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torchship-rpg · 2 months

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Dev Diary 14 - Star Union Members!

Hello cosmonauts! Today we’re going to go back to the lore and identity Dev Diaries and cover the remaining members of the Star Union. So far, we have done Terrans & Lunars, and Martians & Spacers. These groups collectively make up the Solar Union, which is far and away the largest and most influential member of the Star Union (as the names imply).

However, there are three other members; let’s touch on them.

Camp Aldrin

The first member we’re going to talk about is actually still within the Sol system! Camp Aldrin was once a major mining base on Earth’s Moon and a small second city, but the costs of maintaining two sets of infrastructure saw it rapidly outpaced by Armstrong City and eventually become something of a ghost town, home mostly to military bases and robotic mining. It is like Armstrong City in most ways, a network of underground tunnels, just smaller.

That changed during the war, because as Solar Patrol started winning battles, it started taking prisoners, and nobody was exactly sure what to do with them or where to put them. The initial plan was to keep them on Earth, which would be cheapest and safest, but Aquillians are not exactly accustomed to 1 g, so that was deemed needlessly cruel in short order. So, Camp Aldrin was repurposed instead; hardly anyone was living there, the systems were robust, it was close enough to Earth to make feeding everyone easy, and escape risk was very, very low on the moon.

Of course, the Sol Union hadn’t really run very many prisoner of war camps in the last half-century, so it dusted off the models it had used during its expansion on Earth, which was basically to have the prisoners self-organise a little community under their supervision, which is a very good way of ensuring that after the fighting is over, the enemy soldiers you release have familiarity with your mode of political organising. This worked extremely well among the Aquillian prisoners (and various auxiliaries and unlucky others who ended up there), who had up until this point lived pretty miserable lives as press-ganged crews of rockets and space stations. Camp Aldrin was the kind of place where the guards didn’t bother carrying weapons.

Then the war ended, and a lot of the prisoners didn’t want to go back. Some left for the new Aquillian republics, some hardliners tried going back to the various Remnants, but after that was over, there were 200,000 people still living in this creaky old moon base who wanted to stay.

So after some negotiation, the guards handed over the keys, and Camp Aldrin was the second full member of the Star Union.

The details of this identity are going to depend a lot on the Aquillian identity, which we’ll go into in more detail in the next Identity-focused dev diary. What’s interesting for our purposes is that Camp Aldrin’s Aquillians are distinct from the other groups because of their ongoing enthusiasm for biological and genetic modification, which is very taboo among other Aquillians. This is basically an excuse to play just about any kind of space elf you want; whatever characteristics you think a space elf should have, there’s a subculture on Camp Aldrin like that.

The other common Traits of Camp Aldrin’s citizens are War Veteran (for obvious reasons), and Dark History, in case you want any juicy dark secrets or old enemies from before you ended up here.

Camp Aldrin’s flag is based on the old uniforms they gave prisoners, which had a terrible colour scheme and a big symbol on it so everyone could recognize escapees on sight. If the ears didn’t give it away. (Which it might not on Earth. God, can you imagine how embarrassing it would be to be part of some cool fantasy elf gene-mod subculture and then you meet real space elves and it becomes hashtag problematic? How do you explain to people you just liked Lord of the Rings before First Contact?)

Proxima

Gee humanity, why does the Star Union let you have two members?

Well before FTL was invented by humans, we sent tiny near-light probes to the nearest systems using our mastery of Fuckoff Big Space Engines. When the images came back decades later, people were overjoyed by the readings from Proxima b; despite being a tidally-locked iceball orbiting a flare star, it had both liquid water and abiotic oxygen generation in the upper atmosphere. Sure, it was cold, you’d need to live in canyons on the terminator band to avoid the howling winds, you need to bring your own soil to grow stuff, and there’s no terrestrial source of metals, but other than that it's basically just like home!

Needless to say, the moment FTL drives were invented, humans threw themselves on some FTL rockets and made the months-long crawl (they were shitty FTL drives) to the nearest star to set up a colony. Compared to Mars, it was basically paradise! Sure, it took months to get supplies from home, and there was no FTL communications yet so that was the only time you got any news, but the basics were covered.

Then one day, after an unusually long delay, one of the supply rockets came in and told them, hey, first contact just happened. Anyway, we’re at war with a giant alien space empire, everyone back home voted to set up an emergency War Council with way too much power over basically everything, and they’ve unilaterally decided that the colony project isn’t affordable in a war economy, so pack it up, you’re heading home.

Needless to say, people reacted in an entirely rational manner. Which is to say, they concluded that the Solar Union had just had some kind of insane military coup, probably by the same bloodthirsty maniacs that oversaw the Elysium Emergency (which was a formative event for most of the colonists), and was trying to shut the place down because it was outside their control. So, naturally, they promptly declared independence, then immediately fell down a rabbit hole of spiralling radicalization and internal conflict as they tried to figure out how to survive in their half-built colony when Solar Patrol would surely be arriving with the jumpjets at any moment.

This is where we get our two Proxmia identities. The first are the surface-dwellers on the planet themselves, who are the far better-known group. Properly Centaurians, but universally known as Proxies. The Proxies had no doubt that humanity would triumph in their war against these mysterious aliens, if it was even real; they were largely Terrans who had grown up at the centre of the Solar Union’s power and could not conceive of something beating them. Obviously, this meant they’d be next!

This group seized heavily on the preliminary plans to do a Martian-style genetic engineering process and decided that going full-steam ahead and making themselves a distinct species would make them too much trouble to re-integrate back into the Union. And, of course, this could be used to create The Ultimate Specimens of Post-Humanity, an impulse that never ever goes wrong ever.

So, obviously, it went wrong. Sure, a lot of Proxies were faster, stronger, maybe even smarter than the human norm back home. But mostly what happened was they made their kids really sick. Even when it worked out, a lot of them were left with chronic pain, neurological disorders, or permanent dependence on various medicines or procedures to have any kind of decent quality of life, things not in abundance on the tiny colony. To make things worse, the place was rapidly falling apart, and the adults were accelerating this process fighting one another over whether to swallow their pride and call home, or somehow try to tough it out. Eventually, the older generation were overthrown by the super-kids they made, who promptly called their grandparents and asked for medical assistance.

Proxies are a chance to play with all the really fun gene-engineering stuff and make a post-human character. There’s a few recommended Traits; almost all Proxies have a tapetum lucidum for better night vision in the eternal twilight of the terminator band, and the Augment trait’s mix of bonus abilities and medical or metabolic drawbacks is perfect for representing it. The Cold Resistance trait is also a good one; a lot of Proxies have an insulating layer of fat or some other adaptation which makes it easier to survive the bitter cold.

