#postmortem tag: lol

[procedurebybyte]

zero is future junpei. putting this guess here

[silver-ace-of-spades]

Might schedule some Tumblr posts for next century just to fuck with people lol

[umemiyan]

ROBIN!!! im absolutely in LOVE with postmortem/postpartum, its such a good fic and its so refreshing honestly to see such a creative, interesting concept be explored especially with so much care and love. i said this in my tags but thats rly what fanfic is all about, EXPLORING!!! exploring canon, exploring characters, putting them in new situations and seeing what happens. i love love love it. and seeing gojo in such a brand new, vulnerable light, with both him and reader navigating life as a disabled-coded person following his death and resurrection, is so fascinating. and when he did the divine dogs hand motion to megumi i literally almost cried. if its ok with u, i had a couple questions!!!

what was reader before the incident? a teacher at jujutsu high? just a friend to satoru? im interested in what role they played prior to everything that happened. obviously megumi knew reader, but im curious what that relationship is!!

how with it is satoru? reader had to pick out his outfit and bathe and feed him, we’ve seen that much, but is he able to dress himself? how well does he move - walking and such? does reader always have to help feed him or was that just a one time occurrence to encourage him to eat?

SORRY if im bombarding you with too many questions, i just love this concept so much and im so fascinated with it 🤍🤍🤍

AH HELLO!!!!!!! omg i saw your wonderful tags earlier while i was working and i was just so giddy to read them!!!! thank you so much 💕 i really am enjoying exploring this story and am happy that others are as well 🥹 i felt like maybe the whole thing would just be something only i would be interested in LOL which would’ve been totally fine tbh but i’m thrilled to see it resonating with other people!!

no worries about asking questions at all! thank you for doing so! i realize some things have been rather vague thus far and probably have a few people wondering what the deal is lol

more details will be revealed somewhat soon in the story i suppose, but so far my intention has been for reader to be a sorcerer—not necessarily a teacher, but many sorcerers do of course tend to engage with the school and its students, so that’s where the familiarity comes from. it will also be implied that they and gojo were either classmates or otherwise very close in age during school (that’s a specific detail i haven’t exactly landed on yet lol)

as for satoru, i’ve honestly been playing it a little loose when it comes to his condition thus far, though i would like to perhaps refine some of these details in my mind. however, it’s purposefully meant to come across a bit wishy-washy since it’s truly something that everyone is learning as they go along. in my mind, the time since satoru’s revival/awakening has really not been long at all—maybe two weeks at the most. new things are being unearthed every day.

however!! he is very much inspired by brain injury patients as well as autistic individuals with higher support needs (somewhere in between levels 2 and 3). it’s a bit of a concoction of both (as well as tidbits of other things) based on my own observations and research rather than something that’s more clearly defined as being coded as one or the other, especially since what happened to him was… not normal LMAO so there are some supernatural aspects as well that sort of make it its own /thing/

his motor functions are pretty normal for the most part aside from perhaps the occasional coordination issue, though i almost imagine that his six eyes/powers are automatically trying to overcompensate for such things?? which would in turn cause extra fatigue at the end of the day. but tbh that’s something i’m going to put more thought into!!

one of his biggest issues is with executive function/initiating tasks and making decisions. the cognitive impairments are what require reader’s prompting and assistance a lot of the time. however, reader is also potentially overcompensating (or lacking) in some areas as well simply because they haven’t been able to accurately gauge all of satoru’s capabilities yet and are overall not used to caring for someone at this level.

so while he is actually physically able to perform most tasks, the cognitive function isn’t quite there, nor are the memories on how to engage in certain tasks (probably mostly those with more steps/complications) without prompting and reminders. it can take his brain a little bit longer to calculate and process several things.

i just have this image in my head of reader pulling underwear over their pants or something while trying to demonstrate to him how to get dressed without having to fully intervene LMFAO since they are trying to maintain some modesty/distance at the moment. which… probably won’t last for long tbh because it’s not quite practical at this stage.

but there is maybe a little room for neurological improvement on his end! however, it is not my goal for the story to see that he is “fixed” or anything of the sort, nor do i want it to diminish his person. it’s a balancing act!

sorry i just rambled a lot skdjsjsnshdudidie but once again, thank you so much for reading and asking!!! discussions like these really help me understand my thoughts a lot better and i really enjoy hearing yours as well! it certainly helps keep the inspiration flowing rather than all of these little things getting trapped up in my mind lol 💖

[queen-tashie]

OC in 15 or less

Thanks for the tag @mrbexwrites!

Rules: Share 15 or fewer lines of dialogue from an OC, ideally lines that capture the character/personality/vibe of the OC. Bonus points for just using the dialogue without other details about the scene, but you're free to include those as well!

Passing the tag onto @talesofsorrowandofruin, @ftmerriweather, and anyone else who'd like to join in!

