#a professional published piece but

[sunbratz]

need someone to sit across from me in a coffee shop so i can work on writing i think id really like to finish that husbands fic because im actually insanely proud of it

[thespacebetweenworlds]

A protest against Wattpad's new Content Guidelines

Recently, Wattpad has changed the Content Guidelines on sexual content, declaring that the age of consent is now 18. "Any sexual content between characters must abide by this age of consent and not be in violation of Canadian Law."

This is embarrassing for Wattpad. This is disrespectful to Wattpad users. This is a capitalist company conforming to conservative politics.

Wattpad is and has always been home to teenage writers. When I first learned of Wattpad at age 13, this orange app was everything to me. Wattpad is home to teenage writers and readers all around the world, with its many languages Wattpad is unique, and that is something to be proud of. Wattpad has given a creative voice to a generation and inspired young people to write and with multi media challenge our perceptions of the written word and literature. That is not nothing.

But the thing is, teenagers write stories about teenagers. Teenagers write sexual content that includes teenagers. Teenagers have sex in real life with other teenagers. To declare any of that illegal only has negative consequences.

Wattpad declares they want to create a safe space. They want to protect the community. If they really wanted to do that, then they wouldn't have these restrictions on WRITTEN, FICTIONAL sexual content.

Things that would make this a safer space and create and protect our community of global writers: - quality sex education - quality sex education in all languages used on Wattpad

NOW we are in a situation where WRITTEN FICTIONAL depiction of sex between fictional characters under 18 is not allowed. "Illegal sex acts" aren't allowed either. Should we thank Wattpad for clarifying that they mean "according to Canadian law"? Or should we wait with the thanking until they change it to local laws, or LGBT+ stories will be illegal as well?

[werewolves-are-real]

Debating writing more original fiction and trying to monetize, because my rent is now 2k a month (for a 1 bedroom apartment!! kill me) and also I am constantly plagued by existential dread.

But what's the best way to do that? Starting an email list/blog? (requires constantly Socializing - I am terrible at this). Commissions? (Doable, but then I can't use the stories for anything in the future - could regret it). Trying to publish through conventional lit magazines? (incredibly slow, + you have to get every piece actually accepted, which means little money). Self-publishing through Amazon? (Terrifying, seems risky, they have convoluted policies that steal money from authors etc etc)

This is why I like fanfic, I can write and throw things into the void and that's it. Ugh.

[nopeleavemealoone]

Imagine traditional art

This journal was actually a school assigned writing journal so i drabbled a bit around the edges so i didnt lose points on my grade lol anyways it’s chuuyaaaaa

[loverboydotcom]

trying to do my Volunteer Readings but submittable keeps loading the submission form instead of the document? but anyway it made me curious seeing different cover letter styles + one writer adressed theirs to the editors but also all of the readers and i thought that was soooo nice to see acknowledged 😭 like for me i always address the cover letter to the editors (like i look for a masthead anyway bc that's part of determining if its somewhere i want to submit to) but i loooove when litmags list all their readers. i wish more of them did it

[mrbutchdyke]

👉🏻👈🏻 if I posted a link to my poetry instagram would any of you follow it 😳

[wormtoxin]

ok. Narrative obfuscation in House Of Leaves. It’s a relatively simple story about a man who moves into a house with his wife and kids, and the house is haunted. That’s it. The core themes are very transparent.

Except, that story is documented by a famous war documentarian, then published as a series of rare tapes, which are discoursed by film buffs, then interpreted from viewings and reading film critique by a blind old man, then his thoughts are transcribed into a manuscript by a series of young women, which is then compiled from scattered notes by the most mysoginistic, damaged, toxic pothead drop-out who won’t stop talking about his life, which is THEN edited and published by some vaguely nefarious agency who soberly refuse to provide any clarification or context.

It’s not simple, but there are so many different hands on the wheel with wildly differing opinions that you can’t discern the truth.

Johnny Truant is such a miserable hopeless fuck up. He has no sense of academic rigor or archival professionalism. Any interference he provides only muddies the waters and taints what would otherwise be a gripping piece of metaphysical film criticism. His neurotic rambling and personal anecdotes cloud an otherwise reasonable story.

If he wasn’t in it, if we could read Zampano’s manuscript directly, WE would be able to understand the truth. We would get it completely, and we wouldn’t have to encounter so much violence, so much miserable graphic detail. It would be a better story.

And fuck it, if we didn’t have to read all of Zampano’s tangents and analyses and interpretations, if we could just find a copy of the famous “five-and-a-half minute hallway” vhs, if we could SEE it, we’d understand. We wouldn’t need endless pontification of what Navidson and Karen’s marriage might entail, or recitations of what a director once said in a Rolling Stones article. We’d see the hallway itself, stretching out into what should be the backyard, and we’d get it. Hell, Zampano is blind in his old age. He can’t even watch the damn movie! But we could. We’d know instantly, the second we saw it. The impossibility of it, the gravity of it, the weight of that dark abyss.

And well, the VHS recording is a little dark, and the quality is poor, and maybe the white balance isn’t so perfect. And actually, VHs tapes could be manipulated. We can’t be sure that Navidson isn’t just using clever videography tricks to invent a hallway. If we were there, if we found the house (it’s in virginia, isn’t it? we even have the address). If we GO there, we could look down that hallway. And it’s dark, so if we just brought a flashlight, maybe took a few steps inside-

[jinkiezzsstuff]

In Season

alastor x doe! femreader

no but really this is actually so depraved and smutty i cannot believe myself i hope yall enjoy the feast xx

Summary: You were aquatinted with hell for quite some time and you quickly learned as much as you could about mating season to protect yourself from other deer sinners. Although you came across the hotel and neither you nor Alastor could resist each other, and your instincts.

Warnings: 18+ Minors DNI, female anatomy- no pronouns, no descriptions of bodytype/skin colour/hair type, heavy breeding kink, female masturbation briefly, penetration, squirting, creampie, horrorish aspects predator n prey, ‘in heat’ trope, OOC alastor bc y’know sex, general vulgarity, brief mention of blood, swearing, not proofread, LEMME KNOW WHAT I MISSED

Word count: 5K

You’ve been in Hell several years, and at first it was a little jarring. Especially since you now had hooves, a tail, a black scent-sensitive nose, and soft floppy ears. Honestly it was amusing getting used to your new body while dodging sinners hungry for new meat, you reminisced on your first days of hell often, as they were the most exciting.

But now you were more aware, you’d spent a majority of your time in hell assessing and attempting to understand the whole eternal damnation thing- after all you weren’t much of a believer in hell when alive. You kept atop all the sinners that were of note, the different sectors of the pentagram, the overlords as well as their strengths and weaknesses that coincides with their demonic form, you also paid close attention to all the rings of hell and their sins. You’d even grown interested in the hellbors and imps, never imagining how birth and life things that was supposed to be god's gift, ended up breeding in such a foul place like hell.

Most demons spawned into hell with some sort of form be it an object like a television, a prop like a doll, a toy such as a jack in the box, or more commonly an animal. Most humans found themselves attached to animals anyways which made sense as to why many showed up as one, as well as why it wasn't surprising to see many dogs and cats as a common form in hell. During your investigative research, you ran into a few.. hurdles.

Bucks, mating seasons. It seemed like all animal life here was cursed with some sort of violent mating season. Where all that sinners could think about doing was mating. Bucks had been your biggest issue in hell, you found it pretty simple to ignore mating seasons, focusing your mind anywhere but the burning in your pelvis, but the bucks would storm around looking for the smell of the doe near them.

It’s a pain in the ass and you always had your calendars marked, alarms and reminders set, as to not forget that mating season was coming and you needed to take precautions.

Besides the chase the bucks would give you every year, you had it pretty easy in hell, you published on a blog your findings marketing it to new sinners in hell, kind of like a guide to hell, and that kept your bills paid and your mind occupied.

~

Walking down the road in the pentagram city with the intentions of snapping some pictures of some of the expected violence in hell, you gazed along the different brick walls and shops, shopping with your eye at times. You came by yet another brick wall, this one littered with taped up signs, your paced slowed as your eyes rapidly moved across the words on different pages.

There were varying signs, one for resale value drugs, IMP immediate murder professionals, and Charlie Morningstars Hazbin Hotel. Pausing your stride you went up to the wall getting a closer look at the shitty drawn piece of paper, there was several different… characters, on it very poorly drawn. You recognize Charlie’s name of course, you’d often see her roaming around the pride ring actually, unlike her father who you never saw.

Pulling out your phone you snapped a picture of the sign and decided to take a trip down to that side of the pentagram to check out this hotel. It’s definitely quite the story to be told that’s for sure.

You made left, rights, had to take cover for thirty minutes while some sinners duked it out shooting up a whole block, then you tried to hail down a cab- failed and trudged for the longest time to the hotel. It was so much further than you anticipated but everytime you felt like turning back you told yourself you were almost there which got you to the door of the hotel, by the end of the day however.

Knocking on the giant doors you didn’t know whether to walk in like you would a hotel, or wait for a guide. Tapping your fingers against your thighs you’re suddenly hit with strong arousal that clawed suddenly at your abdomen.

Bringing your phone up from your pocket you checked the date, you knew the season was changing and autumn was here but you didn’t have any issues with buck recently so you didn’t really have to worry. You did confirm mating season was in progress, with the conformations laying within the calendar, but it shouldn’t have been a problem, unless there is a buck inside the hotel.

Suddenly the door flew open and you were pulled away from your contemplation by a high pitched, giddy voice tugging your attention toward it. “Oh my gosh, hi! I’m Charlie! Come in! Are you here for the hotel!” The blonde rambled quickly, tugging you in by your wrist.

The hotel was weirdly homey, you could tell that there were different personalities that occupied the space, different colours of reds decorated, random items littered around the room like stiletto boots by the door, a large pile of needles in a corner, the bar seemed to be its own aesthetic design. It was comfortably warm and smelt like an active fireplace, as well as something so strong and musky it made your legs inadvertently clench.

You attempt to hold your instincts inside but this wasn’t like any other buck you’ve smelt before- it made you ravenous. Pulling yourself together while Charlie spoke about the hotel you pondered what you’d say, you could exactly be like, is there a male buck here because i’m horny as fuck.

No. Smiling to Charlie tiredly, you finally ready yourself to give her the explanation. “This place really is lovely, I didn’t actually come to be a patron but maybe write something about it for the little blog thing i have.” You felt jittering and lightheaded as you spoke, your eyes scanning the room and ears pulled back. “Uhm would it be okay to stay for a night?”

Charlie perked up clasping her hands together nodding eagerly. “Of course to both~!” She sang out happily. “I am so glad some people are interested! Who knows, maybe after a day you’ll wanna stay!” She exclaimed, twirling around happily.

You smiled at her optimism and you were genuinely happy that the princess of hell was such a breath of fresh air in the smog filled hell you all lived in. “Do you want me to show you around? Meet our staff and guests?” Charlie asked, a glimmer of hope and excitement sparkling in her eye. You took a brief moment to ponder before nodding your head. “I think that would be perfect, then though would i be able to rest, the walk fucked my hooves.” You say tapping the tip of your booted hoof against the floor.

Interlocking your elbows Charlie nodded, dragging you toward the bar. “Of course you can, I'll end our tour with your room, but let me begin it with Husk! Our loyal bartender!” Walking toward the bar you’d spotted early on, the cat demon turned his head ever so slightly toward you. “Hi,” The alcoholic said flatly, Charlie laughed nervously, but you didn’t really mind his demeanour you preferred short and to the point.

“Hey Husk, nice to meet you.” The cat grunted at you, and gave you a sorta glare. “Another deer. Course it fuckin is.” Husk muttered to himself bitterly, Charlie scolded him under her breath, before turning to you with a grin and a shrug of the shoulders. “He’s sweet once ya get to know him. Heh, anyways c’mon lets meet Angel!”

After about thirty minutes of running around you met all but one of the members residing within the hotel. As you skipped around the hotel you entirely forgot about the low grade heat buzzing between your legs, you were used to it after all, and you enjoyed yourself a lot, confessing to Charlie that you particularly enjoyed the rambunctious Nifty and flirty Angel.

“Alright, the last person of note is one of the most important. He’s been assisting in the hotel basically since the start, half of it wouldn’t be possible without him.” Charlie explained walking up to a door, on it had two different do not disturb signs. A large wood one nailed right on the door, and a second hanging off the handle.

Charlie picked the sign from its hanging position humming while examining it. “He’s never had these before.” She muttered, voice filled with confusion, however you were lost in a daze. This was the smell you could pick up down stairs, he must’ve been a buck, there wasn’t any other way.

The scent was pungent, nearly knocking you off your heels with arousal, it was musky, something only described as sweaty and primal. The natural hormones of the demon beyond the door were unlike anything you’ve experienced before; it was like he was a starved man, hungrier than ever and more than ready to breed.

