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necroromantics · 1 month

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How To Write ASPD / Psychopathy

half educational, half ramble. dedicated to the creepypasta fandom.

(check out my how-to-write bipolar + ticci toby here)

What is ASPD?

Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) is characterized by a disregard for others rights and feelings. It's a personality disorder, which means the mindsets and behaviours associated with this condition are deeply ingrained and maladaptive.

The current DSM-5 diagnostic criteria states that to be diagnosed with ASPD, a patient needs to have a long-term (occurring since at least age 15), consistent, and persistent history of three or more of the following:

failure to conform to social norms; repeatedly breaking rules/laws that may be grounds for arrest

deceitfulness; lying, tricking others for personal gain

impulsivity or a failure to plan ahead

irritability and aggression; fighting, hostility, outbursts

reckless disregard for the safety of self or others

irresponsibility; repeated failure to comply to work or financial obligations

lack of remorse; being indifferent to or rationalizing having mistreated or hurt others

ASPD, by definition, can only be diagnosed in people who are 18+. Minors cannot have ASPD due to treatment and intervention reasons. A minor who exhibits traits of ASPD will be diagnosed with Conduct Disorder.

At it's core, though it may seem like people with ASPD are just hostile and insensitive and rude, is a defense mechanism formed in childhood, typically in response to an abusive environment. Self-preservation and a "dog eat dog world" mindset are very common in those with ASPD. Everything is about doing what it takes to retain social dominance, control, and ultimately safety. Boredom and risk-taking is also very common in people with ASPD, and many people with this condition have never had proper, healthy influences in childhood to teach them proper manners, social norms, morals, or how to regulate their emotions and aggression.

It is a chronic condition that affects about 1-3% of the population. Its very prevalent in the prison population as well. ASPD not only causes a person to potentially cause harm to others, but is a condition that very negatively impacts the patients themselves.

(Note: The term "sociopathy" is typically used to refer to an extreme presentation of ASPD. "Psychopathy" may sometimes be seem as a very very extreme presentation of ASPD)

What is Psychopathy?

Psychopathy refers to a set of traits/issues that might be seen in patients. It is NOT a diagnosis. If psychopathic traits cause dysfunctional behaviour in an individual, they will most likely be diagnosed with ASPD.

Psychopathy is now most commonly used in research settings to use it as a term that describes certain patterns and behaviours. It is something professionals study, not diagnose.

The traits related to psychopathy are:

manipulative behaviour; superficial charm, persistent lying, deceiving others

grandiose sense of self

lack of remorse or guilt; lack of empathy, callousness, shallow emotional expressions

reckless lifestyle; need for stimulation, parasitic (constantly takes from others), lack of realistic long-term goals, impulsivity

antisocial behaviour; poor behavioural control, early behavioural problems, trouble with the law in youth

Not all psychopathic people fit the criteria for ASPD, not all are disordered by their traits, and not all people with ASPD are considered psychopathic. But there is a very big overlap.

Psychopathy is typically only recognized in a forensic or research setting. It is often wrongfully used in the media to describe people who are serial killers, abusive, or used to dehumanize others.

Personally, I believe that media and creators need to move away from the terms psychopath/sociopath. They have far too much negative connotation that only exists to demonize people who suffer with unconventional traits. If you want to write psychopathy correctly, do your research on what it looks like in its presentation, and just drop the label.

What are some harmful tropes with ASPD/Psychopathy in media?

ASPD and Psychopathy have been tossed around in many different settings as ways to cheaply create an evil villain, or a cold calculated monster, or a reckless criminal. There has been only one instance in my lifetime of watching hundreds of movies and shows that I have seen an accurate, humanizing portrayal of ASPD. (That show is House MD by the way, I highly recommend if you want to see good representation).

So what are some of the tropes to acknowledge and avoid?

1. Psychopathic serial killer

Have you seen American Psycho? Great movie. Don't do that. While the character Patrick Bateman is commonly associated with the terms "narcissist" and "psychopath", he also is a satirical character who is a very dramatized and exaggerated presentation of some psychopathic traits.

I will be honest. A lot of real-life serial killers do suffer from various mental health conditions, but correlation is not causation. In the Creepypasta fandom we are surrounded by different characters who are almost all serial killers, and people like to make things easy and just throw the label of "psychopath" onto them and call it realistic. This is very cheap, and very harmful.

If you want to write a psychopathic serial killer character, then acknowledge how harmful, fear-mongering, and dehumanizing this trope is towards people who actually suffer from these traits.

2. ASPD synonymous with abusive behaviour

ASPD is a disorder that does cause people to do and say things that will harm others in some way. Cluster B personality disorders are commonly seen as 'social disorders', as in they cause dis-order in interpersonal relationships, and in response to society. Borderline personality disorder (BPD) for example may cause somebody to threaten harm to themselves in response to percieved abandonment, or to have intense fights due to emotional dysregulation.

ASPD in particular may cause someone to be insensitive towards others problems, lack morality, be aggressive or hostile, put others down, or get into reckless situations. This is why they are disorders. Because they cause significant and serious problems in the persons life.

It is not pretty, and it's not fair, and yes, people with disorders may cause harm to others due to behaviours associated with their condition. But there is a difference between causing harm, and abusing another person.

Lying to someone is not inherently abusive. Being reckless is not inherently abusive. Being an insensitive asshole is not inherently abusive. To not understand the nuance and the complexity of these situations is to completely demonize and stigmatize a serious mental health condition. You don't call people with BPD abusive for their actions inherently, because you acknowledge they are hurting and only doing what they know to cope with this hurt. Of course it's unhealthy. That's what a disorder is. That does not make someone abusive by default. Anyone with any condition, even neurotypical people can be abusive.

3. Cold, emotionless robot

People with ASPD can and do feel emotion. People with psychopathic traits can and do feel emotion. They get sad, disappointed, disgusted, happy, excited, jealous, hurt, angry. There is nothing in the ASPD criteria that states anything about emotional presentation or experience.

In psychopathy, it is mentioned that there may be a shallow emotional expression. This may also be present in ASPD. This means that while a person will feel emotions, it is either beat down or brushed off, or completely repressed. The emotional repression may come from childhood abuse where they were punished for expressing emotions, or expressing emotions had caused them harm.

Lacking emotions/emotional expression is instead highly linked to Schizoid Personality Disorder, and is apart of the criteria for said disorder.

Media protraying people with ASPD/psychopathy as cold, emotionless, calculating robots is another trope used to dehumanize people with mental health issues. It's used to make people with ASPD seem evil or not having feelings that could be hurt. In reality, nearly everything a person with ASPD does, is their dysfunctional way of protecting themselves from being hurt.

People with ASPD may lack the emotional capacity for things such as empathy and remorse, though. Its common that they are unable to care for, or feel upset for others suffering. They may also be unable to feel guilt. This criteria is seen in about 51% of people with ASPD and is associated with more extreme presentations.

Do you headcanon anyone to have ASPD?

Yes, but I don't like to use the label on them. I do write a lot of antisocial mindsets into my headcanons for Ticci Toby, and I heavily write ASPD into my OC, Tobin.

For Toby, his presentation of ASPD comes in the form of rebellion, not understanding/following social norms, recklessness, and a strong desire for power, dominance, and control. I write this as his subconscious response to the trauma he faced in childhood. As a child Toby was constantly put down and made to feel small and powerless at the hands of his father. In order to make sure his father abused only him and not his mother and sister, Toby would act out and be a troublemaker. I think that he would have a lot of ASPD behaviours and views on the world.

For my OC Tobin, he's pretty similar in presentation in regards to power/control, and not following social norms. He is very prone to justifying and rationalizing his behaviours to the point he doesn't feel remorse for the harm he causes. Tobin grew up in a very unstable and abusive environment where, like Toby, he did what he needed to do to get by. He never learned proper morals, norms, regulation, etc. But Tobin does care about others. He takes care of his little sister, and loves his girlfriend, and is very protective. Tobin is still a complex human being with more to him than just being an antisocial insensitive prick.

How can I write a character with ASPD?

Do proper research. Not on Reddit, or Quora, or WebMD. I mean go find trusted, scholarly articles and read real scientific papers and studies on ASPD. Do research into how/why it forms, the mindsets, the symptoms and their presentation, the neuroscience even.

Humanize your characters. While it's fun to throw around a bunch of negative and toxic traits to a character you want people to see as 'bad', it's lazy character development. Give them good, positive traits as well. People are very complex, and nobody will fit in to the mold of good or bad. Make them human enough where someone wont look at your character with ASPD and assume everyone with ASPD are monsters.

But also, don't water down the disorder. ASPD does cause harm to the patient and the people in their life. I've seen it a lot where people will try to fight against stigmatization by completely glamorizing the disorder. "People with ASPD aren't inherently bad! They don't actually hurt others or act hostile or say insensitive things"... Yes we do. And it causes many problems. And that is why its a disorder.

Personally I don't like to throw the ASPD label onto my characters even if I do write them to have ASPD because I feel like it just boxes them in. If you write a character with ASPD, try doing it in a way where a professional would be able to tell they have ASPD without you even mentioning the label.

Remember that ASPD is COMPLEX. It varies vastly in its presentation, its a disorder that is life-consuming and the dysfunctional beliefs and behavioural patterns are deeply ingrained and consistent throughout many different areas in someones life. It's a label to describe preexisting issues. It's something that is highly associated with childhood trauma, and drug addiction, and general suffering for the person dealing with their own chaotic mind.

The biggest problem I see that frustrates me is the way people throw around the terms "psychopath" and "sociopath", especially when someone just wants to add a layer of edginess onto their character. Remember that you are dealing with a condition that real people suffer from every day. If you can't handle it respectfully, and if you would demonize someone with ASPD in real life for acting as your character does, just don't write it in. Keep the label separate. We don't need any more stigmatization and misinformation.

I know this was very long, but it's such a multifaceted and complex issue and I've seen it enough times in the fandom to be frustrated enough to write this. If you have any questions, want more advice or information, please feel free to ask away in my ask box 🔥

#tombtalk #creepypasta #creepypasta fandom #creepypasta headcanon #ticci toby #clockwork #ticci toby headcanons #creepypasta ticci toby #jeff the killer #creepypasta jeff the killer #eyeless jack #creepypasta art #creepypasta headcanons #creepypasta oc #creepypasta fanfiction #aspd #antisocial personality disorder #cluster b #writeblr

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e-clv · 7 days

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Not saying anything new here but my personal take on a lot of pop therapy/garbage psychology happening now is that it’s designed to remove or soothe feelings of accountability from the person seeking the treatment, because in our increasingly antisocial world everyone wants to be told that they are Good and Okay rather than figure out how to navigate our complex social relationships in a way that is better for us and those around us. So that’s how you get wild misinterpretations of things like narcissistic personality disorder (where suddenly everyone who has ever wronged you is a narcissist). And it does not surprise me in the least that doing inner child work has also become about creating a fictional alternative self that has a child’s impulses who you have to appease or can heal by treating YOURSELF like a child LOL…when in fact it’s the exact opposite of that and the whole point is to realize you’re accountable for your own adult behavior and have to stop doing behaviors which you learned in childhood & which no longer serve you

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serialunaliver · 3 months

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My response to this post about the possibility of Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley's mom being charged with involuntary manslaughter I was tagged in (putting it in a separate post because I don't feel like starting shit with anyone):

The case here being used is unique to other shootings. Typically mental illness is not actually the primary deciding factor for violence. Media coverage of school shootings has caused more school shootings than mental illness. A large amount of school shooters were inspired by the ideology of other school shooters. If Columbine wasn't treated the way it was I have no doubt there would've been less shootings.

