedule, which means I'm going to be slowly putting them up over the next several months. With how many projects I have going on at once right now, I don't really have the bandwidth to post these guys daily. So every other week...and then maybe sometimes twice a week, for a couple months in 2025.

Cross Sylvan -- I'm not currently working on this FFXIV series because it'll be uploading once the FFXIVWrite scenes are done; I have a good chunk of the 2.1-2.55 journal entries written, however...and they go well into 2026. So this one's not a priority right now.

A Warrior Returned -- the big FFXIV/Mobius Final Fantasy project. As of right now, I've been working on the base ARR story for a little over a year (as of Oct 1), and I'm almost done with the plot, writing-wise. Just got Wol and his companions to Cape Westwind and what used to be touted as "the toughest fight ever" to sprouts. I just need to watch or play through the solo duty to get an idea of how I'm going to handle writing that, and then I'll be jumping into the last gauntlet of the base game. Current chapter count rests at 98, and it's highly likely that'll go up into the triple digits (readers will be getting ch 45 on the 18th of this month, and ch 98 is going up...end of July 2025). As of this moment, AWR is the longest fic I've written, word count and chapter-wise.

We'll see how it stacks up to Maria's Adventures in the long run series-wise, because I've put a lot of time and effort into the 23 works (and 2 mil words) that my OC-based series now takes up. I mean, I currently have 53 works on AO3. Maria's Adventures takes up almost half of that.

Anyway, I'm going to bed now, because my writing progress is insane and I need to rest my brain before I burn it out. XD

[phoenixtakaramono]

Re: Where to Read the Four Butchlander Threadfics on Twitter & Status Update about Them

Whelp, guess what, everyone? Your girl’s Twitter account got shadowbanned for the first time. And pretty much the threadfics are inaccessible until the ban gets lifted. (Let’s hope everything’s back to normal soon. 😭)

The threadfics in question (M3GAN-inspired AU, Fix-It AU, and Sugar Baby AU are the long WIPs; the Vampire & Lycan Hunter AU is the only one complete):

And like I was somewhat expecting, with my account currently submerged in the ether (fingers crossed nothing’s affected and everything’s back to normal once I’m back so we can return to our regular schedule threadfic updates on Twitter), another person’s reached out to me about it:

The Asks in question:

These threadfics were always intended to exist on Twitter as the first draft prototypes where I can write spontaneously and see what works, what doesn’t, and make them reader-interactive so pretty much my readers influence important story decisions for whichever threadfic it is. Then if I were to migrate these threadfics over to AO3, the intention was always to flesh them out more and polish them up, maybe change a couple story elements so there’s a point of difference between what’s on AO3 versus what’s on my Twitter (as an analogy, think of an author’s original webnovel version they uploaded on their website versus the professional light novel version they’ve polished up for publication) to keep it fresh. This migration was supposed to happen after all four chapters of Truce are complete and the only Butchlander fic I have left on AO3 that would still be ongoing would be The Name of the Game, which frees up my workload.

So currently, where we are right now, I am seriously considering moving up the schedule if, after 1 week (10/29/23), my account on Twitter is still Shazamed. I have heard shadowbans range from 2-3 days, to 3-5 days where it’s best if I don’t use the app in this duration of time, before escalating to Twitter Support if it persists. Same goes if my account is restored and I still get shadowbanned in the future for updating any of these 3 long threadfics.

Because, at that point, I might as well just port them over to AO3 if this keeps happening and save myself the headache. But this will have to be tested out. If I see it is truly unsustainable due to Twitter’s current unfriendliness to 🔞 threadfics (😒 …it used to be an ultra friendly platform for such, till you showed up El0n Musk), then I’ll just stop writing 🔞 threadfics all together.

The one thing I will have to say, though, is being a very detail-oriented multi-fandom writer who’s trying to be fair by adhering to the update schedule, for any new content, updates will be slow. Unlike Twitter where I can churn out 25 tweets at a time per update, you’ll be looking at weeks or months per chapter update on AO3 since three of them will be turned into genuine long stories. Quicker updates depend on how much content already exist on Twitter to be adapted from before the time of migration! Let’s see how it goes! ✌️

[carlos-in-glasses]

angels anonymous makes his (hopefully) long-awaited return! i have to apologise once more for my absence. turns out november absolutely sucks! but i've finally caught up on the new chapter, and somehow, amongst all that sadness, it made me feel... better? carlos and tk's care for each other cures everything, i think.