The other group in the system which split off were the Proxima Spacers, a group of Spacers who tagged along with the colony to set up mining in the rich asteroid belts in the system. As Proxima b has no local metals, they were the ones who’d need to provide them, in exchange for food and biological compounds from the surface colony. Being Spacers well-accustomed to the precarity at the edge of the system, and just how fragile the Solar Union was, they were convinced humanity was going to lose the war, and they’d be next when the aliens swept in to clean up. Human extinction was surely imminent.

So they started to hide, disassembling their major stations and rebuilding them into the sides of low-spin asteroids, spreading out into many small communities and increasingly relying on cold-gas jets to make increasingly infrequent journeys between stations and to the planetary colony. They put up shielding, used lasers in place of radio to communicate, and did everything they could to disappear. They became the Archivists; doomsday survivalists in space.

When the Solar Union returned to the system, it at first looked like the vast majority of spacers had fled down to the colony or died, but over years they slowly became aware of the Archivists through intermittent contact. They mostly want to be left alone to their task, though sometimes members join Star Patrol, either defecting from the tightly controlled and spartan lifestyles of the spacers or, worryingly, spying and gathering information to squirrel away. For the most part, the Archivists seem to just be focusing on long-term survival, and may even have spread to other systems using their reserve of old FTL drives for redundancy.

An Archivist is a really good way to play a loner. The exact mix of Traits is a bit up in the air right now as we rebuild character creation, but you get all the common Spacer ones with a few extracts to represent the culture of secrecy and isolation you grew up in. Archivist communes are often organised quite a bit like mystery cults to compartmentalise information, so lack of trust is something very central which you may need to overcome.

Proxima's flag is a stylization of the sky as seen from the colony, with the three stars in the system and the endless sunset.

Corvus Peasants’ Republic

Finally, we have the first member to consist of aliens and not be located a convenient walk away from Earth. The unimaginatively-named Corvus is the natural exonym given when a wartime Solar Patrol rocket crashed on an alien world and were greeted by a bunch of crow-people; they presumably didn’t recruit them for creativity.

The Koath are a species of hunched, bipedal non-humanoid aliens with an interesting evolutionary history. As best anyone can tell, their distant ancestors were once the domesticated pets of a humanoid species which managed to Great Filter itself about a million years ago, possibly over the fact that they’d bred at least one strain of their companion animal to be able to speak and possess the intelligence of a ten-year-old child. The Koath emerged as survivors of the apocalypse, which included a pretty severe biosphere collapse and resource depletion, and have become the dominant form of life on their world.

At first glance, Koath societies look more or less mediaeval, mostly in that really late period where people were doing really cool things with waterwheels, granted, but there’s not a lot of industry or steelworking owing to the easy sources of carbon fuels and decent iron all being long-depleted. For those reasons, the Koath have been at roughly this state of infrastructural development for roughly a hundred thousand years, at the edge of their population carrying capacity and unable to intensify production any further, resulting in interlocking networks of feudal kingdoms prizing stability in an attempt to build up their resources and overcome the gaps.

This does mean that the Koath have a lot of interesting surpluses, though. Having had organised agriculture for ten times longer than humanity, the Koath have selectively bred some absolutely incredible crops; not just for eating, but for just about everything. Need a dye? They can cross-breed you arbitrary Pantones. Need paper? They can make you a lot of it. It’s so impressive that while the planet had consistently been considered not worth conquering, it has long been considered worth visiting, which means the Koath have learned a lot of things they don’t have the technological infrastructure to have discovered on their own… which dovetails with a quirk of their biology.

Koath are really good at languages. Really good. It’s what their ancestors were bred for. They start talking within months of being hatched, and they make up new languages constantly because it’s easy and fun. They have unique languages for regions, religions, guilds, and within families. They can learn to read in weeks. They’re all literate, they make paper with the waste-products of food production, and they’ve had moveable type for longer than human civilisation has existed. And they are, to a fault, curious.

A Koath peasant working the earth with a bronze plough might not know much about quantum mechanics, but they’ve at least heard of it. They have a rich body of secret political writing written in coded languages about how much it sucks living as serfs so a lord somewhere can have the county’s only lightbulb. So when a human spaceship filled with 3d printers, the diagrams for 3d printed guns, and a bunch of very confused communists who immediately bristled at the idea of ‘local lords’ crashed in their neighbourhood, the local peasants did a whole little revolution about it, and were then promptly besieged by every single one of their neighbours.

So that’s the Corvus Peasants’ Republic. Not a whole planet even; a tiny peninsula of possibly overenthusiastic little bird communists trying to build up technological infrastructure while literally having trebuchets pointed at them. They’re very excited to be a part of the Star Union, because every iron-rich asteroid found out there is a new steel foundry back home, so maybe their people can enjoy all the cool technology they’ve had blueprints for since Ur was the happening place on Earth.

As a Koath, you get the Polyglot Trait, obviously, and the Non-Humanoid Bodyplan trait which gives you some cool little tool bonuses when you use your claws, vestigial feathers, and adorable little legs that give a surprising burst of speed, at the cost of needing special tools and being bad at throwing things. You are also a really good recipient for the Out of Time trait, as you may have gone from living as, you know, a peasant, to operating a spacecraft in a few short years. The Prodigy trait also does double-duty here for the curiosity and literacy of the species.

A year ago this little guy was a farmer.

#torchship #ttrpg #dev diary #torchship ttrpg #rpg

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erisenyo · 10 months

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“Ever wonder if the world would be better off without you… ?” for zukka?

For this prompt game!

“Ever wonder if the world would be better off without you?”

Sokka freezes in the sitting room door, heart beating hard and alarm tightening his throat so fast that it takes him a moment to register Zuko’s pensive, almost abstract tone, the loose set of his shoulders, the easy-burning fire in the fireplace.

“It’s not something I dwell on,” he says after a long moment, forcing himself to finish stepping into the room, feigning casualness as he sets down the latest Republic City expansion plans and trying not to overreact but Agni's flapping tits what the fuck—

“Hm,” Zuko hums, like he isn’t making Sokka’s heart stop with terror, “I’ve been thinking about it.”

Sokka makes himself breathe, weighing the words against Zuko’s general calm and thoughtful expression as he gazes through the half-drawn curtain out the window. He’s too at ease to be truly upset, none of his usual tells in the tension of his shoulders or deliberate stillness of his hands, and there’s no pinched tightness to his brow like there is when it’s something with Izumi, which means… “What did you do?”

Zuko purses his lips. “Remember how I rescued that turtle duck?”

Sokka raises his eyebrow. “That whole family of turtle ducks?”

“And how I kept feeding that wild one?”

“I’m not sure I’d call one living in a fountain wild, but sure.”

“And how, generally speaking, not all our turtle duck hatchlings stay in the pond once they’re big enough to fly?”