When it comes to negligence involving mental health I don't actually see a big increase in surveillance or institutionalization as some are claiming though. The fact is parents can already use mental health as an excuse to force their kids into abusive 'treatment' with no consequence. It happens in every psych ward. It's also already used in legal cases as well, that happened to me and it did in fact lead to being forced into harmful treatment, so really the precedent and incentive is already there for those who choose it in my opinion. Meanwhile there's the opposite case where parents would rather their kid cause destruction than admit any mental health issue exists regardless of consequence. Logic is thrown out the window for the most part.

Now the defense of Ethan's mom is claiming he is a manipulator and not mentally ill. While anyone who follows me knows I despise the mental health argument about school shootings, it's quite clear this kid's actions prior to the shooting were at the very least a cry for help. He didn't try to make this secretive and even drew pictures of it. If his parents didn't care about this, it's possible he's neglected in some way at home, which can actually lead to antisocial behavior and acts of violence or threats of them, because, well, one would assume your parents would finally give a fuck about your well-being in that case. I'm diagnosed with a cluster B personality disorder partially due to "manipulative behavior" in the past which seemed horrible and illogical but was literally the only way I thought anyone would know I was hurting. Obviously I don't know if this is what's actually going on in Ethan's case, but what everyone can agree on is the parents' response to all this was not normal or acceptable and doesn't exactly paint an image of a well-adjusted family. And I do wonder if the "manipulator" argument comes from the (most common) perception that anyone with this behavior was just born evil.

ANYWAY, here are some articles/resources on common causes of school shootings and how media coverage and environment impact them, both to spread awareness and to point out that you should not in fact paint anyone as born evil or a future shooter just for certain issues.

• Bullies, black trench coats: Columbine’s most dangerous myths

• Violence has grown since California's incel shooting

• Who is most likely to get bullied at school?

• School shootings and student mental health (Includes more detailed statistics but some are misleading - the one on bullying is based on public perception of shootings, not actual cases, and the one on violent video games has no real correlation. Let this be a reminder to research your own sources!)

#school shooting #seriousposting

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mrsshabana · 1 year

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Patient!Gyutaro x Nurse!Reader - CHAPTER 1

Chapter 2

✦ CW: 18+ MDNI, female reader. Mentions of mental illness, suicide, and sexual abuse of a minor. This fic has many dark themes, please do not read unless you are comfortable!

✦ AN: The long awaited nurse au is finally here! Sorry it took me so long, but I wanted to make sure it was perfect. Lots of thought and research went into making this fic. There will also be art included in this chapter!

✦ WC: 2,146

This is what you should have expected from a job in the medical field that didn’t require much qualifications. Working at an asylum wasn’t ideal, but they are incredibly desperate for new nurses. As most of them are unable to handle the physical and mental toll that a place like this puts on someone.

It’s your first day at your new job. You were excited until you entered the building. The dreary interior mixed with the groans and screams of unruly patients wasn’t the welcome that you had been hoping for.

You’re young, almost too young to be working at a place like this. The other nurses didn’t take you seriously, and they were going to make the transition for you more difficult than it needed to be. You were being assigned to a patient that is notorious for being difficult to work with. The other nurses use him to weed out the weak. Always shifting the new hires to care for him. They usually leave within the first week, so his care returns to one of the veteran nurses known for having a mind of steel. She’s cold hearted, but that helps you deal with a job like this. The complete opposite of you. A warm young woman, eager to treat and rehabilitate.

Currently you are being led to your new patient. Quickly scanning over his records as you follow the nurse through the halls of the sanatorium.

Rashomon Riverbank Asylum

Patient Record

Name: Shabana, Gyutaro

Identification Data: Sex: Male Age: 23 Height: 6’ 3” Weight: 134

Race: Asian Hair: Black Eye: Blue

Special Handling Code: Code Red; Keep medicated Special Handling Instructions: Keep away from sharp objects

Medical History: Multiple suicide attempts, Complications due to sickle cell anemia, Treated for Congenital Syphilis

Diagnoses: Sickle Cell Anemia Hutchinson’s Teeth Borderline Personality Disorder Antisocial Personality Disorder Depression Insomnia

Current Medical Treatment: Special diet for weight gain Medications given AM & PM

Medications: Wellbutrin - 100 mg twice daily Abilify - 10 mg once daily Carbamazepine - 350 mg twice daily Xanax - 2 mg twice daily Trazodone - 150 mg once daily Voxelotor - 500 mg once daily Adakveo - 5 mg IV infusion once every 4 weeks

Gyutaro Shabana, your very first patient at Rashomon Riverbank Asylum. Looking over his record, this is going to be a difficult one. You’ve learned about a majority of these diagnoses in college, so you have a good idea about the kind of treatment he will require. It’s strange though, he seems to have lost the genetic lottery. And you haven't even seen his face yet, you can only imagine what he may look like.

An asian man with sickle cell anemia is almost unheard of, roughly 0.0022%. And on top of that he was born with Congenital Syphilis. It’s quite frankly amazing that he’s lived past 20.

“Just introduce yourself, then I’ll take you to your other patients,” the other nurse says as she stops in front of his door.

Not wanting to be impolite, you hesitantly knock on his door. There’s no response. You figured that there wouldn’t be, so you open the door anyways.

“Hello, Mr. Shabana?” you say coyly.

When you peek into the room, you are instantly frozen by his icy gaze. He’s sitting on his bed with a book in his lap. His cold blue eyes send shivers down your spine.

“I’m um… I’m your new nurse.” you choke out. He’s feet away from you but you feel as though his hands have a tight grasp around your throat.

“My name is Y/N. Um… If you ever need anything d-don’t hesitate to call for me…”

The expression on his face is unchanging, as he remains silent.

“Well I’ll see you later tonight Mr. Shabana…”

Closing the door, breaking the line of sight that he had on you, instantly you feel a surge of relief.

You go on to visit the rest of your patients, then you come back later that night to give Mr. Shabana his dinner. A high protein meal, specifically for weight gain.

Knocking on the door a few times before you push it open, “Mr. Shabana, I have your dinner.”

He’s in the same spot where you left him, sitting on his bed with a book in his lap. But this time he doesn’t even bother to look at you when you enter the room.

Stepping closer to place the food tray on his table, you inspect his appearance.

His clothes hang off of his frame, enveloping his skeletal body. You can make out lean muscles on his arms, but his face is sunken and his pants hang low on his hips. There are large black marks scattered across his face, and you can barely see one peeking out from below his sleeve. Were these marks from his Congenital Syphilis? Dark circles sit below his eyes, he looks as though he hasn’t slept in weeks.

He’s wearing the standard issue uniform that all patients wear. A plain t-shirt and pants, made of the same material as scrubs. Though his feet are bare, slippers sitting below the edge of the bed. His hair is long and wavy. Black as midnight, unruly in the way it hangs in front of his face. The top of his hair is half haphazardly tied up.

“Got a problem…?” He rasps, drawing out each word.

The venom of his sour tongue sends a jolt of electricity through your skin.

“Huh?” you’ve been sitting there staring at him for too long, “O-oh! I’m sorry sir! There’s no problem, please enjoy your dinner,” you quickly rush out of the room.

As you continue on giving food to the rest of your patients, Mr. Shabana’s voice echoes through your skull.

Got a problem…? Got a problem…? Got a problem…?

A few hours later, you go back to retrieve the tray and whatever food may have not been eaten. Stopping yourself before you open the door. It’s ok. He’s just a patient. Then why does he make you so nervous?

*Knock knock*

“Hello Mr. Shabana, I’m just here to collect your tray,” you chime, masking your fear with a smile.

Walking back into the dimly lit room, the fluorescent lights flickering. His eyes staring into you.

His food has been untouched. The only thing that was eaten was a packaged cookie.

“Not hungry today?” your voice shakes as you try to ignore his harsh gaze.

He remains silent. Watching you as you step closer. The buzzing of the fluorescent bulbs filling the room, filling your brain with static.

“Was it not to your liking? I can have the cooks make something else for you if you’d like.”

“...”

Your eyes meet. His thin eyebrows furrow, the rest of his expression remains unchanging. The pressure of his glare makes the air around you feel heavy. Pressing down on you, compressing your spine, you feel so small when he looks at you. You’re desperate to fill the cold aura with some warmth.

“Mr. Shabana you really should eat-”

*CRASH*

He slaps the tray out of your hand, food splattering onto your uniform, dripping onto the floor.

Silence. You’re stuck staring down at your feet. Watching the pool of meat, vegetables, and milk spread around you. It takes you a few moments to fully process what has just happened, only able to snap out of it when you feel the wetness of the food seeping through your skirt, making you feel cold.

You regret looking up at him. Regret meeting his eyes. Filled with amusement.

“You better clean that up… don’t chu think…?” He smirks. Showing his sharp canines and crooked teeth.

“I-I…” you mumble, looking back down at the mess. He’s right, you should clean it up before it gets everywhere.

Going into the hallway, you grab some towels and return to his room. Not thinking your next actions through as you get down on all fours and start picking up the mess. All you want to do is hurry and clean this up so you can leave. But Mr. Shabana has different plans.

He slowly stands up. Looming over you, looking down on you with a twisted grin. He’s so tall… he makes you feel so small as you look up at him. So pathetic. So worthless.

“You look good down there…” he steps on your hand, “On your knees like a whore…”

His words leave you speechless. Your vision begins to blur and your heart starts to race. He pushes his weight further onto your hand, until you feel a crack.

“I’d like to see you like this more often…” he chuckles, the sound rumbling in his hollow chest.

Every instinct within your body is screaming at you to run. But you feel so trapped. So paralyzed by him. Like a rabbit cornered against a wall by a vicious predator. His eyes. It’s his eyes. No, it's his touch. It’s… everything about him.

You try to speak up, but your words escape you. Coming out in a pathetic whine that makes his grin widen and his laughter intensify.

He’s reaching for you. His hand is coming towards your face. Your mind is telling you that if you let him get any closer you will die. He will kill you. And he won’t even care.

Your body is pumped with enough adrenaline for you to break free from the physical and psychological hold he had on you.

