#lyosha volkov

[goozeghost]

I'm back to oc posting hello

[streetlites]

"If you're here about Alex, I promised Vera I wouldn't say anything to anyone - and I haven't. So," Geneva made a move to close the door.

My hand shot out, palm smacking against the width of the flimsy particleboard material. I breathed in deeply through my nose to calm my temper - this place afforded no protection whatsoever. "You know that's not why I'm here -"

"No, I really don't know and I don't want to have anything to do with -!"

She squeaked as I pushed past her into the small living area that seemed to function as a bedroom, kitchen, and dining room. "Whether you want to have anything to do with my family or not doesn't matter because, like it or not, those are my grandchildren in there," I snap.

"They're not-"

"Do you think I would even bother to come out here if I wasn't certain that they were?"

"How?" she asked, a mixture of fear and uncertainty.

"Oh, that's easy. Did you think that taking them to the doctor in Midpoint would keep them out of our reach? You could have run anywhere in the world and we would have found them eventually. And thank God for that because this place is a dump. Honestly? Do you have any security in this place beside that deadbolt? What's that going to do with that cardboard door?"

Geneva crosses her arms again, "I don't need security. Unlike you and yours, I don't start shit with people."

"You think that's going to save them when people put two and two together about who their father is?! They're easy money right now - a cardboard door and a walk up. And you can't just say 'you and yours'. They. Are. Mine." I ground out between clenched teeth.

She had no idea the danger they were in. None. I'd already started insurance for them the second we had a suspicion. It made me sick to think if they'd been kidnapped before we knew. If it had happened and we'd refused to pay... I shook my head.

"Mama?"

Geneva's inhalation sounded like a hiss. It was one thing to know on paper that the children were my grandkids. It was another to see a little girl that looked so much like my Vera. I sank down to my knees, "мой маленький ангел" I cooed as she hesitantly approached me. She smiled as I held my arms out, shy at first before throwing her arms around my neck. I smiled and wrapped her into a hug, "Давай уложим тебя спать, милая," I tell her as she snuggles against me.

The woman huffs, "Don't. It's about time for them to get up."

"Why? To go to your mother's? No, you won't be doing that today." I tuck the little girl in and smooth the comforter around her.

"I have to go to work," she protests.

"You won't be doing that either." I straighten and check on the little boy who looks like Lyosha and brush his hair away from his eyes. "Come, we need to discuss what you need to do to get your affairs in order."

"My -? Are you threatening me?"

I shake my head in exasperation. "No, because the children will be sleeping and I don't want to wake them. Threaten? Are you not my grandchildren's mother? I don't know what you think when you hear 'Volkov' but family is very important to me." I walk past her back into the small living area, "You can't stay here. You need to move."

Geneva laughs sarcastically, "Oh sure, let me just scrape up a couple of thousand while I'm skipping work and move this minute. Maybe a house in Windslar? "

I nod, ignoring the barb, "That's a good location," I pull out my phone and text my realtor's number to her. "Set up a meeting with her and pick out a house today. Have her show you some of our empty properties and pick out a place to stay until the paperwork goes through."

"I don't know what you think is going to happen, but I'm not interested in getting back together with Alex."

"Lyosha doesn't know about you. Against my better judgment, I promised my wife that I'd keep it quiet for now." I sigh.

Her brows furrow, "Why? Why would you do that?"

I stare at my phone as I scroll through numbers to find Petra, my assistant. "My son is a traditionalist. And dutiful. If someone were to tell him about you, he'd be on the first flight out here. And as you are, if he were to take you to court right now for custody, you'd lose. Especially out here."

"He wouldn't."

"He would. And my wife would like for him to have a firmer grasp on working within Volkov Industries before giving him that information." I tell her, but I don't completely believe it. I push away the worry that my wife has something planned for our son that he wouldn't have sought for himself. "And in the meantime, that would give you time to go back to school, have a distant, unknown, relative pass to give you a house in Windslar and a hefty inheritance enough to afford nannies, schooling, and security."

"And what would this cost me?" She asks, her eyebrows raised.

"My wife and I will have access to the children, whenever we ask for it. And your silence. Aleksei must never know we had this conversation."

[czesarevich]

This is unabashedly inspired by a post @tretiyrim made a few weeks ago (sorry Ira you know I’m a magpie) but Alexei is fairly particular about the way he is addressed. This is partially due to the way East Slavic names work, and partially due to his own personal sensibilities. 

The most polite, respectful form of address would be Alexei Romanovich, but he doesn’t really expect anyone outside of the general cultural sphere of the former Eastern Bloc to use it. Mr. Volkov feels a bit too formal, but he doesn’t find it objectionable.