carlos' conversations with himself lit up something in me. him telling his younger self that it gets better, followed by his older self telling him the exact same thing. it's so important to me.

and the steven reference made me so, so happy. i've fallen in love with this little universe and all the characters in it <3

one more episode to go! and then two months of waiting :( enjoy it, though! i'm praying for an emotional tarlos scene after carlos gets shot, but a guy can only hope!

xox angels anonymous

Angels Anonymous, welcome back, buddy! I hope you're doing better and are having a nice Thanksgiving. I'm very much not American but I have the day off work, hence answering you a lot more quickly than usual! You are helping me procrastinate from cleaning my bathroom floor 👍Again no need to apologise for absence at all. I'm thrilled you're here at any point. You need to look after yourself before anything else. I'm glad that the chapter was cathartic for you. That mix of sadness and healing is certainly what I intended, and I hope it feels like Tarlos are taking care of you too as a reader with their love. I think we talk to our past and future selves all the time, and I really liked being able to make it a sort of concrete thing for Carlos rather than abstract - so it's filled me with the warm fuzzies to know you liked it too!! And Steven!!! Ahh!!! Thank you for loving an OC. I appreciate nobody is really reading fics for the OCs at least to begin with, so they're a challenge to get right. I always try to make them vibrant, and Steven is very dear to me too. And he'll be back...👀

One more episode until a pause, I know!!! I'm really excited though. I'm loving it. I long for an emotional Tarlos scene but I'm not holding my breath tbh. I'm setting my expectations low on that front, to be on the safe side, yet am hoping right along with you!!

So you know: I'm going to be taking a short break from posting Rhythms on 22nd December because of Christmas, so the final two chapters will be posted on 29th Dec and 5th Jan instead. It's partly due to busy-ness, but also I decided I wanted to start the new year with the final chapter of Rhythms (basically, starting the year as I mean to go on, with a fic I'm really proud of!) and I wanted to end this one the same year the show ends 😭 as a kind of...heart-shaped love note to it. I hope you understand! I will have a Secret Santa fic to upload that week instead, and I'm so excited!

I hope you enjoy this Sunday's chapter!!! Thank you so much again for reading and for lighting up my inbox with your kindness.

[senblades]

i just wanted to ask, i know you said you don’t have a beta; if someone was willing to look over the current chapters released and help clean them up, would that be all right? considering the sheer amount of words now, it totally makes sense to accidentally overlook any weird mistakes. i’m looking forward to the rest of the fic btw!! :D

I think for now, I'll still be alright with no beta- especially now that I'm only updating once a week - tysm for offering, though! <3

Right now, my process for uploading chapters is I'll read through the chapter I intend to upload the day before, and that will basically be my editing pass-through; fixing any spelling, phrasing mistakes, continuity mistakes (i.e. things that characters aren't supposed to know just yet), that kinda stuff + adding bits of prose here and there when inspiration hits me over the head with a chair

but lmao i AM laughing nervously and staring at that wordcount and thinking "what the fuck have i done"

I think in the future, I might grab the help of a beta reader for some other stuff- I was going to, with a one-shot I just wrote, but then I got shy and embarressed and just kind of melted into a puddle on the floor while tapping the "post work" button. So, uh, maybe next time I guess?

[lord-aldhelm]

So........ I did a thing and wrote an Aldflaed fanfic...

I started it about a year and a half ago, and only just now finished it. It is 25 chapters, 103k words. I uploaded the first chapter to AO3, and will upload a new chapter once a week until it is all uploaded. Warning in advance: it is a super slow burn. I apologize to your eyeballs in advance...

So for starters, this is the VERY FIRST fanfic I have ever written. I don't even read fanfic, let alone write it, so please keep that in mind when you read this. I am not a writer. The chapter titles are song titles because I could not think of good titles that were not spoilers. I have not read any in-universe TLK fanfic, so any similarities to other existing works is purely coincidental. Also, I wrote this for myself, and myself alone, so I am aware that it may not be everyone's cup of tea. I was originally not going to publish it, but since I put so much time and effort into it, I thought perhaps even if one other person gets something out of it then that is great.

Also, since this is my first time writing, I welcome constructive criticism. If there is a typo, or something does not make any sense and needs to be clarified, or if you think there is a better way for me to say something, please by all means leave a comment. But please do not come @ me if you just don't like it.

