#by 'every time' i mean: when viktor joined (this was not successful)

[non-plutonian-druid]

[ID: a comic in the TUA paranatural au, depicting Patch recruiting Lila to spy on the Activity Club for her. Both of them are about twelve. The first three panels are a flashback of an argument between Diego and Patch.

Flashback, Panel 1: A younger Patch shouts at a younger Diego, "WHAT is the Activity Club!" Diego growls "None of your business."

Panel 2: Patch says, teary-eyed, "You've been so different since you joined."

Panel 3: Diego looks guilty while Patch continues, "It's like it ate your brain! Why won't you talk to me anymore?"

Present Day, Panel 1: Patch is leaning on a desk while Lila sits on it. Patch says, "So, yeah. That's why I want to know what the Activity Club does."

Panel 2: Lila kicks her feet and says " And that's why you want me to join YOUR club. So I can spy on them for you." Patch smiles, embarrassed, and says "Yeah, basically."

Panel 3: Patch hunches her shoulders, saying, "It sounds bad when you say it like that."

Panel 4: She looks beseechingly up at Lila. "But I'm really worried about him. He won't talk to any of his friends. What the hell did they do to him!"

Panel 5: Lila waves her hand reassuringly. "No, I totally get it!"

Panel 6: Lila holds out her hand to Patch, smiling. "I'll tell you everything I learn."

Panel 7: She continues, "Trust me." Meanwhile, she writes a list in a notebook, headed with "Lies for Patch". End ID]

[orphicrose]

Hello! May I request some fem!reader x Viktor from Arcane please? Perhaps some late night studying with him, fluff all the way!! Do whatever gets you feeling creative, thank you! <3

Arcane augmentation (Viktor x Fem!Reader)

Thank you for the request! I did my best with this one.

Tags : Fluff

--------------------------------

Viktor was painfully addicted to his work, after how much success his projects had finally received. Hextech was the most advanced that Piltover had experienced yet, and he wasn't about to let it it fester. No. He dreamed big.

Finding himself engrossed in his studies once again in the comfort of his lab. Fidgeting with the glowing orb every now and then, viewing its behavior, then jotting a scribble of notes in his book as fast as his thoughts rolled in.

"Back at it again, Vik?" her warm smile could be felt without him having to turn to look at her. "what brings you to the lab at this hour?"

"I find solace in the pursuit of knowledge" Viktor confessed. Tapping his pen against the desk as his eyes followed the whirs and tumbles of the blue stone inside the metal contraption. "And it seems we share a similar passion"

Y/n took a chair next to his, eyes lighting up at the specimen in front of her. "What are you studying" she struggled to look away from its beauty.

"I am delving into the intricacies of arcane augmentation" he motioned towards the doodles and math on his page, face becoming more ambitious as he spoke.

"using this?" She pointed to the glowing power source on the table

"Yes, It is the foundation of hextech" He turned to face her in his chair, mapping her face while she was unaware of the stares.

They had known each other for quite some time, studying in university together on the same course. And sticking with each other in the field of science. Y/n became a great scientist of her own nature, but after hearing of his project she couldn't help but join their team. His passion of conjoining magic to their day to day. And his further passion of improving the under city.

Her hand left her side, towards the orb, only to be taken in by Viktor's. "Don't touch it, we still don't know what it will do to human skin when active" his fingers mindlessly stroked the soft skin on the back of her hand. He put her hand down when he realized, hurrying to his feet as best he can. A beautifully carved stick assisting him.

"Watch this"

He hobbled over to another desk sat in the corner of the room, turning a metal handle till it clicked. A few seconds passed of nothingness. But then the orb began to spin vigorously, causing y/n to jump out of her chair and back. The cage around it lowered and the orb was set loose, giving out hues of sparkling waves. Viktor stood watching her expressions as their feet slowly moved off the ground. The waves stopping when gravity ceased to exist.

"Viktor?" A half worried voice expelled from the young lady, looking as if she was trying to swim in the air and failing.

"Don't worry" His voice soothed her, coming from behind as his arms wrapped around her to stable her. "This is one of the many wonders of hextech, I just haven't completely figured out how it would be useful yet." He laughed softly, spinning her in the air to see his face.

She soon realized there was no danger and let herself enjoy the brief moment of flying. "This is amazing, we are floating!" She leapt backwards, letting the air move her around the room as if she was a fish experiencing the sea for the first time. The two danced together, two meters off the ground. Viktor reveling in the freedom on his legs, appreciating being able to move them.

They soon began their descent as the magic wore off. Somehow managing to land on their feet.

"That was amazing, you're amazing" y/n turned to the man in front of her. He chuckled, looking away as a small amount of red painted his cheeks.

"Would you care to help me? Study, i mean." He motioned towards the tech back on his desk like it was before. Y/n excitedly sitting back in her chair and moving it closer in to the desk.

"I'd love nothing more"

The two sat together, chatting away till the sun began to dawn on them. Not even needing coffee to keep them awake, their passions and their good companies being caffein enough.

Math scribbled on hundreds of pieces of paper. Their goal, figure out how to duplicate the mass. Viktor had a theory that this energy source was somehow alive, which meant the organism could be duplicated. Like a plant. By suspending the organism in a growth medium, like agar, you can duplicate or grow a plant. He just needed to figure out how to access its 'DNA', considering it was sealed in a hard case.

"Wait" y/n grabbed his note book, bringing it closely to her face. "Your math... it's wrong. That 'x' shouldn't be there" She pointed to the mistake on the page, Viktor's face showing the puzzle pieces in his head clicking together.

"That's why it didn't work" He mumbled to himself, hurriedly working to fix his mistake. "You're a genius, y/n"

His eyes met hers, both realizing their mystery had been solved. Figuring out how to shatter the shell around it safely.

They found themselves in each others arms in a tight embrace, one they had needed for a long time. Not pulling away when they noticed the bold move.

Viktor cleared his throat, looking down at her in his arms. "Would you care to test out our theory with me?"

"Absolutely"

[theothermercedesdriver-main]

Why I Love Yuri On Ice: A Brief Lesson in Music Theory

I began learning Yuri On Ice on the piano a couple months ago, and here’s my thoughts on it:

No song, in the 10 years that I have been studying music, has been so enticing, made me so desperate to master it, that I would dedicate as much time and amount of headspace to it that I have for Yuri on Ice.

It is due to such intense concentration and analysis that I began to notice the true beauty of this song, which lies in the music theory weaved between each note. Music theory is like any conspiracy- sometimes it’s there, sometimes it isn’t, and it can be hard to distinguish the red herrings from the true intent of a piece. However, in the case of Yuri on Ice, my theory connected so well to every clue laid out throughout both the song and the show, the thought of it being incorrect never crossed my mind.

First, to understand the theory laid out in song form, it is important to examine it from a visual perspective. The song, Yuri on Ice, comes from the similarly-named anime TV show Yuri!!! On Ice. For anyone that hasn’t seen the show, it tells the tale of Japanese figure skater Yuuri Katsuki, who has reached rock bottom in his career and close to giving up as a skater, until his childhood hero and current competitor Viktor Nikivorof decides to coach him. Together, the two progress through the many rounds of an international skating championship, learning about life, love and each other along the way. It is a simple narrative, but presented masterfully, and the romance between the two is one that is widely beloved by fans all over the world.

As the show is based around figure skating, there are many instances where we see Yuuri perform, each one set to music of some kind. This is where Yuri on Ice comes in. It is introduced as a song written and recorded for Yuuri’s Free Skate Program by a friend of his attending a music conservatory. He specifically requests a song to represent his skating career, highlighting the more recent events of meeting Viktor and renewing his confidence to skate one more time. 

Now, unpacking the music theory in all of that may first appear a little difficult, as the main way of understanding a song in media is analyzing where and when it is played. In movies produced by studios like Star Wars or Marvel, there are specific character/moment themes that are played when the characters they represent are onscreen, or even more frivolously, when anything important happens. Unfortunately, in the case of Yuri on Ice, the song is almost exclusively played while Yuuri is performing in competitions, moments that don’t include a whole lot of emotional weight or relevance.

But this doesn’t mean that the theme does not appear elsewhere. Almost every instrumental song throughout the show contains elements of the Yuri on Ice theme (all composed around the main notes Ab, G, F, and Eb), so much so that I find it hard to not consider all of them the same song. It is most prominent in the song Heartbeats, which plays during many important moments between the couple.

Even more important than that, however, is the fact that music theory concerns more than just the placement of a song or theme. The actual notes in a song, and how they are composed to interact with each other, is far more crucial to any meaning it intends to hold.

As I said, Yuri!!! On Ice follows a very specific progression of Yuuri’s connection to Viktor. He starts off alone, meets Viktor, starts working with him (but a bit clumsily), learns to operate in unison, and it all culminates with the two falling in love by the end. The realization that I came to while learning this piece is that the song itself expresses their story perfectly.

To explain, let’s assume that the right hand (which plays the top of the piano) represents Yuuri, and the left represents Viktor. Yuri on Ice starts off with a simple trill played almost entirely by the right hand. There is no backing, no harmony, and the segment is essentially a solo. Just as Yuuri is in the early episodes, it is an isolated sound, with nothing to compliment or amplify it.

After a couple bars of this trill emerges one, resonant bass note. I believe this represents the moment in the show where Viktor and Yuuri cross paths, but do not interact. One brief moment of his presence in Yuuri’s life, and then it’s gone.

Following are a couple more bars of the trill, then, just as Viktor found his way into Yuuri’s life unexpectedly, the left hand returns out of nowhere, joining the right hand to play a fast-paced arpeggio sequence. Despite the emphasis in this being placed on the right hand, both are required to complete the segment, and the left hand works to amplify the sound of the right.

After the arpeggios comes a crossover sequence that truly utilizes both hands. As the right plays the main portion of the melody, the left plays the bass while occasionally crossing over the right to complete the melody. Both hands must be played in perfect unison to achieve the effect of one harmonious tune. By this point, Yuuri and Viktor have begun to work together, falling into place as partners both on and off the ice, and the song expresses how far they’ve come and the beauty that they can create together.

The song essentially continues in that manner for another 3 minutes, every segment relying on both hands to sound complete, just as Viktor and Yuuri needed to remain together to retain their success on the ice and as humans.

In essence, the song Yuri On Ice may not have lyrics to state what it represents, but the evidence is there among the notes if you only know where to look. It’s a love song, as poetic as any other, telling the tale of one of the greatest love stories ever written, without ever having to state that explicitly.

[route22ny]

By Timothy Snyder

Published Jan. 9, 2021 - Updated Jan. 10, 2021, 10:12 a.m. ET

When Donald Trump stood before his followers on Jan. 6 and urged them to march on the United States Capitol, he was doing what he had always done. He never took electoral democracy seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version.

Even when he won, in 2016, he insisted that the election was fraudulent — that millions of false votes were cast for his opponent. In 2020, in the knowledge that he was trailing Joseph R. Biden in the polls, he spent months claiming that the presidential election would be rigged and signaling that he would not accept the results if they did not favor him. He wrongly claimed on Election Day that he had won and then steadily hardened his rhetoric: With time, his victory became a historic landslide and the various conspiracies that denied it ever more sophisticated and implausible.

People believed him, which is not at all surprising. It takes a tremendous amount of work to educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of believing what they already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make sense of their own previous choices. Plato noted a particular risk for tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and enablers. Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace. Aware of these risks and others, the framers of the Constitution instituted a system of checks and balances. The point was not simply to ensure that no one branch of government dominated the others but also to anchor in institutions different points of view.

In this sense, the responsibility for Trump’s push to overturn an election must be shared by a very large number of Republican members of Congress. Rather than contradict Trump from the beginning, they allowed his electoral fiction to flourish. They had different reasons for doing so. One group of Republicans is concerned above all with gaming the system to maintain power, taking full advantage of constitutional obscurities, gerrymandering and dark money to win elections with a minority of motivated voters. They have no interest in the collapse of the peculiar form of representation that allows their minority party disproportionate control of government. The most important among them, Mitch McConnell, indulged Trump’s lie while making no comment on its consequences.

Yet other Republicans saw the situation differently: They might actually break the system and have power without democracy. The split between these two groups, the gamers and the breakers, became sharply visible on Dec. 30, when Senator Josh Hawley announced that he would support Trump’s challenge by questioning the validity of the electoral votes on Jan. 6. Ted Cruz then promised his own support, joined by about 10 other senators. More than a hundred Republican representatives took the same position. For many, this seemed like nothing more than a show: challenges to states’ electoral votes would force delays and floor votes but would not affect the outcome.

Yet for Congress to traduce its basic functions had a price. An elected institution that opposes elections is inviting its own overthrow. Members of Congress who sustained the president’s lie, despite the available and unambiguous evidence, betrayed their constitutional mission. Making his fictions the basis of congressional action gave them flesh. Now Trump could demand that senators and congressmen bow to his will. He could place personal responsibility upon Mike Pence, in charge of the formal proceedings, to pervert them. And on Jan. 6, he directed his followers to exert pressure on these elected representatives, which they proceeded to do: storming the Capitol building, searching for people to punish, ransacking the place.

Of course this did make a kind of sense: If the election really had been stolen, as senators and congressmen were themselves suggesting, then how could Congress be allowed to move forward? For some Republicans, the invasion of the Capitol must have been a shock, or even a lesson. For the breakers, however, it may have been a taste of the future. Afterward, eight senators and more than 100 representatives voted for the lie that had forced them to flee their chambers.

Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions. Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not very much of it around, and the era of Trump — like the era of Vladimir Putin in Russia — is one of the decline of local news. Social media is no substitute: It supercharges the mental habits by which we seek emotional stimulation and comfort, which means losing the distinction between what feels true and what actually is true.

Post-truth wears away the rule of law and invites a regime of myth. These last four years, scholars have discussed the legitimacy and value of invoking fascism in reference to Trumpian propaganda. One comfortable position has been to label any such effort as a direct comparison and then to treat such comparisons as taboo. More productively, the philosopher Jason Stanley has treated fascism as a phenomenon, as a series of patterns that can be observed not only in interwar Europe but beyond it.

My own view is that greater knowledge of the past, fascist or otherwise, allows us to notice and conceptualize elements of the present that we might otherwise disregard and to think more broadly about future possibilities. It was clear to me in October that Trump’s behavior presaged a coup, and I said so in print; this is not because the present repeats the past, but because the past enlightens the present.

Like historical fascist leaders, Trump has presented himself as the single source of truth. His use of the term “fake news” echoed the Nazi smear Lügenpresse (“lying press”); like the Nazis, he referred to reporters as “enemies of the people.” Like Adolf Hitler, he came to power at a moment when the conventional press had taken a beating; the financial crisis of 2008 did to American newspapers what the Great Depression did to German ones. The Nazis thought that they could use radio to replace the old pluralism of the newspaper; Trump tried to do the same with Twitter.

Thanks to technological capacity and personal talent, Donald Trump lied at a pace perhaps unmatched by any other leader in history. For the most part these were small lies, and their main effect was cumulative. To believe in all of them was to accept the authority of a single man, because to believe in all of them was to disbelieve everything else. Once such personal authority was established, the president could treat everyone else as the liars; he even had the power to turn someone from a trusted adviser into a dishonest scoundrel with a single tweet. Yet so long as he was unable to enforce some truly big lie, some fantasy that created an alternative reality where people could live and die, his pre-fascism fell short of the thing itself.