It was dirty and you felt embarrassed at the reaction you were having, typically you had a low hum and no real desire to attempt to have sex with one of the many deer demons who came after you so this was a bit of a new experience. And it was nearly painful, you don’t even know the guy and yet it felt like you were being consumed by him.

“Hm, wait here I’ll go ask Nifty! She normally knows the most,” Charlie drifted off tilting her head at you. “You okay there?” She asked nervously, you promptly nod at that, inwardly cursing yourself for not being more controlled. “Yeah,” You quickly clear your throat trying to play off the lust filled tone for a dry throat. “Yes,” You say with more conviction. “Sorry it’s been a long day. Before you head off, would this guy happen to also be a deer?”

Charlie grinned super wide, purely whites on display. “He is! Best for last! I think you two will be happy to have each other haha,” She chuckled a little awkwardly, brushing her hair behind her ear. She shook her head, swiftly bidding you ado and walking off to find Nifty.

You waited a moment listening for anything down the halls, but you didn’t hear anything anywhere, and you couldn’t see anybody around, nor could you see cameras hidden in the corner. Walls crashing down, heart rate naturally kicking up; you unbuttoned your pants, spreading your legs and slipping your hand down your pants.

You whimpered at the contact of your cold fingers to your clit, feeling the sticky sensation of arousal cover the bit of thigh that your underwear didn’t touch. You soaked yourself just by the smell of the deer on the other side of the door. You slipped your middle finger and ring finger down, coating your fingers entirely before slipping them into you, curling them as you did.

You inhaled deeply resting your free arm against the door above your head for you to lean forward on, you didn’t have the intentions of fucking your self in the hall, but one thrust turned into three. Now you’re dripping, gasping for air and trying to keep yourself quiet when all you wanted to do was collapse and beg whoever occupied the other side of the door to please fuck the neediness out of you.

As you quickened your pace, your body quivered from the uncomfortable position, but you halted everything when you heard the unmistakable sound of a radio on the other side of the door. It was a gritty sound, garbled with no real sound coming out of it, just strange static. You tried to catch your breath as you listened closely, checking your left and right speedily ro assure you were still alone.

Suddenly the doorknob shifted the door falling open under your weight. Your legs stuttered attempting to catch your body, hand whipping out from inside you, slick and sticky with your arousal as if you were some whore. Unfortunately you weren’t able to catch yourself fast enough but lessened the brunt of the fall with your knees before your hands came down to finish. You were still in a blitzed out haze, but the room was pitch black, the only sound that could be heard was an ambient sound of nature and the faintest sound of the radio.

The only light that you were blessed with was the hall light from the opened door behind you. You could barely make out deer heads hung on the wall and a red couch before the door snapped shut leaving you alone in the darkness.

You whimpered, clenching your legs and your teeth, you could still hear the radio but it sounded like it was seriously messed up, switching stations, pitches and incorporating sounds you’d never heard from a radio, like growls and deep rumblings.

Your fear mixed with desire and the smell of lust was far more palpable in this room. It was so much harder to ignore the scent and the smell of the buck who was definitely worked up in this room. “What a depraved little doe you are.” You jumped at the voice, nothing like you expected. He sounded wicked, dark, and surprisingly, hornier than you.

You could now hear him in the room with you, his deep pants, the footsteps around, you swear you could’ve heard him accidentally hit his antler against something as well, it was like he just materialised. “What’re you doing out of bed so late? You do know how filthy bucks can be this time of year, don’t you.”

You yelped as two bright red eyes appeared just a few feet in front of you, either this guy was crouched or contorted as you never stood from the floor. As his eyes got closer to you, his being consumed you entirely, as it dawned on you that he was crawling toward you like a goddamn animal.

“Sorry.” You meekly whimpered, tilting your head back ever so slightly, neck on display for him. He let out a baritone chuckle, shocking you slightly, before he replaced that shock with a new-by pouncing on top of you.

He brought his face closer to yours, the crazily dialed eyes of his illuminating your face enough for him to properly see and observe your face. You however only got brief glimpses of a strained yellow smile, and messy red hair that stuck to his face from sweat. You could feel his body heat against you making your own body feel hotter by the second, his right hand sat above your head, his other grabbed ahold of the wrist that moments ago was deep inside you.

One of his knees sat outside of your body by your thigh, while the other knee occupied the inner thigh too close to your core for comfort, or perhaps not close enough. All you knew is this deer was one of the horniest you’ve ever come across, his breath was erratic chest heaving, breath tickling your face and neck, his eyes were blown and obviously a firey red bright enough to add a horror-esque ambience.

You could feel the strain he had against his suit pants, it was hard not to when in the position he took he was straddling one of your thighs. He gripped your hand harder bringing it up to his face, your heart pounding in your ribcage as you watched motionlessly.

He groaned at the sight of your still wet fingers, his smile stretching just slightly as his eyes momentarily closed. Then his mouth opened, as did his eyes, teasingly he opened his mouth bringing your fingers up to him, before he took a hold with his mouth swirling his long tongue around your digits. You whined, closing your eyes at the feeling, the way he did it was not just in an attempt to be pornographic but to properly taste you, coating his taste buds with your arousal. Pulling his mouth away with an exasperated groan, he dragged his sharp teeth along your flesh, leaving tiny cuts that exuded just enough blood to satiate his desire.

He pulled himself away properly, saliva stringing as he did. You peaked your eyes open, as suddenly a feeling of being sucked into the floor consumed you and you felt like screaming. Though it all happened too fast that you weren’t able to squeak anything out; the floor sucked you in and within seconds spit you out. Gently your body bounced against soft velvet comforters on what you assumed was a bed- his bed. Still surrounded by only the blackened room, the buck nowhere you could see, you sat there heart pounding, bewildered, scared and horny, a unique combination to be fair.

“Tell me, my dear doe. When was the last time you gave into such, primal desires?” The man’s voice appeared before he did, sliding up beside you from the shadows. “Never.” You whisper looking into his deepened red eyes. “I am so sorry. I avoid bucks, I came for business- I didn’t- god i’m sorry i couldn’t help myself- you fuckin,” You threw your head back groaning in frustration, feeling embarrassed to admit you were just about willing to do anything he said if it meant he spread you out and bred you.

He chuckled demonically, his hand sticking out to you. “Alastor, sweetheart, pleasure to meet you, quite, the pleasure.” Alastor’s radio voice lowered and he purred to you so sultry that you clenched your thighs together. Grasping his larger clawed hand that he had stuck out, you shook him tightly enjoying the warmth and contact. “YN, pleasure to meet you too.”

Gently pulling his hand away, Alastor inched his way closer to you, leaning over he placed his hand on the other side of your torso seemingly trying to resume the position he held on the floor. “I could smell you enter the hotel, you know. I keep myself away every season and no other passer by, has been an issue. So what is it that you’ve done my dear,” Alastor questioned accusingly while dragging a claw up your neck and getting back to being on top of you.

Alastor felt like he couldn’t help himself, he felt a yearning for sex he’d not felt ever, sure there’s been the occasional session with his hand on a particularly trying mating season, but never real feral need like this. He wanted to leave his mark on you, and keep all those other foul deer demons that may attempt to take their claim on you in the future.

Growling radio admission and static echoed throughout the room, Alastor promptly closed the inches between your bodies, gently collapsing on top of you. Alastor dragged his tongue up your neck from your collar to your jaw line, ending his travel with an opened mouth kiss. You whimpered at the sensation of his body against you clutching his shirt, as he nipped at your neck with his sharp teeth drawing blood.

His thigh was pressed against your core with the way he leant down on you, and you wondered if he could feel how you were pulsing desperately begging him to fill you. Against your will you jerked up grinding yourself into him, causing him to groan at the own pleasure he got from the friction. Alastor then pulled away entirely looking down at you, then a gentle red light flickered on, then another, and finally a third, lighting the room up with a reddish glow.

You weren’t focused on how, or where the light came from, but rather the man in front of you. You had no clue it was Alastor, as in thee overlord Alastor, although you should’ve put it together based on all the radio feedback that sounded from out of him. Of course you knew of him from your research but he’d been gone when you came down so you easily forgot him.

Alastor was dishevelled, without a suit coat, just a button up and his suit pants, his hair was a mess as you briefly saw before, but man oh man did he look a wreck. He was sweaty, his antlers were out on full display, his eyes lidded.

“I had no idea you were a deer.” You say eyeing him up and down, he chuckled at that. “So you know of me?” The question, you might almost say, sounded uncertain, perhaps before with the lights off lended the two of you a comfortable anonymity that you don’t have anymore. Nodding your head you can’t help but attempt to gain some friction between your legs. “Darling if you truly want this as much as I, then I'd be more than happy to satiate the hunger for both of us- so long as we see to a date and several others after. I wouldn’t be able to stand seeing you with another deer after me.”

Although this formal speech was out of place for your current predicament you looked past it because you wouldn’t mind this being more than a one time hook up. “Of course, I hate one night stands.” Smiling at him, his smile softened compared to its harsher one before. Alastor moved in, this time you were able to watch him in the dim light, leaning back fully and off your elbows, you got comfortable on the soft pillow that kept you somewhat propped up.

You wanted your hands free to touch him, and hold him. When his face was inches from you, lips barely touching, your hands came up to play with his hair. You go cautiously hearing rumours about the distaste he has for contact he doesn’t initiate, however the moment your hands connect to his hot neck, he moans, pushing himself down to connect to your lips.

He smiled through, as you expected him to, but it was the best kiss you’ve ever had, purely based on how intense he was once he finally got a taste of you. You just barely opened your mouth before his tongue was escaping his mouth to explore yours, it was a searing kiss one that was unique to anything before. His body once again lowered as he relaxed on top of you, most of his weight rested on you, which you loved the feeling of it was like he was encasing you with him.

You could feel the stiff hard on that ached to be freed, and his uneven breaths that expanded his chest further into yours, like a tide your chests pushed and pulled each other in and out. It was erotic, and as your make out session dragged on the messier it got, teeth scraping tongues fighting, saliva glistening on the perimeter of both of your mouths. Your hands dug into his hair occasionally touching his long antlers that were out, and everytime you did he’d moan statically into your mouth.

Alastor cared little about his poise and instead chased his own pleasure as his mouth entangled with yours, you were receptive and as needy as he was, so he felt no shame when he started to hump himself against your core. He took even more pleasure in hearing you whine for more, bucking up into him. You buttons were still undone from earlier which made him feel a sense of anger he couldn’t explain, he wanted to be the one to make you come undone, he wish he could’ve gotten to you before you fucked yourself against his door.

So with a new goal in the demons mind, he snaked his arm in between your bodies, him needing to lift himself a bit to do so, and snuck his hand down you pants straight to your soaking wet core. Gasping at the contact you jerked up into his hand, his fingers sliding down the length of you leaving no area untouched.

“Impatient?” Alastor mocked pulling away finally, although he was in no place to, as even the simplest word came out jagged and out of breath. “Alastor please,” You begged unable to stop the way you jerked up into the warmth of his hand.

With contemplative hum Alastor halted all movement making you groan. It was unbearable to put up with, perhaps the foreplay of it all would be more enjoyable if it wasn’t such a painful lust you were in. Snapping his fingers, cool washed over your body like freezer air, and soon you realized you were left bare.

You jumped curling into yourself afraid of being so suddenly exposed. Looking up you were surprised to find the overlord himself nude with you, the comforter that once laid flat underneath you now pulled up behind him. Leaning forward blanket following in suit behind him, you simply stared at him, the markings on his body, the fact he had two tone skin, and of course the more obvious aspect of his body, the fact he was hung.

Covering the two of you under the safety of the blanket, Alastor pulled your legs apart gently, body slotting back where it’s supposed to be in between your legs. “You’re devine torture my dear. Attempting to be somewhat gentlemenly in a state like this, when you’re so desperate, is absolute torture.” Alastor grit out, his static gone as he struggled against the animalistic urge to dive into you.

Breathing out a breath you had no clue you were holding, you begged him pressing your body up into his. Thoughtlessly you reached down between you two, wrapping your legs around his torso to nudge him closer, and slowly you wrapped your fingers around him making him almost robotically crackle.

Giving him a few awkward strokes, due to your position, you guided him towards your entrance that needed no prep, with how you pulsed aching, and dripped greedily you weren’t too worried about pain.

Alastor barely took your guidance, as once you stroked him a twig snapped, when you lined him up to your entrance, he jerked forward plunging into you rather harshly causing your body to jolt. A heat shot through your body crawling down your pelvis straight to your toes, while your jaw hung open, unable to make the noise. Alastors radio was popping and crackling as he fucked into you, grinding his body against your own, he was pouring himself into you as fast as he could and for him it still wasn’t fast enough.

Meanwhile you were still attempting to catch up, your brain hazily lagging behind as your body jerked along with every thrust. You could feel yourself dripping down the length of him, the wet slapping of skin was just more indication you were practically a faucet. Reaching upward to grab onto his neck, it was your turn to growl viciously, loving the way his eyes and smile looked in this fucked out haze.