Pulling your hand away from under his foot, you push yourself backwards. Stumbling to stand up on your feet. You run out of the room and through the halls, not risking looking back at him. All you hear as you escape is his laughter on repeat. You can’t tell if his laughter is echoing through the halls, or if it has just been ingrained into your mind.

You keep running until you get back to the nurses quarters and to your room.

Tears running down your cheeks, food staining your clothes, and pain throbbing in your hand. You collapse on the floor and cry.

Why would he be so cruel? You understand that he’s a patient and has a list of mental illnesses, but you were trying to help him! You can’t even remember what you were doing or why you were in his room. All you remember is him and how he made you feel. His stare. His voice. His touch.

Fuck him and fuck this job.

Clambering over to your desk, you immediately start writing your resignation letter.

You don’t get paid enough for this shit. All you wanted to do is help people, and you get repaid with this? It’s just not worth it. Through your sobs, your tears fall onto the page as you hastily move your pen on the piece of parchment in front of you.

There. It’s done. You’re done.

You won’t have to see this place, see him, ever again once you submit this letter.

Looking around your desk, searching for an envelope. You come across a thick manilla folder. The tab on the side reads, Shabana, Gyutaro.

Something compels you to open it. You already skimmed through his information, but you never looked at everything here.

His psychiatric notes? From his psychiatrist? These shouldn’t be in here… you shouldn’t have access to this confidential information.

But if you’re leaving anyways… then there’s no harm. Right?

Shabana, Gyutaro - Dr. Hantengu

August 14

Childhood trauma starting since birth

Single mother, no father

Raised as a female. Mother would dress patient as a daughter. Would cover up his deformities with makeup. (Feelings of worthlessness, not belonging)

Sister born at age 6 (turning point in patient’s life)

Mother cast aside patient for sister. (When he learned he was actually a boy. Feeling of confusion. Child cannot comprehend)

Sexual abuse started at age 10

Mother was a prostitute, would offer children to adult clients.

Patient record, “She would bring men into our house… and let them touch us. (long pause) They wanted my sister. They wanted to do bad things to her. So I… (patient gets upset) I would offer myself to them. I would perform sexual acts for them so they would leave Ume (sister) alone.”

Sexual abuse continued until age 15

Mother died of overdose. The children were left in the home for over a week until someone found them.

Children taken to orphanage.

Patient held in orphanage for 8 months until incident.

Brought to Asylum at age 16

End of first session

You are left speechless.

Reading his records reminds you of why you wanted to be a nurse in the first place. To help people that have gone through trauma such as this. He didn’t lash out at you because of something you did. It’s not your fault. And it isn’t his either. He just needs help.

And you will be the one to help him.

#gyutaro #gyutaro shabana #gyutaro x reader #gyutaro x y/n #nurse au #nurse reader #gyutaro fanart #kny fanart #demon slayer fanart #hantengu

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multiplicity-positivity · 6 months

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Here’s some positivity for systems with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD)!

ASPD is a heavily stigmatized, often demonized mental illness that affects many people. Folks with ASPD may find it challenging or frustrating to exist in a society which is quick to dismiss or lash out at them. However, people with ASPD are just as deserving of kindness and support as anyone else! So here’s to all the systems with ASPD!

💕 Shoutout to systems who often deal with violent thoughts or bouts of physical aggression!

🌼 Shoutout to systems who are regularly described as reckless or impulsive!

💗 Shoutout to systems who are pathological liars, or who lie about big or small things!

⭐️ Shoutout to systems who struggle with taking care of themselves and keeping themselves safe!

🌺 Shoutout to headmates who are symptom holders for certain ASPD traits!

💛 Shoutout to systems who have reclaimed “psychopath” and/or “sociopath” labels for themselves!

🎀 Shoutout to systems who have trouble learning from past mistakes or making positive changes in their lives!

🌻 Shoutout to systems who can’t feel emotions like guilt or remorse!

💞 Shoutout to systems who do their best to treat others with respect, even if they don’t feel empathy or kindness towards them!

✨ Shoutout to systems who are in treatment for their ASPD, and to those who don’t want or need any sort of treatment in order to live their best lives!

🌷 Shoutout to systems who are often called callous, rude, mean, or abrasive by others in their lives!

🌟 Shoutout to systems who are tired of being hated, mistreated, or demonized for a personality disorder that’s outside of their control!

💘 Shoutout to systems who have recently been diagnosed with ASPD, are pursuing a diagnosis, were diagnosed young, or have self-diagnosed!

Living with ASPD does NOT mean you are any less important or valued than any other member of your community. In fact, our spaces are made brighter, more beautiful, and more diverse thanks to your presence here! Know that you are deserving of kindness, love, and respect just the way you are, and we want to support and uplift you however we can!

We hope that your future is filled with positive things - that your dreams and ambitions will be realized and that you will find yourself surrounded by people who care about you, regardless of what you can offer in return. Remember that having a personality disorder does not make you a bad person, and you will always be a cherished and integral part of the plural community! Thanks so much for reading, and have a lovely day!

#multiplicity #plurality #pluralgang #actuallyplural #system positivity #plural positivity #plural pride #system pride #aspd #antisocial personality disorder #aspd positivity

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lily-orchard · 4 months

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Thank you. Rambling about ODD ahead, please let me know if there's anything I've said weird:

ODD is supposed to note to professionals that there is something creating worrying behaviour in a child/teen. The most common reason someone develops ODD is that they aren't being parented well. There are tables of what is likely to cause specific dysfunctional behaviours and he majority are based on poor parenting skills and/or abuse. The most effective treatment for ODD is working with the parents on their parenting or removing the abuse from a child's life.

In some of these cases it's poor parenting based on an underlying condition, most commonly ADHD or autism, where treatment is essentially just teaching parents how to help their neurodivergent children.

The biggest thing child psychologists get from an ODD diagnosis is what to look out for in the future.

ODD is split into different types of behaviour:

Irritable/angry, Defiant/argumentative and, vindictive.

The biggest worry is vindictive behaviour as it is a flag for the potential development of antisocial disorders. Irritable/angry behaviour can indicate or develop into anxiety and mood disorders and defiant ODD symptoms most often link with ADHD.

Diagnosing ODD is supposed to be a way to improve the life of the child that has been diagnosed and a warning of what disorders they may be susceptible to.

The problem is, and this is where your views on it are completely correct, many psychologists and parents take the label and decide that it is enough. ODD has been given the moniker of "bad child disorder" which seriously harms all kids with ODD! It is used more often as a way to dismiss the children who are suffering when it is supposed to be the red flag of "this kid needs help"

This is why you stop making up new disorders and start telling parents "Your child is being abused. This is a natural response to mistreatment."

This is what all that "over-diagnosis" stuff from the 2000's was about. Using overly clinical language to obfuscate a very straightforward concept, when you KNOW shitty parents are going to take a diagnosis as carte-blanche to do whatever they want.

"How are terrible people going to react to this" needs to be factored into the creation of new diagnostic criteria. It's why shit like "Antisocial Personality Disorder" and "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" desperately need to be renamed yesterday. Because the words "Antisocial" and "Narcissist" mean things that are completely anathema to how those disorders actually work. Whoever approved that name should be hit with a stick.

90% of the stigma around mental illness is based around the fact that they have such ominous fucking names.

Here's a crazy idea: Rename Oppositional Defiance Disorder to "Battered Child Syndrome." Because that's what it is.

Rename NPD "Compulsive Insecurity."

Start naming shit in ways that is both not inflammatory and actually conveys what it fucking does. Like we do with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. That's the greatest name in the world because it's clear, it tells you exactly what it is, and it's so boring-sounding that nobody could ever stigmatize it.

Everyone understands "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

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aspd-culture · 6 months

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why is different neurological stuff between alters impossible, but psychosomatic stuff isnt? /gen (this isnt a bad faith question, im just not educated in sciency stuff ,, i dropped out of hs,,,)

No worries! It's complex and I completely get wanting to learn more about it. I find the psychology and neurology of systems fascinating myself tbh.

So neurological disorders like ASPD, Autism, ADHD, OCD, etc (see also neurodivergencies) are, for lack of a better analogy, hardware-based. Your brain is physically or functionally different than a person without that disorder. The synapses do not fire in the same ways, or the centers do not interact and/or respond in the same ways as someone who doesn't have it.

Other mental health disorders/conditions like depression, some types of anxiety, etc. are software-based. They are maladaptive, but do not alter how your brain works. In the cases where they are caused by chemical differences, these are more hardware based, but generally these disorders are the ones where talk therapy alone can cause significant relief of symptoms, and are the disorders one could reasonably expect to completely recover from (in that after a long time - often many years - of treatment and learning coping strategies, the person would no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for the disorder/condition).

So if we think of alters like different users on the same computer, they may not all have access to the same software due to various permissions and such, and they may not all use software that is available to them (aka they may not have the same conditions or they may handle the symptoms of those conditions so well that they do not impair functioning, which means it wouldn't be diagnosable in that alter by themselves). However, every user on that computer is still bound to the hardware. No user on the computer could run programs that require different hardware than what the computer every user is doing has (aka no alter can make an autistic brain function like an allistic brain, nor make an antisocial brain function as a prosocial one, etc).

I hope that helps!/gen if I missed anything or you need clarification you are very much welcome to submit another ask, as always. For some reason my brain is convinced I missed a part of your question in there.

Plain text below the cut:

No worries! It's complex and I completely get wanting to learn more about it. I find the psychology and neurology of systems fascinating myself tbh.

#aspd-culture-is #aspd culture is #aspd culture #did #actually did #sysblr #system #actually aspd #aspd #aspd awareness #actually antisocial #antisocial personality disorder #aspd traits #anons welcome

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tombfreak · 2 months

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Why can't minors be diagnosed with ASPD?

Well, partially because its written right into the DSM-5. Any doctor in their right mind wouldn't diagnose anyone under 18 with antisocial personality disorder. But why is that? (TLDR at the end)

Most minors who exhibit dysfunctional behavioural issues will go on to be diagnosed with conduct disorder (CD). Having a history of conduct disorder symptoms in childhood is necessary for an ASPD diagnosis. If theres trouble, theres a cause, and in medical practice, we strive to find ways to treat the causes of trouble.

Professionals diagnose someone with a disorder for the sole purpose of treating them. We diagnose someone with cancer so we know to give them chemotherapy, we diagnose someone with schizophrenia so we know to give them antipsychotics instead of stimulants.

Up to 50% of minors with CD will go on to develop ASPD. The reason why we don't diagnose ASPD in minors, is because the progression of conduct issues in childhood -> ASPD is preventable. Did you know that 92% of kids with conduct issues improved their symptoms because their parents took parenting classes? Once someones symptoms gets to the developmental point of being as severe as ASPD, their symptoms are ingrained in their personality, beliefs, and behaviour. They wont be able to be treated by having their parents go to classes.