“…General speaking,” Sokka repeats, feeling a flutter of premonition the same way he used to whenever Izumi and Bumi both turned wide-eyed innocent looks on him back when they were young.

“And that time I found those two injured snapping turtle swans and nursed them back to health?”

“…What did you do,” Sokka asks again, resigned, and Zuko just hums and pulls back the edge of the curtain a bit further for Sokka to come over and see…

“I’ve never seen so many turtle ducks in my life,” Sokka finally says.

“Yup.”

“They can’t all fit in the pond.” Not even if they had two ponds, Spirits…

“Nope.”

Sokka cuts Zuko a sideways look. “…Where are they staying?”

“Where have they been staying,” Zuko corrects, and Sokka takes a long moment to process the fact that this has been…going on for a bit, then, and that probably explains all the pastries disappearing from the breakfast table, like Zuko is some kid secreting away snacks and not the Fire Lord for going on forty years, Spirits. What an idiot. Sokka loves him so much.

“Where have they been staying?” he repeats, obedient.

“Azula’s room,” Zuko says serenely just as a high-pitched, startled shriek sounds out, along with a ruckus of quaking and honking and—

“ZUZU! I’m going to fucking kill y—ow, what the fu—”

Sokka makes a thoughtful noise as Zuko lets the curtain drop back down. “So you asking about whether the world would be better without you," he finally says, resettling his armband, "Was more about your impending demise?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Zuko agrees.

Sokka hums. "It was nice knowing you."

"The best," Zuko nods. “Let’s hide,” he adds, grabbing onto Sokka’s wrist and already hauling him along behind him like they’re teenagers again, Sokka letting out a startled laugh to suddenly be finding himself in motion.

He glances back to the window and the growing cacophony outside, to the Republic City plans, to the stack of correspondence he really needs to get through and the pile of new airship designs he really wanted to work on. Then he turns back forward to catch the flashing edge of Zuko’s teasing, wicked smile and finds he can't do anything but grin helplessly back, find that he's perfectly happy like he always is to pretend to be young again, instead, and let Zuko drag him away again on another adventure.

#asks and answers #ask games #dont-leafmealone #I made myself very sentimental with this one lol #Zuko #Sokka #Zukka #fic writing #my writing

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whencyclopedia · 8 months

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Aquileia

The ancient city of Aquileia was situated near the head of the Adriatic Sea west of the Roman province of Illyria. The strategic location of the city served a crucial role in the expansion of the Roman Republic by serving as a buffer against possible invasions from the Germanic tribes to the north. As a colony with major harbor facilities, Aquileia allowed the Romans to exploit both the neighboring gold mines as well as the region's own rich amber.

#RomanEmpire #AttilaTheHun #Aquileia #HistoryFacts #History

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fatehbaz · 1 year

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Thinking about the Holocaust in Africa.

Here, European notions of anti-Blackness and antisemitism became intertwined.

There was a fusion between the dispossession and racism of European imperialism and colonization projects of the late nineteenth century, and the prison regimes imposed by European fascism in the early twentieth century.

Scholars Sarah Abrevaya Stein and Aomar Boum have recently written much about the importance of recognizing the trauma of labor and internment camps in North Africa during the second world war.

And I want to express my gratitude for their work. I want to share some of what they’ve written in a couple of recent articles.

In their words: “Nazism in Europe was underlaid by an intricate matrix of racist, eugenicist and nationalist ideas. But the war – and the Holocaust – appears even more complex if historians take into account the racist and violent color wheel that spun in North Africa.” [1]

France's prison camps in North Africa were filled with Algerians, local Jews, deported European Jews, Eastern European refugees, domestic political dissidents from France, people fleeing fascist Spain, Moroccan residents, Senegalese subjects of French rule, other West Africans displaced by French occupation, and more.

The anti-Blackness and antisemitism that had fueled Europe's colonial expansion was finding new expression in fascist Europe.

---

Seems France is a central antagonist in the story of evolving approaches to empire, racism, and resource extraction.

After their 1940 alliance with the Nazis, the Vichy French government maintained technical control of French colonies across Africa. Beginning in 1940, the French government “alone built nearly 70 such camps in the Sahara.” [1] This was in addition to another six labor camps which the French government built in West Africa (in Senegal, Guinea, and Mali).

---

By the beginning of the twentieth century, French-influenced or -controlled territory in North Africa was home to around 500,000 Jews, many of whom had been living in the region for centuries or millennia, speaking many languages, “reflecting their many different cultures and ethnicities: Arabic, French, Tamazight – a Berber language – and Haketia, a form of Judeo-Spanish spoken in northern Morocco.” [1] The Vichy French government officially stripped North African Jews of formal citizenship and seized their assets.

Then, deporting residents of Europe and political dissidents in “early 1941, the Vichy authorities transferred hundreds of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees, including women and children, to the Saharan labor camps.” [2] Under French rule “in Algeria [...], it was estimated that 2,000-3,000 Jews were interned in camps [...] resulting in a total prisoner population of 15,000-20,000.” [2] France pursued an “unrealized dream of the nineteenth century” [2]: the completion of the Mediterranean-Niger railroad line in the Sahara, a transportation route across the vast desert to connect the prosperous West African port of Dakar with the Mediterranean coast of Algeria.

Meanwhile the “Vichy regime [...] continued racist policies begun by France’s Third Republic, which pushed young Black men from the empire into forced military service,” including forced recruitment from “Senegal, French Guinea, Ivory Coast, Niger and Mauritania; [...] Benin, Gambia and Burkina Faso; and Muslim men from Morocco and Algeria. In these ways, the French carried on a wartime campaign of anti-Blackness and Islamophobia, pairing these forms of racialized hatred from the colonial era with antisemitism. Antisemitism had deep roots in French and colonial history, but it found new force in the era of fascism.” [1]

---

In late 1942, during the Nazi occupation of Tunisia, the SS “imprisoned some 5,000 Jewish men in roughly 40 forced labor and detention camps on the front lines and in cities like Tunis.” [2] The fascist Italian government had been experimenting with racist and anti-Black policy in their colonization of East Africa; these policies were expanded in Libya. Here, “Mussolini ordered the Jews of Cyrenaica moved” as “most of the 2,600 Jews deported [...] were sent to the camp of Giado” while “other Libyan Jews were deported to the camps of Buqbuq and Sidi Azaz.” [2]

---

Stein and Boum describe the diversity of prisoner experience: “In these camps, [...] the complex racist logic of Nazism and fascism took vivid form. Muslims arrested for anti-colonial activities were pressed into back-breaking labor” and “broke bread with other forced workers” including ‘Ukrainians, Americans, Germans, Russian Jews and others [...] arrested, deported and imprisoned by the Vichy regime after fleeing Franco’s Spain. There were political enemies of the Vichy and Nazi regime too, including socialists, communists, union members [...] overseen by [...] forcibly recruited [...] Moroccan and Black Senegalese men, who were often little more than prisoners themselves.” [1]

As Stein and Boum describe it: “Vichy North Africa became a unique site [...] where colonialism and fascism co-existed and overlapped.” [2]

They write: “Together, we have spent a decade gathering the voices of the diverse peoples who endured World War II in North Africa, across lines of race, class, language and region. Their letters, diaries, memoirs, poetry and oral histories are both defiant and broken. They express both faith and despair. All in all, they understood themselves to be trapped in a monstrous machine of fascism, occupation, violence and racism.” [1]

---

[1]: Sarah Abrevaya Stein and Aomar Boum. “80 years ago, Nazi Germany occupied Tunisia - but North Africans’ experiences of World War II often go unheard.” The Conversation. 15 November 2022.