Here's some lines of Dr. Amelia Roch's dialogue from Copper Frames! (Keep in mind I have not done re-wording edits, just major plot holes so far lol.) If you read them in order, you get a horrible but vague sense of what is going on >:)

“You’re not the first person I’ve seen with this,” Amelia said. “I’ll request a blood and urine sample from the lab down the hall. It's to the left before you exit. As for the skin irritation, here’s a prescription for an ointment that should help.”

“Sorry about that,” said Amelia, “I’m here for a letter. I received a notice today, here—” She checked her wallet for the notice she had received. Nothing. “I seem to have left the slip behind.”

“Loving it every day. How’s Mr. Shvets and the kids?” she asked as she rubbed her hand after he released his grip.

“Emperor Sirota,” said Amelia when the Emperor paused, “will you explain which illness you mean?”

“It’s a bacteria,” said Amelia, “and immune to the most popular antibiotics.”

“We're going to take good care of you here,” she promised each of them.

“Did you use any protection?”

"How? How do you go on as a medical professional, as a human being, after so much death? We're supposed to be taking on more patients next week? To watch them die, too?"

"That's it, then? We're not a hospital, we're a morgue. We're glorified morticians," she said, tears soaking her sleeves where her face was resting.

“I have to be,” said Amelia, rolling up her sleeves beside him. Inside, her blood turned cold. The hot water running over her hands was soothing, a ground she didn’t realize she needed. “Actually, I need a moment. I’ll meet you in there.”

“My apologies Dr. Shvets. I am now, yes, just a little left over anxiety.”

“They’re bleeding.”

“Let’s get a few extra samples of that,” she said, looking for other bizarre postmortem symptoms.

“Thatwas concerning,” she said, grabbing his gloved hand for comfort. “Have you ever had a patient wake up in the morgue?”

“Whatthefuckisthat?”

[thatswhatsushesaid]

1, 6, 22, 23?

1. "the character everyone gets wrong"

the obvious answer is jgy, but I have also written so extensively about jgy's characterization that I'm reasonably sure I don't have to repeat myself here. so I'll go with the other character whose characterization frequently leaves me wanting to chew glass when I check the tags, and that's nie huaisang

I know part of this can be blamed on medium bleed (and fatal journey but lol we do not talk about fatal journey here), but I think the common characterization of nie huaisang that I see in the tags and in fic as 1) some laser-focused mastermind crouching at the centre of a spider web pulling literally all of the narrative strings from the very beginning in order to achieve his revenge, and/or 2) as helpless babie incapable of doing any schemes or any crimes until he was so moved by nmj's death that he just selflessly sacrificed over a decade of his life in pursuit of justice, justice for da-ge!!! and neither of these bland-ass takes are interesting or particularly consistent with the novel or with what we see in cql, tbh.

characterization #1 is harder for me to prove definitively, at least right now, so let's just call it a hard headcanon that he is not this genius schemer and move on for now. (I'm working on a longer Thing for nhs and trauma in my drafts, but it's not done yet, so /waves hands, watch this space)

it's easier for me to point to clear textual and visual evidence of why characterization #2 doesn't hold up under close scrutiny just because wwx lays out so much of it for us during his scooby doo murder mystery postmortem interrogation of wwx after jgy and nmj have been sealed together in the crypt. everything that nhs does to trigger jgy's 'killing intent,' to use wwx's own words (the law in most countries calls this 'entrapment,' btw, and it is illegal, but I digress), involves unnecessary collateral damage, and I say 'unnecessary' because there is no one holding a cursed murder sword to nhs's head forcing him to take any of these actions. he could just not do any of them at any point, and go on living his life, but he doesn't. and what he does do is manipulate mxy into utilizing the sacrifice summon ritual to bring wwx back from the dead to murder the entire mo family; he does the thing that I PERSONALLY had the most difficulty dealing with as a reader sensitive to animal death, which was kill a bunch of cats to lure wwx, lwj, and the junior quartet to yi city; he is the one who ensures that the knowledge of jgy and qin su's relation to each other reaches qin su without any regard to how learning this information would impact her psychologically; and he is perfectly comfortable using lxc as his last-minute, convenient tool to kill jgy when it seems otherwise inevitable to him that jgy will walk out of the temple alive.

all of this 👆👆👆 is not the sort of thing that someone does if they are pursuing justice. nhs wants vengeance, and I am fine with that being his character's driving motivation, I have no problem with that story. I would just very much prefer it if this fandom would treat his revenge quest specifically as that--a revenge quest--and then engage with what the actual, concrete consequences of realizing that revenge quest are for nhs in canon. in short: nmj is not at peace; the one person in his life who had made some attempt to understand him, care for him, and advocate on his behalf to nmj, is now dead, because he killed him; nmj's remaining sworn brother will certainly not be stepping up to provide him assistance as nie-zongzhu or xiandu from seclusion; and none of his remaining friends from childhood trust him. post-canon nhs, whether sauntering away from the guanyin temple as he does in the novel, or trudging away with a thousand-yard shellshocked stare on his face as he does in the drama, essentially has his san-ge's bloody hat for company henceforth, and that's it. that's depressing, and lonely.

