'We know that there's something there'

Why won’t they spend their own money if they’re really so close?

Books cover reveals Revealing We Become Darkness by Grace Morrow A romantic fantasy arriving April 2026 By Reactor | Published on November 13, 2025 Photo credit: Corinne Irizarry Comment 0 Share New Share Photo credit: Corinne Irizarry A human and a Vampyr forge an unsteady alliance in a marriage-of-convenience… We’re thrilled to share the cover of Grace Morrow’s romantic fantasy We Become Darkness—available on April 7, 2026 from Alcove Press/Crooked Lane Books. Thalia, Princess of Agripa, has spent the last four years hunting her ex-lover, Cassius—the man who shattered her heart and betrayed her kingdom by becoming a Vampyr. Vampyrs and humans have had a tenuous past since Thalia’s father and sister were murdered thirteen years ago. But with Agripa’s ore supply—the lifeblood of human cities—running out, Thalia’s mother strikes a desperate and dangerous deal: Thalia will marry a Vampyr prince in exchange for their ore.Thalia is blindsided by the arrangement—and horrified to find Cassius, now serving as the prince’s Hand, is the man tasked with bringing her to the Vampyr kingdom safely. To save her people, she agrees to the marriage but plans to dismantle the Vampyr kingdom from within by killing the prince.The Vampyr court is rife with danger and secrets, and Cassius is always watching. When a monstrous new threat emerges, Thalia realizes the safety and security of their world is far more fragile than she ever believed.Caught between duty and desire, Thalia must grapple with her feelings for Cassius and decide if she will fulfill her duty to the human crown or embrace the darkness within herself to protect both realms. Cover illustration by Olivia Hintz Buy the Book We Become Darkness Grace Morrow Buy Book We Become Darkness Grace Morrow Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Grace Morrow is an author of magic, mayhem, and mischief. As an art historian, she strives to integrate the feelings one might have when looking at a remarkable piece of art into her books. A true Californian, she lives with her husband and two unruly cats. When she isn’t writing, you can find her binge-watching the latest trash reality TV show, working with an academic support program, or trying to keep her many, many succulents alive. The post Revealing <i>We Become Darkness</i> by Grace Morrow appeared first on Reactor.

