#C++ Word Documents Processing

[unproduciblesmackdown]

speaking of happening to manage to go away to college ft. a shakespeare theater within walking distance & not just student pricing & pwyw but a freshman course taken at/with the theater / company, fun to think about all the nonzero exposure scattered all around to Theatre that i could be interested in & engaged with & respond to the idea of theatremaking big time but i had no context for this lmao like well i assume everyone adores Rehearsal & Playing A Role & Being Backstage or In The Greenroom just doing your own thing & the Idea of more of this, so that i feel neutral/average really

like on the note of no context, started dance classes as a Thing To Do when i was all of three? four? on the basis of [older sibling doing that] b/c like how else do i choose doing something. also did that w/[older sibling is being taught playing piano] + that i like to know how to do many things, like determined speedrunning of an edutainment learn to read computer program when i was three, except playing the piano never caught on for me (it'd be fine if it got to the point a song was muscle memory but i never got the hang of oh this note written here is [whatever it is without me having to count the steps in the staff] & ah that's here [without me having to look / count the keys]) so that was a miserable half hour weekdayly requirement for years. whereas dance was alright, & for a while the performance angle could be kind of fun for rehearsal, onstage, costuming, but didn't really have Roles, & was yknow everyone doing the same part at the same time & taller people in the back if there's rows, what older students did seemed more fun, plus like an annual nyc trip some did which didn't happen by the time it was relevant to me....but when it finally kind of kicked off like oh boy pointe shoes have panache & Make Noise (i suppose ideally you're quieter with it but ideally to me, Clonk Bonk Tap. & why not) but speaking of why not, that this also involved like oh shows that have Scenes & Roles even if this is all dance w/pantomime, got solos, costumes, more acting adjacent, more rehearsing, plenty of fun to me, unforch one of the most fun shows was ballet but in less Classical form & more character styles & i had the parent who could make anything into an ego issue who decided things Ought to be Classical despite knowing i enjoyed the more character style techniques as much or more lol so that was like, oh boy an adagio claire de lune quartet? pinch me. however a few more wins in there, fun getting to do a Cats inspired facepaint leg/armwarmers character that some absolute random audience member apparently liked so much their dad was like hey your number one fan, can we get a pic. which is in fact a great basis of an interaction to me

had a damper on dance class anyways from like lord the increasing gender "i'd rather not wear fitted dance garments" problems & my left knee getting more sensitive & my just more wearied like i don't see Fun Performances down the line, i was never doing this besides as a hobby, i'm gearing up to go to college where i kind of assume i could fail asap but the idea of keeping up with dance classes too is a bit much so what if we just didn't....meanwhile a drop of Drama(tm) in middle school, but just as like cycle of elective courses four per year so very Brief & i don't think was part of 6th grade's & yknow, middle school. but it was really fun to me still, not sure what all i even learned lol & yet. & like one time it was like uhh write your own scenes / play & Writing Original Stuff has never been a thing for me & is not only unrewarding but yknow difficult like i don't know. writing Vocab Sentences in like first grade i started to get annoyed at how contrived it felt & the teacher complained the sentences were too simple like clearly the context of what the word means is there but i'm sick of making up narrative beats & character arcs that have fuckall to do with me understanding what a bleacher is, but when i decided to Theme them on a computer game i enjoyed then i could rock n roll lol....anyway so Writing Material just became throwing preexisting characters in a bin & just being silly making jokes / stringing some fun plot along w/the acquaintances in the group assigned to be making this, & then Performing it was a high time i was like i love to do fun comedic stuff & be a villain, throwback to fourth grade and doing scenes from julius caesar like yaayyy nongendered casting b/c all the roles are guys anyway & i'm technically a villain which i enjoyyy, but i'm also like i wish anyone told me anything at all about acting techniques, i don't know what i'm doing beyond [talk loud enough]....feedback on the middle school class homemade performance was that nobody really knew what was supposed to be going on while watching it lmao like well that's fine b/c i'm not interested in writing fuckall, could've stood to have feedback that Enjoying Performing Onstage even that goofaroundly wasn't just expriencing the universal baseline lol ah well. my useful personalized feedback from middle school besides that as ever it was great that i got good grades & kept my head down (reading) was the librarian saying nobody checked out rebecca but i might like it, i did have fun & it's like oh nice when there's pleasant nontransactional gestures For No Reason i.e. you didn't even have to "earn" them, i was just getting to hang out reading in the library at the end of the school day. fond memory still like ah being readily handed one of the crushed oreos & gummy worm cups at the end of some early elementary school year Just Because i was there, wasn't that moved by like figurative pats on the head for good grades or what have you when i understood the conditionality of that just fine

in college like Introducing That Shakespeare Theatre like i sure did respond to getting to be up close & personal w/some professional actors & acting & plays, great time attending....kinda was tempted to get involved in the school theatre going on w/classes or productions but at this point it was like, i don't want my parents to be involved in anything at all ideally but especially not something i do suspect i'd genuinely enjoy & care about, plus it was like uh oh there'll be all these ppl older than me with even experience doing plays in high school & stuff :/ but another real damper was being around age peers incl my roommate who still Also had theatre experience & interest much more established & would be telling me like oh you're not a tenor if you're a man or oh you're not doing xyz right that way (based on their own perspective doing a whole other activity) like i love info & tips sure but not people feeling In Charge of me or even giving the awkward biting back genuine feedback wow nice good lmao....knowing some theatre people with theatre knowledge a bit helpful like oh these are some bway shows / cast recordings from like, the '00s & on, i've heard of Some of these, i've seen some macys parade show names....still just lacking context like what the hell Is broadway, just talked about like gonna take a while like it's this location & this technical capacity based venue designation & here's further context yet. still never really Did Theatre but seemed like a fun thing of Course ppl would be interested in, but luckily some Experiencing Performances, saw live stage shows in various mediums at various levels of professionality now & then, in retrospect like oh i think i saw some bway stuff Touring a few times, i just had no idea that was a ting, nobody explained shit lmao. disinterested parents who just kind of expected you to magically Pick Things Up by virtue of existing, but also don't ambiently pick up the things i don't want you to know about, you can bet it all always worked out great....parents at least a Bit interested in theatre / specific shows / recordings was certainly handy like oh okay not everyone would happen to be exposed to some shows even thusly, sure, but again like with no context / further info or really further way to engage with that....also backing off like i ripped off my siblings' pastime when i was three re: dance classes, just b/c their doing lively musical productions in high school seems super fun like i can't Also rip them off on that one (plus even like yeah family / parental proximity & attendance like eugh....)

like that the How Do You Even Get Context like all the time i'd be amazed if stuff i read or watched that i super enjoyed was like Also something i could find in the outside world, other people who liked it, even just the ability to procure it, like wow magical b/c yknow everything is just what i experienced by myself at home w/no significant onlineness yet or way to travel anywhere else. just pouncing on proximate enough things like queer & have to go to church? hell yeah tenor harmonies time & it's always Be Quieter Be Quieter lol well everyone else step it up, there's like 5x as many sopranos with 5x the rehearsal time going over The Melody....but seriously folks. only showing up late for an online breakout popular Current Bway Musical like oh hey btw what Is any of this? & still don't much know what goes on but at least a little more than i did for sure, plus i just don't keep my finger on the pulse of fuckall, i'm not so much more likely to check out musicals for the sake of being musicals so much more than i do movies b/c they're movies, maybe a little more likely though sure lol....& i just have more of that context like ohhh yeah i did super big time like doing live performance & theatremaking stuff the ways i got to / related activities, i just figured like well me & everyone else having the exact same response i'm sure. or same with enjoying taking it in, i suppose

which nowadays it's still like bummer i Never took in any acting technique just b/c it annoys me not to have anything besides idk making it up, also bummer idk how to sing any better than [also making it up] like no technique known barely in the same way, & i just like knowing things, i'd value knowing it just for singing to myself when nobody's around & i like to do a little performing too when pertinent, e.g. more than survive in the kitchen & i'm doing the choreography lol....utterly abstract though like i love to See people acting the crap out of acting & be like oh shit damn wowww, don't Really feel like ah actor au me is just over there....not even sure like ah you can be backstage in other ways, like i do not know how lol plus likewise i just don't think it's gonna come up yknow like we'll cross bridges when we come to them, who knows in this life. but i'm having the highest time ever as Audience, not live & in person but online & lively, like oh fuck yes finally digging into the relatively nicher more specific theatre live performace acting singing musicaling stuff i'd more specifically enjoy like pointing hands to head yelling are you seeing thising getting everything that i want so i do feel like it's worked out well. maybe low level for randos acting / singing instructing just cuz i like to Know & have the Option to wrangle playing around w/effects one can engage with but in the meantime like i Have always cherished proximity & audienceship so. fr Yayyy 💖

[ms-demeanor]

I had a straight up delightful moment at work yesterday when a new member of the management team asked me how we were tracking warranties and I explained that we kind of aren't and he asked why we aren't and that meant he got a 30-minute rundown of how top-to-bottom fucked the procurement process is here.

First I explained the process for sending a quote (i am assigned a ticket in system A1, I create an opportunity in system A2, from the opportunity i can generate a quote in system B - if I start with the quote I can't associate it back to the opportunity or the ticket, if we need to change the quote after it was approved we need to generate a new quote from the opportunity to overwrite the old one - and send the quote from system B.)

Then I explained the process of getting approval (system B sends the quote and receives the approvals but does not communicate that to system A, so until it is manually updated system A sends a daily reminder about the quote to the client and after three days with no response will close the ticket even if the client approved the quote in system B. System B will send an email if a quote is approved but it comes from our generic support email so to make sure that I don't miss approvals I have filtering rules set up and a folder I check twice a day. Because there are 4 people who use this system I also check twice daily in system B to see if anyone else's quotes were approved).

Then I explained how I place the orders (easy! I'm a pro! We have a standardized PO pattern that tracks date, vendor and client, it's handy)

Then I explained how I document the orders (neither system A nor B has a way of storing information about orders in progress, only orders that are complete; as such I have created a PO Documentation spreadsheet that lists the PO number, vendor, line of business, client, items ordered, order total, order date, ETA, tracking numbers, serial numbers, delivery confirmation, ticket number for install, ticket title for install, shippong cost, and close confirmation, which all have to be entered individually and which require a minimum of three visits to the spreadsheet per order: entering initial info, entering tracking and SN info, then once more to get that info to close the opportunity)

Then I explained how we close an order (confirm hardware delivery or activate software, use system A2 to code hardware/software/non-taxable products appropriately, run wizard to add charges from A2 to ticket in A1; because the A2 charges were locked by approval in system B, use system A3 to add shipping or other fees or to remove any parts that were approved but not actually needed or ordered - THIS WEEK I got permission to do this bit on my initial A1 procurement ticket instead of generating an A1 post-procurement ticket for fees and shipping. Once all of that is done it's moved into system A4 and is no longer my problem).

If there is a warranty involved it *should* automatically have the expiration tracked in system C, but system C doesn't have any way to pull order info so there's no way it can track warranty *start* dates without somebody manually entering it or without using API data from the manufacturer, which some manufacturers don't provide (fuck you, Apple).

But me and my trainee are happy to add the start date to the configuration once a tech tells us that the device is enrolled in system C. If the techs will tell us that we can add that info no problem.

Until then, I have unfortunately been forced to start a spreadsheet.

The manager was appalled, it was great. I got to say the words "part of the reason things sometimes fall through the cracks is because we have so many cracks" and his response was "no shit." I'm talking to vendors about a procurement system now :) :) :) :)

[wosospacegirl]

Legally binding - Part 2

Summary: Alexia Putellas didn’t plan to become anyone’s legal guardian. But a very determined 12-year-old with a forged Barça contract has other ideas — and she’s already moved in.

Warnings: Alexia doesn't know how to tuck anyone is, and Y/n is proudly offering five euros to help with groceries.

Word count: 4.6k

Part 1 here

Masterlist

..

Alexia never realised just how big her dining room was until she sat across from a twelve-year-old stranger in it.

She rarely ate here. 

Usually, dinner was something balanced and boring, grilled fish and roasted vegetables, eaten on the sofa while half-watching a sports talk show. 

But tonight, with the girl here… it felt wrong, somehow, to eat in silence in front of the TV.

So, she set two plates down on the dining table like a proper adult and tried not to feel weird about it.

Now, she just watched, fork halfway to her mouth, as the girl absolutely inhaled her food. 

She was nearly finished already, only a few broccoli left on her plate, while Alexia had barely made it through her third bite.

And she was eating everything. Even the vegetables.

“Aren’t kids supposed to hate that kind of thing?” Alexia asked.

The girl looked up, cheeks full. She looked like a squirrel. 

Alexia resisted the urge to sigh. “So…” she said instead, reaching for her orange juice, “what’s your name?”

The girl shovelled another forkful of pasta into her mouth. “Uhgmm,” she said through it.

Alexia grimaced. “Sorry?”

The girl swallowed, wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve, and shrugged. 

“Not telling you..”

“I’m sorry–what?” Alexia said, completely confused.

“I’m not telling you,” the girl said again, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You’ll just give me back if you know.”

Alexia stared at her, genuinely baffled. “Give you back?”

“To the orphanage,” the girl said simply. “Obviously.”

Alexia’s mouth opened, then closed again. 

Because… she wasn’t wrong. 

Alexia had wanted to know her name so she could pass it to her lawyer, have someone contact the authorities, figure out how to send her back, and if she was going to have to sign other documents cancelling the guardianship.

“I already know where you came from,” Alexia said slowly. “I don’t need your name to find the orphanage, I know it’s the Santa Clara one”

The girl froze, eyes wide, the fork halfway to her mouth again. Her confidence flickered for just a second.

“You can’t give me back,” she said quickly, too quickly. “You’re my legal guardian now. You signed a document.”

Alexia shot her a look. “A document you forged. In a way, I still don’t even understand.”

The girl set her utensils down and folded her hands over the table. The way she leaned forward, her elbows planted, chin tilted, expression serious, made her look like she was about to do business. 

“Look,” she said, “I don’t want a mom. Or a dad. Okay? That’s not what this is.”

Alexia didn’t answer. She just waited.

“I want to be a footballer,” the girl continued. “Like you.”

Alexia stared.

“I don’t need you to parent me or whatever,” the girl went on, as if that part was obvious. “I just need a place to stay. And for you to get me into La Masia. You don’t even need to pay–I’ve got some money.”

She dug into her hoodie pocket and pulled out a handful of wrinkled bills, proudly laying them across the table like she was negotiating something.

Twenties, tens, even a crumpled fifty. Where she got them, Alexia didn’t want to know.

“See?” the girl said brightly. “I can cover the... monthly tuition.”

Alexia looked down at the cash, barely enough to buy shin guards, let alone support a training program, and then back at her.

“You know this wouldn’t even buy one boot, right?”

The girl tilted her head, clearly processing that. “No? Oh….well, that’s okay, I’ll get a job!”

Alexia nearly choked. “You’re not getting a job. You’re a kid.”

“But I can cook! Well, not really. But I can wash dishes!”

“That’s not—” Alexia ran a hand down her face. “That’s not how this works. You can’t just… move in with someone and say you’re gonna get a job in exchange for becoming a professional footballer.”

“Why not?” the girl asked earnestly. “I’ve got a plan. All you have to do is not ruin it.”

Alexia stared at her.

This kid had broken into her house, eaten her dinner, forged a legal document, and now had the audacity to ask her not to ruin her plan.

She took a deep breath, leaned back in her chair, and looked at the girl, who still didn’t have a name. Who looked up at her like this was all normal. 

She forced her own adoption, and she thought it was completely casual.

It should’ve been infuriating.

But instead, Alexia just felt… tired. She had a long day.

She had woken up that morning thinking her biggest worry was the upcoming game. Tactics. Opponent formations.

Now, she was sitting at her dining table. An unfamiliar setting in itself, thinking about how the kid sitting across from her wouldn’tt have clothes for the winter.

Alexia leaned back slightly in her chair, eyes drifting down to the empty plate across from her.

“Do you want more?” she asked, her voice calm.

The kid, who up until now had spoken with nothing but confidence, seemed to wilt a little. 

Her shoulders hunched in just the smallest way, and she looked down at her lap like the question embarrassed her.

“No, thank you,” she said, quiet and polite in a way that felt… off.

Alexia frowned. The plate had been licked clean–well, not literally, but close. 

The kid had eaten her food like someone who didn’t know when her next meal was coming. And now, she was suddenly… demure? 

Yeah. No way was she actually full.

Without saying anything, Alexia reached across the table and took the plate. 

The girl flinched–just a little, a small tightening of the jaw–but said nothing. Alexia turned toward the kitchen, refilled the plate with more pasta, and scooped on an extra spoonful of broccoli, since this one apparently liked it a lot.

Then she returned.

Alexia placed it in front of the girl.

The kid stared. Then blinked. 

Then looked up at her with eyes too big, too round, too unsure.

“Are you sure?” she asked, voice tentative.

“Sí,” Alexia said, nodding once.

There was a beat of silence. The girl’s fingers crept toward the tablecloth, rubbing the edge between her thumb and index finger. Her brows knit together.

“Won’t it, like…” she hesitated, glancing at the plate again. “Won’t there be like… a shortage of food or something?”

Alexia’s stomach dropped.

“No,” she said gently. “There’s plenty in the pantry. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“But your freezer looked empty.”

Alexia flushed. “I haven’t done the groceries yet,” she admitted.

“Oh.” The girl nodded again, like that made sense. 

And then she reached into the pocket of her hoodie. Fingers fumbling a little, she pulled out more crumpled bills.

She took a single five-euro note, smoothed it against her palm, and then, with all the dignity in the world, slid it across the table with one finger.

“To help pay for the food,” she said.

Alexia stared at the note.

 The table felt too big again. 

The kid too small.

  And suddenly, the game or dinner was the least of her worries.

..

When dinner was done, every last bit of pasta and broccoli scraped off the plates, the kid jumped up with unexpected energy.

“I’ll do the dishes!” she declared, already reaching for the sink.

Alexia frowned, rising to her feet. “You don’t have to.--”

“I like touching water,” the girl interrupted, dead serious, like it was a totally normal reason.

Alexia blinked. “Okay then.”

So while the girl stood at the sink, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, Alexia hovered nearby. She dried the plates and set them on the rack, letting the girl have her moment.

She looked comically small next to the counter. The sponge was almost too big for her hand, and she kept having to stretch to reach the faucet.

Alexia cleared her throat, trying to make conversation. “You’re twelve, right?”

“Yes!” the girl said proudly, chin lifted. “Almost thirteen.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes! My birthday is like… in eight months.”

Alexia paused. “Oh. Yeah. Definitely close.”

The girl nodded seriously, as if that settled it. She returned to scrubbing a fork, very concentrated.

Alexia opened her mouth, trying to think of something–anything–she could ask the girl. 

But no question would be enough. None of them could really help her make sense of what had happened two hours ago.

That morning, she was just Alexia Putellas. Barcelona’s captain. Leaving the house with her kit bag slung over her shoulder and her mind focused on training drills.

By the evening? She was… Guardian Alexia Putellas, apparently. Cooking dinner for a twelve-year-old girl who might, technically, be her legal responsibility.

This was insane. Completely insane.

And yet, the girl didn’t look insane. She looked… harmless. Small. 

Too small and far too thin for a twelve-year-old. But also too clever for her own good, too quick with her words, too sharp-eyed. 

And Alexia still didn’t even know her name.

She shivered, recalling how the girl had just… barged in. Walked straight into her living room.

Maybe it was time to finally take her mother and Alba’s advice: alarms on the windows, a digital lock on the door. Something that needed a code to open. 

They had begged her to upgrade the security for years, but she had always brushed them off.

Now? Knowing a pre-teen had managed to scale her building and just walk inside?

Yeah. That needed to change.

Her thoughts spiralled further, carried by a chill that ran down her spine.

What would have happened if the girl had chosen a different house? 

What if she had climbed into the wrong apartment? Found someone who wasn’t kind, who wasn’t safe? Someone with bad intentions?

Alexia’s stomach twisted.

It was obvious no one was looking out for this kid. 

The way she had spoken, so confident, utterly convinced of the legality of her claim, told Alexia that this wasn’t just a prank. 

Something real had happened. Something official enough for the girl to believe it.

And if the orphanage had really let her leave like that…

She rubbed a hand down her face, exhaling slowly. Tomorrow, she was going to call Pedro. Her lawyer would know what to do—he would get the facts straight. 

He could find out who this girl was, where she came from, and what kind of orphanage allowed a child to walk around Barcelona with nothing but a backpack and a forged contract claiming a new parent.

Because right now, Alexia wasn’t even sure what kind of situation she’d gotten herself into.

But one thing was clear: this girl had nowhere else to go.

..

"Okay, everything is done here," Alexia said, sliding the last plate into the cupboard.

The kid, however, wasn’t done. She was hunched over the sink with that same determined energy, scrubbing the basin like it owed her something. 

Her fingers moved fast, precise, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

“I don’t think it looks clean enough,” the girl muttered to herself, scrubbing harder. “I like cleaning. It’s like...you just fixed something, even if it’s small.”

Alexia tilted her head, trying to spot whatever the girl was obsessing over. From where she stood, the kitchen practically sparkled. 

Not a speck of food, not a smear of sauce. It looked better than it had in weeks.