[2]: Sarah Arbevaya Stein and Aomar Boum. “Labor and Internment Camps in North Africa.” Holocaust Encyclopedia online. Last edited 13 May 2019.

#holocaust remembrance day #swana

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mapsontheweb · 7 months

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The territorial history of Armenia and Azerbaijan

“Atlas of the Ethno-Political History of the Caucasus”, Arthur Tsutsiev, Yale University Press, 2014

The Armenian historical view centers on the global threat associated with the expansion of Turkic-speaking tribal groups into former Armenian territories, including Artsakh (Karabakh). Today's Azerbaijan is itself largely the former Caucasian Albania, a land which became Christian in the middle of the 4th century, submerged from the 11th century by Turkish invasions and which, in the 19th century, completely disappeared, transformed into a territory Turkish and Muslim.

Azerbaijan comes from the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan of 1918-1920, created following Turkish intervention and taking its name from a Persian region located further south. This part of Eastern Transcaucasia, incorporated into Russia between 1803 and 1828, is in fact a former Persian territory with an indigenous sedentary Armenian population and a nomadic Turkish-Kurdish population who arrived later.

After the First World War, the Armenians would not have a state in the former Ottoman territories but a small formerly Russian territory around the city of Yerevan, southwestern part of the Transcaucasian Federative Democratic Republic (April -May 1918) which takes the name of the Democratic Republic of Armenia. From June 1920, the Kemalist Turkish nationalists began negotiations with the Soviets and the demarcation of the borders of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (born December 2) was ultimately to the detriment of the Armenians themselves, since it did not does not include Karabakh, included entirely in Azerbaijan, at the insistent request of the Turks.

From then on, the Armenians are a people who have the particularity of being deprived of a large part of their historical territory even though it dates back to the 9th century BC with the kingdom of Urartu and its territorial peak dates from the end of the 2nd century BC when King Tigranes dominated a territory stretching from the Caspian to the Mediterranean.

by cartesdhistoire

#maps #cartesdhistoire #igsourced #armenia #azerbaijan #territorial changes

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yibocheeks · 1 year

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Historical Background for 《无名》 (Hidden Blade)

A very brief summary of historical details of note for understanding the context of the film:

The film is set during the Second Sino-Japanese War and WWII. There are several powers in play at this time: the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomintang, and Imperial Japan. Imperial Japan invaded Manchuria (located in northeastern China) in the early 1930s and established the puppet state of Manchukuo. It was here where they hoped to establish a base from where they would continue their expansion into Asia.

In 1937, after many years of conflict, Japan occupied Shanghai, Nanjing, and Beijing. The Nanjing Massacre occurred at this time. After the fall of Nanjing, which had been the capital of the Republic of China at that time, the Kuomintang moved the capital west to Chongqing, under Jiang Jieshi's leadership. During this time, the Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang formed a temporary alliance, suspending the years of civil conflict between them, although their vie for power continued. The Chinese Communist Party set up their base in Yan'an.

In 1940, Wang Jingwei, who was once a member of the Kuomintang but had always been in opposition against Jiang Jieshi, collaborated with Japan to establish the Wang Jingwei regime. They claimed to be the leadership of the Republic of China, when in fact they were a puppet government of Japan, overseeing the Japanese-occupied territory in eastern China, under Japan's control. They established their capital in Nanjing and used the Kuomintang flag. The Axis powers recognized the Wang Jingwei regime, while the Allied powers still recognized Jiang Jieshi as the leader of the Republic of China.

From 1937-1941, Japan had left a few neighbourhoods in Shanghai unoccupied, because that was where the American-British joint settlement and French Concession were located. Many people fled to this area to live at that time. After Pearl Harbor in 1941, the entirety of Shanghai became occupied by Japan. Many cities were bombed during these years, including Guangzhou, which experienced bombings for 14 months in 1937-1938.

During this era of war, which is also called the War of Resistance in China, espionage networks were established to try to undermine the enemy. Hidden Blade tells a story about these individuals.

Characters in the film (spoiler-free):

Director He (Tony Leung): Director of the Political Security Department for the Wang Jingwei regime

Mr. Ye (Wang Yibo): A subordinate under Director He, works for the Political Security Department of the Wang Jingwei regime

Captain Wang (Wang Chuanjun): A captain working for the Political Security Department of the Wang Jingwei regime, under Director He

Minister Tang (Da Peng): Minister of the Political Security Department of the Wang Jingwei regime, Director He's cousin

Officer Watanabe (Mori Hiroyuki): Head of secret service in Shanghai, claiming to be a follower of Ishiwara's faction (Japanese general who believed in the Pan-Asianism ideology)

Mr. Zhang (Huang Lei): A secretary of the Chinese Communist Party's underground network

Ms. Chen (Zhou Xun): A messenger of the Chinese Communist Party's underground network

Ms. Jiang (Jiang Shuying): Kuomintang agent assigned to assassinate Minister Tang

Ms. Fang (Zhang Jingyi): Disguised as a dancer, she worked together with other progressive youth to try to assassinate Japanese officers

#wu ming #hidden blade #hidden blade movie #无名 #wang yibo #tony leung #zhou xun #huang lei #da peng #jiang shuying #wang chuanjun #zhang jingyi

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sleepingdeath-light · 7 months

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joyride ; 18+

requested by ; anonymous (kinktober entry)

word count ; 1010

content ; sexually explicit content, vaginal fingering (reader receiving), implied (stationary) car sex after the piece finishes

fandom ; the legend of korra

pairing ; asami sato x non binary afab reader

read also on ; ao3

minors and ageless blogs will be blocked

Republic City truly was beautiful in the early morning: all gorgeous golden sunlight, pleasantly cold sea air, and a landscape that never failed to leave you in awe no matter how long you've lived there. And given that most of the population would prefer to sleep in on national holidays, the two of you had pretty much the whole city to yourselves to explore and make your own, even if just for a short while.