6. "which ship fans are the most annoying?"

wangxian lol at least on tumblr. x!cheng as a ship drives me nuts and I can't stand it, but x!cheng shippers themselves are fine. honestly it's just the wangxian fans that make me want to blacklist the ship altogether.

22. "your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores"

huh! I don't know that I have one that my little corner of the fandom doesn't pay attention to? I suppose something I wish we speculated on more in the form of fic or art or w/e is meng yao's time in qishan with wen ruohan, because I am crawling up the walls in my eagerness to know how meng yao became the only person able to approach wen ruohan's throne not on his knees. I want to know how meng yao becomes someone wen ruohan actively wants to protect from harm in that final nightless city confrontation between him and nie mingjue, while meng yao is actively undermining his battlefield advantages through sending intelligence to lxc.

I just have so many questions!!

23. "ship you've unwillingly come around to"

I don't think it is fair to say that I have 'come around' to this particular ship because I still very much do not like 99.9% of fic and art that feature it, but I read one romantic 3zun fic rec'd to me by @poorlittleyaoyao that absolutely left me in emotional tatters. but that's it, that was ONE fic, and I think I mainly vibed with it so hard because the principle romance at work was xiyao. but even the n!eyao still left me feeling "oh 🥺" which I for sure was not expecting lmao.

edit: mea culpa @thymianne !! the fic is called 'favor' by venndaai (aka henshengs here on tumblr), and it is a hunger games AU that leans extremely hard into all of the messy, ugly feelings and actions that you would expect from a hunger games AU. you will absolutely suffer! enjoy it.

[randomidiocyncrazies]

fic writers' self rec

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let's spread the self-love 💞

tagged by @candidateofloyalty (thanks for the tag!)

the fairytales we tell ourselves: the one where Anthy comments on the current crop of duelists. listen. I love my girl Anthy. i love her bitching about the duelists and their problems, which must seem so insignificant compared to hers

courtship for fools: the one where Class 78 weigh in on the developing Ishimondo relationship. Outsider POV is one of my favorite fic tropes, mostly because I am interested in playing with different perspectives while still having a central plot, and it was so fun to explore what makes each POV character tick + how to frame Ishimondo's developing relationship through their classmates' eyes! I also think this is the funniest thing i've ever written

the false knight: the one where I flesh out Hokuto's false memories when he was being brainwashed. not to toot my own horn, but I did a damn good job at expanding on the lore and building atmosphere (also, there are only 3 fics for GEAR Fighter Dendoh on AO3, and this is one of them lol)

the one where two gods wearing pointy ocular shields strife in the woods: the one where Terezi and Dirk have a friendly spar to take their mind off things, set shortly after Act 7. i haven't kept up with the new stuff and have no interest in it, i just think these characters could have an interesting dynamic and i think i nailed it

the multitude an ocean: the one where i try to flesh out Cass and the House Pelagios siblings over the years, and made up lore about Apostolos culture. there wasn't a lot of canon info on Apostolos back then, so i had fun extrapolating how it could work from a line from the Counter/weight postmortem

gonna tag @obstinaterixatrix and @dragonomatopoeia, plus whoever else wants to give this a spin!

[spacetrashpile]

CRASHES INTO YOUR INBOX. tell me about hex nOW 🎯🧊🍀✏️💀

WELL IF YOU INSIST!

🎯 -What do they do best?

ohhhh this is a hard one… i think since becoming the master at arms for the caesura she’s gotten really knowledgeable about weapons, especially older ones. she’s good at knowing exactly how to kill stuff.

🧊 - Is their current design the first one?

oh my god ABSOLUTELY NOT. her first design is gonna be her human one with the revengers which i have NO art of. she long brown hair that she wore down her back, dark eyes, wore a white shirt, yellow shorts, a black jean jacket, and combat boots. when i made her into a mechanisms oc, i took her initial revengers design and kept it about the same and then put her through the ringer, and also made her hair black and her eyes green.

of course we have the part where she looses her eye in our wonderland clone, then after she leaves the revengers when yrt comes back and tells her what happened to rosette, she cuts her hair short (like bob length) and gets rid of the jacket. while with lady saturn, she starts wearing a yellow button up and long black pants, but sticks with the combat boots.

when she gets mechanized, she gets brand new metal organs but those aren’t visible on the outside of course, and also gets a fun new eye (a blue one) and fun mechanical lines coming out of it, and i DO have art for this (ty @redrobemerle )

her hair gets longer in the time in between getting mech’d and joining the caesura, though she wears in different now. she also takes hylo’s dog tags when lady saturn murders them (ty for your consent to harm your guy).