Some of his lies were, admittedly, medium-size: that he was a successful businessman; that Russia did not support him in 2016; that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. Such medium-size lies were the standard fare of aspiring authoritarians in the 21st century. In Poland the right-wing party built a martyrdom cult around assigning blame to political rivals for an airplane crash that killed the nation’s president. Hungary’s Viktor Orban blames a vanishingly small number of Muslim refugees for his country’s problems. But such claims were not quite big lies; they stretched but did not rend what Hannah Arendt called “the fabric of factuality.”

One historical big lie discussed by Arendt is Joseph Stalin’s explanation of starvation in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-33. The state had collectivized agriculture, then applied a series of punitive measures to Ukraine that ensured millions would die. Yet the official line was that the starving were provocateurs, agents of Western powers who hated socialism so much they were killing themselves. A still grander fiction, in Arendt’s account, is Hitlerian anti-Semitism: the claims that Jews ran the world, Jews were responsible for ideas that poisoned German minds, Jews stabbed Germany in the back during the First World War. Intriguingly, Arendt thought big lies work only in lonely minds; their coherence substitutes for experience and companionship.

In November 2020, reaching millions of lonely minds through social media, Trump told a lie that was dangerously ambitious: that he had won an election that in fact he had lost. This lie was big in every pertinent respect: not as big as “Jews run the world,” but big enough. The significance of the matter at hand was great: the right to rule the most powerful country in the world and the efficacy and trustworthiness of its succession procedures. The level of mendacity was profound. The claim was not only wrong, but it was also made in bad faith, amid unreliable sources. It challenged not just evidence but logic: Just how could (and why would) an election have been rigged against a Republican president but not against Republican senators and representatives? Trump had to speak, absurdly, of a “Rigged (for President) Election.”

The force of a big lie resides in its demand that many other things must be believed or disbelieved. To make sense of a world in which the 2020 presidential election was stolen requires distrust not only of reporters and of experts but also of local, state and federal government institutions, from poll workers to elected officials, Homeland Security and all the way to the Supreme Court. It brings with it, of necessity, a conspiracy theory: Imagine all the people who must have been in on such a plot and all the people who would have had to work on the cover-up.

Trump’s electoral fiction floats free of verifiable reality. It is defended not so much by facts as by claims that someone else has made some claims. The sensibility is that something must be wrong because I feel it to be wrong, and I know others feel the same way. When political leaders such as Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan spoke like this, what they meant was: You believe my lies, which compels me to repeat them. Social media provides an infinity of apparent evidence for any conviction, especially one seemingly held by a president.

On the surface, a conspiracy theory makes its victim look strong: It sees Trump as resisting the Democrats, the Republicans, the Deep State, the pedophiles, the Satanists. More profoundly, however, it inverts the position of the strong and the weak. Trump’s focus on alleged “irregularities” and “contested states” comes down to cities where Black people live and vote. At bottom, the fantasy of fraud is that of a crime committed by Black people against white people.

It’s not just that electoral fraud by African-Americans against Donald Trump never happened. It is that it is the very opposite of what happened, in 2020 and in every American election. As always, Black people waited longer than others to vote and were more likely to have their votes challenged. They were more likely to be suffering or dying from Covid-19, and less likely to be able to take time away from work. The historical protection of their right to vote has been removed by the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, and states have rushed to pass measures of a kind that historically reduce voting by the poor and communities of color.

The claim that Trump was denied a win by fraud is a big lie not just because it mauls logic, misdescribes the present and demands belief in a conspiracy. It is a big lie, fundamentally, because it reverses the moral field of American politics and the basic structure of American history.

When Senator Ted Cruz announced his intention to challenge the Electoral College vote, he invoked the Compromise of 1877, which resolved the presidential election of 1876. Commentators pointed out that this was no relevant precedent, since back then there really were serious voter irregularities and there really was a stalemate in Congress. For African-Americans, however, the seemingly gratuitous reference led somewhere else. The Compromise of 1877 — in which Rutherford B. Hayes would have the presidency, provided that he withdrew federal power from the South — was the very arrangement whereby African-Americans were driven from voting booths for the better part of a century. It was effectively the end of Reconstruction, the beginning of segregation, legal discrimination and Jim Crow. It is the original sin of American history in the post-slavery era, our closest brush with fascism so far.

If the reference seemed distant when Ted Cruz and 10 senatorial colleagues released their statement on Jan. 2, it was brought very close four days later, when Confederate flags were paraded through the Capitol.

Some things have changed since 1877, of course. Back then, it was the Republicans, or many of them, who supported racial equality; it was the Democrats, the party of the South, who wanted apartheid. It was the Democrats, back then, who called African-Americans’ votes fraudulent, and the Republicans who wanted them counted. This is now reversed. In the past half century, since the Civil Rights Act, Republicans have become a predominantly white party interested — as Trump openly declared — in keeping the number of voters, and particularly the number of Black voters, as low as possible. Yet the common thread remains. Watching white supremacists among the people storming the Capitol, it was easy to yield to the feeling that something pure had been violated. It might be better to see the episode as part of a long American argument about who deserves representation.

The Democrats, today, have become a coalition, one that does better than Republicans with female and nonwhite voters and collects votes from both labor unions and the college-educated. Yet it’s not quite right to contrast this coalition with a monolithic Republican Party. Right now, the Republican Party is a coalition of two types of people: those who would game the system (most of the politicians, some of the voters) and those who dream of breaking it (a few of the politicians, many of the voters). In January 2021, this was visible as the difference between those Republicans who defended the present system on the grounds that it favored them and those who tried to upend it.

In the four decades since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have overcome the tension between the gamers and the breakers by governing in opposition to government, or by calling elections a revolution (the Tea Party), or by claiming to oppose elites. The breakers, in this arrangement, provide cover for the gamers, putting forth an ideology that distracts from the basic reality that government under Republicans is not made smaller but simply diverted to serve a handful of interests.

At first, Trump seemed like a threat to this balance. His lack of experience in politics and his open racism made him a very uncomfortable figure for the party; his habit of continually telling lies was initially found by prominent Republicans to be uncouth. Yet after he won the presidency, his particular skills as a breaker seemed to create a tremendous opportunity for the gamers. Led by the gamer in chief, McConnell, they secured hundreds of federal judges and tax cuts for the rich.

Trump was unlike other breakers in that he seemed to have no ideology. His objection to institutions was that they might constrain him personally. He intended to break the system to serve himself — and this is partly why he has failed. Trump is a charismatic politician and inspires devotion not only among voters but among a surprising number of lawmakers, but he has no vision that is greater than himself or what his admirers project upon him. In this respect his pre-fascism fell short of fascism: His vision never went further than a mirror. He arrived at a truly big lie not from any view of the world but from the reality that he might lose something.

Yet Trump never prepared a decisive blow. He lacked the support of the military, some of whose leaders he had alienated. (No true fascist would have made the mistake he did there, which was to openly love foreign dictators; supporters convinced that the enemy was at home might not mind, but those sworn to protect from enemies abroad did.) Trump’s secret police force, the men carrying out snatch operations in Portland, was violent but also small and ludicrous. Social media proved to be a blunt weapon: Trump could announce his intentions on Twitter, and white supremacists could plan their invasion of the Capitol on Facebook or Gab. But the president, for all his lawsuits and entreaties and threats to public officials, could not engineer a situation that ended with the right people doing the wrong thing. Trump could make some voters believe that he had won the 2020 election, but he was unable to bring institutions along with his big lie. And he could bring his supporters to Washington and send them on a rampage in the Capitol, but none appeared to have any very clear idea of how this was to work or what their presence would accomplish. It is hard to think of a comparable insurrectionary moment, when a building of great significance was seized, that involved so much milling around.

The lie outlasts the liar. The idea that Germany lost the First World War in 1918 because of a Jewish “stab in the back” was 15 years old when Hitler came to power. How will Trump’s myth of victimhood function in American life 15 years from now? And to whose benefit?

On Jan. 7, Trump called for a peaceful transition of power, implicitly conceding that his putsch had failed. Even then, though, he repeated and even amplified his electoral fiction: It was now a sacred cause for which people had sacrificed. Trump’s imagined stab in the back will live on chiefly thanks to its endorsement by members of Congress. In November and December 2020, Republicans repeated it, giving it a life it would not otherwise have had. In retrospect, it now seems as though the last shaky compromise between the gamers and the breakers was the idea that Trump should have every chance to prove that wrong had been done to him. That position implicitly endorsed the big lie for Trump supporters who were inclined to believe it. It failed to restrain Trump, whose big lie only grew bigger.

The breakers and the gamers then saw a different world ahead, where the big lie was either a treasure to be had or a danger to be avoided. The breakers had no choice but to rush to be first to claim to believe in it. Because the breakers Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz must compete to claim the brimstone and bile, the gamers were forced to reveal their own hand, and the division within the Republican coalition became visible on Jan. 6. The invasion of the Capitol only reinforced this division. To be sure, a few senators withdrew their objections, but Cruz and Hawley moved forward anyway, along with six other senators. More than 100 representatives doubled down on the big lie. Some, like Matt Gaetz, even added their own flourishes, such as the claim that the mob was led not by Trump’s supporters but by his opponents.

Trump is, for now, the martyr in chief, the high priest of the big lie. He is the leader of the breakers, at least in the minds of his supporters. By now, the gamers do not want Trump around. Discredited in his last weeks, he is useless; shorn of the obligations of the presidency, he will become embarrassing again, much as he was in 2015. Unable to provide cover for their gamesmanship, he will be irrelevant to their daily purposes. But the breakers have an even stronger reason to see Trump disappear: It is impossible to inherit from someone who is still around. Seizing Trump’s big lie might appear to be a gesture of support. In fact it expresses a wish for his political death. Transforming the myth from one about Trump to one about the nation will be easier when he is out of the way.

As Cruz and Hawley may learn, to tell the big lie is to be owned by it. Just because you have sold your soul does not mean that you have driven a hard bargain. Hawley shies from no level of hypocrisy; the son of a banker, educated at Stanford University and Yale Law School, he denounces elites. Insofar as Cruz was thought to have a principle, it was that of states’ rights, which Trump’s calls to action brazenly violated. A joint statement Cruz issued about the senators’ challenge to the vote nicely captured the post-truth aspect of the whole: It never alleged that there was fraud, only that there were allegations of fraud. Allegations of allegations, allegations all the way down.

The big lie requires commitment. When Republican gamers do not exhibit enough of that, Republican breakers call them “RINOs”: Republicans in name only. This term once suggested a lack of ideological commitment. It now means an unwillingness to throw away an election. The gamers, in response, close ranks around the Constitution and speak of principles and traditions. The breakers must all know (with the possible exception of the Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville) that they are participating in a sham, but they will have an audience of tens of millions who do not.

If Trump remains present in American political life, he will surely repeat his big lie incessantly. Hawley and Cruz and the other breakers share responsibility for where this leads. Cruz and Hawley seem to be running for president. Yet what does it mean to be a candidate for office and denounce voting? If you claim that the other side has cheated, and your supporters believe you, they will expect you to cheat yourself. By defending Trump’s big lie on Jan. 6, they set a precedent: A Republican presidential candidate who loses an election should be appointed anyway by Congress. Republicans in the future, at least breaker candidates for president, will presumably have a Plan A, to win and win, and a Plan B, to lose and win. No fraud is necessary; only allegations that there are allegations of fraud. Truth is to be replaced by spectacle, facts by faith.

Trump’s coup attempt of 2020-21, like other failed coup attempts, is a warning for those who care about the rule of law and a lesson for those who do not. His pre-fascism revealed a possibility for American politics. For a coup to work in 2024, the breakers will require something that Trump never quite had: an angry minority, organized for nationwide violence, ready to add intimidation to an election. Four years of amplifying a big lie just might get them this. To claim that the other side stole an election is to promise to steal one yourself. It is also to claim that the other side deserves to be punished.

Informed observers inside and outside government agree that right-wing white supremacism is the greatest terrorist threat to the United States. Gun sales in 2020 hit an astonishing high. History shows that political violence follows when prominent leaders of major political parties openly embrace paranoia.

Our big lie is typically American, wrapped in our odd electoral system, depending upon our particular traditions of racism. Yet our big lie is also structurally fascist, with its extreme mendacity, its conspiratorial thinking, its reversal of perpetrators and victims and its implication that the world is divided into us and them. To keep it going for four years courts terrorism and assassination.

When that violence comes, the breakers will have to react. If they embrace it, they become the fascist faction. The Republican Party will be divided, at least for a time. One can of course imagine a dismal reunification: A breaker candidate loses a narrow presidential election in November 2024 and cries fraud, the Republicans win both houses of Congress and rioters in the street, educated by four years of the big lie, demand what they see as justice. Would the gamers stand on principle if those were the circumstances of Jan. 6, 2025?

To be sure, this moment is also a chance. It is possible that a divided Republican Party might better serve American democracy; that the gamers, separated from the breakers, might start to think of policy as a way to win elections. It is very likely that the Biden-Harris administration will have an easier first few months than expected; perhaps obstructionism will give way, at least among a few Republicans and for a short time, to a moment of self-questioning. Politicians who want Trumpism to end have a simple way forward: Tell the truth about the election.

America will not survive the big lie just because a liar is separated from power. It will need a thoughtful repluralization of media and a commitment to facts as a public good. The racism structured into every aspect of the coup attempt is a call to heed our own history. Serious attention to the past helps us to see risks but also suggests future possibility. We cannot be a democratic republic if we tell lies about race, big or small. Democracy is not about minimizing the vote nor ignoring it, neither a matter of gaming nor of breaking a system, but of accepting the equality of others, heeding their voices and counting their votes.

Timothy Snyder is the Levin professor of history at Yale University and the author of histories of political atrocity including “Bloodlands” and “Black Earth,” as well as the book “On Tyranny,” on America’s turn toward authoritarianism. His most recent book is “Our Malady,” a memoir of his own near-fatal illness reflecting on the relationship between health and freedom.

***

Essay copied & pasted here in its entirety for the benefit of those stuck behind the paywall. Follow the link for the accompanying photos and captions.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Timothy Snyder [don't miss a word]

When Donald Trump stood before his followers on Jan. 6 and urged them to march on the United States Capitol, he was doing what he had always done. He never took electoral democracy  seriously nor accepted the legitimacy of its American version. Even when he won, in 2016, he insisted that the election was fraudulent — that millions of false votes were cast for his opponent. In 2020, in  the knowledge that he was trailing Joseph R. Biden in the polls, he spent months claiming that the presidential election would be rigged and signaling that he  would not accept the results if they did not favor him. He wrongly  claimed on Election Day that he had won and then steadily hardened his  rhetoric: With time, his victory became a historic landslide and the  various conspiracies that denied it ever more sophisticated and  implausible.                                                

People believed him,  which is not at all surprising. It takes a tremendous amount of work to  educate citizens to resist the powerful pull of believing what they  already believe, or what others around them believe, or what would make  sense of their own previous choices. Plato noted a particular risk for  tyrants: that they would be surrounded in the end by yes-men and  enablers. Aristotle worried that, in a democracy, a wealthy and talented  demagogue could all too easily master the minds of the populace. Aware  of these risks and others, the framers of the Constitution instituted a  system of checks and balances. The point was not simply to ensure that  no one branch of government dominated the others but also to anchor in  institutions different points of view.                                                                                                                          

In  this sense, the responsibility for Trump’s push to overturn an election  must be shared by a very large number of Republican members of  Congress. Rather than contradict Trump from the beginning, they allowed  his electoral fiction to flourish. They had different reasons for doing  so. One group of Republicans is concerned above all with gaming the  system to maintain power, taking full advantage of constitutional  obscurities, gerrymandering and dark money to win elections with a  minority of motivated voters. They have no interest in the collapse of  the peculiar form of representation that allows their minority party  disproportionate control of government. The most important among them,  Mitch McConnell, indulged Trump’s lie while making no comment on its  consequences.                                  

