#this makes more sense geographically
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thefreakandthehair · 1 month ago
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you could be bad, but I wanna find out.
written for @steddiemicrofic ‘guard’ | wc: 532 | rated: mature | tags: goalie!Steve Harrington, fan!Eddie Munson, alternate universe- no upside down, different first meeting, meet ugly (but it's still cute), bars, alcohol mention, description of sexual activity, humor, big mouth!Eddie Munson, long-suffering besties Gareth and Jeff
The bar is buzzing with excited fans, humming with an energy that makes Eddie feel looser and lighter than the Budweiser ever could. Surrounded by a sea of black and red jerseys that line the long, narrow bar, Jeff and Gareth laugh and shake their heads. 
Eddie hasn’t stopped rambling since the Blackhawks won, and he has no intentions of stopping anytime soon. 
Not after a win like that— a shutout win that tore the roof off of United Center. 
And certainly not after the Blackhawks goalie guarded the net like it was his treasure and he, its dragon. 
Sure, it helps that Steve Harrington is definitely the most beautiful man to ever grace an ice rink, but it’s the competence that gets him. Watching Harrington bend and stretch his limbs into pretzel-like shapes, coming up with the puck and an unhinged grin, really gets his motor running.
“I mean, did you see him?” Eddie asks for maybe the tenth time since sitting at the shiny, shellacked bar. “Jeff, you get it, right? You see what I’m seeing, right?” 
“I see a guy who’s really great at his job, and I see another guy who sounds insane. Guess which one you are?” Jeff snorts into his beer and takes a sip. 
“Gareth, buddy, surely you can understand where I’m coming from. Remember the first time you saw Lars Ulrich?” Eddie turns, knocking his shoulder against Gareth’s. 
“Duh, dude,” Gareth leans forward and yells in response, the bar erupting into cheers and more drunken celebrations. “The difference is that I wanted to be Lars Ulrich. You want to fuck Steve Harrington.” 
Eddie clutches his chest in feigned offense and feels himself being pushed against the bar as the building fills up with what must be the final wave of fans leaving the stadium. The bartender nods behind him with a knowing smile and passes a draft beer over Eddie’s shoulder into a large, veiny hand. 
“Okay, fine,” Eddie concedes, resting his own drink on the bar. “You’re right. The way I would fuck Steve Harrington is obscene. I’d let him violate whatever obscure, unknown Bible Belt laws he wanted. He's a ride I wouldn't survive. The wheels would come right off.”
“Uh, Eddie?” Jeff tries to interrupt but Eddie’s having none of it. 
“Nope, I’m not done. That split save? The way he guarded his crease? And for a fucking 36-save shutout? Holy shit.”
“Ed—” Gareth tries but Eddie steamrolls him, too. 
“What is it you call it, Gare? A competency kink? Well, sure. Fine. Call it what you want, but he’s so good at what he does. I need him in a way that would disappoint my grandmother, and not just because she was homophobic."
A hand— the same hand that had reached over him to grab the glass just a few minutes ago— pats him on the shoulder and when Eddie turns around to see who the fuck is touching him, he nearly falls off of the wobbly stool.
Steve Harrington grins, a drink in one hand and the other still resting on Eddie’s frozen frame. 
“I think your grandmother would’ve liked me,” he shrugs. “I have a way with families.” 
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queen-mabs-revenge · 2 months ago
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youtube
j. kenji lópez-alt the man that you are
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first time with this technique so i'm a bit ragged (and i forgot to flip so the white distribution wasn't fully even on both sides) but this is genuinely the first time i've made a poached egg that wasn't just a yolk and a pot of stringy whites 😭🙌
(and yes i know the eggs are supposed to be baked into the shakshuka but cooking for 1 means making the base in a batch and poaching the eggs individually womp womp)
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Civil War's world is confusing. New York is regularly getting bombed by IEDs but four star hotels are open. DC is a war zone but the successionists are California and Texas. Cars are being abandoned on the side of the road but wifi is somewhat a thing. The NYT doesn't exist but there's dozens of American journalists with jobs AND INTERNS.
I understand the world doesn't immediately end during civil wars but if they wanted to tell the story of Jan 6ers vs the they/them army, why not have it set in Oregon where there are a lot of far leftist and far rightists together? With that state being really the only one that's messed up. Are Texans flying drones across Appalachia? If we can have an iron dome over Israel I feel like we could keep DC stable, much less the CULTURAL CAPITAL OF THE WORLD.
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concha-de-mar · 5 months ago
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Okay, so either he goes to the capital and reunites with Nasuada or he goes to Du Weldenvarden
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curuniel · 2 years ago
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It also has the potential to improve some corporate environmental impacts. Currently, labour protections are so much worse in some countries (who want foreign corporations to set up there for the country's economy) that it's worth the money to have things made on one side of the world and shipped to the other side of the world to be sold. Which is ridiculous from a practical standpoint. The more we close the gap on rights and wages globally, the less worthwhile that gets.
I feel like this bears repeating: the reason that manufacturing has moved out of the US and into other, poorer countries is that labor is less expensive in those countries, because labor laws are worse. It's cheaper for companies to produce things in Bangladesh because in Bangladesh you can pay your workers less and extract longer hours from them and generally treat them worse. This means that if you're an American who has been hurt by manufacturing moving out of the US, your most important allies are labor activists in the countries to which manufacturing has moved.
The US achieved the labor protections it did (like basic safety regulations, the 8-hour workday, and the weekend) through the work of unions and of the broad left-wing coalition that was the labor movement of the early twentieth century. These rights are among the principle reasons that labor is expensive here. If you don't want labor to be moved abroad, it is literally in your own self interest to support labor movements in poor countries where labor is cheep. If people in in places like Bangladesh had these same rights, there wouldn't be nearly the same incentive for companies to move labor out of the country.
If you're an American suffering from industrial decline in the Rust Belt, for instance, then supporting these movements isn't bleeding heart altruism, it is a policy in your rational self-interest.
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tragedyposting · 10 months ago
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Remaking an earlier post to clarify some of the wording
Note that strength in sense of identity doesn't necessarily mean you love living in your country, state, region, etc. nor does it mean you uncritically agree with the government of your government, state, municipality, only that you find it important to your understanding of who you are culturally.
Please reblog this version instead, the notes have gone insane on the earlier version with clumsier wording and I really do want to learn more about this. Also I will be making a non-U.S. specific version of this post soon. As usual, if you're not from the U.S. please don't vote on this poll but feel free to shoot me a DM for a screenshot of the results in progress!
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3verythingiknowaboutlove · 23 days ago
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first fall of snow
how spencer guesses you're pregnant before you actually tell him
fluff word count: 1390 warnings & tags & stuff: pregnant reader, slight issues with mother mentioned?, non-graphic vomiting, mentions/allusions to winter holidays being celebrated, kinda spencer's pov but still 2nd pov, reader is scared spencer will leave her lol, anxious!reader in general, mentions of death?, probably medical inaccuracies ive never been pregnant author's note: hiiii i'm forcing myself to post this because if i don't then i'll never post and i'm being BRAVE. i hope it can be a little comforting maybe. i've realllyyyy been struggling with my take on spencer's characterization lately soo this was kinda like a bootcamp/exercise situation into his mind and less an expression of my writing skills, iykwim. let me know your thoughts if u have any! i love you & have a splendid day!!
Spencer is walking—speed walking—toward his car, away from the case he just finished, away from serial killers and guns and geographical profiling and death.
He places his feet carefully on the snow-covered sidewalk with each step, the cold air biting at his face. He barely notices it, absorbed in the path ahead, as the snow provides a satisfying crunch underfoot—a nice background to his perpetually racing mind.
He doesn’t like the winter. It’s always too harsh outdoors, and too stuffy indoors, and he’s trapped in a suffocating haze no matter where he goes. 
His phone starts to vibrate gently in his pocket, interrupting his racing thoughts for a split second. His pace falters as he pulls it free, a quick smile tugging at the corner of his lips when he sees it’s your name on the screen.
“Hi. How are you?” he asks after picking up, watching his breath come out in puffs of vapor in the cold air.
Winters, however, have gotten progressively better each year he spends with you.
“...I’m okay,” you say, though the crack in your voice reveals the all-consuming ache in your bones and mind.
“No. You’re overwhelmed,” he guesses in his matter-of-fact way, voice gentle. You huff out a soft laugh at his ability to read you, never getting old.
“Yeah, I guess. A little. The holiday season, you know. Are you on your way home?” you ask, voice softer now. You’re sitting on the couch of yours and Spencer’s cozy apartment, wrestling with a blanket to cover your lap, and bouncing your leg relentlessly.
“I’m walking to the car now. Hey, have you done the crossword today?” Spencer asks, words a familiar, tender remedy for your nerves. You told him a long time ago that hearing his voice makes you feel better, and there are times, like these, where he just knows it’s what you need. You rest our head on the arm of the couch, curling up.
“No, I didn’t have the time. Why?”