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC?

ok you KNOW THIS but now i have to tell the internet and also whatever rival crews people who follow me but do not know this already.

for those of you who don’t know: back when buzzfeed unsolved was still running, the boys did a mid week q&a show about the episodes called the postmortem. due to a series of shenanigans, shane started doing an after show during the postmortems called the hotdaga: a hot dog saga about animated (stock art) foodstuffs going on adventures throughout the universe that involved magic, war crimes, an alien species he created, and original music. it’s genuinely really good but it is also about food. in like,, 2017 or 2018 me and some friends (including you, steven, you bastard) started playing a dnd campaign taking place during the space war that shane establishes as backstory for the war, and then it spiraled into utter insanity and beauty. it was the first campaign i ever played and it meant a lot to me and so much of it was stupid and TECHNICALLY we were all foodstuffs though very little art reflects that. hex was my character for this campaign. she was a rogue. and also a banana. and i loved her.

✏️ - How often do you draw/write about the OC?

not very often anymore, which makes me a bit sad. one of these days i’m gonna sit down and least write up all of her backstory so i can set it upon the rest of rival crews lol.

💀 - Does your OC have any phobias?

i BELIEVE i established at one point that she hates spiders. she’s also deeply terrified of getting close to people and losing them again and not being able to save them but that’s less fun.

[dinjoyer]

Next

Okayyyy basically I had this wild and wacky idea to make a comic series out of my belovedest fanfic. And I did Jjdj. So this is the *very* first part of post-mortem by @furiosophie (thank you SM to her for letting me do this) but in an amateur comic form 💀

You can read the actual fanfic (which supersedes any piece of art I could ever create. seriously it’s life changing) here! https://archiveofourown.org/works/38685009

[executiveibex]

PUVAR QHINYY FUVCCREF UBJ JR SRRYVA’ VA GUVF PUVYV'F GBAVTUG???

[eatfruittt]

Buzzfeed Unsolved - Tombstone Q+A (x)

“I didn’t hear anything but I got some sweet tingles bro.”

[mx-xcitement]

Idc about queen but I just wanna know why you hate those two guys did they do something shitty lol

oh man. thank you for this ask. (putting this at the top because the rest of this post is going to be some fairly personal ranting: brian may has said some wack shit about gender and cancel culture, and roger taylor has a girlfriend half his age, in case you want some slightly more valid reasons to be put off by them aside from the inane screaming of a mentally ill college student.)

some important context to why i give so much of a shit (and why i'm so happy to answer this) is that i'm some kind of undiagnosed neurodivergent, and queen has been my special interest as long as i can remember. in the past several years it's lied fairly dormant, but forming a real personality has not changed the fact that i'm ready 24/7 to ramble about queen, and have been my entire life. also as a bit of a qualifier, moments before seeing the post that prompted this ask, i had just seen that back in september the mercury phoenix trust (charity in freddie's name to fight hiv/aids) partnered with some artist to release a freddie mercury nft as part of his 75th birthday celebration. that had already made me a little livid. so freddie mercury has this iconic quote that people use a lot, and was at the beginning of this promotional video. "you can do whatever you want with my work, but never make me boring." in the years since his death, a lot of the content that's come out has been tagged with this quote, implying that look! look at this cool new thing we're doing with freddie's work, name, and image! this isn't boring! freddie would love this!

except reader, i'm bored. the "never boring" box set released in 2019 seems to have not much new, just mediocre remixes of the same collection of solo work we've already heard in full, and a glossy hardcover book of photos and quotes. and they keep cranking this shit out. a $90 replica of his statue in montreux. a branded monopoly game. not to mention all the merch they were able to crank out to promote bohemian rhapsody (2018).

and listen. if freddie mercury were alive today he'd probably be taking the band on its fourth retirement tour, making all kinds of celebrity appearances wherever they could afford him, and selling out six ways till sunday. that in and of itself is not the problem here. where i take issue is that queen's surviving members and everyone on their fucking promotion and marketing team has been milking this shit for years, every year with seemingly less and less shame, and they have the audacity to claim that all of it is in freddie's name. that he'd sign off on this. it just seems crass to me. honestly, i think if it had been anyone else in the band, anyone who wanted to keep on going would've kept making music as usual, but the postmortem "tributes" wouldn't have been nearly as egregious.

john deacon was right to jump ship when he did. he's the only one i haven't lost respect for over the years. i'm just tired of all the cloying attempts at new "content". brian and roger could have just as easily sat back, rereleased some new shit here and there at big milestones, and let the decades of accumulated royalties flow in.

it just feels offensive to freddie's legacy to me. i don't know. i don't have a good way to end this. there's still more i could say. i probably don't have the right to be so upset on his behalf, i'm just some guy. fuck everybody who makes millions off of freddie mercury's life, work, and tragic death.

