#And then despite all they went through together on that mountain and claiming to be a friend

[thelostgirl21]

One thing I really want to see happen in Season 4...

Valdo Marx: Nice to see you again, Joseph!

Jaskier: *Heavy sigh* That's -

Yarpen: *Stepping in front of him protectively.* Julian Alfred Pankratz to you, you dying sounding beached whale! Only his friends call him Joseph!

Jaskier: Ah, actually, that's Jaskier.

Yarpen: *Dismissively.* Yeah, I KNOW.

Jaskier: *Getting all teary eyed.* I know you do.

[starlightiing]

No but for me it's like.

I've only known these two drivers since February. They're as new to me as the sport is. Have I learned a lot in this time? Absolutely. But I haven't spent as much time as some other people loving and supporting these guys and yeah, sometimes that makes me feel a little silly when I get this emotional over them.

But the human experience is a beautiful thing, and my interest in them isn't constricted by time or even the amount of weird fun facts and oddball knowledge I may or may not know about them. My interest is in them as drivers, as incredibly competent athletes in their sport, and it doesn't really matter if I've loved them since February or since 2016/17.

All it means is I have spent less time with them together, and will never have as much time with them together as some other people. I genuinely enjoy their talent (and silly little personas) and even their complicated past. I get the tropes are fun, friends to lovers to enemies back to lovers, or whatever combination you guys want to do with them, but personal issues put aside, I really enjoyed them as teammates at Alpine, too.

And just yesterday, I was lamenting over the fact that when Esteban goes to Haas, chances are low he and Pierre would ever do much interacting again (even if the interaction now is 'forced'). I wouldn't ever have them as teammates in this team again, or probably most likely any team ever again (who knows though). I wanted them to have something. For me. Selfishly. I wanted to get one last treat from my guys, together, as teammates in the same team, before the end of the season.

I never could have imagined it would be this.

Pierre, keep proving them wrong. No matter what it is, what you do, keep proving them wrong. Time and time again. You are not doomed to fade into the background. When given the right opportunity and the right car, you've shown over and over just how good you are. Let's hope Alpine is able to give you that car and that opportunity next year. This podium was fought for and earned and I'm so, so proud.

Esteban, keep your head held high above the haters. You are an incredibly talented driver despite what the media tried to claim of you in the past, incorrectly. You have had to fight for everything, tooth and nail, your entire life. It only makes sense you would fight just as hard on the track to achieve your dream. You are destined for much more than this, and I hope and pray you find that in Haas. For now, I am so proud to see you get what is likely your final podium with this team, and to get it alongside your teammate who, despite your differences, was also proud to stand alongside you for it.

I could not have asked for a better send off for Pierre and Esteban as teammates. I asked for a little and I was spoiled with the movement of mountains. Both of these men worked their ASSES off in this team with a car that barely knew how to get out of it's own way, but the TALENT behind the drivers in the seats brought those shitboxes up to P2 and P3 today without any issues while 80% of the grid (unfortunately) went off track, crashed, spun, and otherwise. This was an EARNED podium for them both, through hard work and dedication to their craft and their team.

I'm so happy for them and so proud of them. This is probably the only time in my life I will ever see them up on the podium together as teammates.

It's suffering, liking two midfield team drivers so much, that the one time probably ever in the next fucking 10 years they both manage to get on the podium at the same time together, you spend the better part of an entire hour emotional over it because you have no idea if/when it'll ever happen again (and even less likely to happen on the same team).

Today meant a lot to me personally for many, many reasons. Not even all of them were detailed in this rambling. I am just so happy for them, so happy that they had this moment together as teammates, who grew up with each other from little children with the fondest memories of karting, to both be in F1 on the same team and get a P2 P3 podium at the same time.

I don't care if I've only been supporting them both since February. It doesn't matter. They are my silly little sports guys and I am so incredibly happy for them!

[startrekfangirl2233-writes]

Star! I'm back! Mainly because I cannot believe no one has claimed No. 20 with Rooster/reader for your "Write a Kiss" prompt!

Can't wait to see what you do, Star!

Jay! Yes! Seriously! I can't imagine why nobody else picked Roo's scars as prime places to kiss. Gosh do I want to. So without further ado, here is a fluffy sweet Kiss #20 for you. A Kiss on A Scar with Rooster.

A Kiss on a Scar

Rain splatters in fat droplets against the canvas over your head as you curl into your boyfriend's side. The both of you are completely bare, curled up in a pile of blankets, warm despite the cold temperatures outside your tent. You're camping high in the mountains of California, just you and Bradley, high up on a mountaintop where it feels like you're the only two people in the world.

When the radio forecasted rain, the two of you retreated to create heat between the sheets. In the liminal sleepy space after, you'd begun lazily comparing scars. Bradley has significantly more, and when you ask about your favorite, so you can kiss it again, he gives you the whole tale. How he had stolen his godfather's motorcycle right after his mother died and bit gravel shortly afterward.

"That's how I got the scars on my chin and cheek." Your heart aches for Bradley as you think of a teenage boy sitting in a hospital bed all alone with no family to rely on. "There's still gravel in it. The docs said the pieces were too small to remove. You can still feel them under the skin."

"Bradley…" His hands are gentle as you tug his arms even tighter around yourself. "You went through all of that alone?"

"Not alone, baby. Never alone." His sigh is soft and fond as you crawl into his lap. "Mav was there. He took me in after my mom died."

You're not sure what your face is doing, but it must be comical because Bradley's squishing your cheeks together and peppering kisses against your pouting lips before you can breathe.

"Bradley!" You're giggling even as you melt into his arms.

When your giggling tapers off, you're so close to Bradley that you can see every amber fleck in his dark chocolate eyes. His piercing gaze sends love and heat in equal parts ricocheting through your system. But instead of kissing his lips, you tip his head to the side and kiss the scars littering his cheeks.

"God, I love you, baby." His words make you shiver even as you finally capture his lips in a kiss that you pour your heart into. 

"Love you too, Bradley. Always."

Want to request a Kiss and a pair for me to write? Guidelines are here.

Want to see other Kisses I've written? Here's the full Masterlist.

I DO NOT CONSENT TO HAVE MY WORK POSTED, TRANSLATED, OR PUBLISHED ON ANY SITES OTHER THAN HERE OR ON AO3 BY ME. IF YOU SEE MY WORKS ANYWHERE OTHER THAN HERE OR AO3, THEN THEY HAVE BEEN POSTED WITHOUT MY PERMISSION AND I WILL BE WORKING TO TAKE THEM DOWN.

[bonnie-aphrodite]

Trolls HTTYD AU

I don't really post anything but I had an awesome idea and I'm obsessed with it.

So it's set in the HTTYD universe BUT Peppy decides to lead around a third of Berk's population on a journey to find an island with no dragons. This happens a few years before Hiccups birth and most Vikings thought them cowards so they are forgotten by the people of Berk. Peppy is a fearsome and strong Viking but wants a peaceful place to raise Poppy and Viva, the events of the journey mirror the trollstice escape to a certain degree.

Branch

A Whispering Death named Thorns

Branch is the first in the village to befriend a dragon despite fearing them the most

He helps Branch dig out his bunker

Thorns is kept secret until Poppy and her dragon need to be rescued

Thorns likes to coil around Branch to sleep

Branch is used to diving out of the way of Thorns randomly barreling through the tunnels in the bunker

Poppy

A Scuttleclaw she names Flutterclaw

Goes off to befriend a dragon immediately after hearing about the Dragon riders on Berk and stumbles across her

Flutterclaw is just as upbeat as Poppy, she's almost never tired

She's named Flutterclaw because we know Poppy isn't the best at naming things on the spot (Tiny Diamond)

They invent dragon-back acrobatics for fun

John Dory

A Snafflefang, it's Rhonda :)

When JD abandoned his brothers he sailed to Neverglaide Mountain and met her by accident

Rhonda had never met a Viking before and just treated the poor guy like a scared hatchling

JD is freaking out but eventually they come to an understanding

They've wandered together ever since

The first character to befriend a dragon

SpBruce

A Scauldron! (Not sure of the name yet)

When he left Bruce went to a neighbouring tribe and established an inn for travelers after meeting Brandy

It was very successful until the Scauldron decided to stake claim

The two had an ongoing rivalry so I famous that everyone on the island was privy to it

When a traveler from Berk came to spread word about dragon riding, Bruce thought he'd give it a shot

It took a while to earn the dragon's trust but it worked eventually

The duo protect the island from wild dragons and Bruce's kids

Clay

A Raincutter named Thundertone

When a storm rips through Peppy's fleet, two of the six ships get seperated from the others

These boats hold Viva and Clay, who work together to lead their people on as Peppy would have wanted

They find an island with minimal dragons but their new Chieftess is very fearful of being attacked, so the Vikings of Gulf Island stay hidden

After the brothers reunite, Clay is out brooding in a rainstorm and he meets a Raincutter with an oddly deep roar

He likes how serious the dragon sounds and they bond whole playing in the rain and digging up food for Thundertone

Floyd

A Windgnasher he names Snaowguard

On the night Brozone (the most formidable dragon slaying family on Berk) broke up, Floyd said goodbye to branch but rushed to a boat the moment he was out of sight

He chased after his brothers' boats, seeing JD's not too far off

In his haste, Floyd accidentally skirted into Outcast waters and was captured

They kept him for his dragon killing knowledge thanks to outcasts Velvet and Veneer

Floyd had grown compassionate towards dragons, he never really liked killing them

After 20ish years his brothers rescued him

The previous week Floyd had spent neighbouring with a Windgnasher who he looked out for and bonded with

Floyd made sure she was saved too and Snaowguard repaid his kindness by protecting him and the two became a pair

Viva

A Deadly Nadder named Brightspark

Her fear of dragons rivalled Branch's, especially after the attacks she had to protect her people from after being seperated from her father and baby sister

This means that she is one of the last Vikings to open up to befriending a dragon

Clay, Thundertone, Flutterclaw and Poppy all help her overcome her fear and it comes in handy when she rescues a Deadly Nadder from a dragon trap (possibly her own?)

They're both scarred by their experiences but find an odd sense of comfort in eachother

Peppy

A Terrible Terror he names Matchsticks

After Poppy brings the idea of dragon riding back to Poptrell Island, Peppy of course wants one

Poppy shows him a bunch of fearsome and tough dragons

But Chief Peppy distracted by the Terrible Terror fighting off a Nadder from his pile of fish

He becomes absolutely enamored with the brave little guy and adopts him immediately

Peppy spoils Matchstick so much that even Poppy has to tell him to chill out a little

I have so much lore written for this AU you don't even know

[alxtiny]

Hiiii ! Back to request again !

Got inspired by San singing Rewrite The Stars in his Toktoq live and thought of this.