We diagnose minors with CD instead of ASPD because we treat minors with behavioural issues by looking at their parents and the issues in their life that may be causing them to act out (which is, as I said, most likely their parents.) ASPD isn't necessarily treated that way. The goal is to stop minors from progressing into the severity of ASPD, not to diagnose them with it right off the bat when we know for a fact it can be prevented.

TLDR; Conduct disorder can progress into ASPD, but ASPD cant progress into conduct disorder. We diagnose minors with CD because we want to catch the symptoms progressing into more severe territories before it happens. The treatment for the two disorders are different.

#opinion #aspd #antisocial personality disorder #aspd awareness #aspd things #aspd positivity #actually aspd #conduct disorder #psychology #cluster b pds #cluster b #cluster b awareness #personality disorder #antisocial pd

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justanotherthrowaway1950 · 5 months

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Why I Headcanon Azula Suffering from Mental Illness, Pre-Sozin's Comet

Note: To make it super clear, I have no relevant training when it comes to mental health, or in psychology in general. I am just a fan sharing my headcanon based on what I think would lead into interesting storytelling. So if you have any problems (ex. you think I engaged in ableism) with my characterization and/or diagnosis of Azula, please let me know in the comments.

One of the more contentious arguments in the ATLA fandom is whether or not Azula has any mental disorder(s), and if so, what they are.

Some fans think Azula suffered from some combination of antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, and/or bi-polar personality disorder, and so all the events of the back half of Season 3 did was make her actively psychotic.

Meanwhile, there are other fans who believe that Azula’s problem was being a poorly socialized kid who was raised to be the perfect conqueror and tyrant, and so her mental breakdown during Sozin’s Comet was a temporary stress-based breakdown caused by her life falling apart.

And while the comics could have provided a clear answer, they unfortunately haven’t as of the time of this post.

This is because while Azula suffered from constant delusions and hallucinations for at least a year, they can be easily explained by her less than ideal treatment in her asylum.

(Yes, apparently it is canon that there is systemic abuse present in the Fire Nation’s asylum system, and that it played a major role in not only Azula’s worsened mental state in the comics, but also why the Fire Warriors willingly joined Azula’s side as well.)

Moreover, despite her and Zuko claiming that she appears to mentally better off in Smoke and Shadow, with Azula claiming that she no longer sees or hears “Ursa”, she occasionally is drawn in the same fashion as an actively psychotic Azula is in The Search.

Which suggests that her escaping the asylum and finding a new purpose in life, turning Zuko into a tyrant or retaking the throne for herself, is just a temporary fix.

In addition, at least in the post-Sozin’s Comet comics written by Gene Luen Yang, Azula is supposed to be suffering from a split personality disorder.

Yet I am pretty sure that a significant portion of fandom would agree with me when I say that did not appear to be the case in those comics considering Azula never appears to switch between her normal personality and any alters.

Therefore, considering the franchise refuses to give a clear answer on what, if any, mental illness(es) Azula has, what, if any, mental illness(es) Azula has is the realm of headcanons for now.

So, what mental illness(es), if any, do I headcanon Azula suffering from?

Well, I headcanon that Azula has (childhood) schizoaffective disorder plus complex post-trauma stress disorder (C-PTSD) caused by the fact that Ursa did manage to teach her morals, but she had to consciously disregard them to be her father's perfect heir.

And that the first time she hallucinated Ursa was after her father made her do something heinous, like torturing an agitator in a prison at his command, or after she smiled after Zuko's burning, thinking that deserved it, even though deep down she knew it was wrong.

I also headcanon that she went to great lengths to hide her hallucinations and avoid triggering herself by doing things like avoiding mirrors to the point that no one other than Lo and Li suspected there was anything wrong with her.

But as Zuko, Ty Lee, and Mai “abandon” her before the events of the show occur, she starts to fall apart.

Hence why she seeks out Ty Lee and Mai, even though there are better fighters available like Combustion Man, and why she allows Zuko to "redeem" himself.

That and "Ursa" telling her that she has been a bad sister for trying to imprison or kill her own brother, and that he deserves to come back home, not in chains or in a coffin, but by her side as their father’s rightful heir once again.

So, with her brother and friends back in her life, combined with the fact that she has succeeded in securing her father’s love by essentially winning the war as far as she is concerned, Azula is able to keep “Ursa” for the most part suppressed.

Hence why Azula appears to be happy and even somewhat normal during the first part of Season 3.

This, even though “Ursa” keeps telling her from time to time that it is wrong to blackmail her brother about the Avatar’s potential survival, and that it is a matter of time before Mai and Ty Lee stop tolerating her after everything she has done to them, especially Ty Lee.

So it’s no surprise that after Zuko, Mai, Ty Lee, and Ozai's "betrayals", especially considering the nature of their “betrayals” and how they all occurred within a short timeframe, that she becomes actively psychotic, with her condition then worsening due to the abusive asylum she was placed in, as well as the fact no one came to visit her until Zuko needed her to find Ursa.

But after Noriko apologizes for not loving her enough, plus Zuko affirming that he will always love her, she stops being actively psychotic due to a combination of no longer being in the asylum and her realizing her purpose in life is to "help" Zuko.

However, Azula hasn’t really healed, since her actions in Smoke and Shadow were essentially having a manic episode due to having a new purpose in life, no longer being in the asylum, and having new friends in the form of the Fire Warriors.

Moreover, her trying to turn Zuko into a tyrant, or if that fails, retaking the throne for herself, is a giant coping mechanism since actively coming to terms with the fact her trying to be her father’s perfect heir alienated her from everyone who she cared about would be too much for her psyche.

Especially since there doesn’t seem any way to redeem herself, let alone get her brother, Mai, and/or Ty Lee’s forgiveness and companionship again.

And why do I headcanon Azula suffering from (childhood) schizoaffective disorder alongside C-PTSD?

Well, initially, before rewatching ATLA, I used to think that Azula’s breakdown was a temporary, stress-induced breakdown caused by her life falling apart.

But after rewatching ATLA, or more specifically, the mirror scene, I picked on something very peculiar: Azula doesn’t appear to be shocked by the presence of “Ursa”, even though as far as she is concerned, Ursa has been gone for over five years at this point.

___________________________________________________________

Azula: “All right hair, it's time to face your doom.”

Azula grabs the bangs hanging in front of her face. She lifts them in the air and cuts them, with them falling near her feet. Her reflection in the mirror shows her grinning, with her hair a mess, but she stops grinning as she notices Ursa appears in the reflection, behind Azula.

Ursa: “What a shame, you always had such beautiful hair.”

Azula: “What are you doing here‌?”

Ursa: “I didn't want to miss my own daughter's coronation.”

Azula: “Don't pretend to act proud. I know what you really think of me. You think I'm a monster.

Ursa: [Cuts to shot of Azula looking at her reflection in the mirror, clearly angered; off-camera.] “I think you're confused. All your life you used fear to control people, like your friends Mai and Ty Lee.”

Azula: [Closes her eyes before turning around sharply to face her mother.] “Well what choice do I have?! [Cuts to shot of her standing in the room, her back to the mirror which still shows the reflection of her mother.] Trust is for fools. Fear is the only reliable way. Even you fear me.”

Ursa: [Sincerely.] “No. I love you, Azula. I do.”

Cuts to close-up of Azula as she bends over slightly, tears in her eyes, and her hair hanging down in messy locks. Cuts to shot of her hand gripped around a hairbrush on the table. The camera shifts as the enraged princess lets out a shout and hurls the brush at the mirror. The resulting impact shatters a large portion of the mirror, including where Ursa's reflection was seen. Cuts to overhead shot of the room as Azula kneels over and begins bitterly crying. The room is devoid of any other people, showing that Ursa's reflection was a mere hallucination.

___________________________________________________________

So, after reading the comics and learning that not only did Azula continue to suffer from hallucinations and delusions, but also that her “recovery” wasn’t really a recovery at all, I came to the conclusion that you can tell a compelling story of Azula suffering from (childhood) schizoaffective disorder plus C-PTSD.

Or more specifically, you can tell a compelling story of Azula constantly struggling to suppress her conscience after Ursa left and she got molded into Ozai's perfect weapon, with her symptoms worsening as her friends and brother slowly but surely leave her life, only getting better after she forcibly brings them back into her life.

But after Zuko, Mai, Ty Lee, and Ozai “betray” her one by one, making her (subconsciously) realize that all the people she had hurt and pushed away in pursuit of Ozai’s "love" was all for nothing, and that she was wrong to ignore to “Ursa”, she can no longer keep her symptoms under check.

And that her behavior from Sozin’s Comet onward can be explained due a combination of the asylum worsening her condition, her going through periods of mania and depression, and her trying to avoid consciously admitting that Ozai’s abuse and her own choices led her to lose everything that mattered to her since doing so might break her for good.

So to conclude, I headcanon Azula suffering from (childhood) schizoaffective disorder plus C-PTSD, even pre-Sozin’s Comet, partially because Azula was not surprised at the presence of “Ursa” during the mirror scene, and partially because she continued to be suffering from delusions and hallucinations long after Sozin’s Comet.

And while I wish the writers for the franchise would do more research before trying to depict Azula suffering from such disorders, I do think with has already be depicted and said that there is enough present already to tell a compelling story involving Azula trying to deal with and overcome such disorders, regardless if she actually does succeed in overcoming them, or at least learn how to manage them.

#azula #atla #atla comics #avatar legends #azula meta #atla meta #atla comics meta #atla comics critical #justanotherthrowaway1950meta

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wawawawawawawawawawawawawa · 2 months

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out of interest, how do you think izaya developed aspd and npd? i know that pds typically develop as a result of trauma so i suppose his parents always being absent would be a factor but id also like to hear your thoughts on it. love the aspd izaya headcanon btw

first off, thank u!

and secondly, his parents being absent would definetley be a factor. i read somewhere that its actually children whove been neglected that are more likely to develop aspd rather than children who are abused, because the complete LACK of stimului contributes to aspd more than bad stimuli does. take this with a grain of salt though because my source is "i saw it somewhere" and im 90% sure that place was NOT a study so it might be wrong

but either way, both pds are known to be caused by trauma and both have a genetic component to them. the genetic component isnt SUPER well known, but it IS known that there's a hereditery component here

so honestly? i think izaya was born with antisocial tendencies. NOT aspd, i must stress- at a very young age, if he was given adequate support and treatment, they could've stayed tendeicies and he wouldn't have developed fullblown aspd. he couldve turned out like one of those guys with a bit of a skewed morality system but is otherwise mentally healthy enough to participate in society without wanting to kill himself or others. quirks over disorder

but from pretty much every account i can think of, izaya was ALWAYS an odd child, to the point where it was his father that instilled a love of humanity into him

When he was younger, I saw he was distant from others, and that made me worried. And so I wanted him to come to like humans and become a man who could strongly love people twice as others would. (source)

of course this isnt exactly very detailed wrt izayas behavior, but if its enough that his absent father noticed, it mustve been pretty serious

so wrt his aspd, i think he was born with those kinds of tendencies, which were then exasperated by the neglect and ergo got worse and worse over the years, culminating in high school with his friendship with shinra, blackmailimg of nakura, and his beginning to poke his nose in the underground

his npd is a bit trickier

so, the way i personally developed npd is that my mom would seem to have two perceptions of me in her head, depending on wether or not i was following the Good Perception or not. the first me, the good one, was intelligent, kind, and filled with potential. the other one was a stupid lazy monster. i was the good one, up until i did anything she didnt like, then i was the bad one. these two ideas getting fed into me led to me clinging onto the Good Perception as how i really was, and if something even for a second made me slip, i'd crash down from total egoism to total repulsion. And It Sucked!