Yet  other Republicans saw the situation differently: They might actually  break the system and have power without democracy. The split between  these two groups, the gamers and the breakers, became sharply visible on  Dec. 30, when Senator Josh Hawley announced that he would support Trump’s challenge by questioning the validity of the electoral votes on Jan. 6. Ted Cruz then promised his own support, joined by about 10 other senators. More than a hundred Republican  representatives took the same position. For many, this seemed like  nothing more than a show: challenges to states’ electoral votes would  force delays and floor votes but would not affect the outcome.

Yet  for Congress to traduce its basic functions had a price. An elected  institution that opposes elections is inviting its own overthrow.  Members of Congress who sustained the president’s lie, despite the  available and unambiguous evidence, betrayed their constitutional  mission. Making his fictions the basis of congressional action gave them  flesh. Now Trump could demand that senators and congressmen bow to his  will. He could place personal responsibility upon Mike Pence, in charge  of the formal proceedings, to pervert them. And on Jan. 6, he directed  his followers to exert pressure on these elected representatives, which  they proceeded to do: storming the Capitol building, searching for people to punish, ransacking the place.

Of  course this did make a kind of sense: If the election really had been  stolen, as senators and congressmen were themselves suggesting, then how  could Congress be allowed to move forward? For some Republicans, the  invasion of the Capitol must have been a shock, or even a lesson. For  the breakers, however, it may have been a taste of the future.  Afterward, eight senators and more than 100 representatives voted for  the lie that had forced them to flee their chambers.Post-truth is pre-fascism,  and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth,  we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create  spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts,  citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend  themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and  fictions.

Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not  very much of it around, and the era of Trump — like the era of Vladimir  Putin in Russia — is one of the decline of local news. Social media is  no substitute: It supercharges the mental habits by which we seek  emotional stimulation and comfort, which means losing the distinction  between what feels true and what actually is true.Post-truth  wears away the rule of law and invites a regime of myth. These last  four years, scholars have discussed the legitimacy and value of invoking  fascism in reference to Trumpian propaganda. One comfortable position  has been to label any such effort as a direct comparison and then to  treat such comparisons as taboo. More productively, the philosopher  Jason Stanley has treated fascism as a phenomenon, as a series of  patterns that can be observed not only in interwar Europe but beyond it.

My  own view is that greater knowledge of the past, fascist or otherwise,  allows us to notice and conceptualize elements of the present that we  might otherwise disregard and to think more broadly about future  possibilities. It was clear to me in October that Trump’s behavior  presaged a coup, and I said so in print; this is not because the present  repeats the past, but because the past enlightens the present.Like  historical fascist leaders, Trump has presented himself as the single  source of truth. His use of the term “fake news” echoed the Nazi smear Lügenpresse (“lying press”); like the Nazis, he referred to reporters as “enemies  of the people.” Like Adolf Hitler, he came to power at a moment when the  conventional press had taken a beating; the financial crisis of 2008  did to American newspapers what the Great Depression did to German ones.  The Nazis thought that they could use radio to replace the old  pluralism of the newspaper; Trump tried to do the same with Twitter.

Thanks  to technological capacity and personal talent, Donald Trump lied at a  pace perhaps unmatched by any other leader in history. For the most part  these were small lies, and their main effect was cumulative. To believe  in all of them was to accept the authority of a single man, because to  believe in all of them was to disbelieve everything else. Once such  personal authority was established, the president could treat everyone  else as the liars; he even had the power to turn someone from a trusted  adviser into a dishonest scoundrel with a single tweet. Yet so long as  he was unable to enforce some truly big lie, some fantasy that created  an alternative reality where people could live and die, his pre-fascism  fell short of the thing itself.

Some  of his lies were, admittedly, medium-size: that he was a successful  businessman; that Russia did not support him in 2016; that Barack Obama  was born in Kenya. Such medium-size lies were the standard fare of  aspiring authoritarians in the 21st century. In Poland the right-wing  party built a martyrdom cult around assigning blame to political rivals  for an airplane crash that killed the nation’s president. Hungary’s  Viktor Orban blames a vanishingly small number of Muslim refugees for his country’s problems. But such claims were not quite big lies; they stretched but did not rend what Hannah Arendt called “the fabric of factuality.”

One  historical big lie discussed by Arendt is Joseph Stalin’s explanation  of starvation in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-33. The state had collectivized  agriculture, then applied a series of punitive measures to Ukraine that  ensured millions would die. Yet the official line was that the starving  were provocateurs, agents of Western powers who hated socialism so much  they were killing themselves. A still grander fiction, in Arendt’s  account, is Hitlerian anti-Semitism: the claims that Jews ran the world,  Jews were responsible for ideas that poisoned German minds, Jews  stabbed Germany in the back during the First World War. Intriguingly,  Arendt thought big lies work only in lonely minds; their coherence  substitutes for experience and companionship.In November 2020, reaching millions of lonely minds through social media, Trump told a lie that was dangerously ambitious: that he had won an election that in fact he had lost. 

This lie was big in every pertinent respect: not as big as “Jews run  the world,” but big enough. The significance of the matter at hand was  great: the right to rule the most powerful country in the world and the  efficacy and trustworthiness of its succession procedures. The level of  mendacity was profound. The claim was not only wrong, but it was also  made in bad faith, amid unreliable sources. It challenged not just  evidence but logic: Just how could (and why would) an election have been  rigged against a Republican president but not against Republican  senators and representatives? Trump had to speak, absurdly, of a “Rigged  (for President) Election.”

The  force of a big lie resides in its demand that many other things must be believed or disbelieved. To make sense of a world in which the 2020 presidential election was stolen requires distrust not only of reporters  and of experts but also of local, state and federal government  institutions, from poll workers to elected officials, Homeland Security  and all the way to the Supreme Court. It brings with it, of necessity, a  conspiracy theory: Imagine all the people who must have been in on such  a plot and all the people who would have had to work on the cover-up.Trump’s  electoral fiction floats free of verifiable reality. It is defended not  so much by facts as by claims that someone else has made some claims.  The sensibility is that something must be wrong because I feel it to be  wrong, and I know others feel the same way. When political leaders such  as Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan spoke like this, what they meant was: You  believe my lies, which compels me to repeat them. Social media provides  an infinity of apparent evidence for any conviction, especially one  seemingly held by a president.

On the  surface, a conspiracy theory makes its victim look strong: It sees Trump  as resisting the Democrats, the Republicans, the Deep State, the  pedophiles, the Satanists. More profoundly, however, it inverts the  position of the strong and the weak. Trump’s focus on alleged  “irregularities” and “contested states” comes down to cities where Black  people live and vote. At bottom, the fantasy of fraud is that of a  crime committed by Black people against white people.It’s  not just that electoral fraud by African-Americans against Donald Trump  never happened. It is that it is the very opposite of what happened, in  2020 and in every American election. As always, Black people waited longer than others to vote and were more likely to have their votes challenged. They were more likely to be suffering or dying from Covid-19, and less likely to be able to take time away from work. The historical  protection of their right to vote has been removed by the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, and states have rushed to pass measures of a kind that historically reduce voting by the poor and communities of color.

The  claim that Trump was denied a win by fraud is a big lie not just  because it mauls logic, misdescribes the present and demands belief in a  conspiracy. It is a big lie, fundamentally, because it reverses the  moral field of American politics and the basic structure of American  history.

When Senator Ted Cruz  announced his intention to challenge the Electoral College vote, he  invoked the Compromise of 1877, which resolved the presidential election  of 1876. Commentators pointed out that this was no relevant precedent,  since back then there really were serious voter irregularities and there  really was a stalemate in Congress. For African-Americans, however, the  seemingly gratuitous reference led somewhere else. The Compromise of  1877 — in which Rutherford B. Hayes would have the presidency, provided  that he withdrew federal power from the South — was the very arrangement  whereby African-Americans were driven from voting booths for the better  part of a century. It was effectively the end of Reconstruction, the  beginning of segregation, legal discrimination and Jim Crow. It is the  original sin of American history in the post-slavery era, our closest  brush with fascism so far.If the  reference seemed distant when Ted Cruz and 10 senatorial colleagues  released their statement on Jan. 2, it was brought very close four days  later, when Confederate flags were paraded through the Capitol.

Some things have changed since 1877, of course. Back then, it was the Republicans, or  many of them, who supported racial equality; it was the Democrats, the  party of the South, who wanted apartheid. It was the Democrats, back  then, who called African-Americans’ votes fraudulent, and the  Republicans who wanted them counted. This is now reversed. In the past  half century, since the Civil Rights Act, Republicans have become a  predominantly white party interested — as Trump openly declared — in  keeping the number of voters, and particularly the number of Black  voters, as low as possible. Yet the common thread remains. Watching  white supremacists among the people storming the Capitol, it was easy to  yield to the feeling that something pure had been violated. It might be  better to see the episode as part of a long American argument about who  deserves representation.

The  Democrats, today, have become a coalition, one that does better than Republicans with female and nonwhite voters and collects votes from both labor unions and the college-educated. Yet it’s not quite right to  contrast this coalition with a monolithic Republican Party. Right now,  the Republican Party is a coalition of two types of people: those who  would game the system (most of the politicians, some of the voters) and  those who dream of breaking it (a few of the politicians, many of the  voters). In January 2021, this was visible as the difference between  those Republicans who defended the present system on the grounds that it  favored them and those who tried to upend it.In  the four decades since the election of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have  overcome the tension between the gamers and the breakers by governing in  opposition to government, or by calling elections a revolution (the Tea  Party), or by claiming to oppose elites. The breakers, in this  arrangement, provide cover for the gamers, putting forth an ideology  that distracts from the basic reality that government under Republicans  is not made smaller but simply diverted to serve a handful of interests.

At  first, Trump seemed like a threat to this balance. His lack of  experience in politics and his open racism made him a very uncomfortable  figure for the party; his habit of continually telling lies was  initially found by prominent Republicans to be uncouth. Yet after he won  the presidency, his particular skills as a breaker seemed to create a  tremendous opportunity for the gamers. Led by the gamer in chief,  McConnell, they secured hundreds of federal judges and tax cuts for the  rich.

Trump  was unlike other breakers in that he seemed to have no ideology. His  objection to institutions was that they might constrain him personally.  He intended to break the system to serve himself — and this is partly  why he has failed. Trump is a charismatic politician and inspires  devotion not only among voters but among a surprising number of  lawmakers, but he has no vision that is greater than himself or what his  admirers project upon him. In this respect his pre-fascism fell short  of fascism: His vision never went further than a mirror. He arrived at a  truly big lie not from any view of the world but from the reality that  he might lose something.

Yet Trump  never prepared a decisive blow. He lacked the support of the military,  some of whose leaders he had alienated. (No true fascist would have made  the mistake he did there, which was to openly love foreign dictators;  supporters convinced that the enemy was at home might not mind, but  those sworn to protect from enemies abroad did.) Trump’s secret police  force, the men carrying out snatch operations in Portland, was violent but also small and ludicrous. Social media proved to be a  blunt weapon: Trump could announce his intentions on Twitter, and white  supremacists could plan their invasion of the Capitol on Facebook or  Gab. 

But the president, for all his lawsuits and entreaties and threats  to public officials, could not engineer a situation that ended with the  right people doing the wrong thing. Trump could make some voters believe  that he had won the 2020 election, but he was unable to bring  institutions along with his big lie. And he could bring his supporters  to Washington and send them on a rampage in the Capitol, but none  appeared to have any very clear idea of how this was to work or what  their presence would accomplish. It is hard to think of a comparable  insurrectionary moment, when a building of great significance was seized, that involved so much milling around.

The lie outlasts the  liar. The idea that Germany lost the First World War in 1918 because of  a Jewish “stab in the back” was 15 years old when Hitler came to power.  How will Trump’s myth of victimhood function in American life 15 years from now? And to whose benefit?

On  Jan. 7, Trump called for a peaceful transition of power, implicitly  conceding that his putsch had failed. Even then, though, he repeated and  even amplified his electoral fiction: It was now a sacred cause for  which people had sacrificed. Trump’s imagined stab in the back will live  on chiefly thanks to its endorsement by members of Congress. In  November and December 2020, Republicans repeated it, giving it a life it  would not otherwise have had. In retrospect, it now seems as though the  last shaky compromise between the gamers and the breakers was the idea  that Trump should have every chance to prove that wrong had been done to  him. That position implicitly endorsed the big lie for Trump supporters  who were inclined to believe it. It failed to restrain Trump, whose big  lie only grew bigger.

The breakers  and the gamers then saw a different world ahead, where the big lie was  either a treasure to be had or a danger to be avoided. The breakers had  no choice but to rush to be first to claim to believe in it. Because the  breakers Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz must compete to claim the brimstone  and bile, the gamers were forced to reveal their own hand, and the  division within the Republican coalition became visible on Jan. 6. The  invasion of the Capitol only reinforced this division. To be sure, a few  senators withdrew their objections, but Cruz and Hawley moved forward  anyway, along with six other senators. More than 100 representatives  doubled down on the big lie. Some, like Matt Gaetz, even added their own  flourishes, such as the claim that the mob was led not by Trump’s  supporters but by his opponents.Trump  is, for now, the martyr in chief, the high priest of the big lie. He is  the leader of the breakers, at least in the minds of his supporters. By  now, the gamers do not want Trump around. Discredited in his last  weeks, he is useless; shorn of the obligations of the presidency, he  will become embarrassing again, much as he was in 2015. Unable to  provide cover for their gamesmanship, he will be irrelevant to their daily purposes. But the breakers have an even stronger reason to see  Trump disappear: It is impossible to inherit from someone who is still  around. Seizing Trump’s big lie might appear to be a gesture of support.  In fact it expresses a wish for his political death. Transforming the  myth from one about Trump to one about the nation will be easier when he  is out of the way.

As Cruz and Hawley  may learn, to tell the big lie is to be owned by it. Just because you  have sold your soul does not mean that you have driven a hard bargain.  Hawley shies from no level of hypocrisy; the son of a banker, educated at Stanford University and Yale Law School, he denounces elites. Insofar  as Cruz was thought to have a principle, it was that of states’ rights,  which Trump’s calls to action brazenly violated. A joint statement Cruz  issued about the senators’ challenge to the vote nicely captured the  post-truth aspect of the whole: It never alleged that there was fraud,  only that there were allegations of fraud. Allegations of allegations,  allegations all the way down.The  big lie requires commitment. When Republican gamers do not exhibit  enough of that, Republican breakers call them “RINOs”: Republicans in  name only. This term once suggested a lack of ideological commitment. It  now means an unwillingness to throw away an election. The gamers, in  response, close ranks around the Constitution and speak of principles  and traditions. The breakers must all know (with the possible exception  of the Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville) that they are participating in a  sham, but they will have an audience of tens of millions who do not.

