#and damn his story is very cool!!! i hope he succeeds i’m rooting for him. babie

[puckpocketed]

extremely important miro facts:

his first nhl goal was in a caps-pens game where we won 6-0, which is always hilarious

tom wilson let him 'win' their friendly little pre-game shoving match (to pump him up, presumably)

his coach in hershey says his english is getting better—unless they have to criticize or scold him. then he doesn't speak any english, actually 😌

baby! little baby.

miro… i see… pondering him. a pretty orb. morb? (miro orb) . i think i watched that caps game?? yes i am checking the highlights and the vod !! i remember this score vaguely and um. <3 wow you grilled and smoked them like a dad with his various meats and vegetables at the barbecue …! fun fact pertaining to our alex alex in that game: he does a cute little gallop move over a pens player. neigh. 🐴🇺🇸

[the-insomniac-emporium]

Wounded Love (Lady Dimitrescu/F!Reader) Pt. 3

Fandom: Resident Evil: Village Rating: T for blood/violence and language Genre: Action with a lil bit of fluff Warnings: Lil bit of blood Notes: There's an unnamed character in here who may or may not end up as recurring in my stories. I don't really have anything in particular planned for her, she's kinda just here to fill a role/allow for some easter egg type shit in the next chapter. Previous Chapters: Pt. 1, Pt. 2

{Wounded Love 3: Bloody Valentine (No, not that Valentine)}

“Mother Miranda, I must insist, if these lycans stray any further they might start feasting on the village as well! Pray tell, who will you use for research then? We can’t just-... Forgive me… Mhmm. Yes, I understand. Of course… Have a good night, Mother Miranda,” Lady Dimitrescu said, before setting her phone down with a loud thunk. Her hands shake a little, and for a moment you worry that her vanity won’t survive the coming moments. Then you make eye contact with her reflection, giving her an encouraging smile, watching as her gaze softens. “I’m afraid there’s nothing she can do, my dear. I cannot allow Heisenberg’s negligence to go unpunished, but we will have to take care of it on our own, without Mother Miranda’s support.”

“Is that wise, love? To go behind her back like this? I can’t imagine she’ll be terribly pleased if we cause chaos for one of her favored few,” you replied, clicking your tongue as you thought things over. Again you see anger cloud Alcina’s face, though she makes sure not to direct it at you.

“We are not the ones who started this mess,” she reminded you, through clenched teeth. “But we will be the ones to end it, one way or another. I don’t care if I have to gut that wretched man-thing and bring Miranda his corpse as proof of his incompetence! He has shown his lack of loyalty hundreds of times… and now he will pay.” Gulping, you rise to your feet, wanting to comfort your girlfriend. While you had understood that your injury angered her, you hadn’t (until this moment) realized the sheer intensity of that rage. How much blood would be shed before this was over?...

-----------------------------

Crimson drips down the beast’s side, across matted fur, before hitting the wooden floor. A stench as awful as you had ever found filled the air, only made tolerable by the nearby presence of scented candles. What a mess, you think, glad that you wouldn’t be the one to clean it up. Why had the girls insisted on bringing the damn thing inside? Couldn’t they have simply snatched a few teeth from its jaw as a prize? Somehow you doubted that the thought had even crossed their minds. Violence was a passion of theirs, and they preferred their trophies to be as large as the effort they put into getting it.

“How close to the path did you find it?” You asked after finishing your examination of the lycan. Next to you, the eldest daughter is rapidly taking notes in a leather-bound journal. Both of her siblings stand near the fireplace, hands held out next to the flames, needing to warm up after being outside for so long. It wasn’t even that cold of a day, with temperatures averaging around eighteen degrees celsius. All the snowfall from the prior week had now melted. While you knew of the family’s weakness, you also knew that they had bundled up before leaving, and had even taken a torch with them in the hopes of using it on a lycan. Their powers had taken somewhat of a hit, temporarily, but not nearly enough to prevent them from killing a single lycan.

“Heard it howling almost as soon as we left the castle. We couldn’t smell it until halfway to the village, though. Once we could we tried to track it, only for the stupid thing to come charging at us. Must have been eight, maybe ten, meters away by the time we collided,” Cassandra answered. There’s a bit of a shiver to her voice, and you can’t help the rush of sympathy you feel in response. Being out on the path, wearing little more than a dress and scarf, had been absolute hell for you. Even if it was warmer outside now, you imagined that being weak to the cold just about made up for the difference. “There was a little more howling once we started walking back here. Louder, if not closer. Heisenbitch isn’t even trying to keep these fucking things in check.”

“Cassandra, language!” Came a voice in the distance, making everyone present look up at once. Strutting down the stairs was a clearly miffed Alcina, eyes narrowed, body tense. “Did you three really have to bring the mutt inside? Surely you advocated against this, Bela? Or did you think I wanted new bloodstains right by the entrance, where everyone can see them?” Next to you Bela winces, but doesn’t respond, too worried about angering her mother further. “And you, my dear, what on Earth are you doing on the floor? You should be resting, in an actual chair, if not lying in bed awaiting my return. There’s enough for me to worry about without you limping around on a useless leg!”

Now it was your turn to wince.

“Please, love, I know you’re stressed, but I can still help. Given enough time I could help ascertain these things’ weaknesses. At the very least I could pass on what I learned during my fight with one,” you pleaded. Then you tried to stand up, wanting to prove yourself, only to stumble, barely avoiding a faceplant- and only doing so because of Bela’s quick reaction time. She helped you to your feet, letting you lean on her, then lead you towards a bench. Begrudgingly you sit back down. “You’re only doing this because I got hurt. Helping you in your endeavor to avenge me is the least I can do.”

“Don’t be foolish,” Alcina snapped, now just a couple meters away from you. Even with that space between you, her presence was intimidating, and you almost felt like a child being scolded. “Were you to get hurt again, how would we avenge you? If you fall by your own hand, there will be naught I can do other than lock you away somewhere without any dangerous elements. What sort of existence would that be for you? I simply can’t allow it, no exceptions.” At this you pout, feeling rather disappointed. It’s not as if you were asking to carry a gun and shoot Heisenberg yourself! Not that you would be opposed to doing so, of course. “Try to put yourself in my place, my dear. Could you live with yourself if you failed to protect me?”

“I suppose I could not, love. Very well, I shall simply root you on from here, and kiss away any injuries you return with,” you replied, at last giving in. Then you found yourself smiling… and on the receiving end of a very soft forehead kiss. “Nothing will separate us, my love. None can tear apart that which the universe has stitched together.”