(disclaimer: do not armchair diagnose my mother. i have my theories but they will stay private and i absolutely do not want a STRANGER butting into this, especially when they could know less abt mental illness than me and thus spread misinformation)

now, i dont think izaya's parents were like my mom- but there was still a dichotomy at play here. he would go to school, where he would be a smart student and praised by his teachers, even if he kept to himself. then, he'd go home, and be alone. as he got older, it only got worse- humans are social creatures, and we don't take well to being lonely. the mind starts to cope with it however it can.

as izaya started to venture deeper into the underground, he couldve started to develop a superiority complex about it. see, look- he's smarter than everyone. better than everyone. that's why he's alone, its because he's too good to be around them. not because he's worse. he's better.

because, especially once he gets to high school age... izaya is smart. izaya is perceptive. izaya would be able to tell that there's something different about him, and that's why people avoid him and he avoids them. there's something wrong with him in a way that's repulsive and unpalatable to most. that'd wreck a kid's self-image, especially a neglected kid's, since he'd already have low self-image from, yk, the neglect

and the dichitomy of the low and high self-image makes him develop npd- the ego masks the low self esteem, but both are equally felt and true, its not like his egoism and god complex are fake- it's all very real, he feels it all and believes it genuinely, and he clings onto it because if he slips, he KNOWS where he's gonna plummet

anyway thats just my take on it!! "it was his childhood" is prolly a boring answer but honestly a lot of mental illness has that answer at the root of it. art imitates life and all

#wasks #izaya orihara #orihara izaya #durarara #once again. do not armchair diagnose my mother. do not armchair diagnose ME.#and for the love of god be normal

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necroromantics · 2 months

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Psychopathy/Sociopathy in the Creepypasta fandom

This is half educational, half ramble. But I think its important

Theres a common issue in the fandom where people tend to throw around the labels psychopath/sociopath, which I understand comes from a place of ignorance above all else so I wanted to make a bit of an educational post.

The terms psychopath/sociopath are heavily related to antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and for simplicity Ill be referring to those terms as ASPD for most of this post.

ASPD is a very heavily misunderstood and stigmatized disorder. When you hear the word "psychopath" you probably think of some cold, callous, horrible evil criminal, but in reality ASPD is a real disorder that effects many peoples lives. Its often caused by early childhood trauma or unstable parenting, and most people with ASPD wont even recieve proper help because of the rampant belief that people with these traits are beyond treatment.

Psychopathy isn't a medical term (it's typically only used in research environments) and should never be used as something to label people as. By using this label to describe villains and killers in media, you're only pushing the narrative that people with psychopathic traits are bad by nature, which isn't true at all. They deserve help and support and to be seen as something more than that.

I made a post awhile back about how to properly write bipolar, so if anyones interested I can make a version of that for ASPD since I see it floating around in the fandom a lot

#tombtalk #creepypasta #creepypasta fandom #creepypasta headcanon #jeff the killer #ticci toby #creepy pasta

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protege-not-protagonist · 26 days

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Criminal Minds: The Protégé Chapter 10

Ch 10: The Mountain King- Pt. 3 or alt title: Trivia Night

Blurb: While the team works on the case in the Appalachian Mountains establishing theories and defining a profile, Spencer throws himself into working the victimology of this new Unsub killer. But it is not enough to distract him from the emptiness he feels in his life, especially after his mother's recent episode. rather than stay at home and face a night of quiet reflection, Spencer reluctantly decides to attend trivia night... who knew it would be the first and last time he would be hesitant to go.

Masterlist

Previous Chapter

Audience: 16+ mature audience for depictions of violence and sexual references

Author's Note: if you see a trigger warning that concerns you, you can scroll to end and I'll have a brief description what happens. And how to read around it. TW: violence, crime scene depiction, This case mentions sexual assault, kidnapping, decapitation, Necrophilia, slight body horror (as previous chapter)

Spencer's Appartment, Arlington, VA, 7:50PM

Spencer rubbed the bridge of his nose and inhaled. Done. He had gone through them. All 562 profiles of the unsubs. He just focused on their status in the past 5 years, since that was when Grace had noticed the upward trend. Of those, 32 had died in that period. A few had died of old age, been executed, or died in prison fights. But disturbingly, 19 of those deaths had suicide by overdose or heart complications listed as cause of death in the last.

And even more concerning was that there was a starkly clear victimology. All were unsubs that had been killing and caught when they were adolescents or very early twenties. All had antisocial personality disorder, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, or both. All were having medical treatment administered to them in either psychiatric facilities or prisons. And, they were all people who shouldn't have died in care, all under 30 and not profiled as self destructive.

Spencer wished it was hard to believe that someone could've gotten away with it for that long. But he knew they weren’t exactly people that would be missed. People would think that no one would care or even that they deserved it, and that is why this killer had been so successful. It was why 19 had died before one person had thought twice about a 20th. One random FBI agent who answered a phone call meant for him.

Now they had a base number of victims, they needed to further narrow down the remaining living unsubs with the victim profile. It would help them figure out who was likely to be next. They also had to correlate employee records with the facilities these unsubs, well actually, victims, had died in. If there was a common person, they had to be the killer.

He shuffled the papers back into the neat stacks on his coffee table. Squinting around at the rest of his room, reached for a floor lamp's switch; it was starting to get hard to see. He stood up from his armchair and felt his legs protest. The light level in the room told him it was a later than he thought it was. How long had he been working on this? He looked out his window at the park outside. It only had a few joggers and dog walkers trailing around the pathways.

Spencer enjoyed the new view and the convenience of the location. He had been in his new apartment for 1 year, 8 months, and four days. But it still wasn’t the same. He missed his old home.

He had left it out of necessity, is what he told himself. It was practical. Now he was home a lot more, he needed the spare room as an office space. He also originally needed the two-bedroom apartment if his mother wanted to stay with him on day releases. Not that she could now.

But no matter how he reasoned it away, it didn’t change the fact that the real reason he moved was because he didn't like the fact that Cat Adams knew where he lived. It was the fact that she and had used his apartment and neighbours in her plans twice now. Max had pointed that out to him. And once she had; he hadn't felt safe there anymore.

Spencer never used to worry for his safety, if anything, his job proved that there was no point in worrying; if someone was determined enough, nothing could stop them. But with her it was different. For the first time, he could not shut the worry out. His home had felt... tainted.

It was a shame. He had spent longer in that apartment than anywhere else in his life. But perhaps the change was good. He was leaving that life behind; a new environment would help him separate himself from his past.

Much to his disappointment though, the walls here were still white. He hadn't got permission to paint them yet. Spencer appreciated that in design theory, the lighter coloured walls help reflect light and make the place feel spacious and airy. But other than a vitamin D boost, for him, there were no more benefits. He needed the comfort of a dark, cosy place to retreat to at the end of long days. Surveying space he nodded with contentment. He had done his best to dampen the impersonal-ness of the ‘clean chic’ aesthetic. His bookshelves lined the walls of the living space. Framed yellowed schematics and watercolour botanical prints cluttered the walls. His dark wooden furniture added the illusion of a comfortable age. Dark curtains and earthy tone rugs tied it all together. It was impressive how similar it was to the old the place.

But now there was the spare room. The room with a plainly dressed bed and his spotless work desk. The empty room.

He would have brought his own house if he had someone to share it with. But that hadn’t worked out and the more empty rooms he had in his life, the more lonely he supposed it would feel. Max was great, but when they finally had that third date, and then a fourth, and then a 15th, they both found that they were great, but just as friends.

Opposites did attract, but ultimately there was just too much difference between their worldviews. He had baggage. A lot of it. And it was not that she didn’t care. No, it was the opposite; she cared a lot, but she was too confrontational. She saw his baggage, and she wanted it gone; she wanted to free him from it. Max saw it as if all of that trauma really was just bags and suitcases that she could toss away from him like a commercial airline baggage handler, if she tried hard enough. But she didn’t understand that some things can’t be fixed. Some things can’t be undone. Some things, in the end, you just had to live with and learn to live around.

He also felt that they wanted different things out of life. Max wanted to live a life filled with excitement. She was eager to explore the world, but Spencer craved stability. He had had enough adventure. He wanted to settle down, take life slowly, and savour it. And so that was how it ended. They followed their respective paths. Max found herself in bustling New York, working at the MET. Meanwhile, Spencer settled into a cozy apartment, its walls filled with books and the gentle hum of a fish tank, finding solace in teaching. Or, he was trying to.

Spencer padded across the room and flicked the light switch on, and stared back at the pile of papers on the coffee table. He couldn’t do much more work without Agent Matthews or Garcia now. He needed something to do. Staying here looking at the spare room was only reminding him that there were people missing from his life. He needed to get out. Staying in and reading was nice. But lonely. And he didn’t want to feel alone tonight. Not after the weekend, he just had.

He checked his watch; 7:52pm.

If he left now, he could still make it to the trivia night his colleagues had openly invited him to months ago. He didn't usually like bars, or competitions, or beer. But they had tried multiple times to convince him he would enjoy himself. The concerned smile that Grace had given him earlier that morning flicked to his mind. He recalled her subtle encouragement to try a new experiences; new people and new hobbies. Was trivia a hobby?

Surprisingly, he felt himself move towards his keys, as if his subconscious was urging him to go. If there were empty rooms in his life, he supposed they would stay empty unless he took the initiative to meet new people and tried new things. He grabbed his wallet and phone and walked to the door while he still had the courage. He turned the doorknob and stepped out into the hallway, pulling up the navigation app on his phone. Trivia. He was going to trivia night, a social event, and he was going to meet people. And if the past week was any indicator; meeting new people wasn’t too bad.

Central Police Station, Harrisburg, PA, 7:00 PM

Rossi walked down the halls to of the police station with Dective Garner following close behind the meeting room. Simmons was pinning up the map on the case board. Luke was scribing down points on the whiteboard as Tara told him what they had learned from their interviews. JJ was in the corner examining the sheets the victims were wrapped in from the boxes of evidence. Grace was missing. He looked down at his watch. She was late for the debriefing. He sighed, but knew she would be in soon; she would be late cause she had found something.

‘Well, what have we got, cause victimology is not really giving us anything other than young, female and in the forest? Not too picky as far as I can tell. We’re going to have focus more on the Unsub. What did the scene tell us?’ Rossi asked.

