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debtconsultationusa · 2 years

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How to Negotiate Debt Settlement yourself

If you feel like you’re drowning in debt, it can be tempting to settle for less money than you owe. You can hire a debt settlement company to negotiate a settlement with your creditors on your behalf. However, you may need to save enough money to pay a fee to the lender and the settlement company before you can settle your accounts.

As a result, choosing the right debt settlement company in USA could make the process easier and cost you less money overall.

A do-it-yourself (DIY) approach can be just as effective, saving you money and getting you out of debt sooner. Here we are with the debt settlement programs in USA for your debt issues.

Why do creditors accept settlement offers?

For a secured loan, such as a mortgage or car loan, the lender may have the right to demand collateral (such as a house or car) and be unwilling to settle. But with unsecured loans, credit card debt, personal loans and medical bills, there is no guarantee. Creditors can either send your accounts to collections, sue you for nonpayment, or sell the debt to a buyer or third-party debt collector.

Sending an invoice to collections is not free, as the company will have to pay operating costs for its own collection or a fee to third-party collectors. Hiring lawyers to sue you for unpaid debts also costs money. While the creditor can sell the right to collect the debt, they often won’t get back the full amount you owe.

According to the Federal Trade Commission’s 2013 report on the debt buying industry, debt buyers paid an average of 4.0 cents per dollar of bad debt. This figure may include debts that have been sold and resold multiple times, which may reduce their value. However, as a borrower, you can see why you have some bargaining power.

If you offer your original lender more than they could potentially make from the debt buyer, they may accept your offer even if it is less than the full amount owed. Similarly, if you offer a debt collector more than they paid for your debt, they can make money even if you don’t pay the debt in full.

6-Step DIY Debt Settlement Plan

While many creditors may agree to settle your debt for less than what you owe, there is no guarantee that debt settlement will work. If you’re considering trying it out on your own, here’s a rough guide to the steps you might want to take:

1. Assess your situation

Make a list of your overdue accounts with the names of the creditors, how much you owe and how far behind you are in your payments. You will need this list as a basis for your plan and to decide which accounts to tackle first.

If you think you can afford to make minimum payments or could stay current on your accounts with a hardship payment plan, this may be a better option. Debt settlement can save you money, but it’s not guaranteed to work and can damage your credit and lead to more charges in the meantime.

2. Research your lenders

Creditors may have different policies for when they will accept a settlement offer and how much (or little) they will accept.

For example, you may need to be at least 90 days past due on the account before the creditor will consider settlement. Or some creditors may not settle at all and you will have to wait for the debt to be sold to another company.

Some creditors are also more likely to sue you to collect an unpaid debt than others. It may be a good idea to work out settlement agreements with these creditors first.

You can search online to learn about the experiences of others and inform your offering, keeping in mind that other people’s results may not reflect the company’s current practices.

3. Establish a settlement fund

Even if you don’t have to repay the full amount, you still have to pay something if you want to settle the bill. In general, lenders may require a one-time payment of about 20 to 50 percent of the amount you owe. You can pay this amount in several monthly payments, although it may be more expensive.

You may want to open a new bank account for your settlement fund to avoid the temptation to spend money elsewhere and to avoid accidental overdrafts during the settlement process. Start putting money into the account regularly to build your fund to the point where you can make a reasonable settlement offer.

It may be a good idea to deposit your settlement fund in an account that is not maintained by the creditor you are also dealing with, so that the company does not gain insight into your financial situation.

4. Make an offer to the lender

Once you think you have enough money saved up to settle the bill, you can call your lender and make an offer. In some cases, the creditor may have already sent you a settlement offer. You can accept the offer or respond with a lower counteroffer.

Whether you’ve lost your job or are dealing with medical bills, share why you can only afford the settlement amount you’re offering. To avoid confusion, make sure the offer is for a specific dollar amount, not a percentage of your balance.

If the creditor does not agree to the settlement, you may want to wait until they sell the debt and try again with a debt buyer or collection agency.

5. Review the written settlement agreement

A company representative can offer you a great deal over the phone, but you want an official written offer. The proposal should include your name, the name of the creditor or debt collector, and the account number. They should also include settlement terms, such as the amount paid, whether it is paid in one lump sum or over time, and due dates.

Make certain the document specifies unequivocally that your payment will fulfil your obligation. It might state that the account will be paid in full, accepted as fully settled, or something along those lines. In case the debt collection agency contacts you again in the future, keep a copy of the letter and any documentation of payments made.

In some cases, you may need to enter into a payment agreement with the original creditor (vs. the debt buyer) before they send you a settlement letter. Try to work out an agreement to schedule your payment in the future, giving the company a few business days to receive your letter in the meantime. If you do not receive the letter, you can cancel the payment.

6. Pay the agreed settlement amount

Once you agree and review the written offer, pay the settlement amount and you will no longer be responsible for the debt. Switch to another account soon.

Debt settlement doesn’t always work

Whether you go the DIY route or work with a debt settlement company, the process could damage your credit and open you up to being sued.

Lenders generally do not agree to settle the account if you are only a few days late. You may need to be at least 90 or more days behind on your payments before the credit card company will even consider settlement. By then, your late payments have probably been reported to the credit bureaus.

The process can also take time, and if the original creditor doesn’t want to settle (or you don’t agree to a settlement offer), the account could be charged off and sent or sold to collections, which could also hurt your credit.

Additionally, creditors can sue you for unpaid debts and obtain a judgement, which could lead to wage garnishment.

Alternatives to settle your debt

Debt settlement may not be your only option if you are having trouble paying your bills, and it may not be the best option in all cases.

If you could afford a more modest monthly payment, you may want to contact a nonprofit credit counselling agency and ask about a debt management plan (DMP). Credit counsellors can deal with your creditors on your behalf and may be able to lower your interest rate and monthly payments.

With a DMP, you pay one monthly instalment to a credit counselling agency and they distribute the payments to creditors. This could be a good option if you can afford to pay something every month and don’t want to become delinquent on your bills.

If you see no possible way to afford to pay off the debt, filing for bankruptcy may be the best course of action. While it may hurt your credit for years to come, bankruptcy could erase your debt and allow you to move on with your life. Choose the right debt relief company in USA and stay worry-free.

Get more details on:-https://www.debtconsultation.co/

Or can call us at:- +1(888)450–1382

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harbourfronttechnologies · 2 years

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Debt Buyer: Definition, How They Make Money, vs Debt Collector

Debt buyers are companies that purchase delinquent debt from creditors for a fraction of the amount owed. They then attempt to collect on that debt by any means necessary, including legal action. They have become a big business in recent years, as the amount of consumer debt has increased.

Debt buyers have come under fire in recent years for their aggressive tactics and for often seeking judgments against consumers who may not be able to pay the debt. Some states have passed laws to protect consumers from these practices, but there is still much work to be done.

What is a debt buyer?

A debt buyer is a company that buys debt from other companies for a lower price than the amount of money the debtor owes. The debt buyer then tries to collect the money that is owed.

When a creditor sells a debt to a debt buyer, the creditor can write off the loss on their taxes. So this means when the debt collector buys a debt, they are buying an IOU for a lower price. The original creditor gets some money and the debtor still owes the full amount.

How do debt buyers work

Debt buyers are small and medium size businesses that purchase delinquent debt from creditors for a fraction of the amount owed.

Debt buyers often purchase delinquent debt, such as automobile loans, credit card debt, and other types of consumer debt. The creditors are generally banks, credit unions, and private finance companies.

Debt buyers can collect the debt by themselves or can outsource other agencies to help them to collect the debt. The agencies that help debt buyers are usually collection agencies, law firms, or skip tracers.

How do debt buyers make money

Debt buyers purchase hundreds of debts in bulk from original creditors at significantly reduced rates. Debt buyers then make profits by purchasing debt for a low price and then attempting to collect from the debtors.

Even if the debt buyer gets only a small percentage of debtors to pay, they can still make a profit because they bought the debt for pennies on the dollar.

The debt buyer market is a multi-billion dollar industry because there are a lot of delinquent debts and many people are not able to pay them.

How do debt buyers collect money

Debt buyers use a variety of methods to collect money from debtors. They may call the debtor, send letters, or even hire a collection agency.

Some debt buyers will sue the debtor in court to get a judgment against them. This allows the debt buyer to garnish the debtor’s wages or put a lien on their property.

If the debt buyer is unable to collect from the debtor, they may sell the debt to another collection agency or write it off as a bad debt.

Conclusion

As people continue to struggle with debt, the debt-buyer market will likely continue to grow. Companies that purchase debt can be very profitable, even if they only collect a small percentage of the debts they purchase. It's a profitable business but it's important to understand all the laws and regulations before purchasing any debt.

Article Source Here: Debt Buyer: Definition, How They Make Money, vs Debt Collector

from Harbourfront Technologies - Feed https://harbourfronts.com/debt-buyer/

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givemmorg · 2 years

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How do i unlock my mac email account

#How do i unlock my mac email account how to#

#How do i unlock my mac email account password#

#How do i unlock my mac email account how to#

You can then follow up with a photocopy of some ID and ask how to proceed. If the person on the phone can't help, just ask them if there is a postal mail address or person you can appeal for help in resetting the email address used for your Apple ID. (yes, I'm sure you know your birthday, but it could have been entered incorrectly or become corrupted along the way)ĭo try calling support one last time with some billing history and ask if you can provide a list of Apps and/or songs you purchased or have them ask you some of the history. If you have triggered the account to be into a locked status due to too many failed log in attempts, you will need the help of a human to get it unlocked when you no longer can receive email or answer both the birth day question and the security question to a machine's satisfaction. Any books, movies, or music distributed with DRM are also available without DRM if you look. (b) Your supporting the DRM technologies which create these problems. Google isn't finding anything for me though.Īs an aside, you should never buy DRM protected content in the first palce because : (a) Eventually you'll lose access one way or another, often by the company discontinuing the service. If it only give you encrypted music, then theoretically the iPod knows the authorization keys, meaning you've a slim chance someone discovered a trick for using the iPod's authorization to decrypt your music. Try any that look promising.ĭo you have an iPod? If so, try Graeme Hutchison suggestion. A priori, I'd imagine most/all require authorization since that's the easiest way, but perhaps some clever one does not. You say you still have the files themselves, yes? There are a variety of tools for removing iTunes DRM. But maybe you could get your account back by contacting Apple's legal department in writing. Imho, this sounds like way way too much hassle for a few hundred bucks. You could theoretically sue Apple in small claims court. Do not lie to your credit card company, simply push the dispute process as far as possible, the further it goes the more money they charge Apple. I doubt you'll get your money back, but you have a legitimate dispute with Apple, so stick them the dispute resolution merchant fees, which might cost as much as $30 per song. You're beyond the 60 day period, but maybe not the 1 year "claims and defenses" period. If Apple won't help, then collect your old credit card bills with iTunes charges, and speak with your credit card company about contesting those charges. You could warn them that you plan on contesting credit card charges if they cannot restore the account. Your iTunes account was presumably associated with your credit card, yes? You could attempt to prove you identity to Apple via that credit card connection. Is there a work around to this problem? The songs are stored on my computer – I just can’t play them. So, I have purchased hundreds of songs that I cannot play now. After going up three levels of Apple customer service, I was told that there was absolutely nothing they could do for me. When I called Apple to see if we could do something to unlock the account and tie it to my new account (which would have the same name, address, and other personal information), I was informed that Apple cannot unlock the account and that I had to have access to the old email account to access the account and authorize this new computer to play the music. Apple then locked my account for incorrectly answering the questions. I soon figured out that none of the questions matched my personal information so I am wondering if these questions were ever associated with my original iTunes account. I next tried the street I grew up on and that did not work either. I did so and Apple said that my answer was incorrect. The first one that came up was to enter my birthdate. Recognizing that I could not access the dead email account, I asked to answer the security questions.