-----------------------------

“Like I said, my Lady, I already want him dead. Did you really think that your family was the only one to suffer because of his machinations? I know half a dozen people who would love to put a bullet in that fucker’s skull, bare mims,” the huntress said, white teeth showing in her half-smirk. There was an odd coolness to her voice, like this whole ordeal was just another job, and you couldn’t help but feel uncertain about her. Could she really be the solution to Alcina’s problem? You couldn’t even judge her arsenal, considering she had been instructed to come unarmed. After all, she was a hunter of monsters, with a sizable history to her name. If not for her hatred of Heisenberg, you would never have felt comfortable letting her come within two hundred meters of your girlfriend.

“How can I be sure that you’ll succeed? The last thing I want is to have that wretched man-thing come crawling out of the filth he lives in, angry and coming for vengeance,” Alcina responded, scrutinizing gaze locked on the huntress.

“Didn’t Duke give you my file? Or at least read the good bits out loud? I’ve been in my fair share of scraps, with all sorts of bioweapon mutant freaks. Besides, I don’t plan on leaving any receipts behind. If he manages to survive, which is already one hell of an if, there’s no way he can prove that you asked me to do it. Considering he’s already seen my face, and knows I want him dead… yeah, he won’t bother accusing you, not when I’m in the picture, and certainly not when you’ve got such a big reputation for following Mother Miranda’s word down to the very last letter. So, you gonna make this official, or what?” The huntress asked, gesturing her arms wide. Although you’re still not convinced, Alcina nods quietly, seeming ready to make her decision. Regardless of how you feel about the stranger in front of you, you’re more than willing to support your girlfriend in whatever she planned.

“Very well, huntress. Show us just what you’re capable of.”

-----------------------------

Flames licked at her heels, even as she charged forward, tickling like hot breaths against her skin. Behind her half a dozen lycans roared and screeched in unison. Smoke and ashes flew upwards, into the air, but could not poison her lungs, not when she had come prepared. Still, the mask was not as easy to breathe in as she had hoped, making her chest heave with effort at each intake of air. Good thing I’ll be gone soon, she thought, sparing a glance behind her as she ran. Dozens of trees were aflame, and countless glowing eyes watched from between the branches. They wouldn’t be there for much longer, not with what she had done.

Soon enough an explosion would shake the Earth. Then, finally, both the lycans who had killed her father and the man who desecrated the remains would be dead. And if a certain countess happened to pay her for her services? All the better, really. Funerals could be expensive, especially in such a remote village. More than that… there was no guarantee that she’d be able to outrun Mother Miranda on her own. A little money would make the flight out a hell of a lot nicer.

Assuming she made it that far. There was another scream behind her, this one more human, though somewhat warped by mechanics. It wasn’t a pained cry. No, it was filled with rage. Clearly Heisenberg had come out of his lair, hearing the fireworks, finding his scrap metal and werewolf army in chaos. From the sound of things- metal against metal, electricity crackling- he was coming her way.

“Fuck fuck fuck!” She muttered, desperately trying to get to higher ground. Even if the lycans succumbed to the overwhelming fire, it wouldn’t be hard for their leader to overcome. But the huntress was still too close to her explosives to risk activating the detonator. Just a bit farther, she thought, ignoring the way her lungs ached. Rocks kicked up with every step, loud enough to be heard from a distance, and made traction harder to keep. In the end she had to scramble to get up the side of a short cliff. A few scrapes appeared on her hands, making her curse under her breath.

But with one last movement, pulling herself up with both arms, she was finally far enough to be relatively safe. In one clean second she turned around, pulled the detonator out of its pouch and clicked the trigger. Just like that, a forest blazing turns into a mushroom cloud of pure hellfire. The setting sun makes for a beautiful backdrop, and the sight almost brings a tear to the huntress’ eyes. For a few moments she just enjoys the view. Then, without hesitation or remorse, she starts to walk away, mentally congratulating herself for a job well done.

Until something shoots past her head with terrifying speed. Before she can react another sharp piece of metal flies past her, grazing her arm, and there’s a blood-curdling roar from behind her. Then she’s running, fast as she can, pulse pounding harder than it ever has. One hand goes to the rifle on her back, pulling it out as quickly as she can. The area is rocky, with plenty of outcrops, perfect to hide behind (assuming there weren’t any hidden metal deposits). Quickly she ducks behind one, crouching to keep her head out of sight. Mere milliseconds later another metal spike slams into the ground just beyond her cover.

In the distance, more screams pierce the air, and something heavy drags itself across the ground. It almost sounds like a tank rolling through the woods. The thought alone worries the huntress, but she had never been one to let her fear control her. So she double checks her rifle, adjusts the scope, and pops out of cover. Less than a second later she has her target in her sights. It’s Heisenberg, for sure, more metal than man, but dripping with red. One press of the trigger sends a bullet straight for his ugly head. Unsurprisingly, it’s not enough to pierce his cranium, instead making him mad as hell.

Which is why automatic guns were invented, probably. The huntress holds the trigger down this time, though briefly, before dashing to the next piece of cover. She repeats the process a few times, hoping to kill the man before he could climb the cliff she stood on. If he managed to get up there with her… no, she couldn’t think about that, not now. She had to focus.

-----------------------------

Hidden among the trees, the Dimitrescu sisters watched as plumes of smoke rose in the distance. Even though they had been aware of the huntress’ plan, they hadn’t expected this much carnage. It was certainly exciting! But they really couldn’t see much from where they were. Getting closer was probably a horrible idea, and yet Cassandra shared a meaningful look with Daniela. A split second later they were forming a swarm, rushing into the trees, leaving their elder sister to yell after them.

“Mother’s going to kill me,” Bela said, before rolling her eyes and following. Maybe she could at least keep them out of trouble?... Probably not.

-----------------------------

Metal hands wrap around the huntress’ throat, squeezing hard, but do not twist or otherwise break their prey. No, Heisenberg does not intend to end this that quickly. This rodent had taken so much from him, set his plans back by decades. He was going to kill her slowly. When she still fights back, pulling a knife from her boot and trying to stab whatever she can reach, he does little else but laugh. It’s a crazed cackling that echoes through the surrounding rocky hills.

Just barely loud enough to drown out the sound of insects buzzing.

“Fuck that guy!” Someone shouted, right as a sickle descended upon the monstrous Heisenberg’s neck. The first slice isn’t enough to sever the connection, which is why it’s immediately followed by a second, from another sister, then a third, from the eldest, that finally does the job. Just like that the hands release from the huntress’ throat, and she gasps for air. Coughs leave her distracted as the sisters move to surround her. “Good thing we wanted to see the show up close and personal, eh?” Daniela asked, twirling her sickle with a little giggle.