Though, Asami's idea of 'making it your own' and 'creating new memories' didn't really give you much of an opportunity to explore the oft forgotten nooks and crannies of the capitol. After all, it's quite hard to admire the scenery when your girlfriend's perfectly manicured fingers are buried in your pussy playing with you in just the right way to have you seeing stars. Or when she's speeding, because you were sure that the speed limit was quite a bit below what was fast enough to not be able to decipher which blurs were buildings and which were plants (but what did you know, Asami was the experienced driver, not you).

Not that you'd ever dream of complaining when she looked so damn pretty in this light: soft lips, painted a flawless flirty red, curled upwards in that bright mischievous smile you fell in love with; peridot green eyes glinting with amusement that never looked away from the road ahead no matter how much you squirmed or moaned, the very corners of their lids crinkled with mirth as she continued to touch you; meticulously styled, black hair falling over one of her shoulders in perfect waves that you longed to run your fingers through, the strands just barely brushing against the lust reddened expanse of her cheeks; one hand casually resting on the steering wheel of the vehicle whilst the other effortlessly toyed with your soaking cunt to make a true mess of the freshly done up leather of the passenger seat (the wonders those hands could do... spirits, if they weren't already inside of you, you knew that by now you'd by downright begging for her to plunge those dextrous digits into your pussy without a care in the world for who saw or heard you).

She was as stunning as she was witty, and even as you became too far gone to give any proper response she continued to tease you. Occasionally allowing her gaze to flit down and away from the street for the briefest of moments to observe her handiwork and comment on it, all the while continuing to relentlessly thrust, and scissor, and crook her fingers inside of you.

Calling you the sweetest pet names whilst spreading her fingers as far as they can go inside of you, stretching you out further and further with every 'sweetie' and 'baby' and 'honey' that slips from those perfect lips. Cheekily mentioning how 'beautiful' the city looks and asking for your input whilst knowing that you're far too distracted by the circling of her thumb against your aching clit to even consider thinking of a response. Groaning in a way that made your pussy throb when she brushed her fingers against your g-spot and felt you soak her hand in response, her voice almost airy as she mentions how 'wet' you are and how much she wants to 'taste it' — but, thankfully for you, she presses on, continuing to use those experienced hands to bring you ever closer to the edge.

Thrusting two, and then three, of those long slender fingers into your entrance and using a mixture of crooking, and scissoring, and sliding to coax more sounds from you (more moans, more groans, more whimpers, and cusses, and pleas, and mindless repetitions of her name). Alternating between using the pad of her thumb and the heel of her hand to stimulate your clit, her own movements getting rougher and more desperate as time went on — as if she wanted to make you climax as much as you wanted to finish on her hand. Clenching her own thighs tightly and rubbing them together when you audibly started to mount your peak, her other hand clutching the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles were starting to pale from how harsh her grip on it was.

Desperately trying to hold out for as long as she could until something snapped in you both, and you were sent crashing over the edge of orgasm whilst she ran out of patience and hurriedly, dangerously, swerved into the abandoned car park of some random office building, turning off the ignition a moment later. Though you didn’t even notice what she was doing; far too lost in the throes of pleasure to pay much mind to what was going on beyond what you were feeling in that moment, as if the rest of the world ceased to exist to you: too lost to the haziness of your own mind and the drowning out of all coherent thoughts to hear her unbuckling her seatbelt and clumsily fiddling with all of the buttons and zips on her pants; too focused on the white hot pleasure rushing through your veins and the waves of oversensitive gooseflesh that it left in its wake to even process her reaching over your spent body to slowly push your seat down until you were laying flat on your back; too caught up in the bleariness of your vision and the splashes of white that marred even the insides of your eyelids to see her as she straddled your lap with blown out pupils and started to downright beg you to let her taste you or touch you ('anything, baby, please'), her own exposed pussy clearly glistening with slick and aching for your touch and acknowledgement. Not noticing anything beyond your own high until you'd finally come back down to earth and were met with the sight and sound of your, very desperate, very beautiful girlfriend on top of you and pleading for her exhausted partner to touch her.

What a way to start the day.

#sleepingdeath #non binary reader smut #afab reader #afab reader smut #minors dni #minors don’t touch #minors fuck off #smut #smut fic #tlok smut #tlok x reader #asami sato x reader #asami sato smut

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crownspeaksblog · 1 month

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I love korra! I love the legend of korra so much!! There's so much i love about this show!!

I grew up with atla, i remember coming home from school when i was a kid and watching atla and i loved it and later on, in my late teens i rewatched atla, from start to finish and i actually absorbed everything and i loved it so much more, atla is damn near perfect of a story for me!

And then i watched lok for the first time and i loved it too! I love the expansion of the world, i love the expansion on the lore, i love seeing how the world changed and develop, i loved republic city, i love that the world didn't stop after atla and that republic city was a something that the characters of atla developed. I love how much lore we got in lok, i love knowing that the lion turtle that came out of nowhere in the finale of atla, is actually the reason why bending exists in the first place, i love wan and ravva so much! I loved finding out how the avatar came to be!

I love the villains of this show, they're so much more than just straight up power hungry villains! I know some people think that amon being a bloodbender undermine the oppression of non benders and even though I'd have loved seeing a high level non bender villain, i absolutely love the story with amon! The villains of lok are genuinely one of the best part of this show!

And i just love korra! I love her journey, her growth and seeing the way some people talk about her, just makes me love her even more!

Yes, season 2 is my least favorite, but it's still so good and so fun! Some people act like it's the worst thing in television and it's just crazy! These people are so fucking dramatic!!

Yes, lok has flaws, yes, it's not as "perfect" as atla, but it's so fucking good!! And now that I'm older, i prefer lok, because it is more mature and more complex and just very compelling.

There's probably one thing i disliked about lok and it's the love triangle from the first 2 seasons, and even then, i didn't hate it, i was just annoyed.. and you know what, I'm more than okay with having 2 seasons of annoying love triangle stuff because it lead to korrasami!! Even though they barely got any screen time and some people still try to deny their relationship, I'm so glad it exists, I'm glad that korrasami is not just some non canon ship that fans like, it's actually fucking real! The creators made it as canon as they could!

In conclusion: i love atla, i love lok, i love korra and i fucking love korrasami!!

#every once in a while i watch a YouTube reaction series to atla and lok and i just relive my love for that world through other people #i just want more of that world i want those fucking movies like right now!!#avatar the last airbender #the legend of korra #avatar the legend of korra #atla #lok #korrasami #avatar studios #👑

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lok-repository · 9 months

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Kya's Free Clinic

Kya runs a free clinic in the Dragon Flats district according to the Avatar Legends - Republic City expansion.