“There was an interesting question about causes of death in Shakespeare plays, but they completely messed up the part of speech. It read, ‘Popular ways to die by the hands of England’s national poet’. I thought it was ‘poisons’ at first, but it was actually ‘stabbed’, even though the correct answer grammatically should’ve been ‘stabs’ or ‘stabbings’,” he says, his car now in sight through the steady sprinkle of snow coming down. “Do you think I should send an email to let them know? I guess stabbing does make more sense, though, versus poison, because throughout his works, thirty characters out of his 74 that died were stabbed compared to only four that were poisoned. Three were stabbed and poisoned. Did you know that two were actually baked into pies, which is a-”
“Oh my god, the pie,” you groan, cutting him off mid-sentence, sitting up hastily, the blanket falling to the floor.
“Pie?”
“Yeah. My mom coerced me into making it to bring tomorrow.” You pad over to the kitchen and crouch down to peek through the hazy glass of the oven, inspecting it. “Oh,” you murmur. “It’s…not pretty.”
He sandwiches the phone in between his ear and shoulder, gently opening the door to his car to sit down as he listens to you. He turns the heat on, exhaling in an exhausted relief, hovering his hand over where the air comes out. 
“Can you tell me what it looks like? Maybe I can help,” he suggests, leaning back against the headrest and letting his eyes close for a second. You put the phone on speaker, setting it on the counter as you bend down to take it out. “Don’t burn yourself,” he adds, hearing what you’re doing.
“I’m not going to burn my-” you cut yourself off with a huff. “Whatever. It’s just really messy. There’s like… liquid overflowing where the lattice should be.”
He hums. “How long has it been cooking for?”
“45 minutes. My mom sent me this one ancient recipe that I had to use written on parchment paper from like 70 years ago, and it does not have a bake time listed, so I’m just eyeballing it.”
“Okay. You could either put it back in the oven in hopes that more of the liquid will evaporate, or you can leave it out to cool down and hopefully thicken,” he says.
“What do you think I should do?”
“I think you sound exhausted and need your sleep.” 
You sigh, staring at your mess of a pie, hopes that you’ll appease your mother this year slipping further and further away, soon to be completely buried by the snow.
“Hey. I’m sure it’ll taste really good. Besides, people still liked Shakespeare, and he wrote about much worse pies than you could ever make.” 
A smile pulls at your lips.
“Yeah. Okay. I’ll just leave it out to cool and head to bed. Will you stay on the phone a little longer?” you ask, padding over to your shared bedroom.
“Of course.”
He doesn’t start driving as you talk, not when nearly 2000 people die per year due to driving on icy roads, and two thirds of them were people who were reported to not be paying close enough attention.
And especially not when 54 hours ago on your last phone call, he noticed a drastic shift in your behavior, and was quickly able to tell that you were pregnant. 
He had too much waiting for him at home to be spinning out on black ice because he was talking to you and not watching the road.
He chooses instead to look outside at the falling snow, blanketing the city, his city, the very first for D.C. to have this winter out of the septillion snowflakes planet earth receives each year.
Spencer gets home a little later that night, holding another pint of cherries in his hands. Not for the pie—which he turns to see resting on the stove and winces slightly at—but for you. 
Cherries, with their 342 mg of potassium per cup, help replenish lost electrolytes and can soothe nausea.
He’s expecting it to start any day now.
He quietly steps into the bedroom, setting his bag by the door to be dealt with tomorrow. The soft glow of the lamp that was left on, presumably for him by your endlessly considerate heart, provides just enough light so he can get changed. He then finally clambers into bed next to you, one hand reaching out to lace in your hair, moving his fingers to gently scratch by the nape of your neck. He lifts the other to rest, like you're made of a delicate china, on your lower stomach, sighing in pure relief the second it makes contact.
You turn sleepily, humming when you’re met with the sight of him. “Spence,” you murmur, contented.
“Hi. I really didn’t mean to wake you up. I’m sorry,” he says, so quietly.
“I'm glad you did. I like it when you wake me.” You tuck yourself closer to him. “I love you.” His hand comes to trace gentle patterns all over your back and arm, and he gives you a little kiss, adoringly.
“Go back to sleep. I love you.”
You let your eyes shut once again, this time much easier now that he’s with you. You inhale his scent, which you swear could repair anything broken or lost in this world. You exhale, wondering if he’d still hold you the same way after learning that you’re carrying his child. 
It’s a scary thought, but you’re comforted by his warm touch, pushing you farther out into the deep sea of sleep.
Once your breaths get steady and your mouth parts slightly, he adds, in a whisper, “Both.”
The next morning, when you’re hunched over the toilet bowl, Spencer is there with you, rubbing your back and wiping your teary eyes. You look up to him after brushing your teeth, and no words are exchanged. He tugs you into his arms, silently quelling any of the countless anxieties swarming your mind, at least in this moment.
His hand comes up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. He lets it rest there, cupping your jaw.
“Let’s go shopping after breakfast today, okay? You need prenatal vitamins.” He presses a soft kiss to your forehead.
“And a new pie.”
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fuckyeahgoodomens · 1 year ago
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SFX Magazine Issue 372 - Designing Good Omens ❤ 😊
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PRODUCTION DESIGNER MICHAEL RALPH REVEALS HOW THE SHOW���S CENTREPIECE SET, WHICKBER STREET, WAS GIVEN A DEVILISHLY CLEVER UPGRADE FOR THE SECOND SEASON
WORDS: DAVE GOLDER
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Invisible Columns And Thin Walls “The new studio is Pyramid Studios in Bathgate – it used to be a furniture warehouse. And unfortunately – or fortunately, because I accept these things as not challenges but gifts – right down the middle of that studio are a series of upright columns. But you’ll never spot them on screen. I had to build them in and integrate them into the walls and still get the streets between them. And it worked.
“There’s all sorts of cheeky design values to those sets. Normally a set like this is double-skin. In other words, you do an interior wall and an exterior wall, with an airspace in between. But really, the only time a viewer notices that there’s that width is at the doors and the windows. So I cheated all that. I ended up with single walls everywhere. So the exterior wall is the interior wall, just painted. All I did was make the sash windows and entrances wider to give it some depth as you walked in.”
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GOOD OMENS HAD A CHANGE of location for its second season, but hopefully you didn’t notice. Because Whickber Street in Soho upped sticks from an airfield in Hertfordshire to a furniture warehouse in Bathgate, Edinburgh. It’s the kind of nonsensical geographical shenanigans that could only make sense in the crazy world of film and TV, and production designer Michael Ralph was the man in charge of rebuilding and expanding the show’s vast central set. “I wish we could have built more in season one than we did,” says Ralph, whose previous work has included Primeval and Dickensian. “We built the ground floor of everything and the facades of all the shops. But we didn’t build anything higher than that, because we were out on an airfield in a very, very difficult terrain and weather conditions, so we really couldn’t go much higher. Visual effects created the upper levels.”
But with season two the set has gone to a whole other level… literally. “What happened was that the rest of the street became integrated into the series’s storyline,” explains Ralph. “So we needed a record shop, we needed a coffee shop that actually had an inside, we needed a magic shop, we needed the pub. To introduce those meant we had to change the street with a layout that works from a storylines point of view. In other words, things like someone standing at the counter in the record shop had to be able to eyeball somebody standing at the counter in the coffee shop. They had to be able to eyeball Aziraphale sitting in his office in the window of the bookshop. But the rest of it was a pleasure to do inside, because we could expand it and I could go up two storeys.”
For most of the set, which is around 80 metres long and 60 metres wide, the two storeys only applied to the shop frontages, but in the case of Aziraphale’s bookshop, it allowed Ralph to build the mezzanine level for real this time. According to Ralph it became one of the cast and crews’ favourite places to hang out during down time.
But while AZ Fell & Co has grown in height, it actually has a slightly smaller footprint because of the logistics of adapting it to the new studio.
“Everybody swore to me that no one would notice,” says Ralph wryly. “I walked onto it and instinctively knew there was a difference immediately, and they hated me for that. I have this innate sense about spatial awareness and an eye like a spirit level.
“It’s not a lot, though – I think we’ve lost maybe two and a half feet on the front wall internally. I think that there’s a couple of other smaller areas, but only I’d notice. So I can be really annoying to my guys, but only on those levels. Not on any other. They actually quite like me…”
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Populating The Bookshop “The props in the new bookshop set were a flawless reproduction from the set decorator Bronwyn Franklin [who is also Ralph’s wife]. It was really the worst-case scenario after season one. She works off the concept art that I produce, but what she does is she adds so much more to the character of the set. She doesn’t buy anything she doesn’t love, or doesn’t fit the character.
“But the things she put a lot of work into finding for season one, they were pretty much one-offs. When we burnt the set down in the sixth episode, we lost a lot of props, many of which had been spotted and appreciated by the fans. So Bronwyn had to discover a new set decorating technique: forensic buying.
“She found it all – duplicates and replicas. It took ages. In that respect, the Covid delay was very helpful for Bron. There’s 7,000 books in there and there’s not one fake book. That’s mainly because… it’s a weird thing to say, but we wanted it to smell and feel like a bookshop to everybody that was in it, all the time.
“It affects everybody subliminally; it affects everybody’s performance – actors and crew – it raises the bar 15 to 20%. And the detail, you know… We love a lot of detail.”