What about idol San and idol (fem or gn) reader being part of groups considered as rivals or rival agencies but San and reader are dating. No one knows about it until one day, they do a collab stage in which they perform Rewrite the stars together. And at the end of the song, in the heat of the moment, they kiss on stage, in front of everyone

Requested by @s1riushwa

Rewrite the Stars | Choi San x Reader

Synopsis: where you and san wish to change the way the world works

Pairing: choi san x gn!reader, idol au

Genre: fluff, slight angst

Word count: 1.2k words

Warnings: none :)))

Notes: I am seriously so sorry for posting this so late it didn’t show up in my notifs and I didn’t think to checks inbox and submissions and ended up not seeing your request, i hope this meets your expectations 😭😭😭

masterlist

The tension between JYP Entertainment and KQ Entertainment was always palpable, both companies boasting top-tier idols. However, hidden beneath the rivalry was a secret that no one knew—except for you and San. Despite being idols from rival companies, you and San had been secretly dating for over six months.Your groups had no dating bans, but you both decided to keep your love life private, away from the prying eyes of the media.

You know I want you

It's not a secret I try to hide

You know you want me

So don't keep saying our hands are tied

The atmosphere backstage was electrifying as you prepared for the highly anticipated joint performance between JYP Entertainment and KQ Entertainment at the annual music awards show. The crowd in attendance would be a mix of diehard fans from both companies and newbies alike. You’d have an opportunity to showcase just how talented each company is and put aside their differences.

You claim it's not in the cards

And fate is pulling you miles away

And out of a reach from me

But you're hearing my heart

So who can stop me if I decide it's on my destiny?

As you and San stood side by side, waiting for your turn to perform, you exchanged a knowing glance. The chemistry between you two was undeniable, and your fans had noticed it too. They often tagged your companies in tweets, suggesting that you and San collaborate on a stage together. Tonight, that dream was about to become a reality.

What if we rewrite the stars?

Say you were made to be mine

Nothing could keep us apart

You'll be the one I was meant to find

The announcer began calling out your names before introducing the two teams’ newest starlets. The crowd roared with anticipation as you took the stage. You held your mic up, clearing your throat as you readied yourself to sing.The music started, and the stage lit up, casting a warm glow on both of you.

It's up to you, and it's up to me

No one could say what we get to be

So why don't we rewrite the stars?

And maybe the world could be ours, tonight

The opening notes of "Rewrite the Stars" filled the air, and you began to sing, your voice blending seamlessly with San's. Suddenly, the stage went dark, and bright lights shone on the two of you. For the first time ever, you shared the same stage. Your voices blended perfectly, your dancing synchronised, and the cheers of your combined fanbase echoed throughout the arena.

You think it's easy

You think I don't wanna run to you, yeah

But there are mountains

And there are doors that we can't walk through

It was almost like everything you’d worked towards since becoming stars came full circle in that moment. This could have been your big break, but instead, it felt more like you were living a dream. The lyrics spoke of defying the odds and rewriting destiny, a fitting sentiment for your relationship.

I know you're wondering why

Because we're able to be just you and me within these walls

But when we go outside

You're gonna wake up and see that it was hopeless after all

As the song progressed, your eyes met San's, and in that moment, it felt like the world around you faded away. You sang with passion, pouring your heart into every note, and San matched your intensity with his soulful voice. The audience was captivated, swept away by the emotion in your voices. As the last chords rang out, everyone exploded into thunderous applause.

No one can rewrite the stars

How can you say you'll be mine?

Everything keeps us apart

And I'm not the one you were meant to find

That night, your joint performance set the tone for your relationship and laid the foundation for what was sure to be an epic romance. Although the two companies kept your relationship under wraps in the heat of the moment, San leaned in and pressed his lips to yours. It was a soft, sweet kiss, filled with love and tenderness. The crowd gasped in surprise, and then erupted into cheers and applause. Your fans and his fans alike were overjoyed, their tweets and messages immediately flooding social media with support for your relationship.

It's not up to you, it's not up to me, yeah

When everyone tells us what we can be

And how can we rewrite the stars?

Say that the world can be ours, tonight

The kiss only lasted a moment, but it spoke volumes. It was a declaration of your love for each other, a moment of vulnerability shared with the world. As you pulled away, San's eyes were filled with affection, and you couldn't help but smile at him. As you finished your performance, the applause grew even louder, turning into a standing ovation that lasted for several minutes. All the while, your cheeks flushed red with embarrassment, feeling like you were blushing again for the first time since meeting San. Bowing with the biggest smiles on your faces, you exited the stage.

All I want is to fly with you

All I want is to fall with you

So just give me all of you

Backstage, your fellow idols congratulated you both, showering you with hugs and high-fives. The performance had been a success, not just because of your vocal prowess, but because of the genuine love and connection you shared. Your fans continued to express their support online, sharing clips of the performance and praising your relationship.

It feels impossible

Is it impossible?

Say that it's possible

In the days that followed, the video of your performance went viral, garnering millions of views and countless positive comments. People admired your bravery, your willingness to share your love with the world. The media picked up the story, highlighting the overwhelming support from fans and fellow idols alike. Everyone agreed that this was the start of something special. Even JYPE and KQ Entertainment couldn't deny that there was nothing but love between you and San.

And how do we rewrite the stars?

Say you were made to be mine

And nothing can keep us apart

'Cause you are the one I was meant to find

After winning awards for Best Collaboration and Rookie of the Year, it seemed that things were going to continue to get better and better. One week later, news broke that JYP Entertainment and KQ Entertainment had decided to do more collabs together, agreeing to promote each other's artists in order to further develop their business.

It's up to you, and it's up to me

No one could say what we get to be

And why don't we rewrite the stars?

Changing the world to be ours

The announcement ignited controversy amongst the entertainment industry, sparking heated debate among industry insiders and fans alike, but to you it didn’t matter because you knew your fans and atiny supported your relationship. After seeing all the comments on Twitter and Instagram, it was clear that the decision to make your relationship public was one of the best decisions you'd made.

© alxtiny . Do not steal, plagiarise, translate, repost, or use my works on any platform in any way.

Send an ask or a message to be added to taglist

Requests are open!!!

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS PURE FICTION AND NOT RELATED TO THE MEMBERS OF ATEEZ IN REAL LIFE PLEASE DO NOT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY

Taglist:

[klaineccfanficlibrary]

What are you fave angsty stories/writers? I love angst, but have a hard time deciding what stories to read!

I always find it difficult to recommend writers as there are so many great writer past and present in the fandom. Plus so many klaine stories have a bit of angst in them.

We do have our angst and blangst tag. So many great stories.

I'd also recommend my other admin Lynne's favorite fics: there's all sorts of fics on there but may are angsty fics.

Also 23 items bookmarked on Klaine fanfic that made you want to reach for a box of tissues, part of our bingo 2023.

Personally, I will name a few, most of these are older fics and come highly recommended in the fandom. These are just a few of mine - people can also recommend in their reblogged tabs, or on the note here. ~Jen

The Awakening by @heartsmadeofbooks

Kurt Hummel has put his perfect life together carefully, making sure all the pieces fit exactly how he wanted them to. But all it takes is one name from his past to make all his hard work go to waste - Blaine Anderson

~~~~~

100 Days by borogroves

Kurt and Blaine have been best friends (and nothing more) since the age of six. Now 22-year-old college graduates, they take a roadtrip around the USA, visiting every state in 100 days. Fifty states. Two boys. One love story.

~~~~~

Perfectly Imperfect by @catcat-85

Golden Globe winning actor, Blaine Anderson went to prison for a murder he did not commit. After 5 long years, he has escaped from prison, and in a desperate need to get to a safe house before he can leave the country; he kidnaps Kurt, and forced him to drive him to a secluded cabin nestled in between the snowy mountains in Vermont. For Blaine, it’s his last chance for freedom. Falling in love is the last thing on Blaine’s mind. It’s not part of the plan. And for Kurt, it’s a terrifying situation that disrupts the impeccably perfect life he has created for himself. He’s outraged and angry at Blaine, and yet; he can’t help but believe Blaine is innocent.

Will the truth finally come out and Blaine be exonerated? Will the FBI catch him and put him back in prison? Will he and Kurt fall in love even in the most hopeless situation? Will love truly prevail all at the end?

Based on the novel, Perfect, by Judith McNaught. This is a story about two men who are complete opposites from one another; and yet, they complete each other in a perfectly imperfect way.

~~~~~

Chrysalis ‘verse by @flowerfan2

Just after graduating from NYU, a car accident puts Blaine into a coma. No one expects him to wake up. Almost three years later, Kurt sees a man in a wheelchair who couldn’t be anyone else. A story of love and new beginnings. Canon compliant through 6x11, then AU.

~~~~~

Foundations by gentlereader

After breaking up Kurt and Blaine went their separate ways.

Blaine’s now a successful LA musician while Kurt is a high school counselor.

The creation of the Pavarotti Music Foundation was their dream… and now its a reality.

~~~~~

No Take backs by @rockitmans

Prompt: A year after this father’s death, Kurt is still reeling from the loss. In an attempt to keep holiday traditions going, despite his father’s absence, Kurt meets a guy at a local Christmas Tree Lot who helps him through.

