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juniorgman187 · 3 years

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Love & Other Drugs (Spencer Reid Imagine) Part 1

*not my gif

Summary: Toxicologist Reader meets her match in the ever intriguing Doctor Reid. Category: Fluff Couple: Fem!Reader x Spencer Reid Content Warning: drug addiction, love addiction, neglect Word Count: 4.1k

This is going to be a two-part series.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

Love is an addiction.

Not only is there behavioral evidence that suggests love can be addictive, but thanks to recent studies, we also have neurochemical and neuroimaging evidence to support the theory. Multiple feel-good chemicals are released when we are in love. These include dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin.

The roots of love addiction extend back to early childhood. A history of abandonment, neglect, or inadequate/ inconsistent nurturing can lead to a love addiction. Like other addictions, a love addiction is often the result of insecure attachment patterns.

It may sound strange to equate love with addiction. After all, love is perhaps the most positive of emotions; it results in many health benefits and has life-lengthening effects. It may only be, then, that a dysfunctional relationship to love is necessary in order to consider a person "addicted."

Love is like a drug and we don't care about the long term side effects; we just care about how high we can get.

So with that being said . . . how high could I get?

A question that I would soon find the answer to following a visit from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.

“I’m Agent Hotchner. We spoke on the phone briefly.”

The dark-haired man with the gentle eyes and dimples greeted. I recognized his voice, despite it being deeper in person. No complaints, though.

“So what was it you needed a toxicology report on?”

Fully expecting the same gentleman to respond, a younger man behind him cut into the conversation, answering for the agent.

“This cloth,” He dangled the evidence bag in front of my face and practically let it drop when I took it from him, rather than making sure the bag landed safely in my hands like he should’ve given the fact that this was something vital to their case. So valuable, even, they requested to have the results expedited.

“I suspect it’s chloroform, but they said we should bring it to a professional to be sure.” He finished his statement by pursing his lips into a thin, straight line, which oddly enough, I think was his version of a smile, and a not very agreeable one at that.

Simply by the way he handed me the evidence bag and the tone of his voice as he said, “professional,” like the word stung his tongue and tasted like acid, I knew he was offended that he wasn’t deemed fit to analyze the chemical on the cloth. He surely thought of himself in the highest regard and to ask for help from someone else, much less a woman, was insulting to him. I was certain that he wasn’t doing this out of his own will, but that his superior most likely assured him it was just a precaution so as not to bruise that fragile ego. I had a feeling the only person he would listen to was a male superior, most likely from the absence of a proper one. A father.

I could be a profiler, too, you know?

“Great. I’ll let you know what I find when I’m done.”

“I’ll come with you.”

I should’ve anticipated he’d have the audacity to invite himself as if this was a social gathering of some sort, which it was most certainly not. If anything, it was degrading to me that he insisted he come. Like he didn’t trust me to be on my own, like he was doubting my intelligence. I didn’t need a babysitter, chaperone, or supervisor, and I was going to make sure he knew that.

“What’s your name again?” I asked, merely as a subliminal reminder that if he had said his name, I forgot it within seconds because he was that forgettable.

“Dr. Spencer Reid.”

He didn’t ask for my name in return, and I had to ponder if it was his way of saying that he just didn’t care. How classy of him.

Two can play that game.

When he stepped foot into my beloved lab, or my lair as I liked to call it, I could feel the environment being tainted with his passive-aggressiveness, and I almost wanted to push him right back out the door so the dark cloud in the room would leave with him, but I settled for a kinder approach, politely asking if he could wear the appropriate protective gear if he insisted being so close to the chemical - the chemical I was to inspect. Again, the chemical I was to inspect - me. Not him - me.

“No, it’s alright. I’ll just be right here.”

I suppose his refusal to abide by my simple precaution of wearing a coat, goggles, and gloves was made up for by his promise to maintain a distance away from me, so I didn’t push the topic any further out of fear that he might change his mind and come closer and meddle with my space. I had my own personal bubble around me and I would go feral if he invaded it, whether it was knowingly or unknowingly.

We’d spent probably two hours or so there in silence, which I quite liked, but I couldn’t help but notice how often he’d excuse himself to leave for the bathroom. I let it slide since I was too busy with my toxicology report anyway, and why would I complain about those few extra minutes of peace I got when he was away?