“You idiots are just lucky I followed you,” Bela added, glaring at her sister. Internally, she was relieved that the end result was a success. Still, she worried about what her mother would think, and certainly didn’t intend to voice her satisfaction at delivering the killing blow. “Now let’s get back, before mother assumes the worst and comes to get us herself.” Sighing, she extends a hand to help the huntress up. Though their mutual enemy had been defeated, there was still much to be done. Who knew how Mother Miranda would react? Who, if anyone, would take Heisenberg’s place? There was plenty to be unsure about, and Bela let her mind wander the whole way back, hoping that things would only get better from here...

[redwinterroses]

hey so here's an idea for a "two best friends but one turned evil and asked the other to kill him before he went too far gone" trope (you know exactly what i'm referring to)

the first character, looking into his friends eyes, stabs him in the heart. then they both fall down and the first character is left on his knees, head down, holding onto the sword embedded into his friend's chest, sobbing uncontrollably.

he doesn't touch the sword again and instead ties a ribbon around it in memory of the one he lost

you're welcome :)

- anon fierri

Not that this has been on my brain all day or anything, but... well. Okay. It has been. And then @/3lsmp posted that stuff about a zombie AU and-- well. This happened.

Yay for my first shulker box fic! (1,728 words, with mirrored/connected first and last lines)

Zombie stories don't have happy endings so... neither does this. Be warned.

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.

.

Jimmy’s waiting when Scott gets back home.

He stands in front of the door to the house they’ve been living out of, with none of his gear or weapons on him. He’s leaning against the old oak that grows next to the sidewalk, one foot perched on a root that ripples out of the ground and cracks through the old concrete. The sun is setting behind him, but the twilight shadows don’t quite hide the bloody stain that spreads from his right shoulder.

Scott’s feet come to a stop of their own accord, and he very specifically does not move his hand to the hilt of his sword. He shifts his satchel— filled with goodies he managed to find today; he discovered an entire village that hadn’t been raided yet— on his arm, its weight heavy after an afternoon of walking. He hates the wary tone in his words when he calls out:

“Jimmy?”

Jimmy, looking up to see him, gives a shrug. “Told ya this would happen,” he says, and there’s a quirk to his smile that could break other hearts.

((hard to break what’s already shattering.))

Scott swallows. “Show me.”

Jimmy pulls the collar of his shirt to the side, and Scott winces at the bloody mess that is his mangled shoulder.

“Skizz got me,” Jimmy says. “It was stupid— I should’a been faster, but… I mean, it was Skizz, ya know? He still kinda looked like himself, and I thought… I dunno what I thought. But by the time I realized he was already gone, he’d got my shoulder in his teeth and…”

((the earth is crumbling away beneath him. this is a nightmare. time to wake up now.))

((please wake up now.))

“Hey, don’t worry.” Jimmy covers the wound back up. “It doesn’t hurt or anything.”

“It doesn’t— No, Jimmy that’s not the way to make me feel better.” Scott takes another step forward, his arms aching to reach out and his gut telling him to get away get away get away— He can feel his throat closing, swallowing emotions he refuses to feel.

“Look— ” Jimmy takes a step forward and Scott backpedals, half-unsheathing the blade at his hip. He hates himself for it instantly, but the instinct—

The instinct is what keeps him alive.

Jimmy just puts his hands up placatingly. “Hey, hey— I’m not that far gone yet.”

“You’re fine.” Scott tries to sound scornful, and nearly succeeds. “We’ll get you patched up and you’ll be good as new in a few days. Don’t be such a drama queen.”

With a laugh, Jimmy shakes his head. “Nice daydream,” he says. “That would be cool.”

They stand there, in a silence that shouldn’t have been awkward, for a long moment. Then, at the same time:

“Scott, you know— ”

“So I picked up a— ”

Pause.

“You go first,” Jimmy says.

((Jimmy always puts others first.))

Scott grits his teeth and forces his voice to be light and cheerful. Nothing is wrong. They’re fine. “I found canned soup!” he says. “Five cans— one’s a little rusty, but I’m sure it’s fine.”

“That’s… um. That’s good.”

Scott steps around Jimmy—

((not too close. don't get too close— no. damn you, coward, get as close as you want, there’s nothing wrong— ))

— and moves toward the house. “So…” he says, “I’ll just… start up the fire? Get dinner going? I think we’ve still got some— ”

“Scott.”

Jimmy’s voice stops him, and Scott winces. He drops his head, unable to look Jimmy in the eye.

“Don’t make me do this,” he says. His voice struggles, and his free hand goes to his throat, as if he can pull the plea from his chest. “You… you can’t make me do this. You can’t.”

((i can’t, i can’t, i can’t— ))

“You gotta.”

((too close!!))

Scott’s head snaps up, and one hand flails behind him, catching against the siding of the house. Jimmy is right there—

((danger! danger!))

But other than the tell-tale red gleam in his eye and the bloody stain on the shoulder of his shirt, Jimmy looks the same. Same golden hair, same dimple as he quirks half a sad smile, same gentle hands spread wide. Unarmed, though that won’t matter soon. He stands close enough that Scott could reach out and touch him— punch him, maybe, for being such an idiot… or wrap him in an embrace that will never let go.

“Skizz got me an hour ago,” Jimmy says, and his voice is as low as a secret. “I’ve got… what. Maybe twenty minutes? Another hour if we’re insanely lucky?”

“You’re fine,” Scott says again. But this time it comes out as a plea and not a statement.

“I’m not.” Jimmy shakes his head. His eyes shift to the side. “I… to be honest, I’m already feeling it.”

“Feeling— feeling what?” Why was he asking. What a stupid question.

And yet… yet he had to know.

Jimmy drops his hands to his sides, and they clench and unclench. Scott watches, mesmerized, his heartbeat fluttering in time with Jimmy’s hands curling into white-knuckled fists and uncurling into trembling claws.

“I can’t— I can’t describe it. It’s like I’m on fire. Only I’m drowning at the same time. Or something. And I— ” he takes a deep breath, and meets Scott’s gaze. A low growl comes into his voice, and the hands squeeze tight into hard twists of bone. “I look at you, and all I can see is how easy you’d be to kill right now.”

Scott’s sword is drawn before his denial can catch up.