Grinning at him you tilted your head back, eyes closed at the insane pace Alastor was attempting. “Fuck Al, just like that please don’t fuckin stop,” You moan spreading your legs further apart so your clit was more exposed to his flesh that came slapping down.

One of his hands grasped your neck lightly squeezing, you clenched in tandem with his choking, absolutely loving the feeling of him having you at his mercy. “Who knew such a sweet face would be so, filthy.” Alastor said through a toothy smile his radio voice was gone only leaving his strained raw vocals.

You let out wails of pleasure as he fucked you into the mattress, before you roughly pulled Alastors head down forcing him to give you a kiss. Your tongues met before your lips did as neither of you were going in for gentle but rather a greedy taste of one another.

Alastor moaned and whimpered more when kissing you seemingly without hesitation, making you feel closer to the edge then before. Arching your body up you clawed Alastors back begging him, tears threatening to spill and the feeling of need. “Please Alastor, please fuck- so good it’s gonna- i’m gonna cum- Al don’t stop,” You cried loudly stumbling over what you wanted to say as you felt hot all over.

Above you Alastor could barely hold on, his forehead rested against you as you cried, wailing for him to fuck you begging for him to make you cum, and he knew from how you cried for him, ge was gonna. He also knew he wasn’t far himself feeling as you clenched and leaked all over the bed, it was disgusting and he loved it. Your skin stuck to his as his body came crashing down on yours legs too shaky to hold him himself up, but his pace didn’t let up all that much still forcing himself deep into you, marking every inch of you.

You screamed, clawing his back wrapping your arms around him as you convulsed. You whined about how it was so good how hard you were coming but it got mixed up in his mind as he focused on the violent gushes of liquid that rushed out of you. It seemed your orgasm kept being pulled out as you continued to gush around him making him bellow out his own praises of how good you felt, how glad he was you were coming on his cock and making a wet mess of his bed.

Alastor was ravenous as he used your cunt to milk him of everything he had trying hard to get himself as deep as possible in you. Meanwhile you continued to moan and whine at him your orgasm still pushing on gushes is liquid squirting out of you as your sentive mating body wanted more, wanted to be bred and was ready to hold out to do so.

And bred it was, Alastor bit onto you as he came, loving the feeling of filling you to the brim, it wasn’t anything he’d done or felt before. You groaned, smiling wickedly and you hungrily kissed up his neck pulling his ear with your teeth, whispering to him about how badly you wanted to be filled with his cum, eyes rolling back as he stilled in you finally.

Your body ceased a bit before his movement ceased, It was all insanely animalistic. Now as Alastor laid on top of you, still inside you, you felt the post nut clarity truly hit you. You were still in a lustful haze, however you’d never been that much with a man, nevermind one you haven’t properly met. Although you didn’t mind, as you dragged your fingers through his sweaty hair you reminded yourself he wanted to see you more, not just use you.

Taking a deep breath, Alastor enjoyed the smell of your skin and the doe pheromones you naturally let off. In the back of his mind twisted questions that he couldn’t bother trying to answer. His head laid under your chin, face between your breasts dazed and staring off into space. You cautiously traced your fingers up his ears, his antlers fell in size back to little sticks. His ears twitched but he made no remark as you gently played with them.

“Do you regret it?” You broke the silence with the nasty feeling of worry in your gut, worry that you messed up, worried you both made a mistake. Alastor let out a long hum, his radio frequencies back in action as he did. “No dear not at all. Lust or not I was certain about my decision. I had the strength to hold back when I heard you on the other side of the door but I didn’t want to.” Alastor admits still a little coy is his delivery.

Although he did a very good job at assuring you because any doubt you had vanished. It was a vulnerable time for the both of you, during mating season, that having the knowledge that he still could’ve kept control, kept himself on the other side of the door but instead choose to claim you, yeah made your heart and mind content.

[reiderwriter]

💢 At Each Other's Throats 💢

Spencer Reid x female! Reader

For the CM Kink Bingo Challenge 2024

Summary: A previous encounter means that you're not the biggest fan of Spencer Reid, and you go to some extreme lengths to prove that to him.

Warnings: 18+ MINORS DNI, Dom! Spencer, but not exactly sub reader , degradation (use of whore, slut), semi-public foreplay, arguing as foreplay etc, oral sex (m receiving, f mentions, too), face fucking, rimming, nipple play, rough sex/ rough play, spanking, slapping, spitting, choking, messy sex, creampie, multiple orgasms, mentions of painful sex/ pain play etc. some possible CNC triggers/ phrasing.

A/N: I couldn't find a gift of Spencer being bitchy enough, so everyone, please enjoy Kyle Orfman from Life After Beth. This one was a labour of love, if love was actually hate. It's 2am. This is obviously not edited, and may never be.

Masterlist || Bingo Board

You knew from reputation alone that you would have a hard time working with Spencer Reid. Perhaps it was the slew of child prodigy articles that popped up alongside his name. Maybe it was even just your preconceived notion of what men with three PhDs, a badge, and a gun were like. Maybe it was the fact that he'd written to you after one of your first professional articles was published in The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology and told you a piece you'd worked on for 18 months was just plain wrong. 

Either way, you laid eyes on him, and the hatred was cemented. But fuck was he hot. 

He had no clue who you were as his boss introduced you to him, looking between the two of you as if expecting good things to happen. You should've warned him. 

“Spencer, this is Y/N. She'll be assisting on a few cases from this month onwards.” 

His eyes glazed over as he ran your name through whatever roller index of memories he had stored in there. 

“Y/N is a lecturer at the University of Virginia. She's going to be lecturing at the FBI Academy from September onwards-” 

“You! You wrote an article, I wrote to you about it, did you get my le-”

“Yes, I got your letter. I believe you called my writing ‘juvenile’ and my thinking ‘wishful,’ and that if I had any actual field experience, I'd slowly understand how many mistakes there were in my writing.” 

Agent Hotchner took an almost imperceptible deep breath in, trying to hide the fact that this was all new information to him. 

“Well, here I am, Doctor Reid.” 

The man in front of you gaped for a moment, letting his mouth hang open, closing after a few seconds only to open again. Perhaps you'd disorganized that index of his. You hoped you'd set the goddamn thing alight. 

“Shall we get started?”

To say that you'd gotten off to a bad start was an understatement. Your start had been reversed over by a dump truck with no tires. It had been cemented into the ground with no chance of going anywhere but down into the pits of hell. 

Which is, coincidentally, where you found yourself every time you had to engage Spencer Reid in conversation. 

Your first impression of his looks - his incredibly good looks - was that he was even better looking when he was pensive, and unhappy, and being bitchy. He was positively climbable when argumentative, and you liked nothing more than ruining his day, if just for the fact that he'd angrily loosen his tie and pop open his top buttons, exposing the pale white of his neck, and his sharp collar bones, perfectly ready for someone to suck and nip at. 

He was still an ass, however, and you couldn't bring yourself to sink to those depths.

Four cases in, and you hadn't agreed on one thing. You'd caught a serial arsonist, who he had demanded was most likely an office worker, but you'd countered with college student, and you had prevailed there. 1-0. 

Then, unfortunately, you'd lost back to back cases with unsubs in the trucking industry, unfamiliar with and uninterested in the life of the Jack Kerouac type. 

You'd even the playing field at last with a child abduction. And although you knew you'd both been keeping score, you were so genuinely happy for this case to be over. A child was safe at home, and you'd worked so well under pressure (something he had assured you would change your view of your personal forensic psychology theories). 2-2. 

Of course, those were just the big leagues. You'd fought many petty battles, too, as the war waged. 

You'd accidentally stolen his place on the jet, enjoying the long bench seat for a good few naps. A few times, he'd settled in next to you, trying to nudge you out of the chair completely, but you'd held your ground. 

“This is my seat. Usually. There are like 10 other places on this jet to sit. Why does it have to be here?” He'd grumbled into your ear as you gently elbowed him in the side, accidentally, of course.

“There aren't assigned seats. Maybe you have control issues, Doctor,” you cut back, trying to avoid speaking too loud to avoid the ire of the group. 

While you'd enjoyed bickering with - and intellectually besting - Spencer greatly, it did seem that the sentiment wasn't shared by those around you. 

“You can't be serious, right now,” Morgan complained from a seat opposite. “You're seriously fighting over a seat, right now?” 

“It's my seat, Derek, come on, you know it's my seat.” 

The look returned to Spencer almost had you ashamed of your petty actions. 

“I swear they're just taking every advantage to get closer and closer together. Next thing you know, she'll be sitting in his lap,” Emily said from the corner of the plane, so obviously not talking to you that you were almost offended. 

“Ah, young infatuation,” Rossi replied, still ignoring you. 

Reid slinked just slightly away after that, and you weren't sure if you were more annoyed at the comments themselves or the loss of his annoying companionship. 

You wanted him to bother you because it meant you'd succeeded in bothering him. 

You'd had more than your fair share of rather explosive arguments as well. 

“You can't seriously believe that Thomas Edison did more for the field of engineering than Nikola Tesla,” he'd shouted at you at a bar after a case had landed you in paperwork hell, filling out forms and working into the late hours. 

A drink had been suggested, a celebration after solving four straight cases in a row, and you'd gladly taken the chance to unwind. 

“Spencer, we're literally sat in a bar decorated with multiple light bulbs. Look, there's one. Another! Astounding. Thank you, Mr Edison.” 

“And none of it would be possible without Alternating Current, so yes. Thank you, Mr Tesla.” 

Your teammates had long since abandoned you to your petty bickering and fighting amongst yourselves. They'd stopped getting involved when Penelope had tried to mediate your discussion about Doctor Who, which had quickly devolved into New Who vs Old Who. 

You didn't even care strongly either way, you just cared that he did. And however he felt, you were sure as hell ready to take up arms against him. Because it was so fuckimg hot watching him lose his shit. 

You were a grown woman. You could admit that to yourself. You likely wouldn't admit it to anyone else, even if it was as clear as day that you found him unbearable attractive at times. You sure as hell knew that it wasn't a one-way street, from the way his eyes strolled across your body each morning. 

You wondered if there was a section of his brain that was dedicated to memorising everything you'd said, done, and worn since he'd met you. You hoped there was. 

On your fifth and final case with the BAU team, you felt unmatched in your annoyance. 

You were still drawn with Spencer for case breakthroughs, and you felt the need to beat him once again just to nail the point home. He was just stubborn enough to see a 3-2 win as a landslide victory for himself, though you were absolutely going to frame it that way yourself if you managed to be the one to crack everything. 

All sense of teamwork and camaraderie was off the table. 

You had a murderer to catch.

Three women, beaten, assaulted, and tied up. He'd shorn their hair but bagged them up so they were unseen. Then he'd placed the bags on display. The unsub was caught between two extremes, hatred of his victims, and gentleness, protecting their dignity in death by covering them up. 

Obviously, you and Spencer had to decide which side of the debate you were to land on.

“I think we're dealing with a killer without remorse here. It's easier to explain the covering, the dressing of the women as a ritual rather than guilt.” 

He'd finally played his cards, and now it was your turn to passionately wipe them from the table. 

“Remorse? He's cut all their hair off and beat half of them so badly we needed dental to identify them. And in case you've forgotten Spencer, half of them are prostitutes.”

“You're saying he can't feel remorse for killing prostitutes?”

“That is not what I'm saying. Don't twist my words."

“Well, of you'd said something that wasn't nonsensical, I'd have a better chance of understanding what the hell you're trying to say!’

With every line you'd stepped closer and closer to one another, like two boxers in a ring, sizing each other up before a fight. 

You wanted to take his tie and strangle him with it. You wanted to pull him down for a kiss and force him to shut the hell up. 

“Reid, Y/N, both of you take five,” Hotch called sternly from the other side of the room. Guiltily, you both broke away from one another, his hand brushing your side as you took a step back, almost as if he'd meant to grab you before Hotch stepped in. 

Probably to remove you from the room. 

“Take five?” You said, mustering all the disappointment you could as you silently pleaded to stick around. 

“Go back to the motel and get some rest. If you're going to argue like this, I don't need you at the precinct, and I certainly don't need you on my team.” 

You blanched at that, almost taken aback by the harsh words as you silently nodded and quietly walked towards the door, letting it shut behind you. 

Spencer stayed behind, and though you couldn't hear his arguments, you knew he was attempting to reason with Hotch, as well. It evidently didn't work as he stormed out of the room behind you. 

He looked half like a kicked puppy, half like an angry school kid who'd just been scolded by a teacher. 

“Don't look at me like that, this is your fault,” you muttered as you walked away from the room. 

“What? How is this my fault?” 

“If you weren't so goddamn infuriating, we'd be able to get some actual work done.” 

You marched off in the direction of the exit, but he caught your shoulder before you made it that far.

“You're blaming me? This is my job, Y/N, not yours. You get to go back to a cushy little office after this is done to teach the people that are going to end up doing the paperwork that consists of only 2% of our job.”