[scripts4dreamers]

I literally JUST sat down, pt. 1

Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven

AN: Nuh uh, nope. Not this again. You did not sign up for this.  Characters: Spencer Reid, Penelope Garcia, Derek Morgan, Aaron Hotchner, Jennifer Jareau, David Rossi. Pairings: Spencer Reid x reader Spoilers: None Warnings: Mentions of crime and violence, alcohol, eventual NSFW content

Prompt: After watching 7x07 “This episode is so scary man... Imagine just doing your job which is pretty morbid at times but oh well and then suddenly you have to go to this place where there's a lot of tornadoes and you're like well at least I'm inside and safe and then your boss is like "we gotta go right to these tornado places lol" and then you think "well that's scary but at least we have this handy dandy live map showing us exactly in real time where the tornadoes are so we'll be fine and then the internet is like "haha nope have fun dying in a tornado" 

- @pirateismywayofspeaking​ who is a literal genius.

This will be a multichapter piece! So lemme know if you want to be tagged in subsequent chapters. 

—————————-

Usually, when terrible things happen, people say the same few things: “I never thought it would happen to me! You never think something like this will happen to you until it does!”. You’d never really been that type of person. You were naturally cautious, and an ex FBI agent, you saw danger pretty much everywhere. You’d seen some of the worst things human beings could ever do to one another and, if you’d learned anything at all, it was that bad things happened everywhere and to pretty much everyone. There was nowhere that you could definitively say was safe from violent crime, but this was just ridiculous.

You looked around the ruined bookshop you’d poured the last year of your life into with a kind of detached sadness. Even before you opened the door, you could see the carnage. The shelves were upended, tables flipped, every vase in the building was smashed...except one. You sighed, stepping into the store, your eyes scanning the wreck with a practiced efficiency. No broken windows, the door was still locked when you’d arrived and your security cameras were blacked out, there were no signs of forced entry. If anything that made you more uneasy and, not for the first time since you’d left the bureau, you missed the weight of your gun against your hip. You crinkled your nose against the smell, the copper-iron of fresh blood that you were all too familiar with as you crept through your store.

“Son of a-fuck!” You swore loudly, cursing your luck as you took in the scene.

There was a body laid out in the middle of the Fiction aisle: face covered with a burlap sack, wrists and ankles bound with rope and blood seeping into the carpets you’d just had cleaned. Your training kicked in and you noticed, without meaning to, that the rest of the aisle was untouched. The shelves were upright, books in order, even the vase of white roses you’d put there the night before were all completely the way you’d left them. It was like he’d just completely bypassed the entire section.

Huh.

You looked up at the sky, “Really? Right now? You throw this at me, now? Unbelievable.”

There was a sinking feeling in the pit of your chest, along with a nervousness that you were telling yourself was irritation as you pulled out your phone. It had been a long while since you’d done this, but you still knew the number by heart.

“This is agent Jareau with the Behavioural Analysis Unit.”

“JJ, it’s me,” you said, “you’re not gonna believe this.”

——————————

You sat in the ruins of your store until the cops arrived, wondering who exactly you had murdered in a past life to end up with this kind of luck. You gave your statement without much incident, directing CSU to the body and alerting the detective to the abnormalities you’d spotted.

JJ had promised to get the team on the case as quickly as she could, and you knew JJ tended to get exactly what she wanted in that regard, you just didn’t know how you felt about that. It had been over a year since you’d left the BAU, since you’d done one case too many and just got fed all the way up. It really wasn’t any deeper than that. One day you’d come home and found that you couldn’t sleep. It had all just become too much, so you packed up your stuff, tendered your resignation, and started over.

It had been hard at first, but now you owned a fairly successful bookstore with a little coffee shop where you sold good coffee, and homemade biscuits. And it was nice. You felt good, kinda. You definitely slept better at night. Your life was finally starting to feel normal and now this? A dead body just happens to appear in the center of your bookstore in just weird enough a way to warrant a call to the BAU? No, you’d seen too much to consider this a coincidence. Whether you liked it or not, you were about to get thrown back into your old life head first, the life you’d worked so hard to get some distance from. So why weren’t you more...upset?

“Y/L/N?” A familiar voice called.

“In here,” you answered, your voice raspy from disuse. You cleared your throat and pushed yourself up onto your feet, “I’m in here.” You tried again.

The figures who stepped in were painfully familiar and you couldn’t help the tired smile that slid onto your face, your eyes going directly to the blonde woman walking at the very front.

“Y/N!” She greeted, her voice dripping with relief as she pulled you into a hug, “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, JJ,” you assured her as you broke apart, the rest of your old team filing in behind her.