“Hm… no, it’s good–come on,” Alexia said, reaching for the sponge.

The girl rolled her eyes in response.

Oh. So this was what her mother had felt all those years, when she and Alba would roll their eyes over homework or chores. 

It was infuriating.

“It’s clearly not clean. Don’t you see this?” The kid jabbed at the sink with her sponge, pointing at what Alexia could only describe as a small speck of tomato sauce, dried and clinging stubbornly to the kitchen.

Alexia squinted. “It’s just tomato sauce…It’s been there for two weeks.”

“Exactly.”

“This is the last thing you’re cleaning,” Alexia declared, watching the wall clock.

Ten p.m. already. It was late for a kid. It was late for her, and she hadn’t even changed out of her training clothes yet. “After this, you’re not touching another sponge again.”

The girl nodded, satisfied with her mission. She hummed as she scrubbed, making up a ridiculous song under her breath: “Sauce, sauce, go away, come back never again.”

Alexia blinked. The kid was weird.

When she tried sneaking over to the counter to keep cleaning, Alexia snatched the sponge from her hand.

“Hey!” the kid protested.

“I told you, no more cleaning.” Alexia pointed dramatically toward the living room. “Out. Let’s get you sorted.”

The girl huffed but obeyed, shoulders slouched like she was being exiled from her kingdom.

As they walked into the living room, Alexia tried to figure out what exactly “sorting her out” meant. 

Maybe… just continuing her own routine and bringing the kid along? That seemed like a reasonable plan.

The girl paused in front of the television, standing still like she had stumbled across a secret relic. Her eyes locked on the blank black screen, her expression puzzled.

“Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do–” Alexia began, adopting her classic on-pitch captain voice, ready to lay down a game plan. “We’re going to take a bath, then go to bed, and tomorrow we’ll–”

“What is this?” the girl asked, cutting her off completely. She pointed at the television.

Alexia blinked. “What?”

“This. What is this?”

“It’s a television.”

The girl looked at her like she’d just spoken another language. “What is a television?”

Alexia stared. “A TV. You know… televisión?”

Still no reaction. The girl tilted her head.

“It shows things,” Alexia tried again, gesturing vaguely. “Movies, cartoons, serious stuff like the news… and football games. The best kind of content.”

The kid squinted at the screen, unmoved. “I don’t know what any of that means.”

Alexia let out a stunned little breath. “You… you are Spanish, right?”

“Sí,” the girl replied easily. “I just never… I don’t know what that is.”

Alexia swallowed. “Okay. I’ll explain it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Sí. Now come, let me show you the bathroom.”

The girl picked up her backpack, cradling the adoption folder tightly against her chest.

 She followed Alexia down the hall. 

The apartment wasn’t large—just two bedrooms with en suites, a guest bathroom, a kitchen, dining area, and living room. 

Cosy enough. 

Functional. 

Alexia had been meaning to buy a proper house, but right now that felt a lifetime away.

She opened the door to the guest room and stepped aside, letting the kid walk in first.

It was a decent space. Queen-size bed, full-length mirror, desk, and a set of drawers. Only her mom or Alba ever stayed in it.

“You can leave your things there,” Alexia said, pointing toward the corner.

The girl turned, her figure suddenly looking too small for the room.

“Is this your room?” she asked.

“No,” Alexia said. “Mine’s down the hall, to the left.”

“So what is this room?”

“It’s the guest room. You’ll sleep here tonight.”

Alexia crossed the room and started fluffing the pillows, trying to make the bed look more inviting. 

She had no idea what she was doing, but it felt like the right thing. Domestic. Caring. Sort of.

The girl stared at the bed.

“I’ve never had one of those,” she said quietly.

Alexia froze. “What?”

“A bed.”

Alexia’s hands fell from the duvet. 

Her chest tightened as she turned around slowly. 

“Oh… no. Really?”

“Gotcha!” The girl grinned, dropping onto the mattress. Her legs dangled above the floor, nowhere near touching it. “You should’ve seen your face! Of course, I’ve had a bed.”

Alexia deadpanned. “You’re not as funny as you think you are.”

Por Dios.

“So what exactly do you have in there?” Alexia asked, nodding toward the girl’s backpack.

The girl looked at her with a vague grin, clearly proud of the mystery. 

“Oh, just some stuff,” she said, dragging the zipper open with a dramatic flair and flipping the contents onto the mattress.

A modest pile tumbled out.

Some clothing, only enough for two days. One sock–just one. A toothbrush way too old. 

A few crumpled pieces of paper with what seemed to be drawings on them, and some small photographs–clearly of the girl herself, but younger. 

Maybe five or six.

Alexia’s hand hovered over the photos for a second, curiosity tugging at her, but she stopped herself. It felt too personal.

“This is all my stuff,” the girl announced, smiling proudly. “I’ve worked really hard for them!”

Alexia didn’t answer immediately. 

She was going to enjoy this moment where the girl didn’t seem to focus on cleaning the oven, or was too scared to get sent away to ask some questions.

Alexia turned toward the en suite bathroom attached to the guest room, opening a drawer and casually pulling out a few towels. 

She added a face towel, then grabbed a spare toothbrush, some soap, and the small bottles of shampoo she kept around for guests.

“So… worked for them? What do you mean?” Alexia asked, while keeping her voice very casual, as if she didn’t really want to know.

The girl sat on the edge of the bed, legs swinging. “Yes. Work. We had to clean the orphanage to get stuff.”

Alexia paused, shampoo bottle still in her hand.

Ah.

That explained the obsession with the spotless sink.

She gave a quiet nod and resumed laying the towels neatly on the bathroom counter. 

“Oh…I see.”

The girl didn't seem bothered. In fact, she was proud. 

Not ashamed or bitter–just explaining the rules of the world she had grown up in. Alexia's chest tightened.

When she returned to the room, the girl was organising her tiny pile of belongings into the drawers like it was a personal treasure chest.

Alexia cleared her throat.

“The bathroom’s ready. I left you everything you might need, but you can tell me if something’s missing.”

The girl nodded solemnly, folding her single sock neatly.

“You good?” Alexia asked.

“Sí.”

The bathroom door clicked shut with a soft thud. It wasn’t loud–but somehow, it echoed.

Alexia stood there for a moment, her hand half-raised like she might knock on the bathroom door, but for what reason? She didn't know. 

So she let it drop and looked around.

This was her guest room.

Except… it didn’t quite like hers anymore.

Something about it had shifted, like the room itself had changed and adapted the moment that kid stepped in. 

The light even looked different now….warmer maybe, softer. Or maybe that was just in her head.

Alexia’s eyes caught on the small drawer she had opened earlier to grab a towel. 

It was closed again now, but she knew what was inside: one sock. 

Not a pair. 

Just one. 

Ridiculous. 

One sock shouldn’t change the shape of a room. But it did. She sat down on the edge of the bed–hesitantly, like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to anymore. 

The mattress dipped slightly beneath her weight. She stared at the floor.

Should she stay? Or leave?

Give the girl privacy? But what if she needed something? What if she didn’t know how the water heater worked? What if the pressure changed suddenly? What if she…slipped?

Alexia didn’t even know what kind of soap the kid liked. Did she have a skin condition? Allergies? Was she scared of something? Of being alone?

There was a whole person behind that door…a whole history that Alexia didn’t know about. 

Alexia let herself fall onto the bed, arms splayed out, staring at the ceiling. 

The fan rotated slowly above her, barely moving the air.

She hadn’t felt like this in her own space since… maybe ever. 

Not when her mom visited. Not when Olga stayed over for weeks during her injury. Not even when the team came over for dinners and spilt wine on her rug.

This whole situation was a mess. 

It was scary.

Alexia didn’t know how to care for someone in any way. 

Her romantic life was just sad at this point…she couldn’t remember the last time someone flirted with her without also asking for match tickets.

Her family had to remind her to call because she would get too caught up in football…and now a kid? A whole living-breathing kid?

Alexia swore up and down during her teenage years that she didn’t have any maternal bones in her body, but minutes later, when the girl showed up on the bathroom door with a pyjama that barely reached her wrists, she couldn’t help but feel something tugging inside her chest.

The shirt was too snug around her middle. The pants clung to her calves like leggings, stretched out and faded with wear. 

The fabric had once been pink, maybe. Now it was somewhere between peach and grey.

The kid didn't seem to mind how her belly and calves were showing, though, as if it was normal, how it was meant to be worn.

Still, the girl beamed.

“Oh, so… that’s your pyjama?” Alexia asked, trying to sound casual.

“Yes!” the girl chirped. “I got it on my ninth birthday!”

Alexia hesitated. Did the math. 

“Oh,” she said. “It looks a bit… tight, don’t you think?”

The girl frowned, her eyebrows pulling together like storm clouds.

“No.”

Alexia shifted her weight. “What if you change it? I can lend you one of my shirts or something–”

“No.”

“I just don’t think you’ll sleep comfortably in that,” Alexia said, gentler now, trying not to push.

“I like it. It’s mine.”

That last word hit harder than it should have. Mine.

Alexia shut her mouth. Because what was she going to say? That it didn’t fit? That the sleeves pinch? That it wasn’t warm enough?

It didn’t matter. It was hers. 

One of the few things in the world the girl could claim. And maybe that was more important than being warm or comfortable.

Alexia nodded slowly, almost apologetically. “Okay, sorry. You can keep it.”

The girl didn’t smile now.

She just moved to the bed and sat down cross-legged, fingers picking at a loose thread on the hem of her shirt.

Alexia stood up slowly, legs stiff from sitting too long on the edge of the bed. The girl watched her, still picking at the thread on her too-tight pyjamas.

Alexia hovered for a second, unsure, then stepped to the side of the bed. She reached down, took the edge of the duvet in her hands, and lifted it.

“You can get in,” she said, voice gentler than she expected.

The girl blinked at her. Like the gesture didn’t quite compute. Like she was waiting for something else.

Still, she obeyed. Slipped under the covers slowly, limbs careful and unsure, as if waiting to be told she wasn’t allowed after all. Her head landed on the pillow.

Alexia pulled the duvet up, tucked it lightly around her shoulders. Not too tight. Just enough. She didn’t know what she was doing, but it felt like the right thing.

Neither of them said anything.

She had never tucked anyone in before.

And the girl… looked like she’d never been tucked in either.

So it was a first for both of them.

Alexia hovered again, hands awkwardly at her sides, standing like she was posing for a team photo. The girl just looked at her, face soft and eyes half-lidded with sleep. 

Alexia thought about saying goodnight, or sleep well, or I’ll be just in the next room, but the words caught in her throat.

The girl’s eyes fluttered shut. Her breath evened out, slower. Softer. And then, in the smallest, sleepiest voice

“Please don’t send me back.”

Alexia didn’t answer.

She just stood there for a beat longer, then backed away slowly. Reached for the light switch. The room dimmed into a comforting dusk. 

She hesitated at the door.

Looked one last time.

Then she closed it.

Not all the way. Just enough.

..

In her own room, Alexia grabbed her phone off the charger with hands that felt too shaky for someone who regularly captained national finals.

She opened her messages, scrolled until she found Pedro, her lawyer.

Alexia: Hello, I have an emergency. Please call me

Three dots danced on screen for a while.

Then Pedro finally responded:

Pedro: What happened, Alexia? Something with the contract?

She sighed, fingers flying across the screen.

Alexia: Well, yes. A kid, she somehow got her hands on the contract, slipped a guardianship clause in there, and she came to my house, backpack and everything, saying I’m her legal guardian, she had some documents with her.

The phone started buzzing.

Alexia picked up on the first ring.

“Pedro.”

“You have a what?” he said, voice high and incredulous–nothing like the calm, measured tone she was used to hearing from him.

“I don’t know her name,” Alexia said, running a hand through her hair. “She’s one of the orphans from Santa Clara. You know, that orphanage Barcelona partnered with last month.”

Silence. Then the faint sound of frantic typing.

“Oh God,” Pedro muttered. “Hold on, let me check the system.”

Alexia waited, the only sound on the line the rapid clack of keys.

“Dios mío,” Pedro said at last. “It’s real. It’s all here. You’re listed as her full legal guardian. Signed and everything. The orphanage has already taken her off their records.”

Alexia squeezed her eyes shut. “How the hell did she manage to forge that?”

“No idea,” Pedro said, still sounding awestruck. “But it’s clean. Official. Like it went through the proper channels.”

“I’m so tired,” Alexia whispered, pressing her fingers hard into her eyes.

There was a beat of quiet.

“If you want to reverse it, we can start the paperwork,” Pedro said gently. “It’ll take a few months, but we can make a case for immediate annulment.”

Alexia didn’t answer right away. She stared up at the ceiling, letting the silence drag.

“…Yes. Please.”

Her voice cracked on the last word.

“Okay,” Pedro said, just as softly. 

“I’ll start tomorrow morning. But until it’s processed, you’ll still be her legal guardian. That means enrolling her in school, getting her on your health plan, and making sure she’s safe and cared for. If we want the court to undo this, you have to show you were responsible in the meantime.”

“Fuck.” Alexia let out a long breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that. I’ll take care of her.”

“Good,” Pedro said. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I have something.”

“Wait,” Alexia said quickly. “Do you have her name?”

There was a short pause, then some more typing.

“Y/N,” he said. Twelve years old. Born April second. No siblings in the system. Her mother gave her up–claimed she couldn’t afford to raise her. No ID listed for the mom.”

Alexia nodded slowly, though Pedro couldn’t see her.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

Y/n.

Okay.

Alexia hung up. Put the phone down on the nightstand. 

She sat there for a while, staring at the wall. She couldn’t remember the last time she had worried about something that didn’t involve a match or a muscle strain.

Not a press conference. Not a lineup.

Just… a kid.

Maybe that was what scared her the most. Not the responsibility. Not even the legal mess. But the fact that part of her already cared. And it had nothing to do with football.

Alexia allowed her eyes to close on their one.

She dreamt of a sock, folded neatly in a drawer. And a kid with a too-small pyjama, curled under a duvet that didn’t quite belong to either of them.

..

Part 3 here

a/n: I’m not sure where this story is going yet, so consider this an open canvas! I’m hoping we can build the plot together, and I’d love to hear any thoughts, suggestions, or ideas you have along the way! <3

Tag list: @edensbreeze @silentwolfsstuff, @goodloe-e @mccabeskcc @blaugranafairy @footy-lover264 @the-fandom-ness @wosofavfanfics

[deliciousangelfestival]

The Imperfect Couple - 1 | Bucky

Character: politician!Bucky x ex-wife!reader

Summary: A separated couple must pretend to be happily married while the husband runs for Vice President, dealing with old issues and political pressures during his election campaign.

Chapter 1 , Chapter 2 , Chapter 3 , Chapter 4 ,Chapter 5 , Chapter 6 , Chapter 7 , Chapter 8 , Chapter 9 , Chapter 10 , Chapter 11 , Chapter 12 , Series Masterlist

Main Masterlist || If you enjoy my work, please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-fi 🙏🏻

By the way, I publish my book Arrogant Ex-Husband and Dad, I Can't Let You Go by Alina C. Bing on Kindle.

Thank you to everyone who has read this chapter. Leave a comment and Reblog, please. I'd love to hear your thoughts. ❤️

You were exhausted. Having just returned from covering another incident, you were familiar with the grueling reality of being a journalist in a foreign country.

Limited access compared to local reporters made the job even more challenging. Despite your fatigue, this was the career you had chosen and loved.

When you arrived at your apartment, you noticed a woman waiting for you. She was shorter and bustier than you, with curly, short red hair. The woman approached you with a confident stride.

“Hello. My name is Natasha,” she introduced herself, handing you a business card.

You glanced at the card, noting her affiliation with the Secret Service.

Is this for real?

“Yes. How may I help you?” You asked, confusion evident in your voice as you fumbled with your keys at the doorknob.

“I’m here to bring you back home,” Natasha replied.

“Why?” you asked, still trying to process why a Secret Service agent would be looking for you.

“Because your husband is looking for you,” Natasha said.

You froze, your mind struggling to make sense of what you had just heard. Turning slowly, you looked at Natasha, your face betraying a hint of incredulous amusement. “I’m sorry? You must be mistaken. I’ve been divorced for years.”

“Yes, I know the story,” Natasha said, her tone steady.

“Goodbye then,” you said quickly, attempting to close the door. The mention of your ex-husband was something you had left behind, and you wanted nothing to do with it.

“The divorce was never finalized,” Natasha said firmly.

“What?” you exclaimed, your eyes widening in disbelief. You had signed the documents, or so you thought. You swung the door open wide and saw two more men standing beside Natasha, their presence making it clear you were outnumbered—three to one.

“Seems like you’ve come to understand the situation,” Natasha said. “I’ll explain everything, but for now, you need to follow me.”

What she meant by following her quickly became apparent as the men gently but firmly guided you toward a car.

Inside, you hoped Natasha would provide answers, but she continued making calls, leaving you in a state of growing frustration.

Upon arriving at the airport, you realized it was not a regular one but a private jet facility.

“Let’s go,” Natasha said, gesturing toward the plane’s stairs.

As you climbed aboard, you noticed Natasha following closely behind. An air steward offered you a tray with a cup of jasmine tea. You took a sip, the delicate aroma providing a brief moment of comfort.

“Let me guess, this is his plane?” you asked, your tone tinged with suspicion.

“Yes,” Natasha nodded.

As the plane took off, the tension in the cabin was palpable.

“You still haven’t said a word,” you remarked, trying to break the silence.

“Because of the timing and for precautions,” Natasha said, her expression serious. “You won’t like what I’m going to say.”

“Tell me something I don’t hate more. You know how much I despise my ex-husband and his family,” you snapped, the bitterness clear in your voice. The memories of their interference and disdain for your background still stung deeply.

“Your husband is going to be the candidate for Vice President,” Natasha said, her voice steady despite the gravity of the news.

“...What?” you replied, your voice barely a whisper as you processed the information.

Natasha didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she pulled out a tablet and handed it to you. On the screen, you saw a video of your ex-husband. He stood proudly in a suit, smiling and raising his arms as the crowd erupted in cheers.

The title beneath the video read, “James Barnes: The Youngest Candidate for Vice President.”

You gasped, your disbelief palpable. “This is a joke.”

“Hundreds of supporters don’t think it’s a joke, ma’am,” Natasha replied, her tone matter-of-fact.

“And the reason I’m here is because he needs you,” she continued.

You clenched your fists in anger. The reason for your resentment was clear: his ambition and his family’s obsessive involvement in politics. Their relentless meddling had been one of the key reasons for your separation.

“Turn this plane around,” you demanded, your voice strained. You didn’t understand why, but exhaustion was overtaking you, and your eyes felt heavy.

Natasha glanced at her watch, a hint of sympathy in her gaze. “You must be feeling sleepy.”

You widened your eyes and looked at the tea cup, realizing its effects. You shot Natasha a glare, frustration mixing with fatigue.

“I’m just doing my job, ma’am,” Natasha said, accepting a blanket from the air stewardess.

You wanted to protest, but the energy drained from you. As your vision dimmed, you felt a wave of drowsiness. You closed your eyes and succumbed to sleep.

Natasha watched you as you fell asleep, then carefully draped the blanket over you. She turned to her colleagues with a resolute expression. “Tell him to pick up his wife.”

✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️

You slowly regained consciousness, your head feeling heavy and foggy. As you blinked open your eyes, the reality of your surroundings became clear: you were still on the airplane, but it had stopped moving. The plane had arrived, and you were still groggy from the drugs.

“Welcome home,” a familiar voice said.

You widened your eyes, trying to focus on the figure before you. There, standing with a knowing smile, was your ex-husband, Bucky.

His smile seemed almost out of place given the situation, and you found it impossible to return it. You struggled to sit up, your limbs feeling leaden.

“Of course,” you said, your voice thick with sarcasm. “The last thing I needed was to wake up and see your smug face.”

Bucky’s expression remained impassive. “Careful now. You wouldn’t want to offend the future Vice President.”

“Future Vice President, huh?” you shot back, your irritation flaring. “Is that why you dragged me back here? You need a trophy wife to complete your perfect image?”

“You’re not just a trophy wife,” Bucky said, his tone dripping with condescension. “You’re a crucial part of my public image. A divorce would be a PR disaster.”

“Is that right?” you snapped. “You’re using me as a prop, aren’t you? You couldn’t just leave me alone. Some of us have lives outside your political games.”

“You think this is bad?” Bucky said, frustration seeping into his voice. “Imagine what would happen if the public found out about our separation. It’s all about maintaining appearances.”

“You’re still the same,” you said, your anger flaring.

Bucky’s expression hardened. “Let’s be honest here. You wouldn’t have left if you didn’t think I was using you. But if you think this is a game, you’re wrong. I need you to play along until the election.”

“And if I refuse?” you challenged.

“One year,” Bucky said, his gaze steady. “Until the election is over. Then I’ll give you anything you want. Just play the part of a happy wife until then.”

You knew why he needed you. His political career depended on maintaining a perfect public image. Only a few people were aware of your separation, so you had to pretend to be a happy married couple to avoid public scrutiny.

As you struggled to stand, Bucky stepped forward to help you. His touch was steady but impersonal. Both of you exited the jet, greeted by a throng of press and cameras. The narrative they were fed was clear: the Vice Presidential candidate picking up his sick wife.