His finger jabbed at your shoulder as he said the words, and you had to resist the temptation to grab it. 

“Doesn't feel too good to be criticized when you're just doing your job, huh, Spencer?” 

His brows knitted together in a deepened scowl and he took a step forward. 

But there were eyes on you, and whatever confrontation this was, you didn't want to act it out in front of an office full of cops. 

You turned and walked away again, down a seemingly abandoned hall to what looked to be an empty storage cupboard, flinging the light on and waiting the three seconds it took him to catch up with you. 

“What's your problem?” He said, joining you in the cramped closet. 

“You! You're the problem! You're infuriating, and annoying, and most important, you're you!” You poked his chest back, harder than he had earlier, quietly reveling in the feel of his body under your fingertip. 

“Oh, I'm sorry. Would you like me to be someone different? Someone who worships the ground you walk on?” He said, discovering sarcasm for the first time since you'd been introduced. 

“Sure, Spencer, if you can take tour head out of your own ass long enough to worship someone else, then be my guest.” 

With a single push he crowded you against the wall, a hand above your head locking you into position as his other hand held your hip, his own hips joining you at the wall as you sucked in a breath. 

“You're begging to hear praise, right now, Y/N. Do you even hear yourself?” He asked, whispering the words directly into your ear. 

“W-Well, you have me pressed up against the wall like some fucking caveman that needs to breed or die.” You spent half the time you were talking trying to compensate for the stutter, trying not to look weak, that you totally missed the words that came from your own mouth. 

“You think I want to have sex with you?” He asked, chuckling awkwardly, even as his hand on your hip began rubbing circles, his head hanging lower, just inches away from your mouths meeting. 

“I think you'd love nothing more,” you said, finally lifting your hands to his hair and tucking a lock behind his ears. “Such a shame I won't be crawling into your bed.” 

“Is that a challenge?” He asked, and you were taken aback for a few seconds. 

“You want me so fucking bad, you're trying to convince yoursel-”

With a swoop, he cut you off, his lips meeting yours. You gasped and allowed his tongue to enter your mouth, but you came to your senses quickly. You kissed back with all the anger of the last month and all the attraction that had built up since you'd joined the team. Your tongue fought his, your hands tangled in his hair as his pulled them out, pinning them against a wall. But you slipped free and grabbed him again, grabbing the tie you'd wanted to choke him with earlier and not letting go. 

His lips were soft, and his body felt hot pressed against you, and you hated how good he was at all of this, how your body responded to his, how each time you pulled away it was with a small whimper as you begged for more. 

“I knew you wanted me,” he said, between kisses, grabbing your face and tilting it up as he returned his tongue to yours. 

“Oh, shut the fuck up, you kissed me first.” His hands trailed up your hips, untucking your shirt as he pushed his hand under, his cold fingers sending a trail of goosebumps along your skin as you shuddered. 

“I kissed you because you begged me to,” he said, his fingers caressing the bottom of your chest as he tried to press your bra up further. 

You were about to argue back when his lips met yours again, and you were lost in the haze of arousal, leg lifting to his hip to better allow him space to settle against you. 

You grew wilder in your passion, neither of you giving in even for one second as you writhed against each other, begging for satisfaction while denying that you'd ever wanted each other in the first place. Just as it became unbearable, your hands slipping to his belt, ready to pull his cock free and take it, the door opened again. 

“Reid, Y/N,” Morgan said from the doorway as you hastily jumped away from each other. 

You pulled your shirt down quickly, and Spencer stepped behind you, covering up the tent in his pants as you stared guiltily up at Derek Morgan. 

“Hotch sent me after you to give you the keys to the SUV,” he grumbled, making no comment on anything that happened. 

“We were just, um, we were just-” your brain fought for an excuse, but you'd left your brain behind somewhere between joining the BAU and foreplay with Spencer in a closet, so words escaped you. 

“You were just making out in a closet. It's okay, we all know,” Derek said, turning to leave. 

You jumped up, indignant now he'd brushed you off, and followed him out of the closet, an equally shocked Spencer trailing behind you. 

“What do you mean you all know? All know what?” You said, stomping back into the office. 

“That you two are into each other. It's why Hotch sent you away earlier. He didn't want to see the two of you going at it,” he said, pressing the car keys into your hands. 

“We are not into each other,” Spencer shouted back at Morgan as he stalked off, and you glared at him to shut his mouth. There was a crowd forming, and you still didn't need that attention. Not when your hair was matted from seven minutes in hell with Spencer or when his hand had, once again, settled on your hip, pulling you closer into him. 

“Let's go,” you huffed, and finally left the building with Spencer right behind you. 

You didn't talk for the rest of the drive home, even as your brain flooded itself with images of him taking you in the back of the car, your lips around his dick as he drove, him pulling over to bend you over the hood. 

You went straight to your separate rooms when you got back to the motel, though you swore that the walls were thin enough that he surely heard you pleasure yourself, fingers sinking into yourself. You weren't sure if he, too, had his hand wrapped around his cock, or if your brain was just now imagining whatever it liked to spur you on. 

Imagined or real, his moans were delicious, a maddening mix of frustration, exasperation and desperation, whimpers and groans, and small growls until you yourself were cumming, and letting yourself sleep.

You avoided talking, all talking, until the end of the case, even as your head replayed his infuriating words, his moans and the rustling sound of his fingers pressing your shirt up. You refused to talk to him to give his coworkers the validation of arguing with him once more. You weren't into each other. 

You simply wanted to fuck him. You didn't like him as a person otherwise. 

In avoiding him, though, the small taste of release you'd sampled in the closet had your softer parts deliriously wanting more. As much as you hated Spencer, you needed him so bad. 

You'd given him the cold shoulder  but he'd returned it just as quickly, and you were more annoyed not talking to him than you weren't. 

Your last case wrapped up, and you decided it was time to give him what he so obviously wanted. A conversation. 

You sat yourself right back down in his seat as you got on the jet and laid down, pulling his blanket over yourself as you took up the entire space. 

The others shook their heads at you as they walked on, Spencer taking up the rear. His eyes met yours, and he scowled, and you couldn't help but wonder if he'd look like that fucking you, so stern and angry. 

You sighed and pushed onto your side as he stood over you. 

“That's my seat.” 

You smiled in success as you looked over your shoulder. 

“I'm tired, I'm going to sleep.” 

“But that is my seat-” 

“Spencer, you've sat on every seat on this damn plane before, that wasn't your seat until last month, now sit down, shut up and let me rest,” JJ exploded and you suddenly felt bad for drawing him into your argument.  Or you did until you sat up a bit, and he sat himself right down where your head had been. 

“Spencer!”

“I give up…” JJ groaned from the table seats, pulling headphones over her head and shutting her eyes, and the others made to ignore you similarly. 

Not one to be beaten, you pushed the book in his hands off his lap and laid your head down again, now cushioned by his legs. 

“What-” his voice squeaked as you shut your eyes, too, and made yourself comfortable. He didn't push you off, or, heaven forbid, start talking to you again. Shockingly, he adjusted to the position quickly and resigned himself to pillow duty for the six hour flight. 

You, too, shocked yourself by how fast you fell asleep. You woke up with his hands in your hair, stroking your head as he read, book in one hand, you in the other. His hands felt wonderful, raking through your long locks, brushing each errant hair off your face. 

“Spencer?” You said, voice still thick with sleep. 

His hand shot away, and you almost regretted not pretending to sleep for longer, sure that he'd have gone on if you hadn't said anything. 

You straightened and cleared your own throat as you stretched, sitting quietly as you listened to the flight landing announcement. 

“Congrats, Y/N, you've successfully finished your time with the BAU,” Rossi said from his seat opposite you, strapping in for the landing.

“And you haven't been shot, kidnapped, or slapped. That's gotta be a first, right?” Emily joked from the corner. 

You smiled quietly as you strapped yourself down, scooting even closer to Spencer now to get your belt fastened.

Still, you couldn't resist the urge to mumble a retort.

“I'm sure Spencer thought about it a few times,” you sighed, a breath of resignation releasing from your lips dramatically.

The others chuckled, but Spencer sat silently next to you until the jet landed. 

He stayed quiet as he began to pack his things, but it became clear quickly that he was dragging everything out. As the plane emptied, you shot him a curious look, not daring to speak until you were the last two on the plane. 

“You're being slow today.” 

“I've never thought about shooting you or kidnapping you,” he said, voice low and quiet, even though you were alone. 

“It was a joke, Spencer,” you started, so sick of him taking g everything so seriously. You made to walk past him, but as you did, you felt his hand on your waist pulling you back as another hand came hard and fast at your ass. 

“I wasn't finished speaking,” he said as his hand ran over your butt, soothing the pain he'd just delivered. “I have thought about slapping you, though.” 

With that he grabbed his bag and stalked off the jet, not bothering to cast another look behind him. 

Two could play at that game. 

In about the most childish was you could muster, you ran ahead of him, staying three paces directly in front of him as he tried to overtake you. You moved when he moved. You sped up when he sped up. You even stopped a few times, so he'd run into you. 

“Y/N, cut it out.”

“Make me,” you said, throwing a withering look over your shoulder. 

He didn't wither. 

Instead, he grabbed your arm and marched you all the way through the FBI building, down to the parking lot, and into your car. As soon as he had you safely in the driver's seat, he closed the door, pulling off your visitors' pass. 

“I'll return this for you, no need for you to dally.” 

“Fuck you,” you spat out the window as you started the ignition. 

“It's been a pleasure,” he said with a grimace. 

“No, it hasn't,” you said back, wondering how long you'd spend in jail of you just mowed him down then and there. 

“You’re right. It hasn't,” he said, leaning down and into the window so you were now eye to eye. 

“Really? It seems like you got a lot of pleasure out of spanking me earlier. You were certainly experiencing a lot of pleasure when you pushed me up against a wall last week. If it wasn't pleasure, there was definitely something long-”

“Long?” He smirked.

“And hard in your pants.” 

He leaned in through the window, his breath fanning against your cheeks as he whispered into your ear. 

“That was my gun.” 

“And I certainly won't be helping you fire a load,” you said, starting the ignition and pushing him back from the window as you drove away from the FBI and away from Spencer Reid. 

It infuriated him that you'd gotten the last word. You'd spent a month with him and hadn't even given him a chance to show off his good qualities, and then you'd left without giving him a chance to prove himself. 

And, in doing so, you'd told a blatant lie. 

There had been two people in that closet, two people with tongues desperate for contact, eager for battle. You'd been moaning just as much as he had when his hands found your nipples. 

But you'd gotten to drive away without listening to his retort, and it was killing him. 

He sat and seethed at his desk for a while, waiting for the sense of relief that you were gone to wash over him. This had been what he wanted for weeks. Why was he now so discontent? Why did everything feel wrong? 

Abandoning paperwork he knew wouldn't be needed until at least next week, Spencer found your address in the team files, wrote it down, and left his desk. 

When you got home, there was nothing waiting for you. 

It was annoying. You'd spent the last month constantly on the go, always with more work, more cases, more paperwork. You'd killed any apparent gaps with Spencer. 

You could still feel his hands on your ass. You hated to admit it, but in your short acquaintance with Doctor Asshat, you'd grown fond of having him around as eye candy. When he wasn't being annoying (talking, breathing, or generally just being), you could quite happily imagine his head buried between your legs, his tongue lapping up every drop of cum you had to offer. 

There were definitely better things he could be doing with his mouth, in any case. 

Your body felt hot, itchy, and neglected as you got home, running a shower immediately and stepping in. 

The water was hot, and the room steamed up faster than you expected. You washed away the fatigue, and you washed away the dirt of a month of cheap motels.. 

Just as you were about to wash away the memories of Spencer Reid and his stupidly skilful tongue, the doorbell rang. 

It wasn't unusual for you to get visitors at 10 pm, but usually they announced themselves. 

You stayed put in the shower. It was probably a package you'd ordered, and it could honestly wait. 

The ringing, though, didn't stop. Whoever was at your door was insistent. First, the door rang to the rhythm of jingle bells. Then, they moved on to Fur Elise. When they got to Flight of the Bumblebees Levels of bullshit, you couldn't stand it anymore. 

You wrapped a towel around you and pulled the door open wide. 

“Sp- mm?” You said, shocked to see him there, but completely floored by his appearance, and more importantly the two hands he'd planted on your cheeks as he pulled you in for a hot, hard, and fast kiss. 

You pushed him off with a hard slap to his face, and stalked further into your apartment, knowing he'd follow closely behind.

You heard the door slam shut as he made to grab you again, but you stayed just out of reach. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” 

“I came because neither of us will move on without this.”

“Oh, you need me so much you won't be able to move on if you don't fuck me?” You scoffed, expecting a sarcastic answer to a sarcastic question. 

“Yes,” he said, and your shock at his earnestness gave him the moment he needed to grab at you again. 