She eyed you like she wasn’t sure, pressing her lips into a thin line as she looked around the trashed store. Derek Morgan swooped in behind her, giving you a second hug.

“Long time, Y/L/N,” he smiled.

You sighed, “Wish it was under better circumstances, Morgs, but I’m glad you guys are here.”

“Y/L/N,” Aaron Hotchner greeted, giving you a firm handshake.

“Thanks for coming, Hotch, I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.” You admitted.

“No, you made the right call. The BAU has officially taken on the case. Reid, Prentiss and Rossi are coordinating with the local PD from our headquarters, the rest of us are here to help,” he said, pausing and meeting your eye, silently asking the question you’d been waiting all morning for.

“No sign of forced entry,” you started, “the front door was still locked from the outside when I arrived.” You walked him through the crime scene, glass crunching beneath your feet as you went, “It looks like someone sprayed black paint over the security cameras I had installed, everything’s been smashed but there’s no cash missing from the register. In fact, they barely touched the front desk at all.” You explained, “And this,” you gestured at the Fiction aisle, “is where I found the body.”

Morgan stepped forward and, just like that, the team moved like a well oiled machine.

“White male, looks like he’s between the ages of 19 and 27.” Morgan started.

“His wrists and ankles are bound, but it doesn’t look like he struggled against his restraints at all,” you cut in, without meaning to, crouching down beside the body, “it could mean he was tied up postmortem.”

“We’ll have to wait on the M.E’s report to know for sure,” Hotch agreed, “Y/L/N, can I talk to you?” You nodded and let him pull you aside. He glanced over your shoulder and lowered his voice, “I know you’re out and we can do this investigation without you-“

“But?” You probed.

The corners of Hotch’s mouth twitched, like he wanted to smile, “But, I would also welcome your help if you’re willing to give it. The team is still a man down and, something about this scene has me thinking-“

“That whoever did this isn’t finished,” you agreed, sighing as you ran your fingers through your hair.

Everything was so messed up in your head. You just wanted to go back to bed and start this day all over again. Hotch looked at you and you recognized his brand of quiet concern. It was familiar and comforting, and it helped you process your thoughts.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” you frowned, “yeah. Yeah, sure, I’ll come back.” Hotch smiled and you wagged a finger at him, “But just for this one case! After that I’m straight back to my boring normal person life, alright?”

“Of course,” he agreed, something almost mocking in his tone.

“I’m serious, Hotch, just one more case.”

“I’m agreeing with you!” He insisted, already walking back to the rest of the group.

But he wasn’t and, much to your chagrin, you felt the familiar rush of adrenaline as you turned back to the scene of the crime.

“Hotch, Y/L/N,” Morgan called, holding something in his gloved hand, “you’re gonna want to see this.”

“Here we go again,” you sighed.

————————-

Walking back into the BAU had felt like stepping back in time. After you’d gotten everything you could from the crime scene there was nothing to do but brainstorm, but walking through those doors again...well, let’s say you hadn’t been prepared for how it would feel being back. For the most part, everyone had been glad to see you, especially Garcia, but you could tell that there were still some resentments bubbling under the surface. It made sense, the BAU survived by relying on one another, by acting like a family, and you’d left that family.

Still, there was a rhythm to this kind of work, a flow that was almost painfully easy to fall back into. You’d worked together for years after all, bouncing ideas off of one another like it was nothing and that kind of bond didn’t just go away.

“Admit it,” Derek teased, bumping your shoulder with his as you studied the evidence board, “you missed this.”

“I most certainly did not.”

“Oh you so did,” Spencer agreed, leaning against the table next to you and giving you a fond smile, “I’m sorry about the bookstore though, it was the only store in town with a proper selection of classics in their original languages.”

You shrugged, “I’ll get it up and running again soon enough, just as soon as we catch whoever did this.”

“Speaking of our UnSub, what do you think the relevance of him leaving the body in the fiction section is?” Spencer asked.

“Maybe he’s trying to say that this is some kind of fairytale?” Prentiss suggested, “Like he’s trying to draw us into his story?”

“Maybe, but this has gotta be more personal than that, right?” Morgan said, “I mean, this isn’t some body in an alley, it was dumped in an FBI agent’s coffee shop.”

“Ex agent,” you corrected.

“Sure thing, Princess,” Morgan teased.

“Why does everyone keep talking like that?” You asked.

“Because you leaving is ridiculous. You love this job,” He replied simply, “you’ve always loved this job.”

You opened your mouth to respond but, before you could, you heard the clacking of heels against the marble floor.

“Um, guys?” Garcia said, coming into the bullpen with a stormy look on her face, “we just got word from the officer who went to Y/N’s apartment.”

“And?” You asked nervously.

“They found something,”

“Another body?” Prentiss asked.

“No, weirder, a letter and what looks like a smiley face drawn on the wall in blood.” She said, pressing a button to display the new crime scene photos on the big screen.