((instinct keeps you alive))

Jimmy looks down at the shining blade, and finally his façade of cheerful nonchalance wavers. There’s a crack in his voice as he says, “There we go. That’s… that’s the way it’s gotta be.”

((i can’t, i can’t, i can’t— ))

And then, as if he can hear Scott’s internal scream: “I don’t— I don’t want to become like one of them. I don’t want… you to see me like that.”

Like one of them. Scott’s memories skip over images of white-eyed creatures, people he used to know, monsters with mindless hunger driving them to rip, to shred, to devour—

Jimmy wakes up crying some nights. He tries to be quiet, Scott knows, but in the single room they’ve barricaded against the darkness, every sound is magnified— and Scott's always been a light sleeper. He knows Jimmy dreams of them, dreams of blood and gore and of being left alone— or worse, of being the one to do the shredding.

He knows because he’s dreamed it too.

“I won’t let that happen,” he says, his voice firm. But there’s a tremble in the sword between them.

“You didn’t let it happen. It just… it just did, dude. That’s life.” Jimmy takes a deep breath, and with a far too gentle hand, takes hold of the sword blade and guides it to rest over his heart. “Anyway, you promised.”

.

.

.

“Right so, if I get bit, you have to take me out before I can hurt anyone.”

“Ew. What a horribly morbid things to say.”

“I’m serious! I couldn’t deal with it if I turned into one of those things and came after you or any of the others— ”

“It’s not gonna happen, so don’t be stupid about it.”

“Come on— just say it. Promise me that if I start to turn, you’ll… ya know. Kill me.”

“Jimmy— ”

“Promise me, Scott.”

“…Fine. But only if you promise the same.”

((it won’t happen. it'll be fine. they’ll be fine.))

“Of course, dude. I promise.”

.

.

.

“You promised.”

Scott’s face is wet with hot tears that he can’t feel himself crying, and he wants to drop the sword— wants to fling it away from both of them and let fate do its worst. Who cares if he dies too?

((jimmy cares. If you let him destroy you, it’ll destroy him first.))

“Damn you,” Scott whispers.

Jimmy smiles.

The sword enters his body too easily.

It slides between the ribs, the only sound the soft catch in Jimmy’s throat as the blade bites into his heart.

For a frozen instant, they both stand there, outside the house they’d claimed— the home they’d defended. Jimmy looks down at the weapon in his chest, one hand reaching toward Scott—

And he falls

((he falls and falls and falls and Scott is falling too and the sword clatters to the ground and he’s clutching at Jimmy’s face and bundling the body to himself and pawing the hair away from his eyes and Jimmy’s hand is on his and— ))

There are no final words. No poignant goodbyes, no tearful proclamations or whispered last regrets.

There is only an ending.

There is only Scott, silent and dry-eyed, kneeling on the ground under the oak with Jimmy’s lifeless hand clasped to his chest.

.

.

.

He doesn’t move, even as night falls around him—

((them))

— and the cicadas start their mournful chorus. Doesn’t stir until something rattles down the street and he dimly realizes that Jimmy would murder him if after all this, Scott went and got himself shredded by a zombie anyway.

Jimmy’s body is heavier than he expected, and yet somehow lighter than it ought to be. As if it’s missing everything that made it Jimmy. He drags it—

((him))

— inside the house and wonders what exactly he’s supposed to do now. Dig a grave, he supposes, but— where? In the yard? It seems so… anticlimactic.

((death is anticlimactic. life is the climax. death is… an afterthought.))

He leaves the sword where it fell. He can’t… he can’t bear to touch it now. Scott doesn’t believe in curses—

((yes you do yes you do you’re cursed this place is cursed and that sword is cursed and the ground where it lays is cursed and— ))

— and yet he can’t bring himself to fetch it. Someone else can find it.

He’ll dig the grave tomorrow.

Tonight… tonight he sits. Keeps watch. Hopes beyond hope that Jimmy will stir— knowing that if he does, it won’t be for any good reason. Knowing that if he does, he won’t be able to kill him a second time.

Tomorrow he’ll leave. Find a new place— far away. Sometime, maybe sooner, maybe later… he’ll find the end of his road too.

He hopes Jimmy will be waiting there, when he finally gets back home.

[myaekingheart]

kakashi for the ask game! :D

Oh this is gonna be dangerous xD (and also really fucking long I’m so sorry lmfao)

send me a character and i’ll list...

favorite thing about them It’s so hard to pick, but I think his resilience. Kakashi has genuinely been through hell and back and yet he keeps going. His character development in Naruto is one of my absolute favorite things, the way he starts out as this seemingly apathetic but deep down very guarded character who ultimately grows to love his students and make peace with his past and finally find some happiness. He’s the man who lost everything and still keeps going and maybe it’s just because I, too, am a depressed bitch but that’s always bee super comforting to me and felt very reassuring. Like if Kakashi can hit rock bottom but pull himself up out of that pit and find happiness and success, then so can I.

least favorite thing about them I don’t even know if I have a least favorite thing about him. I honestly love everything about him. I guess the closest thing I can get to a least favorite thing would be that I wish we saw more of him goofing off and having tons of fun like when he and Guy raced in Shippuden. Hearing Kakashi laugh and joke around was just so good for my soul.

favorite line Oh no there are so many, I can’t pick just one. My favorite contenders are: “Leaf Village Secret Finger Jutsu: One Thousand Years of Death!” “Behind this mask...is another mask! Pretty cool, huh?” “I’m telling you this because you don’t get it. You think you get it which is not the same as actually getting it, get it?” “Those who break the rules are scum but those who would abandon a comrade are worse than scum” “I won’t allow my comrades to die. I’ll protect you with my life. Trust me.” “It’s like an acorn.” “Sorry I’m late, I’m afraid I got lost on the path of life.” “Sorry I’m late, a black cat crossed my path and I had to take the long way around.” “For those who follow the path of revenge, it never ends well. You’ll only tear yourself apart and even if you succeed and you get your revenge, what will you get then? Nothing. Emptiness.” “So it looks like neither of us have led a charmed life exactly. But still, we’re not all that bad off. At least you and I have found new comrades to help fill the void.” “Calm down, Naruto. Slow your breathing down” (mainly because this scene just gets me every time as someone who has had severe panic attacks for twenty years lmfao) There was also another “sorry I’m late” excuse that I don’t remember exactly and cannot for the life of me find but it was from a picture I saw somewhere, looked like it was maybe from a video game? Where Kakashi said something to genin Naruto and Sakura about the path of love or something? And they’re staring at him flustered pointing insisting “That’s...a lie!” Like I can recall the image clear as day in my head but I cannot for the life of me find it.

brOTP Hands down Guy. I mean, I ship them, too, but I just really love their friendship especially. Guy just really brings out the best in him and provides this really nice foil to Kakashi’s personality. I genuinely think Kakashi would’ve been done for if not for Guy’s loyalty and optimism. Their friendship is so fun and the two of them together never fail to make me smile.