For most people that he knows, just Alexei is fine. That being said, if one cannot pronounce his name correctly, he would prefer simply to be called Alexis. Not Alex, not Al, just Alexis; he finds Alex particularly grating, and will be very quick to point out that “Alexei” is the Russian variant of the name Alexis, not Alexander. 

Alyosha, Lyosha, Alyoshenka, and other diminutives are reserved for family members and very close friends exclusively. He will probably assume he’s being talked down to or made fun if called these names, and finds it particularly demeaning to be addressed as such by other men that aren’t family or close friends. 

[susierpt]

hi susie! could you please help me find a Russian boy name and last name for a character played by Froy Gutierrez? thanks.

FIRST

Borya

Kolya

Maksim

Faddey

Ilya

Nikolai

Grisha

Kir

Dima

Demyan

Abram

Vadik

Lyosha

Kazimir

Motya

Feliks

Evengi

Alyosha

Petya

Taras

Kuzma

Iosif

Vanya

LAST

Mikhailov

Lebedev

Babkin

Zaporozhets

Bukhalo

Ivanov

Smirnov

Golubkin

Arshavin

Vanzin

Vitsin

Kozlov

Petrov

Zaslavsky

Kuznetsov

Nikolaev

Volkov

Bazin

Dyomin

Zhilin

Alexeev

Bok

I hope some of these work for you!

[goozeghost]

The day i stop drawing my ocs that no one cares abt is the day i DIIEEE! i love making stuff up!!!

[goozeghost]

making up new ocs bc I'm insane and i can

[goozeghost]

more oc stuff because I'm insane about them

[czesarevich]

30 DAYS OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT  —  DAY 1 

What is your character’s name? Does the character have a nickname? Do they have a preferred name or something they go by?

Alexei’s full, legal name is Alexei Romanovich Volkov. In Russian Cyrillic script, this is written Алексей Романович Волков. 

There are multiple ways of romanising the name, some of which are more phonetically accurate than others, but he opts for the fairly typical spelling of ‘Alexei’ when writing in a language that uses the Latin alphabet. The name Alexei is derived from Greek, and means ‘defender’ or ‘protector’. He didn’t really choose it for himself, it was just sort of...given to him by someone or another as a child, and he kept it. 

Romanovich is his patronymic name, meaning ‘son of Roman’. This one he did choose for himself as he has no actual father. Alexei was also the name of Peter the Great’s only son, so naming himself ‘Alexei Petrovich’ would have felt inappropriate. So, he picked Romanovich, in honor of the Romanov dynasty as a whole. As he got older, he began to see his patronymic as a sort of passive-aggressive snub against Moscow and particularly the idea of Moscow as being the “Third Rome”. After all, what better way to proclaim yourself the true heir of Rome than by literally making ‘son of Roman’ part of your name? 

Volkov is a common surname in all three of the East Slavic countries, but it is by far most popular in Russia. It is derived from the Russian word волк or volk, meaning ‘wolf’. Within Slavic cultures, names taking after predatory animals like wolves and bears were actually given to keep such creatures away. The building of St. Petersburg was notoriously difficult, no doubt thanks in part due to the wildlife inhabiting the area long before humans. Thusly, Alexei’s surname was given to him as a sort of apotropaic name.

As for nicknames, the Russian language has quite literally dozens of diminutive forms of nearly every name. In Alexei’s case, this includes, but is not limited to: Alyosha, Alyoshka, Alyoshenka, Lyosha, Lyoshka, Lyoshenka, and Lyokha. He hates all of these. Alyosha or Lyosha may be acceptable under certain circumstances, but the rest are absolutely off limits to anyone other than very close family members. Russian or Russian-speaking acquaintances will refer to him with the polite and formal Alexei Romanovich. Although they are etymologically related, Alexei is not a Russian form of the name Alexander; it is equivalent to Alexis and this is a name that he has no problem with using. 

[streetlites]

I love the beginning of fall, before the wind finds its teeth. But as I open the car door to let my great-grandfather out, small sprinkles of rain land on my head and neck, ice cold, sending shocks through me while the wind picks up and makes the wet spots burn. My favorite time of year; over before I had a chance to enjoy it.

“You did well today, Aleksei,” he tells me, his tone lacking the energy he’d had at the restaurant earlier.

I lift my lips into a smile that doesn’t show my teeth, small enough to show that I appreciate his approval but not big enough to have him comment that smiling all the time is ingenuine. “Thank you, grandfather,” I answer back in Russian, the words strange in my mouth, though I’ve spoken it with him my entire life.

He regards me for a moment and barely nods his head, “You smile, but your eyes do not. Lyosha, if you mean to lie, do it with your whole face.”