If  Trump remains present in American political life, he will surely repeat  his big lie incessantly. Hawley and Cruz and the other breakers share  responsibility for where this leads. Cruz and Hawley seem to be running  for president. Yet what does it mean to be a candidate for office and  denounce voting? If you claim that the other side has cheated, and your  supporters believe you, they will expect you to cheat yourself. By  defending Trump’s big lie on Jan. 6, they set a precedent: A Republican  presidential candidate who loses an election should be appointed anyway  by Congress. Republicans in the future, at least breaker candidates for  president, will presumably have a Plan A, to win and win, and a Plan B,  to lose and win. No fraud is necessary; only allegations that there are allegations of fraud. Truth is to be replaced by spectacle, facts by  faith.Trump’s coup attempt of 2020-21, like other failed coup attempts, is a warning  for those who care about the rule of law and a lesson for those who do  not. His pre-fascism revealed a possibility for American politics. For a  coup to work in 2024, the breakers will require something that Trump  never quite had: an angry minority, organized for nationwide violence,  ready to add intimidation to an election. Four years of amplifying a big  lie just might get them this. To claim that the other side stole an  election is to promise to steal one yourself. It is also to claim that  the other side deserves to be punished.Informed  observers inside and outside government agree that right-wing white  supremacism is the greatest terrorist threat to the United States. 

Gun  sales in 2020 hit an astonishing high. History shows that political  violence follows when prominent leaders of major political parties  openly embrace paranoia.Our big lie  is typically American, wrapped in our odd electoral system, depending  upon our particular traditions of racism. Yet our big lie is also  structurally fascist, with its extreme mendacity, its conspiratorial  thinking, its reversal of perpetrators and victims and its implication  that the world is divided into us and them. To keep it going for four  years courts terrorism and assassination.

When  that violence comes, the breakers will have to react. If they embrace  it, they become the fascist faction. The Republican Party will be  divided, at least for a time. One can of course imagine a dismal  reunification: A breaker candidate loses a narrow presidential election  in November 2024 and cries fraud, the Republicans win both houses of  Congress and rioters in the street, educated by four years of the big lie,  demand what they see as justice. Would the gamers stand on principle if  those were the circumstances of Jan. 6, 2025?To  be sure, this moment is also a chance. It is possible that a divided Republican Party might better serve American democracy; that the gamers, separated from the breakers, might start to think of policy as a way to  win elections. It is very likely that the Biden-Harris administration  will have an easier first few months than expected; perhaps  obstructionism will give way, at least among a few Republicans and for a  short time, to a moment of self-questioning. 

Politicians who want  Trumpism to end have a simple way forward: Tell the truth about the  election.America will not survive the  big lie just because a liar is separated from power. It will need a  thoughtful repluralization of media and a commitment to facts as a  public good. The racism structured into every aspect of the coup attempt  is a call to heed our own history. Serious attention to the past helps  us to see risks but also suggests future possibility. We cannot be a  democratic republic if we tell lies about race, big or small.Democracy  is not about minimizing the vote nor ignoring it, neither a matter of  gaming nor of breaking a system, but of accepting the equality of  others, heeding their voices and counting their votes.

[petriichvrs]

DAY SIX   :   one final word   /   a letter to noxtms.

dear :  alyssa, amanda, atlas, bee, beth, birdie, blo, cherry, chris, daisy, dew, gabi, gia, hunter, j, la, lex, lucy, maeve, mozzie, nancy, plume, r, rosie, sam and last but never  least, vicky.

here’s the thing. i try as much as possible to say how much i appreciate all of you having joined nox as often as i can, because i think as a person i have a tendency not to be entirely present of all the time, even while i seem it, and it’s important to me - as both admin and as someone who’s befriended what feels like everyone here - that you all know. the thing is, i’ve admined a lot of roleplays over the time i’ve been writing, some of them for longer than others, and i’ve met a bunch of you both in those groups and outside of them. i have a lot of experience, but i had never broken into the harry potter fandom ( in spite of it having formed such a key part of my childhood ) and i hadn’t realized that when i opened nox, i was going to discover such a community. 

it’s really not me just saying it when i say that nox wouldn’t be NOXTMS without each and every one of you. i’m proud of the work i’ve put into the group and i accept however much i’m allowed to of the praise for it, but i’ve put maybe more into other groups and never had them feel the way that nox does. we’re all aware, obviously, it takes every writer in a group to make it something special, and i think that it’s every single one of you who has turned this group into my absolute favorite. there’s things in nox right now - like the marauders verse, but even just movie nights and a successful points system and little ic meetings - that i never could have done in another group because they just wouldn’t have worked, the combination wasn’t there, but i feel like... i struck gold with each of you, as members ? i feel like i got beyond LUCKY, and i have a tendency to over worry about nox, but you guys always make me feel a little bit safer in the knowledge that the group is okay, it’s doing good, and it’s everything i could have ever wanted.

i tried to find praise in other places for you all over the course of this meme, but i’m just going to go for one quick fire round. alyssa, you really are so fucking funny, and you created something really special with avalon and the king arthur myth thing she’s got going on. amanda, mary is the most thought out oc i’ve maybe ever seen and we might’ve had to wait a while for a ron, but he’s brilliant. atlas, you have a tendency to not see yourself the way you ought to, but heather and jo are two showstopping characters that we’re so lucky to have, and you yourself are a wonderful member who i’m so glad came back. bee, i’ve seen what you can do with harry elsewhere and i have you to thank for the fact nox even exists, really : you reminded me through your writing how much i love the world, and your takes on marietta and charlie are perfect. beth, lavender is such an unfairly hated character in canon, and she deserved someone like you picking her up and breathing fresh life into her, which you’re doing amazingly. birdie, for someone who likes to admit they haven’t done much in groups, you’ve really slotted yourself right in here, and i can’t pluck one character from your lineup - you do something admirable with all of them, and i really do hope you’ll RECONSIDER your stance on a fifth. blo... i love everything you do, i really always have, and your writing is a testament to just how talented you are, but i don’t know one person who puts as much continuous thought into their characters as you do, and it really shows.

cherry, i made a joke once about how if you could do something special with jughead jones i shouldn’t be shocked about what you can do with better source characters, but it’s not even a joke anymore... what you started with hermione you’re continuing with lucius and percy, and i love everything about them. chris, this is the second time you’ve joined nox as someone who doesn’t know much about it, but i’m so grateful you did it as my characters kid - i love when we get to play family dynamics most of all, and oriana is an absolute gem. daisy, chatting with you is a dream, and your mind is just... amazing - you do something with george that plays into my favorite sort of character tropes, and zephyrine is something so different and fun that i can’t wait to write with them too. dew, not just anyone would pick up gregory goyle and try and do something amazing with him, so i’ve been not-so-patiently waiting to toss everyone i’ve got at him since your intro. gabi, knox is one of my favorite ocs and for someone who only brought in an oc, to start with, you’ve managed to slot her in brilliantly. gia, what can i even say for you... as always you bring everything you have to the table, and i get to write not just connections that are genuinely FUN ( damien and niko, anybody? ) but also my favorite sort, which comprise of... family and friendships like molly / ginny & tonks / ginny with one of my favorite writers, yet again. hunter, i’m so glad i borderline peer pressured you into picking up pansy, because she’s been a joy to see in action, and a pretty great addition to your roster of characters - that already includes angelina and mason, two characters i love reading the replies of. 

j, most astoria’s i’ve seen have gotten lost on the ‘draco’s dead wife’ thing and have forgotten to turn her into her own, unique character - the same can’t be said here, and astoria has fast become one of my favorite individual characters because you’re at her heart. la, i haven’t gotten to see enough of beatrix yet, but i think anyone who wants to play into an umbridge family is so brave and so talented, so i can’t wait to see and do more. lex... absolute love of my fuckin life ? not many people would join a group even though they don’t know much of the source material and absolutely immerse themself in it, but you’ve done this now... more than once- and each and every time, you manage to craft characters i really do ROOT for and love so much. please be fuckin nicer to yourself always, you’re so talented and i love you so much. lucy, gabrielle deserves to be given a character arc beyond ‘damsel in distress’, and so far, i’ve loved everything you’ve done with her. she’s a breath of fresh air on the dash and i think we’re lucky to have you ! maeve, LISTEN. LISTEN TO ME. I’M HOLDING YOUR FACE BETWEEN MY HANDS RIGHT NOW, BECAUSE THIS IS SO UNBELIEVABLY EMBARRASSING: YOU ARE SO TALENTED, YOU ARE SO IMPORTANT TO THE FUNDAMENTAL SOMETHING THAT MAKES UP WHAT NOX IS, YOU HAVE BROUGHT ME CHARACTERS I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW I NEEDED SO BADLY ( HELLO THEO N OLIVER ) AND I LOVE THEM SO MUCH, YOU’VE DONE SOMETHING SO WONDERFUL WITH EVERY PORTRAYAL AND YOUR AESTHETICS FOR DENNIS MADE ME CRY.  mozzie, you are ALSO so fucking funny, and you are yet another writer that i feel.. so lucky has been drawn to nox - blaise and luna are fascinating characters in canon, sure, but you have done something so much BETTER with them here and i cannot stress that enough to you. nancy, selene is such a fun oc, and i really, really mean that. she’s something different to the status quo, and i feel blessed that i get to have as close a connection as i do with her. 

plume, you yourself have been nothing short of the most lovely ooc presence, and i’m so glad that it’s someone like you who’s bringing parvati patil ( the noxtms variant ) to life, and so happy whenever i see her on the dash. r, i could go on for paragraphs on you alone - you were always one of my favorite writers in eq, and i was always so HOPEFUL you would finally cave and join nox. thank you for being here, and thank you for my daughter, thank you for my sister, thank you for these characters i love. rosie, you haven’t gotten a chance to even settle in yet, but that isn’t going to stop me from expressing how excited i am to have a bill weasley, finally, and to see what you do with him ! sam, the other love of my life... you don’t get enough CREDIT for just how brilliantly you’ve characterized viktor krum, especially, but you also don’t get enough for how you gave us the loveliest child of severus snape we could have ever asked for, and the hottest dowson i ever did see. you go through it far more than you should have to, but you’re such a talented writer and such a staunch friend who i feel lucky to have made. and vicky, once again : last in alphabetical order, but certainly not in my heart. did i expect in 2020 to bond with someone over buffy ? not even a little. but i really was so fuckin’ DELIGHTED to have something i could talk to you about cause you’re just... cool, vicky, you’re so so cool, and you’re so talented at seemingly... everything ? making gifs, being a pal, writing characters like dudley dursley but also somehow making alicia and penelope equally different and fascinating and cool ? have i said cool ? have i said it ENOUGH ? 

i don’t want to be done, here, but i didn’t expect for this to take so many words, so i should probably wrap it up fairly snappily : thank you all so much for joining this group i love so much, and please know regardless of all else, i love everything you’re all DOING, and everything i see. i don’t say that enough, for certain, but i’m going to try and be better about it. beep beep, bitches : it’s my undying love and affection. 

not to sound like severus snape but like. always,

rachel.

[beautiful-eulogy]

Here is chapter 2 of Petals For Armor!

Two: Simmer

The only sound in Natasha’s head for several seconds is the thrumming beat of her pulse in her ears. She quickly composes herself and tunes back in to the moment. Fury sits silently with his hands folded on his desk, his eyes boring into her own, waiting patiently for her to take in this bomb he’s dropped on her. After several tense moments of Natasha clenching and unclenching her jaw while she thinks, Fury speaks. “Natasha, I know this is a lot of information to just—“

“What’s your source?” she cuts him off, wasting no time with apologies.

He doesn’t flinch—instead he raises his brow in concern. “Natasha, I don’t want you to—

She cuts him off again with an eye roll. “What, Nick? Get my hopes up? I learned a long time ago not to let that happen and you know that.” She pauses for a moment, leaning forward in her chair. “No. I won’t even entertain hope until I hear your intel, so enough dancing around my question. You obviously believe the source is reliable, or you wouldn’t be here to give this to me.” At that, she glances at the file. From the look on his face, she knows that she’s right—so she waits for his response.

He huffs with a shake of his head before opening the file in front of her. The first thing she notices is that the top page is a recent addition. The first entry at the top is dated five months ago. Fury begins, pointing to this section.

“Five months ago, we received an encrypted report from an agent named Allen Langford who was assigned a deep cover mission with a smuggling ring called Dalia. They rose to prominence in the underbelly of Europe over the past two years for selling and trading in human cargo. They sold to a known HYDRA supporter in Samara a year ago which put them on our radar. Langford had been undercover for almost six months learning their patterns, popular spots, and contacts so that we could strike and bust their leader Viktor Yahontov.” He points to a specific passage of text, and she leans closer to read as he continues to speak. “Two weeks before the received report, his coms went dead. We lost all contact and had no choice but to presume agent Langford killed or missing in action—until this data showed up.” Fury slides the file closer to her, continuing his debrief.

“He was assigned to a Dalia patrol unit tasked with guarding a shipment of young girls at a holding site. We had a plan for him to run interference to get the girls out before Yahontov arrived in the morning to inspect them, but he never made his rendezvous point because someone attacked their unit. According to his message, no one ever saw the assailants. They came in, took out the patrol, and made off with the girls before anyone came to. Viktor suspected a rat, so he cut his men off from outside communication until he eliminated his mole, but as soon as access was reinstated, we received the SOS from Agent Langford. The assailants were fast, organized, and knew exactly how and where to strike them.” Nick’s finger trails down the page. “We began digging after that, and we found a pattern over the next few months. Once a month, a ring would be hit with the same MO. No casualties, just whopping headaches and missing cargo. Girls, but also tech, weapons, and chemicals.”

The entire time Nick has been explaining, Natasha has been making connections between his words and the report in front of her. She doesn’t like the conclusion her mind is drawing, but she needs more details before she can definitively believe this is the Red Room’s work. She asks her most pressing question first, maintaining a steady and serious tone: “How old are the stolen girls?”

She can see the burning anger and disgust behind his answer. “All between the ages of two and twelve.”

Her heart sinks in her chest. That’s definitely Dreykov’s preferred age range for the girls that he puts in the academy. He likes to acquire them young; it makes breaking them, brainwashing them, and molding them in his image easier. She feels sick at the thought of that man’s name, but she presses on with her questions, her tone more disgusted and angry than before. “That sounds like Dreykov, but Nick—there are hundreds of vile people who would have a reason to steal those girls and equipment from Dalia, and other organizations like them. I don’t see any definitive proof of the Red Room’s involvement in this. Plus, it doesn’t make sense for them to show themselves now when they’ve had years of opportunity to reboot operations. I will gladly do the mission to save those girls and stop whatever these people are planning if that’s what you’re asking, but don’t offer me the hope of taking down Dreykov without finding out for damn sure that it’s him doing these things!” She doesn’t remember standing up, but at some point during her speaking, her body rose along with her voice. She wasn’t trying to let her emotions best her, but she has spent too many years with Dreykov’s shadow following her to throw herself into this, guns blazing, without knowing for sure that she will be able to be rid of him this time.

Fury hasn’t budged once during her rant. He lets her finish, respecting that this is a sensitive and volatile topic for her, hearing her out and allowing her this expression of years of hidden rage. After she ends, and stands there breathing heavily, he reaches over and turns his computer monitor around to face her. “Natasha”—he looks at her now as her friend and her mentor, not as her boss.—“You know that I would never give you hope if I didn’t know that I could follow through.”