OTP Does my KakashixOC ship count? Because if it does, then that’s my OTP. I have spent way too much time and energy on their relationship for it to not be. That probably sounds super cliche and maybe a little Mary-Sue-ish but I don’t even care, Rei and Kakashi are my magnus opum and I love them. I’m also just really, really proud of the way I’ve written their relationship. So much of their bond is informed by my own relationship with my fiance, and I think my own experiences have really evolved my understanding of what real intimacy in a romantic relationship looks like. It’s not so much about flowers and chocolates and date nights as it is about caring for and comforting the person you love, spending quality time with them, making them laugh and smile, being 110% yourself around them, and providing for them in their times of need. I have never written a relationship so real and specifically raw before, and there’s a lot of intricacies that I’ve worked in as well, that just overall make me incredibly proud of the progress I’ve made on their story, and proud of the story I’ve been creating for them in general. But if an OC ship doesn’t count for OTP, I really like Kakashi with Shizune, Guy, Yamato/Tenzo, and Iruka.

nOTP Oh god I have quite a few. I really don’t enjoy focusing on negatives nor do I want to start ship wars so I’ll keep these explanations brief. I can’t stand Kakashi and Sakura, the mere thought of it makes me *this close* to puking. I take big issue with ships in general between characters that met when one of them was a child and the other an adult, though. It just comes off incredibly pedophilic to me and makes me nauseous. The other big ship I take issue with is Kakashi and Rin but that’s more of a personal issue because their relationship, and Rin’s character in general, hit way too close to home (in a very warped and psychotically symbolic way) to some really traumatic stuff I dealt with in the past that took me years and lots of therapy to deal with, and it still trips me up to this day. It’s not anything that anyone in fandom has done or anyone who ships Kakashi and Rin with each other, it’s just a matter of me noticing parallels between the ship and my own trauma that make it incedibly hard for to tolerate content of it. Just to tack these on, as well, but I also really dislike him with Hanare from the filler episode and with Kahyo from the book Lightning in the Icy Sky. The romance with Hanare just felt really disingenuous to me like I can tolerate it, but it’s not my favorite. And as for Kahyo, I blame bad writing. The fact that the book was referring to her as “the woman who has Kakashi’s heart” literally within like two pages of them meeting really pissed me off. I couldn’t even finish the book so I can’t even speak on the rest of the relationship but I just got so turned off by the entire story in general because the romance was so unbelievable and abrupt. I feel like anyone who has read my fic, though, likely has picked up on my opinions on these, though. Not that I’m writing ship hate or anything because I’m not, but there have been little plot points here and there that have kind of touched on my feelings on these ships.  

random headcanon I have way too many but here’s one of them, I guess, though this is more a musing than a headcanon. I think, when the war is over and Kakashi can finally catch his breath, he goes through a bit of an identity crisis as he comes to terms with the fact that he no longer has his sharingan. After all, he had Obito’s eye for almost twenty years. Learning to function without it is going to be incredibly difficult but not only that, so much of his identity was founded on his secondhand sharingan. Who even is he without it? Does he even recognize himself anymore? And how can he ever live up to the reputation he’s garnered over so many years now that the source of all of his power is gone for good? Yes, he was a prodigy before the sharingan and he is still capable without it, but it’s going to be a big change and take a huge toll on him and his perception of himself.

unpopular opinion I’m glad Kakashi has never been given an explicitly canon love interest. Honestly, I don’t want him to have one. As much as he deserves to find love and start a family with someone, from a fandom perspective I much prefer him being open and available. It creates a much more flexible interpretation of him and his love life so that we, the fans, can write him however we damn well please and I think that’s pretty fantastic. I think it’s safe to say that Kakashi is one of if not the most heavily shipped character in the fandom and everyone has very strong opinions on who he belongs with and even how he idenifies from a sexuality perspective. I can only imagine the uproar that would come from finally giving him a canon love interest because you absolutely cannot please everyone. In a way, I feel like Kakashi is just a character who belongs to all of us. He is something different for every single person in fandom whether that’s someone to look up to and seek guidance from, someone to protect and root for, someone to relate to and find comfort in, someone to love and/or lust after. Or in my case a precious emotional support ninja husbando. I don’t know if he would’ve had quite the same effect on fandom if he had been canonically shipped with someone from the get-go, but I’m grateful that he never was and I hope he never will be so he can continue playing the role in fandom that he has been for so many years. That probably sounds selfish, though, but I just really want him to remain a character that belongs to all of us and is not inhibited by canon in terms of who he loves and how he identifies.

song i associate with them Again, there’s so fucking many so I’m just gonna list some of my favorites. Sign by Flow Friendships by Pascal Letoublon Hospital for Souls by Bring Me the Horizon SCARECROW by My Chemical Romance Disguise by Motionless in White-- this is a big one, especially the line “sick of wearing a mask, sick of hiding my face, sick of every motherfucker that is in my way, sick of digging for answers while you bury the truth, fuck your method to my sadness, I will bury you” like it just reminds me of ANBU Kakashi specifically, but overall his character development in coming to terms with his past and crawling out of his depression, too.

favorite picture of them Again...there’s multiple x_x

[mewtonian-physics]

I was tagged by @justanotherboredadult. I hate you for doing this to me. (Not seriously, I love tag games. It’s just that this one is going to be really hard.)

Rules: Name ten favorite characters from ten different things (books, tv, film, etc.) then tag ten people.

I can’t possibly choose my top ten favorites, so I’ll just name ten in whatever order I like and call it good.

1. Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes, et al)

The legendary detective himself! Ah, if ever there comes a day where I claim to no longer like him, you can take me to a hospital because I’m clearly gravely ill. The original stories are my preference, but there are lots of wonderful adaptations out there as well! The picture above is of Jeremy Brett, whose portrayal of Holmes is widely considered to be one of, if not the best of all time; a moniker which I imagine he would be at least a little bit pleased to have earned.

2. Data (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

God, I adore Data. His struggles with understanding how others express themselves emotionally, attempts to understand his own feelings, and his inability to connect to the world around him in the same way everyone else did, and the resulting difficulties... as an autistic person, Data’s a character who’s been really important to me for a really long time. He was one of the first characters I was able to really understand and connect with, because I so often had those struggles myself! It’s been years since I first saw him, but it doesn’t matter. Data will always hold a special place in my heart.