~~~~~

About us by wildhurricane

 It’s an ordinary summer day at the diner where Kurt works, when a new guest enters. He’s hot and flirty and orders coffee and fries, and Kurt. Kurt is instantly attracted and flirts back. When the guy waits for Kurt outside the diner, Kurt decides to go with him for a moment of pleasure. But there’s a spark between them that neither anticipated. Soon Kurt finds out that the guy isn’t who he claims to be and that he’s got other secrets as well. He’s mysterious and exciting and Kurt is falling for him hard and fast, but when the secrets are revealed Kurt finds himself between love and aversion and must decide if he should stay and help Blaine out of an impossible situation or leave him and save his own heart.

~~~~

The Symphony Verse by shandyall

Blaine has spent most of his life feeling like the only thing people notice about him is that he stutters. He’s working hard to overcome his (mostly self created) roadblocks when he meets Kurt in an online class the summer after his freshman year of college.

[shadowqueenjude]

Lucien finally loses it and does something bat-shit crazy

@theewicked @ramim @sonics-atelier @duskcourthighlady This is for you babes😘 After Feyre shit-talks him and the BOE at ACOFAS, Lucien reaches his breaking point, and he resolves to do something crazy. Part 2 coming soon!

Lucien was absolutely fed up with everyone’s bullshit.

It was coming from every side. Feyre, Rhysand, Azriel, Cassian, Tamlin, Beron, Elain, Nesta, and all of their relatives were giving him hell every day. He had just about had enough.

How long was he supposed to just sit there and pretend like everything is fine? Even the finest outfits couldn’t pull him out of his misery.

This was all Rhysand’s fault. He had ruined everything for him. His relationship with Tamlin and Feyre. His home, his life. Hell, he was even the reason his mate had gone through hell. He had failed to protect Feyre’s sisters. He couldn’t understand how Feyre could stomach him after everything he did under the mountain. God knew Lucien barely could most days. Every time he saw his smug ass face, it reminded him of Ianthe.

And after all this time, they still treated him like an outsider. When he had come to the Night Court for the first time, they had treated him like an enemy. Pulled out all the stops to make sure he knew his life was thoroughly threatened. Despite everything he had done for Feyre. If there was anyone who shouldn’t be trusted, it was her.

She had completely used him. He wondered sometimes if she ever thought of him as a friend, or if he had just been a means to an end, and later an enemy. Well, they should know Lucien didn’t respond well to threats. He had been exceptionally tempted to pull an Amarantha on Rhysand and tell him to return to the shit-hole he had crawled out of, but he had a sinking feeling that he wouldn’t have been so lucky as to escape with his life this time.

They had actually made him thoroughly sympathize with Nesta. Hell, his asshole of a brother Eris was better company than those two. He now spent most of his time in the company of two humans. And Feyre, a formally human girl, had become the epitome of all she claimed to hate about the Fae in the first place. “They peddle tales of defending our land and peace. And yet she came to my lands and laid them bare for Hybern. She took my High Priestess and warped her mind—after she shattered her bones for spite. And if you are asking yourself what happened to that human girl who went Under the Mountain to save us … Look to the male sitting beside her. Ask what he stands to gain—what they stand to gain from this war, or lack of it. Would we fight Hybern, only to find ourselves with a Queen and King of Prythian? She’s proved her ambition—and you saw how he was more than happy to serve Amarantha to remain unscathed.” Lucien hadn’t been there for the High Lord meeting, but he had heard the recounting of it afterwards. He somehow thought his former friend was right. He highly doubted Rhysand’s ambition ended at High Lord. And with the power he possessed…all of Prythian would be in danger should he become High King. He'd seen the state of the lands Rhysand thought beneath his notice. Velaris was beautiful yes; more beautiful than he cared to admit. But what of the rest of his nation? Lucien could only imagine how little attention Tamlin’s former territory would get should it fall into Rhysand’s hands. But how would he ever keep Rhysand from gaining such power? He had power of his own, sure, but compared to the might of the entire Inner Circle… Although, he did have one advantage: the Inner Circle had no idea how deep his power ran. Even Lucien didn’t know. He could do things that nobody else could. With the magic eye and the spell-cleaving powers he inherited from his biological father…

Could he do the impossible? The cauldron itself had failed. Then again, that could possibly be attributed to the fact that Feyre and Rhysand had been held together by not one, but two bonds. Now that one of them had been broken…

Lucien chuckled to himself. Such wicked thoughts were unbecoming of him. But especially after today…

“And what, exactly, does this Band of Exiles plan to do? Host events? Organize party-planning committees?”

What a bitch. They had always had banter between them, but it wasn’t like this. Feyre hadn’t been saying it playfully, but just being exceptionally rude. As if she wasn’t the reason the BOE was all he had.

Sometimes he wondered if Rhysand DID have her under mind thrall. Or perhaps the mating bond was what was manipulating her. God knew it affected him.

Elain. A twinge of pain went through him. Why did it have to be her? She wants nothing do with him- and long ago, he had known a girl who had approached him, seduced him, wanted no one but him. Who didn’t see a High Lord’s son, but a male. Who he had loved with every inch of his being.

Elain was beautiful- the most beautiful female he had ever seen, though it still felt like a betrayal to Jesminda to admit that to himself. He had tried to learn about Elain however he could; he’d asked Feyre about her, had observed her, had observed others speaking of her. But it was hard- damn near impossible, really- to get a read on her. He didn’t want to force himself on her. God knew it was hard what she had been through. She was to be married. Then, she’d lost everything.

Well, Lucien knew what that felt like.

He could feel her through the bond. He still remembered that day he had explored deep into the bond and had found thoughts so unbecoming of a lady like Elain he had blushed.

Yet she shrunk away from him.

That wasn’t new to Lucien. It seemed like the only two people who enjoyed his company nowadays were Jurian and Vassa. And of course, they were into each other. Lucien was so sick of being the third wheel, he came on holidays to the Night Court not because he felt particularly welcome, but to give those two human idiots time to sort out their problems sexually before he had to deal with them again.

His self-control was exceptionally high owing to a childhood growing up under the parentage of Beron, but even he was reaching his breaking point.

The next time somebody tried him a little too much, he was going to do something absolutely bat-shit crazy. Haha. Bat-shit. Like the Inner Circle’s bat wings. Lucien cringed at his inner monologue and tried to focus on the present, but the thoughts lingered in the back of his mind.

[tact-and-impulse]

Narumayo Week 2024 Day 5

I just had to pull together the idea at the end of the day, but I made it!

Prompt: Travel

“You finally made it? That took forever.” Pearl gasped on the other end of the line. “Can you see the big clock tower? Or London Bridge?”

Maya wryly looked past the glass, at the rainy weather obscuring the city lights. “Not right now, it’s already nighttime here. And guess what? I’m calling from tomorrow, it’s the next day.”

“Oh, my gosh…” Her little cousin was awed.

She spied a familiar blue blazer staggering out of the men’s restroom. “There he is. Nick is totally wiped out, even though he slept for half the flight.”

“I heard that, Maya. Hi, Pearl.” He yawned. “And it took almost fifteen hours. The Legal League of Attorneys is paying, so I probably shouldn’t complain that much.”

Maya was already enjoying the trip. She’d never traveled by plane before, and she had the window seat. The green fields, craggy mountains, and tiny bustling cars were fascinating, but she was absolutely enthralled by the glow of sunset among the clouds. She had taken pictures with her digital camera, although none seemed to capture the beauty of that golden hour.

A crack of thunder caused them to startle. Maya hurriedly said. “It’s also raining here, and we should get to the hotel. Talk to you later.”

“Bye, Mystic Maya.” The phone clicked, and they rushed to baggage claim. They headed for the exit, stopping short at the sheet of water rippling over the glass windows. A flash of lightning illuminated their resigned expressions.

“Uh, Nick, did you-?”

“No…ugh. And London’s known for it too.”

They’d forgotten to pack umbrellas.

And the airport had to jack up the prices. While Maya sifted through the sightseeing magazines and tried not to stare at an incredibly expensive toy tea party set, Phoenix paid for their shield from the rain. As he returned, she noticed it was a single clear umbrella. Just one.

Her pulse picked up, and she hoped she sounded nonchalant. “We’re operating on a budget, huh?”

“It’s only for tonight. Do you mind if we stick close together?”

“After sitting next to you for hours and hours?” No, she didn’t mind at all. In fact, that was crucial to her enjoyment. “I think I’ll survive.”

“I’ll try to keep you in one piece. Who else is going to ride a trolley and eat fish and chips with me?”

“And sticky toffee pudding. We have to get the full experience while we’re tourists.”

“Legal exchange representatives.”

“Only in the courtroom. Outside of it, that’s a different story.” She purposefully raised her eyebrows. He gave a low laugh, and she was too pleased.

“A fair argument. That’s why I asked you to come along.” Despite his weary demeanor and the dark circles under his eyes, he still offered his arm. That was him to the core, continuing to the very end. “Let’s go.”

She acquiesced, tightly hanging on to his solid presence. “Okay. First one to find a cab wins.”

And with that, they went stamping into the stormy darkness.

[satureja13]

The Friendship between: Vlad and Kiyoshi

After Kiyoshi came out of the blue and invited Jack for prom, Vlad wanted to learn more about the intentions of this restraint and earnest guy who asked his best friend out. But he didn't get far because shortly after the nightmare with Genji biting Ji Ho happened and Vlad died (and had been dead for a while).

And of course Vlad was jealous because Ji Ho worshiped Kiyoshi. And - of course - Kiyoshi sensed Vlad's distrust (because he's a demon after all).

When Vlad came back from hell and Jack and Kiyoshi already started their secret relationship, Jack could't tell him anything and Vlad respected it (even though I guess each of them knew about them somehow). He just wanted Jack to be happy after everything he went through and he had to trust them (the story of Kiyoshi and Jack is -> here).

Another obstacle thrown in their way was the shower incident. After Vlad returned from hell, he found himself blind under the shower (where Ji Ho and Luci (who possessed Vlad's body while his soul was in hell) had their fun ö.Ö'). To shield Ji Ho from Vlad's wrath, Kiyoshi stepped in and claimed it had been him who was under the shower with Vlad/Luci 'to care for his body'...).

Their friendship started shortly after, December 2022, when Ms Coombes put them in a group together for their school project. Vlad still had been blind then and Kiyoshi cared for him. Which was awkward because of the shower incident. Plus Vlad and his foolish pride are not used to someone caring for them and he gave Kiyoshi a hard time with his stubbornness wanting to do everything by himself despite his blindness...

They should soon become very close when they missed the last cable car up to the Tavern at Mount Komorebi. Kiyoshi held blind Vlad's hand and guided him when they walked all the way up the mountain (which Vlad and his foolish pride tried to deny after the others cought them...)

Well he had to get used to it. Or not ^^'

When Vlad's bloodlust for Ji Ho's blood was giving them a hard time, Kiyoshi froze Vlad into an iceblock to keep Ji Ho save.

Twice ^^'

A few days later, on Winter Solstice, before Vlad and Ji Ho finally tightened their Bond at the Temple, Kiyoshi prepared them. And Vlad had been so jealous (again)!

And when Jack and Ji Ho had almost burned alive at Yamachan's Party, Kiyoshi and Vlad worked together to rescue them.

Kiyoshi and Vlad shared an apartment at Belgraves Institute, their boarding school. They both love to wear black clothes and refused to don the bright yellow school sports jerseys. So they'd been punished to run (a lot of) laps. Which they somehow enjoyed. And it deepened their friendship.

And when Jack fell into his coma, Vlad let Kiyoshi join him when he watched over Jack. So I guess he (and the others) really knew they'd been together.

From the Outtakes:

Vlad has a deep understanding for Kiyoshi's duties for the Resistance. Even when Kiyoshi had to betray him to the Council to keep his position as a mole.

Vlad and Kiyoshi Halloween 2023. Team 'Problematic Eyes'. The Bond had punished Vlad whith 'normal' eyes and everyone thought Kiyoshi's demonic glowing eyes were a disguise because they only learned a few months later that Kiyoshi actually is a demon.