She softens at the look he gives her, and a moment passes between them. Fury, in her mind, is the only father in her life that matters. She trusts him. She knows he is telling her the truth, and that he would have gathered conclusive intelligence before bringing this to her attention. Without breaking the eye contact, she lowers herself back into the chair and gives a small nod as a signal for him to continue. He lets out a breath and nods back before gesturing to the screen and continuing.

“Langford mentioned that Yahontov found the mole and disposed of him. Once we fully decrypted his message we discovered the name of that mole. Langford called him Shep Vetos, because that was the name on his record when he joined Dalia. But turns out, that isn’t his real name. Shep Vetos is actually—“

“—Shelepov Kvetoslav.“ She sits up straighter as she interjects, knowing that alias from somewhere deep within the recesses in her mind.

Fury is taken aback by her outburst, but doesn’t look fully surprised that she knows the name. “Right. All we found was that he has a very long record that includes ties to both HYDRA and the KGB. What can you tell me about him, Natasha?”

She pauses for only a moment. “Shelepov was one of the trainees in a program for boys that was created by Dreykov and the Red Room in response to the Black Widow program’s success. It was called the Wolf Spider initiative. Boys, orphans and kidnappees like us, were ruthlessly trained in the ways of espionage, spy craft, and combat. Just like us they were brainwashed and given false memories to solidify their loyalty and ruthlessness. But the program was ultimately shut down because these young men proved to be too volatile to control. It was concluded that women are better with emotional prowess, and are therefore easier to manipulate. So the program was dissolved, and most of the recruits were either killed or shipped off to God knows where.” She deems that enough information for Fury to be satisfied and waits for his response.

He takes in this new information with a raise of his eyebrows. “Well, it seems that this Shelepov survived, and has re-established contact with someone inside the Red Room. Or at least, they re-established contact with him. He was the mole who leaked the transfer spot and the location of the girls back to these people. He died to get those girls to them. Which brings me to you, Natasha. This not only seems legit, but it means that the Red Room has revived the program. And they’re not only tracking down their old operatives, but they’re making new ones. They’ve taken a total of fifty girls so far.”

Her breath catches at that. “That’s double the number from when I was in the academy!”

He nods. “Which means that they’re planning something big. Something very big. And I for one don’t want to wait to find out what it is. Natasha I’m not just here as a friend to offer you the chance at revenge. I’m here as your boss, offering this cause you’re the only agent...the only person I trust to bring them down, and save innocent lives. You’ve told me about the hell you faced there, and I know you want to save those girls from a similar fate. Which is why I’m re-opening your case file and giving you point on this, Natasha.”

Hearing all of this brings memories that she keeps locked away rushing back into her mind. Her room, a dark prison cell that swallowed her up at the end of every day. Handcuffs, dangling from the headboard, a reminder that freedom was something she would never have. Blisters, broken bones, and bruises—battle marks from their rigorous regime of brainwashing, combat training, classes, and the punishments when their performances was unsatisfactory. Faces—the faces of her classmates, her sisters...dead. One by one, they were felled by her own hands as a punishment, for their failure and her success. Each day she was a part of the Red Room was another day that she wished she had never been born. No child deserves to suffer that. Taken from one nightmarish reality to another. Will the innocent ever be safe in this world of monsters and cruelty?

Nick is right. If this truly is the Red Room returning to the surface, then this isn’t only Natasha’s shot at taking them down for good—it’s her chance to save innocent girls from suffering the fate that she and so many others suffered. She could never forgive herself if she didn’t take it. She squares her shoulders and rises, her stance calm but assured. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s bring these bastards the justice they deserve.”

He gives her a proud nod and a smirk, handing the file to her. “I was hoping you’d say that. Here’s your file back, Agent Romanoff. I’ll have Hill give you clearance for everything else we’ve gathered so far. You have forty-eight hours to gather your team, and be ready for debrief. All clearance comes through me, but this is your expertise and your fight. Anything you need from me, you’ve got. Understood?”

She smiles at him. “Understood, Director Fury.”

He gives her a nod of dismissal, turning back to go to the window. As she heads for the door she stops and turns. “And Nick”—he pauses but doesn’t face her—“Thank you.” There is a moment as her rare sign of affection hangs in the air. He still does not turn, but she hears the soft, “You’re welcome, Natasha.”

She smiles and moves through the doorway, walking swiftly toward the direction of her quarters. This is so much to process, and she needs time to read the full report and prepare herself to gather her team. But there is another matter of business she needs to look into before dealing with the main factors in this case. Natasha, despite popular belief, does not enjoy keeping secrets from the ones she loves. However, not divulging the entire truth at once is often necessary so that one can gather their bearings and achieve a fuller understanding of a situation before involving others. There was one key piece of information that Natasha intentionally kept from Fury for this reason. Information that she needs to speak with a certain metal-armed soldier about before she reveals anything, because she’s still not sure how this particular situation is possible.

Natasha knows the name Shelepov Kvetoslav, not only because he was a Wolf Spider, but because he was once her partner for several training missions. And when the program was terminated along with its subjects, Natasha was ultimately the one who killed him. Shelepov Kvetoslav died almost fifteen years ago. She has a strange feeling that it’s no coincidence that someone is using that name. Could it be a message for her? Or maybe it’s a warning. And if so, who is sending it—and why?

* * *

[victuurikatsu]

we’ll never be royals

[For @wewritevictuuri weekly prompt “I’m going for a swim. Do you wanna join me?” And a celebration ficlet for reaching a following milestone, thank you for your continued support! 💖]

“Come on, Yuuri! What’s the worst thing that could happen to us?” Phichit asked.

The man promptly slammed down a regal looking poster atop the work space where Yuuri was working on his latest piece. Desperately, he tried to focus his attention on the piece rather than poster itself --- knowing full well it was filled with details announcing the masquerade ball being held in the kingdom.

Of course he’d already known about the ball, as he’d already been commissioned to make some of the finest gowns and petticoats for it. But this last piece he was working on, he wanted to make sure it was especially cared for, as the snowy white mask with glinted crystals and golden lining was being procured by Prince Viktor Nikiforov himself.

Yuuri could feel Phichit’s gaze burning a hole into his shirt before he responded, “Well for one, we could be hanged. And more importantly we’re not royalty. How would we even get in?”

“Dumb luck and charm.” Phichit smirked. “Besides, you can create the perfect disguises for us, can’t you?”

Being one of the most renowned tailors in the kingdom had its perks. Yuuri was never out of work and usually kept busy well into the dead of winter. His hands had created arguably the most lavish pieces seen on royalty within their kingdom and even in other lands abound. But to pull something as extravagant as whatever Phichit was conjuring up in his mind, he didn’t know if he was capable of it. In an attempt to dissolve any of the concerns that were clearly painted on Yuuri’s face, Phichit went in for the kill.

“I’ve already got us a surefire way to get in. Remember that royal guard? The one who’s usually glued to the Prince’s side?”

Yuuri could only briefly recall him, hair coiffed in strands of blonde in tight curls, eyes that were doe-like and as green as an emerald. The only reason why he didn’t know anything else was due to his attention always landing straight onto the Prince thereafter. His silver hair cascading down like a waterfall, his eyes an azure blue that always looked warm, shoulders broader than anything he’d ever seen, skin as luminous as the moon.

“Uh, Giacometti? Right?” Yuuri managed to stammer out before getting too lost in his daydream.

“The very same. He owes me a favor, so I’m cashing in on it. We’ll have access through the servants quarters. He’ll personally escort us in, no harm done. Besides, it’s not like you to pass on an opportunity to see Viktor.”

Yuuri looked over to the poster and back at the mask in his hands. A royal servant would be by to fetch it within a day or two. He was confident that by the time he finished the piece it would be more than suitable for him. He wondered if it would be a sin to want to see the mask on him with his own two eyes rather than hearing through word of mouth as he had always done for any piece he had made for Viktor in the past.

“Two conditions.” Yuuri finally said as he came to his own resolve.

“Anything!”

“If we get caught, I’m pleading hysteria. By midnight, we’re gone.”

“You sound like a folklore.” Phichit said rolling his eyes.

“Midnight Phichit, no later.” Yuuri warned.

“Fiiiiiine.” Phichit conceded, before throwing a mound of fabrics over Yuuri’s way. “Now get to work, we have a ball to get ready for!”

The days stretched on much faster than Yuuri had anticipated and before he knew it, he was critiquing his disguise in the mirror while Phichit did his best to assure him nothing would go wrong. Against the backdrop of his tanned skin, Phichit was carefully hidden under a mask in brilliant hues of red and gold to signify a dragon. The irony wasn’t lost on Yuuri as Phichit kept making jokes about not fighting back should Guardsmen Giacometti consider slaying him sometime in the evening.

Yuuri opted to be hidden like a raven in the night so his mask followed the same theme. The contrast against his honey brown eyes was jarring but subtle enough for him to feel that he would seamlessly blend into the background. After dusk had settled and stars were beginning to form, Yuuri and Phichit snuck off to the meeting point, grateful for the bustle of out of town royals marveling at the estate that the Nikiforov’s kept so prim and pristine. As Phichit had promised, the doe-eyed guard was indeed waiting to escort them into the heart of the ball.

“Why does he owe you again?” Yuuri murmured as they were led deeper into the confines of the castle.

“That’s a tale I’ll share later.” Phichit said with a smirk.

Making it to the grand ballroom, Yuuri was hit with a world of color in gold and silver. If it wasn’t the dresses that were in bright hues, it was the brilliant fans that each lady of the court seemed to be brandishing that caught high attention. Beautiful and graceful, every participant at the ball did not skimp on fulfilling the duty of showing up in proper attire, some of the pieces Yuuri had worked on weeks ago were even seen waltzing around in the space.

Heart pacing, he made a run for the nearest station where cups of mead and spirits were being passed along. It did not take long for Yuuri to succumb to his own curse as he and spirits never mixed well. Now they were even more in danger of having their cover blown.

As music brandished through the space, Yuuri through blurred vision watched colors flowing across the room as people were pairing up one by one to dance. That’s when he sees the familiar crystalized glint of a mask he would recall anywhere after spending weeks perfecting it.

It was the Prince.

Stumbling over to him, Yuuri could only manage a giggle before standing upright, thankful that the mask he had on himself was a stark black and would hopefully hide the hues of red that were staining his cheeks. Wordlessly, he holds out a hand to invite Viktor to dance, half expecting to be pushed away. But the spirits gave him no ounce of fear and all he wanted to do was follow through with ambition. He wanted desperately to dance with him. That’s why he’s surprised when he feels warmth enveloping around his finger tips.

“I know every royal there is to know, but I’ve never seen you around before.” Viktor said in amusement.

Yuuri can only think of replying in the form of a gesture. He wanted to successful sweep Prince Viktor off his feet and he does just that. He doesn’t know how many dances pass between them, but they are both flushed with joy and giddiness that causes the entirety of the room to take heed of what was unfolding. Who was the stranger making the Prince come alive for the first time in years?

The following day Yuuri finds himself leaning against a tree in the middle of his personal sanctuary. Head pounding, he watches the lake across from him glisten, ebb, and flow as he tries to center himself. Phichit had successfully dragged him away as promised at the stroke of midnight. The events that happened prior were still a blur to him. He only knew that when he awoke that morning, the town was alit with talks of a raven haired stranger whisking the Prince away in a night of dancing and laughter.

As far as Yuuri knew, no one was able to uncover his identity, and he wanted to will it to stay that way. Lost in the curse of his drinking, he strayed from being safe and nearly blew it for both himself and Phichit, all for the chance to live out a dream beyond anything he felt he would ever be worthy of. Though it was nice being able to recall the way Victor’s laughter sounded against the base of his throat.

“Hi! May I join you?”

Yuuri nearly leapt off of the ground, unaware that he wasn’t alone in his oasis and was stunned to see who was standing before him. Grasping onto the tendrils of grass beneath him to feel for sure that this wasn’t another dream, Yuuri gulped before getting up immediately to gather his belongings.

“S-sorry, I was just g-going. Please, enjoy the space your majesty.” Yuuri said with a deep bow, hanging his head low before swiftly turning his back to the man.

“I know it was you.” Viktor called out to him.

Yuuri froze, willing his shoulders to relax before uttering a simply reply, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“At the ball. You were the raven. And I’m certain you must have made my owl mask. The details never lie. I’ve always admired every piece we’ve gotten from you.” Viktor said fondly.

“M-my work?” Yuuri managed to get out.

“Mhm, and if I’m being honest, I haven’t had fun like that at a ball in ages.”

Yuuri found himself spinning around to plead for forgiveness, but all he could hear was giggling and the feeling of a cloth that still felt warm landing on top of his head. Drawing his hands up, he pulled on the cloth and saw that it was an undershirt. Eyes trailing to the ground, he saw a pattern of scattered clothing ranging from trousers, boots, even the lavish magenta hued petticoat.

That was when he saw him, shimmering in the middle of the lake like an ethereal being come to life. The way the sun cascaded against his silver hair making him even more luminous than ever, how his eyes seemed even brighter than the skies above. Yuuri searched for any ounce of distrust or hard feelings, but only found that Viktor was still warm and inviting. Soon enough, his lithe hand was outstretched to him, in a way of beckoning, possibly a calling.

“I was wondering if we might be able to continue in the spirit of fun. I’m going for a swim. Do you wanna join me?”

Yuuri looked on dazed, seeing a brilliant smile gracing Viktor’s lips.

Would it be a sin for him to say yes?

[angstymarshmallow]

Fresh Start (Hunt x MC)

[A little note: After that chapter with Viktor Montemartre..I just have a lot of conflicting feelings. So on a whim, I wrote this. There isn’t a lot of details in regards to what happened, I feel like sexual harassment is a very tenative topic, and if you aren’t comfortable with any mentions of it - feel free to ignore seeing this across your dash. Plus I’ve waited like 10 years to write hunt x mc fanfiction lol. P.S. If you read this, thanks so much for reading! I’ve been feeling really down about everything, even my writing so this always means a lot!].

[Word Count: 2102]

[Tags:  @mariamatsuo @mrswalkerwrites, @nerdpossible, @mysteli, @simplyaiden-blog, @innerpostmentality  @craftytacotrashdream, @nathan-sterling, if you want to be added or removed from this list - let me know].

Her hands are shaking and much to no avail – she cannot get the shaking to stop. They tremble harder the longer she stares, and she stares at them like it is the first time she has paid attention to the smooth planes in her palm. 

Yet, very quickly – her hands change. 

They turn paler by the second and she watches in complete horror as they warp; blurring until the next time she blinks they are suddenly too big and too board to be hers; too manicured to belong to her. An image of Viktor Montmartre burns itself through the wall she’s placed inside her head.

Her heart nearly comes to a stop and the music pulsating around her quickly filters out. It becomes background noise while she studies her hands. It’s impossible – she knows it cannot be his hands that is attached to her skin and yet her haggard mind seems to feel differently.

Her stomach drops and she clenches her fists. She digs little moons into her palms as she forcibly drops them to her sides. She has to convince herself that it isn’t real – not this part.

The alcohol simply isn’t doing its justice.

She shifts forward into her bar stool and catches sight of her phone’s bright light from the corner of her eyes. She ignores the incoming text from her friends and grits her teeth.

She swears she can still feel his stare, gazing at her hungrily despite her protests and indignation when he suggested she slept with him. She can still feel his breath unwantedly grazing her neck when he pulled her solidly against his chest, and his fingers tugged her into him, reeking of cologne before she finally managed to wrench herself free.