With the press closing in, you turned to Bucky and said, “I see you’ve thought this through. Dragging me back here like a prized possession. What’s next? A public appearance where we hold hands and share a tearful reunion?”

Bucky met your gaze with a calm but resolute expression. “It’s not just about appearances. The election is critical, and I need stability. Having you here will help maintain that.”

“You’re the only one I could turn to. I need you,” he said.

The words “I need you” echoed with the same urgency he once used, the very words that had drawn you to him. But now, they felt hollow.

Bucky’s expression remained unchanged. He had no apologies to offer, and the facade of your ‘happy marriage’ had to remain intact.

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[leggerefiore]

Hcs about what various Pokémen would be like if they wanted attention/affection from s/o while s/o is busy with something? Like Lear is probably just going to c l i n g to them until they acknowledge their bf but I also wanna see how Cyrus would handle his horrible spirit making him yearn for cuddles and nice words from s/o (I love tormenting him by making him feel things ❤️💞💖)

cw: slight jealousy, fluff

characters: Lear, Cyrus, Emmet, Grimsley

👑Lear💎

🪙 Your attention was stuck on this document that the prince had assigned for you to handle. He had wished to test your capabilities in handling more administrative roles – Something about becoming a ruler needing you to have focus and understanding of various things that were certainly being taught to you in the bland private classes he had you attending. It was not overly difficult, but the focus needed to skim through the various sentences speaking on how this event would work needed your full mind to make sure you were processing it well. It was needlessly tiring. Yet, you pushed yourself through it. Really, you felt determined to prove to yourself that all the training was paying off.

🪙 However, someone lingered near you. His gaze was intently locked onto you. Lear. Despite having assigned you this task – He now felt desperate for your attention. His arms were pressed across his chest. Your attention had not yet once shifted from the paper to acknowledge him. He felt annoyed. You had been reading over it for the past thirty minutes without once glancing at him. It was cutting into your shared lunch. Lear specifically reserved this time to spend alone with you away from his duties. His teeth gritted. No more. He could stand no more! Your attention belonged to him when he stood in your presence. The prince could handle that stupid document later. His hand slammed down on top of it.

🪙 “Hmph. I have been here for nearly half an hour,” he spoke with his usual arrogant cadence. Your gaze locked onto him. A sigh nearly escaped him. Your attempts to explain that you were trying to do what he asked you to were ignored. “I will handle this later,” he grumbled and moved to hold you close to him, “This is one of the few breaks that I am allowed in my schedule. I would much prefer spending it with you.” You could only accept his needs as he clung to you. His orders were absolute – unless you wanted to deal with a pouty and whiny prince. (You did not.)

🌌Cyrus🛰

☄️ A show you had been interested in finally had a new season, so you found yourself intently watching on the couch. It had been so long since anything new had come from it that you felt your attention was entirely locked onto the show. You had barely gotten up to eat, much less to notice what was going on around you. The entertainment and characters once again in your mind made you far too happy. Enough to ignore the time and the sound of the front door opening and closing.

☄️ Cyrus felt odd as he returned home to no greeting – usually you met him at the door with that smile of yours. His shoes came off, and he heard the television on. Perhaps you simply had not noticed that he had come home. Though, he recalled that you had been watching the television when he had left this morning, too. His feet carried him into the home proper, seeing you sitting on the couch with your attention locked onto the screen before you. Cyrus felt… odd. You still had not noticed his entrance. Had you really been watching that show all day? He could tell a proper meal had likely been skipped over due to the chips on the table before you. A strange… disgusting feeling overcame him.

☄️ He approached you, steps quiet and trained. Sitting beside you, he pondered if you would finally notice his presence. Your gaze remained locked across the room. A hitched breath came from him. This felt ridiculous. How could your attention be so fixated on this show rather than your partner? He finally broke. “… Beloved,” his voice was low but loud enough to finally break your trance. Your attention fell onto him. Blinking, you gasped at the revelation, you had not even heard him come in. Cyrus felt a sigh leave him. Those horrible feelings left as you suddenly hugged him and startled, babbling about what you were watching.

▽Emmet△

○ Battles. You had been really into trying out new team strategies recently. It had started as a plan to get stronger to challenge your boyfriend again but had quickly turned into a way to pass the time while he was away at work. It was exciting to go out and battle various trainers again. Really, it was far too distracting at times. Battles ended up going on and on for far too long. Even when you found yourself on the Battle Lines of the Gear Station, you and whoever you were battling would lose yourselves in the competition and lose track of everything else.

○ Especially the very conductor of the train stepping into the car after growing concerned about why the challengers were taking so long. He blinked at the sight. Emmet had not expected his partner to be the one causing a so-called stall. The battle so was quite intense. It almost seemed like a stalemate. It would have intrigued him, but he suddenly felt oddly huffy. His entrance had gone completely unnoticed – even by you. His cheeks puffed out. Neither one dared a glance at him, too focused on the battle. You called out a move, then followed by the other contender. Emmet felt as if enough time had passed in this battle. (And totally not because he was a little jealous that you had not even looked at him.)

○ He blew his whistle, breaking the attention of you both. “I am verrrry sorry to interrupt,” he was not, “We are approaching our destination. This battle is over.” He quickly took in a tally and figured out who was the winner based on pokemon in battle and health of remaining pokemon. You. His giddiness for a battle was quashed, however. The train really was approaching the next platform. He instead had the challenger take a seat and pulled you into his car. You were then pulled into a tight embrace by the younger twin, who pouted at you and whined about you ignoring him. There was now a train man who demanded your cuddles to deal with.

♠️Grimsley❤️

♤ Honestly, you were not big on gambling – but your boyfriend seemed to demand that you join him at the casino some nights. Naturally, he steered you away from the slot machines, explaining they were the most rigged part of the experience. Instead, you both sat at a blackjack table. Your attention was intently locked as you played against some woman who was just as intensely interested in this game. Each time, the two of you seemed just shy of twenty-one. Calling each other's bluffs led to an intense internal battle. So much so that you completely ignored the clear winner of each round, who was leaning over your shoulder ominously.

♡ Grimsley would not admit his feelings but like a clingy cat makes their wants known – his was quite apparent. He did not mind you participating in the games, if anything he found it adorable how you attempted them. It mattered little anyways – he usually ended up as the victor. Yet, this situation was annoying. There was nothing he wanted more than for you to cling to his arm and be impressed by his abilities. Instead, you were too distracted by that woman. A cat would not allow themself to be ignored, however. Grimsley was no different.

◇ Your arm was grasped. Breaking your attention from the game, you found Grimsley's usual grin almost strained. Those icy eyes stared right through you. A hum left him. “Oh, man, I didn't think you'd get so into it,” his voice was smooth, but you could almost hear the pent-up feeling in it, “Why don't we call the game and move onto… more exciting things?” Your cheeks grew warm at his words. The undertones were not lost. Grimsley turned down gambling for the first time in his life probably to drag you away. Your poor rival was not sure whether to really call that a win.

[randomperson54321]

Non-Profit Bill - Spread the word

In case you missed it, the “nonprofit killer bill”—which would give the executive branch unprecedented control to revoke nonprofit’s tax status and kill off any organization they don’t agree with— is back.1 And this time, it’s wrapped into a budget bill, which is moving quickly.

I’ll go over the details in a second, but we are moving quickly to stop this bill so that countless organizations that run food banks, provide disaster relief, and fight for your rights aren’t shut down. Can you chip in right now to fuel this rapid response campaign?

HELP STOP THE NONPROFIT KILLER BILL

Okay, let me get you up to speed:

You might remember in November when Congress was trying to pass HR 9495, the original version of this bill. If passed, this bill would let the Trump administration (as well as future presidential administrations) designate any nonprofit as “terrorist affiliated,” and strip them of their tax-exempt status (aka their 501(c)3 status, for the tax nerds out there) with no justification or due process.2

TAKE ACTION NOW: Complete CAIR's Action Alert and demand Congress remove this provision

Now, the same bill text is attached to a budget reconciliation package that’s moving rapidly through House committees and could get a floor vote by Memorial Day.3 We rallied so much opposition to the bill last time around that this budget process is the best chance proponents have for passing it. That means it’s also our best chance to kill it, maybe even for good. We have to seize this opportunity urgently, and we can’t do it without you. If you can chip in right now, in any amount, please do.

DONATE NOW

It’s not hard to see where this would go: Trump has already been going after activists, foundations, universities, and government officials and agencies that don’t agree with him.4 If this bill passes, it would allow him to target nonprofits with impunity. And the end result would be people who rely on these groups for support and community resources would suffer.

As soon as we found out this bill was included in a must-pass budget package, we jumped to action. In less than 24 hours we got a helpful call tool set up, drove over 700 calls to key Congressional offices, and got our take out to news outlets so they could help raise awareness.5,6,7

But we need to do more. Your support will help:

Drive thousands more calls into lawmakers offices. The last time we did this, we overloaded the Congressional phone lines. We need to do it again. We’ve got a great call tool that connects people to their lawmakers and tells them what to say, but each call costs money and it adds up.

Get celebrities and influencers to raise the alarm. We’ve got a plan to engage folks with big audiences to help reach more people, and get them to take more actions.

Pressure lawmakers directly. Our very small but mighty team in DC is already talking to Congressional staffers and figuring out where we can put pressure to influence votes and amend the budget bill to remove the nonprofit killer bill. This kind of pressure, paired with grassroots outreach, is what we know will help us win.

Everything we’re able to do is thanks to your support. Your donations allow us to quickly jump to action, respond quickly when we get breaking intel, and reach millions of people who care about the future of their favorite local nonprofits. Please donate now.

We really think we’ve got a fighting chance to kill this terrible bill. We did it once before, and we’re ready to do it again.

Footnotes:

1. Statement: H.R. 9495 text in budget is a five-alarm fire for nonprofits nationwide: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2025-05-12-statement-h-r-9495-text-in-budget-is-a-five-alarm-fire-for-nonprofits-nationwide/

2. Civil Society Letter to House Opposing H.R. 9495: https://www.aclu.org/documents/civil-society-letter-to-congress-opposing-hr-9495

3. Nonprofit Times: https://thenonprofittimes.com/npt_articles/breaking-exempt-status-endowments-and-donors-targets-in-house-bill/

4. NPR: https://www.npr.org/2025/04/29/nx-s1-5379979/trump-has-targeted-more-than-100-opponents-and-institutions-npr-analysis-finds

5. The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/14/tax-status-non-profits-terrorism-republicans

6. AP: https://apnews.com/article/congress-nonprofits-tax-exempt-terrorism-trump-f9f5cfad4ea64c0745313a0b8a84fccf

7. Common Dreams: https://www.commondreams.org/news/nonprofit-killer-bill

[emberfrostlovesloki]

Kintsugi  金繕い [Spencer x Reader]

Photo credits Left (@mon-petit-coeur-noir) Center (@whoisspence) Right (@shakespearesdaughters)

Prompt: When the reader gets kidnapped for being friends with Spencer, she is mentally tormented to get back at Reid, and the reader and team, especially Spencer,  have to find a way to communicate before it’s too late for her to make it out alive. 

Pairing: Spencer x BAU-Fem!reader, Nerdy!reader. The reader uses she/her pronouns

Category: angst/hurt/comfort [happy ending] 

Word Count: 15K

Content Warnings: Mention of death and sexual assault, mention of blood, mental torment [threat of assault, being unclothed, forced partial blindness - eyes glued open, forced partial deafness - loud music is played, degrading comments (reader)], physical harm [being cut with a knife, being put in a feezing unit, being beaten (reader)], distress, mentions of hospitals. If I missed any please let me know. 

A/N: Hi all! I hope you are all doing very well! If you are a student on Summer break I hope you are having fun and relaxing! As always, I return with a novel of a Spencer story. This story was requested by an Anon, thank you so much, and I hope you like it! I do throw in a few Star Trek and literary references in this fic, but I try and explain them well. My requests are open, so feel free to request a fic from me if you like anytime! I do want to encourage you to read the tags as this is a bit dark for me (though it has a happy ending). If you like this concept and would like to see part two of the reader’s healing process with Spencer, let me know. Please be kind to yourselves this week and do something you love, you are so special. If you enjoy this fic, likes, comments, and reblogs are appreciated! Love Levi - ❤️

List with all stories 

y/n = your name 

y/c/h = your color hair 

y/l/n = your last name 

t/c/s = tea/coffee/soda 

y/n’s head was pounding. It was throbbing with pain and the hard floor and air itself seemed frigid. y/n clutched her sides and rubbed. She was grateful that their clothes were still on. Given the unsub the team was dealing with, it wasn’t what y/n had expected. But then again, the man the BAU had been trying to find in the last week had been full of surprises. He didn’t fit the early profile the team had created, and now y/n was alone and scared, but she pulled together her strength and courage and opened her eyes. This was her job and she’d been doing it for a year. She’d seen team members taken, and harmed, and sometimes almost died, but if there was one thing y/n knew about the BAU, it was that they cared for each other. Everyone on the team would be looking for her. They wouldn’t leave a stone unturned until they found her. That was what had drawn y/n to the Unit in the first place. 

The BAU had done a joint operation with y/n’s Counterterrorism team where they were the unofficial data specialist and literary nerd. As soon as Derek had seen y/n and Reid together, he looked at Emily and said, “Well, this is going to be trouble,” to which both agents looked up and said in unison, “What?” It was during that case that Spencer had been in danger, and y/n was a bit too. Spencer had put himself in harm's way to ensure she was okay. Just seeing how the BAU responded with more than just professionalism, but also with care had sealed y/n into wanting a transfer. It wasn’t for another two years before that became a possibility. There was some issue with the documents that she had mailed to the Quanitco office, eventually, she sent fresh ones and drove them down herself. 

It was that knowledge, that the team was looking, at that filled y/n with warmth and shared determination. She opened her eyes and realized why she was so cold. From the looks of things, the white cement floor, the fluorescent lighting, and the crusted blood on the ground, y/n was in a meat packing plant. She sniffled and rubbed her shivering torso as she opened her eyes and sat up. There were conveyor belts on the far side of the wall, along with sharp meat hooks hanging from the ceiling. This setting would make sense given that the bodies of the three victims that had the team come down in the first place had seemed very fresh, even though they had passed a few weeks ago. The thought of the women and what the unsub had done to them and their bodies made y/n want to vomit. 

They had been killed excruciatingly. Not only had they been tortured, but they’d been assaulted as well. With this in mind, and possibly in her future, y/n moved away from the dried blood on the floor, not sure who or what it was from. y/n wondered how long the man kept his victims alive. The team had hypothesized that he was a sadist and loved long drawn out kills, to watch the victims suffer. The unsub had a type, and y/n fell into it. There was a sound at the far side of the room, and y/n moved to the center of the space. There was no point in cowering in the corner. She decided to face the unsub head-on. Show no fear, even if she was filled with it to the brim. The man’s outline filled the door making it unable for her to see him, but y/n knew that would change soon enough. 

As y/n waited to test wits with the man in front of her, the rest of the BAU, many miles away had set up a tent at the Kansas State Fair. Their team tent looked much less adorned than those of the food and game vendors with their bright colors and light. The satellite pop-up of the BAU and police presence were needed to gather information and vet the people leaving the fair since y/n had been taken. Their tent was on the far side of the fair. It would be unassuming if there weren’t loads of cops, police cars, state troopers cars, and a SWAT team all moving in and out of the space. Aaron and Rossi were heading up the operation and working through the bureaucratic tape and interdepartmental things that would otherwise slow the team down. There was a tension in the air that permeated each member of the BAU. It was palpable with all of them, but with Spencer, it was coming off him wave after wave. The lithe agent was with Emily and Derek, walking through the empty mirror house where y/n had been abducted. As Reid, Em, and Morgan move through each cranny and trick door for guests and employees. He caught his reflection in mirror after mirror and it all felt like a sick joke. Reid was absorbed in his own reflection for a moment before he heard Derek’s voice cut through his brain fog. Spencer snapped up and moved toward his friend's voice. Emily and Morgan were kneeling down next to an employee entrance. Reid was upset and angry, and the sight of a blood stain on the bright floor along with a few strands of y/n’s y/c/h should have made him feel good, but the blood only meant that y/n was already hurt, and probably being hurt more at this point made his stomach churn. 

Emily looked at Spencer’s serious face and re-asked “Can we get a blood sample vial, Spence?” The question finally registered with Reid and he replied sharply, “I’ll do it. Can you just step aside a bit?” Derek’s brow furrowed. He knew that Spencer had a thing for y/n. Everyone on the team did except, infuriatingly, the pining agents themselves. But that didn’t give Spencer a reason to be hot at them. Morgan replied, “Easy Spence. We’re doing everything we can.” Spencer couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Well not enough to keep her safe when she was with you both.” At that statement, both Prentiss and Derek stood and looked at Spencer disappointingly, like a child who had said a naughty word they had been told not to say. They both moved back and their physical reactions made Spencer drop his head in shame. He took a deep breath, rubbed his eyes, and said to the floor, “I’m sorry.” He was trying to hold back all the emotions. Emotions he often didn’t let himself feel. He looked up at his friends and continued, “I’m sorry. I… I don’t think I know how to deal with this. I know it’s not your fault. You couldn’t have done anything, and you both care about y/n as much as I do. I let my emotions get away from me.” 

Morgan and Emily looked at each other as Reid said that they both liked y/n as much as he did, knowing it wasn’t true. Yes, they both loved y/n, but not like Spencer, and that realization justified Reid's words for them. They both moved forward. Derek gave Spencer’s shoulder a firm squeeze, and said, “It’s okay, kid. Now, have you got that vial Em needs?” Reid released a relieved breath, pulled a sample kit out of his shoulder bag, and handed it over to Emily who was back on her knees near the evidence. As she began taking the sample, Morgan and Spencer moved down the narrow trap door to see where it led and to see if there were more clues about the unsub or y/n’s location. 

As the duo moved down the narrow hallway, it became apparent that y/n must have been unconscious or tightly bound as she was being taken away by the unsub. There would have been more of a struggle on y/n’s part if she’d been awake or free, but none of the boxes or supplies for the House of Mirrors seemed to be broken or messed up. Derek didn’t know if this was a good or a bad thing, and Reid’s mind was moving too fast, even he couldn’t keep up with it. He knew the team needed to find all of the physical evidence first, to vet the guests and vendors that were leaving for information, but that could be a slow process and all Spener wanted to do was use his full brain power to think about the victimology, update the profile, make a map pinpointing the locations of the victims, but this process had to be done first. The team was a member short, and they all knew the police weren’t helpful in situations like this, so Reid sucked it up and kept moving beside Morgan, trying desperately to still his brain for once. 

Back in the freezer, y/n looked as the mountain of a man came into view. He looked disheveled and red-faced. He wore jeans and a button-down T-shirt. y/n looked at him. She wanted him to make the first move, to understand him better -- his ticks, any weaknesses he had. Anything she could use against him. Force wasn’t an option right now, but she had her mind, and that was worth a lot. The unsub grinned and said, “This will be fun. You’re prettier than I expected. That look of fear on your face, he’s going to love that.” y/n swallowed and replied, “‘He?’ Don’t you mean you. You’re the one taking and killing the woman. And thanks for the compliment.” The man chuckled and said, “You have a mouth on you alright, just like I expected. Of course, he’d like you the little bitch. And who he is doesn’t matter. For now at least. But it will be fun. Not for you of course, but for me it will be. I’ll get so, so very much pleasure from you. I just didn’t expect you to be so cute. It’s a shame, really.” 

y/n frowned. She couldn’t tell if this was dissociation or multiple personalities, but the constant mention of her looks and another person was odd. There hadn’t been any signs of a second unsub, nor was there any other DNA evidence on the victims. As the man made a fast step toward y/n, she moved away from him. This only had the unsub smile and laugh as he moved toward y/n again and said, “You can’t run away from me little bird. You’re only going to make it worse on yourself.” y/n stopped at that. y/n stopped immediately. She swallowed thickly. If she was someone else, like Hotch, Morgan, or Spencer who had the presence and size to act brave in a physical altercation she would bluster and make herself big and threatening. But y/n wasn’t them and didn’t take risks like they did. Firstly, because even y/n assumed Morgan would be physically intimidated by the man’s size and bulk, secondly, y/n was still new to the BAU. Not that she hadn’t picked things up quickly or was good at the job, but it was still more difficult for her to pick up small tells or things like Reid or Emily could. Plus, it wouldn’t help her in signaling the team in some way if the first thing that happened to her was to be fully incapacitated. 