The profile cards they created together on Halloween:

When Kiyoshi returned from the tree but still acted like a tree, it had been Vlad who cared for Kiyoshi (until Saiwa took over because they thought Kiyoshi and Saiwa are fated mates...)

Kiyoshi and Vlad in our Goth Special

At the moment Vlad lives together with Jeb and Kiyoshi and consoles (and cares) for them after Jack and Saiwa left to live at the Beach House for a while. He chose Kiyoshi over his best friend Jack because he knows Ji Ho has Jack covered and the others (except Jeb, Kiyoshi's best friend) avoid Kiyoshi for how he treated Jack. But Vlad knows Kiyoshi didn't have a choice with all the duties he had for the Temple and the Resistance/the Council.

If you wonder who'd be the top: Romance Factor: 4/5

From the Outtakes: A series of pics after they teleported too close :3

Vlad and Kiyoshi had been in Team Animal Care at the Farm. Here they are milking the goats :3

Vlad and Kiyoshi's horses - Diablo and Kiri - are in love with each other.

Their Friendships (in chronological order):

In chronological order: 🫛 Saiwa and Jack 🫛 Vlad and Jack 🫛 Saiwa and Vlad 🫛 Kiyoshi and Jeb 🫛 Saiwa and Ji Ho 🫛 Ji Ho and Jack 🫛 Ji Ho and Jeb 🫛 Ji Ho and Kiyoshi 🫛 Vlad and Kiyoshi 🫛 Vlad and Jeb 🫛 Saiwa and Kiyoshi 🫛 Jack and Jeb

Their Relationships (not updated yet)

Ji Ho and Vlad (and Luci)

Saiwa and Jeb

Jack and Kiyoshi

Noxee and Greg

Leander and Wesley (and Vlad)

Francine Spencer (Jeb's Grandmother) and Jules Rico

From the Beginning  ~  Underwater Love ~  Latest 🕹️ 'Therapy Game' from the beginning ▶️ here 📚 Previous Chapters: Chapters: 1-6 📜 7-12 📜 13-16 📜 17-22 📜 23-28

[anim-ttrpgs]

A.N.I.M. Adventure Art: The Seedtown Party

Meet the Seedtown Party. This is a cast of investigator PCs from one of the earliest test runs for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, back in late 2021. It didn’t even have any sort of combat system when this campaign started, that was written hastily somewhere in the middle of the campaign, somewhere around February 2022.

This campaign is maybe the longest we’ve ever done with Eureka, lasting 6 months with a session nearly every week, and it was amazing.

Four investigators find themselves one way or another in a small town in the mountains of Arkansas, coming together by chance due to shared interest in a series of seemingly related missing persons cases.

It pains me greatly that I cannot remember exactly what was said, but the way that this group of characters came together and agree to work with each other to locate these missing persons in the first session was the single most natural and organic way I’ve ever seen a TTRPG party form.

Eunica, an actual professional private investigator from the big city, here on a personal mission, as one of the missing people is her own nephew.

Joseph, an extremely friendly local bartender who has been manning his brother’s establishment since his brother’s death more than ten years ago.

Sarah, a moviestar who sought to disappear from the spotlight and run away to a quieter life, only to find that some of the missing persons posters feature *her* face, and did before she even arrived.

And finally Alice (pronounced in the French way, sounds more like “Elise”), a cheerful and energetic young Cajun-French biker claiming to be a friend of one of the missing people. She was definitely the youngest of the party, appearing to be in her early twenties, with the next youngest investigator being Eunica in her late thirties. Alice had the rest of the party in love with her sweetness, energy, and optimistic attitude, as well as many weird but endearing quirks like how sarcasm and jokes always flew right over her head, her insistance that her food never have any spices whatsoever, and the fact she wore the same part of sunglasses day and night. In fact, they never actually even saw her sleep, she was always awake when they went to bed and always awake in the morning when they woke up. Alice was “the baby of the group”, and all of the older investigators went out of their way to protect her and curb her bold and reckless actions, despite her insistence that they didn’t need to.

Art by @theblackwarden

This art has been posted here with permission as part of A.N.I.M.’s Adventure Art initiative in our TTRPG book club.

All of these characters are PCs from Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy by A.N.I.M.

If you’d like to join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club, you can find the discord invite on our website.

If your art fits he parameters outlined on this post, and you’d like it featured here, tag us or post it in the book club’s Adventure Art channel on discord.

If you’d like to support us and get a prerelease copy of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, check out our Patreon! Our Kickstarter is planned for launch in April 2024!

This group of investigators followed what clues they could through local urban legends, organized crime, police corruption, and finally occult ritual among the state’s wealthy elite in a remote manor in the mountains, ending in a high-stakes shootout as the gang attempted to flee the premises after disrupting a plot that could’ve brought the world as we know it to its knees, and then a confrontation with the source of the aforementioned urban legends. For the most part, the investigators got out unscathed, except for Alice, who caught three bullets during the shootout, way more than enough to kill an investigator, or most any character, in Eureka. She also did most of the killing in this shootout.

Alice near flat-out refused medical attention, instead sneaking away as soon as the others’ backs were turned, leaving a farewell message at the bar before getting on her bike, and riding away. There was no way to track her or find out where she went, who she was, or if she was even still alive. They never even learned her last name.

Not only was this a test run of Eureka in general, but also the origin of its unique approach to supernatural characters, wherein not even other players sitting around the table know which members of the party are supernatural or not. With exceptions that I’ll get to in a moment, none of the IRL people playing this game except the Game Master knew that there would be any supernatural element to this mystery, let alone within the very investigative party itself. Nearly all of the players were relative strangers to each other before the group was brought together for session 0, not knowing each others’ interests or original characters, so there was little chance of guessing anything was amiss before the session even began.

Eunica shocked everyone about a two-thirds into the investigation, after the involvement of occult ritual started to become apparent, by revealing that she was no ordinary private detective, but really one of a more magical variety, capable of more than a little magic herself, and the person you’d go to if you needed someone to, say, hunt and slay a vampire. This took some time to process for everyone and Alice had what seemed like a hundred rapid-fire questions about the truth or the supernatural.

Alice, on the other hand, didn’t shock anyone, no one suspected a thing. No one, not PCs nor Players, ever guessed that sweet “Alice”, “the baby of the group”, was actually the oldest of them all, an 800-year-old vampire named Yvette Preux. The other players didn’t find this out until a month after the campaign ended. In between regular sessions, secret one-on-one sessions between GM and player were being run while the rest of the party slept, wherein “Alice” did some investigating, and other things like drinking blood, on her own during the night, the findings from which she would sprinkle in casually during discussions of the case the next morning, subtly enough that no one ever asked where she got this information or why she was so sure of it. On a few occasions she even did a lot more than investigating during these nights, like when a crime boss, who had told the investigators that he would have them disappeared if he saw them in town again, mysteriously turned up dead the next day, never seeing any of them again. What a lucky coincidence for everyone else.

Alice actually clocked Eunica as some kind of vampire hunter or the like right away, on the very first day they met, which didn’t really concern her at all. If so-called vampire hunters were any good at their “job”, she wouldn’t be around to laugh about it, would she?

Really, in hindsight, she could hardly have been more obviously a vampire—the sunglasses at all hours; avoidance of garlic, onions, and any other spices on food; hoe she never seemed to sleep; how she always seemed to have something in front of her mouth when she talked; her avoidance of mirrors; taking risks like she was invincible; and always running ahead every time the party was about to enter a private domicile so that she could directly ask to come inside. She even at one point when the party needed to disguise themselves as occultists, revealed that she just *already had* a fine hooded cloak with black on the outside and bright red on the inside in her luggage. That was all pretty weird, but it turns out, when nobody tells you to look for vampires, they actually become extremely hard to stop! This isn’t even a massive failing on Eunica’s part, if it weren’t near impossible to identify them, vampires wouldn’t be considered just a silly superstition in the modern age.

In truth, “Alice” reveled in just being herself right under a wannabe vampire-hunter’s nose, feigning shock when Eunica revealed this, and going out of her way to ask as many questions as she could about real vampires and what they’re like.

This is the ultimate Eureka experience, what starts as a mundane investigation spiraling into sprawling madness, and if what the people you thought you knew could reveal about themselves will shock you to your core, imagine what they keep to themselves. They might not even be playing by the same rules as you, it’s always who you least expect.

[mariacallous]

When jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was pronounced dead by the Russian prison service, most supporters of Russia’s liberal opposition plunged into despair.

Some spoke of a grappling fear from realization that they “are now left one on one with Putin,” while others claimed that with Navalny had died the hope for Russia’s democratic future.

But despite his heroism, Navalny wasn’t Russia’s only hope for democracy.

From the ousting of dictator Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia’s Bulldozer Revolution in 2000 to Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity, the most successful nonviolent revolutionary movements in Russia’s neighborhood have been based on grassroots self-mobilization, driven forward not by a single leader, but a shared vision of a better tomorrow.

At least one such movement exists in Russia today.

Not in Moscow, but in Turkic-majority Bashkortostan.

Bashkortostan’s long-running, diverse, and fundamentally nonviolent protest movement might just be Russia’s greatest hope for democratic change right now. Yet, like other popular movements advocating for Indigenous rights and region-level democratization in Russia, it has been sidelined and gravely misinterpreted by Western observers, as well as policymakers who instead continue to favor engagements with Moscow-hailing mainstream Russian liberal opposition.

Russia’s most populous ethnic republic, Bashkortostan is located between the Volga River to the west and the Ural Mountains to the east. Bashkorts, the region’s Indigenous Kipchak Turkic ethnic group conquered by Russians in the 16th century, make up 31.5 percent of the republic’s population. Russians (37.5 percent) and Volga Tatars (24.2 percent) are the two other largest groups, followed by Mari, Chuvash, and Udmurt people.

The first autonomous republic of the Soviet Union, Bashkortostan issued a declaration of state sovereignty in October 1990, though soon went on to sign a federal power-sharing agreement with Moscow. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin took office in 2000, the region has been gradually stripped of nearly all its sovereign rights.

For several days in January, thousands of residents of Bashkortostan came together to protest the imprisonment of Bashkort activist Fayil Alsynov, one of the region’s most vocal advocates for Indigenous rights and a fierce critic of the extractivist colonial policies of the Kremlin and its local cronies.

Up to 5,000 people gathered outside a courthouse in the region’s southeastern town of Baymak on Jan. 15, the day of Alsynov’s expected sentencing on charges of “inciting interethnic hatred.” Likely startled by the size of the crowd outside, Judge Elina Tagirova then postponed the final hearing to Jan. 17.

On Jan. 17, a far larger crowd gathered at the scene again, defying an official warning from regional police, preemptive arrests of activists, and temperatures of minus 21 degrees Celsius in the frozen Urals. Some had made early morning journeys for several hours through snowy roads of southeastern Bashkortostan.

Alsynov’s main supporters are his fellow Bashkorts but others, including ethnic Russians and Volga Tatars, were among the protesters. So were men and women of all ages, white-collar workers, farmers, students, school teachers, opposition politicians, business owners, bloggers, veteran activists, and many others.