Second, this took me so long because it changed so much while I was writing it. It takes place starting with 3.10, and the majority of the fic takes place between Seasons 3&4, and then ends with basically a rewrite of Season 4. It has way more Uhtred in it than I originally intended, but don't worry it is NOT an Uhtred / Aethelflaed fic!

I am working on another one right now that is a Season 2-3 Aldflaed fic, although I don't know when that will be done. It will probably be as long as this one, so forever...

(pic from Instagram)

First paragraph and link to the first chapter below the cut...

..........................................................................................................................

Springtime in Saltwic

Chapter 1: Bring Me To Life

Tensions were running high after King Alfred’s passing, and Aethelflaed could feel the low rumbling of chaos start to spread in the minds of the men around her. A king’s passing was always a volatile time, especially for those who were self-serving and devious. Aethelwold was trying to sow discord among the ealdormen, Aethelred was looking to cut ties with Wessex and establish himself as King of Mercia, and Edward, young and inexperienced, was struggling to maintain order. Then there were other worries and sorrows. Her mother was distraught after the loss of her husband, Uhtred was imprisoned and was likely to be banished again or killed on the orders of her mother, and Thyra, Father Beocca’s beloved wife and Uhtred’s sister, was killed in a suspicious house fire.

Aethelflaed left the great hall to seek comfort and safety in her room. But it would seem even her own room was not safe; the door handle was covered in blood. Terrified, she entered the room cautiously, not knowing what she would find inside. On the floor at the foot of her bed, to her great surprise, was Aldhelm. He was gravely injured, bleeding out from a stab wound in his abdomen. She did not need to be told who had done it; she knew without asking.

---> CONTINUE READING on AO3 --->

[fay-and-the-forest]

First Tumblr post!

Hi everyone! I decided to create this Tumblr blog to publish all Fay-related content.

Let’s address a few subjects first…

-What is Fay?

Fay, or Fay’s story, is the provisional name of my literary/creative project. Fay’s story is a fable/fairytale-like short novel with an episodic estructure.

The story features talking animals and plants who live normal lives in a forest in the way you’d expect. But the forest has a peculiarity: every year, a small and magical creature called Lumin is born. Lumins are pixie-like creatures who ensure the forest creatures have a peaceful and happy death. The novel follows the story of Fay, a curious and innocent Lumin, as she helps animals and plants and learns what life is (and what her life is) along the way.

In Fay’s story, you might find a taste reminiscent of other works such as The Little Prince, The Moomins, and just fables in general. I intend for it to appeal to children and adults alike.

-How will the novelette be?

It will have some illustrations with a vintage feel – just like an old children’s book!

Don’t expect lots of action. Although Fay and friends have little adventures around the forest, the novel is mostly conversational.

Each chapter covers the wish of a dying forest creature. It will have a prologue and six chapters (this may change in the future).

-What will we find in this blog?

Any kind of content about Fay’s story I come up with: Illustrations, character designs, fragments, sneak peeks, character info…

-What stage of the process is the project at?

The novelette is currently being proofread/changed/rewritten (all by me). The illustrations are in the making too.

-Will we be able to read it?

Yes! I intend to publish it for free, although I don’t know in what medium, as I’m not really fond of Wattpad and the like. That’s something I will have to consider in the future.

Another thing to point out is that the novel is being written in Spanish, my mother language. If there’s interest in the project, I might consider writing it in English too, once the Spanish version is finished.

-When will it be finished?

I don’t know. Since this is a project I’m doing for fun and for free, I have to prioritize lots of other things in my life as of now. There are also my health problems: although I can live and work with them, there are times when I go through a worsening that makes me bedridden for a week. This is why I don’t feel comfortable setting a deadline. However, if I see there are people interested in the project, I might try even harder!

-Can we see your other works?

You can see my illustrations, doodles, etc. on my Twitter account (@erin_draws_)!

I have written several short stories for fun or for writing class. I’ll consider uploading them to Medium or another site.

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading. :)

[foodfightnovelization]

Introduction

So here it is, here's the book we're going to read together. I'm aware this is a Junior Novelization and is basically a book for small children, but it's interesting for SO MANY reasons so please just indulge me on my bullshit for a little while.