#How do i unlock my mac email account password#

I clicked on the “forgot my password” link and Apple gave me the option of answering a few security questions or having my password sent to my email address. I tried several of my “usual” passwords, but none of them worked. When I clicked through the authorization screen, my original email address came up and asked for my password. I recently tried to play an Album and an error message came up that said that this computer was not authorized to play the songs and that I would need to access my account to authorize the new computer. Fortunately, I had my iTunes music backed up and when I purchased a new computer, I uploaded my songs. In the meantime, my computer on which my original iTunes account died. The original email address associated with my Apple account is no longer valid. I later moved my account to a personal rather than corporate email address and I have since changed jobs. When I originally set up my iTunes account, I used an email address from my prior employer.

#How do i unlock my mac email account

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javajust · 2 years

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Yep insurance

And insurance companies have for some years quietly been using FICO scores to ascertain whether you are a good driver, and adjusting premiums accordingly. Facebook toyed with using social media to gauge users’ credit but pulled back in 2016 due to regulatory concerns. Measuring filial piety as part of a credit score? Well just remember, in China parents over 60 may sue children for not visiting regularly or not ensuring that they have enough food! Better remember Mother’s Day! But also remember, here in the America our credit scores are not as straightforward as we like to think. Auto Advocate Inc, DBA YAA Insurance Solutions offers mechanical breakdown. So the government is stepping in with its own system and as you can imagine, it is “Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics.” The government says this new system “will allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under Heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.” How do you say, “1984”? Not all vehicles qualify for coverage YAA does not offer VSCs in California. China’s #1 online shopping day, November 11, Singles Day, (get it?) now does more business than our Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.īut still, measuring people’s ability to pay off borrowings is difficult in China. Well “China is China” and companies like TenCent and Alibaba have developed incredibly successful cell phone payment systems. Name: YEP INSURANCE, LLC Address: 600 17TH STREET STE 2800 CO DENVER, CO 80202 Business Phone: (800) 761-7994 Internet: Email:. It was initially thought that online spending would be slow to take off in China due to the lack of credit cards and a poor logistics system. about 90% of American’s have a FICO credit score but in China only about 30% of citizens do. Dorothy sees clients in our Cambridge office.Here in the U.S. Dorothy has also been adjunct faculty at Northeastern University. Tony started in insurance in 2009 and immediately became a designation addict and shortly thereafter a proud insurance nerd. She’s worked with various global corporate organizations, in which she was an executive coach and educator working with clients on interpersonal skills development and leadership. of Mental Health) hospital for persistent, severe mental illness. She has experience working in outpatient clinics serving adults, young adults, teens, couples, and families and a DMH (Dept. We specialize in group accident coverage for businesses, groups, & organizations. Assisting clients who are often involved in complex family and other environments to identify patterns of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, as well as building on strengths to develop new skills and ways of addressing challenges, she aims to foster mental health and growth for a “life worth living.” Dorothy’s approach centers on reflective listening, empathic understanding, and attunement.ĭorothy is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Simmons University School of Social Work. Were an acronym for Peace Of Mind Insurance. She has expertise in using integrated interventions to help clients, such as psychodynamic attachment theory, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Cognitive Restructuring for PTSD, and Emotion Regulation for Cognitively Challenged Clients. She focuses on building therapeutic alliances with individuals and families who may have anxiety, trauma, mood, depression, emotion regulation, diversity/multiculturalism, identity/self-esteem, and chronic behavioral health issues. The crisis of youth employment was a main subject discussed by the. Dorothy Yep is a licensed independent clinical social worker who has more than 25 years of experience in a broad range of clinical settings. Partnerships for youth employment in the Commonwealth of Independent States (YEP CIS).

#Yep insurance

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mcmusing · 3 years

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Hurry, team! Mainstream Media is making a monumental massacre of mental health!

In my last post, I spotlighted the leading lady of the First Family of Superheroes, Jessica Alba's Sue Storm-Richards. Now, the time has come to defend the rest of her team along with their films, Fantastic Four 2005 and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer 2007.

These are not the only superhero films with which I find favorable elements while the rest of fandom loathes them with extreme prejudice. A good example of this is Batman and Robin 1997. In no way is that film high art, but it achieves what the gritty films of today grossly lack. It has entertainment value. It's not as serious as its prior two films and that is made evident upfront by the tone. It's colorful, jokes around, makes fun of itself- I often re-watch my favorite part, the bat credit card (no, your eyes do not deceive). The villains catch a lot of flack for their- obviously intentional- corny humor. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mr. Freeze still gets the worst of it. However, all dialogue issues fall on the script much more than the actors. Arnold "Terminator" Schwarzenegger could have pulled off a very intimidating ice foe were he not directed to do otherwise.

Another is Daredevil 2003. I admit that the script could have been much better, but I loved every second of seeing Ben Affleck on screen. Some nice RL foreshadowing to him becoming my favorite version of 21st century Batman. They also had a black villain who was not raced-swapped for pandering. The Kingpin was originally meant to be black, but Stan Lee did not want to be offensive. Ugh, that's just like a civil rights era white man- lynching, torching, empathizing.....

In the case of the Fantastic Four films, I maintain that the continued hate spewed in their direction is criminally overblown. Especially since the only complaint the Marvel Mafia has a leg to stand on is the lack of action scenes. Something that is more than compensated by characterization and surprising cliche avoidance.

Ioan Grufford is elastic

Admittedly, on first viewing, I wasn't all that impressed by Ioan as Reed Richards. With continued re-watches, though, I can't picture anyone else in the role. Comic book Reed is usually so socially clueless that some readers interpret him as a jerk. In the films, Reed is not the first guy you would appoint leader. He has an uncanny scientific mind, but he's suffered a lot of setbacks, has little confidence, retreats into his work at the detriment of sorting through his emotions, and is capable of near fatal miscalculations. He's intimidated by his college rival and mission benefactor, Victor Von Doom. Worse, Victor is with his ex-girlfriend. Reed wants Sue back, but again, awkward social issues and low self-esteem get in the way.

Of course, he also has good points.

Due to how meticulous he is with research and development, he focuses on perfection and misses out on profit. When the space mission goes terribly wrong, we see why he takes the time to overanalyze every detail before making a single move. Once Ben is changed into the Thing, Reed is wrecked with guilt and obsesses on how to reverse the damage. Reed isn't demonized for his errors or made to be enslaved to his own ego. His integrity seems greater than his intellect. He's a genius yet still a flawed man.

Reed's heroism begins when he moves the Storms into his and Ben's place. He accepts full responsibility for his best friend's transformation and wants to fix it (No, no, no, Reed, what are you doing? If you cause your most loyal friend's physical impairment and loss of the woman he loves, you're supposed to transfer the blame and join the nearest evil faction. Everybody knows that!). Reed's quest takes priority over his own health to the point of using himself as a guinea pig. When the team is endangered by Victor, there's a boost in Reed's confidence. No longer seeing himself as inferior to his rival, the newly minted Mr. Fantastic comes up with the way to defeat him. He even proposes to Sue. His loyalty, devotion, knowledge, and bravery make him the best choice to lead the Fantastic Four.

In Silver Surfer, Reed is still a bit on the oblivious and awkward side but not to an egregious degree. Though still a workaholic (it's a superhero thing), his ability to get in touch with his emotions has improved. At one point, his upcoming marriage to Sue dawns on him so intensely, he all but collapses on Ben, who basically has to carry the hazy elastic man (Ben, what do you think you're doing? Your burdened leader and best bro needs support and you're giving it to him instead of mocking his emotional issues?? Yeah, when you guys get a sec, there's another super powered team over in Westchester that would like a word with you). Reed's relationship with Johnny is better, too as he eagerly shows his little brother-in-law his new inventions and indulges his request for a bachelor party

The take-charge man Sue wanted is definitely there. When Johnny is reckless during a mission, Reed- who usually defends the youngest team member- reprimands and clearly has an effect on the brazen boy. When the military that asked for the Four's help gets snide one too many times, Reed nonchalantly dresses him down in front of everyone. He demands respect for his team and the general grudgingly complies. It's a genuine empowering moment that demonstrates the fact that naturally nice, non-antagonistic people are NOT submissive weaklings.

Jessica Alba can fade from sight

Since I've already emphasized the greatness that is Sue Storm-Richards, this won't be too long. I love how one of her heroic feats is dismantling romantic drama cliches- something surprisingly prevalent in superhero media. Yes, she's dating her ex-boyfriend's rival, but Reed had no idea Sue was working for Victor, let alone seeing him. Clearly, she hadn't been rubbing Reed's face in it. After Victor proposes, Sue is very uncomfortable and breaks up with him after the space mission. She warms up to Reed and drops her passive aggression to talk and work things out with him.

Not a lot is disclosed about the Storm siblings' past, but the sequel alludes to it being comic accurate. Sue has to be more of a mother than sister to Johnny and it causes them to butt heads at times. The two are obviously close. Johnny even works for Sue and Victor. When he receives literal fire powers, Sue becomes protective of her already impulsive brother.

The Invisible Woman has something of a loving brother-sister dynamic with Ben also. Despite her issues with Reed, Sue is glad to see and work with Ben again. Among the Four, the two of them seem to get along best.

After her powers massively advanced, Sue became more of an asset to the team. In-between planning her wedding. Unlike pretty much every other superheroine, Sue doesn't play make-believe Xena 24/7. Crime-fighting is important to her, but she's still a person- a *woman* even! She wants to marry Reed and produce beautiful genius babies with him. And God bless her for it.

When they found the Silver Surfer, the empathetic Sue is the one able to appeal to the space traveler's better nature. Good thing because he restore her after she died a heroic death. A situation she walked away from with a reaffirmed commitment to the Four and desire to wed Reed. HOW is Sue Storm-Richards a legit beautiful golden-haired celebrity yet packs more humility and selflessness than Raven Xavier??! I guess that's the difference between the girl who came from tragedy and the spoiled rich blue brat.

Chris Evans is the Human Torch

(😡And absolutely no one else😤)

Good golly, casting director- what lucky star were you born under?? Chris Evans IS the one and only flesh-made-fire, Jonathan Storm. His look (get this, he's white and blonde! I was blown away, too) and characterization not only gets Johnny to the letter but provides most of the levity and fun filled moments in the films.

Very much like his comic book counterpoint, Johnny is the youngest and most childlike member of the team. He's around 19-20 years old in the films. His lowkey hyper intelligence is made evident hy the fact that he's employed by Victor and co-pilots the shuttle with Ben. However, his brilliance is well-cloaked by his hedonistic nature. He sneaks girls into company flight simulators, loves extreme sports, never takes a situation too seriously, and is simultaneously an attention-seeker yet attention-grabber. Chris portrays it all without making him annoying to have on screen.

While Sue tends to rain on his brand of fun, Johnny undoubtedly loves and respects his big sister. Not only do they work together, he's Sue's first-choice pick to pilot the shuttle. It can be inferred that Sue prefers to keep Johnny in her line of sight while Johnny has an excuse for staying in proximity to the most constant person in his life. As Sue is towards him, Johnny can get protective towards her. He expresses that he doesn't want Reed trying to get back together with his sister. None of Johnny's animosity towards Reed is genuine. He's simply Team Sue.