Though many of them hoped for a suspended sentence for Alsynov, the activist was eventually sentenced to four years in a penal colony. When the protesters refused to leave the scene following the verdict, riot police used smoke grenades, tear gas, and batons to disperse the crowd. As many as 40 people were forced to seek medical attention following clashes with the police.

Protests in Baymak and a subsequent smaller-scale solidarity rally in Bashkortostan’s capital Ufa have triggered an unprecedentedly large wave of regionwide arrests. The authorities have opened at least 163 administrative and 34 criminal cases against the protesters, according to independent monitor OVD-Info.

At least one of the people detained sustained life-threatening injuries in custody, and two men facing criminal investigation, 37-year-old Rifat Dautov and 65-year-old Minniyar Bayguskarov, died under unclear circumstances.

Russian commentators in both pro-Kremlin and anti-Putin liberal camps were quick to label the protests in Bashkortostan as “riots” with “ethnic nationalist” and “separatist” undertones that seemingly flared up out of the blue. Some even likened the events to the antisemitic riots that swept the capital of Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan last October.

But the recent protests—as I can say through my years of research there and intimate familiarity with the region’s politics—were neither of these things. Instead of being “nationalistic,” the protests ignited by Alsynov’s imprisonment were a manifestation of deeply rooted discontent with the ruthless exploitation of Bashkortostan’s resources by the Kremlin and its local cronies.

Bashkortostan undertook rapid Soviet industrialization amid the discovery of a vast number of natural resources—including petroleum, natural gas, coal, and limestone—coupled with the relocation of multiple industrial plants from Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia during World War II.

The scope of environmental damage caused by decades of unchecked industrial development put environmental protection and Indigenous land rights at the forefront of the republic’s fight for independence in the 1990s.

As the republic lapsed from having a plethora of autonomous decision making powers to being fully subjected to the Kremlin’s control in just over three decades, environmental issues persisted along with new restrictions on usage of the Bashkort language and development of Indigenous cultures. This, in turn, expanded support for local environmental and Indigenous rights movements.

The symbiotic relationship between the two movements culminated in the 2020 protests in defense of Kushtau lime stone mountain, which saw Alsynov, a Bashkort rights defender with over a decade of experience, taking a leading role. The subsequent success of the protests brought Alsynov fame and admiration far beyond ethnic Bashkort circles.

Alsynov has played a critical role in the fight against illegal gold mining in Bashkortostan’s scenic and resource-rich Baymaksky district, which the authorities are trying to turn against him.

Bashkortostan’s pro-Kremlin authorities claimed that Alsynov “violated the human dignity” of migrant workers from the Caucasus and Central Asia by referring to them as qara halyq (“black people” in the Bashkort language) and that he called for expulsion of all non-Bashkorts from the republic in a speech made at the protests in April 2023.

Alsynov denied all charges against him, saying his speech was “gravely mistranslated” from his native Bashkort language by a government-affiliated linguistic expert. The activist also clarified that he “didn’t say that [non-Bashkorts] have no right to live or work” in the republic, but instead meant that Bashkorts have to fearlessly protect their native lands as they have no other place to live.

Qara halyq, the Bashkort phrase used by Alsynov, is not a racialized insult but, in fact, an idiom that exists across a number of Turkic languages and is used to refer to ordinary people.

No less absurd than accusations of “nationalism” are the attempts of some observers to present gatherings in Bashkortostan as “riots” instead of nonviolent protests.

From pro-sovereignty protests to standoff at Kushtau to last year’s anti-mining rallies, activists in Bashkortostan have been consistent in using nonviolent resistance methods and demonstrated dedication to maintaining nonviolent discipline in face of worsening repressions and authorities’ attempts to split the movement by offering concessions to its participants.

In building their nonviolent toolkit, Bashkort activists have relied on centuries-long practice of administering self-governance through yiyins, people’s gatherings aimed at resolving key political and social matters that can take place at a level of an individual clan, a village or even a nation.

Unlike traditional male-only yiyins, their modern form is more inclusive, with women now assuming active participation, although male elders and established community leaders still hold considerable influence over proceedings.

Activists in Bashkortostan also demonstrated their commitment to nonviolence during the Jan. 17 rally in Baymak. When agent provocateurs infiltrated the crowd and began throwing snowballs at the security service, protest leaders and experienced participants repeatedly encouraged those around to steer clear from engaging in physical confrontation and largely succeeded in maintaining discipline within the large crowd.

After witnessing the successes achieved by nonviolent movements worldwide and in its immediate surroundings, the Kremlin has been working overtime to suppress nonviolent dissent domestically.

In Bashkortostan, the team of the region’s head, Radiy Khabirov, has repeatedly tried to discredit the movement by portraying its participants as Islamist extremists seeking political destabilization and violent separation from Russia.

“Let’s save Bashkortostan from nazis, wahhabis and those sucking up to the oligarchs,” Khabirov’s infamous ex-PR chief, Rostislav Murzagulov, wrote of the 2020 protest in defense of Kushtau mountain.

A similar propaganda tactic has already been tried and tested by the Kremlin years before in Chechnya, when Moscow—with much success—used the narratives of the war on terror and ever-rising Islamophobic sentiments to justify military intervention into the region and disrepute the Chechen independence movement.

In Bashkortostan’s case, coupled with a lack of independent Indigenous media outlets and platforms willing to amplify voices of Indigenous activists on a countrywide level, this propaganda has proven widely effective.

Unfortunately for the movement’s participants and sympathizers worldwide, much of the analysis and coverage of recent protests in support of Alsynov, too, have been feeding into the government-sanctioned agenda. These reports, for example, made special note of the religious affiliation of protesters and stressed the fact that Bashkort, a movement that Alsynov was formerly part of, was designated “extremist organization” in 2020, while failing to mention that Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation was banned under the same pretext just a year later.

Persistently inaccurate and unflattering coverage of Bashkortostan’s nonviolent protest movement is, perhaps, one of the major reasons dissuading Western policymakers from treating it as a worthy partner.

Yet, as Indigenous activists double down on efforts to raise awareness about the events in Bashkortostan and support arrested activists and their families, the West has a unique chance to reimagine the course of Russia’s democratization and offer a helping hand to the regional movements that need it most.

[underestimated-heroine]

In the 1990s, I was the field organizer for the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment, a six-state coalition working to reduce hate crimes and violence in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain States region. We did a lot of primary research, often undercover. A cardinal rule of organizing is that you can’t ask people to do anything you haven’t done yourself; so I spent that weekend as I spent many—among people plotting to remove me from their ethnostate. It helped that, despite its blood-curdling anti-Black racism, at least some factions of the White nationalist movement saw me as a potential ally against their true archenemy. At the expo that year, a guy warily asked me about myself. I told him that I had come on behalf of a few brothers in the city. We needed to resist the federal government and we were there to get educated. I said I hoped he wouldn’t take it personally, but I didn’t shake hands with White people. He smiled; he totally understood. “Brother McLamb,” he concurred, “says we have to start building broad coalitions.” Together we went to hear Jack McLamb, a retired Phoenix cop who ran an organization called Police Against the New World Order, make a case for temporary alliances with “the Blacks, the Mexicans, the Orientals” against the real enemy, the federal government controlled by an international conspiracy. He didn’t have to say who ran this conspiracy because it was obvious to all in attendance. And despite the widespread tendency to dismiss antisemitism, notwithstanding its daily presence across the country and the world, it is obvious to you, too.

[...]

To recognize that antisemitism is not a sideshow to racism within White nationalist thought is important for at least two reasons. First, it allows us to identify the fuel that White nationalist ideology uses to power its anti-Black racism, its contempt for other people of color, and its xenophobia—as well as the misogyny and other forms of hatred it holds dear. White nationalists in the United States perceive the country as having plunged into unending crisis since the social ruptures of the 1960s supposedly dispossessed White people of their very nation. The successes of the civil rights movement created a terrible problem for White supremacist ideology. White supremacism—inscribed de jure by the Jim Crow regime and upheld de facto outside the South—had been the law of the land, and a Black-led social movement had toppled the political regime that supported it. How could a race of inferiors have unseated this power structure through organizing alone? For that matter, how could feminists and LGBTQ people have upended traditional gender relations, leftists mounted a challenge to global capitalism, Muslims won billions of converts to Islam? How do you explain the boundary-crossing allure of hip hop? The election of a Black president? Some secret cabal, some mythological power, must be manipulating the social order behind the scenes. This diabolical evil must control television, banking, entertainment, education, and even Washington, D.C. It must be brainwashing White people, rendering them racially unconscious.

What is this arch-nemesis of the White race, whose machinations have prevented the natural and inevitable imposition of white supremacy? It is, of course, the Jews.

[...]

The White nationalist movement that evolved from it in the 1970s was a revolutionary movement that saw itself as the vanguard of a new, whites-only state. This latter movement, then and now, positions Jews as the absolute other, the driving force of white dispossession—which means the other channels of its hatred cannot be intercepted without directly taking on antisemitism.

This brings me to the second reason that White nationalist antisemitism must not be dismissed: at the bedrock of the movement is an explicit claim that Jews are a race of their own, and that their ostensible position as White folks in the U.S. represents the greatest trick the devil ever played. [...] Contemporary antisemitism, then, does not just enable racism, it also is racism, for in the White nationalist imaginary Jews are a race—the race—that presents an existential threat to Whiteness. Moreover, if antisemitism exists in glaring form at the extreme edge of political discourse, it does not exist in a vacuum; as with every form of hateful ideology, what is explicit on the margins is implicit in the center, in ways we have not yet begun to unpack. This means the notion that Jews long ago and uncontestably became White folks in the U.S.—became, in effect, post-racial—is a myth that we must dispel.

Antisemitism, I discovered, is a particular and potent form of racism so central to White supremacy that Black people would not win our freedom without tearing it down.

[...]

The resistance I have encountered when I address antisemitism has primarily come since I moved to the Northeast seven years ago, and from the most established progressive antiracist leaders, organizations, coalitions, and foundations around the country. It is here that a well-meaning but counterproductive thicket of discourse has grown up insisting that Jews—of Ashkenazi descent, at least—are uncontestably White, and that to challenge this is to deny the workings of White privilege. In other words, when I’m asked, “Where is the antisemitism?,” what I am often really being asked is, “Why should we be talking about antisemitism?”