This time, though, the tiny towel that had been holding your dignity in place dropped to the floor as Spencer Reid pinned you against the wall. 

“Already fucking bare and wet for me, how well-behaved.”

“Go fuck yourself!” you said, even as his hands cupped your breasts, grabbing and pulling both of your nipples, making you moan.

“See, your mouth is being a bitch, but your body is being a whore.” 

“Just fuck me won't you? No need to run your mouth.” 

“I think we're finally in agreement on something,” he said, pushing you to your knees. 

“What? Sp-” 

In one quick swoop he released his cock from his pants and wrapped a hand around all of your hair as he slid it down your waiting throat. 

As much as you protested, your mouth was wide open, and your hands wrapped around him just as eagerly. 

Holding your head still, Spencer began to talk as he fucked your throat. 

“There we go. That's exactly how I've needed you for the last month.”

You glared at him as you sank your nails into his thighs, gagging on his cock as he picked up his pace.

With two taps on his leg, you requested a moment, and he quickly pulled his dick out of your mouth. 

You coughed quickly, then spat out all of your accumulated drool before looking up at him. 

Part of you wanted to force him down next to you, to make him taste your cunt the way you'd thought about earlier. The other part, the larger part, was excited about him using you. 

He grabbed his dick and slapped your face with it, returning your earlier hit. He was waiting for you to open up again so he could cum down your throat and leave. 

“Open,” he demanded. 

You didn't comply, but you stuck out your tongue, lapping at his tip slowly as you sat on your hands. He held his breath as you kissed the underside of his shaft, making his way to his balls. You reached them and finally sucked them into your mouth, making sure to look up and make eye contact with him as you toyed with his private place.

He didn't argue or complain. Instead he fisted a hand into your hair and dragged you to your bedroom. 

Divesting himself of his pants and shirt, he sat down and, still on all fours, pushed your face back into his crotch. Perched on the edge of your bed, he held his cock up and served himself to you. 

“Well? Get back to it, Y/N.” 

Your tongue found his cock first as his hands massaged his balls, playing with them gently as you licked all the way to his tip then buried yourself between his asscheeks. You licked at the skin between his ass and balls, you tasted every inch of him, and you grew angry that he still hadn't done this for you. 

Against his wished, you rose and spat on his cock, before squeezing it hard. 

“Spencer, are you going to fuck me or are you just going to ruin my makeup?” 

“You look prettier with spit coating your face than you've looked with any lipstick,” he said as you pushed him down onto the bed and grabbed his cock. 

Straddling his waist, you were surprised he.let you sink down onto his cock without so much as another word. You felt him fill you up, one inch, then another until you sat fully sheathed on top of him. 

And then he flipped you over so he was back in control. 

“Son of a bitch,” you muttered as he pulled out and thrust back in. 

“You wanted me to fuck you, I'm fucking you.”

You wanted to argue but all you could do was moan yes as he set a furious pace, thumb and forefinger pinching your clit as you bucked into him wildly.

You couldn't stand too much of this, knowing that you wanted to at least outlast him. You wanted to tell him how pathetic he was for cumming first, you wanted to gloat that he'd wanted you more, that he couldn't resist breeding your hot wet cunt. You knew any more of this, though, and you would instead be on the receiving end of those same taunts. 

Pushing against his chest, you used the last of your strength to flip him over again. He struggled, though, stronger than you were expecting, and you rolled together like that for a few moments.

You almost went crashing to the floor as he fought for control, but he pushed a foot off the bed and held you up with his lower body strength. The new position though forced his cock deeper, to just the right angle, and when he thrust into you again, you did something you'd never done before during sex. 

You screamed your pleasure. 

Your orgasm ripped through you, as painful as it was pleasurable, and you grabbed Spencer Reid by the neck and forced his tongue to meet yours. 

He couldn't complain, too busy moaning about your hot, wet, and now tighter cunt to worry about whether he should be kissing you. 

He pulled back and picked his pace right back up, but this time, you resisted less. Hooking a hand under your legs, he pressed your legs up, pushing his stomach and chest down just above your own as he moved slower but harder. 

You wondered if this was what other wen talked about when they said they wanted someone to beat their pussy up, to use them until they couldn't stand. You didn't think you could even think about walking again for the next month as he spread your knees apart and pinned them to the bed, unloading his cum as deep inside you as anything had ever been.

You didn't even know your body bent that way. 

Panting, he collapsed on top of you and buried his head in your shoulder, mumbling and muttering to himself as he came down from his ecstasy. 

He didn't pull out. He barely even softened as he kissed across the expanse of your throat, thrusting shallowly with each nip, until your body couldn't take anymore. 

He picked a spot and sucked, and licked and bit and soothed as he ended one round, and began another. 

“Spencer-” you said, gasping as he sat up, his cock once again standing at attention, filling you still. 

“No. Stop. Don't talk, we're not good when we talk.” 

You nodded and pulled him back for another kiss, wrapping a hand around his throat and pressing hard as he moaned and groaned into you. 

Still wet and slippery and sensitive from your first attempt, neither of you lasted long, falling to the bed when it was all over with a grunt of overexertion. 

“That was…” you said, stopping there, for once totally speechless.

“That was good?” He supplied, but just good wasn't enough. 

“Yes,” you agreed, though, not willing to let your cunt rule your mind when around him.

Anymore, at least. 

“We should… we should probably never speak again,” you said, even as your hand reached out for his, fingers tangling. 

“Of course. I'll leave, and we won't ever speak again,” he said, stroking your hand with his thumb, bringing your clasped hands to his mouth and pressing a kiss to your hand.

“You haven't left yet.” 

“I haven't.”

“I have nowhere to be tomorrow,” you said. “You don't…”

“I won't leave yet. We might as well enjoy this,” he said, propping himself up on his elbows as he looked over your naked body. 

“We should definitely just get this out of our systems now. What's the harm in that?” 

“I agree. If we're committing to a one time thing, we might as well go all in.”

“Exactly,” you said. 

“Exactly,” he parrotted.

Exactly a year later, the members of the BAU received invitations in the post to your wedding. Because the both of you had convinced yourself that that one time had never ended and never had need to. 

[nasa]

NASA Inspires Your Crafty Creations for World Embroidery Day

It’s amazing what you can do with a little needle and thread! For #WorldEmbroideryDay, we asked what NASA imagery inspired you. You responded with a variety of embroidered creations, highlighting our different areas of study.

Here’s what we found:

Webb’s Carina Nebula

Wendy Edwards, a project coordinator with Earth Science Data Systems at NASA, created this embroidered piece inspired by Webb’s Carina Nebula image. Captured in infrared light, this image revealed for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth. Credit: Wendy Edwards, NASA. Pattern credit: Clare Bray, Climbing Goat Designs

Wendy Edwards, a project coordinator with Earth Science Data Systems at NASA, first learned cross stitch in middle school where she had to pick rotating electives and cross stitch/embroidery was one of the options.  “When I look up to the stars and think about how incredibly, incomprehensibly big it is out there in the universe, I’m reminded that the universe isn’t ‘out there’ at all. We’re in it,” she said. Her latest piece focused on Webb’s image release of the Carina Nebula. The image showcased the telescope’s ability to peer through cosmic dust, shedding new light on how stars form.

Ocean Color Imagery: Exploring the North Caspian Sea

Danielle Currie of Satellite Stitches created a piece inspired by the Caspian Sea, taken by NASA’s ocean color satellites. Credit: Danielle Currie/Satellite Stitches

Danielle Currie is an environmental professional who resides in New Brunswick, Canada. She began embroidering at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic as a hobby to take her mind off the stress of the unknown. Danielle’s piece is titled “46.69, 50.43,” named after the coordinates of the area of the northern Caspian Sea captured by LandSat8 in 2019.

An image of the Caspian Sea captured by Landsat 8 in 2019. Credit: NASA

Two Hubble Images of the Pillars of Creation, 1995 and 2015

Melissa Cole of Star Stuff Stitching created an embroidery piece based on the Hubble image Pillars of Creation released in 1995. Credit: Melissa Cole, Star Stuff Stitching

Melissa Cole is an award-winning fiber artist from Philadelphia, PA, USA, inspired by the beauty and vastness of the universe. They began creating their own cross stitch patterns at 14, while living with their grandparents in rural Michigan, using colored pencils and graph paper.  The Pillars of Creation (Eagle Nebula, M16), released by the Hubble Telescope in 1995 when Melissa was just 11 years old, captured the imagination of a young person in a rural, religious setting, with limited access to science education.

Lauren Wright Vartanian of the shop Neurons and Nebulas created this piece inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope’s 2015 25th anniversary re-capture of the Pillars of Creation. Credit:  Lauren Wright Vartanian, Neurons and Nebulas

Lauren Wright Vartanian of Guelph, Ontario Canada considers herself a huge space nerd. She’s a multidisciplinary artist who took up hand sewing after the birth of her daughter. She’s currently working on the illustrations for a science themed alphabet book, made entirely out of textile art. It is being published by Firefly Books and comes out in the fall of 2024. Lauren said she was enamored by the original Pillars image released by Hubble in 1995. When Hubble released a higher resolution capture in 2015, she fell in love even further! This is her tribute to those well-known images.

James Webb Telescope Captures Pillars of Creation

Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art, created a rectangular version of Webb’s Pillars of Creation. Credit:  Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art

Darci Lenker of Norman, Oklahoma started embroidery in college more than 20 years ago, but mainly only used it as an embellishment for her other fiber works. In 2015, she started a daily embroidery project where she planned to do one one-inch circle of embroidery every day for a year.  She did a collection of miniature thread painted galaxies and nebulas for Science Museum Oklahoma in 2019. Lenker said she had previously embroidered the Hubble Telescope’s image of Pillars of Creation and was excited to see the new Webb Telescope image of the same thing. Lenker could not wait to stitch the same piece with bolder, more vivid colors.

Milky Way

Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art was inspired by NASA’s imaging of the Milky Way Galaxy. Credit: Darci Lenker

In this piece, Lenker became inspired by the Milky Way Galaxy, which is organized into spiral arms of giant stars that illuminate interstellar gas and dust. The Sun is in a finger called the Orion Spur.

The Cosmic Microwave Background

This image shows an embroidery design based on the cosmic microwave background, created by Jessica Campbell, who runs Astrostitches. Inside a tan wooden frame, a colorful oval is stitched onto a black background in shades of blue, green, yellow, and a little bit of red. Credit: Jessica Campbell/ Astrostitches

Jessica Campbell obtained her PhD in astrophysics from the University of Toronto studying interstellar dust and magnetic fields in the Milky Way Galaxy. Jessica promptly taught herself how to cross-stitch in March 2020 and has since enjoyed turning astronomical observations into realistic cross-stitches. Her piece was inspired by the cosmic microwave background, which displays the oldest light in the universe.

The full-sky image of the temperature fluctuations (shown as color differences) in the cosmic microwave background, made from nine years of WMAP observations. These are the seeds of galaxies, from a time when the universe was under 400,000 years old. Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team

GISSTEMP: NASA’s Yearly Temperature Release

Katy Mersmann, a NASA social media specialist, created this embroidered piece based on NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) global annual temperature record. Earth’s average surface temperature in 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record. Credit: Katy Mersmann, NASA

Katy Mersmann is a social media specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. She started embroidering when she was in graduate school. Many of her pieces are inspired by her work as a communicator. With climate data in particular, she was inspired by the researchers who are doing the work to understand how the planet is changing. The GISTEMP piece above is based on a data visualization of 2020 global temperature anomalies, still currently tied for the warmest year on record.

In addition to embroidery, NASA continues to inspire art in all forms. Check out other creative takes with Landsat Crafts and the James Webb Space telescope public art gallery.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[studiesmediain]

Operation Theatre Technician books pdf download 2023

This book focuses on the areas that come up most frequently in pre-PG exams. Anesthetists in training, postgraduate students, and professional anesthetists will benefit the most from this course. For MD/DA/DNB students, this book might be used as a last-minute revision guide. To make reading easier, the text is divided into nine pieces. Italics are used to highlight the most significant elements. Each chapter concludes with a summary of key ideas. An overview of subjects has been offered in a tabular format whenever possible. Disputes that arise often have been attempted to be settled as much as feasible. The most recent pharmacological, equipment, and procedure advancements have been included. The American Heart Association (AHA) updated its cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) recommendations in 2015.

BSc operation theatre & anesthesia technology

Product details

Product details

originally published at https://www.studiesmedia.in 

[gamorxa]

RESTLESS NIGHTS •°. *࿐

PAIRINGS— paul atreides x valkyrie!reader

SUMMARY—from a young age you’ve been paul atreides’ personal apprentice, your duty being to remain professional in protecting the life of the heir to the house of atreides. however, things change after a rainy night of comforting paul after he awakens from one of his terrible visions.