She squeezes her eyes shut and forces the bile she feels rising to her throat back. She can’t think like that. She can’t let him win.

Today marks two weeks since it happened, two weeks since the moment she walked away from Viktor Montmartre’s…nauseating and horrifying deal. She knows she’s shut her friends out in the days she chose to spend moping inside her home with only her ocelot for company. Shutting everyone out has been the only way for her to pretend she’s okay but after two weeks, she could ignore them no longer.  

Tonight is supposed to be some kind of celebration from her leaving her home and joining them back in the waking world. Although she doesn’t have anything lined up after the action movie deal blew up in her face – she’s kept a wide berth from the public.

You’re here to have fun Tate, not to mope. A small voice implores her, begs her as she watches the empty shot glass in front of her.

Except the thought of his cold hands on her – it isn’t something she can easily forget. Even after the rounds of shots she’s done, even after the fourteen days since she bounded the steps of his manor – it doesn’t feel quite like it’s over. For her, it’s still happening, as if any minute now the door of this club would open and her blood would run cold once she meets his chilly stare across the room.

She has to get out of here.

She’s already half-way off the stool, chugging the new shot she’s ordered when her brain persists and orders her to stop. No Tate, you can’t think like that. You can’t give him that kind of power over you – that satisfaction that he’s broken you.

The words don’t sound like her; they sound like her mother on the night when she told her.  Like a tidal wave, the words sweep her into its embrace, providing her strength she’s never known she was capable of. And for a moment, she wants to push past the fear that threatens to cripple her. She can’t let something like this ruin her – she won’t let it. And yet, it doesn’t stop the insidious thoughts from filtering through after finding cracks she’s tried so desperately behind to slip through.

“Excuse me,Tatum...?”

Her eyes fly open at the familiar voice’s greeting. To say it’s unexpected was putting it mildly. She places an arm across the bar counter to steady herself as she turns to meet his expression. Thomas Hunt in the flesh is standing a littles less than five feet from her – looking concerned as ever as his eyes sweep up and down to take in her dishelmed appearance.

           Five shots of tequila definitely did not do the trick. “Thomas Hunt?” She says uncertaintly, “The Thomas Hunt? – The one that wanted to sign me on his next new movie?” She’s babbling but she can’t help it, she thinks if she stops she won’t have anything more to distract herself with. She thinks if she stops, she’ll think of Viktor.

“The very one and the same,” he replies good-naturedly. “Good evening, are you –” He steps closer and involuntarily she winces. His brows creases. “Are you quite alright?”

Yes. It is the automatic answer she’s always given; the answer she’s said without thinking to her friends ever since it happened. “Yes, I’m fine.” She tries to keep her voice steady but thinks she fallen short of her mark the moment he frowns.

“You aren’t alright,” he says this a matter-of-factly, but doesn’t seem capable of pursing it any further.

Tatum thinks he’s waiting for her to say more. “What are you doing here?” She tries to change the subject instead; deflecting and directing attention off herself has always been one of her best coping mechanisms. “I thought this wasn’t your sort of thing.” She’s proud of herself for finding it in her to keep her voice light, and teasing. Already she can feel the buzz fading, receding and forcing her thoughts to the present. Need more alcohol, she thinks to herself while she waits for his answer.

She hails the bartender for another drink with the flick of her wrist. “It isn’t a celebration without drinks. What’s your poison?”

“I prefer to order for myself,” Thomas interjects thinly. “Although, I hardly think this place can meet the standards of my particular palette.”

“We can try.” The bartender states flatly, although he’s cordial enough to smile.

Thomas orders and mercifully, the bartender does his best to follow his crisp directions.

Silence falls between them for the better half of a minute while they wait for the arrival of their drinks. Tatum turns to him, “I thought you were too good to be seen in places like this.”

“Oh, I am,” Thomas replies shortly, tucking his hands into his tailored coat. “I was just…” he trails off for a moment, seeming lost in thought. “After I heard about what happened with Tommy Phelps…”

Hearing his name and the movie that was completely out of her hands makes Tatum wince. She downs her drink quickly as Thomas pauses again; his brows forming that familiar crease again.

“Perhaps this is better discussed in a more private area.”

Viktor Montmartre’s cruel smirk grips her mind. The reaction is instantaneous. She flinches, and sucks in a deep breath. Her reaction is pure instinct and instead of taking his outstretched arm, she reels away and clenches her hands into fist at her sides. The words come out in a rush, hot and angry as she points flippantly at him. “I am not going anywhere with you.” She storms past him and ignores the quizzical look on his face.

“I think there is some confusion –”

“Oh, there’s no confusion.” She whips her head around; gray eyes the colour of cement steel as they glare up at him. I’m not going to be a victim – never ever again. “Whatever you’re offering – I don’t want it.”

“Tatum,” his eyes flash with confusion but she isn’t fooled.

“Anything you need to say to me, you can say it here!” She yells, folding her arms.

“I’m not where this…aggression is coming from, but I assure you – the quality of my movie would far than rival anything else Tommy Phelps had in store for you. In fact,” he steps a little closer; his voice lowering to match his shrewd gaze. “I think it’s impervious we go forward with making you my lead.”

Her eyes widen. The smart-ass remark she’s been sitting on for the last several minutes vanishes. “You – what?” She stares up at him in disbelief. Even after every curve ball Viktor has tried to block in her career – and Tommy Phelps dropping her as his lead; she didn’t think anyone in this city wanted to work with her ever again.

“I require you for my movie.” He implores, “no one has been able to fill the shoes I know you can fill.” His eyes search hers; more open and honest than she thinks is possible for someone like Thomas Hunt. “They all fall a little short in some fashion and I,” He averts his eyes for a moment, “I would be a fool no to take advantage of such raw talent.”

Tatum stares at him, completely stunned. The last thing she had anticipated was this. Involuntarily, tears seem to swell from the corner of her eyes. “You want to work with…me?”

“I thought that was obvious, yes.” He says impatiently.

“But, you shouldn’t.” She can’t believe she’s saying this but she knows enough about Thomas Hunt and the quality he creates that her current reputation presented a predicament. She isn’t a fool to think he hasn’t heard what Viktor has said about her – all the horrid things he sold to gossip magazines as her coming onto to him as a way of using his success to climb her way to the top. “You’re better off finding someone that isn’t…” She trails off, staring blankly her feet. Someone that hasn’t been tarnished by the media.

The impatient noise he makes at the back of her throat throws her. She stares up at him; watching those often intense-looking dark brown eyes flicker over in annoyance. “If you’re looking for pity Tatum you won’t find that here. I was under the impression that you were a hard worker and your passion for acting seemed second to none.” A frown flits over his face, “if something as ridiculous as rumors will deter you so easily then perhaps you are not what I am looking for.”

As he turns to leave, she stares at his retreating figure. He doesn’t believe in them, he doesn’t care about rumors, Tatum thinks with a jolt of surprise. She doesn’t know why – but realizing he isn’t concerned with such things, makes her heart flutter.

Tatum shakes her head clear. She knows she’s running out of options – the upkeep of her home alone won’t pay for itself without something. And while she cannot remember the important details of his script, Tatum recognizes that this was one of those-once-in-a-lifetime opportunities her mother had used endlessly talk about the last time she did a talent show.

Tatum’s hands extend and reach for his arm without even thinking. “Wait!”

His body comes to a complete stop so swiftly that she nearly knocks into him. Digging her feet into her heels, she plants them with enough force to stop herself from tittering over embarrassingly into him. “I’ll do it.” She says quietly. At the quirk of his eyebrows, she quickly rushes on. “I’ll accept your deal.” She takes a ragged breath. “I want to be the next lead in your movie.”

For a moment, Tatum fears he won’t accept her sudden change of heart. His eyes are too hard to read in this light, and although he hasn’t moved away as though he’s quietly deliberating on something – she’s suddenly struck with panic that he’s withdrawn his offer.

Then the strangest thing happens.

Thomas smiles.

He smiles and Tatum thinks she has never seen something as beautiful as his smile in her entire life. She has always thought the director was handsome, one of the richest bachelors in his own rite but the way those lips of his move; unaccustomed to the confident smile – she feels light-headed.

His face seems to linger on hers’, flits down to her lips; or perhaps she is seeing things once they meet her earnest gaze.

And just as quickly, the smile fades as his hand reached out to steady her. His smile is replaced by a curt nod as he drops his hands back to his sides. “I will see you bright and early tomorrow.” He hands her a card in flourish.

“Tomorrow?” She echoes dumbfoundedly. His name is printed in large and eloquent cursive writing along with an obscure logo from the dainty piece of paper.

“Tomorrow.” He repeats, and before Tatum can thank him – he is already gone; moving through the crowd at a terse pace to escape the music and the people.

She hides a smile as her thumb traces over the thick letters of his name, hoping this deal is exactly the fresh start she needs.

-

[endlesscloudsoftime]

What Brings Us Together

For @yoiroyaltyweek Day 3: Tokens of Favour. (Late to the day, yes I know, but life.) 

If you want to read it on AO3 then here is the link!

Hope you enjoy ^.^ 

-x-

Viktor blinked rapidly, hoping that the more his eyelashes fluttered shut and open the faster he would comprehend why his dog was holding a pair of blue rimmed glasses while being caked in mud.

She’s such a smart girl though, is the thought that ran through his mind when he noticed Makkachin holding them gently by the wiring in between the two lenses. Her tail was limp, a telling sign that she was aware of her mischief, but Viktor did not have it in him to scold her in public. More importantly, he could not, for if he did it would draw attention. Attention is something he did not need at that moment, especially as he was trying to be one with the crowd.

He really did not want his guard escorting him back to the palace.

With a heavy sigh, Viktor plucked the glasses from Makka’s mouth and wiped them clean of any residual dirt. Glad for the oversized hoodie he had managed to grab before being thrust amongst a throng of strangers, Viktor pulled the hood tighter around his head to prevent exposure of his extremely distinctive head and weaved his way through the crowd forming around them. The soft, high lilt of the Japanese pleasantly rang in Viktor’s ears, reminding himself of why he had gone through the risk of being house arrested again. Wandering around the host city for this year’s Meeting of the Royals, it was easy to forget that his beloved companion had somehow drenched herself in mud, but the slight pressure of the glasses in his hand was a stark enough reminder.

A very puzzled Viktor made his way through the city’s populated areas and into side streets that led to pockets of silence and tranquility. His bewilderment did not stop him from marveling the wonder of the city, and he wished he were more familiar with the different kinds of human settlements.

[Practically of course. Not everything can be learned through a book.]

After finding a vending machine in the middle of the quiet street and spending his time ‘ooh’-ing and ‘ahh’-ing about it, Viktor purchased a cold green tea and a bottle of water. Making sure his hoodie covered his pants sufficiently enough, Viktor carefully seated himself in a discrete corner and proceeded to gently wash Makkachin off as much as he could with the water he had. Just as he was finishing his task, an abnormally loud sound had both him and Makka turn their heads around just in time to see a man in an oversized beige coat, scarf, face mask and is that a cat eared beanie?!?! stumbling from another side street onto theirs. The stranger managed to catch himself just short of planting his face into the wall and brushed his clothing in place. He froze on turning his head and spotting the pair staring at him, only letting his eyes turn to slits as he squinted at them.

The Russian Royal was fascinated by this man, and let his eyes roam up and down the bundled figure hoping that imprinting the scene in his mind now will let him remember this as one of the more exciting moments of his trip here. It was when he took in both the squinted eyes and the mud lined shoes the man was sporting did his mind clink. Wordlessly, he walked closer to the man, and before the stranger could flee Viktor offered the glasses to him, palm outstretched.

Cat-beanie man cautiously plucked the glasses from Viktor’s palm. As he rightfully placed them, his face lit up with relief and joy, and soon Viktor was attacked with various forms of ‘Thank you’ s and “I truly appreciate it’ s and “Your dog is adorable” s. The Japanese man punctuated every two words with a bow and Viktor could only grin as the stranger shook his hair out of his eyes each time, only to have them flop again at the next bow.

“You should really only be thanking Makkachin, she’s the real savior here!”

Cat-beanie man knelt down in front of his hero and patted her head. With the softest smile Viktor had ever seen on a person, the man whispered, “Thank you Makkachin, you really helped me out.”

His old girl barked in response and excitedly nuzzled her head into the petting, but Viktor was distracted by the image before him. Something in him trilled and put him on alert because he was sure that he had seen a watered down version of the smile before him recently. Not only that, but the way cat-beanie man moved, even when his hands were flailing about him as he apologized, made Viktor feel all the more certain that he had seen him somewhere.

Before he could voice the questions pooling at the tip of his tongue, however, the man straightened and looked at Viktor. “I’m sorry but I really need to get going. Thank you for all your help, I will forever remember this.” With a parting smile, he turned and left just as quickly as he had entered.

It took a while for Viktor to tear his eyes away from where the stranger had vanished to Makkachin’s curious ones. His body finally registered his exhaustion, and seeing that Makka felt the same, Viktor sighed, “Let’s go back Makka, we do have to get ready after all.” Shades that had been perched atop of his hoodie came back down again, and Viktor donned his urban battle costume before heading back to the stifling world he had no choice but to accept.

 -x- 

“Oh, the food is exquisite here! I need to have this in my life.”

Queen Hiroko, Empress of Japan clasped her hands together and giggled in glee. “Well, as it turns out, I actually helped make tonight’s dinner so if you ever want to learn I can always teach you!”

Viktor immediately lit up and beamed brighter than he ever thought he could, all the while completely failing to notice the gobsmacked expression on Crown Princess Mari’s face as she approached the pair. “Thank you so much, Your Majesty. It truly is an honour that you consider me worthy enough for your time and guidance. Especially as I have just gotten to know you properly.”

“Oh Your Royal Majesty-“

“Please do call me Viktor.”

“Viktor then. It really doesn’t feel like we have been recently acquainted. Why, my-“

“Mother!” A slight pressure by Viktor’s foot made him briefly glance down to the heel that Crown Princess Mari had just avoided stomping his shoe with in her haste to interrupt Her Majesty. “I think Father wants you by his side, it seems urgent.” As she straightened her figure, leaning away from her mother, the heir apparent for Japan tilted her head in the direction of the current ruler. His Majesty did seem to be glancing over at their group quite frequently, with each glance loaded with increasing desperation. Queen Hiroko sighed fondly, excused herself from their company, and made her way to her husband. King Toshiya visibly relaxed once she reached his side, and not for the first time did Viktor wish for a companion who could make him feel the same.

The sound of a throat clearing drew his attention away from his silent musings. The Tsar immediately plastered an apologetic smile for Mari who dismisses it with a wave of her hand and a nonchalant expression. “Honestly, they can be such a handful. The same can be said for us though.”

Viktor chuckled shortly before casting his gaze around the room. “I was told that you would be joined by His Royal Highness too for this event, was I mistaken? Or am I just not able to locate him here?”

Mari emitted her chortle behind a gloved hand as she said, “Oh Yuuri hasn’t made it to the floor yet I believe. It is his first time attending the event so I assume he’s nervous. The boy surprises me sometimes, so I wouldn’t put it past him to arrive exactly when he’s needed.”