Simmons shook his head, ‘Well he is knowledgeable of local area, looking at these sites this active zone where the bodies are being dumped placed is 1.38 square kilometres, that’s not even a square mile but the comfort zone, is a lot bigger, here-‘ he drew a circle around the three points.’-As Detective Garner and Ranger Debraun noted this active zone was not accounting for the terrain. If we adjust to account for the mountain right in the middle of the whole thing, the active zone is more like 13 square miles. If he had to walk there using the trails from access points near roads while carrying a body… it’s just unlikely.

‘So there’s two possibilities, theory one, is that he lives somewhere in this comfort zone and uses a shallow boat to travel the waterways after killing them. Theory two, he lives in the forest, and has multiple secluded areas to hold and kill victims and then dumps them in sites closest to the area he killed and held them in.’

Tara stepped up to the map and added a point to the board. ‘Our interview found that Hope was abducted from the surrounding forest on this road. Now that we know for sure the stretch of trail that Hope was abducted from and the disposal site, we can narrow down that range that this hideout might be in.’

Rossi nodded. ‘Good, good, tomorrow morning we can get out there with some of your men, Garner, and search the abduction site.’

‘Absolutely,’ the detective nodded.

Rossi paused and furrowed his brow. ‘Detective Garner, does the phrase “your friend trips under the hill” mean anything to you?’

The detective frowned. ‘No, sorry, should it?’

‘When we interviewed Jenny, she said sometimes in the days after the abduction she heard a man call her name and sometimes she would hear that phrase.’ Tara explained.

‘The Unsub returned to taunt her?’ Luke questioned.

Rossi shook his head stoically. ‘No, we believe he was trying to lure her too.’

‘She didn’t tell us that,’ the detective frowned.

‘She thought she was imagining it,’ Tara explained. ‘She thought people would think she was crazy.

‘Are we sure that it was the unsub?’ JJ asked Tara. ‘I don’t know who would even speak like that. It sounds… theatrical.’

‘I’m convinced it wasn’t a hallucination that she heard. She would still be experiencing them if they weren’t real, conditions that cause those symptoms are long term and don’t go away without treatment.’ Dr Lewis explained.

‘I’ve got Garcia researching that phrase as we speak. Hopefully, we can find what it’s referencing.’ Rossi nodded and moved on. ‘What about the morgue JJ? Where’s Grace?’

JJ let out a little huff and shook her head, still unable to believe how the interaction had gone. ‘Oh boy, the morgue was something. Grace got in a verbal sparring match with the M.E. It was like watching a high school debate club, but there were no real arguments, just intellectual snark. I had to break it up, but Grace is still there. She’s hovering over the M.E. while they do a dissection.’

‘Grace, verbally sparring?’ Dr Lewis frowned.

JJ shrugged, ‘I don’t know. Something got into her. M.E. made a comment about how she does that talking thing… And she went straight for the metaphorical jugular. Anyway, I got a lot of information I wish I could erase from my brain.’ she paced across the room to the board and wrote, ��Necrophiliac” on the board.

‘Oh, gross.’ Luke groaned.

‘So this guy, still waiting on DNA to confirm it’s the same one, seems to keep the victims for three to five days before killing them and then keeps them for one to three days after death and that’s when the sexual assault occurs. Then he washes and wraps the victims before disposing of them. As far as we can tell, only superficial wounds from scuffles are sustained while they are alive. But the newest victims, Grace believes, show a deviation. She seems to think they were killed before decapitation and then drained of their blood. And this is where things get weird.’

‘You mean it wasn’t already weird? Simmons asked.

JJ grimaced before continuing. ‘One of the new victims had a needle mark from where the Unsub externally filled their bladder-‘

‘-What?’ Rossi asked out loud. The room was filled with confused and disgusted faces.

‘Jesus.’ Detective Garner shook his head. ‘Who even does this?’

‘Well, I’m not sure about the whole bladder thing, but I know that there is some familiar behaviour,’ JJ also wrote: Remorse? ‘I’ve been looking at the evidence here in the meantime. The sheets, the way he wraps up the victims, it’s like a shroud, it’s not just spread over the body, it’s properly done. The way he wraps up the victims and places them somewhere scenic, at the creek. That’s an indication of remorse, it’s shows an amount of care, an amount of shame. It’s a burial ritual.’

‘Yeah, as much as care someone who chops of heads and desecrates bodies can have.’ Detective Garner scoffed.

There was a short tap on the door. Grace's smiling face met them as she opened the door. ‘Did I hear someone say burial ritual?’

Stern faces met her and Rossi raised an eyebrow. Her face dropped a little, assuming a more neutral expression. ‘Right, well sorry I’m late, but I have some great news, some perplexing news and some details for Garcia to look up for our victim IDs when the briefing’s over.’

‘Start with the great news.’ Rossi waved her in.

She nodded and skittered over to the map. ‘I know where the victims are most likely being held and killed.’ She held out her hand for JJ to pass her the marker. ‘So, I called around to see if we could get our lab results flagged as a priority, and well, mainly DNA, to confirm it’s the same guy. Toxicology is still slow, entomology also not finished and the sample we took from the bladder has only just been sent-’

He held up his hand gently stopping her. ‘Grace… What do we have?’ Rossi prompted.

‘Oh um, particulates from the fingernails. The samples were tested before, but only for the DNA of the attacker. I asked a friend of mine back on the second floor to look at the preliminary mass spec, but for grit. He found pure Anthracite Coal in all victims’ samples.’ She grinned widely, clearly proud of herself as she used the marker to draw some dotted lines on the map.

Rossi watched her with interest. He had talked to her about convoluted answers. To Grace’s credit, she had gotten better in the past few months. He knew if she was drawing; she was taking time to gather an explanation with a visual aid. But he supposed he knew of her diagnosis, so he understood. The rest of the team had not quite figured it out yet.

‘So, they were killed in a forge or factory or what… what is Anthracite Coal mean? Are there different types of coal?’ JJ asked.

Grace turned to answer, but surprisingly, Detective Garner cleared his throat.

‘Ya girl here is saying the victims were killed in a Pennsylvanian coal mine. Anthracite is the highest grade coal there is, highest carbon content, rare as well. In America, it is only found in this state.’ The team looked at him with puzzled looks. ‘What? I thought everyone knew that? Anyway There is a problem though, it doesn’t fit the geoprofile. All the mines are further North East of here, quite a ways actually.’

‘Yes exactly, but those are currently operating mines,’ Grace enthused. ‘I suspect this one is old and abandoned. I’m not an expert geologist, but as an archaeologist, I know a thing or two about stratigraphy. The Appalachian mountains, although separated by rivers and valleys nowadays, were once a continuous range before the ice age. Because of this we can look at known deposit on the other side of the river in Dauphin county and assume the layer that was compressed into coal was one deposit before the river separated it-‘ she drew a dotted line over the river and along the mountain and straight through the unsubs active zone. ‘-Theoretically, the coal that ended up in our victims’ fingernails should be at the same elevation as the Dauphin county mine. Which places the abandoned mine on this ridge and within the unsubs’ active zone.’

Detective Garner paused briefly before stating, ‘Considering Jenny's testimony, we can place the abduction right on the outskirts of the active zone. But we found her on the other side of the mountain, which disproves the theory of his lair being in that zone. You cannot abduct someone without a vehicle and drag them either fighting or unconscious up a mountain for two miles. Hold them captive in a mine for five days. Then carry their body three miles down the other side of the mountain. It’s not physically possible. The bodies would suffer more damage from being dragged and manhandled.’

Grace nodded. ‘You are right, detective, I would normally agree. The average distance someone can carry a body is 300 meters or a hundred yards. And if we think he is probably using the river to transport the bodies away from his lair, the place he kills them must be closer than 300 meters from where he keeps a boat. As you said, it looks impossible since the river is on the other side of the mountain. But it is actually possible if the unsub isn’t going over the mountain at all.’

‘There has to be a tunnel under the mountain.’ Rossi realised. It was the only thing that made sense.

‘Exactly, modern mines in the area are open cut, but prior to the 60’s mines were underground. And if this mine is old enough to be forgotten about. It’s got to be Civil War era or before. I also read that this area has a lot of history with the Underground Railroad, which I know was not actually an underground railroad, but it involved a lot of secret passages through the mountains, and also the logging industry sometime would help smuggle people out on rafts through the river systems. Sometimes loggers would create tunnels that would lead to riverside log stations so that logs didn’t have to be dragged over the hill. Point is, this unsub lives in those mountains, and probably has his whole life, his family probably also has deep roots here. Both mining and logging are the old back bone industries here.’

‘How long did you spend reading?’ Dr Lewis asked.

‘Just the plane ride here…’ She shrugged.

Rossi raised an eyebrow. He noticed her busy with something on the plane and had wondered what it could be. She had seemed so focused on it. Obviously, whatever it was, had been helpful.

Simmons nodded and thought for a moment. ‘Is there a possibility that there’s a map of these tunnel systems or survey of the mineshafts?’

Garner shook his head. ‘Not that I know of. Anything old like that, there’s a chance it doesn’t exist anymore. Records like that just aren’t kept. The police records here only go back as far as the 50s. We’ve had a few disaster level floods in the Susquehanna area way back. If something like that existed, I’m not sure if it would have survived.’

‘Survivorship Bias.’ Grace murmured in thought.

‘Do you mean natural selection?’ Rossi asked, prompting her to speak up.

‘Uh no, Survivorship Bias is the likelihood of material culture surviving based on preference. Basically, the more important, impressive, and popular something is, the more likely it is to be preserved over mundane things. If a map did exist and has survived, it will be because someone thought it was worth preserving. If we want to find a map we need to think of who might’ve thought that the map was important enough to preserve?’

There was a moment of silence as they thought collectively.

Simmons lit up. ‘It could be in Union Army military intelligence documents. Do you have a civil war historical society here in Harrisberg, detective?’

‘Yeah, one of the sarges is in it. I’ll go get him to phone them make inquiries.’ Garner nodded and left the room.

‘That could take a while. Do we have anything more to add to the profile than local-necrophile-head-hunter-mountain-man at the moment?’ Rossi asked.

‘I’m sorry to ask, but what’s with the bladder? We see wacky cranked up to 11 every day here, but this is just next level.’ Dr Lewis asked.

‘It a first for me,’ JJ folded her arms. Simmons and Luke nodded in agreement. The team all looked at him.

‘Hey, I may be old, but this is new for me too.’ Rossi held his hand up. ‘How did the dissection go, Grace?’

‘I’m not sure yet, still waiting for tox screens. But this is the perplexing news I had. The dissection confirmed that victim Four’s bladder had been filled externally and drained, naturally. Whatever it was filled with caused hemorrhaging, but there were no caustic burns or lacerations. So at least it wasn’t acid, which I have seen before, but not in the bladder, it was-’ the room collectively winced and Grace stopped her sentence. ‘-awful. But whatever it was caused the victim to bleed a lot. They, uh-would have urinated blood. The level of medical sophistication required for it doesn’t really agree with the ‘feral’ mountain man profile, but DNA confirms it’s the same guy. And it’s too bizarre to be unrelated.’