Your heart froze in your chest.

There it was; a crude smiley face drawn right above your headboard and a crisp white envelope resting against your pillow. He’d made your bed too, some small part of your mind noted. How polite. Instinctively, you crossed your arms over your chest as you were hit with a mixture of panic and disgust.

“Of course,” you sighed, “of course there is. Why wouldn’t there be? It’s been that kind of day.”

“Do we know what the letter says?” Morgan asked.

Garcia nodded, “And it’s a doozy. The letter contains a poem written with letters cut out from magazines and newspapers. It reads:

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part.

Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;

And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart,

That thus so cleanly I myself can free.

Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,

And when we meet at any time again,

Be it not seen in either of our brows

That we one jot of former love retain …”

You could feel your friends staring and you tried to keep your face as neutral as possible. Your skin felt like it was on fire, and you could hear the blood pounding in your ears as you thought of a murderer setting foot in your space; him touching your bed, running his hands over the photos on your nightstand, defiling your possessions with his presence. You’d never felt so vulnerable and exposed, and bile rose up in your stomach like your body was physically rejecting the whole thing. Distantly you heard Prentiss and Morgan discussing theories, and you felt one pair of warm brown eyes staring into the side of your head.

Suddenly, you didn’t feel like joking around anymore.

“Sorry,” you muttered, standing up and striding out of the room without looking back, “I need some air.”

You were so angry by the time you made it out into the courtyard that you’d balled your hands into fists and your breath was coming out in short little bursts. Hot tears pricked at the corners of your eyes and your chest felt painfully tight.

“Y/N?” You heard Spencer ask.

You sniffed, wiping your face quickly, “Reid, hi. Sorry, I just-“ you let out a slow breath, “I needed a break.”

He nodded like he understood, tucking his hands into his pockets as he stepped towards you. You wanted to tell him to go away, to head back inside and leave you the hell alone, but the words wouldn’t come.

It had always been like this with Spencer. No matter how hard you tried to be tough and brave and put together, he saw right through you and broke down your defenses. At one point, he’d been the closest thing to family you’d ever had, in fact you thought you might…..

Well, it didn’t matter now. Over the last year things had changed, you’d grown apart. It happened, but the fondness was still there, and the trust, and those damn eyes.

“I get it, Y/N, I can't even imagine what this whole thing must be like for you,” he said, “having your home be violated like that….and the store?” He shook his head, “I know how hard you worked setting that place up.”

Your bottom lip trembled and, for the first time that day, you let yourself feel afraid as tears slipped down your cheeks.

You shook your head, “You know, when I saw the glass all over the floor, and all the books….I just felt tired, like bone tired. I wasn’t scared of that, but now?” You paused, glancing up at Spencer, as a tear slid down your cheek, “He was in my home, Spencer. He made my bed before he left, he wrote me a letter.”

Spencer worked his jaw and hesitantly reached out, touching your shoulder gently.

“We’ll catch him, Y/N/N, we always do.” He promised.

“And until then?” You asked, “Do I just pretend it never happened? Go home and act like it’s all okay?”

“No,” another voice cut in from behind you, “you rely on us. We’ll take care of you,” Morgan explained.

“Yeah,” Garcia agreed, her big blue eyes clinging to yours, “We’ve talked about it already. You’ll take turns staying with each of us a few nights a week and then, on the weekends, we’ll all stay with Rossi to go over the case. And we’ll spend every free moment tracking this son of a bitch down for you.”

Emily nodded and, for the first time since you had opened your store that morning, you felt your chest swell with something a little like hope. You knew the BAU was special, you knew that the bonds you’d formed over the years were damn near unbreakable, but this? This was too much. Seeing your friends rally around you when you needed them most just reminded you how much you loved them, and how much they still loved you. Even now. Spencer gave your shoulder a squeeze and you smiled back at him.

“I really missed you guys,” you said with a watery laugh.

Penelope crooned and threw her arms around your neck, pulling you into a familiarly bone-crushing hug.

“We missed you too, Sugar Plum,” she promised.

“Really?”

“Hell yeah!” Morgan smiled, joining Penelope’s hug.

“You know we did,” Emily agreed, ruffling your hair and pulling herself in close.

Your eyes found Spencer where he was standing just outside of the group hug, both hands in his pockets and a sad smile on his face. You pressed your lips together and, in response, he nodded.

“We missed you,” he said softly and then, as the hug broke up and you allude your way back inside, even softer, “we still do.”