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(look at the description under this, they called him 'Azi' hehehehe :D <3)
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Aziraphale’s Inspirational Correspondence “There’s not one single scrap of paper on Aziraphale’s desk that isn’t written specifically for Aziraphale. Every single piece is not just fodder that’s been shoved there, it has a purpose; it’s a letter of thanks, or an enquiry about a book or something.
“Michael Sheen is so submerged in his character he would get lost sitting at his own desk, reading his own correspondence between takes. I believe wholeheartedly that if you put that much care into every single piece of detail, on that desk and in that room, that everybody feels it, including the crew, and then they give that set the same respect it deserves.
“They also lift their game because they believe that they’re doing something of so much care and value. Really, it’s a domino effect of passion and care for what you’re producing.”
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Alternative Music “My daughter Mickey is lead graphic designer [two of Ralph’s sons worked on the series too, one as a concept artist, the other in props]. They’re the ones that produced all of that handwritten work on the desk. She’s the one that took on the record shop and made up 80 band names so that we didn’t have to get copyright clearance from real bands. Then she produced records and sleeves that spanned 50, 60 years of their recordings, and all of the graphics on the walls.
“I remember Michael and Neil [Gaiman] getting lost following one band’s history on the wall, looking at their posters and albums desperately trying to find out whether they survived that emo period.”
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It’s A Kind Of Magic One of the new shops in Whickber Street for season two was Will Goldstone’s Magic Shop, which is full of as many Easter eggs as off-the-shelf conjuring tricks, including a Matt Smith Doctor Who-style fez and a toy orang-utan that’s a nod to Discworld’s The Librarian. Ralph says that while the series is full of references to Gaiman, Pratchett and Doctor Who, Michael Sheen never complained about a lack of Masters Of Sex in-jokes. “He’d be the last person to make that sort of comment!”
Ralph also reveals that the magic shop counter was another one of his wife’s purchases, bought at a Glasgow reclamation yard.
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The Anansi Boys Connection Ralph reveals that Good Omens season two used the state-of-the-art special effects tech Volume (famous for its use in The Mandalorian to create virtual backdrops) for just one sequence, but he will be using it extensively elsewhere on another Gaiman TV series being made for Prime Video.
“We used Volume on the opening sequence to create the creation of the universe. I was designing Anansi Boys in duality with this project, which seems an outrageously suicidal thing to do. But it was fantastic and Anansi Boys was all on Volume. So I designed for Volume on one show and not Volume on the other. The complexities and the psychology of both is different.”
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ailurinae · 3 months ago
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That's the whole title. And it's not a pre-print archive where you might think a mistake like leaving out the end of the title could happen, it's in the Journal of South American Earth Sciences. The link goes to ScienceDirect/Elsevier.
The end of the title should probably be "American Southwest" it seems like? "Journal of South American Earth Sciences" seems like an odd venue since it is talking about "Arizona, New Mexico and Texas", not even getting into Mexico it doesn't look like from a skim (the journal says "Including Mexico, Central America, The Caribbean and The Antarctic Peninsula"). And none of the authors are from South America. Three are from the US, one is in Canada and one in Austria.
Edit: yeah the pre-print has the whole title. The journal fucked it up.
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[EARLY PERMIAN SEAWAYS IN THE]
Lucas et al. (2024)
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violetrainbow412-blog · 1 year ago
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Decoy [S. R.]
Spencer Reid x fem!reader
word count: 6.9k
summary: when you go after an unsub who catches students making out, the unit is called upon to resort to desperate measures. Or in other words, where you and Spencer become the decoy to catch a voyeur.
warnings: +16. Making out, mentions of alcohol, mentions of violence, insinuation of smut, sexual tension
Do yourself a favor and imagine Spencer in these clothes during the case
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You sighed, completely frustrated, while you looked for the thousandth time at the blackboard with some information from the profile that you had made for the criminal in this case.
You believed that the unsub was a Caucasian man between 30 and 35 years old, whose motive was to spy on and photograph university students who were escaping in their cars to make out at night, then force them to have sex in front of him and finally kill them cold-blooded. You imagined that he was a person with a mediocre job, that he felt insufficient, and that his voyeuristic behavior probably came from sexual frustration, something that could be corroborated by the violence that he inflicted on the genital area of the students whom he stalked using a knife, his mark on all homicides. You also believed that perhaps the rejection or abandonment of his last partner (preceded by a bad streak from his youth) due to his impotence had been the triggering event for all his repressed impulses to come to light.
All the psychological analysis was fine, it wasn't something you hadn't seen before, but the hard part of all this? Because he only threatened and killed people, he didn't rape them, at first it was almost impossible to tell who it was. He already had 20 victims in total and you weren't even close to catching him. In the last scene he had made the mistake of leaving a fingerprint and Garcia had been able to trace his true identity: Oliver Davis, a guy who fits the description perfectly. Unfortunately, this turned out to be useless because beyond the accusations of being a pervert, the man didn’t have much information that would give a clue to his whereabouts, you had even called the job that he had registered and all you had obtained was that he had several months without working there, which coincided with the beginning of the murders. After that Rossi suggested that he probably lived in a trailer (old, due to his lack of employment) where he developed the photographs and kept his trophies. That only made more sense when you thought that it would make it easier to transport or escape in case things got messy.
But words on paper and intelligent conclusions were of absolutely no use to you. You needed a plan to catch him.
"Do you have something, Reid?" Hotch had asked. You had already interviewed some students, you had set up guard duty to look for any suspicious behavior and you had even shared the photograph of the suspect in the media, but nothing had worked; The only thing left was to carry out the geographical profile to know the area in which he was attacking and thus be able to search for possible targets.
“I triangulated the locations we have of his previous homicides and I'm guessing he hits in this specific area,” he muttered, pointing to a space on the map he had on his blackboard with his middle finger. “Considering it's an area frequented by the age group due to its proximity to the universities and that it has several parks that the students told us they use to drink or go out as a couple”
"So what?" Morgan said from his spot. "We just wait until he kills someone else and hopefully we're near the scene to hear the screams?"
“Maybe we can ask the cops to patrol the area for the unsub's car,” JJ suggested.
“He's smart, there's a trailer park right here. It wouldn't be strange to find one on the streets as well.” Reid was visibly frustrated like everyone else and he ran a hand through his hair with some despair.
Your options were running out and frankly you couldn't think of anything else.
“And if we give him a target?” Emily murmured. Noticing that none of you said anything, she went on to explain her plan, “We ask police officers to send any young people they see around to home so we force our unsub to get close to who we want”
"And what are we going to do? Hire a couple of college kids to stalk them?”
“We can use our own team”
"Not to offend you, Prentiss, but we are no longer in the prime of youth"
"We don't, but Y/L/N and Reid do" when you heard your last name you were surprised, but when you heard your friend's you practically froze. First you looked at her and then at the doctor, whose gaze reflected the same stupefaction as you "You two are young, you might look like students"
"Are you saying you want to send us straight into the hands of a sexual predator?" you couldn't be offended, after all, those risks were part of the job, but you did feel somewhat reluctant about the idea.
“Do you have a better suggestion?”
“It doesn't sound so bad” Rossi murmured “It's a smart move”
“Besides, we would be watching around and we would intervene before that madman got close to you. Once we catch him, the photographs and personal items that he probably has in his trailer will be enough evidence, in addition to the fingerprint from the last crime scene” to your surprise, Derek was also pretty convinced of the plan that Emily had just devised.
"Reid, Y/L/N, would you guys be up for it?" Hotch exclaimed with his usual serious tone, looking at you and then at your partner.
Thinking objectively, the suggestion was very good. But thinking about it personally, you felt worried about the danger you two would be running into… oh, God. It wasn't until then that you realized that the plan to catch the suspect involved the two of you making out like a couple of hormonal college kids. 
You knew that the options that remained wouldn’t be as opportune as that and taking into account the temporary nature with which Oliver operated, in addition to the fact that he was already deteriorating as a murderer, it was most likely that he was already looking for new victims, so if you did that same night the chances of success were quite high. You were between a rock and a hard place and all you could do was look at him while the gazes of the rest of the room were divided between the two of you.
“I… I'll only do it if you say yes” you exclaimed in his direction, with a cautious voice and a fearful look. You knew your friend and you didn't want to make him feel uncomfortable in any way, even though you knew that both you and he knew that your personal interests would take precedence against the possibility that another couple of victims would lose their lives if you refused. It was your job, you had to do it. 
"Are you sure you guys are going to catch him before something happens?" Spencer asked your boss. You thought that with his background the last thing he wanted was to end up kidnapped or seriously injured again, even though the truth was that he was caring just as much about himself as he was about you. He had seen the photographs and knew that women were the most affected by the murder weapon… he didn't even want to imagine something like this happening to you.
"Of course. You will have communication with us and if something goes wrong we will get you out of there immediately" Aaron answered and your friend sighed nervously and then looked for your approval. You nodded slightly and he delivered the verdict, to which everyone agreed.