The director's cut- my firm canon cut- gives us more insight into Johnny. In particular, his relationships with the older males in his life. It's obvious why the wealthy, seemingly cool and spoiling Victor is his initial preference for a brother-in-law. It's Ben Grimm, his former commanding officer at NASA, who Johnny seeks out most. For all things prank and general taunting related. The two couldn't be more different with Johnny as the immature fly-boy and Ben as the much older serious pilot. Still, there's some underlying special affection between them also. Reed is somewhat the middle-ground between lenient Victor and stern Ben. Even though Johnny's not too fond of him since the breakup with Sue, Reed has nothing against him. He tries to mediate between the boy and Ben, claiming Johnny is merely full of youthful exuberance. When Johnny crosses the line, Reed does make an effort to rein him in.

After being hit by the cosmic rays, Johnny's reaction to brand new super powers is probably the most realistic. He uses his fire to make a sideshow of himself, pick up women, compete in sports, and anything else to gain as many onlookers as possible. He is the only one who doesn't want the powers reversed and exercises his Human Torch abilities to the max. Of interesting note, Johnny assigns the team's codenames. He calls Reed Mr. Fantastic but makes a crude joke about his 'anatomy' to deflect from the sweet gesture. He referred to his sister as the Invisible 'Girl' at first, annoying Sue and providing a funny comic reference. Picking the Thing for Ben resulted in a very crushed car for the cheeky boy. Bonus points for Sue scolding her brother before going to calm Ben, leaving Johnny to Reed. Don't cross your big sis, John Boy.

When the Storms get into a fight over Johnny making a degrading spectacle of himself, Johnny accuses her of treating him like a little boy and being too overbearing. He declares he wants to live his own life and huffs off. Following this, there is absolutely zero communication between the two for ten years. Johnny became a hardened, heroic freedom fighter for oppressed younger siblings everywhere while a devastated Sue grew too depressed to- of course, I'm kidding. Yeah, the brother she practically raised just flat-out abandoned her after one fight, resulting in a decade long estrangement. That is the stupidest, most forced, elaborate excuse to divide a family I've ever heard. What's next? The Human Torch goes insane with his fire powers, remembers his father's failures and mother's car accident, and kills Reed during a contrived outburst? Come on, no comic book franchise could be that woefully moronic. Johnny comes to his senses the same night and returns to help Sue and the guys. He even risks himself to lead a heat-seeking missile away from them.

By the Silver Surfer, Johnny is supremely enjoying the Four's celebrity status and rotating conga line of female company. However, we learn that he uses the decadent lifestyle as a front. Johnny sees Reed and Ben happily settled in committed relationships and starts to wonder if he wants the same for himself. His relationships with the rest of the team have grown. He has a very loving moment with Sue before her wedding and is the one to walk her down the aisle. He throws Reed a bachelor party and later, instantly agrees to keep a secret Reed doesn't want Sue to find out about. Johnny's definitely in huge favor of their marriage. He and Ben still have their bickering bond, but now, they're comfortable confiding in each other.

Interestingly, after being the one to master his powers so quickly, Johnny struggles in that area in the sequel. After being exposed to the Silver Surfer, his powers become unstable and direct contact with the rest of the Four causes them to swap powers. This is played for jokes until a mission mishap nearly gets Sue seriously injured. Already feeling guilty, Johnny can't even respond when Reed uncharacteristically berates him. During the climax, Johnny absorbs the abilities of everyone in order to stop a cosmic threat. When the Silver Surfer revitalizes a deceased Sue, Johnny is so grateful, he helps the Surfer rocket into space. In turn, the Surfer corrects the Torch's power problems.

Michael Chilakis just loves to fight

Of all the awesome casting choices, I have the most respect for Michael Chilakis as Ben Grimm. Michael is a serious Fantastic Four fan and wanted to put his best foot forward to properly portray not only the Thing but the Ben within. He vetoed the use of cgi and opted to wear the impressive but heavy and difficult Thing suit. Most actors gripe over facial prosthetics but Michael wanted to maintain Ben's humanity for the audience. What is with Marvel Michael actors and this character commitment stuff? Well, white Michael actors, I suppose. The black one has his picture in the dictionary next to Failure.

While Ben is a former NASA employee and experienced pilot, he's not as defined by his work as Reed. Ben sees and conducts himself as just a regular guy from Brooklyn. He's plain-spoken and highly masculine but also a real romantic with high respect for women. The references to his love for his fiance Debbie highlight this but also work to make Ben the tragic figure he becomes later.

The Brooklyn native is Reed's most loyal friend, through bankruptcy and all. He even resides in the Baxter Building with him. The actors make their history as childhood friendship/brotherhood very believable. Ben was the popular jock to Reed's introverted nerd. Even as adults, Ben instinctively shields Reed from any threat of bullying. He takes that responsibility so seriously, Victor Von Doom wisely refrains from antagonizing Reed in the outspoken man's presence. Promptly after recuperating from the space mission, Ben has no animosity towards Reed. He even prioritizes getting the uncertain scientist back together with Sue.

There's no doubt that the Four had a history pre-Fantastic. Their reactions to seeing each other after a few years easily come off as the aftermath of a divorce between Reed and Sue instead of a breakup. Though he's Team Reed, Ben still adores Sue. He is gentlest towards her and treats her like a younger sister. He always uses his nickname for her, Suzie. His rapport with the younger Storm sibling is a slightly different story.

As soon as they're working together again, Johnny steps back into his calling as Ben's personal troll. The seasoned pilot was his CO at NASA and Ben takes glee in being the head pilot for their mission. While often irritated by the kid, their interaction implies Ben acted as a paternal figure to the fatherless Johnny. The mischievous young man can't miss a minute to pull a prank on him. Johnny makes the occasional crack at Reed but gets no reaction from the scientist. From Ben, Johnny receives instant fury, making it interpretable that he craves Ben's attention. Their closer relationship in the sequel reinforces this, where Ben promises to always be there for him.

While Reed handles the research and presentation, Ben works better in the field. Because of this, he's most exposed to the cosmic rays. After he's transformed, Ben tries to explain the situation to Debbie. She's too horrified by him and even after seeing him act heroically, she returns his engagement ring. Needless to say, his rock hard body doesn't prevent him from shattering. The breakup is not the end of Ben's troubles as he finds performing the most basic of tasks almost impossible. He grows depressed, nostalgically yearning for his life before the space mission.

While at a bar in his old neighborhood, Ben meets his comic book love interest, Alicia Masters. Played by Kerry Washington, the film version depicts her as black. This doesn't come off as forced and fake, though. It actually better showcases her and Ben as the unlikely couple they're known as. Alicia is very beautiful but blind. Ben finds himself hideous, but the artistic Alicia finds his rocky texture captivating and falls for Ben's personality in a big way. The director's cut gave Alicia additional screentime to build her personality and their romance.

The pair are in a beautifully stable committed relationship in the sequel. We also get to see more of Alicia, not only with Ben but interacting with the rest of the Four. Sue is clearly pleased to have another woman around to talk to. Despite his jokes about their relationship, Johnny quietly envies Ben and Alicia.

Thanks to some seeds of doubt planted by Victor, Ben starts to believe that Reed is taking his time with the cure to be around Sue. When Reed returns from a date with her, a very angry Ben accuses him of stalling. Reed insists that he has to make sure the machine is right. Ben is too upset and irrational to listen. They get into a fight and Ben punches the smaller man excessively before paralyzing and discarding him.... Yeah, right, this is flippin Ben Grimm and Reed Richards we're talking about. They wrestle somewhat aggressively for a bit until Reed basically stretch-snuggles Ben until he calms down. Ben declares he's done protecting Reed and leaves.

This heart-wrenching rift lasts a good two or three hours until Reed is abducted by Victor. To keep Ben out of the way, Victor invented the reversal machine. However, upon hearing about the peril of his best nerd, Ben willingly becomes the Thing again to help the team. After they win the day in addition to the public's favor, Reed is still adamant about curing Ben. The rocky man tells him not to worry about it, as he wants to use his new form to save people. Though he remains Reed's personal advocate, Ben is proud and accepting of Mr. Fantastic's leadership.

When the Silver Surfer rises, we see Ben basking in more contentment than in any other adaptation. He meant what he said about wanting to stay super strong and rock solid. While he enjoys a brief return of his flesh via power-swapping with Johnny, he no longer has contempt for his Thing form. The power switching was a really creative means of giving Michael a little face time. Ben has made accommodations with clothing, dishes, and things to improve his quality of life. Alicia is the light of his life and he's so grateful to have her.

In fact, after being the saddest one in the last film, Ben is now the only one in a totally positive mental state. He serves as Reed's best man in every way, always there to support and keep the eccentric scientist's feet on the ground. Ben is eager for Suzie to marry Reed and does whatever he can to help their relationship.

Through this, Ben is attentive to Johnny. The young Torch goes to Ben with concerns that Sue and Reed might be leaving the team. Johnny sounds similar to a kid angry over a potential divorce. Sue only kept the possibility from him because she didn't want to add more worries to Johnny's power issues. Ben actually takes Johnny's side, though he's civil about it. He expresses that Reed and Sue should have discussed it with them from the jump. When Johnny is filled with doubt before a major mission, Ben gives him reassurance. During the last battle, a de-powered Ben aides Johnny in taking down the threat.

Julian McMahon is.....😍😍😍😍

Amidst all of the divisive reactions to Julian McMahon's casting, I have to utter words I never thought I would: I LOVE Victor Von Doom! Oh, my goodness, I don't care what anybody says about the drastic changes from the comics. I could never stand Dr. Doom. He's always been such a generic narcissistic megalomaniac with no entertainment value whatsoever. Some might say turning him into a CEO is generic, but Julian McMahon pulls off an intimidating but confidently seductive portrayal.

Other changes are an improvement as well. Victor and Reed are still college rivals, but Victor's tenacity gave him wealth while Reed's pragmatism reduced him to near poverty. Reed has the uncanny brain to Victor's money, looks, and high self-esteem. It's reasonable to see why Sue would be initially drawn to him. Humiliatingly, Reed goes to Victor to finance his space discovery. Victor gives him a hard time, but believes Reed knows his stuff and accepts. He even joins them in space.

What's great is that in this version, Victor is a legitimate innovator himself. He came up with the custom space suits that would, ironically, serve as the Fantastic Four uniforms. Also, in this one, Victor is not solely to blame for the botched mission and exposure to the rays. After investing countless dollars, Victor did not want to give up the mission so quickly. Still, it was Reed's miscalculations that made scrubbing it necessary. Being a surprisingly good sport, Victor has everyone treated at his private hospital once they return to Earth.

The space debacle crashed Victor's stock monumentally and his investors threaten to withdraw. Victor goes to the Baxter Building to get his relationship with Sue back on track. However, it's clear that her feelings have changed and they break up later. Victor also has it out with Reed over the failed mission. If not for Ben popping up, an enraged Victor would have hit the other man.

Victor's powers- which seem to be metallic skin and lightning bursts- develop slower than the Four's. That side effect along with his skyrocketing frustration and stress impact Victor's mental state severely. When the doctor he sees tells him he has to call the CDC in case Victor spreads his condition, Victor kills him with lightning to prevent it. He goes on to murder his board members.

Dr. Doom persona fully embraced, he starts to work meticulously to divide the Four. He has the easiest time with Johnny, stroking the younger man's ego with promises of the three F's: fortune, fame, and females. From that brief interaction, we can attest that Victor regularly uses money and influence to make Sue's impressionable brother favor him. Getting to a depressed Ben wasn't difficult, either. Victor implied that Reed wanted Sue to stay in his orbit more than he wanted Ben cured.

All of the resulting chaos served as a means of Victor getting close enough to Reed to kidnap him. The rest of the team come to Reed's aide, starting with a very unfriendly Invisible Woman. The Four get the upper hand by freezing Victor in his metal state and immobilizing him.