"When she's in the city, the waterbending master Kya runs a free clinic out of a converted tenement in the middle of Dragon Flats. The clinic provides physical and mental healthcare, preventative to emergency, to a neighborhood that most needs it and can least afford it. Like most public services in the Flats, it's over-crowded and understaffed, and it runs on a shoestring budget."

#kya #lok #legend of korra #tlok #the legend of korra #republic city expansion

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dutch-and-flemish-painters · 20 days

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Jacques-Albert Senave - Copyist in a gallery of the Louvre -

oil on panel, height: 28.5 cm (11.2 in); width: 36.2 cm (14.2 in)

Louvre Museum

The Louvre or the Louvre Museum is a national art museum in Paris, France. It is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement (district or ward) and home to some of the most canonical works of Western art, including the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II. Remnants of the Medieval Louvre fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to urban expansion, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function, and in 1546 Francis I converted it into the primary residence of the French kings.

The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection, including, from 1692, a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. In 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation's masterpieces.

The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, the majority of the works being royal and confiscated church property. Because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed from 1796 until 1801. The collection was increased under Napoleon and the museum was renamed Musée Napoléon, but after Napoleon's abdication, many works seized by his armies were returned to their original owners. The collection was further increased during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, and during the Second French Empire the museum gained 20,000 pieces. Holdings have grown steadily through donations and bequests since the Third Republic. The collection is divided among eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities; Near Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; Islamic Art; Sculpture; Decorative Arts; Paintings; Prints and Drawings.

The Musée du Louvre contains approximately 500,000 objects and displays 35,000 works of art in eight curatorial departments with more than 60,600 m2 (652,000 sq ft) dedicated to the permanent collection. The Louvre exhibits sculptures, objets d'art, paintings, drawings, and archaeological finds. At any given point in time, approximately 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are being exhibited over an area of 72,735 m2 (782,910 sq ft), making it the largest museum in the world. It received 8.9 million visitors in 2023, 14 percent more than in 2022, but still below the 10.1 million visitors in 2018, making it the most-visited museum in the world.

Jacques-Albert Senave (1758–1823) was a Flemish painter mainly active in Paris during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He is known for his genre scenes, history paintings, landscapes, city views, market scenes and portraits.

#Jacques-Albert Senave #18th #louvre

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priapocalypse · 1 month

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The great irony of the assassination of Julius Caesar was that it resulted in the exact opposite of what the conspirators were hoping to do. Rather than preserve the decayed Republic, it eventually led to the creation of the Roman Empire.

The conspirators sought to return to the Roman Republic of old. However, in hindsight, we know this was never a possibility. The Republic had been rotting for 150 years or so before 44 BCE, and it had become a shitshow. Elections were chaotic affairs of violence with roaming gangs attacking various supporters, and their result (at least in the case of the office of Consul, the highest office in the republic), civil war broke out constantly. I'm way oversimplifying the state of the Republic here because there's a lot of complexity, but at the time it would have been very clear that there really wasn't any hope of reviving the "glory days." Caesar's death was not just putting an end to the newly proclaimed "dictator for life" (dictator perpetuo) - it was also a statement intended to stir the Roman identity's hatred of monarchy. Rome's traditional origin story involved overthrowing an early period of monarchy when the republic was established.

However, instead of restoring the republic, many people rallied around the very popular Caesar and his legacy after his death. He essentially became a martyr symbol during the following war against the conspirators, and more so to those who supported the faction of his young nephew Octavian once the fragile compromise to share the rule of Rome fell apart. The Second Triumvirate, as it was known, split Rome's rule between three people: Mark Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus. Once the conspirators were dealt with, this doomed arrangement fell apart and Rome was plunged into yet another civil war.

By the time this ended with Octavian the winner, the Roman world was weary with war. Most the conquered peoples, especially in the east and Egypt, had been subjected to a century of violence as one Roman faction fought another Roman faction, sacking town and cities in a rotating cycle depending on which Romans (or other rulers/"rebel" factions involved) were in control.

The Roman world wanted to peace. It needed to stabilize and rebuild. Octavian and his pals knew this, and sought to bring that peace about permanently. And they knew this could not be done so long as Rome held on to it's failed idea of a republic.

So they created the Empire, and for a good amount of time, it worked. Peace was gradually restored, expansion slowed, and the Roman world began the process of becoming "Roman."

#roman history #assassination of caesar #ides of march #roman empire

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demifiendrsa · 5 months

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Final Fantasy VII Rebirth details regions, exploration, world intel, mini games, and combat

■ Regions of the World

Join your friends as you journey across a wide, open world. Each region feels unique, boasting different enemies to encounter and different methods of traversing its terrain. Search high and low to unlock new quests and unearth rare treasures.

Let’s take a look at some of these regions:

Grasslands

A vast, verdant expanse of land rich with mako. These plains are dotted with smaller outposts and planetary fonts waiting to be discovered. Adventure lies beyond the swamplands, but you’ll need to rent a chocobo from the local ranch if you want to cross.

Under Junon

Former capital of the eponymous republic, this once-bustling port town fell into decline after its destruction at the hands of Shinra. All that remains now is a desolate fishing village where the displaced citizens have taken refuge.

Junon

Previously a beacon of hope and economic prosperity, the former capital of the republic now slumbers beneath the waves. After its takeover, Shinra repurposed the city into its second-largest outpost, a fortified stronghold replete with an underwater reactor.

Gold Saucer

A “gilded paradise” constructed over the Corel Desert, this Shinra-owned facility uses copious amounts of mako to power its state-of-the-art attractions. The park draws in tourists from around the world and keeps them entertained from dawn to dusk to dawn again.

■ Exploration

Countless quests and other diversions await you on your journey. A brief stop along your adventure could lead you to unearth useful treasures or make other fascinating discoveries.

Chocobo Ranches

Each region boasts ranches where you can exchange golden plumes for new chocobo gear. Customize your bird’s ensemble to create a steed that’s all your own.

Item Transmuter

Collect the materials outlined in transmutation formulae to create items. Transmuting items will improve your craftsmanship and in turn unlock new formulae with which you can obtain rare items.

Odd Jobs

Cloud works as a mercenary, taking on odd jobs from people in need wherever he goes.

Check the noticeboards at major outposts if you’re looking for work.

■ World Intel

Help Chadley deepen his understanding of this world by completing research requests in each region. Gathering intel will unlock new locations to explore, greatly expanding your horizons. Chadley will also develop new materia based on the data you have collected.

Chadley (voiced by Sean-Ryan Petersen in English, Shuuichirou Umeda in Japanese)

Once an employee in Shinra’s Research and Development Division, Chadley has left it and Midgar behind, thanks to Cloud. Now, he aims to reactivate the world’s defunct communications towers to facilitate his understanding of the planet, for which he needs the party’s assistance.