And indeed—why? Why, when the president of the United States appears bent on removing as many dark-skinned immigrants from the U.S. as he can, and when men who look like me are shot in the street or tortured to death in prison with impunity? Why, when the leadership of some mainstream Jewish communal organizations level false charges of antisemitism in order to silence critique—whether by Jews or non-Jews—of Israeli government policies? Why, after decades of soul-searching by Jewish antiracists has established a seeming consensus that Jews—with Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews posited as an exception—should regard themselves as White allies of people of color, eschewing any identity as a racialized people with their own skins at risk in the fight against White supremacy? Why, when Jews are safe and claims to the contrary serve to justify rather than to challenge racial and other oppressions, like conservative commentator Alan Dershowitz’s cynical recent attempt to discredit antiracist and anticolonial struggles by declaring intersectionality an antisemitic concept? Why, when Jews of European descent are supposedly “White,” have long been, will ever be?

I can answer this question as I have been doing and will continue to do: antisemitism fuels White nationalism, a genocidal movement now enthroned in the highest seats of American power, and fighting antisemitism cuts off that fuel for the sake of all marginalized communities under siege from the Trump regime and the social movement that helped raise it up. To refuse to deal with any ideology of domination, moreover, is to abet it. Contemporary social justice movements are quite clear that to refuse antiracism is an act of racism; to refuse feminism is an act of sexism. To refuse opposition to antisemitism, likewise, is an act of antisemitism. Arguably, not much more should need to be said than that. But I suspect that much more does need to be said. To the hovering question, why should we be talking about antisemitism, I reply, what is it we are afraid we will find out if we do? What historic and contemporary conflicts will be laid bare? And if we recognize that White privilege really is privilege, what will it mean for Jewish antiracists to give up the fantasy that they ever really had it to begin with?

[...]

Likewise, as much as I draw inspiration from the Jewish community, and as much as I adore my Jewish partner and friends, it was my organizing against antisemitism as a Black antiracist that first pulled me to the Jewish community, not the other way around. I developed an analysis of antisemitism because I wanted to smash White supremacy; because I wanted to be free. If we acknowledge that White nationalism clearly and forcefully names Jews as non-white, and did so in the very fiber of its emergence as a post-civil rights right-wing revolutionary movement, then we are forced to recognize our own ignorance about the country  we thought we lived in. It is time to have that conversation.

-from Eric K. Ward's essay Skin In The Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism

[wickedsrest-rp]

Name: Jasper H. Langston Species: Spellcaster Occupation: Geology Professor Age: 32 Years Old Played By: Joe Face Claim: Dev Patel

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but probably more the stones than the sticks."

Professor Jasper H. Langston is a geology professor at the University of Maine in Wicked’s Rest. He lives alone at his residence, Langston Manor, at Seven Peaks. Unbeknownst to most people, he is also a spellcaster with a special affinity for earth elemental magic. Outside of academia, he frequently holds solo expeditions into the Mines, hoping to find a friend he had lost so many years ago.

Speaking of so many years ago, Jasper also lost something else, a lot of someone else. As far as he knows, he was an orphan abandoned by his parents and adopted by his uncle, Flint Langston. What he doesn’t know, however, is that Flint, his biological uncle, killed every last member of their family. Why? Because Flint, who was not a spellcaster, believed that magic had plagued their family. Flint believed that the mystic arts were a curse upon their bloodline. Flint believed he was the only one who saw it, who needed to do something, and who had the grit and determination to save their legacy and wrest it from “Satan” himself.

Flint, however, didn’t believe that he had to kill the baby Jasper. It would have been too much for him. So, he adopted the boy, told him lies about his parents, and made sure to always remind him to never go into the Mines. Flint believed that the Mines would somehow seduce Jasper toward magic, a fate that he wanted to prevent so he could absolutely purge the demonic taint of the unholy arts upon their family. Slowly, and little by little, Flint raised Jasper far from magic, believing that he had snuffed out any supernatural flame within the boy, the same boy who would then help usher in a new path for their family, a path far away from the magic their family had practiced for generations.

Unfortunately for Flint, he would not be the only influence in Jasper’s life. Ostracized by his peers for losing his family and for living with his creepy uncle in an equally creepy cabin in the woods mountains, Jasper would inevitably make friends with another outsider, a young girl named Faith. Jasper’s first friend inspired in him a curiosity for the forbidden fruit, and together, the pair went under Flint’s nose to explore the mines. Every Saturday night, after Flint would be long asleep, the children would venture out into the tunnels, until that one tragic time when Jasper lost Faith to the haunting shadows of the mines.

Flint was furious when he found out what had happened. He didn’t care that Jasper, still a young boy, was traumatized by the event, by the disappearance of his friend. All Flint cared about was that he stop exploring the mines. But Jasper would not be denied. Despite being continuously grounded and strictly surveilled by his uncle, he still managed to continue sneaking into the mines whenever he could, trying to find Faith but never really getting any closure, never really making any progress on his own.

So he made new friends, the kind that would make Flint go on another murderous rampage, and started to dabble in magic to try and find Faith, ironically making the old man's fears come true. Jasper quickly found out his affinity for earth elemental magic, though he still had no idea why that was, but could not find an actual mentor to teach him the basics of spellcasting. Most of what Jasper learned, he learned himself. Or through sketchy means and terrible makeshift “teachers.” But he still could not find Faith.

A few months ago, Flint Langston passed away. A few weeks ago, Professor Jasper H. Langston finished overhauling Langston Manor, turning it into a more comfortable lair of sorts to live in. A few days ago, the geology professor reopened the entrance to the mines on the manor grounds.

How long will it take for him to finally find Faith? Or should the question be: How long will it take for the mines to claim him as well? Over time, mountains crumble while hills are raised. Which one will Professor Jasper H. Langston be?

Character Facts:

Personality: Diplomatic, enigmatic, aloof, distant, self-reliant, mediatory, even-handed, fair, indifferent, impartial

Jasper comes from a long line of spellcasters but he isn’t aware of such information because his non-spellcaster uncle, Flint, who believed their magic was a curse on their bloodline, murdered them all, only sparing Jasper who was still a baby back then. 

Jasper lost a friend, Faith, while exploring the Mines, and despite his uncle’s warnings, has kept returning to the Mines to try and find them. It got so bad that his uncle had the mines’ entrance on the manor grounds closed. Upon his uncle’s death, however, he reopened that same entrance to make his expeditions easier and closer to home. So far, zero deaths.

Desperate and obsessed, Jasper recently pursued magic to help him in his crusade to find his friend Faith. Because of his lineage, he has a natural affinity for earth elemental magic, but because he’s taken to magic a little late in his life, and because he’s had no real mentor or actual training, and because his work schedule is hell, he is barely decent at it.

A few summers ago, Jasper dated his fellow professor at the University of Maine, Nancy Go, who teaches business and economics. She still has a key to his place and often spends nights in one of the rooms even without his permission.

He has taken his geology mentor’s daughter as his protégé, even though he’s aware that the girl would rather be a performer than follow in his very strict father’s footsteps.

Jasper has a dog named Val, short for Valentine, who’s a cross between a beagle and a Japanese spitz. Born on February 14, Val has her own room in the manor and is very loud when it comes to strangers but is very docile in Nancy’s presence. Nancy could murder Jasper in cold blood and Val would just watch. 

The H in “Jasper H. Langston” stands for Harlan.

[peace-coast-island]

Diary of a Junebug

Hot chocolate, a box of gadgets and gizmos, and a sketchbook full of unrealized dreams

There’s nothing like a mountain mocha hot chocolate after a busy day of adventuring and conducting research in the Maidshire Mountains. Hanging out with Ludwig and the Kayode triplets have always been an interesting experience.

When was the last time we all hung out together? I felt like it’s been a couple years since I’ve tagged along with Ludwig on one of his adventures. This one in particular needs a lot of volunteers since we’re mostly searching for stuff and trying to figure things out as the information we have is incomplete. So, accompanying him besides me, the triplets, and Daisy Jane are, Louie, Almie, Pippa, and a bunch of inventors from One Step Forward.

Ludwig’s friend, Edward Ushkton, is the founder of One Step Forward, a company that allows inventors to make their dreams a reality. I’ve heard a bit about him and his accomplishments. He and Ludwig go way back, so they and their families are well acquainted.

The purpose of this trip is to honor the memory of a young and promising inventor who had a lot of potential. I remember hearing a bit about him and how he died under mysterious circumstances. The investigation resulted in the shutdown of a rival company that recruited him when other scandals were uncovered.

Though Finn Costain’s life and career was short, he left a huge impact on his mentor and fellow inventors. According to Jenny, even though Edward Ushkton has achieved a lot, he’s the kind of person who tends to dwell on his failures. It’s been nearly 10 years since Finn’s death and he still blames himself for what happened.

From what I gather, I feel like it’s one of those things where you did everything you could, but at the same time, things could’ve been handled better. Finn was the kind of person who was initially ridiculed, a common thing for eccentric geniuses like him. He was described as someone who’s selfless to a fault, someone who was desperate to fit in but was punished for being different.

A lot of his inventions failed, which made him a bigger target for ridicule. However, Ludwig said that he was no different than any other inventor. Failure’s a part of the process, that’s just how they figure things out and move forward. And like many inventors, Finn was persistent, so he kept going. And eventually, by chance, he met his idol, Edward Ushkton.

At the time, Finn had left his hometown despite his father’s objections. He was having trouble when he was rescued by Ushkton’s wife. He got to know the family and worked at One Step Forward as an assistant while being mentored by Ushkton.

Several months later, Finn returned home and created an irrigation to address an ongoing problem with the dam over there. At first, his plans were ridiculed, even when One Step Forward backed him. Still, he persisted on moving forward with his project, and he succeeded.

The town became prosperous after that, which led to a new set of problems as people got greedy. Finn went through desperate measures to fix things by orchestrating a crisis in order to get everyone to work together. Had it not worked, the entire town would’ve flooded - that was how far he was willing to go and how much trust he had put in the people. A risky gamble that worked out, but like with Project Floodgate, that solution opened up to new conflicts.

This time, a once big shot company and rival of One Step Forward, In-New-vations, took Finn in. He had planned to go back to One Step Forward, but was lured in by the glitz and glamor In-New-Vations claimed they would open him up to. At the time, no one knew of the scandals the company was involved in, though Ushkton had his reservations.

And from there, that’s where it all went downhill for Finn. They manipulated and exploited him, cut him off from his friends, forced him to go against his principles, and finally drove him to suicide. He disappeared after getting into an argument with his father and the CEO of In-New-Vations acted like he never existed when questioned about his whereabouts.

Ushkton decided to launch a massive investigation after digging some stuff up about In-New-Vations. Ludwig and Clarence assisted him as well. Later, a group of high school kids - one of them happened to be Ushkton’s son - found a boat with a bunch of blueprints and hard drives that belonged to Finn. Before jumping into the river, he left behind a lot of evidence that would bring In-New-Vations crashing down and apologized for leaving everyone else to clean up his messes again.

To think how easily we can be led astray. Ludwig worked with Finn on a couple projects and described him as a bright kid who just needed some direction. He wouldn’t have gotten far without his persistence, but having grown up with people often brushed him, Ludwig felt that maybe that was why Finn needed validation. He pointed out that most of the town didn’t really support Finn until he became famous, so he questions their sincerity to this day. That’s why it made perfect sense to Ludwig why Finn let the fame and In-New-Vations get to his head, and why he couldn’t live with himself afterwards.