“Hmm.” Viktor had been intrigued by what he had heard of the elusive second-in-line’s reputation and prowess. Loved by the majority of his kingdom, His Royal Highness Yuuri Katsuki rarely showed himself publicly and preferred to handle work in the shadows. Despite the obscurity, his reach and success in helping the rest of his family rule the country is apparent to his subjects and other nobility alike. The few times Viktor had seen the Prince were in broadcasts of the entire family, and even then he could not recall the Prince’s face for those public appearances were few and far between. By attending this year’s Meeting of the Royals in Japan, Viktor had hoped to finally be acquainted with the enigma. Seeing that he wasn’t even present at the event, though, made the Tsar slowly lose hope.

Well after his conversation with the Crown Princess of Japan, and his subsequent ones with the Crown Princes of France and Italy, Viktor found himself staring at an abandoned rose by a corner of the room, next to a high table littered with used glasses and plates. Drawn in by the striking hue of the flower, Viktor bent to pick up the midnight blue flower, marveling at the unusual shade. His fingers abruptly halted the turning of the flower when he heard a timid “Excuse me” and glancing over his shoulder he found a familiar face twisted in embarrassment.

Viktor could not move a muscle as he watched Cat-beanie man flap his mouth open and close for a few seconds before stuttering, “Um. I was searching for that but. Uh. It seems, you’ve,” Viktor’s eyes automatically flickered to the man’s lips as he licked them nervously, “found it. The rose. Ah, it’s for you. I mean, I got this for you so. Uh. It found it’s intended.” The sweet smile that punctuated his explanation twisted Viktor’s heart in a way he didn’t dislike, and he wanted to know more about the interesting man twisting his hands in front of him. Before he could ask though, the man suddenly jumped, and only when he straightened did Viktor’s mind finally put two and two together, the click echoing in his mind mockingly audible.

“Oh. I haven’t introduced myself yet! How rude of me. Your Imperial Majesty, my name is Prince Yuuri, second born of King Toshiya, Emperor of Japan. Pleased to meet you.”

[circlecast]

Playing The Victim Means You're Playing to Lose

Join me in helping Operation: Tears of the 22 and their first-time event over at the Byrd Adventure Center in Arkansas. This is happening between August 5-8 and are they ever putting up a bang-up event. There are going to be music and jeep rides on the many trails that span around the heart of the Ozark National Forest. on top of all that, there are going to be some amazing food trucks there to squash any hunger you have. We will also be having an auction where one of the lots is a 3-month coaching package with me!

So join up and let Matt and Rich know that you are going to the event by visiting the event page

Question of the Week by The Brotherhood of Men

How can you instill the understanding early on in a child's life that gang members should not be looked up to as role models and, despite its appealing nature, to walk their path would be a great misfortune?

That is a great question. Now I have a firm belief as to why gangs are so attractive to young people. now I can bash the music. The songs today promote and seem to encourage lots of today's youth to look at gangs in a romanticized manner. There are all the drugs the sense of comradery. you get to have guns and the like. Yet how do you change the hearts and minds of these kids from wanting to join a dead-end street like being in a gang?

To answer that We need to look at what the problem is, that problem is that there is no father in the picture. Thanks to many well-intended government programs the role of needing a father in the house has been diminished. Now when a woman gets pregnant she doesn’t have to turn to the father and say we need to raise this kid together. Instead, they turn to their rich Uncle Sam and he gives them money for food and daycare and rent and everything else that a father is supposed to provide. This keeps the men from having to grow up and face their responsibilities of providing for a family and it keeps the women from having to face their responsibilities that they need to be making better choices with their men.

The people that lose out because of this lack of responsibility are the kids, especially the boys. You have a group of boys who doesn't have any strong masculine guidance in their life, therefore they turn to the closest perceived masculine and that is a bunch of grown boys who are in a gang. So they learn what it means to be a man from a bunch of people who don't know what it really means to be a man. Instead of the dad, who would know best and having that father be a constant presence in their life. These boys now have a bunch of strangers who are saying they have to do this or that to be called a man. When in reality they don't know anything about being a man because they were also taught by a bunch of grown boys instead of a grown man.

So how do we change the minds of these boys thinking that gangs are cool? We get fathers to become involved in their boy's lives. It won't be easy but it is possible. If you don't have kids then start finding ways you can be involved in the lives of boys who don't have fathers. Join up and be a mentor with Big Brothers/Big Sisters. It is a shift in culture which is going to be tough because today's society thinks all the good elements of a successful life are being white. Which the farthest from the truth. So there is a social change that needs to be done. How that is above my pay grade.

Answer requested by Viktor Bondarchuk

Main topic

Today's society is one that they see who can win the race to being the biggest victim. This is why schools have safe spaces. Kids in college want to make sure they can say something without facing the repercussions of their actions. This is one reason the world so so upside down right now. Being a strong masculine man is scored and called out to be the cause of all the good that masculinity does in society.

What is a victim?

A victim is a person who has given up their power to someone or something else. Society is wanting it to mean that there is no blame to be given to the victim. Though many times that person actually got themselves into that predicament. A person was the victim of greedy capitalists. No, that person chose to spend their paycheck on a pair of high-top sneakers and then didn't have enough money for rent.

The poor can't get out of their predicament because the patriarchy won't let them. Again no the poor often made some bad decisions that caused them to be in that environment. They can get back out again if they are willing to change their habits. Yet again you see that the poor supposedly doesn't have any power because of the patriarchy, whatever that is supposed to mean.

Look at people who have been under real oppression. You see that though they are victims of that dictator they eventually decide to take back the power that they gave away and either leave that environment or gather strength and make them change themselves. To say you are a victim is to say you are powerless.

Why the victim never wins

This was touched on earlier, the victim cant win because they don't want their power to be able to change. Many times this means getting out of their comfort zone. The victim has to make a change in who they are or what they believe and doing so can be messy and awkward. They think that it is easier to just sit back and go poor me. Feel sorry for me because I am not able to be successful.

Playing the victim means you are playing life small. You will not take the chances out of fear that you may become victimized even more. Yet this is impossible because you will have your power unless you willfully give it up again.

Another reason that a victim will not be able to win is that nobody actually respects a victim. They pity and feel sorry for a victim but that isn't respect. You see a cancer patient who decided they are going to live every day to the fullest isn't a victim of their environment they are taking their power back and doing what they were afraid to do before. You see a boy who stands against his bigger and stronger bully is taking his power back. If these people were being victims they would simply give up and hand their power over to other people or their condition.

Helping a victim is tiring. There are always emergencies going on, and the powerless victim wants others to put the fire out. When others don't they cry even more victimhood. The person who is helping finally realizes that the victim is actually in the problem because of their own choosing and gives up and lets the victim sit in their own mess. Not because they don't care but because they are tired of sacrificing themselves for someone they don't respect.

How do you stop being the victim?

The biggest way to get out of the victim mindset is to acknowledge that you got yourself into that situation. It wasn't anybody else's fault other than your own. Once you own your dirt and that you had a hand in the scenario then you can start to make the needed changes to clean up your mess.

It isn't easy to change what can be at times years of victim mindset but it is possible. Your power has never left you. Your agency is still sitting in your mind you have to exercise it often and using the help of a coach or a Men's Group

  Newest podcast episode to change your Mindset

[exlansis]

heyyyy this is viktor, i really hope you like him, because he is one of my favorites !! he is my angry smart boy. there is a lot underneath the read more so just read whatever you feel like reading !! if you feel like plotting please like this and i’ll go to you !!

                                                                           ╰        *           𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓

kill our way to heaven by michl

leave me alone by nf

5:3666 by machine gun kelly

jesus in la by alec benjamin

                                                                              ╰        *           𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐌

my smartest character. not that means a lot, most of my characters are dumbasses, but still. he is pretty intelligent. 

most of the time he thinks he is the smartest person in every room.

a fan of silence. if no one talked to him, he would probably spend days without uttering a single world. if he could only speak in grunts, he would. 

loves all doggos. has a weakness for all of them. will kill anyone that hurts dogs.

he has three dogs a russell terrier named charlie, a golden retriever named buddy and a beagle named max. they are his life.

he also has a bunch of strays that he takes care of and they all hang around his house. they are not officially his dogs but he would die for them as well.

from russia. his father was russian, his mom american. he lived in russia until he was ten then moved to the u.s.a

tries his best to not to have an accent, but sometimes he slips up and it’s pretty noticeable.

tends to have very binary ideas on people. he either loves them or hates them and he decides which one after a five minute conversation.

raised catholic. switches back and forth between fervent believing in it or doubting everything he was taught.

                                                                      ╰        *           𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

personality type: istj ( the logistsian )

moral alignment: chaotic neutral ( the free spirit )

strengths: intelligent, observant, diligent, practical, direct, adaptable, dynamic, patient

weaknesses: manipulative, vengeful, ruthless, closed off, rigid, detached, judgmental. arrogant.

                                                         ╰        *           𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘

                             ( tw: child abuse, )

viktor and his twin sister natalya were born in 1981 in a small town in russia.

his mother died when he was two year old and his father was a horrible man that switched back and forth between abusive and not around at all.

a well known gangster in the area, his father wanted to “ train ” him and his sister to be just strong and tough which in his mind translated to hitting his young children every time they did anything wrong.

viktor and his sister grew very close, he felt as though she was the only person in his life he could trust.

after his father got arrested when they were around ten years, he moved to the u.s.a, his mother’s home country, to live with his uncle.

their uncle tried his best to take care of the two of them, but viktor and his sister had a really hard time trusting him and every attempt of his to get closer to them fell flat.

viktor dropped out of high school at age fifteen to run away with his sister. they couldn’t trust their uncle, they couldn’t trust teacher, they couldn’t trust authority figures, they couldn’t trust anyone but themselves, so they ran off.

                                                                       ╰        *           𝐌𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐋𝐋𝐄

                                 ( tw: crimes, )

refer above for general backstory

after a few failed attempts to find a job and take care of themselves, the two of them turned to crime.

as time passed by they seemed to be more and more successful as criminals. viktor and his sister ended up making a little gang of their own.

his sister felt at home doing what they did, but viktor saw it more as means to an end. he used his power and influence to help kids who were lost just like him, get them away from abusive parents, find them a job ( even if it was doing illegal things ) he wanted to a better person than life had made him.

things worked out great until one day, his sister decided to hurt one of the kids viktor took care of to “ make them an example ” and “ teach them a lesson. ” in the moment viktor saw in his sister, the father they had ran from and he couldn’t deal with it.

he packed up everything he owned and ran away to multiville where he is hiding from the rest of his life, living a normal and ordinary life fixing cars and taking care of his dogs 

𝐚𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 ;; the unshakable memory of a terrible past, not knowing how to say what you want to say, short sighs and grunting leaving your lips instead of answering, hiding as much as you can as far as you able to.

                                                                      ╰        *           𝐌𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐘

                                ( tw: crimes, )

refer above for general backstory 

viktor and sister discovered their powers once they moved to multicity. they saw different heroes going around, saving people, protecting the world and they wanted to be heroes just like them.

they started hero-ing around when they were both teenagers, at first the costumes were home maid, ski masks and hoddies with their initials. they started helping old women crossing the streets, cleaning up parks.

slowly, surely, they became more and more noticeable and famous, they started having actual costumes, saving people in danger, developing their powers more and more. 

in one of their fights against villains viktor’s sister ended up dying and he was unable to kill the man resposible for it, that is when he decided to join the guardians.

the only real reason for him to part of the guardians is to use their resources to find the person responsible for her death and have his revenge

𝐚𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 ;; fighting for the sake of fun, laughter behind a black mask, entertainment derived from chaos, fire everywhere, bullets flying through a skull.

                                                                          ╰        *           𝟏𝟖𝟓𝟑

                               ( tw: crimes, ) 

refer above for general backstory

after a few failed attempts to find a job and take care of themselves, the two of them turned to crime.

as time passed by they seemed to be more and more successful as criminals. viktor and his sister ended up making a little gang of their own.

things were good, they were great even, viktor was finally at ease.

at a failed attempt to arrest the people in his gang, his sister ended up getting shot and passing. after that viktor went in a downward spiral. 

he was lost without her, worse and worse as more time passed and he had less and less moments with her. that’s when he decided to turn to the ocult.

viktor grew obsessed with ghosts, spells, anything and everything that would allow him a few extra moments with his sister. — which ended up also giving him and his gang more, terrible, unspeakable powers.

𝐚𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 ;; the echo of an old church, loud steps on old hardwood floors, praying until the words don’t make any sense anymore, a strange gush of cold air rushing past you, the voices of the same ghost troubling your sleep.

                                                                           ╰        *           𝟐𝟐𝟖𝟎

                              ( tw: crimes, ) 

refer above for general backstory

after a few failed attempts to find a job and take care of themselves, the two of them turned to crime.

as time passed by they seemed to be more and more successful as criminals. viktor and his sister ended up making a little gang of their own.

things were good, they were great even, viktor was finally at ease.

at a failed attempt to arrest the people in his gang, his sister ended up getting shot and passing. after that viktor grew ruthless.

he didn’t care about anyone and anything other than himself and power. 

𝐚𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 ;; golden crosses forgotten in faraway cabinets, books staking up everywhere you look, a black leather jacket over a black shirt, smoke leaving a coffee cup, the car’s hood reflecting the sunrise

                                                           ╰        *           𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

someone from his past who knows a little too much

someone that worked/works for him in his gang

someone who doesn’t know what he does for a living and is friends with 

someone that always petsits his dogs

[experiencingmyjoy]

Walking Within Wisdom #41  

Rosh Hashanah - Shana Tova - Sweet New Year

September 30, 2019

“Let the old year and its curses end. Let this year and its blessing inspire and compel us… Let us welcome this New Year as a fresh start. Wrap her round seven times with a joy that fills your heart. Love and generosity are ever-present it is fear that suppresses, sweeten the curses of this past year, it is hope and joy that blesses” ~Kabbalah Experience Rosh Hashanah Service 2019

Walking today has me pondering Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year which started last night. Rosh Hashanah marks the start of the Jewish High Holy Days leading up to Yom Kippur. It marks the beginning of the 10 “Days of Awe,” in which Jews focus their attentions on repentance and reflection leading up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, considered to be the holiest day of the Jewish year. 

Unlike the festive celebrations of New Year in other faiths, the Jewish New Year is a time to reflect on where we have been, where we are going, and what we want to do differently in the coming year. This is a time of personal reflection grounded in the idea that each and every year we have the ability to change the way we live. “The power of personal transformation is not beyond us but within us” 

I spent a long time searching for a place to spend the high holidays, at that time I had not been able to duplicate the tribe of my childhood and being single with no children I hadn’t found a place to “belong”. About five years ago, my dear friend had taken classes with David Sanders suggested I join her at Kabbalah Experience for the High Holidays. I have been attending these services every year since.

In the context of the New Year in today’s service we had a rather robust discussion of “the meaning of life” and within that topic read this quote from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning...

“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it” ~Viktor Frankl

Today sitting in with an intimate group of about 25 people including David’s twin daughters and Lily and her extraordinary harp playing I realized, I have found a place that I am truly at ease and perhaps more importantly allowing me the space to really reflect and dig in to what I have been doing for the last twelve months and what transformation lay ahead for me. I didn’t realize that what I needed (and need) to do is surrender “For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.”

Wishing everyone who celebrates Shana Tova, a very happy, healthy, sweet and of course JOYFILLED new year.

 Until soon when we walk again within wisdom...