Rossi frowned, unsure what to make of that information. ‘Well, bizarre and unknown, we will handle with care once we get those tox screens. For now, we focused on we know: The way he’s wrapped the bodies and isolates the victims, holds them for days, speaks to some kind of fantasy. What kind of fantasy?’

‘This guy almost seems like a Power Rapist to me, but it’s warped to where instead of losing confidence when a victim rejects him, he takes the resistance out of the equation by killing them. Then afterward he is ashamed or has some expression of grief in the way he disposes of them.’ Luke observed.

Rossi nodded in agreement. ‘That’s good, I think you’re right, but then there’s the decapitation, which is not typically a remorseful thing to do to a body.’

Tara looked up at him with a pensive expression. ‘Usually I would agree, but I think what we are seeing here is an expression of frustration that he cannot socialise with these women. During the pandemic, the cases of overkill, particularly beheadings rose. We’ve found theres is a clear link between isolation and this kind of dismemberment.’ Dr Lewis put forward. ‘Everything we’ve seen so far suggest he is a very socially inept individual. Perhaps it’s not so much the heads, but the faces he can’t look at while he commits the sexual acts after. I personally believe we are dealing with a young individual severely isolated, very agitated, and experimenting with his desires on victims his own age.’

‘No social skills, like being a feral mountain man.’ JJ pointed out.

‘Do feral people have clean linen though?’ Simmons asked. Pointing to the evidence box JJ had been going through.

‘You’re just going to gloss over the fact that you’re actually entertaining the idea that they exist?’ Luke raised an eyebrow.

‘Well, although a lot of folks from Appalachia think it’s pretty offensive and stereotypical to suggest there are wild people living in the mountains, the legends persist, which suggests there is some element of truth. Of course, I'm not talking about insane myths like cannibal cults and skinwalkers, but there could be some eccentric hermits out there. This team has come across, like, two, no wait, three unsubs that some might call feral people. So I thought it was a fact that feral people exist,’ Grace added. Then frowned, walking over to the evidence table. ‘But Simmons is right. Feral people don’t have white clean linen, usually.’

‘Well, not all the sheets are white, this was victim one’, unlike that others its old and discoloured there’s also a label on it this. It looks like a nordic language.’ JJ pointed to the evidence she had unboxed earlier that evening.

‘IKEA? So like stock standard and untraceable.’ Luke guessed.

Grace peered at the label. ‘No, these aren’t from IKEA, if they were, they’d actually be more traceable. IKEA is not as generic as you’d think. There are only 51 IKEA stores in the country, only three in the state. Fun fact, the franchise is headquartered in right here in Pennsylvania. This is because of the high percentage of German heritage in the area, which is important because Germany highest consumer of their goods. Actually, the first IKEA in the US was opened in ‘85 in Plymouth, about two hours away from here.’ Grace said distractedly. The room went quiet, and Rossi couldn’t help but smile as Grace continued examining the sheets, oblivious to the fact that all eyes were on her. ‘The font and condition of them say early 90’s at least. I don’t recognise this brand. But JJ's right the text is definitely Nordic, maybe Danish?’

'How?' Simmons asked in bewilderment.

‘How what?’ Grace raised her head and realised the team was focused on her. She looked around nervously and glanced at Rossi, her face asking if she had zoned out.

‘That was the most numerical facts you’ve given about a topic off the top of your head, and about IKEA of all things? Why?’ JJ asked curiously.

Grace simply shrugged. ‘I just really like IKEA.’

JJ chuckled and then asked, ‘Ok, Grace, what’s the address of the police station here?’

‘Why would I need to remember that? It was in the case brief.’ Grace said with a frown.

With a little snort, JJ shook her head. ‘Case and point Grace.’

The Laureate bar, West End, Washington DC, 8:04PM

‘Dr Reid! You made it!’ the table of familiar faces called out to him, beckoning him over. He made his way through the tables in the function room at the back of the bar. He glanced at the leader board and saw their team name’s "You’re Going George-down" was fifth. But the first team "The No Bodies" was a head by a significant lead. The previous winners of other weeks were listed on a white board behind an older woman who paced with a hand-held microphone. The No Bodies didn’t win every week previously, but they certainly had a few.

‘Sit here.’ Dr Brandwrith, The Creative Writing Professor, pulled out a chair next to him. ‘We’ve finished round one, which was ornithology. We’re about to start round two, the topic is 15th century literature, and we’re being slaughtered. The Le Morte d'Arthur, is about all I’m familiar with.’

‘God look at them, they know they’re winning, look you can see the smugness in their eyes.’ Dr Martin, the head of the modern history department, cried, eyeing the table of five in the corner. A little white board place marker showed they were The No Bodies. They didn’t look to be gloating or intimidating. ‘It had to be one of their topics. I can not lose to an Egyptologist again!’ Dr Martin lamented and took a long swig of his drink.

Spencer scrutinised their opponents. The No Bodies was comprised three men and two women. Two of the men appeared to be in a deep discussion, dressed in simple button ups, one with a tie. The other man was significantly younger, probably early twenties in a collared tee and khakis, hand intertwined with a young woman at the table, but he completely focused on the baseball game playing on the screen behind them. The young woman was chatting animatedly with the other woman, who sat with her back to Spencer. All he could see from here was that her hair was red, and she had a green flannel jacket slung over the back of her chair.

He surveyed the other tables. Despite the tie wearing man, The No Bodies were the most casually dressed people in the room. Surprisingly, he recognised a lot of faces. Many were academics from various institutions. He even spotted a prominent judge at a table with people dressed in smart suits.

‘Well, luckily I happen to be pretty knowledgeable on the topic, I grew up reading it,’ Spencer told his colleagues trying to keep the wistfulness off his face as memories of his mother reading to him surfaced. ‘But 15th century literature is not a topic I would have thought would come up in bar trivia.’

‘That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you. This isn’t just any trivia, Dr Reid. This is Triv-atholon. The bar owner was an Ac-decathlon champion in highschool, he missed the fact that there were no competitions or social events like mathleetes and acdec for adults. So he made these trivia nights to be hard for people who wanted to be challenged.’

‘I never did decathlon in school, or trivia. How does it work?’

Dr Nguyen, the political sciences professor, leaned across the table.

‘Well, we are mid season now. There’s 20 games per season, one game a week. A team has to be signed on from the start of the season to enter the tournament, you can have up to six members per game, but you need at least four to compete in a game other wise you forfeit that week, team members also don’t have to be consistent, they can be anyone as long as they don’t play on another team.

'At the start of the season, each team submits their team name and four topics of expertise. Then each week there’s a game with three rounds, each round is 10 questions from the one of the submitted topics. One point for every right answer. And at the end of the game, the top three teams get leader board points and at the end of the season, the team with the most points wins the tournament.’

‘What do you win?’

‘Well, firstly, bragging rights. Secondly, they get personalised jackets, their team name on the trophy and $200 gift voucher. But most importantly, they get free drinks at the close of season party.’

A bell dinged repeatedly, and a hush descended up on everyone in the room.

‘Okay folks, question one, round two, here we go, the chivalric romance Tirant lo Blanch was finished and published in 1490 by Marti Joan de Galba, but who originally authored the text?’

‘Ugh that’s the Tyrant in White, I know it actually was a knight. But the name escapes me.’ Dr Brandwrith said.

‘Joanot Martorell.’ Spencer whispered.

‘How do you spell that? Write that down don’t let them see it.’ Dr Nguyen shoved a pen and paper towards him.

_________________

‘And the score after the second round, still in the lead with 17 points, are The No Bodies. In second place, real dark horses now, You’re Going George-Down with 15 points and in third we have the Matter Babes with 14 Points-‘

‘We got a secret weapon now. You’re going down this time Smithies!’ Dr Martin, a few drinks in, jeered at The No Bodies.

‘Did you not hear the score?’ one of the older men smiled. Spencer noticed he had an eye of Horace’s tie pin. He must have been the Egyptologists.

‘Well, it’s not really a secret once you announce it.’ The red-haired woman turned around in her chair.

Spencer blinked. She looked to be around his age, with freckled pale skin, wire-rim glasses perched on her round face framing her smiling eyes. His brain catalogued a lot of things when he saw her, but the immediate thing he noticed was that she was pretty, very pretty. He would go as far to say she was beautiful, but Spencer reserved that term for after he had observed their nature. She slid the glasses off, laying them on the table, and scanned him from head to toe with an inquisitive look on her face.

‘You didn't bring your pet encyclopedia this week? If she's coming, you might actually stand a chance,’ Dr Nguyen called back.

‘My grad student couldn't come, but I wouldn't count your chickens yet, Nguyen. Seven points down and we still have a few tricks up our sleeves.’ She said. Spencer was left stunned by the confident and playful smirk she shot him before turning back to her table.

‘Okay folks let's start round three, the topic is; The History of Material Culture Generated by Popular American Spectator Sports.’ The hostess announced.

There was a collective murmur.

The younger woman at The No Bodies table nudged her partner, who was still engrossed in the game on the screen behind him.

‘It’s your sport round, babe.’ She smiled at him.

‘No, mine was about the history of sport merch.’ He sighed.

‘That’s what people like us call Material Culture babe,’ she whispered.

‘OH YES FINALLY!’ the young man’s fist pumped. He quickly retracted his fist with a murmured apology once he realised all eyes were on him.

‘For half a point each, in what year was the first baseball card ever produced and by whom?’ The hostess read the first question.

‘Oh my God, we’re screwed!’ Dr Martin slumped on the table.

‘We can make an educated guess.’ Spencer consoled. He thought hard about everything he had gathered from conversations with Derek and Rossi. ‘Well, the product was probably tobacco and baseball reached international popularity in the late 1800s, so let’s say 1870, and Camel cigarettes.’

_____________

It was incorrect; it was actually a sporting goods store, but the year was close, 1868. And that the closest his team got to answering any of the questions from the round. The No Bodies won the night, much to the dismay of his colleagues. After hearing the final scores, his team members shuffled towards the bar.

As he went to follow them, he tried to walk in between two tables at the same time as the Red-haired woman from the opposing team. Both accidentally blocking the path, they made awkward eye contact and apologised. They both stepped to the left and then to the right and laughed nervously at each other. Eventually, he stepped back and let her through in front of him.

‘Good game?’ He cleared his throat. ‘Not really sure if we say that in trivia.’

‘We can if you want.’ She smiled. ‘It was a good game.’ She held out her hand to shake.

‘I uh, I-’ he scrambled for words that were running from him the longer he looked at her.

‘Oh no, that's ok.’ She retracted her hand and offered him a smile. ‘I get it. I got a few friends who don’t like handshakes either.’