“This is so old fashioned,” I said in sheer awe as I inspected the small square of fabric that had clearly been doused with a euphoriant. “I haven’t seen this being used as a sedative since like the 1920s in those soundless black and white movies.”

I was too engaged with the findings of my microscope to pay attention to the “info-dump” that was brewing from the lanky doctor so it came as a shock to me when all that I had said in light of the situation would be refuted with facts.

“Actually, Chloroform was a popular anesthetic from the mid-1800s to around 1900, mostly around the time of the Civil War - not the 1920s.”

I pulled my eye away from the lens of the microscope to inspect the speaking specimen. He looked quite proud of himself for knowing and saying what he did, and for that, I was almost perturbed all the more by his bravado, but given his physical stature, I suppose the skill of his brain was how he compensated for what he lacked in appearance, so I let it pass to boost his ego.

“Yeah, I was never really a history buff. I guess that’s why I got degrees in Chemistry and Toxicology instead.” Hitting him right back with that pursed-lip smile at the end, mirroring his own.

My comment didn’t settle well, and I could tell from the way he scratched at his arm like my words were making him itchy as they seeped into his skin. But I liked to make people uncomfortable, as awful as that sounds. Yet I had a sneaking suspicion, I wasn’t the true cause for why he was itching his arm.

“But um, you . . . you were actually right about the silent films. Those were exceedingly popular in the 1920s.”

His sheepish words seemed to suggest a surrender. As if he was giving me the satisfaction of knowing I was right about something so that I might not be closed off to him entirely, which I was most certainly not, even if it seemed like it. He might have aggravated me slightly with his coldness, but he was arguably the most interesting character out of that team, and I had a feeling he didn’t usually act like this.

Antsy, fidgeting.

Unkempt in appearance.

Often lost in thought.

Depressed breathing.

Pinpoint pupils.

The signs were all there, but that wasn’t what surprised me. I was just surprised that in a team of profilers, no one else seemed to notice him and his addiction, and if they did - they just didn’t care.

“What drugs are you on?”

I asked bluntly with a slight head tilt to deepen the notion of my harmless curiosity to which he definitely misinterpreted as a harmful curiosity. I was never one to address things with subtlety and grace, but it seemed like a waste of time to approach this situation with any other attitude than candidness. If my intuition was correct, which I knew it was, he was months into his substance abuse and at this rate, if he wasn’t receiving any help, he’d need to soon.

“Excuse me?”

“I may not be a profiler, but I’m a toxicologist and I can tell when someone’s on drugs in the same way you can tell when someone’s lying - through studying their behavior. And so far, I’ve noticed that the left cuff of your shirt is unbuttoned, which makes sense considering you’re right-handed, giving you easier access and making it faster to inject whatever it is your taking, but I should warn you - you’re not fast enough. Even though your ‘visits’ to the bathroom have shortened minute by minute, I haven’t been blind to the fact that you’ve gone there at least five times since you’ve been here, and don’t even bother lying. I know you aren’t peeing because you haven’t touched that cup of coffee or the bottled water whatsoever. So let me ask you again - what drugs are you on?”

From the baffled look on his face, I could tell he had never met his match.

Not until now.

His eyes were narrowing in on me darkly, and I feared to see his “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” duality, but I was also curious if the oncoming switch in personality would reveal anything more to me about what he was using. However, that was quickly cut short by his sudden burst out of the room, giving me no opportunity to see his fit of rage unfold, and I had to believe that he knew if he stayed a second longer, I would’ve easily been able to distinguish the drug he was on. I wouldn’t put it past him, he was smart enough, that much I could admit.

I followed him with my eyes as he flew out of the lab, dodging the stupefied Agent Gideon.

“Reid?” Gideon called out to him, as if he was a dad checking on his hormonal teenager, but neither I, nor the agent, heard a response back.

Now, turning his attention back to me, Agent Gideon entered the lab, clapping his hands together and rubbing them together in anticipation, completely disregarding what happened only moments ago. It wasn’t even like he was truly uncomfortable and trying to brush it aside so that I wouldn’t be uncomfortable, it just genuinely seemed like he didn’t care. He didn’t feel the need to bring any more attention to the situation, but judging from his reaction, I had doubts on if there had been any attention being paid to the doctor’s drug addiction - ever.

“So, what do you got for me?”

“Two things - first, this is clearly Deuterated Chloroform, which is an isotopologue of Chloroform with a single deuterium atom. CDCl 3 is a common solvent used in NMR spectroscopy-” I paused when I realized my toxicology jargon was flying right over his head. “So in other words, this type of Chloroform can daze or knock out people even when it's consumed in small doses.”

“And the second thing?”

Without missing a beat, I asked, “What’s up with that guy?”

His hands unfolded to reach out on either side of him in a shrug as a sign of incomprehensiveness. “Spencer?” He finally pointed with his thumb to the door, which Dr. Reid had just stormed out of.

I nodded.

“Ehh, I prefer to leave it alone.” He threw his hands up in surrender, but I wasn’t about to let him maintain his attitude of ignorance.

“Why? Isn’t it better if he talks about it? I mean, it’s obvious there’s something going on. He’s clearly displaying habits of an addict.”

The room was shot dead with silence. I could tell he couldn’t believe I’d just said that so bluntly, addressing what I assumed he had yet to even come to terms with.

“Agent Gideon, I mean this as no insult to you, but I’d surely hope that, even as someone that analyzes behavior for a living, you were sincerely unaware of his addiction and not deliberately avoiding addressing it only because it makes you uncomfortable. Addiction is a very common thing, more common that people would like to believe, and I would hate for Dr. Reid to feel that he’s alone in a room full of people that could help him - that should help him. Or that he can’t turn to any of you without being treated like he's a victim in one of your cases.”

I wasn’t exactly sure which of my words was the one that crossed the line, but I knew, as a whole, I ventured far beyond the boundary. He didn’t even answer me verbally, but his body language did the talking, and if I heard it correctly, he was dumbfounded by my audacity.

“You have a good day, Miss.” He finally said with a forced smile, while snatching the evidence bag from my hand.

Amicably, I had to let it go the minute Agent Gideon left my lab. I shouldn’t care more about the doctor’s wellbeing than his own coworkers, than his own team - than his own family. And even though I was incredibly passionate about proper drug use, I couldn’t be too invested in the care of Dr. Reid. At least not until he started caring about me, too.

After my minor back-to-back confrontations, I was more than ready to go home. Once I cleaned my station and removed my gear, I was out the door. When I got to the parking lot, I saw that on either side of my car, there were two black SUVs I’d never seen here before. The government license plates were all that I needed to see to come to the conclusion that they belonged to the BAU. Having just instigated something with both Spencer and Agent Gideon, I knew I had to leave before they did, otherwise I might risk running into them, which would’ve been utterly humiliating.

It was the sudden chirp of familiar voices that caused me to bolt into my car and try and start it, but naturally, buried somewhere within the Bermuda Triangle that was my purse were my keys, and I couldn’t find them in time.

“Hey, I’ll catch up with you guys later.” I faintly heard from behind me.

Keys! Keys! Keys! Where are you?

With animalistic speed, I rummaged through my purse, literally starving for the feeling of my fingers touching the jagged metal and the remote of my keys before I’d have to -

“Looking for these?”

I tore my eyes away from my purse to peer up at the sound of my jingling keys as they hung from the index finger of the man I shouldn’t care about. I wryly chuckled, taking them with a goony smile when he handed them to me with much more caution than earlier when he handed me the evidence bag.

“I saw you left them behind in the lab and I figured you might need those. Especially if you’re trying to run away from me.”

“I’m not trying to run away from you.”

My words were unaffecting, only leaving him with more reason to doubt me, evidenced by his deadpan stare.

“Really! I wasn’t!” It was beyond me why I thought speaking more loudly would make him digest my words any better, but at any rate, it did.

“Okay, okay, relax. I believe you.”

We shared a brief laugh, the euphoria of which was fleeting, and then, we were right back to where we were before. Back to square one - not knowing what to say. The uncomfortable silence pressed me to leave, but he must’ve registered my sudden movement as a tell that he needed to say something so captivating, so shocking, so bewitching, that would stop me from leaving.

“Thank you.”

To say that I was baffled would be a gross understatement. I was in complete awe and disbelief. Hearing those words from his lips was enough to stun me, but even more so because of how sincere it sounded.

“I was going to come back and apologize when I overheard you and Gideon talking about me. You left before I got the chance to thank you for what you said back there. So . . . thank you.”

And yet again, he thanked me, and surprisingly, it wasn’t any less pleasing to the ear.

“Yeah, of course. I was just worried about you that’s all.” Unknowingly, I revealed too much out of the blinding bliss of the moment.

“You were worried about me?”

His own question brought me to the realization of what I’d just said, and in his tone of voice, I also became aware of the connotation behind it. He already knew the answer and just wanted to hear me say it again, so I nudged him playfully to avoid reciting my confession.

“Actually, I take that back. Why should I worry over someone who didn’t even bother to know my name?”

He looked quite offended; his neck recoiled in distaste.

“I know your name.”

“You didn’t ask me for it.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t know it, (y/n).” Drawing out my name just to demonstrate his honest knowledge of it.

“Actually, it’s Doctor.” I corrected, earning a hearty laugh from him, one that made him throw his head back with an open mouthed smile.

In my playful jest, he was reminded of himself and his own uncannily similar humor. He could see himself in me. (Mind you, this distinction was completely unknown to me). It was only he that could see we were foils of each other - parallel lines that ran side by side, never fated to intersect but forging a connection in spite of that; a connection formed on the basis of close proximity and congruence in shape.

“Anyway, thanks for bringing my keys. I’ll see you later.”

Our goodbye was too quick, I knew that, but I couldn’t, in good conscience, keep talking to him and avoid bringing up the conversation of his addiction. I wasn’t nuanced like that. I was too eager to solve problems head on to keep my determination at bay. I couldn’t dance around the very thing that was killing him slowly. I just couldn’t. Had I drawn out our conversation any longer, I’d sooner touch that tender wound he restlessly picked at; a wound that might never properly or fully heal if he kept doing so. I knew he was too stubborn to let me clean it, so in favor of his pride, he insisted he could fix it himself and simply put a band-aid on it in an attempt to do just that, foolishly thinking it would be enough. However, like a real gash, tear, or cut, it may only be worsened by the lack of adequate disinfection. He could just as easily reap the benefits as he could suffer the consequences of the absence of a proper enabling agent that stings badly, but successfully targets the root of the problem. The choice was up to him. Would he suffer the consequences or reap the benefits? To be quite frank, there’s no way around that disinfectant. It’s that or nothing, and I found myself to be the confrontation to the problem that he lacked. So now that I’d addressed it, it was up to him to decide what to do. I had done all that I could, and I had to accept that.

Maybe a minute more of talking to him and I might’ve even seen that connection he was seeing. I assure you, a few more soulful glances was all it would take to kill me in cold blood. If you could get intoxicated on someone’s eyes, I’d be drunk on his. I saw worlds behind them - raging waters of words unspoken bursting from overflowing dams, calm seas of his thank you’s, maybe even lazy rivers of useless stored information and memorized book passages I could dawdle in forever. An overwhelming guilt consumed me when I realized I’d only been staring at them for as long as I had to probe further and satisfy my own selfish desires. I felt all the worse for the unsuspecting object of my gaze who was led to the hopeful, naive notion that I was looking at him out of admiration. He had no clue what I was really doing.

I was profiling him.

Earlier in the day, I would’ve gloated about my ability to use his own job against him by employing the skill of profiling, but now, it was different. He was different. The guilt was escalating quickly and I made haste to get in my car, not even waiting to catch his reply to my sudden goodbye before I shut the door. If I had to assume, he must’ve said something in agreement because the minute I turned on my ignition, he stepped out of the way, letting me leave with no protests. Quite haphazardly, I drove out of my parking spot, reducing him to just a blurry figure in my rear view mirror that would haunt my dreams at night and occupy my thoughts in the day. Consider it merely a precaution to part from him so promptly. I needed my distance before I did something we both would have regretted.

Before I started to love him.

. . .

“Positive for Alprazolam. Positive for Carboxy-THC,” I mumbled to myself while I jotted down the results of my preliminary toxicology report. You’d often find me in this state and by that I mean, it’s been more than one occasion where someone walked in on me talking to myself. I found that it was easier to make note of things when I spoke it out loud, even if just to myself in a hushed tone. “Negative for -”

“Am I interrupting you?”

I pulled my eye away from the lens and upwards to the voice beckoning me at the door. To my surprise, it was Spencer.

“No, not at all. What’s up?”

As he made his way to my station, I instinctively shot up in my seat to fix my posture into one more ladylike and graceful, pulling my shoulders back as if there was a string tugging at them. It was a stark contrast to my previous hunched over position that rounded my back out almost to the point of looking like a half-circle. It was the most natural position for me, and arguably more comfortable, too, but now in Spencer’s presence, I wanted to assume a more flattering position. For what reason? I didn’t know.

“I, um . . .” He cleared his throat and adjusted the collar of his shirt frantically. “I’m going to see a film tonight in Sky Meadows State Park. I was wondering if you wanted to come.”

It was easy to meet his eyes until he said what he did. Reflexively, I looked down at my microscope to shy away from his gaze so he might not see the color forming on my cheeks.

“That’s really sweet of you,” I began. “But I should probably get this report done first.”

I wouldn’t have noticed I was tapping my pen on my paper anxiously had it not been for Spencer’s eyes drifting to the motion. After consciously stopping it, he looked back at me, seeing that similarity again.

I was just as nervous as he was.

“Yeah, yeah of course. Next time, then.”

My heart sank at the visceral blow to his ego. I didn’t intend to shatter his confidence, but by the time he turned on his heels with his hands sheepishly shoved into his pockets, I knew it was not the first time someone declined an offer of his.

“Actually,” One word was enough to draw him in. “I can finish this up another time. I’d much rather catch that movie with you instead.”

I wish I could tell you that my intentions were pure. That I was going because I knew I would enjoy his company and he would enjoy mine, but that wasn’t it at all. It was that familiar itch again that made my ‘yes’ easier to say.

The itch to dig deeper and to know more.

“Great. I’ll wait outside for you.”

The rational part of me knew that if I couldn’t let his addiction go, it’d be the death of me. But if I did, it’d be the death of him. Literally.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

PART 2 HERE!

#spencer reid #spencer reid imagine #criminal minds #spencer reid fluff #soft angst #love & other drugs

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hiddenpalaceorg · 5 years

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A Spooky New Years!

MediEvil (Jun 22, 1998 prototype) MediEvil (Jul 9, 1998 prototype) MediEvil II (Dec 20, 1999 prototype) MediEvil II (Feb 29, 2000 prototype) Discuss this release on the boards here!

Happy New Years everyone!

This year saw a lot of nice releases from all corners of the internet. From early prototypes of Pokemon Gold & Silver to unreleased games such as SegaSonic Bros and SimCity for the NES, it looks like 2018 was one of the best years for prototypes in a while! What will 2019 bring?

To start off the new year with something great, we decided to release four prototypes from the MediEvil series! Be sure to check out the articles for each prototype, as the articles will describe how to properly play them.

First up, we have two prototypes of the first MediEvil - one meant for review and another for preview. These prototypes are dated several months before the first retail release of the game. While the two prototypes are dated a few weeks apart, they both contain a considerable amount of differences. Unfinished levels, a programmers test level, different layouts, different textures, and more!

Next, we have two prototypes of MediEvil II as well! Again, one “preview” prototype and one “review” prototype. The differences between the final version and the earliest prototype are extreme. For instance, most of the FMV sequences in the December prototype are unfinished (only a rough “layout” was rendered for most scenes). Many stages that would be used in the final version are different here in various ways. The prototype contains a level that was cut from the game called “Parliament” which is playable from the cheats menu. The earliest prototype also includes a few test levels as well, much like the first game.

However, not everything went smoothly this time.

Issues occurred when attempting to backup these prototypes which made us question the integrity of the dumps we created. Besides the typical bad dump that can be remedied through trial and error on different burners with different read speeds, we were constantly presented with an issue where each game would just stop functioning after a certain point (usually during a level change). With no PS1 developer hardware to test with, we were unsure if the games were physically at fault for causing these issues, or if it was a sign of some form of copy protection.

MediEvil marked one of the earliest attempts to thwart pirates with the copy protection method known as “libcrypt”. With this method, unique non-Yellow Book data is stored in subchannels on the disc itself. Games with libcrypt issue special, undocumented firmware commands to perform reads from the subchannel data, and check if it contains the unique data. This was a relatively effective copy protection mechanism for its time, since most pirate releases (even today) do not include the subchannel data, which is not contained in a typical "bin/cue" dump.

It’s also difficult to perfectly extract subchannel data with common CD/DVD readers. Unlike data channels, which use extensive error correction algorithms, most of the subchannels are not error corrected, resulting in pretty much every dump being different (without error correction, reading raw data on CDs with a laser is very error prone!). Most burners also have a difficult time burning subchannel data back to CD-Rs as well. As an effect, at the time, the only way to bypass this copy protection was to debug the game and physically alter the game’s code through a patch to avoid these checks.

After we were sure that the data track (the .img) was being dumped consistently, we decided to debug the games with no$psx to figure out what was going on. To make a long story short, both of the MediEvil prototypes actually use a form of SCEx copy protection where the check is done at the software level rather than just at the BIOS level. This copy protection involves comparing the letters “SCEx” (where “x” is the region of the game or console) with what’s stored on the disc against what’s stored in the BIOS. This check occurs when loading into a new level or quitting the game.

MediEvil II on the other hand doesn’t seem to be using libcrypt. The February prototype seems to work fine and doesn’t seem to check between level changes. The December prototype seems to hang when loading levels even from the cheat menu. However, the prototype seems to work fine in PCSX while any other emulator hangs.

However, even with the correct conditions the game would still refuse to load into another level. Luckily, by disassembling the games, we found that each prototype can be unlocked to work as normal by inputting an “unlock” or “cheat” code combination while the game is paused, which you can see for yourself by checking out the articles for each prototype. While we still aren’t confident that we fully understand what’s going on, it’s possible that the developers intentionally “sabotaged” their builds of the game by disallowing anyone from playing the game on anything besides a developer console, which has the ability to mimic specific regions. It’s also possible that the copy protection is set to always hang to prevent people other than the intended parties from accessing the rest of the game’s contents without knowing how to activate the in game cheats.

Up until this point, we have dumped all CD/DVD based prototypes so far with CloneCD using both a Lite-On LH-20A1L and a HLDS GSA-U10N, drives that have historically low error rates. These particular dumps were created shortly before drx had to move overseas. The move has been a temporary set back since most of the stuff we intend to release is still in progress. The subchannel data will have to be redumped using different methods in order to ensure that the problems we were seeing aren’t caused by the dumps themselves. We consider the dumps okay for release, but we intend to redump everything in the future with a different standard so that we can ensure the best possible dumps. There is some promising software being developed, such as DiscImageCreator by the Redump project.

With that being said, we hope you enjoy this release and look forward to sharing more with you in the upcoming months.

Until next time!

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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My Life as a Meme: ‘I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This’ Revisited

In November 2007, an entirely contextless video of me being punched in the face went viral. You might have seen it. It still does the rounds every couple of months, often when something notably bad happens that warrants a response of disbelief. In these strange times, it’s managed to remain endlessly prescient.

For the uninitiated, the video in question is an 11-second clip in which, aged 16, I appear wearing a dressing gown cord around my head, a chain necklace, some children’s sunglasses and a black T-shirt. I sit down and address the camera, ostensibly about to tell the viewer what I was thinking. I am immediately interrupted by my friend Tim, who appears stage left and lamps me. Rather than react in pain or anger, I err more towards disappointment and dismay, bewildered that something like this could happen. “Ah fuck. I can’t believe you’ve done this,” I said. End scene.

It’s been nearly 14 years since I uploaded the original video and to this day it still prompts questions. Who was the guy who got punched? Why did he get punched? Who punched him? What was he thinking? Why did he react that way? Why did he leave YouTube?

In recent years I’ve come to appreciate and even enjoy its bizarre status as an enduring piece of internet history, but my relationship with the clip in the decade that followed its inexorable rise hasn’t always been easy. To understand why, it’s useful to remember that the internet in 2007 was, for better or worse, a very different place.

Having spent the best part of my school years filming stupid skits with mates instead of studying, there was something semi-appealing about the prospect of being able to put videos online to share with friends. It began in mid-2003, when myself and a group of friends would have been in our early teens. Inspired by the likes of Jackass and Bam Margera’s CKY movies, our impressionable young selves set about ignoring all relevant safety warnings, hurling ourselves out of trees, riding scooters into curbs, and racing tyres down hills on skateboards.

At the age of 14 or so, I had envisaged cutting the footage into a chaotic feature-length video of “stunts.” I’d probably have soundtracked it with music from the Tony Hawk games, alongside countless other homemade skate videos people made circa 2003 that probably featured a mix of Ace of Spades or Guerilla Radio. I still have a box full of VHS-C tapes kicking around somewhere, which can only be viewed on one of those absolutely insane VHS adapters. Having not watched any of it in well over a decade, I can safely say that the content contained within those tapes is unequivocally shit.

All of a sudden you're everywhere and it's out of your control. You either try to fight it and get destroyed, or embrace it and try to cash in.

Looking back, the whole endeavour was entirely aimless, but aside from coming away with mild head injuries from time to time it was an innocuous way to spend my childhood. At the very least it also means I have a bizarre, tangible record of my youth that I’ll be able to laugh at one day when I’m old and wizened.

By summer 2004, we had started filming on Mini-DV, which opened up a whole new world of editing possibilities. Plugging a video camera into a computer and capturing footage directly to editing software is pretty much a given for today’s generation of content creators, but back in the early 2000s, this was revolutionary.

We’d eventually gravitate away from ‘stunts’ towards more structured skits and sketches. Nothing was ever scripted per se, but we’d usually start out with a rough idea of something and see how it played out.

There was an ambitiously misguided 'silent horror' short, soundtracked by Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, in which someone chopped off ‘my cock’ (a banana) with a garden shear. We considered this to be the absolute pinnacle of comedy.

There was an ill-advised 'Ballers' skit in which we ventured out in sports gear to make a mock training video taking the piss out of a guy at school who fancied himself as a bit of a gangster; this painfully middle-class white kid who listened to rap metal and liked basketball. He obviously never saw it and there's no question that we looked like idiots filming it at the local park. It’s probably quite offensive in hindsight.

The author at the Bristol Climate Change Protests in September 2019. Image: Shanya Buultjens

There was a James Bond 'spoof' that involved misquoting portions of dialogue from that scene in GoldenEye where Q gives Bond an exploding pen. It was funny to about three people. One of them was my mum.

One time a mate of mine fell out of a tree when he tried to swing from a branch. He landed on his back and ended up coughing up blood. He didn’t go to the hospital even though he probably should have. He’s now a doctor and a father.

Mercifully, none of this stuff ever made it online, but I did sell a couple of DVDs to people at school who rightly/probably/hopefully never watched them. In an ideal world, I'd own the only copies. I'm also fully aware that writing about this now only makes it more likely that one of the four people that still have a copy will dig theirs out. Please do not do that.

In 2005 and 2006, YouTube was very much in its infancy. This was the time when clips were limited to about 100mb and you could only upload about 30 seconds worth of footage at a time, which basically made it perfect for bursts of frenetic, inane content. As the platform grew, it became a dumping ground for skits and footage that we’d accumulated over the preceding years. Much of it went completely unnoticed until late 2007, at which point things started to get a bit weird.

The truth is that, nearly a decade and a half later, I’m still processing it.

The clip that people have come to know started out as an aimless skit filmed in Summer 2006. We hadn’t planned anything, least of all me being punched. In the footage building up to the event, I pushed Tim off the chair, he fell and hit his head on a filing cabinet off-camera. Rather than react to Tim, I sat down and proceeded to ad lib something that I’d venture to guess would have been considerably less funny than the act of violence that followed. Unprompted, Tim upsided me and I reacted with an inexplicable, completely incredulous response, which has followed me online ever since.

The footage sat on a tape until July 2007 when I decided to upload a brief segment under an ambiguous title. Fast forward to November and the video had somehow blown up, had its comments section relentlessly spammed, been ripped countless times and had offensive Wiki pages written about it. I also received a few direct messages which could at best have been described as ‘worrying’ and at worst ‘threatening,’ which was nice.

To this day, I’m none the wiser as to how it blew up in the way it did. I originally uploaded the video under the title ‘ ___________’ but the video somehow found its way onto 4chan where it spread like wildfire. The earliest mirrored link I could find was from January 2008, by which time it had been re-uploaded by multiple accounts, the most prominent of which had already clocked up almost double the number of views compared to my original upload.

At the time, going viral wasn't really comparable to any other experience and it certainly wasn't something I could discuss in solidarity with my friends. All of a sudden you're everywhere and it's out of your control. You either try to fight it and get destroyed, or embrace it and try to cash in. After yanking down several other videos on my YouTube channel, I opted for the latter.

When the video blew up, I got a call from a friend who informed me that the video had made the front page of Break.com. I peripherally knew what that meant: they offered a buyout scheme for videos that made the front page, which meant that I could make some money from it.

As it transpired, this wasn’t such a great idea. After signing a release form with some pretty appalling terms, over the following months I had several unnerving interactions with researchers for various TV shows looking to license the clip. Each offered far more favourable terms than those of Break. One of them harassed a bunch of my mates on Facebook. I think he even offered to pay one of them for my contact details.

By that point, it was all too apparent that I had completely fucked it. Break had the rights and I couldn't do anything with it even if I wanted to. At just 18 years old, I had sold out. In the short term, I used the money to buy a TV, which was great, but I soon started to get the creeping feeling that this was a decision that would come to haunt me. At that point, it was easier to disassociate myself from the clip, abandon YouTube, and move on with my life.

And yet, for the best part of 14 years the questions have kept coming: no, it wasn’t staged or scripted, it wasn’t a set-up, I didn’t know it was coming and, yes, it hurt. It was also very funny, which is presumably why I felt the need to upload it in isolation in the first place. Incidentally, Tim and I are still friends and contrary to some of the absolutely insane comments people leave on YouTube I can confirm that neither of us are in prison, the punch wasn’t a reaction to some sort of disagreement and he’s a lovely bloke.

To be clear, the lack of context wasn’t a deliberate choice to add intrigue either. I’d never even considered the possibility that anyone outside my circle of friends would see it. To me it was just another daft clip that a few mates would find funny.

Around the time I’d started to make peace with the issues around ownership, in 2018 it came to my attention that Break had shut down and its owner Defy Media had gone bust. The site was subsequently purchased by Yeah1 Network, but to this day I have no clarity whatsoever on my legal rights to the video. Any attempts to receive guidance have either turned up dead ends, or led to suggestions that I speak to IP lawyers, whom I have neither the means nor the time to deal with. Incidentally, if anyone has any insights in that area, I’d love to hear them.

Having said this, there’s something quite empowering in taking something embarrassing and admitting to it before someone else can point it out to you—a bit like taking ownership of an amusing surname. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what gags can be made from the name ‘Weedon,’ but I learned quite early on that if you make the jokes yourself and beat others to it, no one can fucking touch you. It’s much easier nowadays to hold my hands up and admit that I shouldn’t have sold the rights, make a joke of it and move on. At the very least, it makes for a good anecdote at parties.

As I suspect is probably the case for old content creators, if you can even call us that, the real story about I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This isn’t in how it’s aged and endured, or even how it’s impacted my life. For me, it’s tied up in issues of rights, ownership, and monetisation. As mercenary as it might be, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t regret missing out on a slice of the pie when it came to YouTubers being able to monetise their content sooner. On the one hand, that's probably a very cynical view for something that was created by a bunch of teenagers who were fooling around making videos for fun in the noughties, but on the other, that's just the world we live in now.

Perhaps the strangest thing about my experience with it nowadays is the way people engage with it on a day-to-day basis. The comments vary from young people discovering its origins for the first time, surprised to discover that it is in fact a 14 year old video and not a recent creation filmed for Vine or TikTok. At the other end of the spectrum are those who are incredulous that someone with a video that has 9.2 million views and an account that’s amassed over 15,000 followers without really trying would step away from the platform and not want to make content.

The truth is that, nearly a decade and a half later, I’m still processing it. I love seeing how it’s been re-interpreted in modern mediums and that positive association has made it easier to accept. Charles Cornell turned it into a sad song. It got sampled in a KIll The Noise track. I had a nice interaction with The Sidemen about it. Will Smith even featured it in an insane Instagram post during the pandemic. I DM’d him to say thanks and he obviously didn’t reply.

To that end, a small group of us have recently started work on a film project exploring the nature of the meme, how it grew, its impact on my life and my relationship with the internet at large. In doing so, the hope is that, while answering some of the burning questions that other people still seem to have, I’ll ultimately be able to make peace with the whole thing.

@Twotafkap

My Life as a Meme: ‘I Can’t Believe You’ve Done This’ Revisited syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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The War Against Wrestling

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