Books RPGs RPG Tourism: Five Games To Help You Travel Vicariously Experience the trip of a lifetime — without having to deal with planes, passports, or other tourists… By Sarah | Published on November 13, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Many Americans might like to explore the delights of far-off lands, but cannot, lacking the time or the funds. However, they can travel vicariously, by means of movies, television shows, YouTube videos, even novels. All worthy endeavours… which I won’t discuss here. They’ve been well covered elsewhere. But there’s one entertainment possibility for vicarious tourism that I suspect has been overlooked: tabletop roleplaying. Tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPG) have been entertaining us for more than half a century. Time enough for nations across the world to develop their own local TTRPGs, games that reflect their nations’ unique customs and settings. If you doubt me, consider that games like Call of Cthulhu, Twilight 2000, and Paranoia reflect the boundlessly optimistic American psyche1. If you wish to travel via TTRPG, you might want to consider these five games, drawn from across the world and across the decades. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay By Richard Halliwell, Rick Priestley, Graeme Davis, Jim Dambra & Phil Gallagher (1986) Whereas certain other, better-known, subterranean tunnel and fire-breathing monster-branded TTRPGs focused on increasingly heroic characters, the United Kingdom’s Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP), published during the grimmest years of Thatcherite England, focused on more humble adventurers. WFRP characters might come from such occupations as “footpad,” “grave-robber,” and the ever-popular “rat-catcher.” Armed with skills and resources appropriate to their backgrounds, characters navigate a socially stratified Renaissance-level world filled with dangers about which it would best not to think…if only survival did not depend on constantly thinking about them. To underline the nature of the world in which the player characters were living, WFPG’s game mechanics were not survival-friendly. Getting stabbed or bitten—or worse, set on fire—was often lethal. This may sound like a downer, but in play, WFRP could be very funny, even upbeat and life affirming… at least compared to Warhammer 40K. Heavy Gear By Jean Carrières, Gene Marcil, Martin Ouellette, Marc-Alexandre Vézina (1995) A product of Montreal’s Dream Pod 9, the eye-catching Heavy Gear rulebook offers players adventure on Terra Nova, a world that (rather like Canada) enjoys abundant resources, a challenging environment, mutually hostile regional governments, and an external enemy as rapacious as it is heavily armed. Elbows up! Character generation is points-based, so players have considerable control over what sort of characters they get to play. As the combat system leans lethal, players may also get considerable practice designing characters. As an additional enticement to buy the game, Heavy Gear was two games in one. In addition to the roleplaying game, Heavy Gear is a tabletop wargame. Even better, the two elements could be easily integrated… at the risk of player characters discovering the hard way just how lethal heavy armaments can be2. Golden Sky Stories By Ryo Kamiya & Tsugihagi Honpo, translated by Ewen Cluney (2006) This Japanese game features characters that, while they may appear human, are in fact supernatural. Golden Sky players adopt the role of “henge,” magical shapeshifting animals. Every character has special gifts unmatched by humans… modest gifts in keeping with the game’s modest setting. Rather than starring in world-altering epics, the henge contend with personal problems, using their special knacks to mediate disputes, steer lonely kids to new friends, and other challenges of similar weight. Relentlessly wholesome, Golden Sky Stories incentivizes cooperative and community-minded strategies. After all, you cannot help little Ryu find a friend by stabbing him in the face… but you might help things along if you caused a light rain, forcing Ryu into the same bus shelter as young Akane. Vaesen: Nordic Horror Roleplaying By Nils Hintze, translated by Niklas Lundmark (2020) Swedish publisher Fria Ligan provides players with the opportunity to explore not the quasi-utopian Sweden of today3, but the roots from which it sprang. This is a 19th-century Sweden not so far removed from the age of myth as Swedes might prefer. This is yesterday’s Sweden with deep class divides, widespread poverty, a society in which rapid industrialization brought radical change but not security… and where relentless urban and agricultural expansion is encroaching on the territories of fantastic beings that older generations prudently avoided. Enter player characters, who despite diverse archetypes share one common element: all have the Sight, a trauma-induced ability to perceive the supernatural. Therefore, it falls to the player characters to act as intermediaries between the blind mundanes and the eldritch folk. Or, as this is a Year Zero Engine game, to be ground between the millstones of oblivious conventional society and the increasingly irate supernatural. Generally speaking, modern TTRPGs have art that is phenomenally better than most of the art in old-time TTRPGs. Even in a modern context, the art of Vaesen stands out. Outgunned By Riccardo Sirignano and Simone Formicola, translation by Caterina Arzani (2024) A product of Italy’s ongoing golden age of tabletop roleplaying games, Outgunned is a love letter to high-octane action movies of the not-too-distant past. You too can play a character who (somehow) charges nearly unscathed through automatic weapons-fire, (somehow) vaults between buildings, and (somehow) outruns explosions, in pursuit of that One Big Payoff… unless the character’s luck runs out first. I don’t know what’s in the water over in Italy, but judging by the pace with which the Italians are producing innovative new games, it must be pretty good stuff. Outgunned, for example, is marketed as an action movie game, but its sourcebooks already cover a wide range of film genres4. [end-mark] Or not. After all, these are games, and perhaps no more reflective of their nations of origin than were Lost in the Barrens, Jake and the Kid, or Anne of Green Gables. ︎To quote from an old review of mine, “if hit by a round from an autocannon, a heavily armoured character might be identifiable from dental records, whereas you’d need a DNA analysis to ID an unarmoured character.” Note the “might.” ︎I assume. It stands to reason places I have never been to and haven’t researched must be better in every respect than places with which I am familiar. ︎Although I probably wouldn’t use Outgunned to simulate Fellini films. ︎The post RPG Tourism: Five Games To Help You Travel Vicariously appeared first on Reactor.

Video: Trump Ends the Schumer Shutdown; 'Extremists'

Let's not even get started on the non-self-governing territories.

Marvin Gaye was right – sexual healing is a thing!