Also, uh...

I mean... just look...

3. Root (Person of Interest)

Let me tell you, it was almost impossible to choose just one POI character! I love all of the main team so much, but I think in the end Root is the one who’s got the top spot. Sure, she might start out on the wrong side, but I think that’s one of the reasons she’s so compelling. Her switch from antagonist to protagonist is really fun to watch and honestly, in general, she is just fun to watch. And look at that smile...

4. Lemy Abelard (Evillious Chronicles)

Yes, yes, it’s time to get my weeb on. Anyway. This is my clown son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Et cetera. The best clown in the world, in my humble opinion. There’s not much competition to be had :) He’s just a good boy who loves his mother very much... the Pierrot novel’s finally started to get translated and I’m even more ready to die for him than I was before. He’s a precious child. I adore him.

5. Asuka Langley Soryu (Neon Genesis Evangelion)

Asuka, Asuka, Asuka. What am I supposed to do with you except love and cherish you, huh? I know some people think she’s a bitch, and I guess she kind of is one, but do I give a damn? No. No, I do not. Her drive to succeed and prove herself is very compelling, and her backstory hurts like hell, and honestly I just want to give her a hug and tell her that she is the best EVA pilot in the world and no one can take that away from her.

Also, after what Shinji did to her in that goddamn kitchen scene, I just... Man, I’ve been there. How could I begrudge her anything after that?

6. Akemi Homura (Puella Magi Madoka Magica)

You want to try and tell me this girl isn’t amazing? Go ahead, I dare you. She’s incredible. The amount she’s gone through would make anybody crack, but she held herself together so long, and I think that’s really amazing and admirable. Oh, Homura... I hope you get your happy ending.

Also, uh, she’s just cool. Have you seen the stuff she’s capable of? It’s awesome. And look at that hair!

7. L Lawliet (Death Note)

I’m autistic so shut the fuck up--okay, in all seriousness, this frog detective is pretty fucking great. I’m such a sucker for the genius detective archetype, particularly the ‘odd’ ones; it’s been that way for a very, very long time, and I doubt it’s going to stop any time soon.

He’s not that great a person, but I love him anyway. Honestly, I think that’s what makes him interesting! In a series like Death Note, there’s not a lot of room for ‘good’ and ‘evil’ designations, and he falls comfortably into the gray. And he’s just fun to watch!

8. Edogawa Ranpo (Bungou Stray Dogs)

I’ve already told you I’m a sucker for his archetype, but really... Ranpo is so much like a kid, but he’s so smart! He doesn’t even have a special ability, but he’s the core of the Armed Detective Agency; he doesn’t need an ability, he’s a natural genius! He’s fun and kinda relatable and I love seeing him in action. You just can’t change my mind on this one!

Also, he’s autistic too. Fight me.

9. Flandre Scarlet (Touhou Project)

I’m not ashamed to admit it--I love Flandre! She’s actually what got me into Touhou in the first place. Just look at her wings--shiny and colorful crystals--and I love shinies so is it really that hard to see why I’d like her? Plus, her theme song is fun, and she’s got a bunch of Agatha Christie references packed into one tiny little vampire, and I love Agatha Christie so... Flandre just came for my soul.

10. Kurapika (Hunter x Hunter)

It was a hard choice between him and Killua, but in the end, Kurapika won out. What can I say? Well, honestly, nothing, since I don’t fully understand it myself. I guess he’s just an interesting character.

Also, can you say ‘trans icon’? Because I can. Kurapika = trans icon. Thanks for your time.

Let’s see, I have to tag people now, don’t I... Very well.

@shadows-in-the-light-of-day @eveillious @eyeciclez @chatoyqnt @nakaharahs @krpk @adhdleorio @chuuya-nyakahara @ryuuwunosuke @omoidori if you guys don’t mind, of course ^-^ feel free to ignore this, all i request is that you not eat me for tagging you :0

[seriouslyhooked]

Scoring Your Love (Part 5/?)

Modern AU where Killian is a world famous soccer star who has hit rock bottom and been sentenced to the place where ‘football’ legends go to die – America. While here he crosses paths with Emma, an up and coming musician and film scorer who challenges everything he thought he knew and makes him want more than the game he’s always loved. Will be filled with fluff for days, and eventually rated M.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four. Story also on FF here and AO3 here.

A/N: Hello again, all! This chapter, as you might have expected, brings us right back into the fray of game day. We are picking up with Killian’s POV and though there’s a bit about the game, the bulk of the chapter has to do with the actual reuniting of Emma and Killian. I’ve been looking forward to this as I have been writing (and I am really excited to get to the fluff that will be possible hereafter), but I hope that you all enjoy and thanks so much for reading!

“All right guys, that was a solid first half. We came out strong and gave Graham very little to contend with which is always good.”

The team chuckled at their coach, Robin Locksley’s, words, all of them agreeing that it was best to keep the ball away from their own goal tender as much as possible. The less time they spent on their side of the field the better.

“That’s not to say we’ve been perfect,” Robin hedged, “I mean really, Scarlet, that tackle? He barely grazed you and you acted like you’d lost a limb.”

More laughter spread through the locker room as Will Scarlet, one of their mid-defenders, scowled at their coach’s jab. Killian was right there with them, thinking back to the show of dramatics that his new teammate had displayed which belonged in the European leagues or a World Cup match more than it did here. The Americans, for the most part, seemed intent on playing the game, not putting on a show with the hopes of procuring some reward or other.

“Oi, I’m just playing the part, mate! Not my fault you Americans can’t see the strategy in playing up a hit. Besides, Arthur King’s a wanker. I was hoping they’d card him.”

“You realize Coach isn’t actually American, right?” David whispered to Will who just shrugged.

“He’s internalized it, man. He’s completely lost his roots.” More laughter followed the ridiculous assertion.

“Question of my roots aside,” Robin said, trying to retake control of the team meeting, “I think we can all pick it up a bit this half. They’re losing steam out there. Not that you can blame them when Killian has them running all over creation.”

“Seriously, dude,” one of their fellow teammates and a younger American recruit on the team, Gus, said with a tone of appreciation. “You’re like a machine out there. We knew you were good, but not that good.”