NOTE—this is my first time writing and publishing anything like this for a character, but after seeing dune two i just had to. expect more creations from me in the future. Constructive criticism is welcome, just keep it nice and kind. let me know how i did!

word count: 1.2k

Valkyries are very protective beings. In battle, their ultimate purpose is to carry the fallen warriors that perished in combat, and were worthy of eternal paradise, to Valhalla where their souls would reside in blissful harmony. However, there wasn’t just one type of valkyrie. A heroine valkyrie is what you were — the kind that only guarded the lives of those dearest to them. Your dearest was no one, but the son of the duke of atreides.

When you were first assigned to the house of atreides you just barely reached the ripe age of seven years old. In those times, your duty merely consisted of being the only company around his age the young boy had in his life. Innocent soft exchanges of giggles escaped from dimpled cheeks that ached from continuous smiles. Small pieces of grass littered the wild heads of curly hair the two of you possessed from previously rolling in the freshly cut grass the maintenance keepers recently trimmed. Within years, the grass turned to responsibilities, and the dimples into abstract bruises from the numerous sparing lessons shared between the two of you. Thus, your years of childish assignments were gone.

Now, you reside in the chambers next door to the young heir in case of any and all emergencies. You lie awake in your pristine silk sheets staring at the ceiling. The thunderous Caladan rain pelted down onto glass windows surrounding you, keeping you awake. This was your first night back from your annual trip to the emperor's headquarters where your sisters remain. No other planets you’ve ever visited didn’t have rain as loud as Caladan’s.

A loud groan breaks the song of raindrops singing along the windows.

You bolt out of bed and grab a dagger with the valkyries signature emblem on the hilt. Your hands turn white in contrast to your usual brown skin from how tight you hold it. Raising to the balls of your feet to remain as silent as possible, you trudge over to the door, leaving the comfort of your room. The marble flooring in the hallway tickles the bottom of your feet, but you barely notice due to your desperation to find the source the sound came from.

More thunder cracks. Another groan.

Your head sharply turns to the left toward Paul's room. Your body turns rigid.

Oh no.

Sprinting, you throw open his mahogany dark wood door making it slam into the back wall. There in rumpled sheets lies the source. His limbs are tangled in his blanket as he thrashes around in his bed, his face scrunched up in an expression of pure anguish. Wild brown curls surround him like a halo while the moonlight shines on his pale skin. He looks like an angel. A fallen angel.

“Paul,” you mumbled, letting your dagger slip from your hands.

He stirs in his sheets, letting out another low groan.

Rushing to the side of his bed, you dropped to your knees and cradle his face scanning the rest of body. Just in case.

“Paul!” you repeated.

He bolts up abruptly making your hands fall onto the bed. He’s panting as he looks around frantically before resting his eyes on you. His expression softens.

“Y/n?” His voice is raspier than normal due to the hours of restless sleep.

“It's okay, it’s okay,” you cooed. Your face filled with concern as you brush some of his wild hair out of his face. “I’m here.”

He sighs out the majority of the tension built up, rubbing his face from sleep with his trembling hands.

“More visions?” Your voice is so soft it tickles his ears creating a blanket of comfort. He doesn’t understand how a strong warrior could possess such a comforting voice, but that's one of the reasons he liked you so much. You never failed to make his worries disappear — not with a voice like that.

He only nods.

“Want to talk about it?” You rise from your spot on the floor to sit on the side of his bed making you at eye level and in closer proximity to the stressed boy. His eyes are slightly glossed over, and he’s avoiding eye contact as if he’s embarrassed.

“No,” he looks down in his lap before locking eyes with you, “I thought you were on your trip?”

You shake your head, “I came home early.”

Home. You saying it so casually almost makes Paul visibly melt.

“I missed you,” he whispers. His words hang in the air like a forbidden secret. Well, it was forbidden seeing as the relationship between the two of you was meant to be strictly professional. However, you two managed to lay on the thin layer of gray area in the matter.

You could only bashfully turn your head away towards the window. You hated how he’d say things like that in random moments. More so, you hated how much your cheeks would turn warm and your lips would scrunch to the corner of your face showcasing a deep dimple in the apple of your cheeks. The rain was still coming down harder without any plans to stop for the night.

The boy grabs your chin with his pointer finger and thumb and redirects your attention to his face. You could only look down at your lap before eventually looking into his eyes.

Desire. Burning desire is what his eyes scream as he looks at you.

You escape his hands and rise to leave a painfully lingering kiss on his forehead.

“Get some rest, Mr. Atreides.” You say, slightly teasing as you move to get off the bed. However, he reaches for your hand stopping your movements.

“Stay,” he pleads with desperation laced in his tone.

You hesitate.

“Please, Y/n, I need you.” His eyes are low and bright from the moonlight still coating the inside of his room. His blanket lies low on his waist hiding his boxers, and showcasing his chest of lean and faint abs from his weeks of training. He looked so…

“Fine,” the words slip from your mouth before you realize. Before you know it, he’s scooting over and raising the covers to allow you to easily slip into his sheets. They’re warm from his body heat making you release a sigh of breath you didn’t know you were holding.

He looks at your chest before shyly looking you in the eyes, “Can I-”

You tiredly nod your head and open your arms out welcomingly. The boy immediately goes to rest his head on your chest, wrapping his arms around your waist and tangling his legs with yours. This position feels completely natural and comforting from numerous other nights just like this one in the past. Your hands go to his curls and start massaging his head.

“Thank you,” he rasps out, barely staying awake, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Always,” you started, “I’ll always be here.”

You look down to find that the tired boy has already fallen asleep. With a small smile on your face you look up at the ceiling as more lighting cracks outside. You close your eyes assuming he missed your words.

He heard them. He always does.

[maidragoste]

Chapter Three: He ruined it

The Hunger Games AU

Katniss!Jacaerys x Peeta!Reader

Chapter One Chapter Two

A/N: I'm happy to bring you a new chapter of this series, sorry for the delay in publishing and I hope you enjoy it. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments or reblogs. Thank you for reading 🥰🥰💖💖

My inbox is open so I’m always willing to read your headcanons, opinions and answer your questions 🤭💕

Disclaimer: English is not my first language so I apologize for any mistakes

The elevator ride takes less than a minute since the training rooms are below the floor of your floor, but Jacaerys could still feel the tension in the air. He doesn't know if it's because you're nervous like him about seeing who they'll have to face in a few days or if, like him, you're upset because Larys told you two to spend all your time in public close to each other. Jace doesn't understand the reason behind his uncle's instructions, first, he made you two hold hands at the parade and now it seemed as if he wanted you to become friends while training. Jace doesn't like this, he doesn't want to get attached to you. That would only make things more difficult in the arena, but when he complained his uncle reminded him that he had already promised that he would do whatever he told him. He had to do it if he wanted to return home to Lucerys and Joffrey.

When they both get out of the elevator they find a giant gym full of weapons and obstacle courses. It's not even ten o'clock, yet you two are the last to arrive. The rest of the tributes are gathered in a tense circle, each one has a piece of cloth attached to their shirt with the number of their respective district. While they give his number, Jacaerys in a quick assessment realizes that you two are the only ones who are dressed alike. Was it another way to appear like a united front to others?

Once you and Jacaerys join the circle the head trainer steps forward and introduces herself as Atala and then begins to explain the training schedule, how each position has an expert in the skill in question, that some positions teach tactics survival and other fighting techniques. She also warns that it is prohibited to perform combat exercises with another tribute and that if someone wants to practice with a partner, there are assistants.

“We don't have to be together all the time if you don't want to,” you whispered to him, once Atala finished reading the list of skills and gave them the freedom to start training.

“But Larys said”

“Larys isn't here,” you interrupted, making him frown. “He's not going to know if we don't follow what he tells us one hundred percent.”

“If you don't want to train with me just say it” he snapped, feeling annoyed although it made no sense because he should be happy that you don't want to train with him either after all Jacaerys wanted to avoid spending as much time with you as possible.

“I'm not the one who complained at breakfast,” you reminded him, making him blush and feel ashamed of himself for his attitude. If he weren't so impulsive he would have at least waited for you to go to your room before complaining to his uncle.

“I'm sorry about that,” he apologized, scratching the back of his neck.

“Okay,” you shrugged, downplaying it, but even so, your district partner still felt like a fool because of his attitude. “Where do you want to start?”

“Let's tie some knots,” Jacaerys responded, thinking that his uncle had said not to attract attention so he was forbidden to take a bow at least until the private session with the gamemakers. Besides, Jace had no desire to be around the professional tributes, who had gone straight to the weapons that looked more deadly and handled them without difficulty, nor the trembling tributes who received their first class of knives or axes.

The stall is empty so the coach seems excited when the two approach. When he realizes that Jacaerys knows something about traps, he teaches them how to make a simple trap that would leave another tribute hanging from a tree by their leg. They practice for an hour until they both master the technique well and then move on to the camouflage station. Jacaerys notices that you seem more excited in this position as you mix mud, clay, and berry juice on your skin. It also seems easy for you to braid costumes out of vines and leaves. The coach for this position is excited about your work.

"I make the cakes" you blurt out of nowhere.

"The cakes?" He had been concentrating on watching Royce Baratheon swing a mace directly into the chest of a mannequin.

"Those from the bakery. I make the decorations"

Jacaerys remembers those cakes, which are on display in the shop window, with flowers and other pretty designs on the icing. Before he went to live with Uncle Larys he was never able to eat one of those but since they lived with him there was always cake for special occasions like birthdays and New Year's. Every time they went to buy the cake Joffrey and Lucerys always argued about which one looked the best before choosing which one to take. If he came home he didn't think he would be able to accompany them back to the bakery. He couldn't see your father and brothers in the face again. Nor could he see the disappointment in his brothers' eyes when they saw that the cakes were no longer as pretty as before.

"They're cute, but you won't be able to glaze someone to death," he hadn't meant to sound so scathing but thinking about your death, your family, and his siblings put him in a bad mood.

"You never know what might be in the arena what if…?"

"Let's continue with another position" he interrupts you, he wasn't in the mood for some joke.

"Okay, go ahead with whatever you want, I'll stay here a little longer. I'll catch up with you later" you responded.

The smile on your face had disappeared and Jacaerys felt a tightness in his stomach but he decided to ignore it, he just nodded and went to the fire-making station. He is so focused on the coach's instructions and getting the technique right that he doesn't even realize that he has spent so much time there until they announce that it is time for lunch. Jacaerys looks at you with the idea of telling you to have lunch together. He frowns when he sees that you are no longer alone but are talking to Jason Mallister, the thirteen-year-old boy from District 4. What were you doing? Larys said not to attract attention and you found yourself talking to one of the professional tributes, of course, that would attract attention.

Annoyed, Jacaerys went to the carts that had been brought with food and began to serve himself and then sat alone at one of the tables. Professional tributes gathered around a table. They were loud, unlike the rest they seemed carefree, as if they were not afraid.

A few minutes later you sit next to him. Jacaerys can't hold his curiosity for long so he asks you.

“Why were you talking to him?”

“Stop frowning, we're supposed to be friends,” you scold him in a whisper and he struggles to put on a friendlier face. “He reminds me of Joffrey,” you admit.

“My brother is nothing like him,” the brunette denies instantly. He wouldn't tell you but when you two saw the District 4 reaping he also thought about his brother when Jason appeared on screen. But he couldn't allow himself to see his brother in one of his opponents, that would only hurt him in the arena, so he instantly forced himself to push that thought away from him. The only thing in common between the two of them was that they are both thirteen years old, he just repeated to himself.

"I just showed Jason how I made my camouflage and I remembered when I tried to teach Joffrey how to frost a cookie." Jace must have made some funny face in his surprise because you were smiling again. "He made a mess, I don't know how he ended up with frosting on his hair and face, the only reason my mother didn't get mad is because Joffrey bought the cookies he ruined. If you ask me, he didn't ruin them, he just took artistic liberties" You said the last thing as if you were telling him a big secret, leaning towards him and putting your hand a few centimeters from your face, hiding it from the other tributes, as if you didn't want to they will try to read your lips. At your antics and the image of his younger brother covered in icing, Jacaerys can't help but laugh.

"I didn't know Joffrey spent so much time at the bakery."

"And with you", he added in his head. He couldn't help but wonder why his brother never told him. Although he shouldn't be surprised because at home there is always some bread or cookie from the bakery, but he always thought that the one who was going to buy it was Uncle Larys. He might have missed some things by spending so much time in the forest and the Hob with Baela.

"Your brother is addicted to sugar so he usually comes often after school to buy something. He says he deserves a treat after spending hours locked up in hell."

Jacaerys notices the affection with which you speak of his brother and he can't help but feel warm. He has the feeling that you have even more stories to tell about his brothers and he wants to hear them all.

"Yeah, that sounds like Joffrey," he agrees with a smile.