The unsub noticed her submissive posture and liked it saying, “That’s it little bird, now I need you to get out of your things.” y/n looked up at him, biting her lip asking, “Why? What happened to the bird when it gets defeathered, defrocked?” y/n knew what to expect next, assault was part of this man’s MO and if she could postpone that, she sure as hell would. The man laughed again, harsh and cruel, like he was in on a joke that she wasn’t. The man replied, “I’m not going to break you like the others. I could, and I will if you give me too much bratty attitude, but that’s not the plan. All of that other shit with the women and how I treated them, that was to get your attention. Their attention. And I don't think physically breaking you would hurt him either, but don’t test me. However, for now, just take off your clothes and I won’t touch you, that way.” 

y/n didn’t look forward to being undressed in front of anyone. It was uncomfortable for her to be vulnerable with their body like that, even with close friends like Penelope and JJ. In fact, a memory of Emily trying to get her to buy a more revealing swimsuit for the summer popped into her mind and the coaxing it took for y/n to finally buy and wear the skimpy swimwear. Of course, Spencer’s attempt to not look over her body with rapt attention had made the discomfort worth it. When the unsub grabbed at her shirt, y/n began undoing the button of her shirt. It took longer than she expected as her hands shook with cold and fear. y/n expected the man to ask her to move faster, but he didn’t. Again, he seemed to have a sick enjoyment of watching her cower. y/n took this opportunity to think and think fast. The man had said he was trying to get the team's attention. Not only the team’s attention but ‘his’ attention. So that narrowed it down to four people. That was something to go off of. Second, this unsub was someone y/n would have remembered if she’d dealt with him before, but she didn’t, so he was someone from before her time. This was some kind of lesson. There was only a small glimmer of hope that y/n had for her health, both physical and mental because if the unsub wanted to break a member of the team through her, it was going to take more than just taking them captive and keeping them in a poorly regulated freezing unit. 

At this point, y/n was down to her undergarments, and she wondered how pushing the man would be. How quickly he would react, and with how much force? There was only one way of finding out, and she intended to know this early on. This way she could better gauge her actions and submissiveness. If that turned out to be a thing he liked, then she could use it as a small way of gaining control later. So y/n stopped when she stepped out of her pants, and the man quickly changed his demeanor saying, “Don’t stop now. I may not be interested in you, but I know he is, and it’s no good if we’re keeping this at a PG-13, scary movie rating. I need this to be the unrated version birdie, so get out of those panties and bra.” y/n now knew that the man’s emotions were volatile and could change on a dime. That was all she needed to know to get out of her last things. The cold chilled y/n further now that she was nude. 

y/n couldn’t stop herself as she moved her hands to cover her nudity. The unsub bent down not even noticing her discomfort as he picked up her undergarments and examined them to an odd degree muttering, “Do you think he knows you match your bra to your panties? Because he will soon enough.” y/n stepped back, slowly onto one of the patches of dried blood which made y/n cringe. The serious ‘he’ was back and the expression of rage on the man’s face was so intense that y/n wanted to run to the door to try and escape. Whatever this man who had supposedly wronged the unsub, there was a vitriolic rage for him simmering underneath the surface. Before y/n even had the chance to fully think through making a run for it, the man stood up and whipped his hand over y/n’s face so hard that the blow threw her back and into one of the metal supports of the conveyor belts. 

The pain in the side of y/n’s face shocked her into stillness as her jaw clicked oddly and she grunted in pain. Again, before y/n could react, the unsub was on her again. He kicked her torso, legs, and face with the steel tips of his boots breaking the skin every time another blow landed on her prone body. Along with the damage to her front, every time the man’s foot met y/n’s bare flesh, her back was pushed back and harder into the sharp corner of the convey belt. y/n quickly figured out that the unsub was being fast and efficient. When she looked up at his face, he seemed bored as he landed each kick. There was a callous disinterest in what he was doing. He seemed to not be affected at all by what was happening to his victim. Due to this y/n began planning accordingly. Shifting her position slightly so the blows landed on a more padded part of her body, and along with giving her lower back a break by shifting the hits to her lower shoulders, this meant her breasts getting hit, which was not pleasant in the least, but it was somewhere new, and somewhere padded by a bit more. 

y/n felt jostled to the core and rattled to the bone. The pain she was experiencing was blinding and she couldn’t think about much more than trying to protect her face and groin, both of which got hit anyway. What felt like an eternity’s worth of blows ended as soon as it began, and all y/n could do was lie on the ground and grit her teeth against the pain. Her attempt to stay strong physically and mentally was already being tested, but she refused to lick her wounds in front of her captor. If this was about being broken, then she wasn’t yet. The unsub knelt with a grunt and jerked y/n’s face up and into the light, looking at the bruising on her face examining her like a piece of meat for consumption. Something about her battered appearance didn’t suit his liking and he said like a painter finishing a masterpiece, “Just a bit more, right there.” His large stubby pointer finger gesticulated at her lower face and he gripped her hair more tightly and rammed her head onto the floor splitting her lip and jarring her jaw again. 

With that, the man dropped y/n’s face, stood, and walked straight out of the room. Just for the fun of it, he kept the door open for three minutes as he watched y/n turn onto her side to find any place that was comfortable enough to breathe. y/n looked at the open door and the look of delight on the man’s face as he stood by the entrance, and y/n realized that this was going to be her form of torment, an option in view but not accessible. When the large metal door finally swung shut and was locked from the outside, y/n closed her eyes and tried to use her brain. There would be time to assess her physical damage later, for now, she could use one thing that she had. She made mental notes: that the unsub walked with a limp, that he had a New York accent, that he wasn’t over fifty years old. He also had a large size footprint to match his large stature. He also had a mermaid tattoo on his left ankle. Next, she thought about his mental patterns. He was volatile and not afraid to cause harm, but he took no pleasure in doing so to her. It was about a certain result. He had also said that he had only killed those other women, and eviscerated them, to get a man on the team's attention. y/n could work with that. Try and use that to her advantage. If only she could find out who the man was. As the pain took y/n over, and her brain shut down to the basic feeling of hurt and cold, y/n’s mind turned to Spencer. How I must have looked at the moment. Stressed, tired, on edge. It wasn’t a pleasant sight, even if it was for her. She wished she could pull him into a hug and say “It’s alright Spence. I’m holding on. I promise.” The last sentence would stay silent, but he’d know. Because he always knew her. And with that thought, y/n closed her eyes, curled in on herself, and attempted to rest. 

The night was not pleasant for anyone but the unsub. But even Moore Eiarty, the unsub, was worried that his plan wouldn’t succeed, That he couldn’t break the genius of Spencer Reid. But all the pieces were finally in place, and now it was time to play. As the team finally got through vetting the people in the park, they got back to work. The main thing they had to go off of was that one of the performers, the Giant Man, was missing. He’d been added last minute to the tour and there had barely been time to get his paperwork in order before the Kansas Fair began. And it wasn’t until that evening that they discovered that the man, Mr. M. Earity, had very well-forged documents. Not just one, but all of them. That gave Penelope a lot to work on while the team took the angle of victimology and reworked the profile. The BAU had moved back to the police precinct except for Derek and Rossi. Spencer knew that Morgan was taking this especially hard because y/n had been taken while she was with him, but Spence’s head was too full of ideas and concerns to worry about how the others felt right now. 

Aaron watched the team do what the team did. Perhaps they were working a bit more hectically than normal, but this was one of their own on the line and Hotch would rather die before he stopped working to get y/n back. As he looked at Spencer, writing on over seven whiteboards with three coffees on the table, he considered that Reid might also die if they didn’t find y/n soon. That thought sat with the Unit Chief, and he tucked it in the back of his mind for later. This felt especially pertinent to this case, though he didn’t know why yet. Nothing much came in terms of developments for a few hours. JJ released a statement for the press, Derek and Rossi returned to the team, and the Fair was shut down for legal safety. The tip line ran nonstop and everyone felt the weight of time. It wasn’t until 3:00 AM that the first real forward momentum was given to the team, and target to Spencer specifically. 

It came in the form of an email from an unlisted account. It was labeled Urgent Dr. Reid - Re:y/n, y/l/n. Spencer looked at the email and decided to open it. He was tired, and his brain was beginning to numb at all the stimuli that were assaulting his mind. What he saw once he opened that email made him drop his coffee and whip his hand over his mouth in horror. Aaron and Emily were in the room with Spencer, and they both noticed their colleague’s distress. Prentiss moved to Reid’s side and looked at the laptop as well. Her mouth went slack and she whispered, “Oh my God. H-hotch…” It didn’t take Aaron more than four strides to see what had both of these friends looking like they were going to be sick. As soon as he saw the first picture of y/n, naked, heavily bruised and bloody, and head down he knew why Reid and Em had reacted as they had. y/n’s hands were forced above her head with zip ties and strung to a hook hanging from the ceiling. The position she was in had her knees barely brushing the floor which meant that all of her weight was in her wrists, elbows, and shoulders.

y/n wore a pained expression, and Hotch’s eyes darted up for a second out of proprietary. He didn’t want to have to see y/n undressed. To be forced into such a humiliating position and know others, people she trusted, would see it made Aaron pause. It hurt. He composed himself and said as professionally as he could, “We need this on the big screen. Em, can you get on that? Reid, is there any text in the body?” Prentiss and Spencer came back to themselves, though it took Spence a moment longer, and they registered their Leader’s questions. Emily nodded and moved to pull down the projector in the room and pushed some of the whiteboards Reid had been using aside; meanwhile, Reid scrolled past the 25 attached photos to where there was some text. He read it in a millisecond and said, “Yes there is. I’ll get Gacia on Zoom while you get the rest of the team in here.” Hotch nodded and took one more second to look at Spencer to see if he was okay. This was targeted at him, which was both a good and a bad thing, but right now, the smartest member of the team looked determined to get to the bottom of this, so Hotch moved to the door to get everyone else into the conference room. 

After the team looked at all of the photos and the attached email, they split into smaller sub-groups to work more efficiently. Aaron and Emily agreed to look at all of the images with a more critical eye. They would break down every angle and shot and bruise on y/n’s body. The one positive thing that the pictures did show was that y/n was alive. Or at least she had been, and given the unsub’s propensity to draw out his kills, there was a good chance that y/n was still alive. The time stamp on the email had been from only a half hour ago and didn’t appear altered. Hotch assigned Spencer and JJ to look at the body of the email. He gave this task to Spencer so he could do something he excelled at. He was the best linguist and forensic document analyst in the FBI after all. JJ was also excellent at identifying patterns in writing and could help Spencer. It also gave Reid an out for not having to look at y/n’s prone and exposed body. 

Aaron as the leader took that burden of looking at y/n with Emily because Prentiss was also very good at compartmentalizing her emotions related to her friendships and the job. Derek was working with Garcia, who was on overdrive to find the source of the email and pin down a location along with about ten thousand other things. She’d gone as far as calling in Janet, another Technical analyst at Quantico to come and help her because two computer processors and brains were always better than one. Lastly, Rossi coordinated with the police on-the-ground operation of searching for y/n. Even though a lot of moving pieces were happening at the same time, the BAU did what it always did -- work with excellence and as a team. Aaron looked at his team for a moment, proud of them. He was worried about Spencer, who was more on edge than normal. Hotch turned his eyes back to the screen, he’d check in on the genius in a few hours, for now, he had a difficult job to do. 

After a few hours that slipped by like grains of sand in an open palm, the team had discovered a few things. The first thing that Spencer and JJ broke down was the email which read: 

I have waited for a long time to get this opportunity. While I have watched you all, the most famous and infamous team in the FBI, I have been looking at one of you in particular. I wonder if you know who you are yet? Let me give you a hint. Last I saw you, you were just a child not even weaned on crimes or violence. Do you know now? Estranged from your friend, I wonder if you’re floundering like I have been before because of you. Sorry if this is all a bit obtuse, but this is fun, and I’m going to draw it out for you. Try not to get too excited yet, the best is yet to come. Rest assured that your friend will face the consequences of knowing you so well. Only when I see you so ruined as I have been ruined will I be happy. Yesterday you were so determined to catch me, do you feel that way now, or are you feeling the fear in your veins? You can find me eventually, but not before I find you. Other things may happen too. Under my control, I may make y/n do anything I want. Don’t worry though, I don’t have plans like I had for the others, this is different. Ready now. Ready now. Enough of waiting for you, and this moment. I’d start praying for y/n, and you, my friend. Dare we should meet in person and you’ll see what I’ve done to her and you’ll finally taste my revenge. 

It didn’t take Spencer more than a minute to read the ‘secret message of’ I will destroy you, Dr. Reid, in the unsubs email. He almost laughed at the grandiose nature of the writing. JJ then pointed out that y/n wasn’t even mentioned until the end of the rambling message. This told the team that this kidnapping was all about Spencer, as it was clear from the email, and had little to do with y/n. That y/n was being used as a tool to get at Reid. Of course, the pictures of y/n who was bruised heavily all over her body, showed that the unsub was still willing to inflict serious bodily harm on her. But this fact made Emily and JJ feel slightly better. 

Spencer had come up with at least seventeen facts, grammatical patterns, and hints at a personality based on egomania. After Reid had said about five of them in the span of a few minutes, Derek gave him a look and Spencer stopped talking. Aaron and Emily then broke down the patterns of bruising and how the depth of the day-old bruising was likely from one sustained moment in time. That there didn’t seem to be layer upon layer of bruising on y/n’s body. Also, from the look of it, there didn’t seem to be any sign of sexual assault. Hotch had caught onto the dark red-rimmed circles under y/n’s eyes, indicating that she hadn’t slept much if at all since she had been taken nearly twenty-four hours ago. It was also pretty easy for Aaron to tell that y/n was being kept in some kind of industrial freezing unit. This was concerning as staying anytime long-term in such a cold space could lead to frostbite and long-term nerve damage. 

After the team had gone through the information and made a start at a new profile that focused mostly on the unsubs' hatred for Spencer, this put even more pressure on Spence. The rest of the team took a small break to just breathe or step outside or get a drink of the bad coffee from the office breakroom, Reid stayed behind and furiously wrote in his notepad and looked at the photos of y/n while biting the inside of his cheek so hard that he broke the soft pink skin. Spencer turned off the bright light to let his eyes and at least his occipital cortex have a break. The rest of his body was working pell mill. Derek moved back to the room ten minutes later and Spencer was leaning, his hands forward, and head bowed toward the wooden table. He looked like he might collapse. Morgan could see his friend’s outline backlit against the brightness of the screen. He looked frailer than normal, skinnier than his usual tall body. Derek knew this was hard for Spencer because it was y/n who had been taken, and it was because of him. Even if Spencer hadn’t realized he had feelings for y/n yet, he still felt the weight of what was happening to her because of him. Morgan entered the room with a cup of coffee and said gently, “Spencer, I brought you some coffee.” Reid hummed softly like he hadn’t really heard Morgan and Derek said, “Reid,” a bit louder. Spencer’s head shot up and toward Derek and his hands gripped the side of the table harder, knuckles turning white. Spencer snapped a “What?” at Morgan before taking a breath and relaxing his shoulders. Morgan didn’t mind Spence’s tone now. It made sense. 

Derek moved into the room and said, “I brought you some coffee. Maybe we could step outside for a minute? Get some fresh air?” Reid dropped his head again and he said mournfully, “I can’t rest right now. I have to figure out who has y/n.  I don’t know who the unsub is, but they know me and I don’t want y/n to have to pay the price for that.” Derek sighed and replied, “Spence, y/n would never blame you for being her friend, for being someone special to her.” Reid sniffled and replied, “She won’t thank me if she’s dead and neither will I.” Spencer’s voice broke off halfway through his last sentence. Morgan stepped forward and placed his hand on Reid’s shoulder. He gave is a gentle squeeze and replied, “Well thinking like that isn’t going to save her. And you need that super processor of a brain of yours to cool off before it shuts down on it’s own. And y/n is a tough cookie, she’s going to make it Reid. If there’s anyone who can find her, it’s you. And if you start letting this guy get to your head, then he’s already won. And we don’t let fuckers like that win. I know y/n sure as shit won’t thank you for that. Now let's go outside.” Spence allowed himself to be led out of the dark room, and Morgan closed the door behind them. 

y/n was beyond tired, she dozed off on and off as she lay in the corner of the room. She was too sore to move around. She did take a look at her surroundings every time she woke abruptly from an unknown sound. She’d look for the man who called himself Mr. M., or to shift from side to side to try and increase her circulation and shift the pain to a new place if that was possible. Much to Mr. M.’s credit, he didn’t seem to enjoy stringing y/n up to the ceiling and he’d taken her down as soon he’d finished taking what seemed like an endless stream of photos. He’d positioned her more like a clay statue looking at angles and composition than as if she was a human in pain. This gave y/n an indication that he might be a sociopath given that he seemed immune to her pained sounds as he adjusted her body again and again. He’d muttered “He’s going to love these. To see what I’ve made of you so far.” y/n opted to stay silent. To see if she could get any more information from the man, but he didn’t do much more than complain about the lighting and make comments about the ‘he’ in question. y/n highly considered that the male member of the team could be Rossi or Aaron, whom Mr. M was muttering on about. M seemed to address this person with such dignified authority that would fit those two people on the team. But that didn’t make sense, as y/n didn’t think Hotch or Rossi held her in any higher standard than the rest of the BAU. Yes, she respected Aaron as a leader and he respected her back. And surely he was beating himself up for not looking out for her, but it didn’t seem to fit with the rage that M felt toward this person. 

It seemed even more outlandish for the ‘he’ to be Rossi. Rossi was like a father figure to y/n. He had helped her really learn the ropes of the team and cases. Especially the paperwork after a case was finished, but if Mr. M wanted to hurt Rossi, he’d surely know to find one of his Ex-wives or someone closer to Dave. It was the odd reverence that the unsub continued using that threw y/n off of the real person he was targeting. The next interaction that y/n had with the man would clear things up for her significantly, and give her an option to use her brain to help the team find her. 

Mr. M came back sooner than y/n had wished. Her exhaustion and numbness made not only her body weak but her brain slow. When she saw that he was holding her underwear and a knife, she sat up and crawled back against the wall clumsily, not liking that combination of objects together. The man snorted and said, “Trying to fly away bird, I’m going to clip your wings if you do that too much. Then you won’t be able to run, ever.” y/n slowed her movements,  not willing to test the huge man in front of her. y/n swallowed thickly and looked from Mr. M.’s passive face to his hands holding the mismatched objects. The intimate and the violent. The man watched her eyes,  tracked their movements, and when he saw where they landed he genuinely laughed and said, “I told you before, I didn’t like doing those things to those girls. It was to make a point. Touching people intimately is my least favorite idea of a ‘good time.’ I just plan on making him think I’ve had you that way. Send him a little surprise gift and watch as he tries to process his loss of that part of you.” Somehow this response baffled y/n’s sleepless brain even more. Who the hell on the team wouldn’t be upset if she got assaulted in that way? If fact y/n could imagine each member of the team taking Mr. M out in rather lurid ways. It was stupid, but it gave y/n comfort and she even smiled softly at the thought of Derek beating the man up, or Spencer setting some kind of trap of wits for him. M. saw her happy look, and struck her face with the back of his fist, now only a foot from her body. He sneered and said, “‘he’ won’t be as happy as you are right now when he gets our present.” M grabbed her left arm, placed the tip of the knife on her forearm, and pressed it into her skin. The man drew a line down her wrist. 

The red liquid bubbled up and out of the wound like a stream. The cold of the freezer numbed the pain a bit. In fact, the feeling of the hot blood dripping down y/n’s arm was warming and she would have spread it over her arm if she was just a bit more tired. However, she didn’t have the chance as M grabbed her arm in a vice grip, and with his other hand, grabbed her panties. He ran the crotch of her undergarments over her fresh cut, spreading blood over the inside seam. He then dropped them to the ground and turned her arm over. He pinched at the wound, causing the bleeding to increase and easing large red droplets onto her already-soiled underwear. 

y/n felt disgusted at being used this way and said to fill in the oppressive silence, “I don’t think Derek will find this appalling, mainly he’d going to think it’s gross as fuck.” y/n hadn’t really meant Morgan, she’d just said the first name that popped into her head. As tough as Derek was, he wasn’t great with blood, just like Gracia. The slip was the best thing y/n could do as M dropped her arm and looked at her like she’d grown a second head. He shook his head and said, “Lord, and I thought ‘he’ liked you for your brain. It seems you may not have one up there. Dr. Reid is who I am referring to bird. Not agent Morgan. Derek couldn’t figure this out if you put all the pieces in front of him on a board.” 

y/n was astonished for a moment. Not only at the apparent racism of Mr M. but his other statement as well:  Spencer! This was about Spencer! How the hell this guy knew and had been wronged by her best friend on the team was beyond her. Certainly, Reid would have told her about him if they’d had run-ins in the past. They spent so much time together that they basically knew everything about each other. The weariness and pain were starting to get to y/n and she muttered as she closed her eyes, “Why would Spence care about this, he’s seen me on my period before. He’s gotten my sanitary products before, hell I bitch at him when I get cramps, and he takes it.” M stopped looking at the work of art which was y/n’s blood-soaked underwear and said, “You really are hopeless. And I don’t see the appeal to the good Doctor. He’s in love with you and you can’t even see it. Hopeless bird, I’ll take care of that though. You won’t have to think for much longer.” The vitality that y/n had been lacking came back in a rush of heat as M said that Spencer was in love with her. y/n sat up and took her injured arm and cradled it to her chest. The pain finally registered in her synapses. She let out a prolonged breath and said. “You think Spencer is in love with me? That’s a bit of a stretch.” y/n knew in the back of her mind that this might get her hurt more, or killed, but she was finally getting answers and perhaps if she had more answers she could do something with that. Actually use her brain, which the unsub had insulted she didn’t. 