First of all, the fact that it's a novelization of the movie Foodfight!. I'm sure if you're reading this blog you've already heard of the movie so I'm not going to spend too much time going over the basics, but to cut a long story short, Foodfight! is a 2012 animated children's movie directed by Lawrence Kasanoff, centering around a supermarket that comes to life at night. Said city is populated by "Ikes", icons of the various brands of grocery store product e.g. Mr Clean, the California Raisins, Charlie Tuna, as well as original characters like Dex Dogtective and Daredevil Dan. In many ways, you could say this movie is like Wreck-It Ralph if it took place in a grocery store instead of an arcade. You could ALSO say this movie is like if a cartoon dog fought Nazis, poorly attempted to recrate the "La Marseillaise" scene from Casablanca, and hung around with a racist caricature played by Wayne Brady who regularly talks about wanting to ejaculate in/on various women. And all of that would be true, because this movie is crazy loco. Because of that, it's hard to imagine what it'd be like in book form, but it's interesting for other reasons too:

The film itself had a long and painful development. Originally intended to release in 2003, the release date shifted to 2006, then 2007, until it FINALLY came out in 2012. Over the years, the animation was redone so many times that it went from looking like this:

To looking like this:

Around 2006 (one of the initial release dates for the movie) various merchandise for the movie was in development, ranging from picture books, to plush toys, to even a videogame that had a playable demo at E3 2006. The game was never released, but the picture books eventually made into stores, and the plush toys were sold off to various arcades, claw machines and carnivals as prizes. However, there's one piece of merchandise I've never seen discussed ANYWHERE online- and that's the novelization.

I found it on eBay a few weeks ago and just HAD to buy it. There were so many questions in my head right away: Why was the novelization was published in 2008, four whole years before the actual movie came out? Okay, it's probably just because the movie was planned to release around that time at one point, but how is there no other information about this anywhere online? If this was published in 2008, is there a chance it's based on an earlier version of the movie and has vast differences from the finished film? (if you can even really call the film "finished"...) The book says it contains 8 pages of color stills from the movie- again, how can that be when this was 4 years before the movie came out?

I just couldn't leave all these questions unanswered, and so here it is in my hand (next to the Daredevil Dan plush I own because I'm NORMAL about this movie), Foodfight!: The Junior Novelization. As far as I can tell, this was the ONLY copy of the book available for purchase anywhere (is it maybe even the only copy in existence? Why is this book so vague and unknowable?) so I'm really at the forefront as far as discussion of this is concerned, on account of being the only person to even know it exists. Once I'm done talking about it though, I'll be uploading the entire book to the Internet Archive so everyone can get a chance to read it themselves. But for those yearning for a page-by-page analysis comparing the novelization to the finished film, I'm your girl! Stick with me and we'll strawberry jam our way through this enigma of a book.

Chapter 1 analysis coming soon!

[elytrafemme]

hi, mare!!!! i have no idea if u remember me, lmao, i sent an ask back in february i think! (also i am so incredibly sorry for sending this in general but… anyway…)

but, i just wanted to say that you write so incredibly beautifully i actually cannot. i was just like, pacing around in my kitchen doing my maladaptive daydreaming shit when cough syrup came into my mind . specifically that one scene from chapter 28, when cs!ranboo says the sunset is pretty and cs!tubbo tells him he’s also pretty. and i genuinely teared up. that scene is always in the back of my mind it’s so insane. i think it might be something ill think about for a long time, even though i read it for the first time so long ago. i think it’s mainly the way you wrote it. “beside him, the sun says, “so are you.””

something about that like genuinely drives me insane (in a good way, i promise!). i just. it is so small and niche and mundane and probably shouldn’t matter this much but i am crying over it. and i am far from a crier, so if you’ve gotten me to cry over a single sentence you’ve done something incredibly right.

i don’t know if you’ve heard it a million times, or not at all, but you seriously have a way with writing. just so you know! because you definitely have to know!!!!

anyway… sorry for sending a cs ask, (also that it was very long) but!

thank you, once again, for writing this amazing piece. even if it never gets updated again, it’ll always be in my heart, i guarantee it lmao

have a good day/night/afternoon <3 (and to anyone reading this)

hi there! i thought i recognized your url somehow, it's nice of you to stop by again! i'm really terrible with answering asks but honestly you are always welcome in my askbox, i like to visualize it as a cosy space

this is such an incredibly meaningful ask to me, my God. i'm so unspeakably glad that you liked that scene and the fact that it stuck with you this long really makes my entire week, honestly. it was a scene i poured a lot of heart into, as i did those two characters in general, and i'm really really grateful that it was received in such a caring way. thank you for giving that scene space in your heart.