During the rest of the days of training, Jacaerys feels a whole mix of emotions fighting within him. You two continue training together in some positions such as setting up shelters, recognizing edible plants, and throwing knives and spears, but at some point, you always end up separated by your decision because you want to train with a partner so you look for one of the assistants. In those moments Jace can't help but distrust you because for a while he sees you fighting with the assistant but then the next time he sees you you are in the same section as the professionals, he never sees you talking to one of them but he still can't avoid feeling restless. On the other hand, he can't continue denying that something is forming between the two of you; it's impossible not to form a kind of friendship after sharing so many anecdotes during lunch. At first, you were the one who did most of the talking, telling him more about Joffrey's visits to the bakery, but then Jace wants to know about you and starts asking you more about you and your brothers. And before he least realizes it, he is also sharing his own stories. He tells you how Uncle Larys once made them believe his house was haunted only to make them stop wandering around at night because they wouldn't let him sleep. You laugh when he tells you how he once challenged a bear to fight in the woods to keep a beehive and how his father had never scolded him so much.

On the second day of training before you go to train with an assistant you whisper to Jacaerys that he has a shadow. When he turns to see Rue, the little girl from District 11 spying on them, you encourage him to talk to her but Jace refuses because he has no idea what to say to her and also because he is afraid of meeting her and she will remind him of his brothers or Baela's little sisters.

When the private sessions arrive with the gamemakers it is evident that both you and Jacaerys are nervous because neither of you tries to have a conversation while waiting your turn or even when the two of you are alone after Rue enters.

"Good luck," Jacaerys wishes you as he stands up when he is called. He couldn't tell you later because once a tribute finishes the session he has to go to his apartment "Try throwing the weights, impress them."

"Thank you" It is evident that you were not expecting his words because you keep looking at him impressed "Lucky for you too. Remember to shoot well" you smile at him.

He nods and starts walking towards the door.

He ruined it. What the hell was he thinking? No, he didn't think about it. He just let his anger get the best of him, he was outraged that the guards had stopped paying attention to him after he missed his first shot, he was furious that he could die within a few days and they wouldn't deign to watch his entire performance, so he took the arrow and shot at the gamemakers' table. Of course, he didn't shoot any of them, his arrow hit right where he wanted it, in the apple that the pig had in its mouth. When all eyes were on him he sarcastically thanked them for their time while bowing. He didn't wait to be fired, he stormed out of the training room still feeling his blood boil. Only when he was alone in the elevator did he feel the weight of what he did, he felt like his heart was about to jump out of his chest and his throat was burning. He ruined it. He hadn't tried to kill any of the gamemakers but maybe someone would think that. He was sure he must be the first tribute to do something like that. He lost any chance he had of winning the games. But what scares him the most is that because of his attitude, they will now punish his brothers. He would never forgive himself if something happened to them because of him.

When the elevator doors opened, tears had already begun to roll down Jacaerys's cheeks. He ignored the questions from Effie, who was waiting for him in the hallway, and locked himself straight into his room. It didn't take long for knocks to sound on his door and the woman's voice asking him to come out but he didn't move from the bed. When silence came he thought that he had finally given up and they would leave him alone. But minutes later he heard the cold voice of his uncle:

"Jacaerys, open the door. Stop acting like a child."

Jacaerys was about to ignore him but then he realized that the only one who could help him protect his brothers was his uncle. So he took courage and got out of his pile of blankets. He unlatched the door and nervously opened the door. For a moment he thought he saw something different in his uncle's eyes. He couldn't figure out exactly what but that only made him more nervous. Without saying anything he went to sit on the edge of the bed while he watched Larys enter and close the door again. Surprising him, did his uncle think that he would try to escape in the middle of the conversation?

Larys took the chair that was at the desk placed it in front of the bed and then sat down.

"I ruined it," said Jacaerys, his voice breaking when he saw that his uncle did not seem willing to start the conversation. "They are going to punish Luke and Joff because of me." The teenager's desperation was clear by how he tugged at his curls as he spoke."You have to do something, uncle, please. It's my fault, let them punish me."

"What did you do?" the victor demanded to know.

Then Jace told him everything, how the gamemakers were drunk and how after he missed his first shot they stopped paying attention to him, missing the circuit he made and how he hit the center in the rest of his shots, that he didn't think about his actions, that he got carried away with anger and shot at the apple that was in the mouth of the pig that the gamemakers were about to eat, gaining their attention again and how he left the training room without waiting to be fired but not before thanking them sarcastically for their attention. As Jacaerys continued speaking Larys's hand turned white from the strength with which he gripped his staff.

"I told you that you won't attract attention" his uncle's biting tone only made Jacaerys' discomfort increase and he couldn't help but take one of the blankets again and wrap himself in it. It's not like he expected Larys to comfort him but he also shouldn't have been surprised that the first thing he did was scold him. "But you can rest assured, they're not going to punish your brothers." There was that strange look in his eyes again.

"Are you sure?" The uncertainty in his voice was clear, he wanted to trust his uncle but at the same time, he couldn't help but think that Larys would tell him any lie as long as he kept concentrating on the games.

"If they are going to punish Lucerys and Joffrey, they would have to tell what you did in the entertainment center so that it has some effect on the districts, but they won't because it's secret," Larys explained with a little more patience. "The only one you hurt with your actions it's you"

Upon hearing that nothing would happen to his brothers, Jacaerys felt that part of his discomfort disappeared. He still had to worry because surely the gamemakers would now make his life miserable in the arena but at least he knew that his brothers would be safe.

"I know, the gamemakers will make my life miserable in the arena" he stated "And today they will give me the worst score so I won't have any sponsors" he sighed thinking that now it would be even more difficult for him to survive in the arena without sponsors, the food wouldn't be a big problem because he knew how to hunt but if he got hurt then he would need medicine.

"Don't worry about the sponsors, I'll take care of that," Larys promises and this time Jacaerys doesn't doubt his uncle because he looks too confident. "Well, it's done, it's not something we can change. Stop getting depressed and let's go have dinner before they give the scores."

During dinner, Jace barely joins the conversation and feels your worried gaze the entire time. It seems that Effy told you about the state he arrived in after his private session.

In the middle of dinner, Effy can't stand his curiosity anymore so he asks them both how it went. Jacaerys wasn't going to say anything until he heard you speak.

"I don't think I impressed them, some paid attention to me but others were more focused on whatever was on the table," you said resignedly.

"It's my fault. I'm sorry" he apologized, feeling guilty because apparently he had also harmed your private session.

"How is it your fault?" Cinna asked curiously.

"I shot them an arrow," Jace replied.

At first, he ignored Effy's indignation and the rest of the team's questions, focusing more on your reaction. You still looked at him with concern. He was relieved to not see you angry. The truth is, he couldn't blame you if you got angry with him after all his act had attracted the attention of the gamemakers when it was essential for you to have a better score.

"I actually shot an arrow at the pig's apple they were about to eat. They were drunk and I got angry because they weren't paying attention to me."

"And what did they tell you?" You asked anxiously and looked at the doors as if you were expecting that at any moment the peace officers would come in to look for him.

"I don't know. I left"

"Did you leave without permission?" Effie asked to see if she understood correctly.

"I gave it to myself" Jace replied and a laugh escaped your mouth, you quickly stifled it with your hand before Effie's gaze. Jacaerys was pleased to see the worry disappear from your face.

"Larys, aren't you going to say anything about it?" Effie questioned evidently expecting the victor to side with her and scold them.

"It's done, Effie. There's nothing we can do," he responded boredly as he buttered a piece of bread.

"What was their face?" you asked, looking at him curiously.

"They seemed terrified. A man stumbled backward and fell into a punch bowl." At the time Jacaerys had been so angry that he couldn't enjoy the watchman making a fool of himself but now he remembered it with fun.

Everyone laughed, except for Effie but she seemed to hold back a smile so Jace didn't take it the wrong way.

“Oh, I would have loved to see that,” you said with a smile. If Jacaerys hadn't been so focused on you then he would have noticed that his uncle seemed to be studying the two of you.

Once everyone finishes dinner they go to sit in the living room to watch the scores announced on television. How every year a photo of the tribute appears while Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith announce the score. What is striking with the group of professionals is that this year not everyone has a score between eight and ten like previous years, but the boy from District 4 gets a seven. The same score that Rue gets, Jace can't help but wonder how she managed to get that score. But any thoughts of the little girl from District 11 disappear and are replaced by euphoria when he hears Caesar announce his score. An eleven.

Applause and congratulations filled the room. Jacaerys smiles until he realizes that his uncle is quiet and doesn't look as excited as the rest about his eleven. He starts to feel the anxiety in his body and he wants to ask his uncle what the problem is but he doesn't want to have this conversation in front of everyone.

“Good” is the only thing Larys says after they also announce your eight. And Jace feels stupid for worrying so much, surely his uncle didn't say anything before because he was still hanging on to your score after all he wasn't the only tribute Larys had in charge. “You should go to sleep, you have a long day tomorrow” he ordered them while motioning to the avox to bring him more wine.

You and Jacaerys say goodbye to the entire team and head toward the hallway where your rooms are.

“Tell me, what does it feel like to break the bad streak of twelve and go down in history?” you said while leaning on your door.

“You're exaggerating,” Jace said, trying to sound exasperated by rolling his eyes, but there was no annoyance in his tone.

“I'm not,” you shook your head, smiling. You just beat the score of the professionals, I think it's impressive” you said while crossing your arms. “Surely the entire Capitol is talking about you and you are going to monopolize all my sponsors.”

Your last words brought Jace back to his senses. You two were in a competition and his live were at stake. He couldn't keep joking with you. He should be focused on making a good impression on Caesar and the people at the Capitol tomorrow.

“We should go to sleep,” he said abruptly, resting his hand on the handle of his door, trying not to feel guilty as he saw how the spark in your eyes seemed to go out at his tone. “Have a good night,” he didn’t even wait for you to respond before walking into his room and closing the door. His father would be disappointed in his treatment of you.

a/n: I'm grieving because I had to delete the scene I had with Larys and Sea Dragon bc if I left it, then there were going to be things in Cathing Fire that didn't make sense 😫

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, as I always say the comments and reblogs are very appreciated 🥰

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[trans-axolotl]

ID: Intersex activist Max Beck standing in front of the American Academy of Pediatrics with a sign that says Silence=Death.

On October 26th, 1996, the first ever protest for intersex liberation in America took place when activists from Hermaphrodites With Attitude took to the streets to protest the American Academy of Pediatrics. Later memorialized as intersex awareness day, this important action was a milestone for the American intersex movement. Max Beck, one of the intersex activists from HWA, documented the entire protest and later published their recollection in the Intersex Awakening Issue of the Chrysalis Journal. The full piece is pasted under the cut.  

"But we’re here today to say we’re back, we’re no longer lost, and we’d like to offer some feedback. We’re here to say that the treatment paradigm for “managing” intersexuals is in desperate, urgent need of re-examination. We’re back to say that early surgical intervention leads to more than “just” physical scars and sexual dysfunction. We’re back to say that the lack of education and counseling for intersexuals, our families and the community at large does not lead to a blissful, healthy, well-adjusted ignorance. Rather, it too often leads to a life-threatening shroud of silence, secrecy, and self-hatred. 

I’m here representing over one hundred fifty intersexals throughout North America. One hundred fifty intersexuals are saying: Please! Listen! You doctors, you pediatric endocrinologists and urologists treating intersexuals, you nurses interacting with intersexuals and their families, listen to us! We understand intersexuality, not because we have studied the medical literature — although many of us have — not because we have performed surgeries, but because we have been grappling with intersexuality every day of our lives. We’re here to say that those who would have us believe that intersexuality is rare, cloud the issue by breaking us and separating us into narrow etiological categories which have little meaning in terms of our actual, lived experience. 

We’re here so that other intersexuals can find us — for many of us, finding others like ourselves has been a lifealtering, even life-saving, experience. We’re here to reach parents before their intersex child is born. We’re here to elicit the help of other sympathetic professionals. We can take a stand as openly intersex adults without being crushed by shame! And we did!" 

Hermaphrodites With Attitude Take to the Streets: By Max Beck, 1997

In late October of 1996, Hermaphrodites with Attitude took to the streets, in the first public demonstration by intersexuals in modern history. On a glorious fall day, the like of which you can only find in New England, under a crackling, cloudless sky, twenty-odd protesters joined forces to picket the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pediatricians in Boston. Deeply aware of the historical and personal significance of the action, and — correctly — surmising that a notebook diary would not be practical on such a whirlwind, windy week-end, I took a small hand-held tape recorder with me. What follows are excerpts from the resulting transcript.

October 24, 1996 2:45 PM, Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport

The trip has only just begun and I am already exhausted. Hot. Starving. Fifteen minutes until take-off. Every businessman boarding the plane looks like a pediatric endocrinologist, Boston-bound. Silly thought, testimony to what? My anxiety? My fear? My giddy anticipation? If these bespectacled, suit-and-tie sporting men were pediatricians, would they be flying coach on Continental, with a layover in Newark? I’m headed for Boston, for the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP). Tens of thousands of pediatricians. I’m not a pediatrician, though, nor am I a nurse; in fact, I barely managed to complete my B.A. I’m a manager of a technical laboratory. We don’t work with children, and the AAP certainly didn't invite me, so why am I going?