M sighed and replied as if this was a normal conversation, “Bird, the data adds up. Dr. Reid puts himself in forty-three percent more danger when you are in a dangerous postion on a case. He puts himself in the line of fire for you over and over. At least five times by the records I’ve seen. Not only that, the chronically lonely young man who shuns women’s attention chooses to spend time with you above his other friends, even the likes of Morgan or Penelope. If that’s not the start of a crush, then I don’t know what is.” y/n looked up at the man with awe. Not so much at his intellectual prowess that he seemed to think he had, but at how stupid he sounded. Perhaps, maybe, maybe, there were some more feelings between y/n and Spencrs than friendship, but the other things he said were just crap. His use of statistics, and characterizing Reid as a lonely hermit was laughable. However, y/n was more aware than ever now, and this time she kept their mouth shut. She knew that saying those things out loud might likely get her knifed to death, and although the current situation was far from comfortable, she didn’t fancy dying. M hadn’t broken her yet, and now she was more determined than ever to live through this moment. 

The unsub noted that y/n had calmed down slightly and said, “I’ll be back shortly. I can’t let you or him rest too often now. I need to pick up the pace, but I need to send this little gift his way. Any loving words you want to tell him with my little letter? Perhaps it will give the Doctor some comfort.” The man said it sardonically, but y/n pulled herself together and tried to do her best acting and used a sorrowful tone as she said, “Tell him I’m sad it was my first time like this. I’d wished that we’d done it in Tanagra when we had the chance, but he knew I wasn’t ready. I won’t be ready.” y/n let the words slip off her tongue like she’d said them with a longing sadness and it put M at unease to see the odd shift in emotions; however, he shrugged his shoulders and replied cooly, “I’ll be sure to relay your sentiments.” 

Once the man had left the room with the knife, y/n lay back exhausted. The unsub had said he’d be back shortly, but maybe he was playing a game and he’d just leave her there to rot or starve. Either way, y/n needed to use this renewed time to think, and not just about the fact that she was trying to come to terms with the fact that she might love Spencer more than she’d allowed herself to do before. She needed to leverage this situation and not let those feelings overwhelm her. She’d already hopefully set one clue and one trap, she’d just need a bit more information to let the trap work. She pondered these things as she rubbed her skin which was slowly losing sensation as the minutes ticked by. 

When the package arrived at the precinct, the team was more prepared for it this time. The police stopped the carrier to ask him a plethora of questions while the team opened the box with some apprehension. Emily took on the role of the person who opened the box. Given the nasty surprise of the pictures of y/n in a state of complete undress in the first contact with the unsub, nobody wanted Spencer to get that kind of a shock again, even if the box was addressed to him alone. Inside the well-packaged cardboard parcel was a letter which Prentiss handed over to Morgan and then she pulled aside a good deal more pink tissue paper than was needed for the pair of underwear in the box. It took Emily and the team a moment to realize what they were given the blood had caked and dried, wrinkling the thin fabric into a distorted blob shape. The team looked at the item not so much with disdain as confusion. Some members of the BAU, JJ, Emily, and Penelope, had seen y/n in her underthings when they shared rooms in a busy hotel, but none of them, especially not Spencer, could immediately identify that they were y/n’s panties until M stated that directly, and implied that he’d done to y/n what he’d done to all his other victims before slowly killing them. 

This information did seem to shock and horrify the team until Derek read this part of the letter aloud with a hint of awkwardness, “And the little bird has a song for the doctor ‘I’m sorry that this was my first time, and that she wishes you had both done it in Tanagra.’ How unfortunate for both of you that that wasn’t the case…” Spencer cut Derek off before he could go into more grotesque details from the letter about what the unsub had done to y/n by saying, “Wait, wait, say that again.” Morgan paused and the team looked at Reid with questioning expressions. Derek repeated the last sentence, and Reid let out a soft breath in relief as he confidently said, “He didn’t touch her,” then under his breath, “thank God.” The BAU was more baffled than ever, and JJ looked over at the soiled underwear now back in the box getting ready for processing by the forensics lab. With hesitation, JJ replied, “Spencer, y/n’s underwear is telling a different story, as does the bruising on her body” 

The team was at a loss for what to think. y/n had been a reserved person far before she joined the team, and the reference that she might have had sex with Spencer, or wanted to have sex with Reid was not totally a shock, given that the BAU knew the two agents were in love, even if they didn’t. But for her to state it like that either showed signs of mental duress or something of that nature. It was just incredibly out of character for her to say anything like that to anyone, even the women on the team. Reid’s response was even more shocking as he said, “y/n’s had plenty of sex. She’s been in a lot of relationships before, so why would she say this was her ‘first time.’ That doesn’t make any sense. Also, I think she would have singled out something more extreme if she had been hurt in that way. It’s all too faux intellectual.” The team stood in stunned silence for a moment before Derek said, “And you and y/n talk about your sex lives often?” 

Spencer flushed at the intrusive question, realizing that he was putting a lot out there about his and y/n’s friendship. Things they may not have shared with other members of the team and kept between themselves. But this was a case where revealing some private details could save y/n’s life, and Spencer would rather die than lose y/n, so he replied steadily, “Yes. Sometimes. When we hang out we talk about our relationships. Why they worked or didn’t? How we’re, different.” Spence omitted the line, “How we can be hard to love.” He meant it more for himself than y/n, even though she echoed that sentiment whenever he brought it up. Spence never really got that. When they’d lay sprawled out under a blanket arguing about the symbolism in Dr. Who, or what the best adaptation of Jane Austen was, he felt like loving y/n would be the easiest thing in the world. Of course, he’d never said that to her either. The team was still silent when Reid came back from his internal journey and Hotch, who most of the time came forward and realized patterns and trends asked, “And Tanagra? Is it a small island or something? I’ve never heard of it before.” Spencer’s eyes moved up and he said, “It’s a reference to an episode of Star Trek we both like called ‘Darmok.’” The team looked at Reid for further clarification because, unlike Spencer and y/n, they didn’t go on overnight watches of Star Trek the Next Generation. 

Again, Reid reddened but patiently explained, “In the episode Captain Picard gets sent to a planet without any weapons. There’s another alien there as well. The Enterprise crew thinks it is some sort of setup, as does Captain Picard. But as it turns out, Picard and the alien, Dathon, need to come together to fight a common enemy. They end up beating the enemy, but Dathon dies. The moral is that they had to find understanding to become united, not only as fighters but as a species.” After Reid quickly gave his recap highlighting the plot and moral of the episode, the team, with the new information seemed to be revitalized, and put at ease. It was just a sliver of hope because y/n had managed to gain some way of communicating with them. Aaron cleared his throat and said, “Alright, Reid, and you Morgan take the letter. If y/n is sending any other covert messages then you should be able to find them.” Hotch felt the weight of pressure from this case on his shoulders and raised a hand to his forehead closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. Rossi saw his friend's distress and continued the conversation, “Aaron and I will go and check some of the places Garcia flagged as potential locations that y/n could be kept. JJ, you and Emily accompany the forensics team and get us the information once they have some, stat. Is that really y/n’s blood, are there any toxins present, all that? Okay?” Everyone nodded. Now that they all had a direction to go and a specific task to do, it felt more manageable. 

Despite the bright light and thanks to sheer exhaustion, y/n had managed to get a few hours of sleep at some point after being cut by M. She woke with the sound of the door opening. y/n had lost all track of time at this point. There were no windows to tell if it was night or day, and her circadian rhythms were off. Logically y/n knew that it couldn’t have been more than a few days, but at this point, it felt like a week at least. The constant stress, hunger thirst, and cold had drained her so much that she struggled to get up to a seated position to see what her captor was doing this time. M seemed uninterested in y/n, but he did glance at her, the door, and then at her again, as if taunting, “Try me.” The man had brought in a bigger load of items this time. Thanks to his size and strength, he could hold multiple trash bags and a backpack which he could handle all in one trip.

y/n watched M with apprehension and fear as he pulled out a multitude of lights and stands. M set up the lights like a makeup influencer might. M set what looked like extra bright lights in a square formation only a few feet off the ground. y/n bit her lip. If the man was planning on filming something, mainly her, she would be so close to the ground that it would be uncomfortable for him to have to lean down like that. The setup seemed to make no sense, and y/n didn’t like that. In interrogation training, she, along with new FBI agents, were instructed to mentally prepare for what was going to happen to them to better not spill state secrets. However, in this scenario, she couldn’t guess what would happen and it really wasn’t about her. It was about what her deteriorating mental and physical state would do to Spencer. She was important to the extent that she was important to Spencer. 

The unsubs plan became clear as he pulled out a makeshift stand that looked like a prop from a horror film where someone’s eyes get removed. The stand, which M set down and then slotted the wooden frame into was so heavy that even he grunted as he set it down with a loud clanking sound on the floor. y/n closed her eyes and began trying to move away and toward the exit. But y/n wasn’t fast enough. She felt like she was running in knee-deep water as she moved and was quickly grabbed by the hair and pulled to the center of the room. y/n muttered, “Please no, please…” Her cries fell on deaf ears as M bound her hands to the rough wooden post with zip ties so tight that they felt like the plastic was cutting into her wrists. y/n dipped her head down but it was jerked up again as M set her chin on a portion of wood with a cut out for her chin. Just close enough to the skin of her neck was a sharp piece of metal that would slice at her jaw and chin if she tried to move her head; effectively keeping it in place as the unsub lowered a heavy plate for her head and secured it with screws on either side of her face like a vice. When the lights were turned on they were so bright that y/n tried to pull her head back but was stopped by her constraints. Even with her eyes closed the light was searing hot into her retinas and there was no espacing it. Even though the light was bright, y/n took this time to try and pry more information from the unsub as he moved close by her. 

y/n asked with false confidence, “Why do you hate him so much. He certainly doesn’t talk about you.” y/n appealed to his sense of ego which worked. She could hear his heavy footsteps fall silent. There was a long pause and M finally said, “I’d hurt you for that, but I’m planning on that already. If you think this is bad now just wait.”

The words were meant to intimidate y/n, but she knew there was nothing she could do right now but get info and try and relay it to the team. So she stayed firm and didn’t show how scared she felt. Again the silence seemed like a gulf between them but M liked the sound of his own voice and he continued, “And I don’t like the doctor because he bested me. And you did too funnily enough even though I don’t care about you. I applied to the FBI Academy twice. As a Vet with an interrogation specialization, I thought I was the perfect fit, but what happened? Jason Gideon picks some lousy, scrawny kid, and appoints him to the BAU straight out of college, and he didn’t even go to the academy when I DID. Then they hire some woman who ends up leaving under dubious circumstances anyway and then you you -- whore. I don’t know who you had to suck off to get onto that team but both you and the good doctor took a spot that I deserved. I got stuck working at a local college teaching government classes, but I was planning this too. I didn’t want it, but by God am I going to make the FBI regret picking either of you above me, because neither of you will be fit to serve when I’m finished? And I’m far far from finished with you. After M said this, he opened y/n’s right eyelid and instantly she was blinded further. It was with the full intensity of the lights on her that y/n did feel like she might be broken. She didn’t know if she could handle this. But the team stayed in her mind and she grit her teeth. She’d signed up for this, and y/n did her best to remain strong for as long as possible and not lose herself. Not yet, not when there was hope. And if that hope took the form of Spencer Reid, so let it be, it could hardly be a secret to her anymore anyway. Not after this. 

By the time the team got their next message from Mr. M. a few things had happened. The first was that Hotch and Rossi had crossed out a few sectors and limited the range of where y/n was likely being held. The second was that Penelope had caught a red eye and came down from the Quanitco field office to be closer to the action. Lastly, Spencer and Derek had made a solid guess from the tone of both letters that the unsub was likely in the military or the police force and had changed career paths to something like office work or business. This would explain his blunt prose yet stilted attempt at sounding academic or over-intelligent. The team was unprepared for when loud music blasted in their ears when Penelope opened the unlisted video link on her computer. Everyone covered their ears, and Garcia quickly turned down the volume. The team watched in horror, and Pen almost felt like she was going to be ill as the unsub circled y/n with a handheld camera. He zoomed in on y/n’s eyes which seemed glued open and directly facing a very bright light.

y/n was panting like she couldn’t breathe and she hardly looked alive anymore. Not that she wasn’t alive, just that her face was either so pained or slack with the torment that she was being put through that she couldn’t take anymore. All eyes were glued to the gruesome sight and it took a moment for anyone to notice that the music had cut out and the unsub was speaking. Garcia let out a sharp breath, skipped the video back ten seconds, and then raised the volume again. Once the music was cut, and in a calm voice M stated, “Smile little bird, you’re on camera. Have anything to say to the doctor?” y/n’s mouth moved for a moment before she let out a small breath and screamed in a worn and hoarse voice, “Oedipus and his lover, Mr. Dimmesdale was great at his job.” y/n cut herself off with a lot of coughing at the effort of even speaking. Even trying to say something. M pulled the camera back to get a better wide angle of y/n as the unsub said, “Isn’t she great? She sings such a pretty song. I hope you’re enjoying it doctor because I don’t know if she’ll be singing much longer.” 

While most of the team paid attention to what the unsub was saying as a coping mechanism of not having to fully process the mental agony that y/n was going through, Emily paid closer attention. Suddenly Prentiss said loudly, “Roll it back Pen. y/n is mouthing something while the unsub is talking. I’ve almost made it out. I just need to see it once more.” The team, who was looking at Spencer to interpret what y/n had just signaled, and some of whom feared that y/n’s mind was already cracking beyond repair, looked back at the screen as Garcia went back once more. Penelope muted Mr. M, and everyone’s attention went back to y/n, who was clearly mouthing something. Prentiss said softly, and then more loudly, “There are four lights?”  Hearing this Spencer couldn’t stop the tears that came to his eyes with relief, and he sagged with those words. Derek and Rossi helped support Spencer, and the team huddled around him as he brushed the tears aside and said, “She’s okay. She’s saying she’s okay with the ‘four lights’ line. He hasn’t ‘broken’ her yet. At least not her will….” Reid couldn’t stop himself from saying, like it was an inside thing between just y/n and him, “It’s another Star Trek thing.” 

Another thrill rang through the team at this news. They knew y/n was strong, but she was also a good actress as she had played up her first statement. It became less and less of a surprise that y/n and Reid had spent so much time together. That they knew each other so well. This interaction was just solidifying what they had already assumed. But the picture of y/n’s eyes glued open and looking at the bright light also stayed with the team. Reid had his hands in his hair in frustration now trying to parse out the clues that y/n had left him, but he couldn’t fully match those pieces of information with any one person he knew. Dr. Reid did have some enemies, he did work for the FBI after all, but he didn’t think about them like that often. He didn’t just have people hating him enough to go and kidnap and torture the person he cared about the most. His brain didn’t process things like that even though he had calculated the risk every member of the team took with each case. And he did make sure y/n’s score was lowered thanks to him. But it wasn’t clicking because his brain was doing too much. Reid had jotted down a list of people that might come after him for various reasons and he’d given it to everyone in the BAU to see if they had any ideas. Of course, Penelope had made a whole spreadsheet and also found all the information about each person on the list as well. Spencer had gone over those fifteen names thousands of times now and was doing it again, trying to expand it to make something fit. 

Emily finally broke his train of thought and asked, “Spence, what about the other things y/n said? Is that more Star Trek stuff? It honestly sounded like a foreign language to me.” Only after Prentiss said this did Spencer realize that the rest of the BAU didn’t get all the references or implications in y/n’s words. Reid took a steadying breath while he composed himself. Aaron and Rossi simultaneously pulled out legal pads and pens to try and keep up with Reid’s speaking speed. Spencer started with the first part of y/n’s shouted sentence, saying, “Well. It’s kind of Star Trek. You actually just made me think of that Emily.” The parts and y/n’s wit began to click better and Spence continued, “We have to go back to the thing y/n said in her first letter about Tangra.” The team nodded and Hotch was already writing furiously, his hand gripping white on the pen in his grasp. “So Pircard can’t understand Dathon because their species speak only in metaphors, so I think y/n is giving us, me, a metaphor about who the unsub is.” This is where Hotch jumped in and said, “Then it’s not directly related to Trek. Just a way of signaling something. The first part of her metaphor was a reference to Oedipus Rex.” Everyone’s eyes moved to Aaron and they seemed surprised, but he brushed off their apparent shock at his classical literature knowledge and continued for those who didn’t get the reference, “Oedipus Rex is a tragedy about a prophecy that the son of a king will end of killing his father and marrying his mother. The king is horrified and has his newborn son, Oedipus, arranged to be killed. The man meant to kill him takes pity on the baby and spares him, thus many years later the prophecy comes true.” 

Spencer nodded along, and Garcia couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Wow, that’s really messed up.” Before Aaron could remind the technical analyst that it was a thousand-year-old work of fiction, Reid replied, “Yes, Oedipus does end up fulfilling the prophecy, but he didn’t want to. He doesn’t even know about it until later and he leaves his town to try and not fulfill his destiny, but he ends up doing that anyway. That’s why is a tragedy.” The team took in the information and Rossi offered, “So the unsub wanted to do the right thing but ended up doing the worst possible option?” Spence nodded along and then said, “And the second part about Mr. Dimmesdale being good at his job, I assume that’s a reference to The Scarlet Letter. Arthur Dimmessdale is the pastor who gets the protagonist pregnant and ends up being shunned from the Puritan society.” Emily asked, “So are we looking for someone who was thrown away for no reason? Or for doing something that appears bad?” Spencer nodded no, and thought through his list again, expanding it to the new parameters saying, “No. y/n specifically mentioned Dimmesdale, so I think we’re looking for a man. Clearly, Mr. Dimmesdale didn’t love his job because he did something that he shouldn’t have done either. He ends up having a breakdown because he can’t keep his secret. He ends up getting publicly humiliated.” 

The team thought for a moment and Penelope asked, “So is there someone you ended up humiliating enough to do something this horrible? I mean, not intentionally, but like when you were in grad school or at the Bureau? Anything?” Reid shook his head unknowingly. He couldn’t place someone he had specifically wronged except for those he’d put in prison, and thankfully many of those men and women were already dead or sentenced to life, but a picture started forming in Hotch’s head. The Unit Chief stated, “I don’t think you’d know him. Or have even met him, yet? Oedipus didn’t know his father when he killed him. He only figured that out later. So this is more about what you did to him than anything else.” Dave looked at Aaron and asked, “Do you have an idea of who he is?”  Hotch nodded and said, “Yes. This was while Jason was still here and you were ‘retired.’ You know Gideon hand-picked Spencer for the BAU much to the chagrin of the director. But it wasn’t only them, there were other members of the academy who wanted Reid’s spot. There were a few NATS that were more than flustered. Jason and I fielded quite a few complaints. There was one man in particular, an ex-Marine who threatened Gideon and me. That instantly excluded him from our recruiting, and once Gideon invited Reid, we started getting real threats. That man dropped off the map, but he continued sending threats through alternative accounts, and many were targets to you, Spencer. Garcia took care of them actually, took care of blocking them so you didn’t ever see them.” 

Spencer looked up at Hotch shocked and said, “Why didn’t you ever tell me this.” Hotch dropped his head and said, “You were so young Spencer. So much was happening in your life at that time and Jason and I thought it was for the best. I apologize. That was a mistake.” Reid let out a breath, knowing now wasn’t the time to be upset with Aaron. Instead, he asked, “Do you still have his contact information? Do you have anything at all on him?” Before Aaron could even reply, Penelope said, “I do. I keep everything, and this time it’s legal. Any threats that are filed against an agent or a former agent are kept in a database that I helped update.” Morgan said with a happiness he hadn’t felt since arriving in Kansas, “God bless you, woman. Now is the time to show us those computer skills of yours” Penelope smiled and turned back toward her screen, cracking her knuckles, “Glady my friends. Watch me do my thing.” 

y/n slumped onto the ground limp. When M finally released her from the contraption that had held her in place, y/n was too overwhelmed to do anything else but lie. Once the light in front of her had been turned off, she felt like she was in an abyss of black. Even though the man had unglued her eyelids after what felt like an eternity. Just being in front of the light with her eyes shut was still like looking at the sun without shades. Again time was a reality that had left y/n out of place, out of being. It could have been months or years since she’d been bound since she’d been put in this place. Because of the loud noise from the speakers M had brought in, y/n couldn’t hear him moving around. Her ears were constantly ringing even though the sound had ceased. Besides that, y/n didn’t have the energy to try and figure out what was happening around her; she knew whatever it was wasn’t good. At this point, y/n didn’t even feel she was in her own body anymore. She was somewhere else entirely. 

y/n didn’t register anything much apart from pain until the unsub, who had set up the room as a trap, started a livestream that he sent to Spencer, and kicked her in the side. The sharp pain radiated up y/n’s ribcage and she let out a moan though her voice was gone from screaming. Even M had to shout and shake y/n to get her to hear him say, “I’m letting you go. All you have to do is get to the door. You’re useless to me now. I don’t see your doctor coming to save you, so you might as well get out. I guess you’re not as important to him as I thought you were.” Deep down, y/n knew that the man wouldn’t let her go. She’d not leave this place alive. She also knew she was special to Spencer. That he would do anything for her, and that he and the team were still looking for her, but she was so tired and mentally broken that she began to believe it. It felt like for no reason other than to just move instead of being killed not trying, that y/n began to move on the floor. She was too weak to even get on her hands and knees.

Instead, she just moved on her stomach in a direction even though she couldn’t see anything except bright spots covering most of her vision. The rest was so blurry that it only added to the migraine she already had. y/n hardly noticed that there was glass on the ground until the warmth of the blood from her stomach made her realize in horror that she was crawling on a sea of broken glass. y/n stopped and M began berating her for not being strong enough. Not having the willpower to want to get away. That he had won. It took the last of y/n’s strength to speak her mind. To tell the man the truth. She knew it would get her killed, faster, but she would have a clear mind. 