NBC’s Seth Meyers continued his attacks from the left on the Democrats who voted to reopen the government on Wednesday’s edition of Late Night by condemning Sen. Angus King for claiming that the shutdown did not work. Referring to President Trump’s various White House renovations, Meyers introduced a clip of King by declaring, “So, this is what Trump was focused on while the government was shut down, which is why his party got crushed in last week's elections and why his poll numbers are abysmal. People are finally seeing the gap between what Trump pretends to care about and what he actually cares about. The Democrats are finally winning the messaging war, or as Maine Senator Angus King put it, Democrats took the L.”     King was then shown on MSNBC’s Morning Joe claiming, “Standing up to Donald Trump didn't work.” It should be noted King was talking specifically about the shutdown, but nevertheless, Meyers huffed, “It didn't? It seemed like it was working to me. Democrats were finally winning elections while Trump was wandering around the White House like a property only child. By the way, even if you think it didn't work, don't say that out loud. How are you this bad at politics? Just say Republicans were willing to harm people and we weren't, so we had to let this one go.” Of course, Meyers is essentially admitting out loud that it was Democrats who shut down the government and caused so much needless pain for the American people because it was necessary for Democrats to win some state-level elections and that attempts to blame Republicans were just political spin. Here is a transcript for the November 12-taped show: NBC Late Night with Seth Meyers 11/13/2025 12:44 PM ET SETH MEYERS: So, this is what Trump was focused on while the government was shut down, which is why his party got crushed in last week's elections and why his poll numbers are abysmal. People are finally seeing the gap between what Trump pretends to care about and what he actually cares about. The Democrats are finally winning the messaging war or, as Maine Senator Angus King put it, Democrats took the L. ANGUS KING: Standing up to Donald Trump didn't work. MEYERS: It didn't? It seemed like it was working to me. Democrats were finally winning elections while Trump was wandering around the White House like a property only child. By the way, even if you think it didn't work, don't say that out loud. How are you this bad at politics? Just say Republicans were willing to harm people and we weren't, so we had to let this one go.

On Monday night, violence erupted at UC Berkeley. Again.That sentence alone might not shock anyone. Berkeley and riots go together like gender studies and Marxist slogans — a tradition older than most of its students. But this time, the target was different.Christians and conservatives should keep showing up. Every TPUSA Faith event, every lecture, every debate — attend them. The more witnesses, the less room for lies.The mob didn’t come for a politician or a protest. It came for families.The crowd surrounded a Turning Point USA Faith event hosted by an officially recognized student club, featuring Christian apologist Frank Turek and atheist Peter Boghossian, along with comedian Rob Schneider and British commentator and satirist Andrew Doyle. In one evening, TPUSA offered more intellectual diversity than the entire Berkeley humanities department has managed all year.The riot that proved the stereotypePicture families walking into a campus hall to hear a Christian and an atheist debate civilly. Now picture an angry crowd blocking the doors, throwing bottles, lighting fires, and chanting, “Punch a fascist in the face!”Their only problem: No fascists were present. Unless, of course, you classify Turek, Boghossian, and a few Christian undergrads as Mussolini’s heirs. But that’s Berkeley logic — where “diversity” means everyone thinks the same and disagreement is treated like violence.The radical left has no greater enemies than Christianity and free speech. Combine the two, and leftists melt down faster than a Berkeley sophomore trying to define the word “woman.”How did we get here?Berkeley has been the stage for riots since the 1960s. If campus unrest were Broadway, Berkeley would be “The Phantom of the Opera” — always running, always loud, always masked. But tradition doesn’t excuse terror.The deeper problem is the culture feeding it. In today’s universities, students are marinated in ideology, not inquiry. The humanities have traded Socrates for slogans and replaced debate with denunciation.This worldview breeds fragility and fanaticism: emotional dependence on outrage, intellectual intolerance, and the conviction that disagreement equals danger. It’s no wonder students' activism now mimics the very authoritarianism they claim to resist.Antifa’s unofficial motto might as well be: “Accuse your opponents of what you plan to do.”The media’s complicityRight on cue, the Guardian rushed to describe the riot as “mostly peaceful.” That phrase should be Berkeley’s new marketing slogan: Mostly Peaceful Since 1964.The truth is simpler. The TPUSA attendees were peaceful. The rioters were not. They screamed in people’s faces, hurled debris, blocked exits, and called it “defending democracy.” Apparently, democracy now means assaulting Christians.The radical playbookIf you want to decode the left’s method, just reverse the leftists' accusations. They say, “Don’t demonize others,” while labeling everyone to the right of Lenin a fascist. They say, “All voices deserve to be heard,” while drowning opponents in primal screams.They say, “Fight oppression,” while physically intimidating families trying to attend a faith event.At Arizona State University, a colleague of mine once wrote, “I’m all for free speech — but not for bigots,” to justify banning Charlie Kirk from campus. Translation: I love freedom — as long as no one I dislike exercises it.This is the moral logic of the modern left: Disagreement equals harm, and harm justifies censorship — or violence.The 'radical' minority that isn’tWe keep calling these leftists radicals, but that implies rarity. Surveys say otherwise. The ideological monoculture dominates academia. The “moderate left” isn’t moderating anything; it’s supplying the radicals with silence, funding, and applause.The tenured class that claims to value “diversity of thought” has created an institution where dissenters are treated like heretics.RELATED: The Antifa mob at Berkeley showed us what evil looks like Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesWhat must be doneFirst, Christians and conservatives should keep showing up. Every TPUSA Faith event, every lecture, every debate — attend them. The more witnesses, the less room for lies.Second, tell your state legislators you don’t want tax dollars funding violent intolerance disguised as higher learning.Third, warn every parent and student what really happens on college campuses. Prepare your kids to challenge the ideological orthodoxy behind DEI, critical theory, and the alphabet soup of new moral dogmas.Finally, support alternatives. Seek out institutions that teach truth instead of propaganda — and organizations like TPUSA Faith that defend free inquiry.That’s why I started my Substack: to expose the rot inside American universities before your children discover it the hard way.The cure for intellectual darkness is light. The cure for ideological riots is courage. And the cure for the Berkeley disease begins with showing up, speaking truth, and refusing to bow.