He didn’t know if it was audible but a sigh of relief left him. She understood? He followed her up to the bar and was getting ready to search for his teammates when she turned back to him.

‘So you’re Dr Reid, Right? I can see why they wanted you to come.’

‘I can see as well.’ He nodded. ‘And I can see why Dr Martin was particularly worried. The No Bodies are quite a formidable team.’

‘Well, you should remind Dr Martin’s that’s it just a game,’ she laughed. It was a wonderful, contagious laugh. And all Spencer wanted to do was hear it again. ‘We’ve just had a good start to the season and a few new minds. That’s all. The No Bodies are pretty harmless.’

Spencer saw an opportunity and opened his mouth before he had time to regret it. ‘Unless your name is Polyphemus.’

There was a tick of silence before she erupted in that beautiful room brightening laugh.

‘I love a good Greek Mythology reference. So does Jess-‘ she pointed at the other woman from her team who was currently passionately kissing her boyfriend. ‘-Oh they are really celebrating huh, sorry you had to see that. But want to know something funny? Jess is a Classic Historian, her boyfriend’s name is Troy.’ She grinned at him.

He chuckled now. ‘Nominative determinism, that is funny. So your team consist of an Egyptologist, a Classicist, a Sport enthusiast, yourself and… I heard you’re a member down? Your grad student? Should I be worried about them?’

‘Oh yeah!’ she nodded. ‘Luckily for the other teams here, she’s my part time grad student. She has a job that means she has to travel a lot. She’s really good at general knowledge and Vikings. Can I buy you a drink?’ She asked.

‘Oh uh, no,’ Spencer replied. ‘I don’t usually-‘

‘What about a soda? That's what I'm getting. I have to drive home,’ She suggested.

‘You don't have to buy me one,’ he hesitated. ‘Not that I have anything against you buy-‘

‘-I want to buy you a drink,’ she interrupted, ‘So we have an excuse to converse longer. Sorry if that’s forward…’ her sentence petered out.

'Oh?' She wanted to talk? To him? After a moment, Spencer finally agreed. ‘You know what, okay, I'll have a soda.’

She glanced back up at him with a smile and flagged down the bartender.

‘So, grad students, you must be a doctor too,’ he said, leaning forward on the bar with intrigue. ‘What kind of doctor?’ he asked.

‘I'm a doctor twice over. Archaeology and Anthropology, I've also studied anatomy, but I’m a forensic anthropologist,’ she replied. ‘And I haven’t lost you, which is a good sign, not going to have to explain that I am I?’

Spencer’s brow furrowed in genuine interest. ‘No, no, fascinating,’ he encouraged her.

‘So, what kind of doctor are you?’ she inquired.

Spencer lit up with excitements as he replied, 'Like you, I’m a doctor in a few fields. Chemistry, mathematics, engineering.’ Then he shrugged, before saying the thing that usually killed the conversation. ‘But actually, I’m a criminologist and used to be a criminal profiler,’ he explained.

Her eyes widened in surprise. ‘Woah, I’ve got whiplash. Sorry, criminal profiler?’ she exclaimed, but he didn’t read any distaste. She was giving him her full attention. Fascinated, he realised. She was fascinated.

He smiled, ‘Well, I used to be. Now I teach at Georgetown and consult occasionally for, uh, law enforcement,’ he revealed.

‘That would be the FBI, right?’ She guessed excitedly.

He nodded, ‘How did you-’ he began.

‘Oh, I consult with them sometimes too. I work with a few people from there. But that’s work talk. I’m intrigued, because in my mind, mathematics, chemistry, and engineering don’t connect with crime,’ she pondered. ‘How did you end up there, Doctor Reid?’

Spencer leaned back, his gaze thoughtful. ‘I guess I just found my way there. Growing up, I found it hard to comprehend emotions and establish connections with people. I initially studied social sciences and psychology in order to develop a deeper understanding of myself and relate to others. But then I met a profiler and attended his guest lecture. Then I desired to comprehend what drives people to deviation. I found I was good at it, and my knowledge in other areas allowed me to think out of the box. Profiling is more effective when supported by a diverse skill set. And crime is as broad and challenging field of study there is. I’ll never be done learning. So that is where I’ve chosen to stay.’ He explained.

The bar tender deposited their drinks on the in front of them he looked it over before drawing toward him.

‘I am intrigued by your field of study, though. What made you choose forensics? It’s a highly specialised field of anthropology that few would specialise in. And archaeology, again, not much connection to crime on the surface.’ He looked at her expectantly.

‘Well, connections to things are everything in anthropology. Forensics was a way I could help the living. It’s a present history, you know? Examining 4000-year-old remains, it’s fascinating, tells us so much about where we come from, how people were and how we still are, but… what good does it really do? Whereas finding someone’s loved one and returning them home for proper burial? It’s tangible, it’s present and meaningful,’ she explained, passion infused in her words.

Spencer nodded along with interest. ‘Yeah, I felt the same with my job,’ he enthused.

As they continued their conversation, completely engrossed in each other’s stories, the noise of the bar seemed to fade into the background. He spoke passionately about his thesis, while she shared her experiences from various digs she had gone on. She told him about her students she had had through the years and how each one always fascinated her in just how unique their approach to things was. Likewise, he opened up about the different members of the BAU he had worked with, each bringing something unique to the team.

Time flew by as they spoke for over an hour, and he brought them another soda. He even broached the topic of his mother, telling her she was a professor of 15th century literature and how she was suffering from Alzheimers. Sympathetically, she related her own experience with her grandfather going through the same illness when she was younger. She revealed that she was also struggling with loss. Her father had recently passed away from cancer. Spencer expressed his condolences, and they shared memories and reminisced about favourite moments with people they loved. That is how they found they both enjoyed western films.

It was a surprising discovery, and a topic that seemed trivial, but it only deepened their conversation. She mentioned how she used to watch them with her father, and how she had been indulging in them lately to relive those nostalgic moments. He eagerly offered recommendations. She promised to watch them and then got enthusiastically lost in talking about the sociological themes that westerns often carried. Spencer watched her with a contented smile on his face as she asked him what he thought of the shift in themes with modern westerns. To her surprise, he admitted he hadn’t realised there were modern films that fell into that genre, leading to an engaging discussion and recommendations from her.

Time seemed lost in the enjoyment of each other’s company. Eventually he saw his teammates wave goodbye to him and support a worse for wear Dr. Martin out the door. She turned back to him and smiled.

Spencer paused for a moment, his mind racing. ‘I don’t know, I’m not usually into these sorts of occasions. But I’m trying to try new things,’ he admitted.

‘Are you going to be coming regularly?’ she askedq.

‘Well, I’m very glad you did. Did you have fun?’ she inquired, a playful smile on her lips.

‘Yeah, a lot of fun. Though I think the answer for question five round three was subjective,’ he chuckled.

‘I thought so too, but I won’t contest it, since we got it correct. Troy knows his stuff,’ she replied. ‘But I have no idea how we’ll handle next week. That was one of our submitted topics. We’ve had a pretty good run so far, but there’s still half of the season left to play. And now, I hear there is a pretty formidable opponent on the Georgetown team.’ She grinned at him.

‘Maybe, but he seems to have a weakness with questions involving sports. Are you here often?’ he asked curiously. Spencer leaned back, his gaze lingering on her.

‘Most games. I don’t go out much otherwise,’ she confessed.

‘Well, with the highest chance of seeing you being coming to trivia regularly, I suppose I will be a regular then,’ he replied.

The air felt charged with anticipation as they exchanged glances. Spencer stiffened, surprised at himself. His mind raced as he mentally berated himself. “Why did I say that? That was the corniest, stupidest thing I had ever said,” he thought and his face flushed.

‘I’d like that.’ She said with a hint of shyness in her voice.

Then, her phone rang, breaking whatever spell had been upon them. She wrenched it from her pocket, glared at the screen accusingly, then sighed.

‘I’m sorry I have to take this. It’s life or death, well probably death, considering my occupation.’

Spencer nodded. He hoped his bar stool would sink into the floor and take him with it.

‘Hey Avery, what can I do for you?’ she smiled into the phone. Her expression faltered. ‘Oh? Yes, that is unusual. Are you sure? I see. No, no, that’s fine. I can come over. Where was the scene?’

She grabbed a napkin and pulled a pen out of of her bag and scribbled something down, probably the address. ‘Uh-ha, and in what state of skeletonization are the bodies? Yeah? Better swing by home and get my coveralls on my way over. Okay, yes, see you there.’

She got up and Spencer frowned a little. His chest ached just the slightest. He had enjoyed the past couple of hours. Guess maybe he had enjoyed it more than-

‘If you’re not freaked out by that-‘ She slid the napkin across the counter to him. ‘Call me sometime. I hope to see you here again, Dr Reid. It’ll be nice for our team to have to a challenge.’ She smiled at him and left.

He was too stunned to pick the napkin up right away. Her Number? He thought she had written the address of the crime-scene.

He reached out gingerly, grabbed the paper, and turned it over, but one half of it stuck to the bar.

‘No.’ He whispered to himself as he pulled the napkin out of the small puddle of condensation left by a glass and cradled it in his hand.

Spencer was gutted as he examined the napkin. Only half her number was still visible, and the word above it had bled into inky stains. The word above would have been her name he realised. It was also then it dawned on him that she had never shared it with him.

He turned in his seat to see if he could catch her, but she was gone.

He heaved a deflated sigh and stared back at the napkin. He could try an algorithm to guess her name and apply a few forensic techniques to revive the precious symbols he had lost. And he would. He would try his best to recover them. But there was only one way to ensure he saw her again; he had to come to trivia night next week. And he would be there no matter what; that was a certain, sure and immutable fact.

Next Chapter

Taglist: @bridgeoverstrawberryfields

Sorry this took so long. Hopefully, you liked it. What did you think of Spencer's love interest? Who is she? (for once, the reader probably knows more than Spencer)

If you love this story or even just like it, leave a comment, like, reblog, ask a question with Character Mail, will be posting some prompt for this soon so keep your eyes peeled. Any interaction is much appreciated and it really motivates me. Love you guys.

if you want to be added to taglist please comment on this post.

TWs:

Sexual assault, Necrophilia : I will try not to be graphic at all in this story, this chapter just has it mentioned as part of what the unsub does

Slight body horror : I will try not to be graphic here, but in autopsy it is found that unsub fills Bladders externally with a injection. then found that it injures the victim to a point where they bleed. Again not going to describe that more than I have too.

violence, crime scene depiction: cannon typical throughout this story

kidnapping: Unsub is implied to kidnap victims and hold them for a few days.

decapitation: this is part of the unsubs M.O.

#spencer reid #BAU #criminal minds #oc #luke alvez #mentor spencer #spencer gets a happy ending #the protege #OC Grace Matthews #fanfic #my fic #criminal minds case #spencer reid fanfiction #criminal minds fanfiction #the protege chapter 10 #ch 10

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