“You’re an idiot.” Y/n couldn’t hear her own voice, but she assumed M was listening and she didn’t let anything he did distract her from continuing, “You are the dumbest person I’ve met. You got Spencer all wrong. You don’t understand him at all. He might like me, and I like him too, but Spence isn’t some weirdo who doesn’t have any friends. He doesn’t stay up at night plotting revenge on people or thinking of zany puzzles because he’s so bored and doesn’t have friends. Spencer is a smart guy, but that intelligence doesn’t push him away from people or relationships. He’s just a smart guy who works for the FBI. It’s clear to me that you’re the weirdo with no friends, and you’re just going to have to accept that you couldn’t cut it in the FBI, forever. It sucks to suck.” Mr. M moved to grab a knife he had brought in the room to finish the job. He couldn’t handle y/n insulting him,  and he was going to finish her off, slowly. He had very little restraint when he was scorned. Before he could get to y/n, he was knocked back by a load of gunfire as the BAU along with a SWAT team swarmed into the room. y/n was so far gone that she couldn’t even tell as Reid knelt next to her and wept. 

The next few days stretched into apparent eternity for many of the team. y/n was taken immediately to the hospital, accompanied by Spencer and Emily, while Derek and Aaron took the unsub into custody for interrogation and criminal proceedings. Rossi, JJ, and Penelope stayed behind to handle the police presence, forensics teams, and clean-up process. In part, the BAU was relieved to find y/n still alive, it was a weight lifted, but the reports from y/n’s team of doctors at the hospitals painted such a picture of pain and mental suffering that y/n must have endured that it broke their hearts. How they could ever forgive themselves for what had happened, to y/n? They didn’t know. But they had to keep moving because that was what the job required. That was the nature of the work, and they all prayed that y/n would get better, and also understand what they had to do. 

Spencer felt shielded from most of the work side of things, as he stayed mostly at the hospital and heard the doctors and nurses' multifaceted and comprehensive care plan for y/n with the majority of it working on how to deal with y/n’s partial loss of vision, mental health, PTSD, and the chronic pain that would likely come in the months ahead. Spencer took in this information and researched and planned and found medical trials and anything that he thought might help. He mostly did this to fill the time. y/n had been put in a medical coma to help facilitate her physical healing. Spencer knew in the end that no amount of research he did it would but y/n It would be up to her to want to keep living after this. And given all that she’d been through, he wouldn’t blame her if she decided to just be whatever was left of herself because of him. Reid was trying to take in the very real possibility that she might never want to see him again given that being his friend had made this fate happen to her. Spence was only out of the hospital when another member of the team tagged him out for a day or a few hours. Even then, Spencer didn’t rest. He just tossed and turned. 

When y/n was taken out of her coma four days later, it was Penelope who was there when her fingers twitched on the sheets and felt the crisp material. y/n’s eyes opened, seeing only the blurred brightness of the room which she quickly closed them again. Garcia leaned forward in her chair and said softly, “I’m here y/n. You just rest for now.” Penelope stayed with y/n for the next few hours as the doctors and nurse checked on y/n’s vitals and her sight and she lay exhausted in every way, just let these things happen to her. Her mind was somewhere else. It wasn’t in the hospital room, part of it was still on the team, like an outsider looking in, and part of it was at her apartment watering the one plant she’d kept alive since college, and another was in the park where they sold a t/c/s that she loved to drink and people watch with, but the majority of her brain was still in that freezer, waiting for death, waiting for the worst to happen. And even though part of her mind knew she was alive and being helped, it couldn’t register beyond what had happened to her. y/n stayed in this state of being in and out of herself and her body for another day. The next time y/n came back to herself, it was still Penelope sitting by her. 

Garcia came back into the waiting room where Spencer was, as always, sitting and waiting for news, waiting for anything. Penelope walked over to him and leaned over his seated form. Reid looked up at her, his brown eyes lit up slightly. He asked something quietly back and Penelope nodded her head. Spencer got up and shook out his legs. They’d gotten stiff with all his awkward sitting positions. He followed Garica and a nurse to y/n’s room and took the place where the blonde and spunky Technical analyst had been for the last two hours. The nurse gave Reid a few words before leaving the room. The mood shifted a bit. Penelope just lit up a room where as Spencer brought a more calm mood to the room. He looked around the space which he’d seen while y/n was unconscious. It was still light, a sad beige color, and lots of pretty soft flowers from the team and friends. It seemed that Reid could look everywhere but y/n. The nurse and Penelope had both warned him that y/n still hadn’t said a word since she had woken up apart from his name. Reid didn’t expect y/n to just become whole because he was near her, but the fact that y/n had called for him had given him hope. But as his eyes finally landed on her face which was healing from the heavy bruising she’d received, her eyes remained mostly closed, but every now and then they opened, took in whatever they could, and then closed again. One time she turned her head slightly toward Spencer, and he wondered if she could even see him, or if she knew he was there. 

It wasn’t until the next day that y/n said in a very soft and hoarse voice, “Spence?” that Reid looked up from his lap and shifted forward in his chair. He didn’t want to be imagining things, but y/n’s voice had been so faint that he could have just made his name up. Anyhow, he softly replied, “Yes, y/n. I’m here.” y/n swallowed and turned her face toward him. She couldn’t see him, but she’d left like he was there. It didn’t seem like Penelope anymore but given how she’d felt, and the things that weren’t real that she’d seen before being saved had messed up her sense of reality. Hearing Spencer’s response helped, and she held back a sob as she asked, “How do I know you’re real? How do I know if any of this is real?”

Spencer desperately wanted to take her hand and reassure her that everything was going to be fine, but he didn’t want to promise things he couldn’t guarantee. He also knew touching y/n might make her nervous and panicked. Spencer looked over y/n and replied, “It’s real because you know it is. Because you’re strong enough to wake up and talk. Because maybe life isn’t so cruel to let this be a dream for either of us.” y/n turned her head toward him again and tried to make out his face. She’d have liked to see what he looked like right now. Was he sad, relieved, or feeling as empty as she was? She wanted to know because she didn’t know how to feel or act or do. For now, there wasn’t more than resting and waiting to see if this was all a charade. To see if she’d suddenly jerk awake to see death in the face again. To be back with M. again. For now, she let out a sigh and tried to feel anything in her body. Her pain receptors were either shot from what she’d been through or she was on so much pain medication that it was intentional. Either way seemed preferable, and yet the pain had grounded her in her time in captivity and now that it was gone there was a strange void where it had pulsed all over her body. y/n rested her head in a more comfortable position and let the sleepiness come back to drag her back under. 

The rest of the BAU shuffled through sitting with y/n as Spencer got his mandated rest and time off ordered by Aaron. The presence of the others and the changes in the atmosphere with each of them helped y/n pull herself back together. The next time Spencer came back she was slightly more herself. She was sitting up on a few pillows and she sensed when Reid stepped into the room. They sat together for a few minutes in silence before y/n said, “The last time you were here you said I was strong. But I don’t feel strong Spencer. I feel broken. I mean I am broken. I can’t see anything and my hearing’s shot too.” Reid bit his lower lip and thought for a bit before responding. He could tell her that she was very likely to get her hearing back and that her vision would improve in time. That with time and care she could resume a pretty normal life. 

But a pretty normal life didn’t feel fair. None of this felt fair, and Spencer knew that. He also knew that the team in charge of y/n’s care would have told her that as well. They would have been doing everything that would attempt to boost her spirits. As it was like Spencer to do, he chose to go with a more metaphorical take on things. It was one of the things that had drawn y/n to him in the first place, and he hoped it would bring her comfort now. He focused on her hands which were gripping the sheets tightly as he said, “No one chooses to be broken y/n. That’s not their fault, but that doesn’t mean that the thing isn’t beautiful, it’s just changed.” y/n let out a breath and said, “I’m not Fitzgerald or Beethoven. I don’t think the tortured broken artist thing will work for me. I’m just a profiler. Was just a profiler.” Spencer could see the disappointment and pain on her face, and he replied, “Not that exactly, but your knowledge about art and literature did make it possible for us to find you. I was useless on this case, and I’m so, so sorry for that. You saved yourself on this one, and given what you’ve been through, you deserve a good life after this, a peaceful life if you want it.” 

y/n wanted to believe Spencer, but his speech so far was giving, “A broken clock is correct twice a day,” and that wasn’t the most uplifting thing she’d heard so far. She didn’t know what she wanted after this. Didn’t know how to want anything after she’d thought she would die over and over again. However, y/n knew that Spence wasn’t done yet. It was a tell in his cadence, and just as y/n expected, he continued, “Have you ever heard of kintsugi?” y/n nodded her head no, and Reid explained, “It’s a form of Japanese pottery. When a plate or vase or anything that’s been fired breaks; the potter puts the pieces back together with gold.” y/n let out a breath, it sounded like a beautiful thing, and it was a nice metaphor, but her pessimistic side said, “So I’m just a broken thing and painted pretty so I’m not a profit-loss?” Spencer sighed and said, “No. What I’m trying to say is that. What I’m trying to say is that things that are broken still have value and beauty. They still deserve to be cared for and looked after. They’re different, but it’s still a precious thing. It is to me at least.”

y/n couldn’t hold back the tears that were now overspilling from the corners of her eyes, and she moved her hand out, palm open. An invitation to let Spencer take it, which he did. Spencer bowed his head over their joined hands and y/n felt his soft hair on her skin. It was the first time she’d felt grounded since waking up. It was the first time she felt real again. y/n sniffled and said, “I don’t know what to do Spence. I don’t know who I am anymore.” Reid nodded and said while gently squeezing her hand said, “I know. And you don’t have to know that right now. Every part of you is still there, but it’s going to be a hard time to dig those things back out of yourself. Maybe some of them you’ll want to leave behind. But I want to be with you as you try to become this new version of you. If you’ll let me. I was such an idiot y/n. I’m so sorry,” y/n nodded and said, “Don’t be. I don’t regret it, Spencer. It’s worth it to know you. I want you here, please.” 

Spencer nodded, and y/n felt tears that weren’t her own on her hand and arm now as Spence ever so lightly brushed his lips over her knuckles. Neither of them said it, but the love in the room was so much more than what it had been before. Perhaps it wasn’t the fluffy teenage love they could have had if none of this had happened, but it was clearer now than ever, and that was worth it. There was a future in that, whatever it looked like. After a few moments y/n asked, “Can you read to me? I knew you had a book in your lap before I said anything and the quiet is slowly driving me insane.” Spencer sat up and said, “Well it’s just a collection of Ginsberg poems and I know you don’t like Ginsberg.” y/n scoffed lightly and retorted, “What do you mean, I love Ginsberg.” Reid shook his head and said, “Liar.” y/n pouted like a child at being read so easily and said, “Fine, but maybe I love Ginsberg when you’re reading him to me. Please?” Spencer chuckled and said, “Anything for you, y/n. Anything.” As Spencer began reading, and y/n listened, neither of them thought about the future or the past, they were just there, and for now, that was as meaningful as gold holding something broken yet precious together.

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[dewffin]

soo... I think I accidentally began to make a Silmarillion Fangame...

For some unknown reason i was like "I wanna make textures :D" but i didn't want to model shit, so i just used VROID studio as a painting book... but then i was like "ummm, i never tried to draw a character an then tried to make it 3D in vroid" so uh-

yeah...

and then i was like "let´s drop this bad boy in Unreal to see how he looks" and because, well, i don't know why i decided to try to make him look a bit 2D? like he was drawn? like doing the complete opposite of what i just did?

so this is what he looked when i began to play with post process stuff

and because i wanted to look around and stuff i added a little guy i had, and it turns out that he was really little and i had to make him a box to take pics of Fëanor's face

Then i did more stuff and i ended up with these cute flowers :D

And then I said fuck it, i think I'm making a game...

So the thing is that doing a game doing a game while being a one person studio is a biiiiiit difficult.

By that i mean i had to try to keep my head leveled in what i could do, so I ended up with this...

Tecilwë's Adventures in Arda

(yeah, i don't have a name for this)

So, you play as Tecilwë, a noldorin journalist that travels around trying to document the best stories of Arda. You can find out what is happening around by talking with people, sneaking around or finding clues. Then, you can write your take on what happens, and depending on what you say, how you say it and what secrets do you keep your reputation as a journalist and your relationship with the different character you find can change for better or worse.

A little bit about Tecilwë...

Q Tecilwë Autanna -  S Tegilu

Tecilwë - The one who writes [tecil “pen”, wë “person”] or as i like to call them "El pibe birome"

Autanna - the lost sign, the fool sign [au “away, lost”, aut “fool”, tanna “sign, token”]

A young lore master from Tirion. Studied under Rumil, and is excited to document all that happens in the course of the story. 

Curious and eager to learn. More often than not ends up in trouble for documenting what was not supposed to be seen.

Tecilwë believes in the power of the word, and on how truth is composed by those who write it.

Not often remembered, wants to be remembered as one of the great lore masters. But the curse of the Noldor runs deep…

Basically a player insert

Y alto chismoso

What i have for now in gameplay is that you can run around a location (and you'll be able to travel to different places, but time passes so, for example, if you leave Aman you cannot go back, or if Gondolin fell then you cant go there). There as i wrote you can talk to people and find out stuff, and all what you find you write in your journal, which you can check to remember what you have seen. With all of that you can unlock new dialogues, and when you get enough information you can end the day and write like a newspaper or magazine. If, for example, you found that gasp Maedhros and Fingon are being two love birds behind a tree, you can write about that in different ways. A- You just say thing as they are. B- You say that is great to see the unity in the House of Finwë. C- Accuse Fingon of corrupting the innocent eldest of Fëanor. D- say nothing about this. With A you get lower relationship points with Russingon for exposing them. B gets you a good realtionship with them, but lower with Fëanor. C gets you a good amount of points with Fëanor, but the other two will hate your guts. And with D, nothing changes, but you can confront them about their relationship and tell them to be more careful if they want to keep it a secret.

Also if you write a lot about gossip stuff you will lose credibility and that is kinda a way to not being remember as the great Lore Master you want to be...

Also i love how FIngon's hair is coming out. This is like a first draft but it was fun to make.

Also this motherfucker is so fucking tall

And this is one of my favourite screenshots from when i had Fëanor as the playable character

(also here is really noticeable that i added lights to their eyes, and it switches form golden to silver light)

In short, a gossip simulator

Also i cannot wait to make the "Who is Gil-Galad's dad" level

Version 0.1.0

Other updates

[spacemonkeysalsa]

For context, I’m putting together some training materials for my office, and something like this is going to make it into those documents. Though I will have to change the example to something that doesn’t reference BG3 or sex, since it’s like not appropriate or whatever.

I’m barred in Nevada but then I moved (dummy) and now I am studying to take the bar exam again in a different state because I moved somewhere that doesn’t have any sort of reciprocity (double dummy) and its fine, I’m not worried. It’s just a pain, but as I’ve been studying and remembering what the bar is like, I also have friends who are studying for the EA exam or the CPA exam. It's forced me to think a lot about this kind of test and here's my main takeaway from studying for it:

Say you have a question on the exam like: “Which of these statements is most correct?” and then the statements are:

A) Astarion tops his partner in all his romance scenes in BG3

B) Astarion doesn’t top his partner in every one of his romance scenes in BG3

C) Astarion bottoms his partner in all his romance scenes in BG3

D) Astarion may top or bottom his romance partner in every scene in BG3

And you think to yourself, “hang on, I am overly familiar with the 2023 Larian video game Baldur’s Gate 3 and I love Astarion, I’ve romanced him 30+ times, surely this question ought to be easy, except none of these are quite correct?”

Answer A bothers you because you know it’s possible for him to bottom with larger body types, and this answer seems to exclude that possibility in how it’s phrased. Or does it? We’ll get back to that.

Answer B bothers you because even if you can get a version of the scene when he doesn’t top, there still exists a version when he does, and this applies to all ‘his’ scenes. Circling back to A real quick, you might be able to save yourself some time if at this point you just recognize that with A&B they are trying to get you to fall into the trap of assuming mutual exclusivity where none exists, but let’s say you’re an overthinker like me and your brain needs to keep processing all your options…

Answer C is obviously wrong, but you might hesitate to dismiss it, because what if you missed something? It’s a huge game and if we are thinking about variations, are these options you haven’t considered?

Answer D makes your stomach drop because you realize that three of these questions specify ‘his’ scenes, but the last one says ‘every scene’ and if it just removed the phrase ‘in every scene’ it would be correct, but the fact that it’s the one that’s different makes you fixate on it, even though you know it can’t be right, because it says ‘every scene’ not ‘every romance scene’ and therefore on its face implies every scene in BG3 is a sex scene, which isn’t true.

And you really wish there was an option that read “Astarion can top or bottom depending on player choices” but that’s not there. You have to pick from what’s there.

And, maybe you get distracted for a moment, wondering if by ‘his scenes’ they really mean just the scenes written for his character---that’s what you assumed, at first, but now that you’ve kept thinking about it you wonder if they may just mean a scene that he can participate in, as a player character, in which case B is true, because it implies that there’s at least one scene where he’s always a bottom and you can think of some that would count Also, they purposefully used the similar phrases “all” and “every one of” for A & B because they are hoping you will waste time considering whether these two phrases have the same meaning or not, and if there was any purpose in writing it in a way that was inconsistent. To be clear, the only point in switch up the wording is to mess with you.

Finally, you decide that the phrase “his romance scenes” has to refer to the scenes written for his character. Because anything else would be too unclear for the purposes of this question, since those other scenes ‘belong’ to other characters.

A is the correct answer because even if it’s not the best way to summarize this topic, it’s the only answer that isn’t technically wrong. All his romance scenes show him as a top, even if variations exist where he’s also a bottom. That just means “Astarion is a top in all his romance scenes, and a bottom in some romance scenes,” which would also be another example of the kind of ‘more correct’ answer you might wish was on the page, but it’s not there, and you can’t write in your own answer. Saying ‘all’ doesn’t exclude other possibilities. He tops in all the scenes, and he also bottoms in one of the scenes, and both of these things can be true at the same time. There’s no mutual exclusivity.

They purposefully write these options like this because they want to trick you. They don’t care that you are knowledgeable on the subject, they are barely interested in testing your knowledge, what they really want to test is whether or not they can trick you into making a mistake.

And, on the one hand, I don’t think this is a great way to test people on a subject. Especially a subject that is dense all on its own. You’re not showing that you’re unfamiliar with BG3 if you get this one wrong, you’re just showing that purposefully unclear communication and pedantry can trip you up. That’s nearly totally meaningless.

On the other hand, the meaning that is there has to do with being careful when you read, and understanding common logical fallacies like false equivalence or fallacy of division. You know, the kind of thing lawyers are supposed to be good at.

It isn't so bad if you can stand how tedious these kinds of exercises can be, or if you’re a weirdo who kind of likes tedium, like me. It will make it more likely that you take psychic damage while interacting with normal people, though. And people will think you're a pedant, because in fairness, you are a pedant.

[wufflesvetinari]

hi!! okay so i really loved that one fanfic you wrote (3:16) way back when, it's honestly one of my favorite fanfics ever but I have a question for you!! I've honestly adored your writing style and techniques and I was wondering: what is your writing process? Not just plot wise (although yes that!) but also prose-wise? because honestly, the first thing that drew me into your fic was how FUCKING good your prose was and I was just in absolute awe reading what you had written, and it sort of started me on a journey to improve my own prose and make it sound nice.

so uh yeah!! what is your writing process and if you have any advice for how you write so beautifully (Not just prose wise!! plot and character wise too haha) or just like. writing advice in general, i am ALL ears <3

oh this is so incredibly sweet, thank you!!!

i've tried to marshal some thoughts...tbh i am always envious of effective writing that is UNLIKE mine, so there are lots of ways to go about this. (and also i am just Some Guy.)

i'll focus on prose things i think about during writing/revision b/c otherwise we will be here all night...but imo some of this overlaps with effective pacing, character, etc.

Prose is character – some writing is “voicier” than other writing is, living closer in a character’s POV.  but in most cases, if you are in any way in a character’s head, your prose is part of their characterization. dick grayson will use different words and notice different details than damian will. being intentional about a character’s voice has the nice iterative effect of strengthening their characterization, which then makes your prose more confident as you understand their voice, and on and on it goes

Allow “workmanlike” phrases – sometimes cliché exists for a reason; you don’t actually need every sentence to be a poem. in fact, you NEED simple writing to string together your powerhouse lines without turning it all into purple prose/losing the reader/ruining the pacing.

Examine “workmanlike” phrases – that being said, another failure mode is RELYING on these phrases instead of digging for something more interesting now and then. i might write the phrase “a chill went down her spine” – ok this is fine, but I’ve read this sentence 15,000 times in my life and seeing it in my own document should be a trigger to slow down and decide if there’s a more specific or vivid description that conveys character or mood or theme better. or is just prettier lmao. i think to myself: how does it feel to be scared? what is a physical reaction that’s REAL that i have experienced, and am not just taking from a list in my head called “Descriptions Of Being Scared That Writers Use”?