Killian gave a slight nod of acknowledgement, knowing that he’d had a great start to the game. Two goals scored despite the obscene amount of coverage he was getting from the other side was nothing to be discouraged about, but Killian also felt he could do better. The next half was a new slate on which to make his mark and he had every intention of leaving that field tonight with a solid victory for the Galaxy and a sterling representation of his skill set for all to see. This would be a season of proving himself again, of reminding people of his talent with the ball on a pitch, and trying to erase the baggage and toxicity that had been thrown his way the past few months.

That being said, Killian couldn’t actually recall the last time a mere exposition game had left him feeling this charged and eager to succeed. Then again the setting had little to do with his emotional state. Surely the match itself was of some importance, for despite his deserving a spot in a more premiere league, Killian wanted to succeed for his sake and the sake of his teammates. But the game itself felt less significant than the unexpected twist of fate awaiting him in the stands.

And what a twist it had been. One moment he’d been focused on his pregame warm ups, sticking to his usual habits for the sake of ritual, and then he’d felt something. There was a split second before he’d seen her where he just knew that Emma was there, and then their eyes met across the field and all thoughts of blocking out the world to focus on the game were gone. His mind was racing a mile a minute with all kinds of thoughts, but the most prominent among them was how could he possibly have gotten this lucky? Here he was struggling the past few days since their chance meeting, trying to figure out how he could get in touch with this intriguing woman again just knowing her face and her first name, and not forty-eight hours later she’d just so happened to walk into his stadium, looking every bit as beautiful as she had that first afternoon.

“Well it doesn’t hurt that he’s got a bit more motivation than the rest of us,” Graham said as he strapped his keeper gloves back on, slapping Killian on the back and pushing out those thoughts of Emma. “Didn’t you all see the girl he’s been staring at?”

The cacophony of responses in the locker room was near deafening with hoots and hollers and different childish variations of ‘Killian’s got a girl!’ circulating about, but Killian still tried to play it cool despite not loving that he was completely figured out so easily. He hazarded a glance at David, the only one of his mates who had mentioned anything on the field, but Killian turned away from his meddling if well-meaning friend shortly thereafter. All game long David had been making subtle jokes about Killian’s being smitten, and it had taken Killian’s eventual confession that this was the same girl from the street a few days ago before David sobered up.

“Wait, that’s Emma?” David asked as they both caught a breather on the sidelines to get some water and catch their breath, the tone of laughter falling to the wayside as David scanned the crowd again to get a better look. “Your Emma?”

“Aye,” Killian had acknowledged, incapable of not looking back over to where she sat in the stands with her friends. She hadn’t noticed his attentions at this particular moment yet (as she had most times he snuck a glance up to this point) and he took the chance to really soak her in, watching her laugh at something one of her companions had said and feeling his gut clench at the sight. God she was beautiful, dressed for a game and a casual evening out with people who clearly meant the world to her, and he was a right moron for ever having mucked up his chance with her in the first place. He would not be so foolish again, that was for damn sure.

“Huh. Wait she’s not the one with all the team gear on, right?” David asked, his tone suddenly a bit more terse than it had been only moments before.

“Uh… no?” Killian said looking back at his new friend and finding a familiar look etched on his face. Ha! Here was David berating him for being smitten, but it seemed one of Emma’s friends had caught his eye too. Would wonders ever cease? “Why, do you know her?”

“Not yet,” David said with a grin. “But once you make it right with Emma I’ll have my in. So you should really get a move on.”

“Is this going to be a problem, Killian?” Robin asked him privately, pulling Killian from the stream of memories. It was clear their coach did not want to draw attention with the other players, probably because Killian had made one direct request when he moved to this team: he didn’t want the details of his coming here aired all over the place. Robin knew about Gold and the PR standoff, but the less people that were in the loop on the nightmare of Killian’s personal life the better.

“No, sir,” Killian replied with complete certainty. After all, he might not know Emma very well, but he could trust his instincts enough to know that she wasn’t anything like a problem. In fact, she might just be the answer to all the ones he’d faced before, but Killian was getting ahead of himself. First he had a game to win and then he could try to start and win the girl.

“Fantastic. I never was particularly good at the whole lecturing thing, and as long as you keep playing as you have I see no reason to learn now. And if Regina asks, because she always does, I’ll just tell her I trust you and that’ll be that.”

Robin made it sound like the easiest of tasks to reason with Regina Mills, their fearless and fearsome team owner. Regina was a woman seen pretty much the world over as being a hard ass who was brilliant at business but stubborn as an ox. Yet Killian knew Robin meant what he said and that his coach did have an inexplicable sway with the team’s owner. To this point Killian hadn’t seen anything that crossed professional boundaries between them, but the dynamic they had was so startlingly different than any other of Regina’s that Killian had seen that he had to hold it in high esteem. Keeping his hard bought ally happy was important after all, and it turned out the best option for managing that ally was staying on good terms with his coach.

“No offense, but I must have missed that part in my contract that said I had to run potential dates by the Queen,” Killian joked, trying to keep the mood light by using the team’s nickname for Regina. Robin replied with a blank face.

“Section six, clause C of your contract.” Killian’s jaw was set to drop at that. Bloody hell! Had he really signed something so ridiculous?! But then Robin’s stony face broke into a grin and he shook his head. “No, I’m messing with you. Just remember Regina’s an observant woman, and she’s hardly known for being subtle. When she finds out you’re seeing anyone, seriously or not, she’ll stick her nose in it without shame. Is this girl worth that?”

A call on Robin’s attention interrupted their conversation, but as his coach walked away Killian admitted to himself that yes, Emma was worth any hardship that might come to him for seeking out time with her. Technically this was supposed to be a year of lying low, but instinctively Killian knew that Emma wouldn’t be a threat to that. If anything he’d seen that look in her sparkling green eyes today that spoke to her unease at his being somewhat famous. When it dawned on her that he was a professional athlete, some things seemed to click into place, but Killian wanted to prove those assumptions wrong. He was more than the stereotype; at least he was at his core. Perhaps Killian had indulged in the frivolity of his fame at times, yes, but he was different now, or at least he wanted to be. Suddenly there was a real motivation to be better than he once was, and as he and the team headed back out for the second half of their match, Killian clung to that desire to improve.

That aspiration proved a very powerful tool, and the team won the match in the end 5-1, which had everyone in the best of spirits. Yet as his teammates celebrated, Killian couldn’t manage to ride that high with the others. All he could think through the end of game talk and their time getting cleaned up was that he had to find a way to get to Emma. He didn’t dare to dream that she’d have stuck around this long after the game since more than a half an hour had come and gone, but he had been meticulous in paying attention to where she’d been sitting, and he was confident that he could give the people at the ticket offices the right cluster of seats. For some reason he doubted that the evening had been Emma’s idea, but maybe he’d get a clue in the right direction on how to find her again, and God knew any lead would be welcomed.