i really really appreciate it, thank you. i've been struggling with prose writing lately so hearing that my writing can stick with people means a lot to me. cough syrup feels sacred, like an untouchable thing i've created that i now can't touch after so long of being estranged from its writing, but hearing kind words makes me feel like i can touch it again.

it's a fic i intend to finish, though i realized a few weeks ago it may take me several years to. i've sadly lost all love for that segment of content that became its source- -with no judgement to those who appreciate it, it's just no longer part of my heart (aside from my friends' artistic creations) but cough syrup is still meaningful to me. and honestly hearing that it is still thought fondly of even in 2024 is like earthshatteringly incredible. just a bit ago i remember freaking out over whether cough syrup meant anything and honestly, your kind words reminded me that it does, and it did. and the reason it mattered so much was because of the people like you who appreciated it.

so seriously, thank you. always feel free to send me cs asks -- again, i don't respond very timely but i always will see them. i appreciate you, and i hope you like the next upload, whenever it arrives.

have a delightful day/night/afternoon as well <3

[msnihilist]

On a whim, I'm working on a podfic for 'Lysis,' my multi-chapter Ben/Elena fic. This is just me reading the prelude, which is very short. I'm still debating if I want to upload this onto YouTube in parts, or maybe just put them all together into one long video. It will probably be somewhere between an hour to two hours long if I do that.

Anyway, if you like this idea, let me know! I might do it for more of my other fanfics in the future.

Text below the cut if you want to follow along:

The Plumber base was silent, as it always was at this time of night. The green-tinted lighting meant that the hall looked the same as it did turning the day. Only the lack of other lifeforms was different, and it came with an eerie, almost uncanny sort of feeling, as if something were wrong.

The lone Plumber guard who was circling the hallways muffled a yawn. It was shaping up to be another dull night.

There was a clatter from down the hall. The guard — an Appoplexian who got roped into covering his friend's shift — was immediately on edge. Nothing in the base made noise without reason. He headed towards the sound.

The hallway opened into the base's main hub. It was silent and dark in here, too. The many supercomputers and monitors were all off for the night. The guard scanned the room, searching for what could have made the noise… And relaxed when he spotted a pen and a few loose papers on the floor next to someone’s desk. They must have been set precariously on the edge at the end of the work day and had finally fallen off.

The guard bent over and gathered the supplies. He set them back onto the desk they had fallen from, swept his eyes and his flashlight around the room one more time, then he left.

Once he was several hallways down, even the on-edge guard didn’t hear the soft whir of a computer booting up.

A fragmented hand, swarming with thousands of tiny movements, touched the side of the computer. A few tiny pieces of it broke off and entered the desktop, connecting to the hardware and pilfering the data banks stored within. Once the figure had the information that they were looking for, they retracted their pieces and turned the computer back off. As silently as they had entered, the figure dissolved into a shapeless swarm and slipped out of the room.

The swarming figure hung close to the walls and the floor. When it passed a security camera, the figure would pause and make sure to disrupt the live feed, inserting looping footage of the empty hall. The guards watching the cameras didn’t notice anything amiss as the figure made their way through the base, slipping underneath high-security doors and gliding down monitored hallways.

Finally, the figure reached their intended target — the location that they had gathered from the computer. Compressing their loose shape into a thin mass less than a hair wide, they slid through the gap between the door and the ground, easily bypassing the last barrier standing between them and victory.

Their destination was a small bedroom intended for a single soldier. There was an adjacent bathroom. The only noteworthy customization in the barren room was a single framed photograph sitting on the bedside table. The figure paused and stared at the photo for a moment.

If they’d had eyes, their gaze would have gone soft.

Refocusing on their task, the figure moved towards the bed. They held out a single finger, barely brushing the sleeping individual’s ear. The occupant of the bed didn't so much as twitch as a single, microscopic carrier of their ‘virus’ crawled into his ear. One was all that would be needed for this first part.

A couple dozen objects smaller than a cell were all that was needed to make Ben Tennyson’s life crumble to pieces.

The figure shot one last, longing look at the framed photograph… Then they exited the room the same way they came in. 

No one saw the figure enter, and no one detected them leaving, either. 

The seed had been planted. In a week's time, they would have everything they had ever wanted. 

Read the rest of this fanfic on AO3.