The triplets and Louie met Finn a handful of times when he was with Ludwig and enjoyed his company. Had he not lived so far away, maybe he would’ve been able to become Ludwig’s assistant. Jenny said that Essie and Clarence got along super well with him and that maybe Ortensia would’ve liked him too.

That was probably the first time I’ve heard Jenny talk about her mother casually. I don’t know too much about that situation other than things got complicated when Clarence sacrificed himself and Ortensia came back into the picture. We kinda had a general consensus not to pry on that. And as for the triplets, I don’t think they really know what’s going on anyway. Ortensia may be their mother, but she hasn’t been around for most of their lives, so she’s nothing more than a stranger to them.

According to Ludwig and Essie, she and the triplets felt that it was best if they kept their distance. The truth is, the triplets don’t really have an opinion on their mother, or more accurately, how they feel about her. Clarence, Essie, and Ludwig were the ones that raised them, not her. I think it was Clarry who said something along the lines of she’s got her own life and they have theirs.

There had been some resentment at first but by now they just kinda accepted that they can’t force something that isn’t there. From what I get, Ortensia wasn’t the kind of person who was meant to be a parent. Even if she hadn’t disappeared on an adventure gone wrong, it probably wouldn’t change the fact that was and will always be a thrill seeker.

I imagine she’s probably similar to Xenia’s mother - the triplets have made similar comparisons. Xenia’s mother was a daredevil who constantly disregarded her safety for the thrill of adventure. Just as many had predicted, she paid the price with her life and left behind a daughter who barely remembers her.

The triplets had long accepted that their mother’s fate was something similar, so it stirred up complicated feelings when it turned out that she was alive, although trapped somewhere for years. That, and the fact that their uncle sacrificed himself to free her, which resulted in her being forced to kill her brother - or the shell of what’s left of him, as they later found out - really fucked things up, to put it simply.

Lyndi mentioned that Ortensia drops by Essie’s from time to time, but even then, she and her sisters rarely talk to her. After all, by the time she came back in the picture, the triplets were just staring college. Plus, she was too wrapped up in her brother and the guilt she had for having to kill him. That’s still another sore spot between her and the triplets. And I’m afraid that’s one that might never be resolved.

Like with Finn Costain, it feels like one of those scenarios where everything went wrong and there was no good outcome no matter how hard you try. I’m not trying to be too negative, and as much as I wish that things could have turned out better, there’s really no use getting tied up in what could have been.

Should things have ended up this way? Probably not. But what’s happened is past and all we could really do is hopefully not make the same mistakes.

Anyway, so a while back, Ushkton and Ludwig found a box of stuff from Finn’s old office in One Step Forward that was thought to be lost. When Finn returned home to propose Floodgate, he had intended to return to One Step Forward and get his own office as well. That’s how half his stuff ended up over there, and he never got the chance to come back. His office space went to someone else and his stuff were put in storage, only to get misplaced when the company relocated.

Ushkton later discovered that most of Finn’s stuff ended up in a storage space, though there’s still some things that haven’t been recovered yet. At least most of the stuff they found were prototypes, blueprints, files - basically bits and pieces of his work during his time there. Even though a lot of his projects never came to fruition, it’s still worth looking into and archiving.

One notable find was a sketchbook where Finn jotted down pretty much everything. At first glance, it’s hard to decipher, but Ushkton and Ludwig have worked with him enough to understand how his mind works. It’s amazing to see all the work left behind on these pages. All those ideas and dreams, stored away in an old sketchbook.

Even after we’re long gone, we leave something behind, something to remind the world that we had long existed, no matter how insignificant we are.

By using Finn’s research, Ushkton and Ludwig were able to continue with this thing codenamed Project Wisdom. It was some collaboration thing with Maidshire University’s School of Science - a series of research projects, to be accurate. Finn was working with some researchers over there and made valuable contributions to their work.

This project in particular needs a lot of volunteers to clean up a lake and collect plant specimens. Decades ago it was polluted because of some weapons testing facility several blocks away. Ludwig said by the time the facility closed, the lake was so badly polluted that it had to be closed off to the public.

Efforts had been made to clean it up but it was still a huge undertaking. A lot of progress has been done over the past twenty years thanks to Maidshire and One Step Forward. A lot of the research over there has to do with environmental science and combating pollution. That was where Finn was inspired to start Project Floodgate.

The lake, at first glance, doesn’t look too remarkable. But compared with pictures from thirty years ago, it’s amazing to see how much pollution there was. The area looked like a landfill! If they continue to make steady progress, the city hopes to eventually open the lake to the public within the next five years.

When we’re not at the lake, we’re checking out the shops and hanging out the cafes. There’s this popular cafe near the university that’s famous for its mountain mocha hot chocolate. The weather’s been a little chilly so hot chocolate feels just right.

I can see why it’s popular as the consistency is perfect - not too watery or rich, so it’s something I can enjoy without getting tired of it quickly. The coffee balances well with the dark chocolate - I’m thinking kinda like a fancy and richer latte, if that makes sense. The one they serve at the university cafe’s considered the classic but every place has their own spin on it. Sorry to be basic, but the classic’s my favorite, though the rest are good too.

Tomorrow’s more of the same - cleanup at the lake and then chilling for the rest of the day - which I don’t mind. Jenny’s our tour guide as she’s the most familiar with the area since she tags along with Ludwig the most, so she covered a lot of ground.

Along with this being a nice little vacation, it also feels nice to contribute to someone’s life’s work in hopes of building a better future. No matter how short or seemingly insignificant or forgettable someone’s life may be, they will always leave something behind, whether it be memories or something physical that represents who they were.

Ushkton worked hard to protect Finn’s integrity, not just as an inventor, but as a person too. He could’ve easily just taken Finn’s work and run with it while leaving him as merely a footnote, but from I what I see, he’s not that kind of person. I think the fact that he goes out of his way to show respect like that says a lot about him.

To pick up where someone left off is, in my opinion, something you should do if you know for a fact that you’re doing it out of respect for them. Finn was someone who had a lot of dreams and ambitions, and it’s a shame that he was never able to act on many of them. But that doesn’t diminish his accomplishments, and nor should he only be known for what could have been.

Read on AO3

[fraink5-writes]

In the Names of Freedom - Chapter 4

As I promised in the notes of the last chapter (if you actually read those), I am publishing the next one now to make up for how short the previous was!

As always, my editor was @leio13 and she deserves the biggest thanks!

Summary: After confirming the death of his latest target, Xiao’s secret mission is interrupted by an eccentric stranger in green, who claims to be Xiao’s protector! But the reality is much more convoluted… What destiny could possibly link Xiao with Venti—an assassin of hitmen?

This chapter can also be found on Ao3 here. Without further ado, please enjoy!

Qingce Village was indeed the quaint little village its reputation made it out to be. Despite the great number of tourists, the village proper had retained the structure and atmosphere of an old-fashioned Liyue town. The surrounding valley was terraced with autumn-colored flowers, whose sweet scent seemed to nullify the smell of sweaty pilgrims who hiked up and down the mountains in lines.

Following behind Xiao, as soon as Venti stepped off the bus, he stretched with a yawn. “Maaaann… I'm wiped.”

"No surprise there." Xiao said flatly. "You were drinking non-stop." 

"We should find somewhere to stay, do some looking around…"

"No, I have business to do."

"Alright, Mr. No-Fun, you can cut straight to the boring stuff, and I'll enjoy the perks of visiting a new place." 

"Fine." Xiao turned and left.

As soon as Xiao left, Venti sighed with relief—finally away from his eternal gloom! Xiao viewed himself as only a tool for murder, and Venti was beginning to admit he was right. He was the most unbearably callous person Venti ever had the pleasure of meeting.

But Venti's destiny was linked to Xiao, so he would stick with him for a while more. 

Still, Venti wasn't about to let Xiao ruin the best parts of visiting a new place. Venti was first and foremost an information dealer. Qingce Village was a hub for tourists from all around and a breeding ground for criminals. There was a great wealth of information circulating through the unassuming streets. Outside of being the "Mole," he was also Venti, the greatest bard in Teyvat. As Venti, he needed to take in all the magnificent sights the world had to offer. A bird blind to the changing skies as he soars might as well be in a cage.

In any case, Venti's first order of business was to find a place to lodge. The best source of info on this matter would undoubtedly be a community leader. In Qingce Village, Venti soon gathered, the makeshift Village Chef took the form of an elderly woman referred to as Granny Ruoxin.

Venti put on a curious smile and approached the old lady. "Excuse me, Ma'am, but where are the affordable hotels in this village?"

Granny Ruoxin looked him up and down. "...Are you… here to perform?"

Venti's eyes went wide. Clearly, he had underestimated her discerning wisdom. "Yes! Well, sort of… I'm Venti, a bard from Mondstadt. I'm here with my partner as a tourist, but unfortunately, I spent most of my savings on the long journey. Nevertheless, I still hope to find new poetic inspiration—and, of course, get my name out there!"

"Oh wonderful!" Granny Ruoxin looked expectant. "Would you mind performing for the permanent residents here? They could use a breath of fresh air like yourself."

"I'd be delighted! Just give me today to get settled and do some sightseeing, and I'll be good for tomorrow."

"Oh thank you! We haven't had a great performance here in Qingce Village in a long time." 

"I'll show them the best bard Teyvat has to offer!"

Granny Ruoxin chuckled. "You know, I used to be a performer once. An actress. In Liyue Harbor."

“What happened?”

"Well, I was young and very much in love. He was an adventurer, but he promised me that we'd settle here, in the country, together—right after a final voyage. But it ended up a lie." She sighed. "I suppose that's only fitting for an actress. You spend so much time pretending, the truth becomes hard to discern."

"Are you still waiting for him?"

She laughed again. "What would it matter if I were? I'm too old for acting. Too old for whirlwind romances. But you're still young and already more ambitious than I—don't take what you have for granted. In fact, if you wouldn't object to a humble abode, you and your partner are more than welcome to stay in my home."

"Really?!" Even better than Venti anticipated.

"It's only fair since I'm asking a favor of you."

"That'd be perfect! Thank you so much!" Venti had managed to secure not only a place to stay but also a performance gig for himself—he was feeling pretty accomplished. He could now move onto more scenic—and more intrusive—errands.

Whether for enjoying music or less wholesome activities, Venti had honed his ears, and they were perfect for eavesdropping. All he had to do was stand at a viewpoint for a few minutes, and he'd have access to tons of gossip. Most conversations were mundane garbage (grumpy children, forgotten items, etc), but if you could filter through that, there were gems to be found. When Venti tired of a crowd, he simply sauntered to a different hotspot.

He was still in the village proper, at an expensive restaurant with a view, when a wave of hushed whispers hit the surrounding tables.

"Did you hear? There's a fire."

"There's a fire at the Dragon's Scale Hotel!"

A fire…? Venti had witnessed many disasters during his travels—none of which were accidental. 

Venti excused himself from his table, throwing a good chunk of mora at the bartender to cover his drink, and rushed to the source of the rumors. The Dragon's Scale Hotel was a decently large hotel that drew in crowds through its supposed ties to Qingce Village's mythological history. For its popularity, Venti had also overheard a fair share of complaints (missing items, creaking ceilings at night…), but frequent fire alarms wasn't one of them.

In fact, a fire in Qingce Village was a big deal. Older buildings meant relaxed safety standards. And its relative isolation meant that it would probably take a half-hour for a fire crew to reach the site of the fire. The whole town was a disaster waiting to happen, so local businesses took fire alarms very seriously.

When Venti arrived on the scene, he was met by throngs of people regrouping outside and a blaring alarm—but no fire. Someone must have evacuated the building for their own purposes. It could have been owners, hoping to rummage through their patrons' belongings again, but such a flagrant crime came with too many risks. The alternative was… Xiao.

In either case, Venti couldn't wait to find out what all the hype inside the hotel was about. 

Sneaking through the nebulous cluster of panicked people would be a piece of cake. The real hard part was inside. Venti couldn't be certain about the status of the "fire," and, more than that, he really didn't want to run into people. Although Venti was confident in his assessment that the Dragon's Scale Hotel was run by criminals, he had no evidence that they were connected to Liyue Harbor. He wanted to avoid any confrontations with random petty thieves.

Luckily for him, there wasn't a soul near Venti's window of choice, which turned out to be in the kitchen. There was no fire in there either, just an abundance of active sprinklers. He could, however, hear the hurried creaks of multiple footsteps on an upper floor. It didn't sound like fighting, but that could change at any moment. Venti wasn't in a rush to meet them either, so he decided to stick with the ground floor.

Since he was in the kitchen, his first destination was, of course, the wine selection. None were particularly vintage, but there was a decent mix of top-brand Liyue wines and local creations. Venti took mental note of some of the labels for future taste testing. Then he decided to move along with more haste—he had no idea when the owners, or even the fire department, would show up and end his perusal.

While exploring the hall, the first detail that caught Venti's eye was the lack of security cameras. There was an excessive number of blaring alarms and raining sprinklers to assuage guests' concerns but nothing that could implicate any criminals. 

The second oddity was the staff room. Though the hotel liked to play at being a historical building, the facade was dropped for the staff room, which was guarded by a digital keypad. Luckily for Venti, the door was already open. 

As it turned out, the staff room wasn't much of a room at all. It was instead a stairwell leading to a basement. With an ounce of caution, Venti crept down the stairs, but he stopped when he picked up a sweet scent wafting up—

Sleeping gas?! Venti instinctively covered his nose and mouth. After a quick inhale, he held his breath. His exploration was on limited time now. 

The owners probably weren't downstairs, but some enticing evidence most likely would be. So Venti jumped down. At the bottom, there was a large chamber with mounds of stolen treasures. In the center, there was a desk, piled with junk and a desktop computer. And at the foot of the desk was a curled up body. It was Xiao's. 

He really fell for this type of trap? Venti would've sighed, but he didn't want to end up like Xiao on the ground. After confirming Xiao's pulse, Venti reluctantly picked up his body, throwing it over his back. If Venti had time, he would have checked the computer, but he was running low on oxygen, and, as it was, he already had to carry Xiao up and out of the building before he could breathe. There probably was a camera hidden somewhere in that room, but that was beyond Venti's concerns.

In order to avoid stirring up attention, Venti decided to exit through a back window. Fortunately, Xiao was surprisingly light as though he had systematically cut out all excess from his life. With his cheek on Venti's right shoulder, his breath was light and slow. If he remained asleep like this, Venti could carry him with no problem.

However, Xiao's peaceful sleep did not last. As the distance between the noxious gas and Venti grew, Xiao's heartbeat sped up, accelerating his uneven breathing at the same time. Then came the first kick. Then another.

"...Xiao?" Venti cast a glance over his shoulder where Xiao's head was still resting motionless. The only response Venti received from Xiao was a few kicks and some stirs of his arms.

"If you keep that up," Venti added sternly, "I'm going to drop you."

Xiao grunted, but he kept putting up a fight. In fact, he even turned it up another notch. In between grunts and gibberish, Xiao shouted out random words. "...go! …off! …let!"

With his own internal groan, Venti tightened his grip on Xiao's feisty legs and tucked away into a nearby bamboo grove. The last thing Venti needed was for the cluster of panicked tourists to notice the apparent abduction in progress.

If only Venti had the willpower to follow through with his threat and drop Xiao where he stood… But he couldn't abandon Xiao completely defenseless. So he lumbered through the woods with the pestering burden on his back.

Carrying Xiao must have been an inextricable part of Venti's destiny, as little as he understood it. 

How does someone like you survive? One so helpless yet resistant to help?

Venti sighed before pulling Xiao's legs closer to his chest and clamping down on his flailing arms. Perhaps for his own sake more than anything else, he sang a small tune over Xiao's mumbling:

Thus under another's wing, the crane did fly

Away from his clouded nest toward a fair blue sky.

But what fate could the violent skies bring?

For two birds weren't made for one pair of wings…

[godofwar3gamespc]

God of War 3 Games Full Installer

Lord involving War III

After voyage as a result of Helheim and also claiming the heart, Kratos heals Atreus as well as exposes on the young man the pair become gods. This kind of goes together with you may expect, taking into account Atreus is just a young child. Once the crowd seeps in Modi when all over again — now beaten in addition to hit through Thor — Atreus blows as well as eliminates him, despite Kratos’ disputes. With Mimir’s completely living head right now dangling — as well as chatting incessantly — from Kratos’ belt, the trio rule away in the globe to seek a approach to Jotunheim. Right after experiencing through the corpse of your literal giant searching for a chisel, the cluster deal with Thor’s childrens. Back again at the hill, Kratos and Atreus employ their own newly uncovered lighting arrows to be able to occur the light up, after which find themselves driving a lightning monster on their way to the mountain.

God connected with Conflict (

The girl ask Kratos to send back the ability regarding optimism while using purpose involving founding god of war 3 pc download her own tip over Greece. Kratos wastes as well as seemingly wipes out himself while using Knife involving Olympus and so to trust could be spread among humanity. A dissatisfied Athena keeps empty-handed while Kratos falls over a mural of a phoenix arizona. With Kratos over as well as the power of Optimism freed, a good went up Athena ended up being unengaged to accomplish what ever the girl remembered to.

While 2018's Deity associated with Rivalry completes tie immediately here we are at the original trilogy, you can find good good sense for you to sport catch-up. If absolutely nothing more, the emotional pounds from the story's main journey nation that has a good deal a lot more result as soon as you're familiar with the episode which command Kratos to this particular position. The game ends up being fashionable reviewers' gives, with we're most excitedly participating in what is just about the most assumed video game on the year. The sweeping part of the experience is breathless, and so substantial with impressive, in which near rest the good ask involving just how this could be topped later in the entertainment.

It has a vintage structure into it, being a tight hold about speed while Kratos bats berrel in quite create gauntlets in addition to the ancient greek stars itching for being demolished by the end. The archetype replicates clearly throughout The almighty associated with Hostilities 3, turning out to be all the more apparent because Kratos drops look of the initial drive and just almost bends toward growing 100% killing conclusion. If you’re simply just becoming a member of us, God of War 3 begins using the consistently wronged Kratos within the cusp connected with smashing Zeus, the manipulative god presiding over Instal Olympus with a full interactive diorama formed beyond soft Language of ancient greece mythology. Kratos have got solicited a nation involving behemoths to assist him ascend Zeus’ stronghold, rend the idea case by means of part and then particular vengeance for, fit … ” consequently loudly this clips the action music, that appears like sufficient backdrop to obtain a fist-pumping activity sport head out.

By the end in the entertainment, Kratos and also Atreus go to rest, and also awaken into a holiday coming from a enraged Thor. Baldur at some point attempts to be able to execute Freya regarding wrecking his days by simply taking away their capability to experience anything regarding millennia. Freya apologizes to Baldur in an effort to generate his or her forgiveness, but Baldur won't hand it positive; he still plans for you to killing Freya. Freya tells Baldur she’s prepared to surrender the woman go if it’ll cause him happy, although Kratos paces throughout in addition to takein Baldur’s fretboard yet again, killing him permanently.

To continue promising that you malware-free directory involving plans with apps, each of our workforce gets included a Report Software element in each and every catalog leaf to hooks your comments back to us. The Burial place associated with Ares—housing the earlier Lord associated with War's remains—and the municipality associated with Olympia rest around the sides involving Mount Olympus. Merely ahead of the capital is the Corridor connected with Eos, a buried cavern touch on the base involving Olympus. The Building with the Lords may be the property in the Olympians, with stories the Forum (a tiny coliseum), Hera's Plots, plus the slot provided associated with Aphrodite and Poseidon. The Web is often a great aerial puzzle developed with the designer Daedalus in order to imprison Pandora in the Cave associated with Olympus, property involving Skorpius and its particular offspring. The Underworld, governed simply by Hades also separated with the Lake Styx, could be the sphere in the over.

Naturally Divinity involving Hostilities III, the series's very first expedition for the PlayStation 3, have got roughly high expectancies that come with the item. The end result is obviously a valuable door in to the collection, however should it really deliver the sort of spellbinding end we live irritated with? The cliffhanger ending regarding The almighty regarding Campaign II put away the gambler using the tantalizing believed of any no-holds-barred destroying spree as a result of Bracket Olympus, along with in most cases that's what we obtain. During the opening sport, Kratos work-in by having a chains associated with duties for you to accord him the electricity to handle behind Ares himself.

But, Kratos been his or her choice, the one which led to a lot personal advance also promotion. Zeus became at first a kind chief, yet when Pandora's Pack ended up being initiated, he / she was there distorted simply by Terror. He then became harsh and paranoid, in addition to enormously worried Kratos because Levelled Enthusiast. The girl demise immediately compares Hades in opposition to Kratos, however, what Hades believes the girl collapse just one more minor touching him by Kratos. Ares became got rid of in Kratos inside God associated with Warfare (2005), resulting in Kratos turning out to be the brand new idol of War. Ares sits entombed in frost, which area is usually an interesting callback to the essential match. Kratos journeys across the underworld, gradually claiming their got rid of, god-killing Blade connected with Olympus and also exhausting this in order to assassinate Hades. That is merely the beginning of what exactly works out to become a murderous rampage with the Ancient greek pantheon, Titans and spirits similar.

Without any really significant upgrades to what had been a terrific ready when first released, this might be considered a challenging push on broad value. Thankfully, Divinity of Competition III Remastered should be only $40, understanding that price level is fairly somewhat simpler to take. Devotees in the series be expecting cool issues, since the preceding chapters with the franchise organized while a few of the very best gaming expertises coming from all occasion. The Goodness connected with Competition III crew could have simply hit a whole new cover involving color within the occurring system, thought way up roughly deep boss battles, along with requested the item a day. Kratos may also acquire quite a few fresh guns on this last extend regarding the journey, consisting of soul-stealing series through Hades then the boxing-glove-like Cestus from the great Hercules. Artilleries could be substituted personally helping the D-pad, as well as circuited in around the escape in pressing L1 along with X.