Remnawave Towers

Activating the old republic’s remnawave towers in each region will open up new research opportunities.

When visiting a location for the first time, try seeking out these towers: they will not only help you get your bearings, but also offer a great view of the surrounding area.

Combat Assignments

Seek out rare fiends in their natural habitats and gather intel on special assignments to unlock new challenges in Chadley’s combat simulator.

These missions will test your mental mettle, though, so be sure to fight strategically.

Excavation Sites

When a chocobo smells treasure, a “?” will appear above its head. Following the scent might lead you to unearth a valuable item or a new transmuter formula.

Chocobo Stops

Repair fallen chocobo stop signs to transform them into fast travel spots. If you see a stray chocobo chick, be sure to follow it: not only will it lead you to one of these stops, but it will reward you with a golden plume once your repair work is complete.

Fast Travel

Fast travel allows you to jump instantly to previously visited towns, chocobo stops, and other locations. Use this feature to pick up the pace of your adventures.

■ Mini Games

Not only stories and battles, but all kinds of unique elements of fun await players. Enjoy the numerous mini games available across the game’s world.

Piano Performance

After obtaining a piece of sheet music, head to a piano and try your hands at performing it. These pieces feature music from the game, with some proving to be quite the challenge. If you would rather improvise, however, you can perform original music in the free play mode.

Queen’s Blood

Queen’s Blood is a strategic card game that has skyrocketed to popularity. Players take turns placing cards on the board in an attempt to overpower their opponent by accumulating power in each lane. Collect cards and utilize their abilities to claim the crown as QB royalty.

Moogle Mischief

A minigame to bring mischievous Moogle kids back to their mogstools.

The Moogle kids will attack you in every possible way, so be careful not to be caught off guard by their cute smiles.

■ Combat

Next, let’s take a fresh look at Final Fantasy VII Rebirth‘s intense battle system, and some of the awesome things you can do.

Limit Break

The limit gauge gradually fills as you take damage or stagger foes.

Once the gauge is full, you can unleash devastating limit breaks unique to each party member.

Some synergy abilities can increase your limit level, enabling the usage of even more powerful attacks.

Synergy Ability

Two party members team up to activate useful abilities without consuming ATB. These commands can be executed while blocking, and provide a wide array of beneficial effects. Each pairing has their own unique set of abilities; some deal damage, while others offer support.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, the second game in the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy, will launch for PlayStation 5 on February 29, 2024.

#Final Fantasy VII Rebirth #FFVII Rebirth #Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth #FF7 Rebirth #Final Fantasy VII Remake #FFVIIR #Final Fantasy 7 Remake #FF7R #Final Fantasy VII #FFVII #Final Fantasy 7 #FF7 #Final Fantasy #Square Enix #video game #PS5 #long post #late post #very late post

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renlyslittlerose · 6 months

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Kinktober Day 19 - Shaving

Today's prompt: Anakin helping Obi-Wan shave would be equally 👀

Dedicated to the wonderful @sugarpsalms 💕

Everything and More - 2,015 (back on my bullshit, it seems) Rating: E Content: Shaving; Frotting; Anakin being a Giant Sap; Obi-Wan lookin' and feelin' cute~

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Anakin slid the sharp side of the blade against Obi-Wan’s stretched out neck, touch steady despite the fact that Obi-Wan’s hand kept rubbing his thigh idly. The smell of Republic issued shave cream filled the tent, mixing with wet canvas and clean sweat, heady and pleasing. Rain fell steadily on to the top of the tent, a gentle patter of water that drowned out the sounds from the rest of the camp.

They’d been entrenched in a ground battle for the last week, Separatist forces pulling back further and further into the dense thickets of woodlands that covered most of the mid-rim planet’s surface. The longer they spent the more exhausted everyone had become, the luxuries of ship life - let alone life in a city - quickly becoming a distant memory for Jedi and Clone alike.

It was the sixth day of fighting that Anakin noted Obi-Wan’s beard had become a little haggard, bristled hairs growing down his neck while the edges along his jaw and chin were longer. Anakin didn’t say anything, but he watched the development with mild interest, using Obi-Wan’s beard growth as a way to count the hours and days as they passed by in misery. Finally, on the eight day a torrential downpour stalled the efforts of both forces, the land slick with mud and flash-flooding, clone and droid alike getting caught in the mire and unable to get free.

It was then, their forces tucked away in their tents or huddled together in the mess, that Obi-Wan passed Anakin a cup of steaming hot water and a blade.

“You could do this yourself, you know,” Anakin said. He tilted Obi-Wan’s head to the side, checking over the work he’d done to make sure he’d gotten all the errant hairs. “We do have mirrors.”

Obi-Wan smiled when Anakin let go of his chin, his head falling back to its normal angle. “But my mirror doesn’t greet me with such a cute pout.”

Anakin rolled his eyes. “You could pout in the mirror, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“But I want your pout.”

Anakin accepted the kiss, chuckling softly when Obi-Wan made a pleased sound in the back of his throat. Breaking away, Anakin nuzzled their noses together before working on the other side of Obi-Wan’s neck. Obi-Wan kept his hands firmly on Anakin’s thighs, thumbs digging into the muscles a little, just enough for Anakin to relax even as he slid the blade along Obi-Wan’s jugular.

The fact that Obi-Wan trusted him with such a delicate task meant something to Anakin, perhaps more than Obi-Wan trusting him to have his back in the middle of a fight. Obi-Wan had fought with other Jedi at his side before, relied on their skill and dedication to get him home in one place. It wasn’t special, really; it wasn’t intimate. It was just a part of war. But shaving him - sliding a sharp blade along the expanse of his neck, across arteries and tendons - was something Anakin was fairly certain Shaak Ti or Windu ever got to do.

Obi-Wan’s hand drifted, and Anakin only had time to still his hand before Obi-Wan grabbed his cock and squeezed.

“You want to bleed to death?” Anakin asked, his grip tightening on Obi-Wan’s chin. “Because grabbing my dick while I’m shaving you is how that’ll happen.”

Obi-Wan simply smiled, eyes twinkling with mirth and playfulness. “You won’t do such a thing, Anakin. I trust you.”

Anakin stared at Obi-Wan and waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally Obi-Wan released his grip on his cock, a soft sigh slipping past his lips. “Fine, have it your way.”

“You can fondle me once I’m done…” Anakin mumbled as he went back to work. He only had a few more strokes, anyways.

“You’re awfully focused on the task at hand,” Obi-Wan said after a time, his throat flexing as he spoke.

“This is your beard, Obi-Wan. It’s like, a part of you. I screw it up by shaving off something I shouldn’t, and it’d be like seeing you without hair or a mustache.”