Victor made his return in the sequel. Initially, the military brought him in due to Victor previously facing off against the Silver Surfer. They wanted him to partner with Reed to build a weapon to stop the alien. To no surprise, Victor really came to take the Surfer's powers for himself.

In any other superhero sequel, a previous villain returning when there's already a new one would make the film overloaded and incoherent. However, Rise of the Silver Surfer maintains good pacing without sacrificing characterization. There's no love triangle rehashing a la Spider-Man, as Sue and Victor verbalize their disdain for each other. The Four grudgingly work with him but not one of them trusts Dr. Doom for a moment.

The Silver Surfer expands greatly on the world of the previous film. The team has to do a lot of globe-trotting over the new cosmic threat. We see more of them as a unified team in different locations. The most chilling moment in the otherwise tame film had to be right after Victor stole the Surfer's powers. He viciously murders the general who brought into the mission. After seeing him for most of the movie, it's so jarring to witness the remains of the general's charred corpse. Yep, there's the dark action you so desperately had to have, folks. Enjoy.

As usual, people are entitled to their own opinions and not everyone will like every movie. Here's a few franchises I find overrated.

Christian Bale Batman: I can understand people enjoying the origin movie but the Dark Knight is regarded as some sort of masterpiece. Heath Ledger's Joker completely eclipses Batman in his own movie. Joker is just some agent of chaos, causing random violent acts for the giggles as he philosophies about it. With no weakness or humanity at all to speak of, he feels like a gary stu villain more than anything. Did Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent's friendship really need to be non-existent so that they could emotionally duel over some woman? It's shocking when Rachel dies but who cares? All she did was lead both guys on. And I'm still not over the skank slapping a grieving Bruce twice in the first movie. In the third one, apparently Bruce stopped being Batman for eight years over this chick..... WHAT?! The guy who didn't stop after his son and sidekick was brutally murdered spiraled out over some chick he never actually dated! Little 19-year-old Peter Parker watches his actual loving girlfriend die but only grieves for three months while this rich playboy fool.... Come on! Then he retires with some other chick! And people have the nerve to criticize Ben Affleck for excessive force?! The name is Bat-MAN, people, not Bat-simp.

Sam Raimi Spider-Man: Once upon a time I enjoyed this series but even then, I knew something was wrong. People look back on this as the lighthearted Spider-series but UMMMM, were we watching the same films? The first one is okay enough. But Peter spends all of the second one being cruelly kicked in every direction. It was too depressing for words. Then, Mary Jane ditching her astronaut fiance on the day of their wedding to run to Peter is meant to be a happy ending- no! In the infamous third, Mary Jane and Peter are stunted and immature. Three films and not an ounce of growth between them. Also, Goblin and Doc Ock- both with a personal connection to Peter- both just had to die but the guy who killed Uncle Ben gets to go free?!!!!!!! That still gets my blood pressure up. But oh look, cool fight scenes and totally rad special effects! Who cares if the characters are sad, depressing, frustrating vessels of suck?

Are the Fantastic Four films perfect? By superhero standards, yes honestly. Could they have done some things better? Of course. But I hate how they don't get credit for everything they got right.

We're talking about the First Family of Superheroes. Unlike the X-Men movies, the individuals and the family as a whole took priority over the action elements. When they did battle, it was a cathartic thrill to watch. In this age of seeing the hero journey fast-forwarded while said hero is only there to give the powers center stage, how can anyone knock these films?!

Not only did they stay mostly faithful to the comic book origins of the Four, they improved in many areas. The X-Men took twenty years to feature space travel and the Four did it all the way back in 2005. They didn't come up with ludicrous alternate methods of them receiving their problems nor were any characters assassinated. Other movies are terrible at balancing an ensemble. These films showcase the team's individual personalities, struggles, interpersonal relationships, and team dynamic- all in the first film!

Rise of the Silver Surfer was a RARE sequel that raised the stakes and explored new concepts without the heroes getting overshadowed by spectacle. There was no repetition and regressing of the Four at a. There was no needless romantic drama to slow things down and make the audience hate the main couple. Everybody stayed true to themselves yet their development was clear and so well done. Despite Jessica Alba having the most clout and presence on the posters, no one is benched for actor favoritism- try not to die from shock, Logan and Raven. They didn't permanently kill off main characters for edginess and emotional manipulation. They had not only a strong female character but the *best* one ever featured in a Marvel movie. Through whatever conflict, the team felt whole and devoted to each other. Unseen in today's cinematic world, the ending is an earnestly uplifting one.

Again, I'm not an MCU fan but I've heard and seen plenty of you go on about how the Avengers never felt like a real team. Many of you complain about their relationships being underdeveloped. So many claim that the team showed no sincere camaraderie before they split apart. Don't get me started on varying endgame reactions.

We're all entitled to our opinions. Yours just happen to be dead wrong on this one and you should feel complete shame for that reason. Fear not. The Fantastic Four will accept your apologies. They're not into the whole holding onto resentment for decades thing.

My, this is certainly long but it doesn't have anything particularly controversial. Hmmm- oh, I almost forgot.

So, that fan-4-stick fail? Do you know what the most ludicrous part of that pandering puke pile was? That allegedly gritty, realism grounded blunder wants people to believe that a black family- the group that makes up 15% of the US population yet accounts for the majority of absentee fathers- would not only be pro-adoption but would willingly take in and pay out of their own pocket for a little white child.... 😂😂😂😂😂

Look, teleportation, super powers via cosmic anomalies, and some idiot thinking there's a single trickle of talent to be found among that cast of frauds are infinitely more probable than that scenario 😏

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green-light-debt-relief · 10 months

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Will Discover Card Sue For Non-Payment?

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#youtube #DiscoverCardDebt CreditCardLawsuit DebtSettlement LegalAdvice FinancialGuidance

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astrobiche · 4 years

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Mars 🌡️

🔥courage, determination.

🔥 putting up a fight to survive (not necessarily in an agressive fashion).

🔥defending ourselves (sign,house and aspects show the tools we have and how willing we are to use them).

🔥 asserting ourselves (mars square venus : we may not like to assert ourselves bc we think it wont let us be popular).

🔥The Mars principle not only helps us fight off unwanted pressure from the outside world but can also enable us to cope with internal psychological conflict.

🔥Aspects to our Mars will indicate what we feel about the whole area of competition in all its various guises.

🔥 The Martian impulse is a selfish one, in as much as it is concerned with going out and getting what we want. Aspects to our Mars may indicate what we learnt about being selfish when we were young.

🔥 anger; our Mars aspects will describe, along with the Mars sign, the way in which we express our anger and passion about things and the ease or difficulty we may have in doing so.

🔥Accidents will usually have been caused, at least in part, by the action of Mars. Accidents are usually the result of misplaced energy and are also perhaps, often the result of unexpressed anger – frustration that can find no outlet.

🔥Mars is also traditionally associated with fever and, indeed, has dominion over ‘heat’ generally, as well as all areas about which we may get ‘hot’. ‘Hot under the collar’ as in anger; ‘hot’ as in sexually aroused.

🔥 Pure Mars energy is very vulnerable, for it impels us to go out and get something – impels us to dare. And when we have dared, our cards are on the table; what we want is clearly expressed and can be denied to us.

🔥 Mars is also a significator, along with Venus, of our sexuality, but whereas Venus relates to the harmony of sexual union and to sensual pleasure, Mars relates to that part of sexual life which involves forcing the issue: the chase, conquest, penetration.

🔥 Mars will also quicken the expression of whatever planet it touches in the birth chart. That planet will be speeded up and the individual will be impatient to express it. There will also be a strong impulse to express whatever it signifies. In this area, if in no others, the person may come on strong. The Mars principle converts very easily into action and the individual will often seek to act physically on whatever the contacting planet represents.

Credits : "Aspects in astrology" by Sue Tompkins.

#astro notes #astrology observations #astro observations #astrology #mars #mine

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shinpredicts · 3 years

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Marriage - long post part 2

Here's post one about marriages.

Marriages are tough. Think twice before you get married. I know this from seeing many marriages go to divorce, doing many readings, etc.

Marriage doesn't become only a 2 people thing

Marriage often means that you are also having connections with your spouse's family. You will most likely have closer relations with them. Issues from your spouse's family's side can become yours too somehow. Their mother or father may have ideas about some things. Your spouse may be too filial and listen to their parents a lot, which leads you to get frustrated. You might need to live with their parents or your parents might live with you and your spouse. You might be obliged in some sense to look after your spouse's parents and your spouse might be obliged to look after your parents.

Marriage means legal responsibilities

Once you are married, in many countries, you will have legal responsibilities to your spouse. They can be entitled to half of your assets upon separation or divorce. They can be entitled to spousal support upon separation or divorce. You can also share in their debt, depending on where you live and their laws.

You can have more rights as well in a marriage upon separation, depending on the laws of where you live.

It can take a long time for you to divorce depending on where you live. From my knowledge, some European countries make it so that it is quite hard to get divorced once you are married like you have to separate at least 2 - 5 years or something with other steps. In some places you'll need the consent of your other spouse in order to get divorced and if not then you go to court to show that they've done some wrong like cheated on you.

In many countries, cheating on someone is no longer a legal and valid reason to grant a divorce. Usually separating for a certain period is enough.

Marriage means financial responsibilities

You're probably going to have at least 1 joint account with your spouse. If it's like some credit card account or a line of credit account or a mortgage, that means you are legally liable for half of the debt of that joint account. Your spouse could overspend and the bank would still come after you. Of course the law probably has some ways of ensuring that you can sue your spouse they recklessly spend stuff but that's a hassle.

You will probably be sharing some the expenses together like rent/mortgage, utilities, groceries, etc. How do you decide what's fair between you and your spouse? Well that's up to you to decide. These are conversations that a lot of people don't really have until they marry because a lot of people don't live together pre-marriage. Due to lack of communication on this end, there will probably be fights among newly married couples as to who should pay for this and that.

What about that house or property or car you owned before marriage? Does that now mean your spouse can split the growth in the value of whatever you owned pre-marriage when you two separate? Isn't that unfair because you poured all your life money into that condo and your spouse didn't contribute anything to it and they get to split it with you??? Well, you'll have to see where the law lands for this. It depends on the country that you're in. Some countries say you can exclude property that you had pre-marriage completely. Some countries say no, you get some deduction but if it still exists at date of separation, then your spouse gets to share in the growth of the value of the property.

Marriage can lead to other challenges

Because you are no longer by yourself and you are with a spouse, your career will need to involve your spouse's input/discussion etc. You may have a great job opportunity or promotion but that's in another country or another state. You don't want to be separated from your spouse or maybe your spouse's career is doing great here and isn't the type that can easily move elsewhere. Will you give up this career advancement or will you make your spouse move with you so that you can pursue your dream while your spouse needs to give up theirs in a way?

Most marriages involve the spouses living in one home. A lot of people don't live together before marrying and that also runs into some problems upon marriage. Dating involved not living together.

Living together means you have different lifestyle habits. One spouse might be an earlier riser, while the other needs to sleep till like 10 am. One spouse might like sleeping earlier while the other sleeps at like 1 am. One spouse might have a certain way to squeeze their toothpaste that drives the other nuts. Everyone has different habits and quirks. The married couple needs to somehow find a way to work out those habits.

What about household chores? Who will be doing them? Do you like how someone washes those dishes? So many questions that you have to answer during marriage.

Marriage gets even more complicated when you have children

When you have children during marriage, that means there can be more complications in the marriage. Having children means more responsibilities on the parties. You now have other people that you have to look after and you have to somehow divide the responsibilities so that you both feel that it's fair.

People have different parenting styles too, which are often influenced by how their parents were to them. Some might believe in tough love. Others are more relaxed with the children and don't like lecturing them.