“I’m sorry.” I stop myself before telling him that I’m feeling tired because, in our family, you do not complain and you do not show weakness – which is being drilled into me at every turn because I’m now the Volkov Enterprises Heir Apparent. I shift my weight slightly to distract myself from the sinking feeling the thought brings, swallowing it down until I could process it later, alone.

“Good. Now, what did you think of the Gallettis?”

I think carefully, if grandpa was asking, that meant that there was something there to see – however nondescript. “The older Gallettis were very friendly toward you but the youngest two – the ones in their 20s – didn’t look happy to see you at all and were subtly disrespectful.”

“Good eye. The older ones know me since youth. You are distantly related to them, are you aware?”

“I was not. Through whom? Nonna?”

“Yes, she was a Galletti. Her family and ours fought each other for land but we were better at it than they were – we had boats to bring in supplies after The War. A word of advice: When you take over, make sure that you continue the community outreach programs – it keeps people quiet and happy to have you around, to the point where they’ll resist anyone else. Hold out a simoleon for them to take and they won’t notice the other five you pocketed,” Grandpa winked and made a swiping motion with his hand. “In any case, the old ones remember. The young ones think they should be making more of a cut and will push for it when you take over. How will you deal with it?”

“Stop using them, it’s not as if we cannot use other restaurants in the area to launder the money.”

“Indeed. That should settle them down quickly – they’ve largely ignored their community while we’ve made sure to provide, no one from their neighborhoods will back them if they try by force. Not that I believe they will, in any case. Your father isn’t called The Butcher for nothing.”

I nodded, The Butcher and The Spider – my father mowed down his enemies while my mother trapped hers and bled them dry – not necessarily shoes that I ever had designs of filling but, because of my other brothers’ disinterest in running the family business and my sister’s insistence that she’d fill in for my mother’s, I felt that it was my duty to step up.

“However, I hear your making a name of your own these days,” he says, his eyes sliding to mine. “Beautiful work there,” he glows and my ears grow hot.

I had found a kid slinging for someone that wasn’t who we had approved to deal in the area. At first, I had roughed him up a little, taking the money from him with a warning that if his ass was caught again, I’d really beat him. I guess the money was too good to pass on because I found him a few weeks later, conducting his business in the locker room. I had hit him until the blood and bruises made his face unrecognizable and loaded his unconscious body into a car to his supplier’s house where I used him as a battering ram to break in a glass door to throw him inside. Last I heard, he was still in the ICU because of swelling on the brain.

“He was warned,” I answer, careful to shrug my shoulders and appear unconcerned. Internally, I understood that, even if he lived, he’d suffer from some sort of brain damage. Would it have been better if I had killed him? I’d never killed anyone before – was that something that I could do?

“So he was. Which was more than he deserved. Everyone knows that you must ask for territory here, you do not take without permission. You did well. Better to have this reputation first before people discover that you also have a brain.”

“Why wouldn’t I want people to know that? Papa is known to be very smart, why would I not want that for myself?”

Grandpa sucks the air through his teeth, “I wasn’t expecting your father to take over, so I allowed Yulian to be himself. When he started, it made people more careful. You should hide it long enough to make people who would cross you show their asses. It does two things: Gets rid of enemies and sets an example to others who are more cautious why it’s a bad idea to do the same.” He stumbles and curses as he catches himself, a hand pressed into his lower back as he straightens.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m old, Lyosha, back pain is normal.”

“You’re only a 100, grandfather, you’ve got at least another 50 years.”

He shakes his head and smiles, “I doubt that. I stopped taking the extenders and I’m starting to really feel it. If I had to guess, I think I only have a few years left.”

I stare at him in horror. The average human life span was around 150 years now due to people using  medications that slowed aging. To hear someone wasn’t using them – well, it almost sounded as if they were trying to die. “But why?!”

My great-grandfather stared toward the manse he lived in, a small resigned look on his face, “Because this is long enough. Don’t worry, I will speak with you about the ways of this business as long as I am able.”

“You-“ I feel conflicted, part understanding what he means that 100 is long enough, but this was the man who had raised my father, the man that always made time for my siblings and I even if he was working, he couldn’t just stop taking those pills! “You’ll die!” I said, my façade of indifference earlier fading to a pleading whine.

“Isn’t that the duty of all old men?” he asks with a rueful smile.

“No. No!” I shake my head. “You said that you would guide me.”

“And I am, boy.” He tilts my chin to get me to look at him, “Live for yourself first, Lyosha. I will take you around when you request it, but take a few years for yourself before you give it to the business. I tell you this because it will consume you and leave no room for anything else. And it’s not a thing anyone will ever thank you for – so do with it what you will.”