“Perish the thought of that ever happening.”

Just the thought made Anakin uncomfortable.

"Anyway, I think you’re being far too relaxed about it all," Anakin continued.

“You want I should panic and make you falter?”

Anakin finished and dropped the blade into the cup of murky water. Grabbing the washcloth, he roughly cleaned Obi-Wan off, trying not to smile as Obi-Wan scrunched his lips together and squeezed his eyes closed.

“You never panic,” Anakin said.

He tossed the cloth onto the pile of muddy clothes in the corner of his tent and sat back on his cot, hands dug into the fabric of the sleeping bag. He spread his legs a little and waited as Obi-Wan drug his hands across his beard, brushing away the last of the stray hairs.

“How do I look?” Obi-Wan asked.

Anakin shrugged. “Go look in a mirror, and then you can critique my technique.”

Obi-Wan smiled again, but this time it was more seductive, a little curl to the corner of his mouth as his eyes darkened. Anakin chewed on his bottom lip as Obi-Wan crawled up his lap and pushed him back down on to the cot. Spreading his legs, he accommodated Obi-Wan’s weight with ease, groaning as Obi-Wan ground down on him a little.

“I want you to tell me what you see,” Obi-Wan purred out, his voice barely heard above the patter of rain.

Anakin stretched out beneath Obi-Wan, taking up as much of the narrow cot as he could. He was a little too tall for the bed, his feet hanging off the edge, and he feared their combined weight might break the metal framed, but he pushed the thought away. It had been too long since they’d had a moment like this; just the two of them, chests bare and flush together, breath skittering across cheeks and lips, cocks hardening against one another’s. And rarer still - Obi-Wan in a good mood.

The war had taken a lot from them, but perhaps it was Obi-Wan’s natural playfulness that Anakin missed the most.

“I see… my Master,” Anakin said. “And I see… my friend.”

Obi-Wan quirked a brow and paused with his hand half-way down Anakin’s leggings. “That’s all?”

Anakin smacked Obi-Wan’s arm. “No, that’s not all.” He felt a blush spread across his cheeks and chest, and he shifted slightly. “I’m not as naturally gifted at speaking like you are. Give me a second to collect my thoughts.”

“Alright, I apologize.”

To show his apology he fondled Anakin, squeezing his cock once before stroking him lazily. Swallowing, Anakin relaxed back on the bed and moaned softly, concentrating on Obi-Wan’s movements for a moment, eyes searching Obi-Wan’s face as he thought of the words that would be good enough to encapsulate what he saw when he looked at Obi-Wan.

It was a daunting task.

He remained voiceless for a moment longer, caught up in Obi-Wan’s touch as he started to undress them both, Obi-Wan’s brows furrowed in concentration. The light from the little lamp next to the bed highlighted the copper and blond tones in his hair and beard, and the dips and lines across his brow. His eyes were framed by golden lashes, irises the colour of ocean waves, and his pupils black like space.

“I see a man who is beautiful beyond compare,” Anakin continued, voice soft in the small tent. “With copper hair that drapes across my fingers, soft like silk and smelling like… like comfort. Like home.”

“What else?” Obi-Wan asked. He removed Anakin’s leggings and socks before working on his own, stripping them both down until they were naked.

“I see the flecks of grey in your temples and the corners of your beard, and I love how they represent another day lived… another year enjoyed. I want to be there for each and every grey that appears so that I can count them as a way to keep track of the days we spend together. And I’ll keep counting even when we’re both old and grey and still together… still like this.”

He took Obi-Wan into his arms, groaning as their cocks pressed between their bellies. Obi-Wan wrapped his arms tight around Anakin and kissed him, slow and steady and achingly good. When they pulled apart Anakin felt breathless, his body ridged beneath Obi-Wan’s, cock bouncing and leaking.

“And I see freckles,” Anakin continued as Obi-Wan rocked above him, breath hot across his chin and jaw, smelling of mint tea and sugar. “You’ve got so many of them all across your nose and along your shoulders and chest.”

“Perils of being pale,” Obi-Wan grunted out. He reached down and grasped Anakin’s ass, squeezing the muscle as he pulled Anakin closer, the pair humping against each other at a slow, leisurely pace.

Anyone could interrupt, but that didn’t hurry them on.

“But I love them,” Anakin said quickly. He kissed along Obi-Wan’s neck, tasting the left over shave cream and enjoying the warmth and softness of his skin. “Love to count them when you’re asleep, o-or watch how they rippled across your skin when we spar. Or when we fuck.”

“I love yours, too. All your beauty marks and moles.”

Anakin sighed and kissed up Obi-Wan’s neck to nibble on his earlobe. Obi-Wan moaned this time, a soft little sound that curled around Anakin’s cock and tugged. “And I see your hands, so firm and strong. And your thighs - just as strong… just as powerful. Think a lot about how they feel wrapped around me and on top of me.”

“You don’t have to keep going,” Obi-Wan whispered against Anakin’s ear.

Anakin ignored him.

“I love your cock. So thick and heavy. Filling me up, ‘n stretching me open. I didn’t know h-how much I needed you inside of me until you fucked me for the first time. Remember? Back in Coruscant, at the Temple. I had just been Knighted and—”

“I took you in your room, amongst your messy sheets and stripped droid parts. You came early and I cleaned your come with my tongue. It was the most delightful thing I’d ever tasted in my life.”

Anakin groaned and lifted Obi-Wan’s face from his shoulder. Cupping Obi-Wan’s jaw between his hands he pressed their foreheads together as they continued to rock. The cot was shifting from side to side, little creaks from the metal mixing with the gasps and steady moans, and the heavy drops of rain up above. They were both close, breath stuttering, movements more frantic, their cocks leaking profusely, making them sticky and slick. Anakin shifted and wrapped one leg around Obi-Wan’s waist, heel tucked into the back of his thigh, shoving him in closer as they neared the end.

“But beyond that, I see a man I can trust,” Anakin said against Obi-Wan’s parted lips. “S-someone I can depend on. In every way, and all ways I see a mentor and a friend, a confidant and… and a lover. I love you, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan crushed their lips together in a fierce kiss as they came, swallowing Anakin’s moans. Arching up into Obi-Wan, Anakin ground his cock against Obi-Wan’s hip as he shuddered through his release, his emotions coalescing with the sensations of his body, making his pleasures that much more. He did love Obi-Wan in every single way that he could. He loved his body and his mind, loved his compassion and his intensity - he even loved him when he was being irritating and condescending.

When Anakin looked at Obi-Wan, all he saw was everything and more.

All he saw was his entire world.

#obikin #star wars fanfiction #lemon fanfiction #kinktober 2023 #lemon does kinktober

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