Despite the ongoing obstructionism by Chicago's deeply unpopular mayor, Brandon Johnson (D), and other open-borders activists, federal immigration agents continue to risk life and limb with the aim of unburdening the crime-ridden sanctuary city of some of the roughly 150,000 illegal aliens who have sapped its resources, strained its systems, and endangered its people.'An ACTIVIST JUDGE is putting the lives of Americans directly at risk.'A Biden judge decided on Wednesday to undo some of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's hard work, ordering the Trump administration to free hundreds of the illegal aliens recently apprehended in the Chicago area, including some of those captured during the Department of Homeland Security's Operation Midway Blitz.DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Blaze News in a statement. "At every turn, activist judges, sanctuary politicians, and violent rioters have actively tried to prevent our law enforcement officers from arresting and removing the worst of the worst.""Now an ACTIVIST JUDGE is putting the lives of Americans directly at risk by ordering 615 illegal aliens be released into the community," added McLaughlin.U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings, a Biden appointee, ruled last month that ICE had violated a 2022 consent decree settlement that barred federal immigration agents from conducting warrantless arrests unless they have cause to suspect an individual is both an illegal alien and a flight risk.The settlement, which was the result of a lawsuit filed by the open-borders advocacy organization National Immigrant Justice Center and the ACLU of Illinois, was set to expire on May 12, 2025. However, the NIJC filed a motion to continue enforcing the settlement earlier this year after ICE made a series of warrantless illegal alien arrests.RELATED: Federal judge wildly oversteps her bounds with Border Patrol commander in Chicago Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images Cummings, who previously claimed that NIJC's pending motion kept the settlement alive, decided on Oct. 7 to extend the consent decree until Feb. 2, 2026, and ordered ICE to apply it to all agents nationwide.On Wednesday, Cummings went even farther to appease the open-borders activists, ordering ICE to free 13 illegal aliens by Friday and to release another 615 illegal aliens on bond into a monitoring program by Nov. 21, unless the Trump administration appeals and/or demonstrates that the arrests were in keeping with the consent decree.Lawyers for the government are considering an appeal, indicating that at least 12 of the 615 illegal aliens arrested in Chicago between June and early October are considered high flight risks, reported Axios.The activist judge also ordered the Trump administration to pause deportation and voluntary departure procedures for all those illegal aliens who are pending release and to provide additional information concerning all arrests that have taken place since his October ruling.Michelle Garcia, deputy legal director at the ACLU of Illinois, suggested that by committing to enforcing the consent decree, Cummings has set the stage for "even more of the hundreds of people illegally arrested and detained during Operation Midway Blitz to be released."Mark Fleming, associate director of litigation at NIJC, also celebrated Cummings' apparent judicial activism, stating, "We are grateful that Judge Cummings sees the urgency of this moment and has ordered the Trump administration to allow hundreds to leave the inhumane detention centers where they are being unlawfully held and to have a chance at the due process our laws require."Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!