Spouses might have different expectations for the children too. Some might agree this school is better for them. Others might feel like they should learn the piano, not French or Korean. The other might think it's important they do hockey or karate or baseball. Some might want the kids to have As and the others think as long as they pass it's fine.

Some spouses don't want to be parents. They're not ready yet to be parents or they really just don't want kids. You and your spouse need to have the "kids" chat sometime probably before getting married. If you want kids and they don't, then that's going to be a problem. If you force them to have kids and then expect them to somehow magically adore kids after the kids are there, then that's just wishful thinking. It's very hard to change someone. Think twice before you have kids because once you pop them out, there is no refund. The kids are living, human beings with emotions and thoughts. They are not like clothes that can be refunded or exchanged.

Here's part 3!

#marriage #long post #food for thought #thoughts #marriage advice #relationships #relationship advice #dating #marriages #married life #love #advice #not a prediction #personal thoughts #relationship #couple #couples #spouses

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shotgun--rider · 4 years

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Stay With Me

A @destielsecretsanta2020 gift for @princess-aleera

Summary: For the first time in his life, Dean has the opportunity for a real Christmas with his family. And it would be perfect, if Cas hadn’t decided to bail on him again. OR: Dean and Cas finally use their words.

Warnings: Dean’s cripplingly low self-esteem, Cas undervaluing himself...you know, the usual.

A/N: Did I anxiously rewrite half of this on Christmas Eve? Yes. Do I have any confidence whatsoever left in the quality of this fic? No! Nevertheless, merry Christmas to my lovely giftee and I hope you enjoy this dumb fluffy little thing!

By now, Dean should have really known better than to have any kind of expectations for Christmas. He hasn’t had anything less than a shitty holiday since Mary was alive, and then he’d been too young to remember it. The weeks leading up to the 25th in his childhood were marked out by shoplifting cheap gifts for Sam (usually practical stuff, like flannels and socks) and trying to convince John that they didn’t need to work a job on Christmas day. He’d managed to walk out with a paper-wrapped ham once, but cooking it in a motel room didn’t exactly turn out and Sammy got mac and cheese for Christmas dinner. Again.

Even when they got older, it still wasn’t much of a big deal. They’d toss badly-wrapped gifts at each other in the Impala, still the same kind of practical things as always. Once, Sam bought them dumb Santa hats from the Gas-n-Sip and they drove down the interstate wearing them for a couple dozen miles before Dean got fed up and chucked it into the backseat.

So, yeah, Christmas sucked ass. And usually Dean didn’t give it much thought, because it wasn’t like he had a lot of fond memories to miss. But this year...sue him, this year he’d thought it might be different. Jack had cheerfully requested a Christmas tree with such enthusiasm that they had caved and set one up in the library, and after Sam had spearheaded the decorating with Eileen, Dean had to admit it looked surprisingly festive. And once there was a tree, it seemed only right to put some effort into the gifts, so he painstakingly picked something out for each member of his little family. (It was paid for with a fake credit card, but it was the thought that counted.) And with several more YouTube tutorials than he would ever admit to a living soul, they were neatly wrapped under the tree, too.

It was shaping up to be something like a real Christmas, and he was starting to look forward to making new stupid traditions and watching the look on Sam’s face when he opened his gifts.

But Dean Winchester doesn’t get nice things. So even though there’s an ache in his gut he’s trying to ignore as he bends to fish Cas’s gift back out from under the tree, he’s not really surprised. Hurt, maybe. Pissed, definitely. But surprised? No, it only makes sense that the angel bailed on them on Christmas Eve, popping off to who the hell knows where and ignoring his phone the way he too often does.

This is what always happens, Dean reasons, shoulders a little hunched as he starts back toward his room. He’s an angel, of course he has better places to be than spending Christmas with a pair of boring human hunters. What does Dean have to offer him anyway? The gift in his hands is shitty, he’s demanded way more from the guy than he can ever repay, and he already knows he’s not good enough for Cas. So he’ll just quietly put the gift back and play the whole thing off if anybody asks.

He’s almost made it to his bedroom when he passes Eileen, the woman giving him a friendly smile that fades into a curious look when her gaze falls on the slightly unevenly wrapped box in his hands. She signs something that he doesn’t quite get, and Dean kicks himself again for being such a fuckup that he can’t even learn ASL right.

Eileen doesn’t seem to mind, asking her question again verbally and signing along to help him. “Does Cas get his present privately?” She punctuates with a little eyebrow wiggle, always trying to tease him about the angel.

Dean huffs, shaking his head. He manages the sign for no before speaking the rest. “Nah, Cas, uh, Cas isn’t coming to Christmas.” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly.

Eileen’s face scrunches. “What do you mean, he’s not coming? He was so excited--what did you do?”

“Nothing!” Dean says defensively, a private panic starting in his head at the thought that maybe he did, maybe he hurt Cas and he didn’t realize it. Or maybe Cas knew and left to save him the embarrassment. “He just said he had somewhere to be,”

“Did you talk to him about it?”

“He won’t answer his phone,” Dean says a little petulantly. He’s tried calling him about a dozen times at this point, and Cas has to have turned the damn thing off, because he doesn’t even get to the stupid endearing voicemail recording.

His brother’s girlfriend just gives him a look and folds her hands into a sign he knows immediately. Pray. “He’ll listen,”

Not for the first time, Dean wonders if Eileen is massively misinterpreting his relationship with Cas. Or at least, how much of a shit Cas gives about him. “Look, Eileen, I don’t think--”

Dean. She makes his name sign sharp and gently scolding. “Just talk to him,”

“Yeah, maybe,” he mumbles. He doesn’t bother to voice the but what if he still doesn’t answer.

He leaves Eileen with an attempt at looking nonchalant and makes it the rest of the way to his bedroom, flopping down on the memory foam mattress and staring at the ceiling. He’s positioned to one side as always, avoiding sprawling in the middle even though he would be well within his rights. Sam would probably spout some psychology bullshit about subconsciously saving the other half for someone. Yeah, right.

So maybe he’s a little more bitter about this than he thought. Squeezing his eyes shut, he huffs out a breath, half prepared to just pray to Cas so he can shout at him childishly. “Hey, uh, Cas? Listen, buddy--”

There’s an almost immediate flutter of wings and by the time Dean’s scrambling to sit halfway up, Cas is standing by the foot of the bed uncertainly, more rumpled than usual and his expression pained. “Hello, Dean,”

“Cas, what the hell?” Dean bursts out before he’s even fully decided to say the words.

“Dean,” Cas fixes his blue eyes on Dean’s face. “I think I may have made a mistake,”

“Really? What gave you that idea?” Dean shoots back sarcastically. “I mean, what the fuck, Cas? I get that you have obligations and better places to be, but goddammit, you have to stop leaving m--leaving without an explanation!” Vaguely, Dean realizes that he’s not totally in control of this conversation anymore, but he’s been sitting on this for a long time. “It’s Christmas, man,” he goes on weakly. “I know this is kinda your first one but you’re supposed to be with your family,”

“I know,” Cas rushes to agree, his face still flickering with distress. “But I could feel your longing after I left, and your prayer--” the angel slumps slightly in his too-big trench coat. “Dean, I don’t understand.”

“First of all, I was not longing. And b, what don’t you get? It’s not rocket science, Cas,”

“I left so that you could be with your family,” Cas explains, as if he’s not uttering the most insane thing Dean’s ever heard in his life. “But now you’re upset--I’m sorry, Dean,”

“Cas, what the fuck?” Dean says again, momentarily lost for words as he blinks at his best friend. “How do you not---you are family,”

Cas’s blue eyes blink a few times hopefully, before he seems to resign himself. “I try to be of use to you and Sam--”

“That has nothing to do with--” Dean stops. Oh, Cas. “Do...do you think we keep you around because you’re an angel?”

Cas tilts his head. “Well...yes,”

“Cas,” Dean says weakly. God, he wants to punch himself in the face for letting him think this way. “Look, Sam’s plenty useful, doing the research by myself would seriously suck ass. But he’s my brother either way. Family’s not--it’s not about being fucking useful.”

“Am I your brother, Dean?”

“Yes!” Dean bursts out, too loudly, kicking himself as his mouth continues without permission. “Yeah, I mean--yeah,” he trails off, not remotely willing to try explaining why that might not be the correct label after all. “You’re family, Cas.”

It’s probably just wishful thinking, but Cas looks almost disappointed. “Oh. I see. Thank you, Dean. I will--” a short pause, “I will stay for Christmas,”

“Great,” is all that comes out of Dean’s mouth in reply. “Yeah, that’s great.”

He wants to tell him that wasn’t actually what I wanted to say and I kinda think I might be in love with you and I want you to stay with me but the shadow of John Winchester and the fear of rejection keeps the words tightly coiled inside. Besides, they don’t do this. They don’t say things out loud, they never have. And--most of the time--that works.

So Dean swallows and smiles tightly and shoves away his newly-realized I love yous, turning around instead to find where he’d tossed Cas’s gift on the floor beside the bed. “You, uh, wanna put this back out--”

“Dean,”

Something in Cas’s voice has him straightening up immediately, and when he turns around the angel is looking at him with an expression he’s never seen before and--are those tears?

“Dean, I can hear you,”

Dean’s stomach sinks like a fear-filled lead balloon, but he asks anyway. “You can hear me what?”

“Sometimes,” Cas says quietly, “if you think something with enough intention, it can be heard like a prayer,”

Dean clears his throat roughly, bracing himself for Cas to explain gently how he has no interest in a man like Dean. “So, uh,” he trails off. Cas is still just looking at him with brimming eyes, which narrow suddenly.

“You are a good and righteous and wonderful man, Dean Winchester,” he says firmly, standing there so close and yet just out of Dean’s reach.

Dean gives a sheepish look. “Heard that bit too, huh?”

“Dean,” Cas says again, gently, waiting. Waiting so that Dean can go first.

And suddenly, with the knowledge that Cas already knows what he’s been trying to say, it’s infinitely less terrifying. “I--I love you, Cas,” he says hoarsely, surprising himself with how, after all this time, the words aren’t really that hard. “And you’re my best friend, and you’re family, and I don’t give a shit if you’ve got angel powers or whatever, and--” I need you please stay with me still gets stuck in his throat, the most dangerous out of all of those words, but Cas must hear it anyway, or be able to tell what he’s getting at, because he’s suddenly wrapped up in the angel’s embrace, the slightly shorter man warm and solid and thoroughly clinging to him.

He’d make a crack about chick flick moments, but he really doesn’t have a leg to stand on because he’s clinging to Cas just as tightly, gripping fistfuls of his trench coat and trying to reassure himself that this is real. This is real.

“I rebelled for you,” Cas is saying quietly into his shoulder. “I loved you from the minute I saw your soul for the first time.” And then he moves to meet Dean’s eyes, his own still looking a little watery, and finishes, “And I need you too,”

And Dean’s never kissed a man before, but after a confession like that is as good a time as any to bury the last of his father’s old words about fairies and manliness.

It’s clumsy at first, and not really fireworks and magic like chick flick romances like to claim, but it sends warm relief through his entire body. Dean shivers just slightly, pulling Cas closer as their mouths slowly explore, cautiously at first and then bolder, heat lacing the kiss. But more than anything, it feels like something he has been missing for so long that he stopped noticing has finally fitted back into place, and it’s overwhelming. But, Dean thinks as he helps toss Cas’s coat on the floor, so, so worth it.

***

The first real Winchester family Christmas is nothing short of chaotic, from the first moment that Dean and Cas finally emerge from their definitely-not-cuddling nest of blankets. Sam takes one look at them in the hallway and grins immediately, shaking his head with a loud “finally!” that has Dean scowling and demanding to know how long Sam has been paying attention to them. (The answer is far longer than Dean wants to think about)

They unwrap gifts on the floor of the library, indulging Jack’s inquisitive questions and periodically balling up wrapping to throw at each other. Sam’s hair is slowly collecting bows off the wrapping as Dean gets bored, though he eventually gives up when he has to choose between reaching Sam’s head and continuing to inch closer into Cas’s side.

For a moment, he wonders about the last Christmas when Mary was alive, and what she would say if she could see her sons and their hodgepodge celebration now. He doesn’t really mind, though, that he can’t remember it. This is all the holiday family memories he didn’t know he needed.

#destiel secret santa #destiel #destiel fic #deancas #spn fic

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ambiguousdisorderken · 4 years

Text

christmas time.

what about dean and cas going christmas shopping together huh? what about cas buying stupidly cute plushies and board games for jack and dean saying how the kid's neither a toddler nor an actual kid blah blah so obviously dean ends up swiping his credit card to pay for an overpriced set of legos. it's star wars, okay? which does nothing to erase the smug look from cas’ face.

he also ends up paying for all the plushies and board games and tees (”seriously cas, spongebob?” to which cas flatly states “jack likes yellow”) and (fugly) sweaters and a pack of ridiculous reindeer antlers headbands. for fuck’s sake. is this the type of person dean is now?

then again, he could be doing worse.

on the way to the car, dean asks what cas wants for christmas, but cas only smiles and says there's no need for dean to trouble himself with that. dammit cas.

"so what, opening boxes and tearing wrappers off, that’s just for jack?" he half jokes, hoping for cas to hint at whatever he may need or want for himself, anything. if cas can name it, dean can get it.

"well, he is our kid, dean. i believe it's common for parents to just sit and watch throughout the unwrapping process." cas states matter-of-factly. "isn't it?" he adds, maybe to get confirmation.

definitely to get some sort of response. not whatever dean is offering, which is... nada.

cas just stands there, nose reddened by the cold and hair wind-swept.

as if he hasn't flipped dean's world topsy-turvy with that one array of words. cas is, for all it matters, jack's father, no questions. and, objectively, dean knows jack is family as much as sam and cas are.

hell, dean feeds jack properly (he’s hitting the produce section more often these days) and watches crappy shows and cartoons because jack wants to (scooby-doo will outlive us all, bitch) and he even taught jack how to drive, the memory of which still shocks him to this day, trusting baby into the kid’s uneducated hands. as for jack, he’s called him ‘dad’ on occasions, and dean treasures deeply each and every one of them, but it’s not something he can brag about with the cashier at the local liquor store that also sells nougats or the one at the grocery shop that carries a specific brand of juice or the one at the 24/7 pharmacy on main where he went get cough drops when jack came down with a mundane yet nasty case of flu, okay. so maybe, if only a little, he really is going all paternal on the kid. sue him. but this... put in simpler words, viewed from cas' perspective? if cas is jack's father and jack calls dean his dad and –okay sammy is also raising the kid, but his family has never been nothing if a little dysfunctional, and the dude’s been spending an awful lot of time at eileen’s, whatever– then that means–

"dean, are you okay?" cas asks tilting his head a little, and it tugs something in dean’s heart. the gesture reminds him of jack. their goddamn child. the same one they're raising. together. and who’s the reason that, three days before christmas, he and cas went to multiple jam-packed stores at the frigging mall, that’s more than an hour and a half drive away from the bunker to buy a bunch of christmas presents.

fuck.

overcome the brain-freeze, dean realizes they're a family. and the word, his long-term security blanket for all emotional outpours, takes a whole ass new meaning.

a family.

they even have the damn cutesy dog.

dean stares at cas and eyes the excessive amount of shopping bags he's holding. he smiles, and cas mirrors it.

if dean was corny, he'd think of how the pale sky threatening to snow makes cas look angelic again, now that his grace has been lost to the empty. but dean's not a pathetic sap, so he settles for the thought of cas looking like a very human blessing, as well as the only gift dean will ever want, not only for christmas but for all the days he's got left to live on this earth. and in heaven. maybe for forever.

"'m okay" he finally replies with a smile stretching the words. "more than okay, cas."

cas nods, quiet contentment wrinkling the corners of his eyes.

definitely for forever.

on the way to the bunker– no, on the way home, they make a few stops to gather supplies for the unforgettable dinner that dean has in mind (pie trifecta is what's got him the most excited. it's pie!) and some shit to decorate too.

cas goes on merrily talking about their holiday plans and jack's childish enthusiasm for everything christmas related, which, in turn, makes cas look also childlike, and damn if that isn't making dean feel giddy too.

dean feels drunk, like he drank one too many cups of that frozen kiddie champagne they saw at the store with elsa smirking at the front of the label. he laughs at nothing, at everything. cas is right there with him, echoing the sheer self-indulgent joy that suffocates them.

he veers for one last stop. this is a sort of first for all of them, this type of christmas. it has a different, warmer, tone to it. safe and mushy and loving and all that. so what if he wants to get it right?

on the radio, mariah the-traitor carey, proclaims, in that 90s pop glitzy voice of hers, all i want for christmas is you.

as they pull in at the tree farm snowflakes begin to fall gently on the windshield. with the engine dead, the temperature has dropped low enough to have their breaths turn into misty clouds, yet dean is burning under the collar of his jacket.

fuck.

he's a grown-up man in his forties and he’s freaking out. except, he isn’t.

except he's in some sort of magic trance because right in this very second he feels – no, he is a teenage boy, sweating. breathing all but forgotten and reduced to a nervous wreck, a train wreck. scared shitless.

he's a boy in his car about to kiss his crush.

and just like a reckless teenager, he does. he kisses cas, not before getting a silent confirmation from cas' tentative yet hopeful gaze and chapped pink lips.

he doesn’t know how long they kiss, it could’ve gone on endlessly, with how smooth their lips glide against each other despite the stubble and with how cas comes up for air to hold dean’s face in both his hands, with how he speaks those same words he confessed not so long ago, this time with nothing but his devoted touch and his all too caring eyes. it could’ve gone on endlessly, but it slowed down once the windshield got covered in white and the sky turned from light blue to a silvery hue.

cas knows, he does. he’s always known. but dean’s done with truths left unspoken, and if he’s happy with what he’s got right now, then saying it will give him the golden ticket right into fucking paradise on earth. it should be difficult, but it’s not. it comes to him as easy as a lovefool’s sigh.

“i love you too, cas. i love you so much.”

this year they won’t only have a christmas, they will actually celebrate it. and no, dean won’t need the excuse of standing beneath the mistletoe to kiss cas – former angel of the lord, now father of his child– but he’ll be damned if he won’t do it anyway just to wring out a squeal of surprise from their kid. jack will be over the moon, dean’s sure of it.

he couldn’t be doing any better.

#self indulgence is my weakness #i live for deancas raising jack im WEAK! and it's christmas almost and and ..#whats my other excuse i had a third one i swear but i forgot :((#someday i'll write a proper fic with a proper introduction but in the meantime they all just start like long headcanons :(#destiel #deancas #fanfic #my fic #spn #supernatural

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arcticdementor · 3 years

Link

Stefanie Gray explains why, as a teenager, she was so anxious to leave her home state of Florida to go to college.

“I went to garbage schools and I’m from a garbage low-income suburb where everyone sucks Oxycontin all day,” she says. “I needed to get out.”

She got into Hunter College in New York, but both her parents had died and she had nowhere near enough to pay tuition, so she borrowed. “I just had nothing and was poor as hell, so I took out loans,” she says.

This being 2006, just a year after the infamous Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 was passed, she believed news stories about student loans being non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. She believed they would be with her for life, or until they were paid off.

“My understanding was, it’s better to purchase 55 big-screen TVs on a credit card, and discharge that in a court of law, then be a student who’s getting an education,” she says.

Still, she asked for financial aid: “I was like, ‘My parents are dead, I'm a literal fucking orphan, I have no siblings. I'm just taking out this money to put my ass through school.”

Instead of a denial, she got plenty of credit, including a slice of what were called “direct-to-consumer” loans, that came with a whopping 14% interest rate. One of her loans also came from a company called MyRichUncle that, before going bankrupt in 2009, would briefly become famous for running an ad disclosing a kickback system that existed between student lenders and college financial aid offices.

Gray was not the cliché undergrad, majoring in intersectional basket-weaving with no plan to repay her loans. She took geographical mapping, with the specific aim of getting a paying job quickly. But she graduated in the middle of the post-2008 crash, when “53% of people 18 to 29 were unemployed or underemployed.”

“I couldn't even get a job scrubbing toilets at a local motel,” she recalls. “They told me straight up that I was over-educated. I was like, “Literally, I'll do your housekeeping. I don't give a shit, just let me make money and not get evicted and end up homeless.”

The lender Sallie Mae at the time had an amusingly loathsome policy of charging a repeating $150 fee every three months just for the privilege of applying for forbearance. Gray was so pissed about having to pay $50 a month just to say she was broke that she started a change.org petition that ended up gathering 170,000 signatures.

She personally delivered those to the Washington offices of Sallie Mae and ended up extracting a compromise out of the firm: they’d still charge the fee, but she could at least apply it to her balance, as opposed to just sticking it in the company’s pocket as an extra. This meager “partial” victory over a student lender was so rare, the New York Times wrote about it.

“I definitely poked the bear,” she says.

Gray still owed a ton of student debt — it had ballooned from $36,000 to $77,000, in fact — and collectors were calling her nonstop, perhaps with a little edge thanks to who she was. “They were telling me I should hit up people I know for money, which was one thing,” she recalls. “But when they started talking about giving blood, or selling plasma… I don’t know.”

Sallie Mae ultimately sued Gray four times. In doing so, they made a strange error. It might have slipped by, but for luck. “By the grace of God,” Gray said, she met a man in the lobby of a courthouse, a future state Senator named Kevin Thomas, who took a look at her case. “Huh, I’ve got some ideas,” he said, eventually pointing to a problem right at the top of her lawsuit.

Sallie Mae did not represent itself in court as Sallie Mae. The listed plaintiff was “SLM Private Credit Student Loan Trust VL Funding LLC.” As was increasingly the case with mortgages and other forms of debt, student loans by then were typically gathered, pooled, and chopped into slices called tranches, to be marketed to investors. Gray, essentially, was being sued by a tranche of student loan debt, a little like being sued by the coach section of an airline flight.

When Thomas advised her to look up the plaintiff’s name, she discovered it wasn’t registered to do business in the State of New York, which prompted the judge to rule that the entity lacked standing to sue. He fined Sallie Mae $10,000 for “nonsense” and gave Gray another rare victory over a student lender, which she ended up writing about herself this time, in The Guardian.

Corporate creditors often play probabilities and mass-sue even if they don’t always have great cases, knowing a huge percentage of borrowers either won’t show up in court (as with credit card holders) or will agree to anything to avoid judgments, the usual scenario with student borrowers.

“What usually happens in pretty much 99% of these cases is you beg and plead and say, ‘Please don't put a judgment against me, I'll do anything… because a judgment against you means you're not going to be able to buy a home, you’re not going to be able to do basically anything involving credit for the next 20 years.”

…

The passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was a classic demonstration of how America works, or doesn’t, depending on your point of view. While we focus on differences between Republicans and Democrats, it’s their uncanny habit of having just a sliver of enough agreement to pass crucial industry-friendly bills that really defines the parties.

Whether it’s NAFTA, the Iraq War authorization, or the Obama stimulus, there are always just enough aisle-crossers to get the job done, and the tally usually tracks with industry money with humorous accuracy. In this law signed by George Bush, sponsored by Republican Chuck Grassley, and greased by millions in donations from entities like Sallie Mae, the crucial votes were cast by a handful of aisle-crossing Democrats, including especially the Delawareans Joe Biden and Tom Carper. Hillary Clinton, who took $140,000 from bank interests in her Senate run, had voted for an earlier version.

Party intrigue is only part of the magic of American politics. Public relations matter, too, and the Bankruptcy Bill turned out to be the poster child for another cherished national phenomenon: the double-lie.

…

Years later, pundits still debate whether there really ever was an epidemic of debt-fleeing deadbeats, or whether legislators in 2005 who just a few years later gave “fresh starts” to bankrupt Wall Street banks ever cared about “moral hazard,” or if it’s fair to cut off a single Mom in a trailer when Donald Trump got to brag about “brilliantly” filing four commercial bankruptcies, and so on.

In other words, we argue the why of the bill, but not the what. What did that law say, exactly? For years, it was believed that it absolutely closed the door on bankruptcy for whole classes of borrowers, and one in particular: students. Nearly fifteen years after the bill’s passage, journalists were still using language like, “The bill made it completely impossible to discharge student loan debt.”

…

The phrase “Just asking questions” today often carries a negative connotation. It’s the language of the conspiracy theorist, we’re told. But sometimes in America we’re just not told the whole story, and when the press can’t or won’t do it, it’s left to individual people to fill in the blanks. In a few rare cases, they find out something they weren’t supposed to, and in rarer cases still, they learn enough to beat the system. This is one of those stories.

…

Smith’s explanation of the history of the student loan exemption and where it all went wrong is biting and psychologically astute. In his telling, the courts’ historically sneering attitude toward student borrowers has its roots in an ages-old generational debate.

“This started out as an an argument between the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers,” Smith notes. “A lot of the law was created by people railing against draft-dodging deadbeat hippies.”

He points to a 1980 ruling by a judge named Richard Merrick, who in denying relief to a former student, wrote the following:

The arrogance of former students who had received so much from society, frequently including draft deferment, and who had given back so little in return, accompanied by their vehemence in asserting their constitutional and statutory rights, frequently were not well received by legislators and jurists, senior to them, who had lived through the Depression, had worked their ways through college and graduate school, had served in World War II, and had been paying the taxes which made possible the student loans.

Smith laughs about this I didn’t climb the hills at Normandy with a knife in my teeth just to eat the debt on your useless-ass liberal arts degree perspective, noting that “when those guys who did all that complaining went to school, only rich prep school kids went to college, and by the way, tuition was like ten bucks.” Still, he wasn’t completely unsympathetic to the conservative position.

…

This concern about “deadbeats” gaming the system — kids taking out fat loans to go to school and bailing on them before the end of the graduation party — led that 1985 court to take a hardcore position against students who made “virtually no attempt to repay.” They established a three-pronged standard that came to be known as the “Brunner test” for determining if a student faced enough “undue hardship” to be granted relief from student debt.

Among other things, the court ruled that a newly graduated student had to do more than demonstrate a temporary inability to handle bills. Instead, a “total incapacity now and in the future to pay” had to be present for a court to grant relief. Over the course of the next decades, it became axiomatic that basically no sentient being could pass the Brunner test.

…

In 2015, he was practicing law at the Texas litigation firm Bickel and Brewer when he came across a case involving a former Pace University student named Lesley Campbell, who was seeking to discharge a $15,000 loan she took out while studying for a bar exam. Smith believed a loan given out to a woman who’d already completed her studies, and who used the money to pay for rent and groceries, was not covering an “educational benefit” as required by law. A judge named Carla Craig agreed and canceled Campbell’s loan, and Campbell v. Citibank became one of the earlier dents in the public perception that there were no exceptions to the prohibition on discharging student debts.

“I thought, ‘Wait, what? This might be important,’” says Smith.

By law, Smith believed, lenders needed to be wary of three major exceptions to the non-dischargeability rule:

— If a loan was not made to a student attending a Title IV accredited school, he thought it was probably not a “qualified educational loan.”

— If the student was not a full-time student — in practice, this meant taking less than six credits — the loan was probably dischargeable.

— And if the loan was made in an amount over and above the actual cost of attending an accredited school, the excess might not be “eligible” money, and potentially dischargeable.

Practically speaking, this means if you got a loan for an unaccredited school, were not a full-time student, or borrowed for something other than school expenses, you might be eligible for relief in court.

Smith found companies had been working around these restrictions in the blunt predatory spirit of a giant-sized Columbia Record Club. Companies lent hundreds of thousands to teenagers over and above the cost of tuition, or to people who’d already graduated, or to attendees of dubious unaccredited institutions, or to a dozen other inappropriate destinations. Then they called these glorified credit card balances non-dischargeable educational debts — Gray got one of these “direct-to-consumer” specials — and either sold them into the financial system as investments, borrowed against them as positive assets, or both.

…

Smith thought these practices were nuts, and tried to convince his bosses to start suing financial companies.

“They were like, ‘You do know what we do around here, right?’ We defend banks,” he recalls, laughing. “I said, ‘Not these particular banks.’ They said it didn’t matter, it was a question of optics, and besides, who was going to pay off in the end? A bunch of penniless students?”

Furious, Smith stormed off, deciding to hang his own shingle and fight the system on his own. “My sister kept saying to me, ‘You have to stop trying to live in a John Grisham novel,’” he recalls, laughing. “There were parts of it where I was probably super melodramatic, saying things like, ‘I'm going to go find justice.’”

Slowly however, Smith did find clients, and began filing and winning cases. With each suit, he learned more and more about student lenders. In one critical moment, he discovered that the same companies who were representing in court that their loans were absolutely non-dischargeable were telling investors something entirely different. In one prospectus for a trust packed full of loans managed by Sallie Mae, investors were told that the process for creating the aforementioned “direct-to-consumer” loans:

Does not involve school certification as an additional control and, therefore, may be subject to some additional risk that the loans are not used for qualified education expenses… You will bear any risk of loss resulting from the discharge.

Sallie Mae was warning investors that the loans might be discharged in bankruptcy. Why the honesty? Because the parties who’d be packaging and selling these student loan-backed instruments included Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank.

“It’s one thing to lie to a bunch of broke students. They don’t matter,” Smith says. “It’s another to lie to JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. You screw those people, they’ll fight back.”

…

In June of 2018, a case involving a Navy veteran named Kevin Rosenberg went through the courts. Rosenberg owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and tried to keep current on his loans, but after his hiking and camping store folded in 2017, he found himself busted and unable to pay. His case was essentially the opposite of Brunner: he clearly hadn’t tried to game the system, he made a good faith effort to pay, and he demonstrated a long-term inability to make good. All of this was taken into consideration by a judge named Cecilia Morris, who ruled that Rosenberg qualified for “undue hardship.”

“Most people… believe it impossible to discharge student loans,” Morris wrote. “This Court will not participate in perpetuating these myths.” The ruling essentially blew up the legend of the unbeatable Brunner standard.

Given a fresh start, Rosenberg moved to Norway to become an Arctic tour guide. “I want people to know that this is a viable option,” he said at the time. The ruling attracted a small flurry of news attention, including a feature in the Wall Street Journal, as the case sent a tremor through the student lending world. More and more people were now testing their luck in bankruptcy, suing their lenders, and asking more and more uncomfortable questions about the nature of the education business.

In the summer of 2012, a former bond trader named Michael Grabis sat in the waiting room of a Manhattan financial company, biding time before a job interview. In the eighties, Grabis’s father was a successful bond trader who worked in a swank office atop the World Trade Center, but after the 1987 crash, the family fell out of the smart set overnight. His father lost his job and spiraled, his mother had to look for a job, and “we just became working class people.”

Michael tried to rewrite the family story, going to school and going into the bond business himself, first with the Bank of New York, and eventually for Schwab. But he, too, lost his job in a crash, in 2008, and now was trying to break the pattern of bubble economy misery. However, he’d exited Pennsylvania’s Lafayette College in the nineties carrying tens of thousands in student loans. That number had since been compounded by fees and penalties, and the usual letters, notices, and phone calls from debt collectors came nonstop.

Now, awaiting a job interview, his phone rang again. It was a collection call for Sallie Mae, and it wasn’t just one voice on the line.

“They had two women call at once,” Grabis recalls. “They told me I’d made bad life choices, that I lived in too expensive a city, that I had to move to a cheaper place, so I could afford to pay them,” Grabis explains. “I tried to tell them I was literally at that moment trying to get a job to help pay my bills, but these people are trained to just hound you without listening. I was shaking when I got off the phone, and ended up having a bad interview.”

Two years later, more out of desperation and anger than any real expectation of relief, Grabis went to federal court in the Southern District of New York and filed for bankruptcy. At the time, he, too, believed student loans could not be eliminated. But the more he read about the way student loans were constructed and sold — he’d had experience in doing shovel-work constructing mortgage-backed securities, so he understood the Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities (SLABS) market — he started to develop a theory. Everyone dealing with the finances of higher education in America knew the system was rotten, he thought. But what if someone could prove it?

The 2005 Bankruptcy Act says former students can’t discharge loans for “qualified educational expenses,” i.e. loans given to students so that they might attend tax-exempt non-profit educational institutions. Historically, that exemption covered almost all higher education loans.

What if America’s universities no longer deserve their non-profit status? What if they’re no longer schools, and are instead first and foremost crude profit-making ventures, leveraging federal bankruptcy law and the I.R.S. code into a single, ongoing predatory lending scheme?

This is essentially what Grabis argued, in a motion filed last January. He named Navient, Lafayette College, the U.S. Department of Education, Joe Biden, his own exasperated judge, and a host of other “unknown co-perpetrators” as part of a scheme against him, claiming the entirety of America’s higher education business had become an illegal moneymaking scam.

“They created a fraud,” he says flatly.

…

Grabis doesn’t have a lawyer, his case has been going on for the better part of six years, and at first blush, his argument sounds like a Hail Mary from a desperate debtor. The only catch is, he might be right.

By any metric, something unnatural is going on in the education business. While other industries in America suffered declines thanks to financial crises, increased exposure to foreign competition, and other factors, higher education has grown suspiciously fat in the last half-century. Tuition costs are up 100% at universities over and above inflation since 2000, despite the 2008 crash, with some schools jacking up prices at three, four times the rate of inflation dating back to the seventies.

Bloat at the administrative level makes the average university look like a parody of an NFL team, where every brain-dead cousin to the owner gets on the payroll. According to Education Week, “fundraisers, financial aid advisers, global recruitment staff, and many others grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009,” which is ten times the rate of growth for tenured faculty positions.

…

Hovering over all this is a fact not generally known to the public: many American universities, even ones claiming to be broke, are sitting atop mountains of reserve cash. In 2013, after the University of Wisconsin blamed post-crash troubles for raising tuition 5.5%, UW system president Kevin Reilly in 2013 admitted that the school actually held $638 million in reserve, separate and distinct from the school endowment. Moreover, Reilly said, other big schools were doing the same thing. UW’s reserve was 25% of its operating budget, for instance, but the University of Minnesota’s was 29%, while Illinois maintained a whopping 34% buffer.

When Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice looked into it, he found many other schools were sitting atop mass reserves even as they pleaded poverty to raise tuition rates. “They’re all doing it,” he said.

In the mortgage bubble that led to the 2008 crash, financiers siphoned fortunes off home loans that were unlikely to be repaid. Student loans are the same game, but worse. All the key players get richer as that $1.7 trillion pile of debt expands, and the fact that everyone knows huge percentages of student borrowers will never pay is immaterial. More campus palaces get built, more administrators get added to payrolls, and perhaps most importantly, the list of assets grows for financial companies, whether or not the loans perform.

…

“As long as it’s collateralized at Navient, they can borrow against that,” Smith says. “They say, ‘Look, we've got $3 billion in assets, which are just consumer loans in negative amortization that are not being repaid, but are being artificially kept out of default so Navient can borrow against that from other banks.

“When I realized that, I was like, ‘Oh, my god. They’re happy that the loans are growing instead of being repaid, because it gives them more collateral to borrow against.’” Smith’s comments echo complaints made by virtually every student borrower in trouble I’ve ever interviewed: lenders are not motivated to reduce the size of balances by actually getting paid. Instead, the game is about keeping loans alive and endlessly growing the balance, through new fees, penalties, etc.

There are two ways of approaching reform of the system. One is the Bernie Sanders route, which would involve debt forgiveness and free higher education. A market-based approach meanwhile dreams of reintroducing discipline into student lending; if students could default, schools couldn’t endlessly raise costs on the back of unlimited government-backed credit.

Which idea is more correct can be debated, but the one thing we know for sure is that the current system is the worst of both worlds, enriching all the most undeserving actors, and hitting that increasingly prevalent policy sweet spot of privatized profit and socialized risk. Whether it gets blown up in bankruptcy courts or simply collapses eventually under its own financial weight — there’s an argument that the market will be massively disrupted if and when the administration ends the Covid-19 deferment of student loan payments — the lie can’t go on much longer.

“It’s just obvious that this has become a printing money operation,” says Grabis. “The colleges charge whatever they want, then they go to the government and continuously increase the size of the loans.” If you’re on the inside, that’s a beautiful thing. What about for everyone else?

#matt taibbi #substack #long #read the whole thing #student loans #student loan debt

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sou-ver-2-0 · 4 years

Note

Maybe I'm thinking too much about the Persona games today, but are there any characters that you would pair any tarot arcana with?

What a fun question! I think that tarot cards have like, the coolest aesthetic ever. Unfortunately, I don’t know much about tarot arcana, so I went on a deep dive into Wikipedia to try to understand it. I’ll apologize in advance that A. E. Waith’s definitions for these cards feel very heteronormative. I’m working with the traditional definitions, but I try to make them work for a modern story.

Here are the character-card combinations I came up with:

0 – The Fool: Folly, mania, extravagance, intoxication, delirium, frenzy, bewrayment. [If the card is] Reversed: Negligence, absence, distribution, carelessness, apathy, nullity, vanity.

Joe Tazuna

Joe Tazuna is our gaudy, “extravagant” fool! The fool represents the “everyman,” and is often the “protagonist of the story” in Major Arcana. Joe, who is good-natured and clumsy, has the type of personality you’d expect to see in a story’s protagonist. Ironically, he is one of the first to die. His “absence” is deeply felt by our real protagonist, Sara, who must go on the “Fool’s Journey” “through the great mysteries of life and the main human archetypes” without him.

1 – The Magician: Skill, diplomacy, address, subtlety, pain, loss, disaster, snares of enemies; self-confidence, will; [it signifies] the Querent, if male. Reversed: Physician, mental disease, disgrace, disquiet.

Reko Yabusame

Reko is our “skilled,” “confident,” strong-willed musician magician! (And she often uses masculine pronouns, so why not give her a masculine card?) Reko has also suffered through “pain, loss, and disaster,” which has shaped her current mature, kind personality. And in the past, she was a “disgraced” rebellious rock star who burned through bands.

2 – The High Priestess: Secrets, mystery, the future as yet unrevealed; the woman who interests the Querent, if male; the Querent herself, if female; silence, tenacity; mystery, wisdom, science. Reversed: Passion, moral or physical ardor, conceit, surface knowledge.

Tia Safalin and Maple

This card made me think of both villainous ladies. Tia Safalin has knowledge of science, while Maple seems to also have mysterious wisdom about human nature and the future.

3 – The Empress: Fruitfulness, action, initiative, length of days; the unknown, clandestine; also difficulty, doubt, ignorance. Reversed: Light, truth, the unraveling of involved matters, public rejoicings; according to another reading, vacillation.

Sara Chidouin

The Empress can only be our Sara! The girl who takes “initiative” and becomes the group’s leader! She seeks to bring “light” and “truth” to discussions, and she “unravels mysteries.” And yet, she also suffers from “doubt” in herself, and “ignorance” of her surroundings.

4 – The Emperor: Stability, power, protection, realization; a great person; aid, reason, conviction also authority and will. Reversed: Benevolence, compassion, credit; also confusion to enemies, obstruction, immaturity.

Mr. Chidouin

We don’t know much about Mr. Chidouin, and I do not trust him one bit. However, he seemed to be a suitable companion to his “Empress” daughter. Kai Satou certainly thought he was “a great” and “benevolent” person, though he has an “immature” way of speaking.

5 – The Hierophant: Marriage, alliance, captivity, servitude; by another account, mercy, and goodness; inspiration; the man to whom the Querent has recourse. Reversed: Society, good understanding, concord, over kindness, weakness.

Kai Satou

The words “servitude” and “captivity” suit our homemaker Kai, who always lived in service to others—either Asu-Naro or the Chidouins. Kai is a “good” man, but he is also shown to be one of the “weakest” participants since he dies early on.

6 – The Lovers: Attraction, love, beauty, trials overcome. Reversed: Failure, foolish designs. Another account speaks of marriage frustrated and contrarieties of all kinds.

Nao Egokoro

I know that Nao’s story doesn’t have much romance in it, but I liked the duality of “trials overcome” combined with “failure” and “foolish designs” for our poor, brave Nao. She is a girl who grew a lot, and her heart was overflowing with love for her new friends, but in the end she was doomed to failure with the Sacrifice Card.

7 – The Chariot: Succour, providence; also war, triumph, presumption, vengeance, trouble. Reversed: Riot, quarrel, dispute, litigation, defeat.

Alice Yabusame

So many aggressive words in that description made me think of our “Murderer,” Alice! Alice was “triumphant” in his last fight with Original Sou, but he can be “defeated” by Rio Ranger.

8 or 11 – Justice: Equity, rightness, probity, executive; triumph of the deserving side in law. Reversed: Law in all its departments, legal complications, bigotry, bias, excessive severity.

Keiji

Of course I had to give “Justice” to everyone’s favorite self-proclaimed policeman, Keiji! Keiji lays down the law in our group, and don’t we all hope he’ll favor the “deserving side” instead of showing “excessive severity.”

9 – The Hermit: Prudence, circumspection; also and especially treason, dissimulation, roguery, corruption. Reversed: Concealment, disguise, policy fear, unreasoned caution.

Rio Ranger

“The Hermit” feels like a strange card to give to our childish doll villain, but I liked the descriptive words associated with “corruption” and “policy fear.” Rio Ranger commits “treason” by directly killing a participant, and he also “conceals and disguises” himself with masks and other people’s clothes.

10 – Wheel of Fortune: Destiny, fortune, success, elevation, luck, felicity. Reversed: Increase, abundance, superfluity.

Sue Miley

Sue Miley is the villain who introduces us to our destiny with the Practice Vote and the First Main Game. She sadistically wishes everyone “luck.”

8 or 11 – Strength: Power, energy, action, courage, magnanimity; also complete success and honours. Reversed: Despotism, abuse of power, weakness, discord, sometimes even disgrace.

Q-Taro

Q-Taro suits “strength” perfectly! His character arc is all about learning what true strength is. He begins the game from a place of cowardice and selfishness, but he becomes courageous and honorable.

12 – The Hanged Man: Wisdom, circumspection, discernment, trials, sacrifice, intuition, divination, prophecy. Reversed: Selfishness, the crowd, body politic.

Shin Tsukimi

How could my favorite doomed antagonist have any other card but “The Hanged Man”? Shin is cursed from the beginning of the game with a “prophecy” that he will die. He relies on “intuition” more often than logic and he can be very “selfish,” but he is also “wise” enough to want to protect the most vulnerable among them, leading to his “sacrifice.”

13 – Death: End, mortality, destruction, corruption; also, for a man, the loss of a benefactor; for a woman, many contrarieties; for a maid, failure of marriage projects. Reversed: Inertia, sleep, lethargy, petrifaction, somnambulism; hope destroyed.

Ranmaru Kageyama

I liked the card “death” for our main dummy Ranmaru, who has died and transformed. The words associated with “sleep” and “lethargy” also reminded me of his final moments, where he commented that death felt like going to sleep.

14 – Temperance: Economy, moderation, frugality, management, accommodation. Reversed: Things connected with churches, religions, sects, the priesthood, sometimes even the priest who will marry Querent; also disunion, unfortunate combinations, competing interests.

Kazumi Mishima

“Temperance” sounded like a good card for a wise character who lives in “moderation.” Mishima was cursed with an “unfortunate combination” of votes in the Practice Vote.

15 – The Devil: Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality; that which is predestined but is not for this reason evil. Reversed: Evil fatality, weakness, pettiness, blindness.

Original Sou Hiyori

“The Devil” is the most perfect card for my favorite villain! He is “violent” and goes to “extraordinary efforts” to manipulate the participants, but he has also suffered a “fatality.” I thought the phrase “predestined but is not for this reason evil” was especially intriguing for Original Sou, since I often wonder how much free will he could exercise within Asu-Naro.

16 – The Tower: Misery, distress, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin. It is a card in particular of unforeseen catastrophe. Reversed: Negligence, absence, distribution, carelessness, apathy, nullity, vanity.

Gashu Satou

Gashu brings a terrible “unforeseen catastrophe” in the Second Main Game, when he would rather kill himself then give our characters a chance to escape! He is undoubtedly the best character for “The Tower.”

17 – The Star: Loss, theft, privation, abandonment; another reading says--hope bright prospects, Reversed: Arrogance, haughtiness, impotence.

Kanna Kizuchi

Kanna has suffered “loss” and she may be “abandoned” by the people she loves. However, her survival also brings “hope” and “bright prospects” in spite of the Death Game’s cruelty.

18 – The Moon: Hidden enemies, danger, calumny, darkness, terror, deception, occult forces, error. Reversed: Instability, inconstancy, silence, lesser degrees of deception and error.

The Dummies

The words related to “hidden enemies” in the “darkness” reminded me of our dummies, who are tasked with killing the human participants.

19 – The Sun: This card is generally considered positive. It is said to reflect happiness and contentment, vitality, self-confidence and success. Sometimes referred to as the best card in Tarot, it represents good things and positive outcomes to current struggles.

Gin Ibushi

Gin Ibushi is a light in our lives who brings Sara emotional comfort! In spite of having no tokens to defend himself in trades, nobody sent him the Sacrifice Card, which is a wonderful thing.

20 – Judgment: Judgement, Rebirth, Inner-calling, Absolution, Karma, Causality, Second chance

The Man from the Memorandum

The Man from the Memorandum, the winner of the Previous Death Game, seems to be the Mastermind of a new Death Game and is calling for a “second chance” for the High School Girl to survive. He pronounces judgment on every victim.

(It’s entirely possible that the Man from the Memorandum is Mr. Chidouin himself, which would make my distinguishing between them silly in hindsight! For now, I’ll assume they’re different people.)

21 – The World: Assured success, recompense, voyage, route, emigration, flight, change of place. Reversed: Inertia, fixity, stagnation, permanence.

The 17-Year-Old School Girl

Is 15.5% enough to “assure the success” of the High School Girl? Is that enough to “change her place” from dying in the First Death Game? Or will she be “permanently” dead? The entire “world” of the Death Game seems to hinge on this critical role!

#yttd #your turn to die #kimi ga shine #your turn to die spoilers #asks #meta #mine #tarot #I can't believe I matched a character to every single card #like my god...look at what a nerd I am hahaha

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