The fucking thesaurus lmao – do not find/replace willy-nilly obviously BUT if the only word you can think of is Not Exactly The Right Word Dammit then the fucking thesaurus is a perfectly valid brainstorming tool to get closer to what you are trying to say. even if u don’t find the right word, it’s often a jumping-off point to a better way to approach the sentence

Note your “is”es – ok this is the annoying one. imo this really strengthened my writing but i hated it so so much. when revising, find any instance of “is/was/seems.” (ex: “He seems impatient, and there’s a pile of paperwork sitting in front of him.”) There’s nothing WRONG with that sentence, but it’s worth checking to see if it’s an opportunity for a more active one that gives more character detail (“He taps impatiently on a pile of paperwork.” there. done.)

Condense – ok look at that example again. i phrased things more actively but i ALSO condensed two concepts (He seems impatient + there is paperwork) into a sharper sentence that ALSO tells us a bit about how this character acts when stressed. imo you can accidentally find really interesting prose this way, in addition to improving pacing.

Vary sentence structure – that being said, sometimes the way to go is a beautiful run-on, so long as that sentence has intention packed into it! if you are writing long lovely flowing sentences, it’s going to hit hard if you drop the emotional reveal in a short, choppy, standalone one. or if your sentences shorten as the mood of the scene changes, or or or.

Use detail to let a scene breathe – personally, i never want to write the phrase “there was a pregnant pause” or “there was a brief silence” if i can help it. this is personal preference, but i think the principle stands: you can instead control your reader’s sense of timing, create an implied pause, by giving detail in the right place. the reverse is why it bothers me when a conversation is interspersed with paragraphs of introspection lmao: in my head i’m wondering why pov is taking so long to respond

Use repetition – oh my god this is my cheat code. if you are really proud of a beautiful, distinctive phrase you wrote? use it again!!! make it a callback at an important moment!!! make it thematic!! do it on purpose. trust me it’s cool

Get out of their head – ok here’s an experiment. take a concept (“Dick is scared”) and tell yourself that you have to express this, but you CAN’T describe anything about Dick himself in order to do it. you can use the way the crumbling buildings of gotham loom above him, or the weather, or the way people react to him—but you cannot say a word about his actions or thoughts or feelings. chances are, you’ve now created some interesting prose getting at the concept abstractly. cool! use that, and also go and add the direct feelings back in if it makes sense to do so

"Unconscious" writing - uhh ok this one is weird, but sometimes for a VERY early draft—like, when I am staring down the blank page—I will stop…trying to write a story? I will instead begin to write, uh…poetry about what is happening in the story? Just, impressions, details, stream-of-consciousness…this will all have to be cleaned up and made linear later. but for now, go nuts. and usually it gives me a) some workable, pretty prose and b) an entry point into what i am trying to say so i can go back and write the “real version”

Dissect!! Good!!! Writing!!! - i'm sorry, this one is so boring. but if there's a writer who really WORKS for you, read very slowly and break down what's so effective about it on a prose level. i do this with ursula le guin. also, do this with poetry!!! which poems slam you to the ground and take your lunch money? how?

i know you also asked abt plot and character but i've already written so much lmao plz forgive me. i am not a big craft book person but i did enjoy refuse to be done and a swim in a pond in the rain. i also try to collect tips i find in this tag!

[copperbadge]

Amateur Translation Programs

So I had a lot of imaginative and informative responses to my post about looking for an amateur translation program -- something where I could load in a foreign language and it would insert a box where I could add a translation every-other-line. The idea was that this way I could practice translation with more advanced texts, and texts I chose, and thus move away from Duolingo, which at this point is good for drilling and daily practice but not for more advanced learning.

I didn't find precisely what was needed but I did get some inspiration for further explanation, and I also learned that adding the term "glossing" (thank you @thewalrus-said) into my searches helped a great deal in terms of weeding out programs that were either "Let this AI translate for you" or just endless promotional links for Babbel and Duolingo and such. I thought I'd collect up the suggestions and post them here; at the end I'm including my best swing at designing what I wanted, and why it doesn't work yet.

Suggestion one, from many people, was various ways to generate a page that is simply fixed Italian text with space underneath each line to add in a translation. This is pretty simple as a process and there are sites that will do it for you, such as this one that @ame-kage suggested. However, most of these don't allow for movement in the Italian text, and many produce a PDF which you would need to print out in order to write on unless you're willing to open it in Acrobat (and deal with Acrobat). A good solution for some but not what I'm looking for purely because I'm trying to make this super frictionless so that (knowing myself as I do) I will actually do it.

I did find this version interesting, suggested by @drivemetogeek: Have one word doc saved as your "template" doc and set the line spacing as 2.0 or higher. Select your text from source and paste it into the template doc as text-only. Ctrl a, ctrl c to select all and copy, then open a new document and "paste special" as picture. Right click and set the "wrap text" as behind text. Now you have a document where you can, basically, type over the existing text because it's the background of the page. This seems like the most frictionless version, because you could set up a bunch of them ahead of time. If you wanted to move between desktop and mobile, however, you'd need to ensure that the pasted image was fairly narrow so that you don't have to sideways-scroll.

Relatedly, people suggested generating a document that is simply the Italian text with empty space beneath it for typing in of the translation. This can be done either semi-automated, using a macro or a language like Python, or find-and-replace on, say, the stops at the ends of sentences. It basically outputs the same as above but with a more digitally accessible format, without any more effort than above. If you were to do this in Google Sheets you could also fix the column width so that it didn't do anything weird when you opened it on your phone. But it is still very friction-y, and does not allow for easy shifting of the Italian as needed. There's high probability of the translation breaking weirdly across the page. Still a top option in terms of simplicity and access.

@smokeandholograms suggested another variation illustrated here where essentially you're converting the text to a series of tables, with each paragraph a row, and an empty cell next to it for the translation. I might play around more with this one eventually, since I think I could possibly make it a three-column and put the Italian in one, the translation in the next, and the auto-translate to let me know where I might be slipping in the third. (Not that I trust auto-translate but comparing a hand translation to an auto translation can be useful in terms of working out when I've messed up the way a tense or mood is read. I tend to read indirect verbs as automatically imperative because I'm a weirdo.)

@wynjara linked to an add-in for Word specifically designed for translators, known as TransTools; this appears to employ a macro to do the same thing, though it does have a format where you can place the translation next to each sentence directly rather than in a separate cell. The full suite of tools is only $45 which is reasonable for my budget, but for what I need I think I could also just create the macro.

Using LaTeX as a tool specially designed for glossing was an option on offer, but I don't know enough about LaTeX to figure out the pros of this one, which is in itself the major con -- there's a learning curve that I think varies widely by person but for me is unfortunately a wall. It came out of a discussion on Reddit about trying to find something like what I want; also in that discussion is a link to a code generator that allows you to…do something…to the initial language, but it's not entirely clear to me (I'm sure it's clear to people who understand coding) what you would then do with it that would allow it to be output in the way I'm hoping for. Like, I could turn a paragraph of text into HTML, I understand that far, but any Italian I find is already on a website.

Moving more into apps that might work, Redditors on the LaTeX discussion suggested SIL Fieldworks, which is a professional language tech tool. Fieldworks isn't a program I'd previously encountered but much as with the ones I had, it looks like the learning curve is fairly steep and it is definitely overkill generally for what I need, though it might also harbor within it the thing I want. It is free, so I may download and play around with it.

@brightwanderer suggested using note-taking or "whiteboard" apps such as Freeform or Nebo; these are generally a kind of "infinite canvas" in which you can drop objects, text boxes, or handwriting. I don't know that Freeform would be measurably different to just using Word and a macro, since I'd still have to input/format all the text and then be stuck with the same "fixed text" setup -- and it's also iOS only -- but for some folks it might be more helpful. Nebo is a similar infinite-canvas with unfortunately the same issues, though on the plus it's available for Android, which is where most of my mobile property resides.

@bloodbright suggested that I was looking for a CAT tool, a professional translation tool mainly used by translators working in the field. This was a concept I'd encountered, but I hadn't found a good starting place. They suggested Smartcat and OmegaT. Smartcat bills itself as an AI translation platform and is HARD pushing the "don't translate it yourself, hire a translator or let AI do it" angle, so it's difficult to tell what it offers in terms of actual tools for translators, and it's also cagey about pricing, so I can't really evaluate it. OmegaT is free and gives off big "some weirdo homebrewed this in their basement" vibe (which I am here for) but I also recognized it from screengrabs that were the reason I veered away from professional-grade software: it looked too complex. Realistically, the major downside of OmegaT is that I don't think I can put it on my phone. One thing I did find interesting is that once you translate a portion of the text, the original language goes away, though I assume you can turn that off if needed. I do kind of like that because it means my distractable brain is looking at Less Stuff.

So where did I end up?

Well, it looked like I was going to have to try a homebrew myself. I had the idea of trying some of the initial suggestions but in reverse -- designing a document where every other line was a single-cell table fixed to the page. You could paste in the Italian, which would wrap around the cells, and then enter the English in the cells.

You can fix a table in place in Google Docs -- you click on the table, then under Table > Style select Wrap Text, Both Sides, and Fix On Page. Getting the whole page set up is a little labor intensive but once you did that, you could just save it as a template and make a duplicate of it each time. And this actually works….on desktop.

Unfortunately, if you open it in the mobile Docs app, the app can't handle the fixed tables and automatically moves them all to after the text that's been pasted in. I tried redesigning it so that it's a table within a table -- one for the Italian, then within that a series of them for the English -- but when you nest a table in Google Docs, it doesn't let you fix the second table in place. And you are also still dealing with the wrap issue, although you can resize the page and add a large right-hand margin as a kludge of a fix for that.

You can build this same kind of document in Word, so I tried building one in Word and then uploading it to Drive, but when you open the Word file in Docs (or in Microsoft Word for Android), it still strips the fixed positioning -- there's just some functionality missing from both apps that doesn't allow them to handle fixed-position tables.

So, the design is sound, just not the final execution. If I could program an app, I could probably remedy the issues with it -- it's simply a series of text boxes nested inside one another with different formatting. I would imagine that's relatively basic to set up, although given that neither Docs nor Word can handle fixed tables in mobile, perhaps I've stumbled on a much bigger problem that everyone is ignoring because nobody actually needs or wants fixed tables in mobile. :D

Experimentation is ongoing, anyway. I might simply have to resign myself to the fact that my translation study is going to have to be in front of a computer, which might be for the best anyway when I inevitably want to compare my translation to an auto-translate to see where I might have read something wrong.

[codingquill]

JavaScript Fundamentals

I have recently completed a course that extensively covered the foundational principles of JavaScript, and I'm here to provide you with a concise overview. This post will enable you to grasp the fundamental concepts without the need to enroll in the course.

Prerequisites: Fundamental HTML Comprehension

Before delving into JavaScript, it is imperative to possess a basic understanding of HTML. Knowledge of CSS, while beneficial, is not mandatory, as it primarily pertains to the visual aspects of web pages.

Manipulating HTML Text with JavaScript

When it comes to modifying text using JavaScript, the innerHTML function is the go-to tool. Let's break down the process step by step:

Initiate the process by selecting the HTML element whose text you intend to modify. This selection can be accomplished by employing various DOM (Document Object Model) element selection methods offered by JavaScript ( I'll talk about them in a second )

Optionally, you can store the selected element in a variable (we'll get into variables shortly).

Employ the innerHTML function to substitute the existing text with your desired content.

Element Selection: IDs or Classes

You have the opportunity to enhance your element selection by assigning either an ID or a class:

Assigning an ID:

To uniquely identify an element, the .getElementById() function is your go-to choice. Here's an example in HTML and JavaScript:

HTML:

<button id="btnSearch">Search</button>

JavaScript:

document.getElementById("btnSearch").innerHTML = "Not working";

This code snippet will alter the text within the button from "Search" to "Not working."

Assigning a Class:

For broader selections of elements, you can assign a class and use the .querySelector() function. Keep in mind that this method can select multiple elements, in contrast to .getElementById(), which typically focuses on a single element and is more commonly used.

Variables

Let's keep it simple: What's a variable? Well, think of it as a container where you can put different things—these things could be numbers, words, characters, or even true/false values. These various types of stuff that you can store in a variable are called DATA TYPES.

Now, some programming languages are pretty strict about mentioning these data types. Take C and C++, for instance; they're what we call "Typed" languages, and they really care about knowing the data type.

But here's where JavaScript stands out: When you create a variable in JavaScript, you don't have to specify its data type or anything like that. JavaScript is pretty laid-back when it comes to data types.

So, how do you make a variable in JavaScript?

There are three main keywords you need to know: var, let, and const.

But if you're just starting out, here's what you need to know :

const: Use this when you want your variable to stay the same, not change. It's like a constant, as the name suggests.

var and let: These are the ones you use when you're planning to change the value stored in the variable as your program runs.

Note that var is rarely used nowadays

Check this out:

let Variable1 = 3; var Variable2 = "This is a string"; const Variable3 = true;

Notice how we can store all sorts of stuff without worrying about declaring their types in JavaScript. It's one of the reasons JavaScript is a popular choice for beginners.

Arrays

Arrays are a basically just a group of variables stored in one container ( A container is what ? a variable , So an array is also just a variable ) , now again since JavaScript is easy with datatypes it is not considered an error to store variables of different datatypeslet

for example :

myArray = [1 , 2, 4 , "Name"];

Objects in JavaScript

Objects play a significant role, especially in the world of OOP : object-oriented programming (which we'll talk about in another post). For now, let's focus on understanding what objects are and how they mirror real-world objects.

In our everyday world, objects possess characteristics or properties. Take a car, for instance; it boasts attributes like its color, speed rate, and make.

So, how do we represent a car in JavaScript? A regular variable won't quite cut it, and neither will an array. The answer lies in using an object.

const Car = { color: "red", speedRate: "200km", make: "Range Rover" };

In this example, we've encapsulated the car's properties within an object called Car. This structure is not only intuitive but also aligns with how real-world objects are conceptualized and represented in JavaScript.

Variable Scope

There are three variable scopes : global scope, local scope, and function scope. Let's break it down in plain terms.

Global Scope: Think of global scope as the wild west of variables. When you declare a variable here, it's like planting a flag that says, "I'm available everywhere in the code!" No need for any special enclosures or curly braces.

Local Scope: Picture local scope as a cozy room with its own rules. When you create a variable inside a pair of curly braces, like this:

//Not here { const Variable1 = true; //Variable1 can only be used here } //Neither here

Variable1 becomes a room-bound secret. You can't use it anywhere else in the code

Function Scope: When you declare a variable inside a function (don't worry, we'll cover functions soon), it's a member of an exclusive group. This means you can only name-drop it within that function. .

So, variable scope is all about where you place your variables and where they're allowed to be used.

Adding in user input

To capture user input in JavaScript, you can use various methods and techniques depending on the context, such as web forms, text fields, or command-line interfaces.We’ll only talk for now about HTML forms

HTML Forms:

You can create HTML forms using the &lt;;form> element and capture user input using various input elements like text fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, and more.

JavaScript can then be used to access and process the user's input.

Functions in JavaScript

Think of a function as a helpful individual with a specific task. Whenever you need that task performed in your code, you simply call upon this capable "person" to get the job done.

Declaring a Function: Declaring a function is straightforward. You define it like this:

function functionName() { // The code that defines what the function does goes here }

Then, when you need the function to carry out its task, you call it by name:

functionName();

Using Functions in HTML: Functions are often used in HTML to handle events. But what exactly is an event? It's when a user interacts with something on a web page, like clicking a button, following a link, or interacting with an image.

Event Handling: JavaScript helps us determine what should happen when a user interacts with elements on a webpage. Here's how you might use it:

HTML:

<button onclick="FunctionName()" id="btnEvent">Click me</button>

JavaScript:

function FunctionName() { var toHandle = document.getElementById("btnEvent"); // Once I've identified my button, I can specify how to handle the click event here }

In this example, when the user clicks the "Click me" button, the JavaScript function FunctionName() is called, and you can specify how to handle that event within the function.

Arrow functions : is a type of functions that was introduced in ES6, you can read more about it in the link below

If Statements

These simple constructs come into play in your code, no matter how advanced your projects become.

If Statements Demystified: Let's break it down. "If" is precisely what it sounds like: if something holds true, then do something. You define a condition within parentheses, and if that condition evaluates to true, the code enclosed in curly braces executes.

If statements are your go-to tool for handling various scenarios, including error management, addressing specific cases, and more.

Writing an If Statement:

if (Variable === "help") { console.log("Send help"); // The console.log() function outputs information to the console }

In this example, if the condition inside the parentheses (in this case, checking if the Variable is equal to "help") is true, the code within the curly braces gets executed.

Else and Else If Statements

Else: When the "if" condition is not met, the "else" part kicks in. It serves as a safety net, ensuring your program doesn't break and allowing you to specify what should happen in such cases.

Else If: Now, what if you need to check for a particular condition within a series of possibilities? That's where "else if" steps in. It allows you to examine and handle specific cases that require unique treatment.

Styling Elements with JavaScript

This is the beginner-friendly approach to changing the style of elements in JavaScript. It involves selecting an element using its ID or class, then making use of the .style.property method to set the desired styling property.

Example:

Let's say you have an HTML button with the ID "myButton," and you want to change its background color to red using JavaScript. Here's how you can do it:

HTML: <button id="myButton">Click me</button>

JavaScript:

// Select the button element by its ID const buttonElement = document.getElementById("myButton"); // Change the background color property buttonElement.style.backgroundColor = "red";

In this example, we first select the button element by its ID using document.getElementById("myButton"). Then, we use .style.backgroundColor to set the background color property of the button to "red." This straightforward approach allows you to dynamically change the style of HTML elements using JavaScript.

[callsign-sucker]

What's In a Name?

Sucker was sifting through the Omninet onboard the flight back to the Dawnline, Arvantiel's question about a name still following him.

Sure, Sucker was how he referred to himself. But that wasn't a name. It was a callsign. One given by his late commanding officer as one part hazing ritual, and one part a method to keep him humble.

Many of his peers back in the armory also called him Caleb. But that was an alternative reading of the serial number on his back. 'C-4136.' there was more before that, but that was still a reminder of his past. Of the armory. Of what they did to him.

Did he want to keep that reminder? Did he want to look at whatever documents he got with it and be reminded of that number? Or did he want something to represent the new page he was turning?

The Surname was easy enough. On Cradle there was a period in time where those names were given based on birthplace or trade, and his trade had a suitable name from it's history.

Landsknecht. A German word for mercenaries who wielded swords the size of their bodies during the ancient pre-collapse past of Cradle.

The first name still evaded him however. Each name he looked up just didn't feel like it fit. Each name not sounding right for one reason or another. Some were too fancy, flourishes that just didn't fit who he was or what he did. Others were too plain, boring, or just felt... he wanted to saw wrong, but that wouldn't fully encapsulate the feeling he had.

So he decided to start from the beginning.

After a bit of searching it led him to a Karrakin site about names. The fact is was Karrakin didn't surprise him. The purples of the House of Order that ran the site was also unsurprising. They managed the registrar of every Karrakin resident after all.

The meanings for those names however was something that surprised him. He had never considered that given names had meaning beyond a simple identifier. Though in hind sight he realized he should not have been surprised.

To form a baseline he decided to look up if Caleb meant anything. He wasn't expecting it to change his mind on the matter, but it would help start the process.

What he found was surprising. Caleb apparently was a name that had been morphed over several languages, having started as a Hebrew name. Some quick searching in a new tab answered what that meant. It was an old language used by an even older religion that predates much of what even Union knew about humanity itself.

The name surprised him in that way. It was old. Sucker went back to the page to learn more about the name itself.

The Original name was Kelev. Or... At least that's how it was spelt in the writing system he was using. And the name referred to being 'dog-like.'

Sucker Squinted. He didn't like being compared to dogs, even if he agreed that it was an apt comparison. But as he read on he found that it was not meant in the way he had assumed. It also meant wholehearted and loyal as well.

Sucker chuckled at the Irony as he scratched above where the Armory had marked him as theirs. The number and the name being so close a moment of serendipity.

He wasn't keeping the translated version. It... It was a result of a creative reading of his serial number. But the original? That could work.

'Kelev Landsknecht' had a ring to it after all.

Sucker laughed.

"I guess I have my answer."

[blakbonnet]

AUTHOR OF THE WEEK: @adhduck

Please give it up for the nicest and one of the most creative writers in this fandom: Duck! I'm just such a fan because not only does Duck manage to write the softest, gentlest, loveliest Ed and Stede (both together and apart), their fics somehow perpetually keep me looking like 🥹 all the time ough. And they were very very nice about sharing their writing process with me:

What's your writing process like? Do you start with the beginning or the end? Do you write in order or as the scenes come to you?

Mostly it’s the Taika “look at a document for 8 hours and then close the document,” honestly. I’m a very slow writer and lose motivation very easily, so I mostly get by on the muse’s fire hydrant and forcing myself to write those fifty words even when every single one feels so bad.

I go moooostly beginning to end because even though I’m generally an outliner, I always end up with little details that will affect later scenes and I don’t wanna lose continuity or have to rewrite a bunch. However, I do definitely let myself do a [finish this scene later] and move on to the next scene because otherwise I will get really fucking stuck, and sometimes I’ll write a line or a paragraph I thought of that sounds really good and tuck it away for a later scene.

Favourite trope or headcanon you like to explore while writing?