---------------- 

Taglist: @ourfavoritesergeantbarnes​

[cactusandfir]

i’ve been catching up on reading rather than writing the last couple weeks, and it’s been a nice break after posting. i almost pulled an all-nighter finally reading all 300k of  the hockey at the end of the world series in like, two days, and it felt so indulgent and inspiring!

i’ve also been throwing random bits into drafts here and there. i kind of want to write one more small thing before the end of the year, partially because i have a couple ideas percolating i’d like to explore, and partially because i want to hit 50k words published. i’m having a hard time even believing i’ve almost done that! this month has kicked my butt in a lot of ways and i’ve been feeling a little down abt myself (unrelated to fandom!), so it would feel super nice to accomplish that.

lastly, i thought i was going to have more to say about keep the lanterns lit, but when i went to write a postmortem, it ended up being pretty short. those thoughts under the cut!

i’m still not sure how exactly i feel about this fic! i’m not sure i did very well at communicating some key character motivations and i had so much time to work on it, but ended up having to take quite a few life breaks, and i think that was overall not good for like, continuity. i felt like i lost the plot (literally and figuratively) several times while writing it. 

BUT i didn’t want to just abandon it, there’s still like quite a bit of it that i like, and i felt that posting it now, rather than withdrawing and working on it longer, was the right way to go. i think i tried to do more than i was capable re plot and character building so i don’t think having another few weeks was going to change anything significant.

things that went well: 

i like a lot of the language i crafted, i think i had some really nice descriptive phrases. 

i like how much i was able to spread out, i think i’ve slowly been improving on extending the pacing and i felt like i did well with it here. 

i liked thinking about the little world i built in my head, and although i don’t feel like i did it justice in portraying it, it was very soothing to me, personally lol sometimes i wish i could be one of those people who tagged atmospheric things about their fic on their blog, but truly i am too nervous to reread my own writing so soon after posting, much less talk about it immediately after!

lessons learned:

taking long breaks from projects is maybe not ideal, unless there’s a significant enough chunk of time at the end to finish. i wasn’t expecting life to get in the way this much, so i spent more time writing than i probably would have if i was working on it all in a row, because i had to refamiliarize myself with it after every break.

i’m not sure i enjoy writing longer fic! i love it when a project comes together, but i don’t have any formal fiction writing training, so it’s more work than i want to do to in my spare time to write longer stories. the words just don’t come easily to me and that’s okay! this was the longest thing (in general: for fun, for work, or for school) that i’ve ever written so i’m super proud of finishing it, but i’m going to happily go back to no-pressure word limit situations.

[fuyunoakegata]

rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. send me an ask with the title that most intrigues you and I’ll post a little snippet of it or tell you something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs. Tagged by @daringyounggrayson (as per usual, ignoring the part about how many people I tag lol)

Ummm. 11 documents named "Untitled" 🙃😎

Cozy

You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed

Early reboot Dick and Roy

Dick/Roy

Flaws3

Whumptober 2020 and Batfam Bingo

Collar Me (Don't Collar Me) Chapter 8 - I Am Superman, and I Know What's Happening

flaws sequel

Various assorted character and story notes and deleted scenes

And 2 documents that I have no idea where they come from. And I'm not sure if I wrote them or pasted them to turn into Kindle format to read on a trip. One is called "copy of Postmortem" , and the other is "copy of Gone and Back Again" it's driving me nuts that I don't know if I wrote them or not 🤣

[proudmythicalbeast]

(re: your tags on the gifset from Mark’s postmortem) yes I was thinking about the same thing! Especially after seeing Rhett’s ‘congrats’ tweet, that felt like a real ‘god I wish that were me’ moment. Hope they can end gmm before entirely burning out on it and feel just as satisfied when the day comes 😖

Lol, reading back my tags, maybe I was little harsh. And yeah, I have feelings about Rhett reacting to UA. I think RandL pride themselves on being the first (or one of) for so much on youtube, and Mark and Ethan did something so new in spite of everything while RandL haven't been able to do much this year.

It does feel like RandL are so uninvolved creatively in their own work and that cuts down on their enjoyment. I hope they are working on things they do enjoy on the side that we just haven't seen yet! I wouldn't mind if GMM ended or even if they cut down on how often eps were, as long as they were happier. Seeing how satisfied Mark and Ethan were about the ending of UA was so fun and touching, it would be amazing if GMM was able to achieve that kind of ending.

[levyfiles]

I haven’t watched this episode yet but it really does feel like a goodbye bfu episode to me :((

I hope you changed your mind since you sent this because they did say they’re coming back with a supernatural season when things are better. Granted, don’t think I don’t understand the feeling. Yesterday only moments before the bloopers video dropped, I felt a sudden hollow feeling like “Oh...we don’t have anything else today” which ugh mean we’re so spoiled now because do you remember what hiatuses used to be like around here? Oh my god, I used to brace myself every time the last postmortem aired because I knew the moment the content stopped, the tag would slowly start to fill with bad takes, discourse and people trying to start fights. 

Be at ease lol we got a whole trunk load of content to look forward to. It may not be the formula of BFU but Ryan and Shane and Steven have a lot of big plans and we’re gonna be so well fed.