Looks like this is an ourchive exclusive for now. A fanvid to test the video uploading capabilities of ourchive. This is a fanvid for the Talzin/Sidious pairing, my favorite toxic rarepair. Topical to my fic Heart of Shadow.

EDIT: Now with 100% more video!

Song

A Beautiful Lie

Thirty Seconds to Mars

Gabrielle's travels take her to a new continent, but the city she hunts in already belongs to someone else.

Petronia has not been invited to the festivities at the Château de Lioncourt.

thefourthvine wrote, "I want the story where someone sits down and thinks that, and lists every single person in the canon (probably in some kind of database, with numerical codes and assigned weights for each category and stuff) and weighs all the pros and cons and finally, after a lot of careful deliberation, selects a candidate for the position of Significant Other."

This is the first step in that process.

In our youth,
we three were heroes,
sworn brothers —
what though our
arms won you a land to rule?
What did you fear then —

that you were
led so easily
to kill your
general
and his reputation too?
His name is silent.

"My gongzi is a fool!" Luo Qingyang bursts out as soon as they're alone in her tent. "How can he look at someone so kind and lovely and skilled and—”

Jiang Yanli laughs softly. "It's a good thing we're not engaged then. I can spend time with someone who appreciates me."

“Dong jie fights well as always,” Mu Nihuang said, smiling. “It’s been a while since we’ve sparred; perhaps you can give me a match, as well?”

Xia Dong had had her own year of mourning. She had tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that Nie Feng had died a hero, had given his life to prevent a rebellion, and had succeeded. All things being equal, though, she’d rather her husband were alive.

Xia Dong realized the silence had dragged on too long. The smile on Mu Nihuang’s face was slipping. Xia Dong found her own smile somewhere and gave Mu Nihuang a challenging bow. “I would be honored to spar with the princess,” she said. “Let us see if you have kept up your training, stuck in the south as you were.”

“We raised a child together,” Jiang Wanyin says, voice thick with pain. “You two were sworn brothers.” He swallows hard and oh. Oh, no. Lan Xichen is not ready for this conversation. He is never going to be ready for this conversation. “And because of what he did, there is nowhere outside this room that either of us can mourn him.”

Lan Xichen has been in seclusion for half a year, healing, he thinks, from the way his world was upended that night in a temple in Yunping City. Then, Jiang Wanyin comes to visit—breaking the fragile peace he has been building, but offering, perhaps, a better healing.

A moment between a gunslinger and a city boy in a lonely place.

Art for reine_des_corbeaux.