With the plane taxiing toward take-off, this is a lousy time to reassess. I’m going. I’m going because I am intersexed. I’m going because the doctors and nurses who treated me as an infant and a child and an adolescent, and those who continue to treat intersexed infants and children today, consider me “lost to follow-up.” I was lost— that’s part of the problem. Now, I’m back.

9:02 PM: Boston’s North End

I’m comfortably ensconced in Alice’s warehouse condo in Boston’s North End, a renovated warehouse with a view of the city skyline, ceilings easily twenty feet high, exposed beams and brick, gorgeous tile floor. As I speak, my hostess is preparing an absolutely phenomenal meal. The aroma of roasted peppers permeates the entire space. Tomorrow, the work begins; my project this evening is to unwind and enjoy this wonderful meal. Easier said than done. I’m feeling excited, enervated, I feel very alive, something I don’t feel very often, I feel very present and aware. It could be my exhaustion, it could be the Chardonnay. But I think, rather, that the excitement is anticipation about what we are about to do. Being here, finally being prepared to raise a voice, to be heard, to be seen, a vocal, out, proud hermaphrodite who is standing up to say, “Let’s rethink this, this isn’t working, we’ve been hurt, stop what you’re doing, listen to us!” I’m really looking forward to meeting Morgan at the airport in the morning; it’s always amazing to make eye contact with someone else who has been there.

October 25, 7:38 AM Boston Commons

En route to my encounter with the AAP, walking the approximately two miles from my hostess’ domicile to the Marriott Hotel at Copley Square, I pause in the Boston Commons to enjoy a park bench, to sip my Starbuck’s decaf, and to watch a group of senior citizens performing Japanese swordsmanship on top of the hill beneath a monument to some forgotten general. The city is cool this morning, but clear, and it promises to be a beautiful weekend. That’s good: we won’t be rained out. I’ve got a stack of about ninety ISNA brochures in the bag at my side, crammed in the inside pocket of my leather jacket. If I want these pamphlets to get inside, I’ve got to get to the site of the Nurses’ Panel at the Marriott before they close the doors. Then it’s back out to the airport, to pick up Morgan. My feet are already killing me.

October 26, 9:15 AM: North End

Morgan and I are sitting at our hostess’ breakfast table, pulling our thoughts together. In a few minutes, we’ll have to leave to pick up Riki at the airport. The logistics of pulling together an action are mind-boggling. There’s no describing the thrill, though, of all that work, all those phone calls, all those miles. Riding a clattering subway on a Saturday morning, seated beside another living, breathing, laughing, swearing intersexual, hugging near-strangers at unfamiliar airports, then riding back, together, defiant, determined, organized, to the heart of so much of our pain, so much of our anger, so much of our need. We gathered in front of the huge Hynes Auditorium, pamphlets and leaflets in hand, and met the AAP attendees as they left the convention center for lunch. The next hour-and-a-half was a blur, as we positioned ourselves in strategic locations before the Hynes, held signs and “Hermaphrodites with Attitude” banner aloft, distributed our literature, engaged AAP members and passers-by in conversation and debate, spoke to microphones, to cameras. In all that time, I recorded only one fragment of a breathless sentence. 

Saturday, 12:20 PM Outside the Hynes

We’ve got all the exits covered, and it’s an incredible, incredibly empowering experience. I remember the words I spoke to the TV camera, if only because I had scribbled a rough outline on the airplane, pirating mightily from Cheryl’s press release. And because the moment was so salient, so real. Me, Max, bespectacled, with blisters on my feet and chapped lips, speaking out to untold numbers of invisible viewers (and a few bewildered pediatricians behind me.)

"When an intersex child is born, parents and caregivers are faced with what seems to be a terrible dilemma: here is an infant who does not fit what our society deems normal. Immediate medical intervention seems indicated, in order to spare the parents and the child the inevitable stigmatization associated with being different. Yet the infant is not facing a medical emergency; intersexuality is rarely if ever life-threatening. Rather, the psychosocial crisis of the parents and caregivers is medicalized. 

Intersexuality is assumed to be a birth defect which can be corrected, outgrown and forgotten. The experiences of members of the intersex support groups indicate that intersexuality cannot be fixed; an intersex infant grows up to be an intersex adult. This hasn’t been explored, because intersex patients are almost invariably “lost to follow-up.” The abstract of a talk that will be given at this very conference by a doctor who treats intersex infants concedes that “the psychological issues surrounding genital reconstruction are inadequately understood.”

Part of the problem is that we were lost to follow-up, and there were reasons for that. But we’re here today to say we’re back, we’re no longer lost, and we’d like to offer some feedback. We’re here to say that the treatment paradigm for “managing” intersexuals is in desperate, urgent need of re-examination. We’re back to say that early surgical intervention leads to more than “just” physical scars and sexual dysfunction. We’re back to say that the lack of education and counseling for intersexuals, our families and the community at large does not lead to a blissful, healthy, well-adjusted ignorance. Rather, it too often leads to a life-threatening shroud of silence, secrecy, and self-hatred. I’m here representing over one hundred fifty intersexals throughout North America.

One hundred fifty intersexuals are saying: Please! Listen! You doctors, you pediatric endocrinologists and urologists treating intersexuals, you nurses interacting with intersexuals and their families, listen to us! We understand intersexuality, not because we have studied the medical literature — although many of us have — not because we have performed surgeries, but because we have been grappling with intersexuality every day of our lives. We’re here to say that those who would have us believe that intersexuality is rare, cloud the issue by breaking us and separating us into narrow etiological categories which have little meaning in terms of our actual, lived experience. We’re here so that other intersexuals can find us — for many of us, finding others like ourselves has been a lifealtering, even life-saving, experience. We’re here to reach parents before their intersex child is born. We’re here to elicit the help of other sympathetic professionals. We can take a stand as openly intersex adults without being crushed by shame! And we did!

7:20 PM: Boston’s North End

Goddess, this is so sweet, so liberating! I was so reluctant a week ago, having my Jesus-in-Gethsemane experience, reluctant to accept — not an onus or responsibility but — to accept who I am. And here’s where the hard work really begins. I’m exhausted when I think of the road before us. But then, it’s nothing like the road behind us. 

Max Beck, 1997.

[prokopetz]

Hi, I can you shed some light into what happened with the third edition of nobilis and the DeviantArt art? I ask out of genuine curiosity and confusion, as my first impression with nobilis came through tvtropes and the vague posting happening inside the article talking about stolen art, and frankly I never heard a comprehensive anything, from any traceable source. Thanks.

Mm. The gory details aren't really my story to tell (and I'm given to understand that the game's author doesn't like to talk about it, so please don't go pestering her on my account!), but in the interest of heading off the rumour mill, the short version is as follows:

Nobilis 3rd Edition was originally funded via Kickstarter under the banner of Eos Press – who, to be clear, were merely the game's publisher, not its creator.

When the game's preview edition was released to Kickstarter backers, folks noticed that some of its illustrations looked awfully familiar. Several pieces were quickly identified as having been traced from Touhou fanart published on DeviantArt and elsewhere.

The preview edition was withdrawn, and new art obtained to replace the plagiarised pieces. Eos Press made no statement accepting responsibility for the fiasco, and some of the replacement art was apparently commissioned at the author's own expense, both of which are highly irregular; however, at the time, most people assumed it was just the usual small-press lack of professionalism at work.

Fast forward four years, and the owner of Eos Press gets caught red-handed misappropriating Kickstarter funds for personal use, albeit from a different project. In light of this, it's been speculated Eos Press' owner also pocketed the art budget for Nobilis 3rd Edition; that would explain both the low-effort plagiarism and the game's author having to pay for the replacement art out of pocket.

The author of Nobilis subsequently cut ties with Eos Press, recovered the game's publishing rights, and independently published her own version which replaces Eos' "contributions" with original material, produced at her own considerable effort and expense. This version of Nobilis 3rd Edition is the one that's currently for sale via DriveThruRPG and elsewhere.

Clear as mud?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Too big to care

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Remember the first time you used Google search? It was like magic. After years of progressively worsening search quality from Altavista and Yahoo, Google was literally stunning, a gateway to the very best things on the internet.

Today, Google has a 90% search market-share. They got it the hard way: they cheated. Google spends tens of billions of dollars on payola in order to ensure that they are the default search engine behind every search box you encounter on every device, every service and every website:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Not coincidentally, Google's search is getting progressively, monotonically worse. It is a cesspool of botshit, spam, scams, and nonsense. Important resources that I never bothered to bookmark because I could find them with a quick Google search no longer show up in the first ten screens of results:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Even after all that payola, Google is still absurdly profitable. They have so much money, they were able to do a $80 billion stock buyback. Just a few months later, Google fired 12,000 skilled technical workers. Essentially, Google is saying that they don't need to spend money on quality, because we're all locked into using Google search. It's cheaper to buy the default search box everywhere in the world than it is to make a product that is so good that even if we tried another search engine, we'd still prefer Google.

This is enshittification. Google is shifting value away from end users (searchers) and business customers (advertisers, publishers and merchants) to itself:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/05/the-map-is-not-the-territory/#apor-locksmith

And here's the thing: there are search engines out there that are so good that if you just try them, you'll get that same feeling you got the first time you tried Google.

When I was in Tucson last month on my book-tour for my new novel The Bezzle, I crashed with my pals Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. I've know them since I was a teenager (Patrick is my editor).

We were sitting in his living room on our laptops – just like old times! – and Patrick asked me if I'd tried Kagi, a new search-engine.

Teresa chimed in, extolling the advanced search features, the "lenses" that surfaced specific kinds of resources on the web.

I hadn't even heard of Kagi, but the Nielsen Haydens are among the most effective researchers I know – both in their professional editorial lives and in their many obsessive hobbies. If it was good enough for them…

I tried it. It was magic.

No, seriously. All those things Google couldn't find anymore? Top of the search pile. Queries that generated pages of spam in Google results? Fucking pristine on Kagi – the right answers, over and over again.

That was before I started playing with Kagi's lenses and other bells and whistles, which elevated the search experience from "magic" to sorcerous.

The catch is that Kagi costs money – after 100 queries, they want you to cough up $10/month ($14 for a couple or $20 for a family with up to six accounts, and some kid-specific features):

https://kagi.com/settings?p=billing_plan&plan=family

I immediately bought a family plan. I've been using it for a month. I've basically stopped using Google search altogether.

Kagi just let me get a lot more done, and I assumed that they were some kind of wildly capitalized startup that was running their own crawl and and their own data-centers. But this morning, I read Jason Koebler's 404 Media report on his own experiences using it:

https://www.404media.co/friendship-ended-with-google-now-kagi-is-my-best-friend/

Koebler's piece contained a key detail that I'd somehow missed:

When you search on Kagi, the service makes a series of “anonymized API calls to traditional search indexes like Google, Yandex, Mojeek, and Brave,” as well as a handful of other specialized search engines, Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, etc. Kagi then combines this with its own web index and news index (for news searches) to build the results pages that you see. So, essentially, you are getting some mix of Google search results combined with results from other indexes.

In other words: Kagi is a heavily customized, anonymized front-end to Google.

The implications of this are stunning. It means that Google's enshittified search-results are a choice. Those ad-strewn, sub-Altavista, spam-drowned search pages are a feature, not a bug. Google prefers those results to Kagi, because Google makes more money out of shit than they would out of delivering a good product:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024-home-use-office-use-labels-school-homework

No wonder Google spends a whole-ass Twitter every year to make sure you never try a rival search engine. Bottom line: they ran the numbers and figured out their most profitable course of action is to enshittify their flagship product and bribe their "competitors" like Apple and Samsung so that you never try another search engine and have another one of those magic moments that sent all those Jeeves-askin' Yahooers to Google a quarter-century ago.

One of my favorite TV comedy bits is Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the AT&T operator; Tomlin would do these pitches for the Bell System and end every ad with "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company":

https://snltranscripts.jt.org/76/76aphonecompany.phtml

Speaking of TV comedy: this week saw FTC chair Lina Khan appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. It was amazing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

The coverage of Khan's appearance has focused on Stewart's revelation that when he was doing a show on Apple TV, the company prohibited him from interviewing her (presumably because of her hostility to tech monopolies):

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/apple-got-caught-censoring-its-own

But for me, the big moment came when Khan described tech monopolists as "too big to care."

What a phrase!

Since the subprime crisis, we're all familiar with businesses being "too big to fail" and "too big to jail." But "too big to care?" Oof, that got me right in the feels.

Because that's what it feels like to use enshittified Google. That's what it feels like to discover that Kagi – the good search engine – is mostly Google with the weights adjusted to serve users, not shareholders.

Google used to care. They cared because they were worried about competitors and regulators. They cared because their workers made them care:

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/4/18295933/google-cancels-ai-ethics-board

Google doesn't care anymore. They don't have to. They're the search company.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi