#22 hours later and this is the result
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Boat Marc in bi-lighting has a special place in my heart. Excited to finally be back at digital art!
#22 hours later and this is the result#rendering was a bitch#thankful everyday for the blur tool#and the colour selector#marc spector#steven grant#jake lockley#moonknight#moon knight#moon knight fanart#moon knight art#moonknight fanart#oscar isaac art#oscar isaac#digital art#procreate
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Whumptober 2023
Welcome to Whumptober 2023 — the sixth year running!
COMPLETIONISTS/PARTICIPANT BADGES CAN BE FOUND HERE
To those of you who participated last year, welcome back! To everyone joining this year, welcome!
Please make sure to read the Event Info carefully, as most of your questions will be answered there already. For everything else, you are welcome to come to our ask box or ask questions in our Discord server here.
This year’s AO3 Collection can be found here.
And this years playlist can be found here.
There are 139 prompt options in total this year - this is including the alternatives list! A special thanks goes out to those who took part in our trope vote back in July. From the 1526 responses to our list of 223 tropes, we looked through the popularity results, as well as your honourable mentions, and were able to produce this years prompts list. Stay tuned, as we will be posting some of the results at a later date!
We’re very excited to see the community come together once more and be a wild, chaotic bunch of creators and consumers of whump. Go wild with the prompts, and support your fellow creators - we wish you all the fun!
Best of luck and happy whumping,
Mods Vanne, Yenn, Kitty and Surro
(All 31 Themes + Prompts, Event Information and FAQs are posted below the cut!)
Whumptober 2023 Prompt List
No. 1: “But now this room is spinning while I’m trying just to fill in all the gaps.”
Safety Net | Swooning | “How many fingers am I holding up?”
No. 2: “I’ll call out your name, but you won’t call back.”
Thermometer | Delirium | “They don't care about you.”
No. 3: “Like crying out in empty rooms; with no-one there except the moon.”
Journal | Solitary Confinement | “Make it stop.”
No. 4: “I see the danger, It’s written there in your eyes.”
Cattle Prod | Shock | “You in there?”
No. 5: “You better pray I don't get up this time around.”
Debris | Pinned Down | “It's broken.”
No. 6: “Do or die, you’ll never make me; Because the world will never take my heart.”
Recording | Made to Watch | “It should have been me.”
No. 7: " “I paced around for hours on empty; I jumped at the slightest of sounds.”
Alleyway | Radio Silence | “Can you hear me?”
No. 8: “I’ve got soul, but I’m not a soldier.”
Overcrowded ER | Outnumbered | “It’s all for nothing.”
No. 9: “Learning everything ain't what it seems, that's the thing about these days.”
Polaroid | Mistaken Identity | “You're a liar.”
No. 10: “Can’t you see that you’re lost without me?”
Broken Phone | Stranded | “You said you'd never leave.”
No. 11: “All the lights going dark and my hope’s destroyed.”
Animal trap | Captivity | “No one will find you.”
No. 12: “I haven't slept in days but who's counting?”
Red | Insomnia | “I’m up, I’m up.”
No. 13: “It comes and goes like the strength in your bones.”
Cold Compress | Infection | “I don’t feel so good.”
No. 14: “Feed me poison, fill me ‘till I drown.”
Flare | Water Inhalation | “Just hold on.”
No. 15: “I don't need you to help me I can handle things myself.”
Makeshift Bandages | Suppressed Suffering | “I’m fine.”
No. 16: “Would you lie with me and just forget the world?”
Gurney | Flatline | “Don’t go where I can’t follow.”
No. 17: “You’re the lump in my throat and the knot in my chest.”
Collar | Touch Aversion | “Leave me alone.”
No. 18: “I tend to deflect when I’m feeling threatened.”
Blindfold | Tortured For Information | “Hit them harder.”
No. 19: “I’ll take one final step, all you have to do is make me.”
Floral Bouquet | Psychological | “I’m not as stupid as you think I am.”
No. 20: “People don’t change people, time does.”
Blanket | Found Family | “You will regret touching them.”
No. 21: “See the chains around my feet.”
Vows | Restraints | “Don't move.”
No. 22: “They never saw us coming, ‘til they hit the floor.”
Glass Shard | Vehicular Accident | “Watch out!”
No. 23: “It’s gonna get me by the end of the night.”
Shadows | Stalking | “Who’s there?”
No. 24: “I’ve got a head full of chemicals; mouth full of ridicule.”
Goodbye Note | Neglect | “I thought they were with you.”
No. 25: “You’re not delivering a perfect body to the grave.”
Storm | Buried Alive | “They’re not breathing!”
No. 26: “Sometimes I get so tired; I don’t even know myself.”
Seeing Double | Working To Exhaustion | “You look awful.”
No. 27: “You drew stars around my scars; But now I’m bleeding.”
Matches | Scars | “Let me see”
No. 28: “We might not make it to the morning; so go on and tell me now.”
Bloody Knife | Sacrifice | “You'll have to go through me.”
No. 29: “I only sink deeper the deeper I think.”
Scented Candle | Troubled Past Resurfacing | “What happened to me?”
No. 30: “It’s okay, just to say, ‘I’m not okay’.”
Borrowed Clothing | Bridal Carry | “Not much longer...”
No. 31: “I thought that I was getting better.”
Emptiness | Setbacks | “Take it easy.”
Alternatives List:
Betrayal
Aftermath of Failure
Brass Knuckles
Decoy
Body Modification
Playing Cards
Examination
Hunting
Drugging
Shaking
Panic
Broken
Miscommunication
Lab Rat
Reluctant Whumper
Event Info & Rules
~ Please read our extensive event info posts before sending us an ask ~
WHUMPTOBER is a month-long, prompt-based creation challenge (think: Inktober, but whumpier). There are 31 official themes this year - one for each day of the month - which can be used, skipped, or combined in any way you’d like. The 'theme' of each day is the line of lyrics.
The prompts are merely to serve as inspiration without being taken literally (e.g. you don’t have to include the exact wording of prompts into your work). Feel free to run rampant on interpretation. For example, if the prompt is "flame", you could create something with reference to a candle/campfire, your character could have suffered a burn, or the flame could be related to the 'spark' of a relationship. It's truly up to you!
In total, there are 4 prompts for each day: there's lyrics, an object, a trope and a line of dialogue to choose from. We want to give everyone as much creative freedom as possible, as well as increase event accessibility for folks with triggers and squicks.
Creators can PRODUCE work in any media they choose, including but not limited to: writing, visual artwork, photo/video/audio edits, paper crafts and elaborate recommendation lists (not just a list of links). Creators can PARTICIPATE as much or as little as they want (i.e. you don’t have to do ALL the prompts if you don’t want to) and prompts can be used in any order. They are also free to use even after the event ends.
When uploading Whumptober content to your blog, be sure to tag the with:
#whumptober2023 …..(the event tag)
#no.1, #no.2, #no.3, …..(day number)
#lyric, #bruises, #stabbing, …..(the theme or specific prompt you chose)
#fandom or #OC, … (ironman, originalcontent, oc …)
#medium …..(gifs, fic, podcast, art, etc.)
#teeth, #gore tw, #etc …..(trigger warnings & any additional tags. Add "tw" AFTER the trigger/content warning. )
#nsfwhump …..(only for nsfw content)
#your own tags go here
PLEASE BE DILIGENT WITH YOUR TAGGING. Only properly tagged posts are considered for archiving on the official @whumptober-archive blog. They must be tagged in the order above. An elaborate post about our tagging system can be found [here]
Unfortunately, due to the sheer number of participants in recent years, we cannot guarantee your work will be archived. A random selection of properly tagged posts from all genres will be reblogged each day.
Whumpers who produce content for 31 total theme days are considered event completionists and will be tagged in a masterpost at the end of the month. A form will be published at the beginning of November asking you to tell us if you completed the event. You do not need to post anything you have created, we rely on trust and we will not check this.
Questions not addressed in one of our many event info posts can be directed to this blog. We will not answer any questions that have been answered in the FAQs or rules already.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. How does this year’s prompt list work? What do I have to choose?
You can create something based on:
The overall theme/lyric of the day
Prompt 1, 2 or 3
One or several of the alternative prompts
A combination of the above
Q. Is [specific anything] allowed?
When in doubt: JUST DO IT!
Q. Do I have to do all 31 days?
Participate as much or little as you like! Just be sure to tag your posts properly (ex. #no.7, #radio silence). If you create works for 31 total theme days you will become a completionist. But apart from that, there are no repercussions if you don’t fill prompts for each day.
Q. Can I post early/late?
Yes, you can post whenever you want. We will only reblog posts during October, but you can use our prompts all year round. The day you post will only affect your probability of being reblogged.
Q. Will you reblog my post?
Due to the sheer number of content posted during Whumptober we can’t promise to reblog every single post. We will make a random selection trying to capture a wide variety of content. The following will increase your chances at being reblogged:
tag your post properly
post within 2-3 days of the theme you want to fill: if you fill the prompt for Day 1 your chances of being reblogged during October 1st to 3rd are highest and will go towards zero afterwards.
Q. What if I don’t understand a prompt/theme?
Send us an ask! We’re happy to help with wild, unhelpful clarifications or brainstorming. That being said, the themes are entirely up for interpretation. Don’t take them too literally. For example: You can be choking on a cherry, someone else can choke you or you could be choked up on emotions, etc.
Q. What kind of content can I make? Can it be NSFW?
This is a MIXED MEDIA event! You can write fic, post meta, doodle or paint, create a gifset or photo edit, link a song, or get crafty with video - anything goes. As for NSFW, make what you like, we just hope that you’ll tag your work accordingly so that others participating in the event can stay safe.
Q. Can I combine Whumptober with other creation challenges?
Absolutely, as long as the other challenges allow it too.
Q. Can I upload/repost my Whumptober content to other social media platforms?
Of course! You can post your own content wherever you like (or you can opt to not publish it at all). Additionally we’ve created an AO3 Collection to archive any fics posted there. It can be accessed here. The tumblr blog @whumptober-archive is the official archive, so please respect the boundaries of any closeted whumpers in your social circle.
Q. Can I use prompts to write a new chapter for an existing fic?
Yes.
Q. An existing fic I am currently writing contains many of the Whumptober prompts, can I use it?
If you are actively writing this fic at the moment with the Whumptober prompts in mind, yes. If you’ve previously posted something that checks the boxes, we ask that you not include it retroactively for this current year. You can, however, add new chapters relating to one or more of the prompts.
Q. What kind of characters can I write for?
Fandom characters, OC characters, human, furry, alien, cyborg, RPF, whoever you like. You can use the generic “whumpee” character or have specific ones.
Q. Does it have to take place in a specific fandom?
No, you can create works for your own worlds or for fandoms or for both. You can also create more generic or pan-fandom works. You can do cross-overs or use OCs, whatever you want.
Q. Can I use a prompt multiple times?
Yes, but it only counts once towards being a completionist.
Q. If I’m not comfortable with one day’s prompts can I use a prompt of a different day as a substitute and still be a completionist?
No, you can’t exchange prompts for different days. However, if all four prompts of a specific day make you uncomfortable, we have created an alternate prompts list that you can draw from. You can exchange any prompt with these, but please make sure not to use them twice.
Q. Where can I post my work?
Post where and how you want. You don’t have to (cross)post it to Tumblr or at all. Just keep in mind if it’s not on Tumblr we will not be able to add it to the blog archive.
Q. Can I start posting early?
You can, but this is an October event and wouldn’t it be more fun with everyone doing it at the same time? That being said, you can post early, but we won’t be reblogging any work predating October 1st.
Q. Do I have to finish a fic I started/can I post WIP’s?
Yes you can post WIPs. And you’re not obligated to finish it in October for it to count towards being a completionist.
Q. Is co-writing allowed?
Yes, absolutely, and it would count towards being a completionist for both/all of you.
Q. Do I have to create 31 standalone pieces to be considered a completionist or can I write one continuous story?
One continuous story is fine. The challenge is to write something for 31 prompts. If that’s spread over 31 fics or just one, you are still considered a completionist. (The same goes for every other media you choose.)
Q. Is there a min/max limit on word count?
There is no limit.
Q. Can I combine prompts? Is there a limit on how many?
No limit and combine as many as you’d like.
Q. Is a hc/angst/emotional whump focus ok?
Of course! We are not going to establish a threshold for whumpiness. If you think it’s whumpy enough, then it’s whumpy enough. It can be physical, psychological, emotional, or any combination of the three.
Q. What’s considered nsfw?
See this post
Q. What is whump?
Typically the genre includes situations where a fictional character is hurt, be it emotionally, psychologically, or physically. Fanlore provides information here.
Q. My interpretation of the prompt isn’t whumpy at all, does that count?
If you don’t think your interpretation is whumpy, then it doesn’t count for Whumptober. Remember that whump comes in many forms, though, and that we don’t have a whump-checker or a threshold for how much whump needs to be included. If you think your interpretation contains enough whump to count, then it does.
Q. Can I start working on the prompts before October?
Absolutely! That’s why we post the prompts a month in advance. We recognise how difficult it can be creating for 31 days in “real time” so feel free to start creating early!
Q. How do I tag triggers?
tw at the end of the word, ex. #gore tw
Q. Do I have to use your tags?
Yes, if you want your work archived on the blog. If not, feel free to use whatever tags you want.
Q. Does combining prompts count towards completion?
Yes
Q. Can we @ you?
Yes but we mostly rely on the #whumptober2023 tag.
Q. Is there anything we are absolutely not allowed to write?
There are no rules, but please make sure to properly tag your trigger warnings. And keep in mind Tumblr’s policies if you are posting it here (or the policies for whatever site you use).
Q. Where can I go for brainstorming help?
Here on Discord or come into our ask box.
Q. My characters are minors, is that ok?
Yes, but as with everything else, use clear and descriptive tags.
Q. Can I cross post on other blogs?
Yes, multiple platforms and blogs are perfectly acceptable. You can also post different works to different accounts under different names, without posting them everywhere at once.
Note: This is a creation challenge, please don’t repost your old work under our tags (unless it’s been changed or edited for the event).
Thanks for reading, and happy whumping!
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The moral injury of having your work enshittified
This Monday (November 27), I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.
On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."
This week, I wrote about how the Great Enshittening – in which all the digital services we rely on become unusable, extractive piles of shit – did not result from the decay of the morals of tech company leadership, but rather, from the collapse of the forces that discipline corporate wrongdoing:
https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/
The failure to enforce competition law allowed a few companies to buy out their rivals, or sell goods below cost until their rivals collapsed, or bribe key parts of their supply chain not to allow rivals to participate:
https://www.engadget.com/google-reportedly-pays-apple-36-percent-of-ad-search-revenues-from-safari-191730783.html
The resulting concentration of the tech sector meant that the surviving firms were stupendously wealthy, and cozy enough that they could agree on a common legislative agenda. That regulatory capture has allowed tech companies to violate labor, privacy and consumer protection laws by arguing that the law doesn't apply when you use an app to violate it:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
But the regulatory capture isn't just about preventing regulation: it's also about creating regulation – laws that make it illegal to reverse-engineer, scrape, and otherwise mod, hack or reconfigure existing services to claw back value that has been taken away from users and business customers. This gives rise to Jay Freeman's perfectly named doctrine of "felony contempt of business-model," in which it is illegal to use your own property in ways that anger the shareholders of the company that sold it to you:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain
Undisciplined by the threat of competition, regulation, or unilateral modification by users, companies are free to enshittify their products. But what does that actually look like? I say that enshittification is always precipitated by a lost argument.
It starts when someone around a board-room table proposes doing something that's bad for users but good for the company. If the company faces the discipline of competition, regulation or self-help measures, then the workers who are disgusted by this course of action can say, "I think doing this would be gross, and what's more, it's going to make the company poorer," and so they win the argument.
But when you take away that discipline, the argument gets reduced to, "Don't do this because it would make me ashamed to work here, even though it will make the company richer." Money talks, bullshit walks. Let the enshittification begin!
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/#corporations-are-people-my-friend
But why do workers care at all? That's where phrases like "don't be evil" come into the picture. Until very recently, tech workers participated in one of history's tightest labor markets, in which multiple companies with gigantic war-chests bid on their labor. Even low-level employees routinely fielded calls from recruiters who dangled offers of higher salaries and larger stock grants if they would jump ship for a company's rival.
Employers built "campuses" filled with lavish perks: massages, sports facilities, daycare, gourmet cafeterias. They offered workers generous benefit packages, including exotic health benefits like having your eggs frozen so you could delay fertility while offsetting the risks normally associated with conceiving at a later age.
But all of this was a transparent ruse: the business-case for free meals, gyms, dry-cleaning, catering and massages was to keep workers at their laptops for 10, 12, or even 16 hours per day. That egg-freezing perk wasn't about helping workers plan their families: it was about thumbing the scales in favor of working through your entire twenties and thirties without taking any parental leave.
In other words, tech employers valued their employees as a means to an end: they wanted to get the best geeks on the payroll and then work them like government mules. The perks and pay weren't the result of comradeship between management and labor: they were the result of the discipline of competition for labor.
This wasn't really a secret, of course. Big Tech workers are split into two camps: blue badges (salaried employees) and green badges (contractors). Whenever there is a slack labor market for a specific job or skill, it is converted from a blue badge job to a green badge job. Green badges don't get the food or the massages or the kombucha. They don't get stock or daycare. They don't get to freeze their eggs. They also work long hours, but they are incentivized by the fear of poverty.
Tech giants went to great lengths to shield blue badges from green badges – at some Google campuses, these workforces actually used different entrances and worked in different facilities or on different floors. Sometimes, green badge working hours would be staggered so that the armies of ragged clickworkers would not be lined up to badge in when their social betters swanned off the luxury bus and into their airy adult kindergartens.
But Big Tech worked hard to convince those blue badges that they were truly valued. Companies hosted regular town halls where employees could ask impertinent questions of their CEOs. They maintained freewheeling internal social media sites where techies could rail against corporate foolishness and make Dilbert references.
And they came up with mottoes.
Apple told its employees it was a sound environmental steward that cared about privacy. Apple also deliberately turned old devices into e-waste by shredding them to ensure that they wouldn't be repaired and compete with new devices:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently
And even as they were blocking Facebook's surveillance tools, they quietly built their own nonconsensual mass surveillance program and lied to customers about it:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar
Facebook told employees they were on a "mission to connect every person in the world," but instead deliberately sowed discontent among its users and trapped them in silos that meant that anyone who left Facebook lost all their friends:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs
And Google promised its employees that they would not "be evil" if they worked at Google. For many googlers, that mattered. They wanted to do something good with their lives, and they had a choice about who they would work for. What's more, they did make things that were good. At their high points, Google Maps, Google Mail, and of course, Google Search were incredible.
My own life was totally transformed by Maps: I have very poor spatial sense, need to actually stop and think to tell my right from my left, and I spent more of my life at least a little lost and often very lost. Google Maps is the cognitive prosthesis I needed to become someone who can go anywhere. I'm profoundly grateful to the people who built that service.
There's a name for phenomenon in which you care so much about your job that you endure poor conditions and abuse: it's called "vocational awe," as coined by Fobazi Ettarh:
https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/
Ettarh uses the term to apply to traditionally low-waged workers like librarians, teachers and nurses. In our book Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin and I talked about how it applies to artists and other creative workers, too:
https://chokepointcapitalism.com/
But vocational awe is also omnipresent in tech. The grandiose claims to be on a mission to make the world a better place are not just puffery – they're a vital means of motivating workers who can easily quit their jobs and find a new one to put in 16-hour days. The massages and kombucha and egg-freezing are not framed as perks, but as logistical supports, provided so that techies on an important mission can pursue a shared social goal without being distracted by their balky, inconvenient meatsuits.
Steve Jobs was a master of instilling vocational awe. He was full of aphorisms like "we're here to make a dent in the universe, otherwise why even be here?" Or his infamous line to John Sculley, whom he lured away from Pepsi: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"
Vocational awe cuts both ways. If your workforce actually believes in all that high-minded stuff, if they actually sacrifice their health, family lives and self-care to further the mission, they will defend it. That brings me back to enshittification, and the argument: "If we do this bad thing to the product I work on, it will make me hate myself."
The decline in market discipline for large tech companies has been accompanied by a decline in labor discipline, as the market for technical work grew less and less competitive. Since the dotcom collapse, the ability of tech giants to starve new entrants of market oxygen has shrunk techies' dreams.
Tech workers once dreamed of working for a big, unwieldy firm for a few years before setting out on their own to topple it with a startup. Then, the dream shrank: work for that big, clumsy firm for a few years, then do a fake startup that makes a fake product that is acquihired by your old employer, as an incredibly inefficient and roundabout way to get a raise and a bonus.
Then the dream shrank again: work for a big, ugly firm for life, but get those perks, the massages and the kombucha and the stock options and the gourmet cafeteria and the egg-freezing. Then it shrank again: work for Google for a while, but then get laid off along with 12,000 co-workers, just months after the company does a stock buyback that would cover all those salaries for the next 27 years:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/
Tech workers' power was fundamentally individual. In a tight labor market, tech workers could personally stand up to their bosses. They got "workplace democracy" by mouthing off at town hall meetings. They didn't have a union, and they thought they didn't need one. Of course, they did need one, because there were limits to individual power, even for the most in-demand workers, especially when it came to ghastly, long-running sexual abuse from high-ranking executives:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html
Today, atomized tech workers who are ordered to enshittify the products they take pride in are losing the argument. Workers who put in long hours, missed funerals and school plays and little league games and anniversaries and family vacations are being ordered to flush that sacrifice down the toilet to grind out a few basis points towards a KPI.
It's a form of moral injury, and it's palpable in the first-person accounts of former workers who've exited these large firms or the entire field. The viral "Reflecting on 18 years at Google," written by Ian Hixie, vibrates with it:
https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373
Hixie describes the sense of mission he brought to his job, the workplace democracy he experienced as employees' views were both solicited and heeded. He describes the positive contributions he was able to make to a commons of technical standards that rippled out beyond Google – and then, he says, "Google's culture eroded":
Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision.
In other words, techies started losing the argument. Layoffs weakened worker power – not just to defend their own interest, but to defend the users interests. Worker power is always about more than workers – think of how the 2019 LA teachers' strike won greenspace for every school, a ban on immigration sweeps of students' parents at the school gates and other community benefits:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/
Hixie attributes the changes to a change in leadership, but I respectfully disagree. Hixie points to the original shareholder letter from the Google founders, in which they informed investors contemplating their IPO that they were retaining a controlling interest in the company's governance so that they could ignore their shareholders' priorities in favor of a vision of Google as a positive force in the world:
https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/
Hixie says that the leadership that succeeded the founders lost sight of this vision – but the whole point of that letter is that the founders never fully ceded control to subsequent executive teams. Yes, those executive teams were accountable to the shareholders, but the largest block of voting shares were retained by the founders.
I don't think the enshittification of Google was due to a change in leadership – I think it was due to a change in discipline, the discipline imposed by competition, regulation and the threat of self-help measures. Take ads: when Google had to contend with one-click adblocker installation, it had to constantly balance the risk of making users so fed up that they googled "how do I block ads?" and then never saw another ad ever again.
But once Google seized the majority of the mobile market, it was able to funnel users into apps, and reverse-engineering an app is a felony (felony contempt of business-model) under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to install an ad-blocker.
And as Google acquired control over the browser market, it was likewise able to reduce the self-help measures available to browser users who found ads sufficiently obnoxious to trigger googling "how do I block ads?" The apotheosis of this is the yearslong campaign to block adblockers in Chrome, which the company has sworn it will finally do this coming June:
https://www.tumblr.com/tevruden/734352367416410112/you-have-until-june-to-dump-chrome
My contention here is not that Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in personnel via the promotion of managers who have shitty ideas. Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in discipline, as the negative consequences of heeding those shitty ideas were abolished thanks to monopoly.
This is bad news for people like me, who rely on services like Google Maps as cognitive prostheses. Elizabeth Laraki, one of the original Google Maps designers, has published a scorching critique of the latest GMaps design:
https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182
Laraki calls out numerous enshittificatory design-choices that have left Maps screens covered in "crud" – multiple revenue-maximizing elements that come at the expense of usability, shifting value from users to Google.
What Laraki doesn't say is that these UI elements are auctioned off to merchants, which means that the business that gives Google the most money gets the greatest prominence in Maps, even if it's not the best merchant. That's a recurring motif in enshittified tech platforms, most notoriously Amazon, which makes $31b/year auctioning off top search placement to companies whose products aren't relevant enough to your query to command that position on their own:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos
Enshittification begets enshittification. To succeed on Amazon, you must divert funds from product quality to auction placement, which means that the top results are the worst products:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens
The exception is searches for Apple products: Apple and Amazon have a cozy arrangement that means that searches for Apple products are a timewarp back to the pre-enshittification Amazon, when the company worried enough about losing your business to heed the employees who objected to sacrificing search quality as part of a merchant extortion racket:
https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-gives-apple-special-treatment-while-others-suffer-junk-ads-2023-11
Not every tech worker is a tech bro, in other words. Many workers care deeply about making your life better. But the microeconomics of the boardroom in a monopolized tech sector rewards the worst people and continuously promotes them. Forget the Peter Principle: tech is ruled by the Sam Principle.
As OpenAI went through four CEOs in a single week, lots of commentators remarked on Sam Altman's rise and fall and rise, but I only found one commentator who really had Altman's number. Writing in Today in Tabs, Rusty Foster nailed Altman to the wall:
https://www.todayintabs.com/p/defective-accelerationism
Altman's history goes like this: first, he founded a useless startup that raised $30m, only to be acquired and shuttered. Then Altman got a job running Y Combinator, where he somehow failed at taking huge tranches of equity from "every Stanford dropout with an idea for software to replace something Mommy used to do." After that, he founded OpenAI, a company that he claims to believe presents an existential risk to the entire human risk – which he structured so incompetently that he was then forced out of it.
His reward for this string of farcical, mounting failures? He was put back in charge of the company he mis-structured despite his claimed belief that it will destroy the human race if not properly managed.
Altman's been around for a long time. He founded his startup in 2005. There've always been Sams – of both the Bankman-Fried varietal and the Altman genus – in tech. But they didn't get to run amok. They were disciplined by their competitors, regulators, users and workers. The collapse of competition led to an across-the-board collapse in all of those forms of discipline, revealing the executives for the mediocre sociopaths they always were, and exposing tech workers' vocational awe for the shabby trick it was from the start.
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/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification
#pluralistic#moral injury#enshittification#worker power#google#dont be evil#monopoly#sam altman#openai#vocational awe#making a dent in the universe
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First ever post!! 🫶🏼
Hey y’all!! I’m wanting to start writing Avatar fics, mainly smut (lol). Please don’t be too harsh but I’m open for suggestions and tell me what you think!! I don’t really know what I’m doing haha. And also I wanna start doing requests so lmk!
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Pairing: Dilf¡Jake Sully x omatikaya reader (22)
Warnings: MDNI 🛑, SMUT, age gap, getting caught in the act, p in v, cursing, dirty talk, virgin reader, i think that’s it?
Synopsis: you’re urged to ask your best friend Neteyam to be your mate since the pairing seems beneficial, he denies you and his dad shows you what you deserve ;). Porn with plot.
Word count: 2.6k
Next part!
You were Neteyam’s best friend ever since childhood. For as long as you can remember, you and him were attached at the hip practically. Born on the same year and the first child to your families, you two had a lot in common that resulted in a very close bond. You could tell him anything and he could tell you anything. It was nice having someone to relate to who also happened to be funny, smart, talented, and charming. You’ve always loved Neteyam and he loved you, as friends.
However, as time went on and the two of you grew up, expectations became harsher and duties were falling in line. You’re now both 22 and things have changed now that you’re adults. Taking responsibility in the Omatikaya clan is a right of passage, it’s about showing that you now agree to give your all to the people around you just like all Na’vi are expected to do once they reach a certain age.
Neteyam is going to be the next Olo’eyktan, the most important duty of all along with the Tsahik. You were decently good at hunting and could hold your own, but you were also best friends with Kiri and spent many hours with her and Moat, learning healing skills.
You always knew Neteyam would have to chose a mate once the time came, but you never thought much about it and you were both platonic and never looked at him in a romantic way. You know he didn’t look at you that way either. But once you both turned 21, you had to admit to yourself that he was quite breathtaking in his fully grown adult form. He’s now grown into a strong and healthy man, with broad, muscular shoulders and is as tall as his dad, the present Olo’eyktan.
Today, as you were chopping some food in your hut, you heard a knock by the entrance. “Come in!”, and with that Jake, Neytiri, and Moat approach you with smiling faces. You didn’t expect to see them so you stop what you’re doing and bow your head, signaling “I see you” to them. They return the gesture and Moat speaks up, “My child, we have a very important proposition to bring you.” You nod as in saying to continue, then Neytiri joins in, “Y/n, we know you are a very responsible and nice girl. We also know that you have been steadily learning Tsahik duties with Moat and Kiri over the past few years. We have come here to say we think it would be best for you and Neteyam to be mates and the next leaders for the clan.” she beams.
You don’t know what you were expecting them to say but it wasn’t this. You chuckle nervously and shift in your place. “But Neteyam is my best friend. And anyways I don’t know if he would agree to this, have you brought it up with him?” Jake steps up and says “No, he doesn’t know yet because we were hoping you could tell him and it could be more natural. So it doesn’t seem like we’re forcing you guys or arranging it. It we try to force it, he might rebel. You think you could talk to him? He needs to pick a mate as soon as possible and we know you two get along great.”
You began to feel a bit dizzy and held onto the table beside you. You didn’t want to tell them no, how could you tell them no? So you meekly nodded and said “I will talk to Neteyam later when he gets back from hunting.” Neytiri hugged you and said “I would be honored to have you as my daughter-in-law!” You returned the hug and gave her a weak smile. You felt sick. They said they’re goodbyes and left you with your thoughts.
After 2 hours in your hut thinking on this, you decided you were actually really lucky to be chosen to mate with Neteyam. He was handsome and of course you loved him, so why not? All the girls in the village talk about how much they’d love to mate with him, but only one can be chosen. You had butterflies in your stomach and a newfound confidence as you left your hut, setting out to find Neteyam.
After a few minutes, you rounded a corner and seen the man himself. He looked tired and worn out, but you knew this had to be discussed now. You walk up to him and put your hand on his arm and say “can we talk for a minute? In private?” He lifts an eyebrow but nods his head, slightly concerned something was wrong. You two walk over to the forest, where the chatter of the village can only be heard in the distance. You take a deep breath and just say it, “Neteyam, it’s time for you to chose a mate. I don’t know how you feel about the other girls in the clan but I’ve been practicing Tsahik duties and we already have a bond…” you look at him like he should be able to get your meaning but he just gives you a confused look. So you spit it out, “Neteyam, I think we should be mates.”
His eyes widen and mouth drops a little. Your heart is pounding but you understand the initial shock. He nervously lets out a chuckle and says “But y/n, we are just friends… did you think we were something more?” Your heart drops and mouth dries up. Hot anger boils up in your blood at the embarrassment and denial. “N-no, I know we’re friends now but our duties are changing. We have to do what’s best for the clan’s future.” He looks around and says “but I can’t mate with you, I don’t see you in that way”, he gives you a look of pity and now you are livid. “Why not? Am I not pretty enough for you??” “No, I mean you could make yourself prettier but that’s not the only reason why…” he trails off and your mouth hangs all the way down. Tears flood your eyes and you bolt off. In the background you hear him yell, “Y/n, don’t do this!”
You run through the village, covering your face while crying. You felt so much shame and hurt. You burst into your hut and fling yourself onto the bed, wetting it with your tears. You couldn’t believe he outright denied you. You weren’t the prettiest girl, sure, but you most certainly weren’t the ugliest either! You should’ve never agreed to this or even dreamed it could happen. He could get any girl he wants, why would he pick you?
Night was closing in and you shivered under your covers. You dried up your tears but still felt the sting in your heart at the betrayal. Suddenly, you hear a knock at your door. You’re facing the wall and muster out “who is it?” with no enthusiasm. Much to your surprise, it’s Jake. You scramble out of the sheets and sit on the edge of the bed to then stand up and bow your head and gesture your hand, “ma Olo’eyktan”.
He throws his hand up as if brushing that gesture away, “no need for all the formalities, sweetie.” You nod and slightly smile to be polite. You loved his fatherly way of speaking. You then remember everything that happened earlier and that he probably found out about you being rejected. “I heard what happened and I just want to apologize on behalf of my son. He’s a dumbass” he says bluntly. The human curse catches your attention.
He sits down on the bed next to you. You choke out “I’m so sorry. I thought it could work but I guess I’m not good enough for him. He is probably so used to me by now that he sees nothing special.” A single year rolls down your cheek. Jake slowly shook his head and touched your thigh and your eyes meet his. His eyes are filled with pity for you but also something else, something like hunger. You tingle under his touch.
“You’re a special girl, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, the stupid skawng. If it were me and I were your age, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off of you…” he purrs.
The atmosphere changes and you heat up all over. You’ve always thought Jake was a hot dad but you assumed he wouldn’t even bat an eye at you, especially since he has Neytiri.
He slowly rides his hand up your thigh to your most sensitive area. You gasp at the sudden intrusion but don’t stop him. You couldn’t believe this was happening.
“Let me make you feel better, honey. I can make you feel real good”, he smirks. You look up at him with doe eyes and can only manage to nod. “I’ll make you forget about Neteyam, that dumb bastard. You’ll only be thinking about my name now, how’s that sound?”
You feel his voice vibrate down to your very core. And quickly you feel needy, with no shame. It had been a terrible day and you wanted nothing more than to just feel better. “Yes please”
That’s all he needs to hear to start going at you. His calloused hands feel heavenly against your soft skin. He rubs you all over in desperate need like he doesn’t know where to even start. Then he crashes his lips on yours. You greedily open your mouth to let him come in and explore. You’ve never felt anyone’s touch before but he was guiding you though it. You started whimpering and whining and he groans to this.
“Have you ever done this before?”, he asks. You slowly shake your head no and feel a bit ashamed that you have no experience. His eyes get wide and he searches your eyes for answers, “you’re telling me no one has loved this pussy before?” and you simply shake your head again, blushing.
“My God.” He’s painfully hard and can’t believe the sweet prize he has in front of him. He reaches his hand down your loincloth and feels your sopping cunt. His eyes dilate and he realizes how pent up you must be. “Baby girl, you should’ve asked for my help a longgg time ago, you need a good dickin down”, he lowly growls.
You bite your lip and clearly look in distress from needing some relief. He kissed your neck and grazes it with his fangs, while kneading on your breasts under your top. Then he finally takes off your top and reveals the precious sight. He just stares, practically drooling. “Look at these perfect tits, all for me.” You whimper in response.
He starts kissing and sucking on your nipples, greedily tasting them as fast as he can. “Jake!”, you whine.
“Yeahhh, that’s right. My name on your pretty lips.”
He then rips off your loincloth. He marvels at your pretty pussy, wanting to open it like a Christmas present. Then he starts lapping on it. He sounded like a starved man, moaning and groaning on your heat like it’s the best meal he’s ever had. “Ohhh my Eywa!”, you moan out.
He sticks one finger in your needy hole and you throw your head back. “Holy fuckkk”, he groans, “such a tight little pussy for me, gonna have to stretch you out, girl.”
You’re a whimpering mess and he adds another finger in. You cry out in ecstasy and move your hips against him to get more pleasure. “Yeahhh baby, that’s it, fuck yourself on my fingers, use me for what you need.”
His words only edge you on as you start to feel the coil at the bottom of your stomach. You’re seeing stars and his pace is relentless, he coos at you, “gonna cum for me? I know you want to. Let it out, all over me baby.” And that pushes you over the edge as you spill out moans and a slew of Na’vi curses, to which his ears perk up to.
“Didn’t know you had a dirty mouth? I thought you were a good girl?”, he teases. “Won’t you be a good girl, and take my cock, hm?”
You’re still coming down from your high but you get a burst of energy once he takes his loincloth off and his massive, swollen cock springs up to slap his stomach. You can’t believe how big it is, lengthy and girthy. He just grins at your expression and how you can’t take your eyes off it.
“You like it, huh? You wanna get fucked silly?”, he degrades.
“Mhmmm” is all you can manage to get out.
He towers over you and flips you on all fours. You feel his dick at your entrance and close your eyes, anticipating sharp pain. He slowly goes in and let’s out a long groan, “Shittttttt, feels so fucking good”. You only feel the pain for a minute and feel so full. He bottoms out and slowly slides back out and you moan at the sensation. Then, he starts to pick up a steady pace.
“OHHHH, Jake!!! I can’t take it!”
“Yes you can and you are”, he pants. “Taking it so well for me. Keep being a good girl”.
He is absolutely rattling your shit, the sounds of skin slapping and your combined moans and pants filling the small room.
“Such a needy little slut, ain’t that right? Look at you, taking it like a champ. That’s right”, he praises.
He then grabs your braid and pulls you up against him, both still on your knees. He puts one hand on your clit and starts rubbing relentlessly, and the other hand around your mouth because you’re getting loud.
“As much as I love you screaming because of my cock, you don’t want Neteyam or someone to find us like this, hm?” he grunts, still fucking the daylights out of you. To be honest, it gives you a thrill to think of Neteyam seeing his dad fucking you after he rejected you.
You only whimper and bite his hand, as tears are falling out of your eyes now from the overwhelming pleasure. You feel the same coil from earlier rising up, as if you’re about to burst.
“Can feel you squeezing on me, shit you’re gonna make me cum” he pants throwing his head back in pure bliss.
Suddenly you hear shuffling steps at the door like someone just snuck up. You both snap your heads in it’s direction and are faced with Neteyam.
“Dad?!? Y/n?!?”, he shouts.
You freeze a little but are so close to your high you can’t be bothered enough by him. His dad just laughs and says “you see son, this is what you’re missing out on. And boy, does she feel gooddd.”
Neteyam looks horrified but can’t take his eyes off the scene, as if he’s frozen in shock. The blood drains from his face and he just stands there dumbfounded.
“Now watch your old man make a pretty girl cum on his cock. Look at her, she’s cock drunk and just needs that final push.”
He speeds up on your clit and pounds your cervix HARD. “OHHHHH!!!” you moan out.
Jake whispers in your ear, “come on sweet girl, cum on your first ever cock, it’ll feel real nice”, he coos.
And just like that the coil snaps and you feel a hot white rush all over your body. “I’m cumming, cumming, fucking cumminggg” you whine out.
“Yeahhh, that’s it. Making such a pretty mess everywhere”
He lets you ride out your climax and he finishes inside you, “fuckkkk” he moans. You’re both panting trying to regain your breath and strength.
Neteyam still stands at the entryway in shock, unable to get a word out. So much just happened that he can barely process. Seeing you naked and needy under his dad was not what he had planned for today.
“Well son, I can honestly say you fucked up, good luck finding someone better than her.”
#avatar fanfiction#avatar smut#jakesully smut#dilf jake sully#neteyam#jake sully#avatar#avatar the way of water#atwow
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IN 1986, Sophie Ottaway was born with a very rare condition which required immediate surgery.
Cloacal exstrophy happens when the organs in the abdomen do not form correctly in the womb, resulting in babies born with organs such as the bladder or intestines outside the body.
Doctors had to operate to save her life.
Sophie was actually a boy, with a tiny, damaged penis but healthy testes.
But doctors advised Sophie’s parents that their baby’s male genitalia should be removed to avoid further complications.
The baby had to be registered by the following day, which meant they had to decide whether to tick male or female on the form.
Sophie’s parents Karen and John followed the surgeons’ advice.
“They were told not to tell me,” says Sophie, a warm and friendly 37-year-old who has since fully forgiven her parents for their decision.
“We are very close,” she tells me, “despite going through some rocky times in the past.”
Life changed for Sophie, who grew up in Beverley, East Yorks, when she was 22 years old and visiting her GP surgery for tonsilitis.
She says: “I saw on the computer screen that I had XY chromosomes, had been castrated hours after birth, and an incision was made where a vagina would be.”
Although Sophie exploded at her parents in the moment, she buried her feelings about it all until 13 years later when, hospitalised during a Covid lockdown, it was discovered she had developed sepsis that had ended up in her intestines.
‘I went into 13 years of absolute denial’
This was what led her to decide to speak out.
Sophie was already aware that many children and young people were being groomed in gender ideology, persuaded to take puberty blockers, then set on a medical pathway for life.
She says: “At age 11, as I approached puberty, they put me on oestrogen because there’s no ovaries, and no testes to produce testosterone.
“This is what doctors are doing now to kids who wish to change gender — putting them on blockers.”
It was a lie when Sophie was told she had to take oestrogen for life because her ovaries had been removed at birth as a result of damage.
Sophie was born biologically male. “So obviously there were never any ovaries,” she says wryly.
She adds: “The time to tell me and try to get informed consent was at the point we introduced the endocrinologist. This is the time puberty blockers are being offered to kids, so I make that connection with what’s happening today.”
When feminists and others critical of the medicalisation of children with gender dysphoria have said that these drugs and interventions are harmful, we are often labelled bigots. But Sophie is speaking from personal experience, in the hope that she will be listened to rather than dismissed and vilified.
About five years ago, Sophie chose to stop taking the hormones, because “I was adamant that many problems in my life were being caused by them.
“I was about 4st heavier than I am now, and I wasn’t eating badly. I was having bladder pain beyond belief.
“I had fatigue and was quite angry a lot of the time.”
By then, Sophie had been taking oestrogen for 20 years, and decided enough was enough. She was told she should keep taking it because it was for bone density, to which she replied that she would have regular bone scans.
Sophie had no choice but to go on oestrogen, because the doctors prescribed it to her as a child — but surely she should be listened to when she warns of the effects cross-sex hormones have on the body?
Now that she no longer takes it, all her symptoms have improved.
She says: “We’re selling this idea of perfection in the guise of changing gender. You’ve got all of these problems and might be struggling because you don’t fit in at school, or because you like boys’ toys and you’re a girl, or vice versa. As someone who knows all about decisions made under time pressure and who has paid the price, Sophie’s understanding of the sales pitch being made to children before puberty is crystal clear.
She says: “You’ve got a sale based on a time pressure.
“We’re going to push you through this for the puberty blockers, we’re going to make that sale.”
Keen to stress that there is a big difference between a girl behaving “like a boy”, wearing boys’ clothes and haircuts, Sophie adds: “Puberty blockers are a different level to how we dress and which toys we favour.”
The idea being sold is that gender reassignment is the answer to all your problems, but Sophie says: “What you get is genital mutilation, castration, and a lifetime of dangerous hormones, which was my experience.”
As she points out: “Children can’t vote, they can’t drink, can’t drive.
“But you can choose to do something life-changing.”
Sophie hopes that by speaking out and telling her unvarnished truth, some children — and parents — might make a different choice.
She says that when she found out that she’d been born male, “I obviously knew I had urological problems, and I knew that I had no vagina because of the surgeries.
“I didn’t address it at that point. I was 22, in second year at university.
“I had a plan of my life. And dealing with this monstrosity was not in the plan. I got up the next day and went to university.
“I still had the same connection with my friends. I was still the person I was 24 hours ago.
“But I went into 13 years of absolute denial.”
She never told anyone about it, not even close friends.
‘When I came out of hospital I was raging’
Then, during the pandemic, Sophie found herself in hospital a couple of times, and it all came crashing down.
She recalls: “They thought it was a kidney infection, but they couldn’t get to the bottom of it.
“When I was born they had fashioned some female genitalia. Brown putrid fluid starting leaking out of the hole and it would not stop.
“I presented at the hospital and I had to tell them for the first time about what had happened to me.”
When doctors examined her, they saw that there was something very wrong.
It turned out there was a mass in her abdomen, which was the neovagina — inserted when she was a baby — and left to rot.
Sophie says: “I found out from my mum that they had inserted it when I was two days old, and that one day it popped out and was found in my nappy.”
Surgeons replaced it during a later operation, sealed it up, and left it, which is why it led to sepsis many years later.
“No one had been told it had been put back in,” says Sophie.
Up until this point she had thought that the surgeon had simply operated to save her life — “which he did, but he also did a hell of a lot of other stuff that was unnecessary.”
What’s more, the doctors failed to do something that was necessary — namely, address the complex urological problems that have plagued Sophie all her life.
She says this “is one of the things that has the biggest effect on having any kind of intimate relationship. And yet the one thing that they could have fixed is my incontinence.”
She tells me: “When I came out of hospital, I was raging at that point.”
And she thought that by speaking out, she might be able to help those who think they are in the wrong body.
Sophie says: “A lot of them are being groomed to feel that way or question those thoughts in the first place by the school and the system and the media. Those kids need help.”
A much better solution, she argues, would be to divert funding currently being used for puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgery and allocate it to children’s mental health services and counselling.
Sophie says: “We can work with that person to find out why they are feeling like this.
“Then, maybe when they become an adult, they might be mature enough to be properly informed and consent to any changes to the outer body.
“It is often assumed I am transgender, but I really don’t like labels. I am just Sophie.
Poised for a backlash from the more extreme trans activists, Sophie makes it clear that she respects any adult’s decision to choose that path — so long as they are properly informed.
But she is clear that this is never appropriate for children.
“I don’t want this to happen to any other baby born with this condition,” she says.
“We have to find better ways to support kids to live in the body they are born with.”
Link | Archived Link
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when it rains (obi-wan x reader)
summary: being in love with obi-wan is great - but it might be less difficult if he knew about it. (commission for @ofmusesandsecrets!)
warnings: language
You were generally quite good at keeping your shit together.
Obi-Wan Kenobi had always been a threat to that.
On the surface, you were everything a Senator could need to be; an intelligent and well-spoken individual, with a high level of education and a passion for change. You always stood up for what you believed in; always spoke up on issues you were passionate about and always fighting the good fight. These were all things that Obi-Wan had loved about you, and in what felt like the galaxy's cruellest Catch 22, it was that love that threatened your ability to upkeep appearances. One glance at him across the Senate, or a brief moment of eye contact at one of the Galas - more often than not where he was your bodyguard - and you were worried it would all come tumbling down.
You had met Kenobi a few years after he'd become a Jedi Master. You were early on in your career as a politician, working as an apprentice to a higher-level representative. Always on the go, with stacks of paperwork in your arms and a million thoughts brewing in your mind, you'd crossed paths with Obi-Wan one morning during a meeting in the Temple. He'd given you a smile, made a quip about how he'd never seen you not on the go (which confirmed to you that he had seen you before and had stared long enough to notice those details about you).
Five years later, you hadn't been able to look at anyone else.
He was your best friend now, undoubtedly and wholly. You saw each other every day at the least - maybe in meetings and occasionally in passing - but he would come to your apartment every night without fail. Mostly just to catch up, and sometimes just to vent. Even on the days where Anakin had driven him to the point of grey hair, you were still happy to listen.
It was raining tonight in Coruscant. A lot. Lashing down from the sky, putting most of the city to a halt. Your afternoon meeting had been cancelled as a result, which meant you'd been holed up in your apartment all afternoon, a mug of tea in one hand and a stack of paperwork in the other. Obi-Wan's first ever comment to you had always rung true; you were always on the go, even when you were sat still. There was always something on your mind - something to create, something to do, something to debate. Sometimes, it made Obi-Wan want to grab your shoulders, give you a little shake and tell you to slow the fuck down.
He turned up just after 8PM - drenched, as expected, and with a slightly wet coffee cup in hand. In your line of work, you could afford a slow afternoon. For Obi-Wan, your busiest day of work was comparable to one he'd find relaxing. You had no doubt that he'd not long wrapped up for the night, so you wasted no time in stepping aside and letting him into your apartment.
"Long day?" you asked, eyebrows raised.
Obi-Wan glared at you. "Long day. Wet day."
"Right, sorry," you snorted. Taking the coffee cup out his hands, you tossed it into the garbage and headed towards your kitchen. "C'mon, I'll make you a drink that's not half rainwater."
"Thank you, darling," he gave you a small smile, hot on your tail as he followed you through the apartment. "I heard the Senate meeting was called early this afternoon."
"Yeah," you replied. "At like 2PM. Half the people due to come couldn't make it due to the weather. It took me two hours to get home."
"You should have come and found me at the Temple," Obi-Wan said. "You know my room is always available."
You knew. You'd always known, even on the nights when Obi-Wan was present there too. How many times had you stayed over after a long night? Snuck back there after a Gala? Just to sleep three feet apart, both your minds working at a thousand miles an hour, purely to resist the urge to reach out towards him and curl up into his side. The idea of domesticity with Obi-Wan was almost enough to kill you, just as it was right now. Here he was, leant against your kitchen counter. He was throwing his wet cloak into your tumble drier, hands reaching for a tea towel on the side. He was acting like he lived here, like he paid half the rent and maker, you wished he would. You wished that he would come back here every night and just fucking stay. With you, here, forever. No outside world; no politics; no stupid Jedi laws.
"Where did you go?" he asked.
You blinked in surprise. "What?"
"Your mind - it went somewhere," Obi-Wan continued. "What are you thinking about?"
"Oh, uh...just work," you forced a smile. "You know how it is."
"I turn off when I'm done," he replied, hand brushing down your arm. "You never really stop, do you?"
I stop thinking about work, you thought to yourself, but I never stop thinking about you.
"No, I will," you murmured. "Sorry."
"Never be sorry," Obi-Wan said.
You snapped back into action, hands quickly chucking ingredients into a mug in order to produce an acceptable cup of coffee. You knew Obi-Wan's routine with his fancy-ass drip filter and organic beans and locally sourced milk. It was a few levels above the instant coffee you were about to press into his hands, but your actions were still met with a smile.
"How are you going to get back to the Temple later?" you asked. "The storm has half the city at a standstill and I beg you not to say that you're walking."
He smiled. "I realised as soon as I got to your building that I may be trapped for the night."
"Right," you replied, fighting back your own smile. "That's sort of the point I was getting to anyways."
Your eyes met, and you couldn't help but sometimes wonder if he felt it too. If his eyes lingered on yours when you turned away, if you were constantly on his mind every moment that you were apart. Of course, it was different for him; after all, the job he'd dedicated his very life to forbade attachment in any form and this? Well, this was the highest form.
"I have some of my brothers clothes in the hallway closet," you broke the silence. "You're welcome to steal some."
Obi-Wan smiled. "Thank you, darling."
It wasn't really a question between you about where he would be sleeping. You only had one bed and you'd already shared before, so what was the point in overcomplicating it? Well...overcomplicating it even more. Nothing about this was simple, and sharing a bed was not the distance you needed for the situation, but what did you care anymore? You yearned to be around the man all the time, even if it meant doing this weird to-and-fro that you'd had going on for half a decade. Him being in your bed just for tonight was fine. You were both tired. You both needed it.
Obi-Wan picked up his mug, giving your arm another squeeze.
"I'm going to go and shower," he said. "Thank you letting me stay."
You smiled and nodded. "Always."
Putting aside your own half empty coffee, you threw it into the sink - that would be tomorrow's problem, as would all of this - and went through to the bedroom. You could hear the shower running, and your mind again went off to that all too familiar place: home. Not here, but wherever Obi-Wan was. What you wouldn't have given to had this every night; you getting ready for bed, him in the shower, both of you planning to end up in the same bed. It wasn't possible. You knew it wasn't possible, as long as he were still a Jedi and as long as you were still a Senator. Hell, you would have thrown your position aside in seconds if it meant being with him. Maybe that was the difference between the two of you.
Changing into a baggy shirt and sweatpants, you threw aside the covers and climbed into bed. The sheets were cold, as they always were when you first went to bed, but knowing someone else was minutes away from warming them up sent butterflies to your stomach. Maybe not butterflies, so much as they were wasps. Big, anxious wasps, at the idea of being in such close proximity with your best friend. What if this was the night that three foot meant fuck all? Maybe you could actually have his arms around; keep him closer for longer, not just a brief hug or a quick touch. This could be it now.
You heard the water shut off and there was a brief shuffling. A few moments later, Obi-Wan exited the bathroom. He'd opted for sweatpants too, but no shirt. Your instincts said to look away, but you couldn't. Hell, you didn't even care that you looked like a creep, watching him as he crossed the room. Obi-Wan barely even noticed, simply placing his boots by the door and climbing into bed beside you. You could feel the heat off his body beside you, arms just inches from touching.
"Was the shower okay?" you asked, eager to break the silence that had once again formed. "I've been having problems with...with my hot water."
"Why are you nervous?"
You blinked. "I'm not nervous."
"Yes, you are," Obi-Wan replied. "You always ramble when you're nervous, and I've never heard you talk about something as boring as how well your shower is working."
"Right," you murmured. "Sorry."
"That still doesn't answer my question," he pushed. "Why are you nervous? It's me, sweetheart."
"Maybe that's exactly why I'm nervous," you muttered. "I'm not sure. I just...it's weird that you're shirtless in my bed."
"Oh," he seemed surprise. "That's okay. I can sleep on the sofa-"
"- no, no, it's fine," you quickly cut him off. "I just never really know what to do these situations, to be honest. When we've slept together before, I've always tried my best to stay on the other side of the bed but...I'm not so sure I want to do that tonight."
Obi-Wan stared blankly ahead for a moment. Okay, so that had been risky as fuck, and for a moment you felt yourself reeling, waiting for his reaction. To your surprise, there wasn't really one. Even when it was the most forward you'd been - without really being forward at all - he still stayed stoic as always. There was no visible response, just a quick blink and a small shrug.
"We're both cold from the rain," he reasoned. "It makes sense. I see no reason why we have to stay on opposite sides of the bed."
Much to your surprise, he was the one to move first. He shuffled onto his side, a large arm coming around your waist and the other snaking underneath you. He pulled you into him, hand guiding your head into his neck and tucking it below his chin. You were stiff for a second, but quickly relaxed - this felt right. Like it was meant to be.
You could faintly smell the remains of his aftershave, mixed with the smell of your shower gel. His skin was still warm from the shower.
(And maybe it was).
"Are you warmer now?" he asked quietly.
"Yeah," you murmured. "Toasty."
He smiled. "Good - now get some sleep."
You knew the morning would come, and that Obi-Wan would have to leave; you knew even more that this might not happen again. Not unless luck was on your side and would happen to lump you together during a storm, or a black out. Or - and the more terrifying option - that you declared your love for him and this would be how every night was.
It was hard to know; hard to tell and predict, just like everything else in the galaxy. Still, you were grateful that Obi-Wan was your best friend, and even more grateful that you had tonight.
#obi-wan kenobi x reader#obi-wan x reader#obi-wan kenobi imagine#obi-wan kenobi imagines#obi-wan fluff#obi-wan kenobi fluff#obi-wan imagines#obi-wan imagine#obi-wan reader insert#obi-wan kenobi reader insert#obi-wan#obi-wan kenobi#star wars#star wars x reader#star wars imagine#star wars imagines#star wars fluff
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The secret timeline inside of Good Omens season 2 revealed, *part2*
Part 1 l Part 2
The ineffable cut is explained in part 1. Please read that first. (I’ve burnt a timecode into this ineffable edit to help pick up the rhythm.)
So now that I've shown you XX:X6 is the number of the beast in the last installment, what else can we glean? Well, it turns out angel numbers (sequences of repeated numbers ex: 22:22 or 20:02) are quite important events in the S2 universe!
I've cut together every "Angel Number" I could find in the timeline and put them in order. I first noticed this near the end of the ineffable cut, where Beelzebub and Gabriel hold hands, so I've started with that one just to give you an idea how bonkers this whole sequence is.
Don't forget, sound on! Breakdown below the cut.
So we start off with this Beez and Gabriel sequence near the end of the cut. They start singing to each other a little out of time, but lo and behold, at 02:03:20 the music comes in right on time with the seconds ticking by to line them up. By the time they reach 03:33 they're gone.
Aziraphale is excited to get his "record"! He's doing something sneaky, and as a result opens the door to go off to said covert activity on 00:02:22.
Crowley asks "Do they know?" on 03:33. Who are they and why does he want to know? This whole scene is on a St-James park bench so spying and double speak is in progress, clearly.
Crowley then asks "Something big?" on 00:04:44. We get the hint for the main action of the entire second season here. Something's up with the up...
Now the real fun begins! I'll come back to the ones I just skipped in a later post because they're more subtle. Here's the first "real" angel number at 11:11. Aziraphale discovers THE box and touches it for the first time.
At 22:22 Nina and Maggie's signs are "mysteriously" ignored by a human passerby.
This is wild. Aziraphale is learning about the Everyday record and something funny happens.
33:31 Aziraphale says, " Do you have a copy?"
33:32 Maggie says, "Mm, too many of them" and at the same time a car horn beeps twice.
33:33 Aziraphale is startled by the fact that a double car horn happened on a XX:X2 and looks out the window in concern. So the question is: does Aziraphale feel or know the rhythm of the timestamps?? And are things that line up with numbers a signal he's paying attention to?
A funny one! At 44:44 Aziraphale seems to be wanting to check if Gabriel is really who he says he is, and is watching him like a hawk. Gabriel does all he can to do nothing at all and look innocent while the angel number passes by.
Another funny one. Nice. 55:55 reveals that the Bentley likes Aziraphale more than Crowley, and does whatever he wants, including not speeding when he puts his foot down.
This next one's a little peculiar. It seems like an exchange about Gabriel's whereabouts, but it's the halfway point of the edit (1:11:10-11:11:11) of the ineffable timeline and we seem to be having two conversations at once. Shax says on 11:11 "He hates you." Does she mean that she thinks Crowley hates Aziraphale, or... that Gabriel hates Aziraphale. Aziraphale looks noticeably shocked at her reply. After the eyebrow raise of "You don't seem like his type at all" I would bet we're not talking about Crowley anymore. How did she get this information?
01:22:22 Gabriel does a little laugh to himself while signalling with the lamp. What the fuck? Does someone know morse code?
01:33:33 Maggie extends her had to Nina at the ball, to invite her to dance. Nina looks pleased, but doesn't move until... a very odd miracle sound on a XX:X6 happens and she jumps up to take Maggie's hand. That miracle sound is not Aziraphale's, and besides, he would never miracle on a 6. Who's the demon making Nina dance...
Aziraphale's halo toss is the flip from ACT II to ACT III of season 2, and as such, get's a special time right before rolling over to the second hour. He decides to throw it down on exactly 01:54:45, and at 01:54:54 gets a giant tubular bell ring in the music to highlight the action. It lands on the ground at 01:55:01, and incinerates the demons at precisely 01:55:10.
01:59:59 Beez and Gabriel hold hands, and a magical chime sounds at 2:00:00. Maggie start her sentence "Aww, that's really sweet" at the same time, and manages to finish it on 2:00:02. (Dagon politely waits to pretend to barf on a XX:X3 after she's done.)
The last one is a big one : 02:02:02 gets "to face CELESTIAL punishment" by Michael. This is what we've been waiting for the entire season, the Checkov's gun of the book of life. But, where is it? We then get an odd cowboy showdown style stare-off between Michael and Shax. I'm predicting that missing chunk of time in the bookshop before we come back to Michael threatening Aziraphale with the book of life is going to be a pretty interesting reveal in season 3.
-------------------------------------------
People, this is the short version of this post.
There are SO MANY things to unpack. Next up is doubled numbers. If you want an ides of what it takes to break things down, here's my workflow timeline right now. The stuff after the first big space is numbers I haven't shown you yet... This show is insane.
#good omens meta#good omens 2#art director talks good omens#go season 2#go meta#good omens season 2#crowley x aziraphale#good omens#good omens analysis#good omens spoilers
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happy birthday!! the untamed, wwx in female mxy's body please!!
a continuation of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Xuanyu seems very familiar with Song Lan.
She pulls up a chair right next to him, leaning into his space and demanding he tell her everything. Song Lan seems faintly bewildered by this behavior, but inexplicably starts to tell her the details anyway.
Lan Wangji has always known Song Lan to be a quiet man. It's unusual for him to be this open with anyone, even if he and Xuanyu have met before.
"They're just talking," Xichen says.
He forces himself not to flinch. The last thing he needs is his brother to realize he was so busy staring at his wife and the wandering cultivator that he didn't notice his approach. "Of course."
"You could probably go join them," he continues, that same teasing glint in his eye that he had the morning after he drunkenly slept with Xuanyu.
He deliberately turns away from them. "They can catch up just fine without me."
Xichen is disappointed and Jin Guangyao rolls his eyes and makes no effort to hide it.
He regrets his decision a half hour later when both Song Lan and Xuanyu are missing.
~
"You're very good at talismans," Song Lan says to the young woman who's very different than the teenage girl he met before. She'd been quiet with a look in her eyes that hadn't seemed to match her meekness.
Xiao Xingchen had called him paranoid, but he hadn't had much to say when they'd found out the girl was a demonic cultivator and the ghoul they were fighting was the results of her own botched ritual. She'd at least helped them destroy it.
He'd thought it was mistake to leave her at the Mo's, in that house full of people who hated her. It could only end in death, although who's was to be decided.
Turning her in hadn't been an option to either of them. Even taking into account her cultivation methods, she'd been the least monstrous member of that household.
He hadn't expected her to marry into the Lans, of all people. Her forehead ribbon is hard to miss. He wonders which of the cultivators she managed to seduce and if they knew exactly what they were getting themselves into.
"It's a skill," she says dismissively, letting the cloaking talisman fade as they make their way down the street and away from the inn. "You didn't need much convincing to let me use it."
"I assume you don't want your new family to know of your demonic cultivation," he says, then has to reach out an arm to steady her when she trips. "I don't approve of your choices but if you're going to use your skills to help me find Xiao Xingchen I don't much care what else you do with them."
She looks at him for a moment, mouth hanging open, before closing it and shaking her head. "Huh. Yeah. I don't suppose you have a flute on you? I was going to try to go for the subtle approach, but I guess there's no point."
A flute? Odd, she'd leaned into arrays before. Then again, it's the tool Wei Wuxian used, so maybe there's something to it's effectiveness that she's discovered for herself in the years since he saw her last. "I know where we can get one. Do you really think you can find him?"
"One way or another," she answers, face suddenly grim, and Song Lan swallows.
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How to Make Replicas of Your Own Teeth:
A Cosplay Toothtorial
This is a method to safely use a molded mouth guard to make duplicates of your own teeth without destroying a potentially expensive piece of dental equipment. Everything that goes into the mold—clay and mold release aid—must be nontoxic/edible so you can wash your mouth guard at the end of the process and continue to use it as normal.
Benefits: No mold-making or casting experience required
Lightweight end result
Adds a truly personal touch to your project :)
Downsides: Must own a molded mouth guard/retainer
End result can be fragile and needs proper sealing for durability
Supplies
Molded mouth guard/retainer (referred to as “mold” from here on)
Cornstarch
Soft/fluffy brush
Non-toxic white air dry clay (I used Crayola Model Magic)
Craft knife
Jewelry wire (I used 20 or 22 gauge)
Pins/yarn needle/any various household implements you can sculpt or smooth small details with
Acrylic paints and a variety paint brushes
Clear glossy top coat (I used Mod Podge (satin) and UV Resin)
Prep
Brush or otherwise clean your mouth guard if you haven’t already, especially if there’s build-up.
If you’re using your container of cornstarch for cooking, set aside a small container specifically for crafting. No accidental cross-contamination here!
Dip your fluffy brush into cornstarch and brush into your DRY mouth guard. Lightly coat the entire mold and distribute any clumps. This coat of cornstarch will make it easier to remove your teeth from the mold.
Molding
Firmly press clay into the mold so that approximately half is in the mold, half is sticking out for root sculpting. Make sure there are no air pockets or you won’t pick up the details.
Use detail scissors/craft knife to cut away excess material and indent to mark out the divisions between teeth as visible on the gum lines (see above)
Reference a tooth diagram like the one below and separate out the roots for each tooth. Front teeth tend to have 1 leg, middle teeth have 2 legs, and some molars have 3+. I personally found that my limit was 2 roots. Sculpting 3+ roots on a single tooth was more difficult and more fragile than anatomical accuracy was worth.
Demolding
You can demold immediately after sculpting or wait up to an hour. The faster you remove the teeth, the easier they are to reshape. The longer you wait, the more they resist unintentional denting BUT the more touch-ups you'll have to do to clean the edges between teeth.
Gently lift the full row of teeth from the mold. If it won't release when you tip the mold or or push at it, try using a pin to stab one of the end teeth and use that to pry up the teeth. The rest of the row should follow. If they don't, try repeating for the other side. If they're still not lifting, set aside to dry and try again ~15-30min later.
Gently cut apart the u-shape into individual teeth.
Press raw cut edges in and smooth with various tools, like a yarn needle. Use a craft knife to help trim off any excess clay.
Touch-ups
In the case of air pockets or if you accidentally remove a root, wet some clay and use a very small amount to fill in gaps or add on roots. Don't forget the water! It makes the clay stickier and smooth out better. This is where tools come in handy, wet clay sticks less to smooth objects than your fingertips!
Once repaired, set aside any wet pieces to dry for at least 15min before doing any more sculpting work.
Set all teeth aside to dry for several hours on a wax paper or other non-stick surface. Make sure it's not textured or it will leave an imprint on your teeth!
Flaws like the chip on the top left tooth and the cracks on the middle bottom teeth are great candidates for smoothing out with a little extra clay.
**PAUSE HERE AND CLEAN YOUR MOUTH GUARD**
I personally like to rinse it out with water and clean it with a dissolving denture cleaning tablet to make sure it’s fully sanitized. It also doesn’t hurt to properly brush the mouth guard to make sure there’s no clay or cornstarch residue stuck in the crevices.
Holes
Test a tooth to check if it’s dry to the touch and doesn’t immediately deform to your touch. If it’s holding shape, you can move on.
Bore a hole into the tooth with a pin or jewelry wire. Consider how you want them to hang.
A) For the central dangling teeth on Harrowhark’s choker, I punched holes as close to the tip of the root as possible without tears, perpendicular to the teeth so I could hang them on jump rings directly from the center brooch.
B) For the teeth intended for Harrow’s tabard, I punched two sets of holes parallel to the jaw to prevent teeth from flipping around. One set just under the tooth cap, approx. 1/8in down, and one set about the same distance from the roots.
Once a hole has been punched with a pin, wiggle it around a little to open the hole or thread it on a piece of jewelry wire.
Leave teeth on a piece of wax paper or strung on a thread/wire to dry for ~48hr (or as recommended for your clay).
Painting/Weathering
Mix a small amount of yellow-brown paint with water to create a wash (middle palette above). Paint all of your teeth with this first to establish a base color and help define any hairline cracks.
Paint with less diluted yellows and browns (right palette above).
Refer to photos like the below for reference (try searching "teeth" and "archaeology"). NOTE: The root tends to be darker and more weathered than the main tooth because it isn't protected by enamel.
Dry brush ivory or white mixed with some yellow/brown onto the tooth cap to bring out highlights.
Finishing
Your air dry clay teeth and paint job will need a top coat for protection. I highly recommend a glossy clear top coat to give the look of enamel. Below is a comparison of the two sealants I used, but there's many more options out there!
UV Resin (Left)
Pros: Harder/more durable
Cures faster
Cons: Need to work during daylight or use a UV light
Harder to get a thin even layer
Requires more set up and safety precautions
Satin Mod Podge (Right)
Pros: Can be applied with a brush
Air dries
Cons: Takes longer to dry
Teeth tend to stick together unless kept below room temp or kept from touching each other
(I solve this by storing unused beads in an old pill bottle in the fridge. Yes it's cursed and Yes I've had comments from my housemates.)
As mentioned earlier, thread teeth on a wire or pin down to dry.
This method also works well to set up for spray painting a clear coat.
Now, go forth and enjoy everyone's reactions when you tell them that you're wearing your own teeth! :D
#cosplay#cosplay tutorial#crafting tutorial#cosplay ref#harrowhark cosplay#the locked tomb#harrowhark nonagesimus#the locked tomb cosplay#locked tomb cosplay#craftblr#tutorials#tutorial#Nymph rambles#the scraps of NoN#I'm accepting my fate to potentially be know as the Tooth Harrow to a swath of people slkdfskljfsdlf#teeth#cw teeth#juuuuuust in case
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Ooh, from the wip game: former mafia hob :D
I know I have posted bits and pieces of this in various places on Tumblr and Discord, but below is probably the largest segment of the WIP I have ever posted at once. And this is maybe about a quarter of it? It features an OC that I made up and then it turned out I was prescient because in my head Sandro looks pretty much exactly like Ethan from Maneskin. Also, to no one's surprise, this gets NSFW at the end. (WHAT?!? SMUT?!?!?! FROM MEEEE?!?!?!)
"And this guy, this Burgess, just had him locked in a giant glass sphere in his basement!"
"A human? Wouldn't he need air?"
Hob was in an ex-pat bar on the south end of Okinawa, doing a very good job of continuing to live completely off the grid just as he had for the past eight years.
The old man started up again and Hob strained to hear him across the length of the bar. "He just looked like a human. I worked there sixteen years and he didn't age a minute, hell he barely moved. I heard Burgess bragging once about how it was the God of Dreams that he caught! All I know for sure is what I heard directly, which is that Burgess kept asking him for things – magic, money, immortality – and the pale fucker just kept glaring at him. Never spoke a word. Just stared daggers with those unearthly blue eyes. I am telling you, if looks could kill, that old bastard would be dead thirty times over. Whenever that fairy King or whatever the fuck that shaved panther of a human-looking thing is gets out…" The guy whistled, leaning back from the bar and shaking his head. "The entire Burgess family tree is going to burn."
This man had Hob’s full attention now. He grabbed his drink and moved around to sit on the barstool next to him.
"I am sorry, where did you say you are from?" Hob asked, trying for casual, sizing up the ex-military guy. He had a muddled accent, but with a heavy dose of south London. His salt-and-pepper hair had been kept buzzed even though he had clearly been out of the service for a long time.
"What's it to you?" The man was immediately bristly, crossed his arms over his chest. He was defensive and closed off and Hob was going to need to work to get more information. Hob sighed. Or take the easy way out… just pay him for the information.
The Okinawan summer was too hot for this. Hob would give it one shot, try to explain, but if that didn't work it was Plan E for Easy. "I have an interest in the supernatural. And you certainly seem to have seen something. Could I ask you a few more questions?" The old-timer just stared at him, completely deadpan, unblinking. It made Hob take a sip of his whisky with its melted ice and then press the glass to his temple. "I can pay you for your time."
He perked up immediately after that.
> > > > > | | < < < < <
Two days later – and after an exchange of enough money to set that old-timer’s family up for generational wealth – Hob was settling into his Business Class seat on the long haul from Tokyo Haneda to Rome Fiumicino. He tapped out an email telling Gio his flight to Palermo was going to get in at 08:20 and would he be so kind as to send around a car? He needed to stop and see il Barone first (because his knee was bad enough as it was without getting kneecapped for failing to pay his respects) and then straight to the grotta. And make sure the shovel is in the car? Grazii.
It was his Stranger. It had to be. The description was uncanny. And the quick sketch Hob had drawn on a bar napkin had resulted in a rather emphatic positive identification.
And even if it wasn’t his Stranger, there was something being kept in that basement that probably needed rescue. There were paltry few things in the world, as Hob had learned over the centuries, that deserved to have their freedom completely taken from them.
Almost 22 hours after sending that email to Gio, Hob stepped out into the salty Mediterranean air of Palermo and sighed. His white linen three-piece suit with light blue shirt fit the aesthetic of the region as much as the weather. The smells, the breeze, the sounds – yeah, okay, Hob had missed it. But this was no time to linger. Focus, Hob! First, he had to give his regards to Salvatore and then he could go dig up his stash from his time in the Family Business. He put on his hat and dark sunglasses and walked out into the sunlight.
In the aftermath of 1889 Hob had, unsurprisingly, a lot of anger and frustration to work out. He ended up falling back on a reliable skill set he hadn't tapped in awhile: violence.
It was bare knuckle boxing first, which earned him enough money to leave for the States without disturbing his securities in the UK. He continued with underground boxing for a bit, because he was fucking good at it, until he got noticed.
Hob got picked up by Giuseppe “the Clutch Hand” Morello and Ignazio “the Wolf” Lupo and the rest was history.
First they took him in as a base-level associate, just another meatheaded guy who could fuck people up for them. And he made it to the Castellammarese War, which was as good a time as any to fake his own death.
But, by pure happenstance and a whole lot of luck, Salvatore D’Aquila caught him in the act, pig's blood everywhere, mutilated body that clearly wasn't Hob at his feet and well. That had required a bit of explaining. Explaining lead to talking, talking lead to negotiating, and suddenly Hob was heading upstate to train with the best.
And so it was, with some excellent mentorship on handling firearms and his innate knack for getting himself out of trouble, Hob became one of the most feared associates in Cosa Nostra.
In fact, he became The Associate.
See, he was never going to be a made man; he didn't have the proof of a Sicilian, or even Italian, heritage that he needed to be a ranking Family member. But any capo worth his salt wasn't going to turn away this level of skill and finesse.
And in return they had kept his secret. Mostly because they knew they had given him the means to kill them all if it was otherwise.
Well, it wasn’t like the entire Family knew. Just Salvatore and his immediate blood relations. Who he needed to stop and say hello to first, then to business.
Once the meeting was done, he headed to the coast.
When Hob left the Family Business he had literally put all of his gear into an air-tight oak box and buried it. One of the things Hob had learned over the centuries was that, more often than not, symbolism mattered. So it wasn't a surprise to find that when Hob opened the wooden box with a crowbar it was like seeing good friends come back from the dead. His shotgun. His sabre. His pistols.
He buried these along with his career in Cosa Nostra in 1998. It should have been earlier, but the six or so years after 1989 were a bit of an alcohol and cocaine tinted haze and it took him another three years after getting sober to work on his exit strategy. But once he was out he had abandoned it all and never looked back.
In fact, it was only in the past few months that Hob had let himself pick up a gun again to do some target shooting. Suddenly he was very glad of that coincidence.
After filling his duffle Hob stared down into the empty casket of his former life. He had never, ever expected to be in this position again, most certainly not less than a decade after abandoning it.
Crouched amongst the sand and the rocks of the beachfront cave, he ran a hand through his sweaty hair and sighed. "The things I do for you, Stranger." He closed the lid.
"Ti Umbra?" Sandro had been watching Hob silently up until now. Even as a little kid, Alessandro had called the thing that haunted Hob his Shadow. He was an eerily perceptive child, often ostracized from his peers because of it – which of course meant that when Hob had arrived in Sicily in the early 1980s they had become easy friends. Now in his early 30s, Sandro was mostly a driver, but knew his way around a weapon, as any son of a Don should. Hob had hoped he would leave, go to college, get out, but Hob never did convince him to. He was a good kid, he didn't deserve this kind of life.
"Si." Hob put his hands on his knees and levered himself up. "I think that he needs my help." A sigh as he kept staring at the box. "Am I that obvious?"
"Only to me, Bettino." The nickname had come from the diminutive of the diminutive of Roberto, which Sandro’s family knew Hob as. It was an endearment used only between them. "Only He could bring you back to this, to the Family." Hob felt the other man's hand on his shoulder and laid his own over it. The feel of those fingers was achingly familiar. "Let me come with you. You should not go on the rampage you are about to embark on alone, my friend."
Hob picked up Sandro's hand, placed a kiss on the knuckles. "Not a chance. I won't put you in such danger. And I won't let you see me like that." Alessandro hadn’t even been born yet when the Associate was working hardest, in the heydays of Murder, Inc., and all that entailed, when Hob rarely had a night when he wasn’t washing the gunpowder from his hands.
Sandro laughed. "I have seen you every other way, why not this one?" His arms went around Hob's shoulders from behind and he moved his lips to the shell of Hob's ear before dropping into Sicilian. "One more go at it? For old time's sake? Last chance to use me as His stand-in." He laughed even more at Hob's sharp inhale. "You think I didn't know? Oh, Bettino." He nuzzled into the hair at Hob’s nape. "That's how I was able to pretend you really loved me."
"Sandro!" Hob pushed away and whirled around, looking over his former lover’s dark hair and olive-bronze skin, high cheekbones and pouting pink lips, wiry build and black-brown eyes. Not wanting to misspeak, he answered back in English. "I did – and still do – really love you, you know that."
"Yes, but not as you love Him." Sandro shook his head as he moved in to press their foreheads together, arms back around Hob's shoulders. "You would not come back to the Family for me. You would not go to war for me. And that is okay. I know my place. I made my peace with that years ago, when you left." He leaned in to speak against Hob's lips. "But I would ask if you would have me one last time."
Hob let Sandro pull him to the ground amongst the rocks inside the small cave. Hob's shirt and vest were already discarded, his sleeves rolled up and his collar unbuttoned. He unbuttoned Sandro's shirt and pulled it down so it caught in his elbows, draped down his back low enough for Hob to run his lips over the huge tattoo of Santa Rusulia – Patron Saint of Palermo, invoked for protection in times of plague – wearing a crown of roses and standing amidst a copse of lilies outside a cave not so different from the one they are currently in, looking out to the sun setting over the sea, that covered his entire back. Hob drew that image, originally charcoal on paper, while they were sitting on the beach watching the sun set on Sandro's 19th birthday in the early ‘90s. He didn't know that Sandro had even saved the picture until a shootout a year later had Hob ripping off the young man’s shirt to stop the bleeding and found the image permanently inked into his skin.
Sandro knew more about Hob than anyone living. They had spent four years as lovers in the mid-'90s. Hob had gotten sober for Sandro. He had left Cosa Nostra for Sandro, had begged for Sandro to come with him. But he was too scared of his father, Salvatore “the Baron,” to leave. He was worried about the fate of his mother, his sisters. Hob couldn’t begrudge him that. It still stung.
Hob shucked Sandro's pants down his thighs and moved his hand around to his ass, thinking that he would tease him dry before trying to find something slick back in the car. Instead, Hob's fingers found warm, flat silicone. He slumped forward with a moan and his forehead hit between Sandro's shoulder blades. "Oh fuck, Sandro. You have been full with this the entire time?"
"Ready for you, Bettino." He sighed, soft and sweet as candy. He let out a high-pitched cry as Hob slowly pulled the plug out and Christ it was huge Hob would be able to just…
There was a thmpt as the silicone object hit the dense sand a few feet away, flung aside as Hob frantically tried to get his slacks down as quickly as possible. As soon as his cock was free Sandro's hands were reaching back to grab it, lubricant that the horny little weasel must have been carrying in his bloody pocket smeared all over his fingers, readying Hob to just…
Sandro sat back and Hob slid into him to the hilt, all in one stroke, easy as breathing, smooth and perfect.
They stayed that way for a long moment, readjusting to each other. The first movement was Hob's hands stroking from Sandro's thighs up to his chest then pressing them together. When they started rocking Sandro let his head fall back with a sob.
"Did you keep your hair long for me, too?" Hob wrapped the waist-length ponytail around his fist and tugged. It made Sandro moan just as sweetly as it had all those years ago. "That's it, sing for me, bell'uccellino." He snapped his hips up and Sandro wailed; he always was such a vocal lover, his pretty bird.
#yes another mafia AU#in this one Hob is still canon immortal and Dream is still King of Dreams and Nightmares#fishbowl rescue fic#Dreamling#Pavonis writes
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Oblivious | Spencer Reid
- Criminal Minds
- x Reader, Rossi’s daughter. (Y/N Baker-Rossi)
❪ FEM! ❫ ❪ adult aroace virgin attempts to write smut Altitude
───── ❝ description + disclaimer ❞ ─────
𖥻 Spencer Reid x AFAB+FEM!reader, in which SSA Dr Spencer Reid is dating his coworker. OR in which SSA David Rossi’s daughter is has been sneaking around with the smartest man in the FBI for months.
𖥻 established relationships. Not directly connected to Criminal Minds series timeline but an estimated place in the timeline around season 5. 8.2k words
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
───── ❝ backstory ❞ ─────
Carolyn Baker-Rossi, first wife of SSA David Rossi. After the loss of their son James, the couple began to drift apart and eventually filed for divorce after a case made him miss their anniversary in 1983 and he came home in time to see Carolyn packing his things. A few months later, and with no complications, a daughter was born. Y/N Baker-Rossi.
Y/N was always a gifted student, deciding when she was 7 that she wanted to “catch the boogie monsters that daddy does” and following through. Eventually, a few book releases and divorces later, Rossi’s 22 year old daughter completed her degree, resulting Rossi using his connections to get her allowed into the BAU as a liaison.
Y/N was spending 85% of her time at the BAU following around Penelope Garcia, 10% getting everyone coffee, and the other 5% staring at Dr Spencer Reid. The boy genius who joined the BAU 2 years prior as a Supervisory Special Agent.
2 years passed and Y/N— Agent Baker, affectionately nicknamed ‘Cupcake’ by Derek Morgan— was promoted, officially joining the team. And although she loved him, she refused to use her father’s last name while at work.
───── ❝ Oblivious ❞ ─────
Rossi‘s chair scraped along the floor as he pulled it out, and I groaned. Morgan called and woke me up at 6am, how much more murdering could happen if we waited just 1 more hour?
I wasn’t angry, but It was my first official case. I was no longer a liaison I was an SSA. My seat at the table meant something, but I didn’t expect them to drag me into work while it was still dark outside.
“Wheels up in 30” Hotch said, ending the briefing and giving us time to get what we needed from our desks.
Spencer was sat across from me like always, his hair messy and shirt collar a little messed up, and he pushed his chair out from the table before getting up.
I walked behind him as he went to his desk, and I went to mine. “Rough night?” I yawned.
“No, no. I’m fine.” Reid put his bag over his shoulder, rubbing his eye with the back of his hand.
I hummed in response and walked up to him, noticing that he tensed up as I got close to him. I put my hands on his collar, fixing it and his tie as he just watched me with his lips slightly parted.
“Uh, New collared shirts often come with stiff collars; however, after a number of washes and wears, the material that keep the collar stiff begins to soften, causing the shirt collar to lose its shape.” I nodded, enjoying the seemingly pointless information that he would often share. Everyone had left, the space around us now empty. “This leads to shirt collars curling and folding.”
When I was done, I went to step back and gave him some space, but Reid put a hand on my waist stopping me.
“Are you aware of how hard it is to avoid touching you while we’re at work?”
“You’re touching me now”
“But i’m stopping myself from… More”
“Nobody’s around” I kept my voice no more than a whisper, putting my hand on Reid’s chest and pushing myself up to reach him.
“Ready to go, Cupcake?” Morgan entered, back over his shoulder and eyes down as he looked at his phone. Reid and I jumped away from each other before Morgan had the chance to look up and tuck his phone in his back pocket. “Kid?”
Both of us nodded and he turned towards the doors, Reid following a few steps behind him. I slung my bag over my shoulder, jogging to catch up.
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
“How was your first case?” Garcia asked, rushing towards me with an open container of cookies in her hands as we entered the BAU. Returning from the long trip to Florida.
“I might be a little traumatised but that’s part of the job” I looked in the plastic container, happily taking one and almost melting at how good the warm cookie was.
Morgan patted my shoulder as he stopped beside me, swiftly taking a cookie and earning a shocked gasp from Garcia.
“Those are not for you”
“Thanks, baby girl” He smiled. “You look like you need a drink after that.”
“I do, I really do” I sighed wiping the cookie crumbs on my pants. “Garcia?”
She nodded enthusiastically, putting the lid on the container. “Yes.”
“Drinks?” Morgan asked the other members of the team, clapping his hands together. He earned a few responses as the team packed the extra things from their desks.
The team conversed as they left the building, leaving Garcia, my dad and I a little behind.
“You did real good, kid. Make sure you call your mum later”
“Got it.” I nodded, watching him hurry to catch up with Hotch.
“So…” Garcia started.
I shook my head at her. “Don’t” Garcia and I had spent so much time together over the past few years that she was practically my sister at this point.
She claimed knew about my crush on Reid before I did, noting that ‘22 year old Y/N came in to see her dad and immediately took notice of the 24 year old who’d just joined the team.’ But i’d managed to keep it from her that we had progressed our relationship.
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
With my FBI visitor pass— Which honestly seemed like a bad idea in retrospect, I walked into the bullpen and was barely noticed. Agents passing by without so much as a quick glance in my direction.
I spotted my Dad in a glass office, along with Hotch, and who I know knew was Garcia. He waved my direction, Hotch doing his best to smile at me before going back to their conversation.
Walking further into the room, I narrowly dodged someone with their head down looking at an open file as the walked and bumped into someone’s desk.
“Oh shit, i’m sorry” I muttered, the boy at his desk seemed barely older than I was.
“No, it’s perfectly fine. Young adults fall more frequently than expected, most falls even occur during everyday activities such walking and talking.” The boy looked up from the open book and papers scattered on his desk and It felt like I got slapped in the face by emotions that made no sense.
I couldn’t think of anything to say, I just forced my mouth closed so I could stop gawking at him. “Totally”
“Uh…” He stared at me for a second before quickly blinking a few times. “Each— Each year slips, trips and falls cause thousands of preventable injuries. In most cases, people trip on low obstacles that are hard to spot.”
I laughed, not really understanding what the boy was rambling about. Just nodding and smiling like a fool.
“Y/N” Hotch called my name, I turned to face the 2 men and the blonde. “Hey, I see you’ve met our newest SSA.”
“You’re an agent? I wouldn’t have guessed” I gave the boy another once over.
“Boy genius.” Rossi sighed “IQ of 180, photographic memory—”
“187, actually, and I have an eidetic memory. Eidetic memory refers to the ability to retain visual information with extreme precision while in contrast, photographic memory refers to the ability to remember everything in a scene, not just the visual elements.” The boy pushed his chair back from his desk, playing with the pen in his hand.
Woah.
Hotch cleared his throat. “Y/N Baker-Rossi, this is our technical analyst Penelope Garcia , and doctor Spencer Reid.”
“Baker-Rossi? As in, you, Rossi?” Garcia’s eyes widened, looking between us quickly.
“Yes.” I laughed. “From his first marriage.”
“Wow, I didn’t even know you had spawn. It’s great to meet you”
Rossi put his hand on my shoulder, taking my bag from my hands. “She’s actually here to see you, Garcia.”
“Me?”
“Y/N just completed her advanced degree in behavioral science, and while her application is pending I got permission for her to be a temporary liaison, somewhat of an assistant for you”
“Oh, assistant wow. Yes, yes. Come my child, I will be your seeing eye dog for the BAU.” Penelope linked my arm, taking the bag from my fathers hands and wishing me away. Hotch and Rossi already making their way back to the office.
I was flabbergasted to say the least, looking around as Garcia began to explain her position here. I looked back at the boy sitting at his desk and smiled. “Uh, bye Spencer”
“Yeah— Yeah, bye Y/N.” He spun his chair, watching Garcia and I as we disappeared down the hall.
When he was gone from sight, I took a deep breath. Spencer Reid.
When he spoke there was something eerily calming and familiar about him. Something in the pit of my stomach told me that this guy was special. Special in different way than being a young genius working for the FBI.
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
As we entered the bar and found somewhere to sit, JJ and I sat beside each other so she could show me pictures of her son, Henry, on her phone. Spencer at the other end of the table across from Garcia.
I finished my drink and sighed, moving away from the table taking my glass with me to the bar. Rossi passing me his empty glass with a smile as he engaged in conversation with Morgan.
“Hey” I tiredly smiled at the bartender “Can I just get another Vodka and Coke, and 3 fingers of Whiskey please.”
The bartender got to work on the drinks and I found ed my attention on my shoes.
“Y/N?” I looked up at the person calling my name. “Oh my god, it is you.” I stared at the man in utter confusion as he walked up to me, leaving his friends chatting at their table behind him. “George. We went to High School together.”
“Whoa, George Maddison?” It finally clicked, he chuckled, nodding that it was in fact him. He was a handsome sight but in my memory I can still see him wearing his Harry Potter-esque glasses in his brown coat and black beanie.
“You look amazing. And I heard you work for the FBI now, isn’t that what your dad did?”
“Thank you, I really don’t feel amazing right now so it’s much appreciated.” I laughed, thanking the bartender as he put the drinks on the counter for me. “My dad actually still works for the BAU, he’s right over there. The team is just celebrating my first case.”
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
“Spence” Garcia whispered, the boy practically grunting in response. “You’re going to burn a hole in the back of her head if you don’t stop staring.”
“I’m not staring” Reid snapped his attention to Garcia, keeping his voice low to avoid drawing attention from the other agents. He was staring, and he knew it. But of course he was there was someone else talking to Y/N, and he knew that when men go to a bar, they are typically looking for a good time, to catch a buzz, to let off steam, and maybe find someone to take home for a one night stand.
Garcia hummed, finishing the rest of her cocktail and pushing the glass towards Reid. “Here. Get me another, there’s your excuse to go interrupt.”
“Why would I interrupt, I’m sure Y/N is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. She’s a highly trained federal agent and although studies suggest drink spiking may be more widespread than previously believed, on average—”
Garcia wasn’t listening, instead looking across the crowded bar at the tall blonde making Y/N smile. “He’s like Derek Morgan levels of hotness.” She muttered, Reid immediately shutting his mouth.
After a moment of silent contemplation, the 26 year old took Garcia’s empty glass and walked to the bar. Swallowing the lump in his throat and leaving Garcia smiling to herself as she thought about adding ‘Matchmaker’ to her resume.
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
“Another one of… Whatever this is” I heard Spencer’s voice behind me and turned my head to look at him.
“Hey” I smiled, my heart almost skipping a beat at the sight of my coworker.
Reid licked his lips quickly before smiling back at me. “Hey, sorry to interrupt.”
“Not a problem”
“Hi” George stuck his hand out for the lanky brunette to shake. “I’m George”
Spencer ignored his offer and instead chose to just nod at him in acknowledgment. “SSA, Dr Spencer Reid. Do— Do you two know each other?”
“Yeah, High School. We even dated for a while.”
“I wouldn’t really call going to the mall and a few kisses during spin the bottle ‘dating’.” I awkwardly laughed, swirling the straw around in my drink.
“Dating is a term coined in America to signify that stage of romantic relationships in which two individuals engage in an activity together, most often with the intention of evaluating each other's suitability as a partner in a future intimate relationship. Most couples go on 5 to 6 dates before discussing a relationship, and some take even longer.”
George momentarily seemed frozen, letting Reid’s words sink in. “See! We were dating, and I guess technically we never broke up. Thanks dude.”
“Uh, you’re welcome, dude”
I laughed at how unnatural it seemed for Spencer to say ‘dude’. My smile even beginning to hurt my cheeks. He turned to the bartender, taking the drink they had just put down and I raised an eyebrow at him.
“What the hell are you drinking?”
“This is Garcia’s actually, she wanted me to come get it for her.”
“Oh” He didn’t want to come be my knight in shining armour, rescuing me from the mystery man that could swoop me away from him.
“What is taking the two of you so long?” Rossi asked, reaching past me to grab his drink from the bar. “You’re young, aren’t you meant to be fast? Don’t answer that Reid it wasn’t a real question”
Spencer shut his mouth quickly. Rossi sipping his drink and noticing George standing with a smile on his face.
“Mr Rossi” He put his hand out to shake again. “How are you?”
“Have we met?”
“No” I answered, I didn’t want to hear another remark about us ‘technically’ never having broken up. “We did a play together in High School but, you were on a case.”
“I’m sure you want to get back to celebrating, but i’d really like to see you again Y/N.”
I raised an eyebrow at the blonde “You would?”
“Really?” Rossi and Reid said almost simultaneously.
“Definitely. Can I have your number?”
“Uh” I thought for a minute, I didn’t want to give some guy at a bar my number and lead him on in front of my boyfriend. But on the other hand my dad was standing right there. “This job doesn’t give me a lot of time to myself.”
“I’m sure you’ll work something out” Rossi smiled, gesturing for me to put my number into his contacts. Reid’s eyes widened and for self preservation he turned and went back to the table.
“Okay.” I forced a smile, keying in my number and passing the phone back him.
George left, my dad and I waving as I went back to the table and I took my seat beside JJ again. Sipping my drink and raising an eyebrow at the stares I was receiving. “What?”
“Who was that?” Emily asked, a slightly suggestive look on her face.
“Just someone from high school.”
Rossi hummed, looking over to where George was laughing with his friends
“He’s cute” JJ commented
“Yeah.” Reid said, catching my attention. “Dude seems great”
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
We were lucky to have 2 days off before being sent on our next case, Reid and I sitting beside one another on the plane and enjoying what little intimacy we could have on the trip; Our arms touching on the arm rest.
The jet ride consisted of Rossi making popcorn, me and Morgan trying to sleep, Garcia calling us with more information and everyone doing their own thing.
As we left the airport terminal, Reid walked a few steps ahead of me, and I watched as the wind blew his hair into his face. The boy stopping and looking at me when my phone started to ring.
“Hello…?” I said cautiously
“Hey! Y/N, it’s George”
“Oh, hi. I didn’t actually expect you to call this soon, isn’t there some men’s unspoken rule to wait 3 days?”
“I’m just really excited to talk to you I guess.”
“I actually can’t talk, we just landed in North Carolina for a case.”
“Already? Wow, serial killers work fast.” He laughed on the other end of the line. “I’ll call you back some other time then”
My phone beeped and I took a second to look at it before putting the cell back to my ear “That would be great. I have to go, work call.” I hung up, not hearing whatever he tried to say before I cut him off and answering the other call. “Garcia?”
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
Hotch had split us up for the case, him, Prentiss and Rossi at the latest crime scene. JJ and Morgan at the house interviewing the family. Leaving Reid and I at the police precinct trying to find the MO, and looking for potential UnSubs.
Reid and I were professional, apart from lingering when our hands touched and the occasional longing stare. But we made it through the case without a hitch, and as soon as Morgan called to tell us they’d caught the guy we began to pack our things.
“I think it was pretty, uh, pretty hot how you worked out that the UnSub was taunting the victims.”
I scoffed, putting the photos from the whiteboard into a manila folder. “Replicating murders from famous movies isn’t that difficult to realise”
“There’s a number of generally agreed elements comprising popular culture. These aspects are often subject to rapid change, due to omnipresent media. It encompasses the most immediate and contemporary aspects of our lives.” He paused for a second to breathe and I leaned against the table to look at him. “Considering my circumvention for most aspects of modern technology or media, I show a fair amount animosity against popular culture, the likelihood that I would have figured that MO is only about 3%”
“I’m taking this as I need to educate you on horror movies”
“I’m well educated on classic horror films. In fact, I think my favourite would be Anita. The 1920 Austrian film that depicts a societal lady trapped under the spell of an unskilled hypnotist.”
“Have you ever watched anything that wasn’t a foreign black and white silent film?”
The door to the precinct briefing room opened before Reid could respond. The team walking in, exhausted from working without a moments peace.
Hotch put his phone down on the table. “Unfortunately theres thunderstorms coming in and we won’t be able to get a flight out until some time tomorrow. Garcia’s booked us into a hotel in the meantime, we can all hopefully get a good nights rest”
“I doubt that.” Emily said, a disgusted look on her face as she pushed the picture from one of the crime scenes across the table away from her. “This one was some real nightmare fuel.”
The photo made my stomach turn as well, a recreation of a scene from 1976 film The Omen. The victims face sewn into a Joker-esque smile and hung from the room of her house.
I quickly put the photo in the envelope and closed it so i’d never have to see it again.
“That gives you some time to call George.” Rossi smiled, helping pack up what was left scattered across the table.
“Dad” I groaned, earning a puzzled look from the officers nearby. Morgan and JJ chuckled at my annoyance I shot them both a glare.
“Reid, tell her she should be putting herself out there. I want grandkids eventually”
Spencer choked on air, his eyes wide as he tried to stop coughing and everyone looked at him in concern.
“Are you okay?” Emily asked, Reid nodding and putting his hand up to stop anyone from helping him.
“Um” He finally caught his breath. “Single men are far more likely than single women to be looking for a relationship or dates – around 61% compared to 38%. While looking both men and women report equal levels of dissatisfaction with their dating lives and the ease of finding people to date, women are more likely to say they have had some particularly negative experiences.“
Rossi stared at him for a moment, dissatisfied with his response. “Don’t listen to him. Call the boy.”
I rolled my eyes and Rossi picked up the case files, heading out of the precinct with the rest of the team and leaving Reid and I behind.
“That was… Uncomfortable” I laughed, combing a hand through my hair and picking up my bag.
“I was actually thinking how we could possibly utilise this whole George situation.”
“Yeah?”
Reid put his hands either side of me, pinning me against the table and putting his face a few inches away from mine. “You can tell Rossi you’re going out with him and then we’ll actually be able to spend some time together”
“And after a few ‘dates’ with George, or multiple nights where I don’t come home, how do you suppose he’ll react if I don’t start bringing George around as my boyfriend?”
“Just a few dates, not enough to be considered a relationship but enough so he’ll believe you’re trying.”
I hummed in response, my lips just about to press against Reid’s— The feeling i’d craved for the past 3 days that we’d been running around on this case—
“Agents?” One of the local officers stood in the doorway, Reid taking a large step back with his bright red face. “Sorry to interrupt, but Agent Hotchner is waiting outside.”
Clearing my throat and smiling, I moved off the table. “Thanks.”
She smiled briefly, taking one step away before turning back. “You two are a really cute couple.”
Reid put his bag on his shoulder, looking down to try and hide the smile on his face. “Thank you.”
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
Completely exhausted from the case, I didn’t even bother to change once I’d walked into my hotel room. Instead just collapsed face first on the the plush bed, the TV on at a low volume and the heavy rainfall outside lulling me to sleep.
Of course, as my mind finally went blank and eyes fluttered shut, a knock came at my door and I had to force myself up.
“Reid?” I muttered, the boy standing in the hall rocking back and forth on his heels. And nodding at me as I opened the door, eh just stepped inside and closed it behind him.
“I need you”
“Couldn’t it wait? I’m so tired.” He titled his head slightly to the side, a tuft of hair sliding down his forehead and breaking me. “Fine, what is it? Chemistry? Math? Missing sock?”
“No, no.”
“Then what?”
“I need you.”
I sighed, a ghost of a smile playing on my lips. “Spencer”
“Don’t say my name like that if you’re going to say no and send me away” His voice was so soft, breathy and faint. It set goosebumps up my arms.
Hotch’s room was beside mine, at least when Spencer snuck into my bedroom he had no chance of running in to Rossi since it was on the entirety opposite side of the house. I reached for the door handle, intent on sending Reid away, it wasn’t worth the risk even if I really wanted him right now too.
My arm brushed against his warm skin and I looked up at him, eyes locking on one other and drowning out everything around me.
I find life seldom follows the plans you've made.
Turning the lock on the door, Spencer waited for the click before hisface coming close to mine, sleepy eyes closing, medicine-sweet lips puckering up, and all the other sounds of the world going silent— The thunderstorm, whatever had been running on the television, the sound the rain made on the small balcony as it made a small puddle— all silent, as Spencer’s lips finally met mine and I couldn’t get enough of him.
I was tired and sore but I didn’t care. I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted him, all the time. His weight on top of me. I wanted feel his warm breath on my skin. I wanted his sweat to drop onto me.
Reid took a step forward, his hands sliding down my body and stopping at my hips, cold fingers sitting on the exposed skin where my shirt had ridden up. Our breathing became heavy, more desperate as we gave in to our urges.
He took another step, forcing me to take one backwards and kept doing so until I felt the hotel bed mattress behind me. I slid my hand down his chest, Reid groaning as I reached his waistband, hurriedly unbuckling his belt. I grabbed the zipper of his fly and he pulled away from me.
“You’re going to have to be really quiet” He had a painful expression on his face, eyes shifting between my lips and eyes as if it truly hurt him to pull away from me. “Y/N?”
“Yeah, I can be quiet.”
He didn’t waste another second, letting me fall back on the mattress so he could hover over me. Soft open mouth kisses along my kneel as he carefully undid the buttons on my shirt and I tugged at his zipper.
He shifted his weight, using one hand to hold himself up as he dug though his back pocket. Putting the shiny plastic wrapper in his teeth before pushing his jeans the rest of the way down before moving to undo mine.
I take the wrapper from Reid. allow him to take his own shirt off as I open it, watching as he rushes to get back to smothering me in kisses.
My hand touches his chest and begins to fall in excruciating slow designs, the boy almost whining against my lips.
Gripping a pillow in my fists as he breathes against me, hot air down my exposed him.
Reid flips, me now straddling him and allowing me to playfully tug at the ends of his hair.
My phone vibrated on the bedside table, Reid groaning in frustration and pulling away from me.
“Ignore it” I muttered, using my index finger to turn his face so he was looking at me again. The phone stopped and he smiled into the kiss until the phone started again. He pulled away. Making me the one to whine this time.
“Hello?” He said into the phone “She’s busy.”
He hung up, putting the phone back on the bedside table and gripping his hands on my thighs to pull me closer to him. Skin to skin.
I moaned and Reid laughed, moving to place a kiss under my ear and whisper. “Quiet, remember?”
I wanted nothing more in that moment than to be with him. Feeling I was about to crumble like sand as the bed creaks beneath us.
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
We all arranged to meet in the lobby, Emily and I were talking, entertaining the possibility of a ‘girls night out’ soon.
JJ walked back towards us with coffee cups in her hands, offering us each one. “Where the hell is Reid?”
“Maybe we should send someone to check on him.” Morgan walked towards the elevato, pressing the button and the doors opening instantaneously.
“Hey” Reid greeted. “Ready to go?”
“What took you so long?” Rossi asked
“I didn’t get a very good nights rest.” He walked off the elevator, heading towards the exit. “Poor sleep habits often include an irregular schedule, more than 90 percent of law enforcement officers report being routinely fatigued.”
Reid and I were in seperate cars, unintentionally splitting into women in one and men in the other. I spent the entire drive wondering what they were talking about.
“You alright, Baker?” Emily asked, looking at me in the rearview mirror
“Yeah, i’m fine.” She raised an eyebrow and I sighed. Working with profilers sucks. “I’m just trying to work out why my dad is suddenly so pushy about me dating someone.”
“Maybe he knows you have a crush on Reid.” JJ shrugged
“JENNIFER!” Emily gasped
“You guys think I have a crush on Reid? Did you hit your head or something?”
Prentiss sighed, parking the black SUV “We may have realised a long time ago. It’s not a very kept secret. I think everyone except Reid knows.”
“I’m pretty sure Morgan and Hotch are oblivious too.“ JJ laughed. Climbing out of the car.
We boarded the jet, JJ and Prentiss sharing a knowing look as I took my seat next to Spencer.
“Shut up” I mouthed, the pair of them shaking their head as Reid gave me a confused look.
As the jet started to take off, I listened to everyone’s conversations, checking my phone when it beeped to a new message from Garcia. I looked up through my eyelashes, Prentiss and JJ both looking at their phones and telling me we all just got the message.
Girls Night. Please. Tuesday. - P.G
Emily put her phone down first, mine and JJ’s buzzing again and Hotch noticing. “Are you three messaging each other?”
“Maybe” JJ smiled, putting her phone down after pressing send.
Morgan raised his eyebrow as mine and Emily’s phones buzzed again. “What are you talking about?”
Yes. We need to talk about Y/N and Reid. - E.P
Tuesday’s perfect, and I agree we need to talk about it. Code name: Romeo and Juliette. - J.J
“It’s girl talk, Morgan. And no matter how smooth you are, it’s just not for you.” I sighed, clicking send and making a point to turn my phone off.
“Come on, Cupcake, don’t do me like that.”
There’s nothing to talk about! … but I prefer Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy actually. - /.BR
We had small conversations until we landed, all heading to put away files and clean up our things before heading home.
“So?” Garcia smiled, taking a seat in my desk chair “Anything happen this time?”
“It’s a work trip, G.”
“But Em and JJ know now, so something must have happened!”
“They just worked it out, profilers notice everything.” Apart from that we’d been in an exclusive relationship for a while now.
“You two are totally smitten, just ask Reid on a date. Rossi doesn’t have to know, I can keep a secret. Swear.”
I looked at Reid talking to Morgan across the room, nobody else knowing about the purple marks hidden just beneath his collar.
“See!” Garcia signed “You’re even blushing just looking at him.”
“Nothings going to happen between us.”
“Ready to go home?” Rossi smiled as he walked up to Garcia and I, oblivious to the conversation he had just interrupted. I nodded and he adjusted his bag strap. “Did you call, George?”
Garcia’s eyes snapped to look at my face. I had to focus on how I would answer, he’d know if I was panicked or lying.
“Yeah he called last night.” Truthfully he did, it’s just I didn’t answer, Reid did.
“And?” Penelope urged
I shrugged. “I’m very busy.”
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
Girls Night Out. Usually we’d be out at a bar getting insanely drunk, but the night started at JJ’s house waiting for Will to come home.
“He’s asleep” She sighed, returning in the 3rd outfit she’d tried on since Henry had decided to throw up on her 1st dress and pee on the 2nd.
“Finally. Now we can discuss.” Garcia smiled, shifting in her spot on the sofa to look at me on the armchair. “Go on, Y/N.”
I laughed, having hoped they would have forgotten this topic over our luxurious 3 days off of work. “Discuss what?”
“Tell them how long you’ve been in love with Reid.”
“I’ve never been in love with Reid!” I protested
“First day she arrived at the BAU, the both of them, practically drooling.”
“Really?” Emily smiled, looking at me with a glint in her eye.
“Hey, well don’t you all look pretty.” Will draped his coat over the back of the couch, everyone greeting him and standing ready to leave.
“Henry‘s asleep, we’ll hopefully only be out for a few hours.” JJ kissed her partner and he gave her a warm loving smile. Maybe I could tell them about Reid and I, but we had a very different situation to others.
Most people don’t work with both their boyfriend and father.
As we left JJ’s the topic shifted and I was immediately relieved, enjoying listening to everyone’s funny anecdotes much more.
The bar we went to was busy, full of people out celebrating. Any time my glass was empty, a new one seemed to appear in front of me until I was viewing everything in a slight haze.
“I think we should go!” JJ announced loudly, pushing herself up from the table and knocking over Emily’s drink.
“At least it’s the weekend” Garcia groaned, picking up her back and adjusting her glasses.
Emily snorted “It’s Tuesday”
“Oh god”
As we managed to make our way outside, JJ’s phone rang and I whined. “Please don’t tell me someone’s murdered again”
JJ answers the call “It’s Will”
“Will!” I cheered, flagging down a taxi for us. I told the man Garcia’s address first since her apartment building was the closest, and we drove off as soon as JJ was done on the phone telling Will we were all safe.
Emily, as the most sober. was in the front telling the driver addresses and making sure we all got to the door safely.
“I’ll see you tomorrow” Prentiss sighed, knocking on the front door as I attempted to find my keys at the bottom of my bag.
Rossi opened the door, pyjamas on and sleep in his eyes.
“Dad, what’s up?” I snapped my fingers, finding my keys. I wasn’t completely drunk but I was buzzed enough that I needed a babysitter.
Rossi looked at Emily as he let me inside “Thank you” Shutting the door behind me, he put his hands on my shoulders to guide me to my bedroom. “Don’t throw up on my carpet”
“I won’t” I groaned, pulling my jacket off and throwing it on the end of my bed with my bag. Rossi turned the light on in my bathroom, walking off and returning with a large glass of water and some snacks.
“Get some rest.” He said softly, pushing a loose strand of hair from my face.
After he was gone, I yawned and pulled my phone from my bag, keying in Reid’s number.
“Spencer” I coo’d when he answered, dragging his name out.
“How much did you drink?”
“Not enough.”
“It’s been stated that to reduce the risk of harm from alcohol-related disease or injury, a healthy limit is to have no more than 10 standard drinks a week and no more than 4 standard drinks on any one day.”
I stayed silent for a few seconds, mentally trying to count how many drinks i’d had. “Then I had way too many.” Reid chuckled on the other side. “Come over.”
“Alcohol primarily affects areas of the brain associated with behavior regulation, this impairment in judgment makes people much more prone to saying the they normally wouldn’t sober.”
“But I would invite you over sober”
“A sober brain helps weigh the good and bad consequences of any decision, therefore I know that it’s probably a bad idea.”
“I hate sleeping alone”
“I believe this is what Morgan’s called a, uh, a ‘booty call’. Human nature to be monogamous but humans quite frequently engage in short-term sexual relationships as well. Evolutionary psychologists resolve this paradox by proposing that men and women employ both long-term and short-term mating strategies, depending on the circumstances. It’s important to note that—”
“Spence. Please.” There was a long pause, a few rustles coming from his end. “Spencer?”
“Hold on, I’m putting my shoes on”
By the time I heard the knocking on my window, i’d already changed into an oversized FBI t-shirt and pair or shorts. I pulled the curtains open, smiling at Reid and letting him in. Much more sober than I had been when I got home.
“Hi”
“Hi” He smiled.
He took a seat on the edge of my bed, taking his shoes off and I looked over the outfit he had on. Plaid pyjama pants, a grey shirt.
He dropped his dirty old converse and stood, stepping towards me slowly and embracing me in a warm hug. I practically melted into his arms, Reid pushing the hair from my face so he could gently kiss my forehead.
“Prentiss and JJ think I have a crush on you and you’re oblivious” I muttered, feeling his chest rise and fall as he laughed.
Moving away from him, I laid on my bed and waited for him to join me. The bed dipped and I reached for the remote on my bedside table.
Spencer raised an eyebrow “Really?”
“You need a horror movie education, i’m thinking The Shining. Morgan and I were talking the other day about how it was a revolutionary film for its time since it explored horror conventions such as isolation, fear, mental illness, and duality—”
Reid cuts me off by rolling over so that he's laying on top of me, parting my legs with one hand. "I get jealous when you talk about Derek like that," he says in a low voice, surprised that he's admitting this to her. "It gives me the wrong idea."
I can already feel my heart beginning to beat faster. "You know he’s just a friend" she whispers, my mind going wild when he leans down, pulling the neckline of my shirt and kissing my collarbone.
"But he gets to call you nicknames, and I don’t" Reid whispers back and looks down at me again.
Before I can even think about her response the words, "But i’m all yours" spill from my lips and he smirks.
Our lips become one and Reid grinds his hips against mine, groaning as he does so. He keeps moving his hips, creating a friction that make my breathing shallow— makes me want more.
He pulls away, slipping the shirt over my head and kissing around my chest. "You know how crazy this all is?" He asks, hands reaching down for the button and zipper of his jeans as I nod. Our romantic situation was our secret but we knew it was crazy since we should have just told people from the start.
He stands so that he can pull his shirt off and motions for me to get up with a finger. "Can we try something?" he says, sitting down on the edge of the bed and pulling her down with him.
He positions me so that my crotch is on his thigh and places his hands on my hips. Spencer's eyes take every single inch of my body. Never once had I felt bad about myself when with him. Whispering in my ear what he hoped to do with me tonight.
Normally, the idea of dry humping someone to the point of orgasm would sound like a ridiculous and odd suggestion, but with Spencer it was different.
We kiss again and I nod, willing to do practically anything that he could ever want to do together.
Reid’s hold on my hips tightens as he presses me down on to his thigh and, slowly, he begins to rock me back and forth.
I try to think of how many other ways he could make each other feel. Not just physically.
Placing my hands on his shoulders as he begins to move me faster, and pressing his mouth to my neck.
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
“Y/N” Rossi called out, wrapping his knuckles on the bedroom door. “Are you awake, Hotch said he tried to call.”
I shot up in bed, Reid still peacefully asleep beside me and I shook him awake. The boy blinked slowly, smiling at me like I was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.
“Y/N?”
The smile disappeared and Reid threw the blanket off of him. Rushing around the room as quietly as possible to grab his clothes.
“One second dad” I picked Reid’s boxers off the floor, throwing them at him. He pulled them, and his pants, on as I opened the window for him to climb out.
Reid put his arms in his shirt, climbing out the window and pulling his head through the hole. He rushed away and I cautiously opened the door, pretending to rub my eyes. “Good morning”
Rossi smiled, cup of coffee in hand. “Your cell must be off, Hotch called asking you to come in.”
“I’m not meant to start until 12” I sighed, looking at the clock on my bedside. 9:30am.
“Better get moving” He brought his cup to his lips, turning and walking away as I closed the door and went to close the window.
“Hey” Reid reappeared outside, startling me.
“Jesus” I put my hand to my chest. “What are you still doing here?”
“I forgot something”
“You never forget anything”
Reid kissed me quickly, his lips warm and soft. “I love you”
He left before I had the chance to say anything back, leaving me dazed at the window for a minute until I managed to force myself to get dressed for the day.
Hotch smiled as he sat me, Garcia, Prentiss and JJ at the table. “Have a fun night last night?”
“The volume is up here” Garcia held her hand above her head, moving it down to the table height. “It needs to be here”
“You still have paperwork to fill out, need it done before the rest of the team gets here.”
Sitting at my desk, I mindlessly filled out the paper. Garcia got to sit in the quiet darkness of her office, meanwhile Prentiss, JJ and I were in the open bullpen. People walking buy constantly, and since JJ had the worst hangover she was constantly complaining I looked over my desk, groaning when I couldn’t find what I was looking for and picking up my phone.
“Hey, Rossi.” I sighed, rubbing my head with my thumb and forefinger. “I must have accidentally taken one of my files home last night, do you mind grabbing it from my room?”
I could practically feel the sarcasm radiating off of him through the phone. “Oh yes my darling daughter, your wish is my command.”
“See you when you get here.” I yawned, ending the call knowing he’d grab the file from my room for me. Spencer pulled his chair out, sitting at his desk across from me. “Good morning, Reid.”
“Morning, Baker.” He greeted, glancing around before leaning forward and lowering his voice to a whisper. “Coincidentally, I found myself walking home in my socks this morning.”
He nodded to his foot, poking his leg out from the desk and I held back a laugh. “You’ll have to collect them later.”
“I guess so”
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
Rossi put his phone and keys down, closing the front door again so he could go and grab what Y/N had forgotten.
He walked into her room, spotting the folder on her dresser and picking it up.
Feeling the cold breeze coming in through the open window and walking to close it, Rossi almost tripped in the sneakers by the window.
David Rossi picked up the shoes, intent on moving them to the shoe rack in the open closet but stopped. He’d seen these shoes before, but he knew what his daughter wore.
It hit him.
Rossi knew who these shoes belonged to. And he was angry.
───── ❝ ❞ ─────
We were waiting in the briefing room, all of us chatting at the table when Rossi walked in, smacking the file down in front of me. I looked up with a smile, about to thank him when I saw the look etched on his face.
A moment later, Reid looked up at me noticing the tension and then looking up at my dad.
Rossi ran his tongue along his teeth. “Why haven’t you called George?”
“We’ve been busy, but I’ll— I’ll do it” I tried to smile but the look on his face didn’t change, instead, taking his hand from behind his back and revealing none other than Reid’s shoes.
“Crap” Spencer whispered. Everyone silencing as they tried to understand what was happening now.
“Dave?” Hotch asked “You alright?”
“Spencer? Anything you want to say?” Rossi urged
I swallowed the lump in my throat “Dad”
Rossi slammed the shoes down on the desk “He’s messing around with my kid!”
“Technically, uh, I think ‘messing around’ implies that we’re frequently having unprotected sex” All eyes went to Reid, nobody knowing what to say exactly.
“Kid—” Morgan started
“Which We’re— We’re not.” Reid held his hands up in defence. “Well, we are, uh, active just not an impractical—”
“Spencer!” I shouted, trying to get the man to stop talking all together.
“—Amount. Once a week is a common baseline, although that statistic depends slightly on age: 40 to 50 year olds tend to fall around that baseline, while 20 to 30 year olds tend to average around twice a week.”
“Spencer!”
“Right.” The boy finally stopped talking. Everyone at the table was silent, eyes shifting between Spencer and I.
“Are you really mad?” I asked quietly, Rossi pulling out his seat and putting his head in his hands.
“No” He sighed. “Disappointed.”
“Why?” He’d already walked in here and slammed shoes on the table, making it everyone’s business. They’d find out eventually so we may as well have this conversation now.
“You kept it from me. I’m your father and you were sneaking around behind my back, don’t you trust me?”
“Can I say something?” Reid asked, Rossi pointing a finger at him.
“No.”
Spencer ignored this. “In our field everyone is at constant risk. We all know someone who’s been effected by our job, it was a lot safer for us to not tell anyone when we started dating. We actually discussed telling you around month 2 but it was—”
“How long has this been going on?”
“228 days” Everyone looked at Reid. “7 months”
“Rossi, it’s not that bad.” Hotch tired to make his friend see the bright side. “Albeit I didn’t know how far it had gone, I thought it was obvious they had some sort of attractive to one another”
Rossi looked at him with wide eyes. “You knew?”
“How did you not know? They always sit next to each other, long stares and awkward glances.” Morgan practically scoffed.
“Oh shut up, none of you really knew.” I laughed, feeling the mood change in the room.
Everyone laughed, agreeing and talking about how they only thought it was a meaningless crush that we’d never pursue.
“So” Rossi started once the laughter had died down, a small smile on his face. “7 months it’s serious? You’re not going to hurt my daughter?”
Spencer tensed. “No— No sir.”
“Good, because you know I have a gun and can use it.” Rossi leaned back in his chair. “Please just knocknext time you come to my house.”
“Oh my god you would not believe how big the bucket load of crazy in this case is I—” Garcia walked into the room, ready to present us with our new case when she stopped. “What did I miss?”
“Everyone knows that Y/N likes Reid.” Emily informed her. “And that Reid likes her.”
God it sounded so much like some school yard drama.
“Everyone? Oh… So what now?”
After Penelope was caught up, and celebrated that she was right— Noting “Penelope Garcia will always notice a blooming office romance. Always. Especially if it’s love at first sight.”— We were sent to pack for our case, Reid and I staying behind in the briefing room as he put his shoes on.
“No exactly how I wanted everything to go but I’m assuming it’s been accepted. We’ll have to fill out an Employee Relationship Management in HR.” Reid stood and I grinned up at him. “What?”
“I forgot something”
He looked at the table. “No, there’s nothing—” I cut him off by kissing him, waiting until he kissed me back before pulling away. “One more, one more.” Our lips met again, full of emotion. Gentle, loving and romantic. The perfect kiss.
“I love you, too” I whispered as I pulled back, Spencer staring at me in silence, slowly sliding his hands across my body to rest in the small of my back and resting his forehead against mine.
“Hey!” Rossi knocked on the glass. “None of that. Hands where I can see them Reid, you’re a smart boy you should know better.”
Copyright © 2023 Altitude. All rights reserved.
#kinda lost it at some point#i wrote one of the last scenes first as a one shot and turned it into this garbage#spencer reid#spencerreid#criminalminds#criminal minds#dr spencer reid#ssa spencer reid#ssa david rossi#david rossi#x reader#spencer reid x you#spencer reid x y/n#spencer reid x fem!reader#spencer reid x reader#spencer reid fanfiction#spencer reid fanfic#criminal minds fanfic#david rossi’s daughter#ao3 fanfic#ao3 writer#ao3#wattpad#fanfiction#fanfic#matthew gray gubler#MGG#don’t know if any of this is readable#smut#spencer reid smut
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PEIP Incident Report Released by ███████ to Tumblr Blog "john-macnamara" 03/13/2024. Subject: General John MacNamara; Elimination of Enemies
Incident #1: December █, 20██. Persons Involved: Colonel Wilbur R. Cross; Major Johnathan S. MacNamara; Lt. Colonel Rosalind B. Schaffer; Agent Xander P. Lee. Location: █████████, NM
At approximately 20:35, a standard mission update was sent in by Col. Cross. Team was instructed to stay put and wait for further instructions. The next two mission updates were unreported. At 22:14, a transmission was sent to Col. Cross. Was picked up by Lt. Schaffer, quote: "Cross is in unstable condition, Lee providing medical assistance. MacNamara in a fire fight with ██████, ███████, and █████. Prepared for further instruction."
The team was left without further instruction. At approximately 1:00, a final transmission was sent. Quote: " ██████, ███████, and █████ incapacitated. MacNamara defied orders under extenuating circumstances, ████ ████████ has been eliminated. Cross has been stabilized. Prepared for extraction. We are sorry."
Post-Incident: Col. Cross was sent to the New Mexico center for emergency medical aid, recovered within one week. Lt. Schaffer given the chance to explain the circumstances, Maj. MacNamara unpunished. Maj. MacNamra also required to take a two-week leave of absence due to his mental state post mission. Viewed this as a punishment.
Incident #2: August ██, 20██. Persons Involved: Brigandine General Johnathan S. MacNamara; ████ ███████; ████ █████████; ███████ ████; █████ ██████; Major General Truman E. Youngerman; Colonel Rosalind B. Schaffer; Lieutenant Colonel Harriet Y. Smith. Location: ███████, ██.
On ████ ██, ████, Brig. Gen. MacNamara disappeared from his station in Point Pleasant, WV. Unresponsive, filed as MIA 48 hours later. On ██████ ██, ████, a message sent to Maj. Gen. Youngerman. Read: "A little birdie told me you were missing a general. Give us the information before he does. You have 72 hours before your general dies."
Maj. Gen. Youngerman provided Col. Schaffer with a hard drive filled with falsified and/or outdated information. She was instructed to swap it for Brig. Gen. MacNamara. Took Lt. Smith as backup. Backup was needed. ████ ███████, ████ █████████, █████ ██████ pulled weapons on the two agents, resulting in a short firefight with all three adversaries eliminated.
Brig. Gen. MacNamara found in a state of half-consciousness, showing signs of heavy torture. Dead body of ███████ ████ found in corner of room. Brig. Gen. MacNamara found clutching the knife. Was sedated and taken to the intensive care unit at MSHS.
Post-Incident: No more information could be found on kidnappers. Brig. Gen. MacNamara made a recovery within 54 days. Retains minor hand tremors, ensure he is still able to consistently aim. Promoted to Maj. Gen. upon his return.
Incident #3: June ██, 20██. Persons Involved: Major Chunhua N. Shào; Major General Johnathan S. MacNamara; Lieutenant Colonel Harriet Y. Smith; Major Ishaan D. Bhavsar; Private Reese G. Dobler. Location: Yellowstone National Park, WY.
Team instructed to remain in cabin and observe impacts of extraterrestrial substances on biological organisms. On May ██, 20██, the escape of a presumed non-sentient substance was reported by Maj. Gen. MacNamara. Previous data had proven a possession of both living and dead organisms. The substance would slowly replace the original matter with it's own. Only able to spread via fluid, however.
Maj. Gen. MacNamara prevented his team from becoming infected in quarantine for twenty days. On June ██, 20██, Maj. Shào reported feelings of dizziness. Throughout the next few days, Maj. Shào showed more signs of infection until it was undeniable. Maj. Shào was a host for the substance. Maj. Gen. MacNamara was given the order to eliminate her. After 17 hours of deliberation, a report was sent in. Quote: "I... I killed her. Chunhua's dead. It was quick, I shot her in the head when *sob* she was sleeping. We burnt her body. There's nothing- *sob* there's nothing left. The threat has been eliminated. Extraction is no longer a risk. *hic* Over."
Post-Incident Report: Maj. Gen. MacNamara and his remaining team members were extracted the next day and given proper medical treatment for minor malnutrition and dehydration. Maj. Shào promoted to Lt. Col. postmortem. Her stipend will be sent to her family, and a funeral will be held on June 24, 20██. For his skills in handling the situation, and following of orders, plans have been made to promote Maj. Gen, MacNamara to four-star general.
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Since there is no snow to be found anywhere at the moment, I decided to spend my last day of the year on the beach! It’s a popular spot in summer but on December 31st it was just me and Pandolf, and a fisherman in a small boat who occasionally waved at us from afar.
After my picnic I just read for a few hours, and eventually started feeling a bit post-apocalyptic due to the complete and utter silence + empty lifeguard chair standing next to me on the deserted beach like a quiet sentinel. It’s a nice feeling, just slightly eerie.
There was a little free library and I found this old battered copy of How Green Was My Valley which I’ve been meaning to read! I left an old Maurice Druon book in exchange which seemed fair.
Another surprise was finding out that this lake had tides. The jetty which was an island at first became accessible after a few hours and I was a bit puzzled. Where has the water gone?
I wanted to google it but there was no reception so I had to be 20th century about it and remember this question to look it up when I got home. I found that this lake is part of a wider network of reservoirs and hydroelectric dams—the resulting tide effect was very appreciated as it made it feel more sea-like! We were just missing salty wind, and a few seagulls to break the silence. Lakes are so quiet.
Since I couldn’t google the tide mystery at the time, I sat down very near the water and waited to see if it would rise or recede but the lake declined to participate in my scientific experiment and the water stubbornly stayed where it was.
(Pandolf: “No offense this is nice but what are we waiting for”)
I would have liked to stay and watch the last sunset of ‘22 on the lake but I had to be home before dark for hay distribution or face Pirlouit’s wrath—and then I was treated to a surprise mid-afternoon sunset. The sun was still pretty high but temporarily hid behind clouds for a darker atmosphere and the sky started to take on sunset colours for no reason. 10min later the sky was clear again, so it was just a little end-of-year present from the lake.
I hope everyone had a lovely quiet New Year if you’re into that kind of thing :) Or a loud tumultuous one if not!
#crawling along#pandolf was very reluctant to venture onto the jetty and i had to encourage him like you'll see it'll be so fun#you'll be surrounded by water! and he was looking at me in polite distress like thank you i very much do not want that#but when we reached the edge of the jetty he looked proud of himself for being a brave dog
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Little Talk
Larissa Weems x fem reader
Summary: Larissa and you have been arguing a lot recently over little things that are not worth fighting over. Eventually you end up having a massive argument resulting in you storming out. Some time later you end up coming back to her to have a small talk about everything.
Warnings: shouting, verbal fight, abandonment, arguments, break up?, time apart, angst
Requests open
———————————
Once again you and Larissa have been arguing again. The two of you have been together 3 years now and you have had little arguments here and there but nothing like this. Recently it has been argument after argument over the smallest little things.
So far this week you have had seven different arguments. You were just waiting for Larissa to get home to start another. You hated arguing and you always tried your best not to escalate the situation but by the end you gave up.
Larissa was currently at work and you knew she was going to be home soon. Today you decided to try and avoid an argument by making ten two of you a nice dinner. There was no possible way Larissa would start an argument about you making her dinner.
You decided to make a homemade pie with potatoes and vegetables. It was getting close to the time Larissa would normally get home and she hadn’t texted you to say she was staying late. You placed the plates of food on the table before lighting a couple of candles and pouring two glasses of red wine for the both of you.
Larissa always needed a glass of wine after this and she sure was going to love this. You excitedly sat down in your seat and waited for Larissa to come through the door. She wasn’t always on time due to traffic but she would only be about 10 minutes out so you knew you could play it safe with having her food on the table.
You sat there patiently and waited. 10 minutes went by, then 20, then half an hour. You grabbed your phone and called Larissa. Straight to voicemail. Great, you thought to yourself.
‘Are you on your way home? xxx’ you texted Larissa.
You waited for a response and got no reply. You continued to sit at the table and before you knew it a whole hour had gone by. You had been sat at the table for an hour and a half and Larissa hadn't even responded to you. Well she read your message but that was all she did. You tried calling her again but got no response.
You sighed deeply. She wasn’t coming home for dinner. You started eating your cold dinner at this point while sobbing to yourself. Once you had finished you took your plate to the kitchen and washed it up. You then grabbed a plate cover for Larissa’s food and left it on the table. You were so angry right now but the only thing you could think about was if Larissa would be hungry when she came home.
You made your way upstairs and got yourself ready for bed. You checked the time to see that it was almost 22:00. Larissa should have been home hours ago. You tried calling her one last time and still no answer. You are done with this now. You put your phone on silent before crying yourself to sleep.
When you awoke the sun was shining in your bedroom. You turned over to expect to see Larissa but were saddened to see her side of the bed untouched. Did she even come home? Maybe she slept on the sofa. She might have felt bad.
You went downstairs to see that everything was untouched. Her food was still on her plate and the glass of wine was still full. You couldn’t stand it. You grabbed the plate chucking the food in the bin before you chucked the glass of wine down the sink. You placed the dirty dishes in the sink and left it. That’s Larissa’s problem now.
You went back upstairs, quickly got ready and went off to work. Larissa obviously didn’t care. She didn’t even have the decency to text you to say she wasn’t coming home. If you knew you wouldn’t have bothered making a nice dinner for the both of you.
You needed the distraction and the only place you were going to get that was at work so that’s where you headed. Your day at work was actually really nice. Everyone helped distract you and even agreed that Larissa was wrong for what she did. At least you weren’t being dramatic.
When your shift finally ended at 19:00 you realised you didn’t want to go home. You knew Larissa would be home and you didn’t know if you could handle it just yet. However unlike Larissa you wouldn’t leave her in the dark. You got in your car and made your way home wondering how this was going to go when you got in.
When you pulled up to the house you could see Larissa’s car in the drive. So she was definitely home. You made your way slowly up to the front door before letting yourself in. “Hey Larissa, I’m home” you said when you got in. Instead of a greeting from your girlfriend instead you got a snarky comment.
“So I cleaned up your mess in the sink. Jesus y/n the least you could do is clear up after yourself instead of leaving it for me to do” Larissa said rolling her eyes at you. Is she being serious! “Well actually Larissa that is your mess! So thank you for clearing up after yourself” you snapped back at her.
Larissa scoffed. “My mess! I haven’t even been here so tell me how that is my mess” Larissa snarled. “Well you would have known Larissa if you had come home. That is the fucking point. You never told me you weren’t coming home last night…”
Before you could finish Larissa interrupted. “I don’t need to tell you my whereabouts all the time,” Larissa said, rolling her eyes. “You're right Larissa you don’t but last night because I thought you were coming home I made the two of us a nice romantic dinner. I dressed up, had the candles lit, and a nice hot dinner and a glass of wine waiting for you. I tried calling and texting and the most you could do was leave me on read. I waited an hour and a half before I ate my cold dinner. I even had the decency to cover your food in case you wanted it when you came home but you couldn’t even do that” you scream as you start to cry.
Larissa just stood there shocked. You were a mess and just wanted to get out of there. “Y/n I didn’t know,” Larissa said calmly. “That’s my point Larissa. You don’t care anymore. All we have done this past few weeks is fight and I try to do something nice and you couldn’t even let me know where you were. I’m done Larissa. I’m done with this and I’m done with you!” You screamed as you went upstairs to pack a bag.
“Wait y/n! Where are you going?” Larissa asked, chasing after you not wanting you to leave. “I need a break from this. I can’t deal with it. I’m going to go and stay with a work friend for a bit” you said as you continued to pack your bag. “So that’s it? We are over?” Larissa asked.
“I don’t know Larissa. But what I know right now is that I need a break. When I feel ready I will text you and we can talk. But maybe this is what we need right now” you said, trying your hardest not to cry. Deep down you didn’t want to leave Larissa. You loved her but maybe it will take almost losing you to realise how much she needs you too. At the moment the relationship is not healthy and this is the only way to fix it.
You picked up your bag and headed to the front door. “Please y/n don’t leave me. Please! We can sort this out!” Larissa begged you. But you have had enough. You need a break and to clear your head and leaving is the only way to do that. Larissa continued to beg you to stay but once you shut the front door behind you it stopped.
You half expected her to open it and chase after you but she didn’t. She accepted fate and let you leave. Walking to your car all you could do was cry. Hopefully you would be back in Larissa’s arms sooner than later as you couldn’t bear to be away from her.
A whole week went by before you finally decided to message Larissa. She had sent a few messages on the first couple of days but when you didn’t reply she stopped trying to get in touch. Larissa had to face the fact that you would come back when you were ready.
You were actually ready to go back the minute you left but you needed to do this for your relationship. It’s now Friday and you texted Larissa that you would be coming back home and that when you did the two of you needed to have a chat. You knew Larissa was at work today so you probably wouldn’t get a response until later or at all.
However, after about half an hour you received a text back from Larissa. ‘Ok! See you at home!’ Larissa texted back. That was the quickest she had ever responded to you in these last few months. You knew she felt bad about everything and wanted to do her best to make it up to you.
You continued on with the rest of your day at work before finally heading back to your friends house to grab your belongings. Thankfully it wasn’t too much so it only took you about 10 minutes to put everything back in your bag.
You thanked your friend for letting you stay with them before making your way to your car to make your way home. You looked at the time to see it was 19:00. Technically Larissa’s shift ended an hour ago so she should be home but who knew what time she would roll through the doors.
You drove home in a peaceful silence before arriving at the house. Larissa’s car was in the drive so you knew she was home. You took a few deep breaths as you parked the car and got out. Slowly you opened the door to reveal Larissa standing at the side of the table with a meal set out for the both of you.
“How long have you been home, Larissa? This looks like it took ages?” You asked her as you walked through the door. “I came home maybe an hour or so after I responded to your text,” Larissa said shyly.
“Ah babe. You didn’t have to do this for me. What work?” You asked her. “Work doesn’t matter to me anymore. You are my number one priority and I’m gonna prove to you that you are. I can’t lose you y/n! I love you so much!” Larissa said, holding back her tears.
You couldn’t hold it any longer. You dropped your bags to the floor and ran over to your beautiful girlfriend. “I love you too!” You whispered as you embraced each other in a tight hug.
The rest of the night was spent having dinner and catching up. The two of you did have a chat about everything and you believed you have found a solution that will work for the both of you which was great. After dinner the two of you headed up to bed to relax and watch a few films.
Who knew what would have happened if you didn’t have a break and you sure as hell didn’t want to find out.
#gwendoline christie#gwendolineuniverse#fanfics#larissa weems#larissa weems x reader#larissa weems x y/n#break up#angst#larissa weems angst#arguments#sorry for shouting#verbal fight#abandoment issues#time apart#larissa x you#larissa x reader#larissa x y/n#brienneoftarth1989
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[ 📹 Scenes of massive destruction following a series of Israeli bombings and missile strikes targeting two civilian locations in Baalbek, in eastern Lebanon, for the first time since the 2006 war with Hezbollah.]
[📸 An infographic detailing the more than 3'525 civilian murders and 5'246 injuries among Palestinians resulting from Israeli strikes since the ICJ ruling on January 26th, 2024.]
🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏡💥🚑 🚨
ISRAELI MASSACRES OF PALESTINIAN FAMILIES CONTINUES ON 143RD DAY OF GENOCIDE, OCCUPATION LAUNCHES STRIKES AGAINST BAALBEK LEBANON
On the 143rd day of Israel's ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 10 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of 90 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, and wounded another 164 others over the previous 24-hours.
At the same time, IOF attacks turned towards Lebanon on Monday morning, with Israeli airstrikes launched against two civilian locations in the city of Baalbek, in eastern Lebanon, for the first time since the 2006 war between the Israeli entity and Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, the Israeli occupation army once again opened fire on civilians waiting for food aid convoys to arrive on Al-Rashid Street, west of Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip.
According to local medical sources, at least 10 civilians were killed and many others wounded after the Israeli occupation launched strikes along the sea shore where civilians waited for the arrival of food. A previous bombing in the same area resulted in the deaths of 22 civilians as they awaited food aid to arrive.
In another atrocity, occupation fighter jets launched an airstrike on a civilian residence in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City, killing at least 15 civilians, including women and children, and wounding several others.
In another series of strikes in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, as well as the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, at least 10 civilians were killed and many others wounded as the Israeli occupation continues to hammer northern Gaza with airstrikes and artillery shelling.
In the southern Gaza Strip, at least 23 civilians were killed as a result of a series of occupation raids across the Khan Yunis governate, including six Palestinians who were killed after an airstrike targeted the Al-Agha family home in eastern Khan Yunis, while two others were killed from the Barbakh family after an airstrike targeted their home near the city's market.
According to later reports, Israeli fighter jets bombed the Al-Fokhari neighborhood east of Khan Yunis, while at the same time, occupation gunboats opened fire with artillery on the coastline near Khan Yunis, killing two civilian fishermen.
Due to the Israeli occupation inflicting heavy damage and a siege against the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, the bodies of the dead and wounded from the area now have to be transported outside the city.
Elsewhere, at least 8 Palestinians were killed after IOF warplanes bombed three homes in the Rafah area, including a home belonging to the Abu Al-Aninin family, as well as that of the Abdeen family, northeast of Rafah, while a third was targeted near the European Hospital, where the Israeli occupation bombed a residential apartment in the Al-Geneina neighborhood in eastern Rafah.
Occupation airstrikes and artillery shelling also continue along two strips of agricultural land near the border with Egypt, though luckily no one was killed as a result of the strikes.
Meanwhile, in central Gaza, the Zionist army shelled a civilian vehicle in the Abu Al-Ajen neighborhood, east of Deir al-Balah, leading to the tragic deaths of two Palestinians. The Israeli occupation continues strikes across eastern Deir al-Balah, which has repeatedly resulted in casualties.
The Israeli occupation also bombed a civilian residence west of the Nuseirat Refugee Camp, in the central Gaza Strip, while four civilians were killed after occupation warplanes bombed a civilian home north of Rafah.
As a result of Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, the death toll has risen in excess of 29'782 martyrs, mostly women and children, while another 70'043 civilians have been wounded since the beginning of Israel's aggression on October 7th, 2023.
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@WorkerSolidarityNews
#gaza#gaza strip#gaza massacre#gaza news#gaza war#gaza genocide#genocide#genocide in gaza#genocide of palestinians#israeli genocide#israeli occupation forces#israel#israeli occupation#israeli war crimes#war crimes#crimes against humanity#palestine#palestine news#palestinians#war#israel palestine conflict#middle east#politics#news#geopolitics#world news#global news#international news#breaking news#current events
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The Beatles' second album 'With The Beatles' is released, 22nd November 1963
Impressed with Robert Freeman's black-and-white pictures of John Coltrane, Epstein invited the photographer to create the cover image. Harrison later said that, whereas the cover of Please Please Me had been "crap", their second LP was "the beginning of us being actively involved in the Beatles' artwork ... the first one where we thought, 'Hey, let's get artistic.'"
The group asked Freeman to take inspiration from pictures their friend Astrid Kirchherr had taken in Hamburg between 1960 and 1962, featuring the band members in half-shadow and not smiling. To achieve this result, on 22 August 1963, Freeman photographed them in a dark corridor of the Palace Court Hotel in Bournemouth, where the band were playing a summer residency at the local Gaumont Cinema.
To fit the square format of the cover, he put Starr in the bottom right corner, "since he was the last to join the group. He was also the shortest". McCartney described the result as "very moody", adding: "people think he must have worked at [it] forever and ever. But it was an hour. He sat down, took a couple of rolls, and he had it."
The original concept was to paint the picture from edge to edge, with no bleeding, title or artist credit – a concept that went against music industry practice and was immediately vetoed by EMI. The first album to carry an edge-to-edge cover was the Rolling Stones' self-titled debut, released five months later. EMI also objected to the fact that the Beatles were not smiling; it was only after George Martin intervened, as head of Parlophone, that the cover portrait was approved. (x)
#I love this album and won't hear anything said against it#the first beatles album I listened to and the first LP I owned on vinyl#I still think it was harsh to stick ringo at the bottom though#with the beatles#it was sixty years ago today#november 1963 was just the best month#javelin’s gifs#november 1963#the beatles#john lennon#paul mccartney#george harrison#ringo starr
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