Ooooooooh, I don’t know if this is a trope but there’s just nothing I love more than huge feelings contained in mundane stories, of feelings so big you can’t actually express them and so they’re this constant hum throughout the story. I also love writing about touch for both of them, how Ed gives casual touch to hide the deep well of desire for intimate touch, how Stede is so unused to touch and craves it so deeply. (Can you tell I just really like subtle yet overwhelming emotions? Maybe it’s the aroace in me idk but that shit hits HARD.) Oh, and I love a fuckin’ allegory or object to discuss all those big feelings, whether it’s monsters or gardening or peaches or what the fuck ever (I have used all of these lol).

Whose voice is easier to write - Ed or Stede? Why?

I think Ed’s voice comes to me faster because the way I personally speak is closer to Ed’s voice, but it also means I’m sometimes double-checking myself to make sure I’m still deep in his voice, not my-voice-but-Ed. Stede isn’t necessarily harder for me, I’m just doing all that double-checking to make sure I’m not slipping into Ed voice or, god forbid, Aziraphale-lite voice. So, idk! I love writing them both, the little details of each of their inner dialogues are SO important to me (Ed’s tangents and his pshh-I-don’t-care moments, Stede actively avoiding thinking about things he doesn’t want to face, etc etc etc).

Your personal favourite thing you've written that you'd like more people to read

For the longest time it was There is Love That Doesn’t Have a Place to Rest, mostly because it was posted the day before another fic and, while I find them to be siblings and equal quality,  the other one got way more attention. That fic is about the time between signing the Act of Grace and getting to the academy and I think I really nailed where the two of them are at.

However! (And I know this is cheating okay shh.) Nowadays the one that I wish people read the most is Not Only the Sugar, But the Days. It’s the sequel to my “offscreen 30 year slowburn friends to lovers finally get together” fic and I put my whole fucking heart into it, honestly. The two boys basically go on a bunch of dates to live out the teenage experiences they never got together and work through the biggest feelings and I just! Really want people to see it! (It also can be read as a standalone, which I didn’t advertise super well lol.)

What is the one word that you think you use a lot?

Unfortunately it’s probably “just” or “a little” or filler words like that. Also obviously if the word fuck counts then, yeah, that. Maybe warm? Or something about yearning??? If I have a classic word please tell me I’m fascinated by this idea.

Do you have a beta reader? Have they made you a better writer?

The person who beta’s for basically all my fics is Owen @trans-top-stede and they are sooooo fucking helpful and incredible. So good at catching all the little things I miss, making sex scenes make sense, reminding me positioning in general is a thing, cheerleading me on, etc etc etc. My fics are so much better for their help.

Why OFMD 🥹

Ed and Stede just fit so fucking well into all sorts of AU’s (they try to invent their own AU’s in canon, even) while also having so much fun space to explore within canon. Their range is also perfect perfect perfect for writing fics—they can be in the wells of misery and fluffy as fuck and obnoxiously cheesy and realistic all in the same fic, if you want, and it’s completely accurate to their canon selves. It’s also helped me to embrace being silly and cheesy and earnest because life is about being yourself and finding your people and feeling deeper, feeling bigger, feeling more authentically without fear of being too much. Fuck I just really love these boys. (Also they’re so pretty and the whole crew’s so pretty we WON.)

Please head over to @ofmdlovelyletters (who also made the header) and send your love to all your favourite authors (and authors of the week 😈 watch that blog for some special letters coming your way)

[owlchimedes]

Any study/homework tips? Especially when it come to writing a essay?

I can definitely share what works for me! I generally feel that there are 3 types of essay assignment, so I'll break this answer into parts. I'm assuming your essays are untimed and can be written in advance.

General Persuasive Essay:

Could be a unit assignment, midterm paper, or a chiller final. Generally 2-6 pages with moderate sourcing (3-5 new sources per page).

Personally, I like to assemble all my arguments first. Think of it like a pearl necklace -- imagine what you want your essay to prove ("X is Y") and then gather thoughts and evidence supporting that: quotes, articles, journals, statistics, etc. These are your pearls. Once you have enough of them to meet the page count -zip- all you need to do is thread them together with explanations and transitions.

For me, this looks like a very messy trash document filled with nonsensical shorthand and meticulous citations exactly how I'm supposed to use them in-text for the paper and for the final bib. If your teacher wants Chicago, or MLA, or APA, be sure to use that from the get go. The best parts are that 1) you know exactly where to go to double check something, 2) you don't need to look anything up again, 3) you've already written your bibliography.

For me, a doc might look like:

"72% of people can detect fake statistics" (Example, et al. 2025 404-405) ... "what, you egg?" (Macbeth 4.2.94)... [NEED MORE SUPPORT HERE] "cat's toe beans can absorb 5.44 lbs/cm of force" (Akename, F. in Purrrfect: A Science Tail 2013 p. 102) [TIE BACK TO 3RD PARAGRAPH]

You get the idea. Messy, but helpful. I like to copy-paste each 'pearl' into a clean document that holds the actual essay as I write it. You probably won't use every piece of evidence you have, but it's better to have a lot to choose from than to be staring at a blank page trying to write. Collecting evidence this way is particularly helpful if you know ahead of time that you need to do a paper, because then you can add tabs or highlight materials as you read them, cutting your workload in half. Generally, unless I'm totally unfamiliar with the field, I try to roughly know my final essay topic on the 2nd day of class and then start putting things in the messy doc when I find them. If it's not in the syllabus, ask your teachers about the final prompts. The worst they can say is no.

One of the great things about the process is that it skips the paralysis of a 'draft'. There is no draft here because there is no writing. Ideally, you should have 0 of your own words on the page -- only pulls and quotes. You'll paraphrase and rearrange things later. Don't copy paste directly into your essay; even with citations, that's plagiarism. Don't use first-person unless your teacher explicitly says it's okay.

Once you have all your content, structuring it may seem difficult.

I taught the TISAS model (also sometimes known as TISAC). This stands for topic sentence, introduction, supporting evidence, analysis, & summary (or conclusion). For clarity here, I'll use TISAC.

The TISAC is a simple paragraph structure model for beginner writers, but can also apply to longer and more complex writings. The standard 5-paragraph paper form taught in most middle- and high-schools is a simple nested form: TI TISAC TISAC TISAC C. The pattern of topic sentence and introduction, three evidence paragraphs, and a final summary is clear. More complex writings may add more evidence to the same point: TISAISAISAC. Thus, the amount of evidence and analysis can be endless, but must always be bracketed by clear topic sentences and conclusions. You can also vary the amount of information on any one topic; all paragraphs do not need to be the same length. More supporting evidence often leads to stronger persuasion or proof, though if there is enough of it, a reader may require mini-summaries to keep track of what it going on: TI TI(SAISAC TISAC)C TISAC C. It's clear that these elements can be combined endlessly to whatever length and complexity is required. Overall, TISAC is a straightforward set of building blocks that serve both beginner and advanced persuasive writers.

The format of the above is TISAISAISAC.

Introductions and topic sentences benefit greatly from the use of transition words, which flag to the reader (and to you) exactly what you're trying to do with the information you've presented. All evidence should be cited correctly. Obviously, TISAC is a little cramped on style and not perfectly suitable for heavily data-based work or more lyric, narrative, or artistic writing. Keep in mind though, 'evidence' can be a graph, an image glossary, an appendix, or many other formats.

Reflective Essay:

Unlike the persuasive essay, this type is entirely first-person, focused on YOU and your own thoughts, experiences, and takeaways. These tend to be the first and/or last assignment in a class, and are usually 1-5 pages with minimal to moderate sourcing (1-3 sources per page).

For course/project reviews, make sure to cover all the topics in ASSASSIN: Anticipations, Surprises, Strengths, Awkward points, Struggles, Show an example, "In conclusion", and Next time.

You can organize your thoughts chronologically or by theme. Longer papers work better as chronological.

Get a sense of what your teacher likes. If a prof. is proud of a certain thing, don't bash it. If they expressed disappointment in an outcome, agree with them. Don't come off as smarmy, but this is the easiest way to an A.

Do not use AI. In general, don't, but especially for reflective papers. AI is trained on models of the external world --it has no clue about your private internal world or what the class was like. It's guesses will be wrong and it only takes one or two incorrect details for your professor to realize you didn't write the paper. Even with careful proofreading, it's not worth the risk.

Research Essay:

These tend to be longer papers, possibly a course final or graduation checkpoint (qualification exams/thesis), meant to show how well you know the literature and materials as well as your ability to argue. Usually 5-100+ pages with moderate to max sourcing (4-10 sources per page). I use the same general process as for any persuasive essay, but make sure to use a reference management software instead of a single document. Mendeley, Zotero, RefWorks, and EndNote are the ones I've noticed most among my peers. Zotero was a godsend for my thesis.

Lab reports are a whole different beast, so I didn't discuss them here. Good luck!

[nerdieforpedro]

It’s Worth The Paper It’s Written On

Chapter Six of A Safe Place for Us

Dieter Bravo x Aisha Smith (plus size OFC)

My entire masterlist and blog are for readers 18+ MDNI. I do not consent to my work being used in AI, recommended on TikTok, borrowed or plagiarized.

Summary: Aisha looks over the papers Dieter gave her and has an answer for him. Also, a trip!

Warnings: Paperwork!, mean oldies (just the one), oral (male receiving), Zoom call, doctor’s appointments, medical jargon (possibly inaccuracies because Mother/Baby was the class I got a C on in nursing school 👀 I like caring for adults. They can tell me yes or no. Kids can’t and you gotta argue science with parents.), a happy surprise

Word Count: about 2.8k

Notes: So turns out I had posted chapter five, it was chapter six I didn’t post. 😎 Whew, memory is a funny thing. So chapter seven should be next month and a I’m going to try for a monthly schedule. I make no promises as inspiration is fickle.

Dieter Bravo Masterlist/ Main Masterlist/ AO3 Link

Aisha says nothing for a full hour. She’s reading, highlighting, circling, letting out soft hums and flipping pages. All the while sipping her coffee and ignoring Dieter’s pacing.

He’s second guessing doing this, he should have just kept things cool, maybe continue to take her lead on the situation. “Hell no.” He mutters to himself. Who knows what that would have led to? Dieter knows from his wealth of failed relationships that certain things need to be in writing, especially concerning kids and pets. Well, in this case primarily kids, he doubts Aisha will want to take Cookie, his spotted goat, away from him. Dieter then announces that he is going to take a walk outside.

He had to come back as he forgot a shirt and to put his crocs on, but left again.

Aisha on the other hand is stunned at the level of detail put into the document which is essentially stating how involved Dieter wants to be with their child and it would apply to any future children they had. There’s different rules and levels for when he’s in between roles and on location or on press tours. That she would need to bring the child along and be present so they would have equal time with them. There was a long list of private schools in California and New York and that the choice was up to her depending on which would suit her writing career best. It also stipulated that the more children they had and the longer they remained living together, she was entitled to a larger monthly stipend, which started out at four grand a month when the paperwork was signed.

What threw a wrench in her thought process was toward the end, it mentioned a college fund or trust dependent if the kid decided to go to school or just enter the workforce, but after that was that Aisha would have to live with Dieter, agree to staff coming to the house to keep him apprised of her health as well as their baby and in the event that he had an untimely demise, she would oversee all financial decisions concerning his estate and their child’s trust. A final addition had included that this would all stand no matter if they married or not but it would be null and void if Aisha decided to have a child with someone else. She circled that part and wrote next to it, only if I was criminally insane and hell froze over.

Rationally, she understands why he feels he has to have his team, she assumes, draw up such paperwork. Dieter is a public figure and one that’s had people try and steal from him by any means. She isn’t a fan of a monthly payment just for living with Dieter, but it might be his way of making up for her losing her apartment which she’s immeasurably fond of. He likely had that in mind when he brought it up the other day. Since he hasn’t returned from his walk yet, she calls him. “Dieter you haven’t got lost in your own neighborhood have you?”

Rolling his eyes as he watches some older woman in a yellow track suit walking a poodle and eyeing him like he doesn’t belong, he flips her the bird as she stomps away, “Nope. I did give the finger to this old woman looking at me like I’m a round peg in a square in my own damn neighborhood. She’s one of those that would calm the cops for dumb shit.” He pauses a beat, “You finished reading? Anything you wanna ask?” The older woman yells some obscenities while her dog barks at its owner’s behavior. Dieter pays no mind and starts circling the tree he’s standing next to, trying to work off some of his anxiety. “First impression at least, give me something Aisha. Any direction you might be heading with it.”

“My first impression is that this is a hellova document and a unique way to propose a life with someone. Most people do it in bed, with a ring, over dinner, a trip or actually talk about it first.” The light tone she’s using helps Dieter relax, she’s not scared at least. “You know this is my neighborhood and not yours right?”

“I’m not most people Scribbles and neither are you. Plus I’d best lock you down before you get tired of me and decide on some other method of getting a kid.” There’s a gasp and a pause. Did he just stick his foot in his mouth? Quite likely. The older woman in yellow has returned with a younger man in a red track suit who’s shaking a fist at him. Dieter gives them both middle fingers and starts back toward Aisha’s place. He’s here often enough it should be his neighborhood too.

“Come back Dieter. I need to talk to you in person and not over the phone.” Aisha stands and meets Dieter at her apartment door where he rushes in and hangs up the phone. He describes the older woman and Aisha laughs knowing that woman hates everyone. “Glad you made it away from her. She needs to retire somewhere.”

“So what else did you think besides it being a bad way to propose?” Dieter kicks his crocs off at the door and plops down on her couch, Aisha takes a seat next to him and pats his thigh, she then cups his face and speaks.

“Dieter, I’ve chosen to have a baby with you. We've been having sex damn near every day and often several times a day. I don’t plan on having a kid with anyone else. I told you I love you, you big goofball. I don’t have an issue with moving in with you. I’m already locked in. I promise.” Dieter runs his hands along her forearms and down her sides to try and move her onto his lap but she shakes him off. Dieter’s face contorts with confusion but Aisha grabs a pillow off the couch and kneels in front of him and tugs at his pants. “You’re also letting me suck your dick before your afternoon zoom meeting. She needs an afternoon off but she’ll be ready tonight.”

“Fuck…no objections here Aisha.” Dieter’s more than happy to allow his pajama pants down to his ankles and watched as Aisha moved between his legs, placing a hand on each thigh, her lips kiss the tip of his hardening dick. She sticks her tongue out and runs it along the bottom toward the base, moaning the entire time. Bravo hasn’t seen this side of Aisha and is keen to see more. He reaches for her and she intertwines her fingers with each of his.

“Just watch and enjoy Dee. Be good for me?” Her eyes peer up at him to watch him slowly nod while she moves her mouth down a bit further to nibble at a spot between his cock and his heavy balls. Dieter can’t help but throw his head back and groan her name, pressing on her hands. He wants to put his fingers in her hair, on her neck, cheeks, but she won’t allow him to. Aisha is being purposeful in her restriction. She’s going off what she’s writing rather than experience, she’d rather not her neck hurt in addition to her cunt. It won’t be a sweet ache from how rough she knows men can be. Hearing him trying to bite his lip and hold back is something she’s unaccustomed to as Dieter is more all or nothing. She finds him attractive in this manner too.

Using her nose to glide along the base of his cock, Aisha kisses his head once more before sticking her tongue out to drool along his shaft. Dieter’s got a fair bit of precum, but it’s dripping on her breasts, dress and thighs. With an audible “Omhp!” She swallows a third of his length letting it sit in her mouth, warming it. Dieter in the meantime, has let out a string of curses, feels his hips sputtering and is apologizing for not being able to keep still. Aisha chuckles when she makes eye contact with him again. His pained expression at failing to control himself after she told him to ‘be good’ and that he’s begging her to start sucking. He feels the throbbing in his balls and he knows that it won’t be too long. A pop is heard as Aisha lets his dick fall from her mouth.

“I forgot to ask Dieter. Did you want to paint my breasts, face or the inside of my mouth?” Her question is followed by using her tongue to grab some precum that’s leaking from his tip. Dieter’s lips are quivering, he can’t think straight and he’s dry heaving in panic that if he doesn’t answer she'll stop and he’ll be on Zoom like this.

“Mouth, I-I-Inside your mouth. And swallow please. Just don’t stop Ai. Fuck me…when the hell were you like…” His hips jut toward her as she just smiles and nods, wordlessly taking him back into her mouth and bobbing her head. “Damn! Your mouth nearly feels as good as your pussy…I’m damn lucky she needed a time out….” Aisha snorted at Bravo’s ramblings while she tried to take more of him in her mouth, she was able to make it a little more than halfway before the urge to gag was too much. She hollowed out her cheeks while Dieter’s small rolls of his hips forced himself deeper into her mouth and he finally spilled down her throat with a growl. Aisha gulped three times before letting his softening dick hang. She made sure to lick their combined mess from his cock, balls and thighs before finally letting go of his hands.

Immediately, Dieter cupped Aisha’s cheeks and nibbled at her lips, getting her to open her mouth so he could taste her saliva and his come. “We always taste good together, Ai.” He slid down onto the floor and pressed his body against hers. He hadn’t been able to feel anything except her hands and mouth so he wanted more. Dieter always wants more. As he swallowed some of the spend that had been in Aisha’s mouth, he looked down at her panting face. Her caramel skin has a damp sheen over it, he laid his head on her shoulder. “We’re good together.” Aisha’s fingers scratch Dieter’s scalp and cradle his head, she lets out a “mmhm.” In agreement. The pair help each other off the floor and Dieter goes to do his Zoom call.

There was a question of what had dried in his beard, but Dieter said that he was saving it for later and Aisha snickered from the room.

The following week saw Dieter, Aisha and their lawyers sit down to iron out the contract that Dieter had presented Aisha with. It stayed the same, except for that part that mentioned if she had a baby with someone else. She wanted that part removed because like she told Dieter, she wasn’t planning on it. Things were notarized and signed with a trip to a few houses in LA that were for sale. Aisha was still coming around to the notion that she’d have to move, but was becoming more open to it.

Next month, they flew and looked in New York. Dieter took Aisha to a few shows while there and she was asked to consult on a production of “Cats” for their script. It wasn’t something she normally did but she found it fun and challenging. It had been quite awhile since Dieter had seen her working with scripts but it brought him back to when they first met and her being in writer’s rooms.

While staying in NY and getting accustomed to taking the subway and looking at houses, Dieter noticed that Aisha was getting up early in the morning so he followed to the bathroom and ensured she had a warm washcloth to clean her face. The nausea she had off and on was normal depending on what she smelled for years but the vomiting started last week before they flew out to NY. Dieter was upset that Aisha hadn’t mentioned anything but more than that he was worried. “Are there going to be other things you don’t tell me about? You’ve got to be honest with me Aisha.”

Aisha hadn’t wanted to ruin the trip. It’s been years since she’d been to New York and it’s her first trip with Dieter. She just wanted to enjoy it being the two of them a bit longer, rather than worrying about their expected third they’ve been working hard to make. The fact that she thought that at all was why she felt ashamed, like it was wrong to enjoy time alone with Dieter because she is the one who asked him to have a baby with her. Considering how much she’s enjoyed the process of trying for a baby, she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to allow herself to enjoy other parts of the experience. “I know I sound completely insane Dee. I swear I make no sense sometimes.”

Dieter walks her back to the bed and they lay down while he is her big spoon. “You’re not insane. Just scared to be happy. Honestly, I am too. We just have to learn how to enjoy things while they’re happening.” He kisses the back of her neck and she sighs.

“You’re right, Dieter. Let’s get some sleep. We’re going to see more places tomorrow right? I’ll call tomorrow morning and see if I can move up my OBGYN appointment to the week we get back.”

“Yeah we will, but I think we can’t wait to see your OBGYN at home. We should find one here.”

Bravo insisted on going and Aisha agreed, she did still call her OBGYN to let them know and to get their fax numbers and such so things could be sent over from NY. Seeing Aisha in stirrups led to several jokes about horses and if he should get something like this put in the house. Aisha was against the idea of seeing stirrups outside of a doctor’s office. So far, vitals, blood work and urine tests were good with the doctor and nurse entering the room with grins on their faces and telling Aisha not to get dressed yet.

“So Ms. Smith, it looks like from your urine, you’re pregnant! We’ll do an ultrasound to confirm and see how far along you are. You and your partner need to make sure that you’re going to all your appointments.”

Aisha was in shock, it only took three months? Initially when she had discussed the issue with her OBGYN, the doctor had said it could take up to a year since she’s starting later in life and is overweight. She looked over at Dieter who was sitting very still. It seemed the reality was hitting them both, there’s now a baby. Especially, after the nurse and doctor spread that cold jelly on her stomach and there’s a small heartbeat with a woosh sound. Aisha is laid across the table with Dieter kissing her forehead and holding her hand. She looks up at the screen on the ultrasound machine and sees a small big-headed kidney bean shape.

It’s there. Their baby is there. Looks totally weird, like it could be on the X-files but it’s there. Their baby.

Chapter Five Chapter Seven

Peeps who are looking for the truth in kidney beans 🫘: @readingiskeepingmegoing @megamindsecretlair @soft-persephone @soft-girl-musings @rosecentaur1916 @westside-rot

@angelofsmalldeath-codeine @mysterious-moonstruck-musings @schnarfer @yorksgirl @guelyury @gwendibleywrites @survivingandenduring

@pascalsanctuary @harriedandharassed @baronessvonglitter