[bestbooksintheworld-blog]

Best 100 Books All time

Best 100 Books Why we want read books because we could not connect from top success full people but when we read the successful people write books know that what is they saying and every one get friendship from that people using books. Once you read the following books surely you will come success full person and great leader eligable for any team the image told hole story of the blog Every one want success but on;y few people only get success others i want tell some best tips for success the tips are explain for the following books first one Believe your self it is the first step of success

You cannot believe in god until you believe yourself

Set Goal with out goal setting you could not achieve anything

Believe your self

Make a positive difference and do some good

Follow your dreams and just do it

Believe in your ideas and be the best

Have fun and look after your team

Don’t give up

Make lots of lists and keep setting yourself new challenges

Spend time with your family and learn to delegate

Try turning off the TV and get out there and do things

When people say bad things about you, just prove them wrong

Read following books you get high confident and achieve any thing if you want became an best leader read the books the books all life changing books once you done for the books get more motivation and self confident and get lot new ideas all the best

The Power of your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

The Intelligent Investor Benjamin Graham

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E Frankl

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by R. Stephen Covey

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change by Charles Duhigg

Thinking, Fast and Slow (Penguin Press Non-Fiction) by Daniel Kahneman

Zero to One: Note on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel, Blake Masters

Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action by Simon Sinek

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World Cal Newport

Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of Spacex and Tesla is Shaping Our Future by Ashlee Vance

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time by Brian Tracy

The One Thing by Gary Keller, Jay Papasan

The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The Hard Thing about Hard Thing: Building a Business When There are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard

Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins

The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built by Duncan Clark

The $100 Startup: Fire Your Boss, Do What You Love and Work Better To Live More by Chris Guillebeau

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms by Vishen Lakhiani

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

The 48 Laws Of Power (The Robert Greene Collection) by Robert Greene

Leaders Eat Last (With a New Chapter) by Simon Sinek

Awaken the Giant within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Life by Anthony Robbins

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely Business Adventures by John Brooks

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines and Habits of Billionaires, Icons and World-Class Performers by Timothy Ferriss

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg

The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams – Lessons in Living by Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow

Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking by Susan Cain

Crucial Conversations Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High, Second Edition by Kerry Patterson,Joseph Grenny,Ron Mcmillan,Al Switzler

Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success by Adam Grant

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity by David Allen Essentialism by Greg McKeown

Losing My Virginity by Sir Richard Branson

Talk Like TED: The 9 Public Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds by Carmine Gallo

ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever by David Heinemeier Hansson & Jason Fried

How Will You Measure your Life? by Clayton Christensen

Crush It! Why Now is the Time to Cash in on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh

Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance: 40th Anniversary Edition by Robert Pirsig

How Not to be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper Perennial Modern Classics) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The Go-Giver by Bob Burg,John David Mann

Originals: How Non-Conformists Change the World by Sheryl Sandberg, Adam Grant

Getting to Yes: Negotiating an agreement without giving in by Roger Fisher, William Ury

Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change) by Christensen

Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull

Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want by Yves Pigneur, Greg Bernarda, Alan Smith, Trish Papadakos Alex Osterwalder Girlboss by Sophia Amoruso

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni

First, Break All The Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently by Gallup, James K. Harter

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Charles Burck, Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School by Mark H. McCormack

Leadership and Self Deception by The Arbinger Institute

Switch: How to change things when change is hard by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice by Clayton M

Christensen (Author), Taddy Hall Karen Dillon

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin

The Content Trap: A Strategist’s Guide to Digital Change by Bharat Anand

Never Eat Alone (Portfolio Non Fiction) by Keith Ferrazzi, Tahl Raz

The Art of War (Collins Classics) by Sun Tzu by Sun Tzu

Strengths Based Leadership: Great Leaders, Teams, and Why People Follow by Tom Rath,Gallup Press

Tribes: We need you to lead us by Seth Godin

Emotional Intelligence: 10th Anniversary Edition; Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

The Happiness of Pursuit: Find the Quest that will Bring Purpose to Your Life (Old Edition) by Chris Guillebeau

Good Leaders Ask Great Questions by John C. Maxwell

The Wisdom of Failure: How to Learn the Tough Leadership Lessons Without Paying the Price by Laurence G. Weinzimmer, Jim McConoughey

Grit to Great (Lead Title) by Kaplan Thaler, Linda

Smarter Faster Better by Charles Duhigg

Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod

Act Like a Leader Think Like a Leader by Ibarra

Choose Yourself!: Be Happy, Make Millions, Live the Dream by James Altucher

How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life by Russ Roberts

The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch by Dan Norris

Building the Internet of Things: Implement New Business Models, Disrupt Competitors, Transform Your Industry by Maciej Kranz

Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity by David Whyte

Do Over: Make Today the First Day of Your New Career by Jon Acuff

The Truth About Leadership: The No Fads, Heart of the Matter Facts You Need to Know by James M. Kouzes , Barry Z. Posner

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown

Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland, JJ Sutherland

How to Speak Money by John Lanchester

Crazy is a Compliment: The Power of Zigging When Everyone Else Zags by Linda Rottenberg

[whoareurl]

Now I come to do this myself it's really hard to think of words! Let's try: Dizzy, American, Unrestrained.

(ngl i sat in ur askbox for like 20 minutes thinking of words omg it’s hard)

Viktor is always impressed that Yuuri got into an American university. Not only that, but he graduated from a university which taught in his second language while also skating at the Grand Prix Final. Viktor thinks in italics a lot when he thinks about Yuuri.

So, when Yuuri is asked to attend an alumni event, Viktor is adamant that he should go.

After some arguing (”I don’t want to!”) and anxiety (”What if everybody is really successful and I’m just me?” - Viktor cannot understand how Yuuri can consider an Olympic gold medal to be unsuccessful), Yuuri caves and they fly out to Detroit in First Class.

The event is formal and seeing Yuuri in a suit still makes Viktor weak at the knees. Ever since he’d forced Yuuri to get a tailored suit, formal events became infinitely more enjoyable. Everything was infinitely more enjoyable when Yuuri’s butt was well-displayed.

The room set-up is reminiscent of the many banquets Viktor has attended over the years and, judging by the soft blush on Yuuri’s face, his darling has noticed it too. It’s endearing how Yuuri still gets embarrassed about their first banquet together.

They’re greeted first by two men, one around Yuuri’s age and one significantly older with a grey beard, both holding flutes of champagne. Viktor gleans from the conversation that they both now work for the US government. 

Viktor keeps his arm looped through Yuuri’s while he lets his mind wander. Ever since Yuuri came into his life, Viktor has enjoyed himself at these formal dinners much more. He remembers too many years forcing smiles and laughing politely at dull conversation with uninteresting people. He remembers being alone and tired and never quite drunk enough.

And then Yuuri. Oh, Yuuri. What a light he has brought to Viktor’s heart.

When Viktor tunes back into the conversation, three women have joined their circle. One is chatting animatedly about her work in clean energy and her husband. 

The man with the grey beard laughs and says, “Ah, marriage. The old ball and chain.”

Viktor stares. He doesn’t understand. But then the woman laughs too.

“Well, we put up with each other. That’s as good as it gets, right?” She says. 

Viktor can’t breathe. He doesn’t understand. What does she mean by ‘putting up with’ her husband? That doesn’t make any sense. Don’t they- don’t they love each other so much that it hurts in their chests?

Viktor can’t breathe.

HHehhtzzishhoo!

He curls away from the crowd at the last minute with a hand over his mouth, taken completely by surprise. What the-

ehhtiSHHEW! hh…iHZHISHHOO!

The sneezes are strong and unrestrained and he hears a chorus of amused bless you’s from the group. Yuuri offers him a handkerchief as he straightens up but he finds himself snatching it without offering thanks before he’s thrown forward again.

hhiHHSHoo! inGISHHOOO! hhh…

Viktor sniffles, rubbing his itchy nose through the fabric and offering a general apology. He nods vaguely to Yuuri’s worried “Vitya?” and then he’s sneezing again. And again. And one more time for luck.

“Oh, excuse me,” he says sheepishly but then he sniffles and he smells perfume and his eyes scrunch shut again and-

hhhHRSZZISHHEW!

He leans heavily against Yuuri after that last one, cheeks flushed with embarrassment. He feels dizzy from the sudden onslaught.

Yuuri takes his hand, squeezes it tight, and says, “Sorry but I’ll have to bow out early. I’m afraid my husband isn’t feeling well.”

And then he drags Viktor to the bathroom. He sits Viktor up on the ledge between the sinks and washes his face with paper towels doused in cold water and gently, lovingly, kisses the tip of his pink nose.

“Hotel?”

Viktor waggles his eyebrows in an attempt to look seductive. “You want to make me feel all better, Yuuri?” He asks, voice low as he walks two fingers up Yuuri’s chest, delighting in the way his husband shivers under his touch.

“You’re a bad man, Viktor Nikiforov,” Yuuri scolds.

Viktor laughs. Yuuri delights him every single day.

[christophe-yoirp]

Like Lovers and Fools (Part 1)

Pairing: Chris/Mystery Man, Chris/Masumi

Rating: Mature

What started out as a game to get his composed, stick in the mud manager to open up turns into something Chris never could have prepared for.

Chris caught sight of him over the rim of his champagne glass as he brought it to his plump lips. A delicate wall flower lingering on the outskirts of the banquet hall. Masumi looked dashing in his suit, as always, and Chris hadn’t hesitated in telling him so when they’d arrived together. The skater wondered if he knew just how captivating he was, how much fun he could have if he’d open up a little and let himself blossom.

Of course, there was no one better to nurture such a flower than Christophe Giacometti. Out of the goodness of his heart, he had decided to rise to the challenge and had been trying to tempt him all evening to join in the festivities, preen him to fit in the social garden, but Masumi remained a steadfast and composed chaperone. Every advance he made was dismissed with a smile and chuckle, much to Chris’ chagrin. What did a man have to do to break that composure? Get naked and dance on that pole?!

…

Now there was an idea.

—–

Admittedly, in the haze of champagne and dancing with the cute dumpling who Chris was convinced may or may not be in love with Viktor (who wasn’t, honestly?), he had forgotten about his self proposed mission. It was momentarily shed, just like his clothing. Where were those now, anyway? Not that he was by any means self conscious. Just like when he graced the ice, Chris carried himself with the utmost confidence and oozed sex appeal with each sauntering step.

He found himself pressed up against his friend and rival, Viktor’s, back, arms draped around his neck and dipping into the unbuttoned neckline of his dress shirt to trace his fingers along his collarbone. Viktor had long since grown accustom to Chris invading his personal space, but the perceptive blonde had definitely noticed the shift in the accomplished man’s attitude when that drunk little minx had pressed up against him and begged him to be his coach.

“Mm, zhat one wants you bad, chéri. Don’t think I didn’t notice the way you lit up either. Oh, what shall I do if he steals you away from me?” Chris moaned in lamentation, bringing his hand up to press it dramatically to his forehead.

A light tap on his shoulder interrupted his shenanigans and he reluctantly detached himself from his unfortunate victim to greet the person behind him. Chris’ eyes widened, the flecks of green hidden among the hazel catching the light and seeming to shimmer as they took in the familiar figure standing before him. It was Masumi, actually away from the spot he had been rooted in all evening. “Chris… It’s getting late."

Ah... He should have known it was to corral him away from the party. And here he was hoping perhaps for one last dance.

“Time flies when you’re having fun, darling. I swear, za party just started.” Chris didn’t hesitate to melt against the man’s side, his arm snaking around his waist as if to steady himself. He wasn’t quite drunk enough that he couldn’t stand steady on his own two feet, but he played it off for an excuse to press himself against a warm body. “Zhen again, I have more stamina for zhis sort of zhing than most.”

He winked, but Masumi had long since become immune to the skater’s flirtations. Chris supposed he could only blame himself for spoiling him with love and affection on the daily, but it didn’t keep him from trying time and time again. Unperturbed, he reached up to affectionately brush one of Masumi’s long brown locks behind his ear. “Are you going to come, too? I might not be able to find my way wizout you~” He pouted childishly.

Truth be told, if he didn’t lead him then there was no telling who’s room Christophe might end up in for the night and that would make finding him in the morning for his flight home to Switzerland even more of a hassle. Masumi had been playing his high end babysitter long enough to anticipate that and it was for that very reason Chris knew he would take the bait.

“Of course.” Even now, there was no sign of resignation in Masumi’s voice. How he was so patient with Chris’ antics was beyond him. Placing his arms on the blonde’s bare shoulders, he straightened him upright for a moment and shrugged out of his own suit jacket to drape it around his form. He couldn’t have him walking through the hotel like this, even if he was more accustom to the cold than others. “So you don’t get cold.”

The considerate gesture staggered him, leaving Chris momentarily robbed of words. It was at moments like these, when Masumi was so selflessly kind for no reason, that he needed to remind himself to not let his mind get carried away like his racing heart. “Zhen take me.” He didn’t spare any of the innuendo as he mewled the suggestive invitation.

They didn’t talk much as they made their way through the hotel, but Chris gladly took the opportunity to lean on Masumi like he needed him and savor the way that strong arm wrapped securely around his waist in return. Much too soon they stood before his suite and the clingy blonde begrudgingly separated himself from his companion, turning to press his back against the door.

“Zhank you for ze escort.” He purred in gratitude and made a point of eyeing up Masumi from under long lashes. As a true master of eros, it was a look he’d practiced on many before and it had proved quite successful. “Why don’t you come in? I still have some champagne. We can have our own little after party. Just you and me.”

“We have an early flight in the morning, Chris. Best to get some rest.” The ever composed man chided as he adjusted his jacket on Chris’ shoulders, fingers sliding a bit too slow beneath the lapels to not strike him as sensual. Or at least it would have been, if he wasn’t offering that sweet smile that unfortunately reminded Chris of a parent’s when they had to tell their child they couldn’t have that toy they desperately wanted.

The skater let out an exaggerated sigh and leaned in to press a kiss to Masumi’s cheek. He may have been turned down, but he wasn’t dejected. “If you insist. My bed will be so lonely.”

“I’m sure you’ll manage.” His manager quipped with the ghost of a smirk tugging at his lips that never failed to wound Chris each time. Curse him for being so dashing and unobtainable. Yet instead of turning to leave, Masumi unexpectedly leaned closer, reaching past him as if to brace himself against the door, and Chris’ breath hitched as those silken locks brushed against his cheek. Hazel eyes fluttered closed expectantly for the goodnight kiss worthy of a movie scene... 

It never came. The only caress he received was from the cold rush of air from within his hotel room as the lock clicked and the hard surface of the door disappeared from behind him. When he opened his eyes, he noticed Masumi standing at a distance, pocketing his duplicate key card. ”Goodnight, Chris.” He uttered with that same wry little smile before waltzing down the hall, probably knowing full well that Chris’ gaze was fixated on his backside the entire way.

“Bonne nuit…” Chris’ dumbfounded farewell hung in the air, unheard by who it was intended for. Shaking his head, he finally stepped into his room and let the door swing closed, hand still clutching the front of Masumi’s suit jacket that was draped around him. How was he able to resist all his advances? Was it perhaps that he wasn’t his type? Chris scoffed at the mere thought. Nonsense! How could he not find him attractive?

The alluring ice skater hadn’t realized he had been standing motionless in the entryway, lost in his thoughts, until he suddenly felt something fluffy rubbing against his bare legs and heard the insistent mews of his neglected cat.

“Ah~ Mon petit chou.” He cooed as he bent to cradle her in his arms and nuzzled his cheek against her in a very feline manner of affection. “It is just us two, it seems. At least I can always count on you to keep me warm at night.”