He was still standing, but after that he slumped into the nearest chair as he listened to everyone brainstorming ideas for setting up the scene, distributing the crew, and what they would tell the local police to do to make the decoy effective.
At some point you lost the whole point of the conversation, to start thinking about what was implied by what you were about to do.
The feeling of attraction for your co-worker had been latent in you for a couple of years, but you had never confessed it to anyone to avoid creating tension in the team or suffering the humiliation of certain rejection. Also, you knew that a crush meant distractions from what was truly important and you had tried, in vain, to eliminate it completely. But even if it hadn't completely gone, you had known how to control it, only allowing yourself to look at him with loving eyes from time to time and avoiding being too confident with him during group drinking outings. You even limited physical contact, not because you didn't like it but because you knew your greed would demand more and more of you until it became inevitable to beg for his touch. But now all that good work holding you back was screwed because in a few hours you would have to be passionately making out with him.
Still with the internal crisis, you raised your head to look at him and realized that he too had been submerged in his own tide of thoughts, which you hoped would be more positive than yours. At some point Spencer felt you watching him and when his eyes met yours he gave you that tight-lipped smile that was strangely comforting, to which you responded with the same gesture. After that it didn't take long for everyone to leave the room to fulfill their respective tasks, but you stayed seated because you honestly didn't feel enough energy to move. Besides, you had nothing entrusted to you, you were the bait.
"Hey, are you sure you're okay with this?" Spencer asked you, once everyone else had left. He looked so tired of everything, but at the same time there was a kind tone in his voice about him that made you smile.
“It's just kissing, Spence. I think we'll be fine" you assured him, trying to swallow all your embarrassment and nerves "And you?"
"I agree. I just hope we get lucky today or we'll just have to keep trying” 
"Reid, I need you to tell the cops what area we'll be in," Hotch interrupted you from the door. "You still have time to regret it," he added, looking at the two of you.
You immediately denied and after that Spencer withdrew from there in the company of Aaron. When you were about to drop you exhaled, completely concerned about the last thing your partner had said.
We will just have to keep trying. You didn't know if the idea excited you, or terrified you.
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As night fell, Spencer drove the old pickup truck the unit had managed to rent for the two of you to drive into the park, with you in the passenger seat and a six-pack of beer in the backseat.
Although you were sure that it would be cold, you had decided to wear shorts and a button-down shirt that you normally wore for work, but that you had adjusted to make it look more youthful. Spencer was wearing an outfit that Morgan had gotten for him from a department store, simple jeans with a rather baggy cotton shirt and some nice boots that you didn't know where he got from, since in Quantico you had never seen him wear anything like that.
Both of you had showered at the hotel (separately of course) and you had made sure to brush your teeth and put on a good amount of deodorant and perfume before getting in the car. You had paid special attention to your appearance, not because it was necessary, but because you wanted to look perfect for him. Even with all this, you were a nervous wreck next to him, not saying a word along the way and only soft music from the radio filling the air.
When you stopped, the two of you put your headphones on to the channel the team was supposed to be on, and Morgan answered in the affirmative.
"Remember, he doesn't have to see the communicator or your weapon," Rossi spoke, who was also in the van, along with Prentiss and Hotch. "García will be watching with the security cameras and he will warn us if the trailer is coming"
"And meanwhile what do we do?"
"Pretend to be a couple, sit on the tailgate and drink beer, laugh, I don't know"
“Did you ever run away like that in college?” you asked, directly at Reid.
“Do you remember that I was like 16 when I studied at the university, right? I wasn't even old enough to drive, much less a car" he muttered and you gave a short laugh "I guess you did"
“I was too busy being the best in the institution to even think about going out and making out with idiots,” you replied, proud of yourself for that. “I mean, it's not like you're an idiot, but they were. You're very smart," you rambled, still twiddling your fingers, "Hotch, you guys will tell us when we're going to start kissing, will you?"
“When the suspect approaches, yes”
"Okay, well... then we have to go out, huh?" you muttered to him as you reached for the beers and tried to open the door to get out. You turned, expecting to see Spencer do the same as you, but noticed that he had lingered in the car for a moment, checking himself in the mirror and applying his lips with chapstick.
My God, could that man make you more nervous?
When he finally caught up with you, you went to the back of the pickup, where you opened the tailgate to sit down with a little hop. Spencer was tall enough to keep up with you just by leaning over the edge, where you watched him cross his arms. You were silent for a few moments, listening to the sound of crickets and cars in the distance.
"Do you think it's a good idea to drink?"
"Only a little. I'm having a hard time thinking while sober, I don't want to ruin the little reasoning I have left” you exclaimed as a joke. Or maybe you weren't joking so much "Just empty a couple of cans and leave them on the floor so he'll think we're really drunk." Spencer was about to do what you said when you noticed an important detail and called him over to look at you "Come here, let me fix your hair."
"What's wrong with my hair?"
"You're very well combed, it's not the image we expect" you carefully took his hand until it was close enough to pass the other through all his golden locks, messing them up enough to give him that relaxed touch that he should have. He looked so handsome, but not in the style of a fancy FBI agent but just like a young intellectual who went to parties and smoked weed “Like this. Perfect"
“Do you think we have to think of some backstory?” he asked and you looked at him with a frown. “You know, something about us. What degree are we studying, what are our names…”
"This is not a play"
"It's rude to eavesdrop on conversations, Prentiss," you said visibly annoyed, although looking at your partner that expression softened "As you wish, Spencer. Although being honest, I would say that you study… literature”
"Really?" he exclaimed with slight enthusiasm. You knew that his mother had been a teacher in the subject and you wondered if he had ever considered it.
“Morgan wasn’t wrong to choose those clothes for you. It suits you” you complimented him and Morgan whistled from the other end of the line. You felt like you were having too much fun for the situation you were in, but you needed to talk about something else to put off the reminder of what you had come to do for as long as possible. “I think you would have that hopeless philosopher/romantic vibe who flirts by whispering memorized poetry in your ear.”
“I actually know some good ones”
"Sure you do" you smiled gently, suppressing the thought of him sighing close to your neck at Bécquer "I'd probably study science or something."
"The unattainable scientist with whom the captain of the soccer team has a secret crush, but she is completely unaware"
"Where did you get that? From a 90s movie?
Spencer's laugh was one of your favorite sounds and today that was precisely not helping your situation. You felt intoxicated by how handsome he looked, like you'd discovered a side to him that no one else had, and the thought of kissing him made you tremble a little with anticipation.
“Do you want to share a beer?” he murmured, carefully opening the can and offering it to you first. You knew your partner wasn't the most enthusiastic about doing anything that involved germs, so it made you feel good that he took the lead. You took a big gulp of the drink to gather something of value and when it was his turn to drink he kept looking at you intently, you would even say that he seemed entranced.
You had made sure you were in a strategic position, with enough light for the unsub to see you and quite lonely, except for the patrol cars and the van that had been positioned at a safe distance.
“How does voyeurism develop?” you asked quietly, with genuine interest, as you shifted a bit to get closer to him.
“Voyeurism usually begins in adolescence and since during that age it is usually seen with greater tolerance, there are people who continue with these behaviors until adulthood. When voyeurism is pathological, they spend considerable time looking for opportunities to watch, often at the expense of not fulfilling important responsibilities in their lives, and people reach orgasm by masturbating during or after watching. Although if you think about it a bit, everyone is a bit of a voyeur."
"Why you said so?"
“Many men and women enjoy viewing pornography, which can be classified as voyeuristic behavior. It's not a worrying thing, but it's interesting to think about it” he explained, with those expressions on his face that he had every time he shared knowledge with you. He liked that about you, that you were always willing to listen to his data and statistics even at the most inopportune moments.
"I'm still a little scared that Oliver is trying to do something to us."
“I have my gun. If he tries to do something to you, I'll use it" you knew that killing the unsub was always the last option Reid considered, so you widened your eyes a little to show your surprise "All lives are worth, but when that life has already taken so many and it puts you at risk, I would not doubt it. You have nothing to worry about” he assured you and your heart warmed a little at feeling so protected.
"Do you know if Oliver attacks at a specific time?"
"No, he doesn’t. Just as we can be here for ten minutes, we can also be here all night."
You exhaled loudly, before taking another gulp of beer.
“Drink some, boy. I feel kind of selfish around here."
"I am nervous"
"And why do you think I'm drinking?" you exclaimed wryly, still holding out the can to him, and when he finally agreed he drank a little more than you expected “Have you ever…” you started to say, but suddenly remembered that literally the whole team was listening to you. If the answer was embarrassing, you didn't want to hear Morgan and Emily taunting you all week, so you covered your microphone for a moment and spoke again, but so quietly that only he could hear you. "I suppose you kissed someone, did you?"
"Yes," he said quickly and you sighed with relief. It comforted you a little to know that it wasn't his first kiss, because you didn't want him to have such a bad memory “Do I look so inexperienced?"
"No, that's not what I meant" you smiled "You're handsome, I know you've probably kissed a couple of girls"
"You don't need to tell lies, you know I'll kiss you anyway"
"But it's not a lie. I really think you're handsome" you confessed, gathering all the courage in you, while you smiled at him in the most serene way possible "And if we weren't literally waiting for a murderer, you know I'd be happy to do this with you"
"Smooch me?"
"Having this bad date attempt, Reid," you hissed, flushing red, as you slammed your palm into his forehead with just a little bit of force. Spencer seemed quite pleased that he made you nervous, rather than the other way around, so he grinned, “Though I think we should have brought food. I'm starving,” you pouted, swinging your dangling legs back and forth.
"That's not a picnic, Y/N"
You hated for a second that everyone was so intent on the conversation. A part of you wanted a moment alone with the brunette, even if it was in the midst of such a strange situation.
You began to talk pleasantly about things completely unrelated to the case for a couple of minutes, staying where you were, until Hotch's interruption made you jump a bit in place.
"Garcia intercepted an approaching trailer, get ready” your heart immediately sped up and you noticed him tense beside you, too, probably with the same thought flooding his head.
"Okay, come closer," you exclaimed, trying not to panic, as you spread your legs a little to allow the man to step into the space between. He wasted no time and just as you wrapped your hands around his shoulders you heard the sound of another car pulling up.
"Is that our unsub?"
"It is"
You were about to turn your head to peek when Reid grabbed your cheek and stopped you.
"He's smart. If you look at him, he'll realize it” he reminded you with a serious voice. You were so worried about everything that you were forgetting about your training “Okay, so I… Is it okay if I put my hands here?” he asked with a different tone, nervously placing both hands on your waist. You had always admired the size and anatomy of those hands, but until now you had not had the pleasure of feeling them on your body in this way.
“Tonight everything you do is fine. I promise"
"It would be a good time to start, he'll see you" Emily reminded you and you could only sigh shakily.
You two were adults, why were you so scared about kissing?
"Close your eyes" Spencer whispered to you, masking his nerves better than you "I'll kiss you, just close them," he asked you and you did.
You felt his body lean against you a little until his chest almost touched yours and then his lips shakily pressed against yours. You would always remember your first kiss, which in essence was such a brief caress that you didn't even know if it could be counted as one, the one where he wordlessly asked your permission to explore your mouth. Still with your eyes closed, you pulled him by the neck towards you and started a new kiss, a little more confident and deep this time, allowing you to savor the beer mixed with strawberries and that strange flavor that each person has.
“We…” you started to say, once you separated “you have to do it slowly, what he wants is a show” you exclaimed. Spencer felt unable to say any words and your hands caressing him so deliciously wasn't helping at all “Slow,” you repeated.
You arched your back a little to get even closer and when you finally looked up you met his caramel eyes. You needed a moment to recover and you unconsciously licked your lips, as if you needed to pick up and savor his presence in your mouth again, something that didn’t go unnoticed by his attentive look at your movements. 
It didn't take long for you to give up, as beginning the third kiss you felt that you no longer had any control over your body, your heart, or your mind. And while it was true that neither of you were experts on the subject, you guys managed pretty well as the seconds ticked by. Spencer gasped as he simultaneously felt you pull the hair from his neck and caress his lips with the tip of your tongue, while you were taken by surprise when his hands left your waist and lowered to the height of your hip, where his thumbs gripped firmly on the clip of your shorts.
There was a kiss, then another and another; they became too many to count. You didn't want to touch him anywhere and at the same time you wanted to touch him completely, in the grip of the fantasy that this was real and not just a performance. And even if you were aware that it was all fake, that would probably only have encouraged you to enjoy something to the fullest that you knew would never come back. Amid everything you didn’t know which of the two situations would be worse.
The sound of your lips colliding became so obscene that you were embarrassed, but you had no plan to stop. Your hands slid gently down the length of his neck until you reached his chest and cupped the soft cotton of his garment in your fists to make sure he didn't move away from you. The heat of the moment just went up and up, but a voice on the intercom brought you back with a jolt.
“He started the trailer. He's going to go"
Spencer closed his eyes in frustration, and you sighed. From the position he was in it wasn’t possible to get around him without being seen, so keeping all his attention was on you and him.
Maybe you weren't doing it right? You wondered what the hell this man wanted to see if you were practically eating each other, but suddenly you remembered that his motivation was even more sexual than a couple of wet kisses. Maybe he was getting bored because he needed to see that you were about to… well, do it.
"Take off my shirt," you said immediately, still too close to his swollen lips and looking right into eyes that seemed to be pitch black.
"Take... what?"
"Take off my shirt" you repeated, with a tone that made the man shudder completely. With the hands that were still holding his shirt you pulled him to you and he held his breath “And kiss me better. Like you really want me"
But Spencer didn't need to pretend that he wanted you. 
He made you completely dizzy when he began to kiss you so hungrily and you managed to keep enough composure when you felt one of his warm hands travel under your blouse, limiting yourself to letting out sighs that were drowned against his lips. But what finally caused you to let out an indiscreet and unwelcome moan was when he pulled you by the hip until you were on the edge of the tailgate and you could feel the growing bulge in his pants pressing against you. Spencer had almost managed to suppress his, but in the end, you having your own situation down there didn't help one bit. 
His trembling fingers fussed with the buttons on your shirt until it ended up somewhere on the floor at incredible speed, leaving you half-naked before him and the collection of FBI agents standing around. You might have been embarrassed if your brain could connect two coherent thoughts, but you'd lost that from the moment Dr. Reid first dared to kiss you.
You carefully guided his hands to the beginning of the curve of your breasts and now you both sighed in unison, feeling goosebumps on every inch of your skin. You pushed yourself forward just for the satisfaction of hearing that guttural sound again and your prayers were immediately answered, for it was enough for him to feel the slightest friction and he would go crazy. It was inappropriate to need him like that, but you couldn't help it.
Holding your lower back, he leaned over you and at the same time pulled you towards him until your breasts collided with his chest. In that position, your neck was exposed and your partner’s hot lips didn't hesitate to go down there, while you sighed agitated just at the height of his ear. Spencer asked you, between each kiss, to look in the direction of the trailer to see if he was still there and as you could you answered yes, which was victory enough for both of you.
As he could, he maneuvered to lay you down carefully on the cold metal of the truck without stopping kissing your neck, and by inertia you wrapped both legs over his hip. When you were hidden by the panels of the pickup he finally looked at you.
"I hope it's enough to get his attention," he said, sounding as agitated as expected, and although the circumstances meant that you two would be taking a break you flatly refused, pulling him back to kiss him.
That kiss did take Spencer by surprise and it was perhaps the sincerest of the night. It wasn’t as passionate as the previous ones, but rather it was loaded with softness and you would even say that a hint of supplication. You were begging for him not to stop, for the night to get stuck in an infinite loop where the two of you could kiss for eternity. And suddenly you felt how he, who had been so tense the whole time, completely relaxed against you, as if he understood exactly what you wanted to say. His hands came to rest on the sides of your head to be able to kiss you more comfortably and you dared to take him by the waist with the same care that you were kissing him, feeling even above the cloth the softness of his skin. 
And then he broke up with you. You feared you had done something wrong due to the suddenness of the movement and your frightened eyes searched his gaze for a sign of the reason, without finding anything. He just looked at you with something you couldn't describe, but that made you feel butterflies fluttering all over your stomach... and he stayed like that for a few seconds: just looking at you, as if he wanted to memorize all your features.
You opened your mouth to say something, but your words were drowned in a new kiss, totally different from the previous ones. Spencer was taking time with him, trapping your lower lip between his and sucking on it gently, pressing himself a little more against your body, sighing heavily into your mouth.
Your hand was already running up his side to make its way to his cheek just as screams filled the silence and you hugged him reflexively. The screams had come from Morgan, who had already moved across the park to take down the unsub and was now wrestling with him to get the knife out of his hand. Spencer hesitated for a moment if he should come over to help, but he preferred to hold you better against his body to protect you and wait for Emily to place the handcuffs on the man under her partner's knee.
From a distance you saw that he only brought with him, in addition to the knife, his camera, and a small backpack with some other murderous instruments that they managed to confiscate without any problem.
"All clear, we've got him," Hotch spoke over the radio. As you exhaled in relief too many emotions washed over you, combined with the adrenaline coursing through your body and the arousal still flowing into your crotch.
"Are you okay?" Reid's gentle voice called to you, as he pulled away to check with his eyes that everything was in order. His hair was messy and his lips were so swollen that it was almost painful to look at the image without launching yourself to kiss him again "My God, your shirt..." he said, completely embarrassed, as he bent down to pick up the garment. You looked him up and down and blushed when you noticed how tight his pants were, feeling your stomach turn a little. When he got up, he took the opportunity to look at your chest covered only by the black lace bra and a big gulp of saliva went down his throat.
You thanked him quietly and put your shirt back on, feeling the sneaky glances Spencer was giving you, just before Hotch walked up to you.
"How are you?"
"Very good, excellent" you stammered.
You could perfectly feel your swollen lips, the light sheen of sweat on your face, the heat flowing from all the places Reid's fingers had been, and the abundant moisture between your crossed legs.
After Hotch congratulated you on your performance, the two of you walked as best you could toward the rest of the agents, who were already placing Oliver on patrol. Another group was analyzing the trailer and they managed to pull out enough evidence about the murders that would be very useful in prosecuting the man.
"All good?" Emily asked in your direction, once things had settled down and the rest of the team had gathered in a circle by the van. You and Spencer just nodded at the question.
“I honestly think I'm going to need therapy after what I heard,” Dave murmured, so serious that you couldn't help but burst out laughing.
"Don't you even dare make fun of this"
“No, we won't. I'm just saying you guys seemed to be enjoying it there."
"That's supposed to be the plan, right?" Spencer said nervously, finally daring to look at you and looking away almost immediately as he smoothed his hair back.
Once your boss said you could retire you escaped in a patrol car as fast as you could, wanting to get home so you could take a cold shower and soothe what wasn’t satisfied by the man. You could hardly sleep that night, still haunted by the ghost of the kisses you received from your gorgeous coworker, and the next morning you hoped that double coffee would do the trick. But apparently you weren't the only one who thought so, because at the same time that you arrived Spencer Reid crossed your path.
"Hey," he said, in that high-pitched voice that came out when someone caught him off guard, "How are you?" 
"Fine, and you?"
"Fine too"
You knew that the two of you wanted to talk about what happened, but it only took one of you to have the courage to speak first. At the same time your phones rang indicating a message and you mistakenly assumed that it was JJ contacting you to announce a case. What was your surprise when you opened the file and found a collection of photos from the night before. You knew from Spencer's face that he had received the same thing.
"Garcia did you… did she send you the same evidence?"
"That's right," he said nervously. You had to admit that if Oliver had one quality it was that of a photographer: you were sensual and perfectly captured the desire that had existed between you. Well, the one you had pretended to feel… right?
Spencer held his breath as he came to a picture of you topless in which his hand was practically on your breast, immediately remembering how that had felt. He just hoped his memories didn't affect him too much or it would be embarrassing enough to walk into the boardroom with a boner.
"They're good," you said to the air and he suppressed a laugh "But I can delete them if that makes you feel uncomfortable"
“No, no, I… I think I want to keep them too. After all, the bureau will have them in the files as evidence of the case, I prefer to have access too”
"I just hope she doesn't send them to anyone else, I wouldn't want to see my bra photos going around."
“I'll tell Garcia, don't worry,” Spencer murmured, rushing to type something on his phone.
While you waited for him to type you took another look, feeling your whole body heating up again at the memories. A part of you was grateful to have such material in your custody.
"I never thought of being the protagonist of an erotic photo session and here we are," you said ironically.
“Speaking of which…” Spencer started to say, “Not the erotic sessions by any means, don't think I'm planning on inviting you to one or that, because it would be super weird and inappropriate, but I was thinking if… huh…”
“Sell them online? I thought so too, but it depends on how much profit there is. Garcia can help us find the highest bidder and not get charged for tampering with evidence."
"What? No!" he said, completely shocked, and you laughed because you got the reaction you expected with your joke "Why would we do that?"
“Just kidding, Reid. Those photos are something I prefer to keep to myself" you clarified and your smile made him feel shy "Seriously, sorry for interrupting you. What did you want to tell me?"
"What…? huh, yes, right. It's just that this morning I was thinking about what you said yesterday, about how under normal circumstances you would have liked to have a bad date with me, right? and it just kept spinning in my head, so I was asking if you wanted to go for a drink sometime. Not like a date, of course, I'm not saying it is if you don't want to. I can just be like… well, go get a drink. As friends"
Yesterday Spencer had practically eaten your mouth and now he was nervous about asking you out. So adorable.
“You're not doing this just as compensation, are you? because you know that it is not necessary…”
“I do it because I want to. And I want to believe that… that I didn't misunderstand what happened yesterday."
You no longer even cared that it was unethical to date team members, or that if things went wrong, you would probably go into the worst of depressions. What mattered to you was that Spencer was interested in you, even if he had implied it, and that he was asking you out alone with him. Just the two of you, with fun and alcohol involved, without gossipy colleagues or mortal danger.
"Then I'd love to, Reid."
“Wow, excellent then” he smiled, feeling lucky that you agreed “I know a great bar near here, the atmosphere is generally calm, I like it because they don't play loud music. What day is right for you?"
“I'm available any day you want” you responded genuinely, grinning from ear to ear just being around him. That was the effect Reid had on you.
It was stupid to try to deny that you were still attracted to him, especially since now you had a taste of what he could do with you. You wanted to kiss him again, of course, but you were also anxious to earn that completely adoring look you'd received the night before.
“Today?”
"Yeah, why wait?" you responded, more excited than you wanted.
“Hey, I didn't ask you, but I wanted to know if I didn't go overboard with you last night. I mean… did something bother you?”
It was a smart move, you could see it clearly. It was obvious that Spencer cared about you, but you also picked up on his intentions to find out if you were interested in him too. Well, that's how it was from your perspective, because that probably would have been your motivation being in his place.
Even if it wasn't the case, you weren't going to miss the opportunity to take a little advantage of the situation.
"The kisses on the neck were something he definitely didn't expect, but they weren't unpleasant at all," you assured him, feeling your cheeks heat up again. "Did it feel good to you?"
"It did"
"So everything's perfect," you murmured, shrugging off the matter. But you both knew you couldn't see each other in the office and acted as if nothing had happened.
Something had happened. Those kisses had only fueled the tension that had always existed between you but that you wanted to ignore.
"Do you want to go after work, then?"
“Sounds good to me”
Spencer gave you one last smile and then went to prepare his usual cup of sugar with a dash of coffee. All day you were thinking about him and more than once he caught you looking at him, but you didn't even care.
So, at nightfall, with a few drinks on you and more courage in your body, you finally confessed that kissing was something you had wanted to do for a long time. You almost didn't believe it at first, coming from him, but when you finally accepted it, it wasn't hard at all to rush at him and kiss him feverishly. And this time there did not impede for you to give free rein to your desires, which led you to the soft mattress in your friend's house and kept you awake until a few hours before dawn.
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aquilamage · 2 years ago
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I know I’ve still got a lot of game to go through but it feels good looking at all the quests I’ve gotten all done and uploaded so far
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bearflowerr · 2 years ago
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the true part of me wants to make LotusClan’s Bane take place in an old english portion of land where i can describe ruins and old stone buildings so it can fit the shakespearean vibes im trying to portray but the evil part of me is telling me to make this story take place in Florida
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cupcakeinat0r · 11 months ago
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<3 Valentine’s Breakfast w/ DadBod!Miguel <3
[NSFW]
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With the sun rays flowing in through the curtains, your eyes flutter open, your blurred vision focusing in on the gorgeous man lying on top of you. This is usually how it is. You start the night laying on his hairy and soft chest, but after tossing and turning through the night, you two never failed to end up in this position. It sort of just happens. You believe it’s Miguel’s need to protect you in every sense of the word, so he just absentmindedly engulfs you in his sleep.
Miguel was a big man. In every way. It was sort of hard to breathe when he was on you like this.
But that was more than ok. In fact, you thrived on the feeling of all his body weight on yours, his face snuggled deep into the crook of your neck and his Herculean arms wrapped around you, not too tight, but just enough so that you weren’t going anywhere. And yes, his snoring was loud, but you learned to love it, it becoming the music to your ears on mornings like this.
It only takes you a few seconds for it to click.
It’s Valentine’s Day.
You smile to yourself, excited about all things you have planned for Miguel. But first… to figure out how the hell you were gonna get Gigantor off of you.
Unable to move, your head isolated, you look around for ideas. With your free hand, you reach for the blanket, slowly pulling it off of him in hopes he’ll move off of you to wrap himself in it again. Your idea succeeds, and he frees you just enough for you to sneak off the bed.
In the most cautious way humanely possible, you sneak out of the room (not before you softly kiss his forehead) and into the kitchen. You weren’t too worried, though. Miguel didn’t get to sleep in a lot like this due to his work, but when he did, not even a geographical disaster could wake him. You were safe.
You start listing in your head all the things you remembered you wanted to make him.
Your hands were ace in the kitchen. Everything you made, Miguel loved. One of his favorite parts of the day was coming home after a long day of work and into the arms of his cute sweet little housewife, a plate of delicious warm food already ready for him on the table. It’s kinda funny; it’s you he blames for his weight gain, but you always reply with how much you absolutely love him that way, accompanied by a kiss and a playful smack to his juicy butt (which has also gotten larger, props to you).
You slave away in the kitchen, making sure everything was perfect, even down to exacting the edges of your heart-shaped pancakes, which matched the heart-shaped strawberry slices.
You go to check on the sleeping giant. He’s still knocked out thankfully, except he’s on his back now, hugging a pillow (thinking it’s you no doubt). Aw.
You notice that the blanket wasn’t on him anymore, which allowed you a beautiful view.
His dark wavy hair sprinkled with hints of gray tussled from his sleep. His 5 o'clock shadow framing his perfect, dark, plump lips. His thick neck, chest and arms, peppered with dark hair as well, resting beautifully. His soft midsection, rising and falling with each dad snore. Near his happy trail was a prominent tent, the print of his huge cock tightening his briefs. You bit your bottom lip at his morning wood. God, this man was too perfect for his own good. You could feel yourself salivate as you remind yourself of all the other things you had to get to like decorations or lighting the candles or the rose petals…
It doesn’t take much for you to give into your urges. He won’t miss the candles or any decorations anyways…
He’ll appreciate what you’re about to do way more.
You silently climb onto the foot of the bed, your face dangerously close to the bulge. You give it a small caress, your hands gently molding around the shaft on top of the fabric of his boxers. You look up when you evoke a barely audible groan from Miguel, who’s still asleep.
You apply just a little more pressure in your next caress, this time making his dick twitch and his hips faintly buck up into your hand, his instinctive neediness signaling you to proceed with your lustful endeavor.
You then lift the band of his boxers, his completely hardened cock immediately springing up. You have to literally suck in your lips to muffle a moan.
Your eyes drink in his perfectly shaped bush at the end of his delicious happy trail, the pumped veins going up his shaft, the singular drop of pre-cum already running down, and finally his fat tip. He was perfect.
You use the juice already there as lubricant, slowly stroking his dick, the other hand on his thick, hairy thigh for support.
You start to feel Miguel‘s thighs contract and hips slightly bucking up some more, little grunts escaping his lips. His arms tense up as well, his muscles clenching around the poor pillow.
His small, slow thrusts drove you crazy, not able to wait any longer to put your mouth to use. You test the waters by giving his tip soft licks, swirling your tongue on it in lazy, annoyingly slow circles.
This grants you a few quiet hums from him, his belly and round pecs rising and falling faster, his body telling you to keep going for him.
Faint ‘Ffuuuckkk’s and ‘Mmm’s were sighed in his sleep, brows furrowed, lips in a pout; signs that you were doing amazing.
You then take him in completely, hollowing out your mouth for him as much as you possibly can, because as mentioned before, this man is big.
You bob your head slowly a few times. It’s when you pull him out with a pop! and start treating it like your own popsicle does his eyes finally slowly open, his lips curling when he looks down at his now very cock drunk girlfriend with a satisfied smirk. His chuckle is low and silk-like, his morning voice making your cunt clench around nothing.
“Well,” his breathing remains labored, his jaw hanging open, “Good morning to you too, Mamita… Mmfuck.”
He says as you maintain eye contact, your lips wrapped around his long and thick member, tongue tracing along a vein. You pull away with a wet smack before saying, “Happy Valentine’s Day, Daddy”, in the most sing song tone of voice.
Miguel tuts at your adorable yet seductive response, “ay, beba, so thoughtful n’ good to me…do that again...” he pleads.
“Like this, Daddy?” You ask, lapping your tongue over his tip just the way he likes it.
“Oh-oh fuck… si, just like that, mamita, así, goood girllll.” his head falls back against the headboard for a moment to sigh before looking back down at you again, seeing his balls in your mouth as your thumb works on his sensitive tip almost making him instantly burst.
You know he’s getting close when he starts panting, propping himself on his elbows and reaching a hand out to your scalp (it practically covers your entire head), gently applying pressure now that he’s in your mouth again. “Aw shit…. I’m close, mama, almost there… fuck, takin’ my fat cock so well, princesa…” He mutters apologies and thank you’s as he relentlessly rams into your mouth, his bush managing to meet the tip of your nose almost every time. He growls as he starts greedily thrusting his hips, face fucking his release into you.
You take your sweet time pulling him out of lips, making sure to get every single drop, your eyes on his the entire time. Once he’s out of your mouth, he sees you swallow, “Open,” and you do as he asks, “diablo, mami, eres tan sucia.” You begin to sit up, wiping your mouth, “Only for you, baby… C'mon, there’s some things in the kitchen for yo-“
“Oye, whoa whoa whoa,” He grabs your hand as you’re about to leave the bed and pulls you toward himself, “I didn’t say we were finished, did I?”
You fall into the bed again, Miguel guiding your hips onto his lap as he sloppily makes out with you, his tongue practically down your throat. “I’m not done with you yet, nena,” he mumbles against your lips.
He lays back down on the bed, “C’mere. Sientate.” He brings his hands up to his face motioning for you to sit on your throne.
You wince, now realizing you forgot that you had meant to shave last night.
“Babe, noooo wait... I haven’t shaved…”
Miguel furrows his brows, a confused scowl on his face.
“Mama. Look me in the face and tell me if I look like I care.” You begin to smile seeing how Miguel was starting to look genuinely mad at you for saying such a ridiculous thing.
“Now, I said sientate. I’m hungry.” He says sternly.
“You sureee? You really don't have to-”
“I don’t like repeating myself.” He commands. This man wasn’t playing any games. He was starving.
Your smile widens at his insistence. Your boyfriend was a real man.
Placing your hands on his hairy, thick body for support, you scoot your way up to his face, Miguel’s grin getting wider as your wet cunt comes into full view.
“So perfect for me, fuck,” His voice is sweet and tender now, planting a few equally tender kisses on your inner thighs, making sure to show them some love before you squeeze his head between them like a melon. “Te amo mucho, you know that, mama? Wanna make you feel good, beba.”
“Mhm,” You nod, biting your lip as the breath of his voice tickles your womanhood.
If Miguel could, he would just live in between your thighs just like this for all of eternity. His absolute favorite place in the whole world. “N' when I tell you to sit on my face, yo nunca quiero ir ese porqueria, understood?”
His stern tone made both your heart and pussy flutter. “Yessir.”
Your hands use the edge of the headboard as support, tentatively hovering your hips over his face as he showers your inner thighs with loving pecks and nibbles, the smack of his lips making your pussy clench again.
One of his big hands steadies your hips with a tight grip, the other moving your panties aside to reveal your unshaven lips.
“Prettiest pussy ever…. y todo es mio. Fuck, you’re so wet, mamita, did I do that?” He speaks mockingly.
You sigh when his lips kiss your clit, his tongue following shortly after by flicking it a couple times. You hear him grunt beneath you after having to lift his head off the bed to reach your hole.
"Baby, sit down. All of your body weight." He's short with his words. It sounds more like an order than a request.
"But Miguel-"
He breathes out, "You're really testing my patience, mama." And with that, his massive hands wrap firmly around your waist and pull you down, a yelp falling from your mouth as he feasts on your sensitive pussy.
Miguel is the definition of a munch. His head movement adds to the stimulation, moving it up and down, side to side; any effort to submerge his face deeper into your folds. His nose, the perfect size and shape that brushes against your clit while he simultaneously slurps and tongue fucks your cunt. The vibrations of his ‘Mmmph’s, the scruff of his face rubbing against your inner thighs, and softly pressing your clit between his tongue and front teeth were the cherry on top.
Your sounds are pornographic as he eats you out. When you're unable to sit up straight anymore due to the immense pleasure, you lean back, hands landing behind you on his soft pecs, pushing into them in an effort to get some kind of break, but Miguel wasn't having it. Plus, he was way stronger than you. There was no escaping him. A small part of you wondered how he was going so long without coming up for air, but you quickly answer your own question when you remember that your man loves to eat, and when he does, he’s like a starved man. Each time you pushed, his grasp only got stronger, but as much as you pushed, you truthfully didn't want him to stop. Ever.
"B-baby, baby… I- I- c-can't," you cry, unable to speak without stopping mid-sentence to let out a whine, "I'm so close, Daddy, don't stop, please, don't stop, don't stop!" You became a broken record, all sense leaving your body. The only thing on your mind was Miguel's mouth ravishing your weeping cunt. You sat forward again, now tugging on his hair, making him hum further and fueling his hunger. "Mmmph fuck! I won't mama, I won't, don't worry... I'll give you whatever you want," You began to literally ride his face, desperately chasing your climax with his hands slapping against your ass. Miguel was in heaven with this view, bucking his own hips into the air from how perfect you looked like this.
“Mmm… such a dirty fuckin’ girl you are,” smack, “wakin' me up like this… ay, que ricoooo, sabe tan dulce,” smack, “puta madre, Puedo vivir de este coño y nada más…” both his voice, an octave lower, and the wet, sucking sounds of his mouth helped uncoil the knot in your stomach, bursting on his handsome face.
Your hips stutter and your jaw falls open when you cum, Miguel drinking in your juices as if he’s been stranded on the Sahara for weeks. You could’ve split his skull into two, that’s how hard you pressed your thighs together, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Miguel finally lets you go, allowing you to sit on his chest now, both of you catching your breaths. He smirks back up at you, and you roll your eyes, blushing. "awww, mi princesita gets all shy when I make her cum, eh?"
"Leave me aloooneeee." With Miguel’s big hands as support and guidance, he rolls over, so he’s still in between your legs, but you’re now the bottom, and him the top. With your legs now around his waist, He chuckles at you and goes to kiss your flushed cheeks.
Then he goes in for a sweet, romantic kiss on the lips. You feel safe and taken care of while feeling his body weight on you again, his soft tummy against yours and his big muscly arms wrapped securely around you. You can feel his cock twitch against your overstimulated cunt, completely soaked from his second climax from simply eating you out, no doubt. He moves any hair on your face aside, caressing your cheek when he does.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, princesita. Have I told you how much I love you?” He coos, pure adoration in his eyes.
You manage a soft, tired smile, “Every day. I love you, too.” you chuckle, “Oh! I made you breakfast! You must be hungry, baby…” you say, as you start getting up.
He gently stops you, and you lay back down.
“I am… but not for food.”
Safe to say the feast you prepared was cold by the time y’all got to the kitchen<3
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Hope u liked it <3 It's a bit longer but I've been thinking alottttt about this tee hee!!!
This is a culmination of my thots and the thots of some of my hot moots, so Tysm @mybvalentine @gltzpzy for the ideas <3
Happy Valentine’s season, my loves!!! Wishing everyone not only a day but a whole new year of love. Not just romantic love, but also the love of your friends, family, and above all, the love for yourself <3
Speak to yourself kindly, treat your heart nicely, and consume all the chocolate!!!! You deserve ittt!!!
P.s. n if u don’t have a Valentine’s, I’ll happily be urs 🤭 MWAH!
- Cupcake xoxo
Want more DadBod!Miguel ? Here’s my master list, bae!!
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iwanthermidnightz · 1 year ago
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When I was 24 I sat in a backstage dressing room in London, buzzing with anticipation. My backup singers and bandmates gathered around me in a scattered circle.Scissors emerged and I watched in the mirror as my locks of long curly hair fell in piles on the floor. There I was in my plaid button down shirt, grinning sheepishly as my tour mates and friends cheered on my haircut. This simple thing that everyone does. But I had a secret. For me. It was more than a change of hairstyle. When I was 24. I decided to completely reinvent myself.
How does a person reinvent herself, you ask? In any way I could think of. Musically, geographically, aesthetically, behaviorally, motivationally. And I did so joyfully. The curiosity I had felt the first murmurs of while making red had amplified into a pulsing heartbeat of restlessness in my bars. The risks I took when I toyed with pop sounds and sensibilities on red? I wanted to push it further. The sense of freedom I felt when traveling to big bustling cities? I wanted to live in one. The voices that had begun to shame me in new ways for dating like a normal young woman? I wanted to silence them.
You see, in the years preceding this, I had become the target of slut shaming, the intensity and relentlessness of which would be criticized and called out if it happened today. The jokes about my amount of boyfriends. The trivialization of my songwriting as if it were a predatory act of a boy crazy psychopath. The media co-signing of this narrative. I had to make it stop because it was starting to really hurt.
It became clear to me that for me there was no such thing as casual dating, or even having a male friend who you platonically hang out with. If I was seen with him, it was assumed I was sleeping with him. And so I swore off hanging out with guys, dating, flirting, or anything that could be weaponized against me by a culture that claimed to believe in liberating women but consistently treated me with the harsh moral codes of the Victorian era.
Being a consummate optimist, I assumed I could fix this if I simply changed my behavior. I swore off dating and decided to focus only on myself, my music, my growth. And my female friendships. If I only hung out with my female friends, people couldn't sensationalize or sexualize that, right? I would learn later on that people could and people would.
But none of that mattered then because I had a plan and I had a demeanor as trusting as a basket of golden retriever puppies. I had the keys to my own apartment in New York and I had new melodies bursting from my imagination. I had Max Martin and Shellback who were happy to help me explore this new sonic landscape I was enamored with. I had a new friend named Jack Antonoff who had made some cool tracks in his apartment. I had the idea that the album would be called 1989. And we would reference big 80's synths and write sky high choruses. I had sublime, inexplicable faith and I ran right toward it, in high heels and a crop top.
There was so much that I didn't know then, and looking back I see what a good thing that was. This time of my life was marked by right kind of naïveté, a hunger for adventure. And a sense of freedom I hadn't tasted before. It turns out that the cocktail of naïveté, hunger for adventure and freedom can lead to some nasty hangovers, metaphorically speaking. Of course everyone had something to say. But they always will. I learned lessons, paid prices, and tried to… don't say it don't say it. I'm sorry, I have to say it. Shake it off.
I’ll always be so incredibly grateful for how you loved and embraced this album. You, who followed my zig zag creative choices and cheered on my risks and experiments. You, who heard the wink and humor in "blank space" and maybe even empathized with the pain behind the satire. You, who saw the seeds of allyship and advocating for equality in "Welcome to New York". You, who knew that maybe a girl who surrounds herself with female friends in adulthood is making up for a lack of them in childhood (not starting a tyrannical hot girl cult). You, who saw that I reinvent myself for a million reasons, and that one of them is to try my very best to entertain you. You, who have had the grace to allow me the freedom to change.
I was born in 1989. Reinvented for the first time in 2014, and a part of me was reclaimed in 2023 with the re-release of this album I love so dearly.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the magic you would sprinkle on my life for so long. This moment is a reflection of the woods we've wandered through and all this love between us still glowing in the darkest dark.
I present to you, with gratitude and wild wonder, my version of 1989.
It’s been waiting for you.
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literaryvein-reblogs · 2 months ago
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A Guide to Descriptive Writing
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Descriptive writing makes reading a more visual experience.
Utilize descriptive writing, to show not tell your story to readers.
However, it is important to note that if passages of descriptive writing are too long or too complex, they will slow your story down.
Alternatively, the story's development and readability fall flat if you do not use a variety of types of words.
Take time to choose your words carefully, expand your vocabulary, and practice descriptive writing.
Below are some tips that may improve your descriptive writing.
Try Using Metaphors
Metaphors compare one thing to another.
Utilizing this technique is not saying the objects you’re comparing are the same, but that your audience can note shared traits between the two.
Example: Jordan is a living map.
Explanation: Of course, Jordan is not literally a living map. What the map and Jordan have in common is geographical information and the ability to help others navigate locations without getting lost. What the writer has done here is demonstrate to readers that Jordan has an excellent sense of direction.
Play with Similes
Similes also compare one object to another but discuss one thing as being like another.
You will often find words such as “like,” “so,” “than,” or “as” used in similes.
Example: Diego soars across the soccer field like a jet.
Explanation: Again, this is not a literal statement. The author shows us that Diego is a fast runner and creates a vivid image in the reader's mind that would not have been present if they had simply stated that Diego is fast.
Make a Statement with Hyperboles
Hyperboles are exaggerated statements.
They are used to make a point.
Example: Math class lasts a million hours.
Explanation: Your readers will know there is no way a class can realistically last a million hours, but they will understand the feeling of time dragging on when you’re doing something you do not enjoy.
Use Sensory Details
Adding sensory details is a great way to help your reader experience your story.
Depending on the character and story, sensory details may include sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.
Be careful not to overload passages with sensory information.
Only use what is needed to communicate with the audience.
Example: Cold, wet glue dripped from the bottle onto her fingers; the tangy, chemical smell flooded her nose. She rubbed it between her thumb and long finger, relishing the transition from silky gliding fingers to tacky digits to peeling the cast of her fingerprint away from her skin with the satisfying crinkle of crisp paste.
Explanation: In this description of glue on skin, readers encounter details of touch and smell. Although this scene is not happening to readers at this moment, they can easily recall the smell of glue and the feeling of it between their fingers.
Choose Vivid Language
Choosing vivid language can form a clearer image in your reader’s mind.
For instance, you may select words that more accurately convey what you’re aiming to communicate, whether you are simply searching for a synonym to vary language or trying to locate a word with a more nuanced meaning.
Example: “The knight entered the kingdom on the back of a horse.” vs. “The knight stormed into the kingdom on the back of a mighty stallion.”
Explanation: Having a knight storm in on a stallion rather than enter on a horse is a much stronger, more heroic image. Additionally, stallion may be a better word choice than horse because it is specific. The word stallion tells the reader the horse is male and could be used for breeding, which, since this is a knight’s horse, could be relevant since it could be used to breed warhorses.
Incorporate Feelings
Crafting a visual experience for readers marks successful descriptive writing, but you also want your readers to experience your work emotionally.
For your story to reach its full potential, you need to incorporate feelings, whether those feelings are positive or negative.
Example: Desiree felt the weight of the empty space in bed pressing down and stealing her breath like a knee to the chest. She was cemented in place, limbs unfeeling, as she floated above the bed tethered to her body but no longer secure within.
Explanation: Here, the author shows the readers a woman dealing with the pain of grief and the hollowness that sometimes accompanies it. Most readers have experienced some level of loss in their lifetime and will understand and emotionally connect with Desiree.
Source ⚜ Descriptors ⚜ Common Metaphors ⚜ Mixed Metaphors Plot ⚜ Character ⚜ Worldbuilding ⚜ Imagery ⚜ Notes ⚜ Writing Sounds
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aces-to-apples · 15 days ago
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I don't personally care about Antiva being a wild mish-mash of Italian and Spanish but considering Eight Little Talons makes it textual that there's a northern vs. southern culture slapfight in Antiva it makes the most sense to me to just headcanon that you get more Italian- or Spanish-inspired Antiva depending on where you are geographically. Like Treviso is basically Venice or whatever but Lucanis's "Antivan" voice lines are Spanish so maybe whatever region he's originally from is one of the more Spain-inspired regions of Antiva idk
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