“If I didn’t know better I’d say you’re about to go full stalker right now.”

David’s words were said in jest as Killian was heading out, and though Killian had no desire to delay, he was surprised to find it wasn’t necessary. It turned out that David was ready to leave already too, and Killian’s initial thought that he’d be doing this alone evaporated. He didn’t know how to feel about that. On the one hand maybe having an extra set of eyes and ears would help, but on the other Killian hadn’t any want for distraction if and when he finally did find Emma.

“But you do? Know better I mean?” Killian asked, wondering what the line actually was that he wouldn’t cross at this point. Getting into the financial records from the stadium was already a gray area, wasn’t it? But it didn’t feel anything less than necessary to Killian.

“Oh yeah. You might have a crazy look in your eyes at the moment, but you aren’t actually insane. At least not dangerously so.” David laughed at his own joke and Killian only shook his head.

“Thanks, mate. Your faith in me is uplifting as ever.”

“Don’t thank me yet. I tried to get rid of him, but I couldn’t.”

Get rid of him? Killian thought to himself, but before he could ask David to explain himself the ‘him’ he was referring to manifested. Turned out this wasn’t just a duo undertaking this search in the end, and along with David it appeared Graham was dead set on playing a part in all of this too.

“Bloody hell,” Killian muttered under his breath as Graham walked out of the locker room with the same confident swagger the man always embodied. He looked pleased to see the two of them still there and now Killian knew there was no escape from what would likely be a constant stream of jest at his expense.

“Didn’t think I was gonna miss out on you making heart eyes at that girl now did you, Jones? I’ve been waiting for this all game.”

“Anyone ever tell the two of you that you’re slightly too invested in the life of a man you’ve only just met?” Killian asked as they moved down the private club hallway towards the exit of the stadium closest to the ticket office. It was where Tiny, his bodyguard and driver, was set to meet him this evening, and it would also be a good place to start the hunt for Emma. But as they made it down the hallway, Killian found Tiny wasn’t alone. Somehow his man had already done the extensive work of tracking down Emma, for here she was, waiting in the reception area with two of her friends. Killian had a fleeting thought to give Tiny a hefty raise for such a stroke of genius, but then all of his thoughts focused squarely on the beautiful woman before him.

A moment passed where Killian hadn’t been spotted yet and his friends didn’t seem to connect that here was the woman he’d been mooning over. In that precious space of time Killian had the ability to collect his thoughts. It was a triumph for sure, considering what an enticement Emma made for even after he’d been keeping tabs on her through the game, but he centered himself to be assured that he wouldn’t fuck this up again. He would by no means wield the same conceited air that he had before. This time he’d side with humility and the honest truth that he had messed up and would never be so careless as to do so again.

“Oh good, Tiny came through in the end,” David acknowledged, sounding unsurprised and Killian pulled his glance from Emma to interrogate his friend.

“You knew about this?” Killian asked and David only smiled.

“Sure did. I asked him to help out at the half. I thought you might originally, but you seemed a little preoccupied.”

Killian knew that he had been rather distracted, and right now he was so damn grateful to David for having the foresight to do something where he had failed to. Killian immediately dropped all the resentment he’d had at having to share his reunion with Emma with other people. David could stay. After all, he’d earned it.

“Preoccupied is one word for it,” Graham said with a laugh, and the reaction was so boisterous that it ended up alerting Emma and the other two women with her of their approach.

Killian tried to ignore the laughter at his expense, and it was easily done since he now had to try and combat the fluttering of anxiety that had settled in his chest. This was his last shot to do the right thing and to show Emma he was worth her time. He could only make this second impression once. The only problem was crafting the words to do so in his head as he closed the space between he and Emma wasn’t going so well, and the next thing he knew they were only feet apart and she was looking at him expectantly.

“Forgive my current loss of words, love, I just can’t believe my luck at running into you again.”

“Yeah, small world,” Emma agreed, her voice so much softer than it had been last time, but still quizzical and cautious as it sounded out to him.

There was a clear wall still erected between the two of them, but since Emma wasn’t running from him, Killian considered that a win in itself. His behavior on the street the other day had been callous and thoughtless. As such he tried to take command of the situation with a bit more tact and gentlemanly charm. He started by smiling to her two friends and offering a handshake in greeting.

“Excuse my manners. I’m Killian Jones, and these two sorry looking blokes behind me are David Nolan and Graham Humbert.”

“Oh we know who you are,” one of Emma’s friends, the one that Dave had noticed before, responded immediately before going a little red. Killian wasn’t entirely certain, but he suspected that this woman was the cause of his good fortune. Taking a better look at her now, he could see that she was in fact decked out in team apparel and she certainly looked more a soccer fan than Emma or the taller brunette beside her.

“What Mary Margaret is trying to say is that your reputation proceeds you, both on and off the field. Isn’t that right, Emma?” the other woman asked with a smirk. Killian swore he heard a groan that came from Emma, and he most certainly saw an eye roll, but the taller woman paid it no mind as she laughed. “I’m Ruby, by the way. Ruby Lucas.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you look like one of the girls from Dawn of the Odyssey?” Graham blurted out randomly, and Killian was about to call his friend a right idiot when Ruby smiled even wider, this time a light reaching her eyes of excitement that hadn’t been present only a second ago.

“You saw that? Literally no one saw that show!” Ruby exclaimed. “Trust me I begged so many people to watch it but to no avail.”

“We’re on the road a lot,” Graham said with a shrug as David decided it was his turn to chime in.

“And though he might not look like it, Graham’s a big sci-fi nerd.”

“I have an appreciation for good stories,” Graham said, sounding embarrassed now at the ribbing, but where Killian wanted to be entertained he was mostly still anxious. His eyes remained on Emma’s and while he was trying to figure out how to get some actual alone time with her, Emma was the one to take action.

“So could we maybe… talk?” she asked as she nodded in a direction where there were less people.

“Aye, love,” he agreed, but instead of just moving away with her, Killian found himself offering his hand. Emma considered it for a moment before giving in, but when her hand was in his Killian felt his whole being come alive. To find simultaneous elation and peace was an immensely satisfying experience, and so it made it all the harder to let go when they’d maneuvered out of the direct scrutiny of their friends and taken up residence in a private corner.

“Before I say anything else, I just wanted to state for the record that I’m sorry, Emma. The way I handled myself the other day was nothing short of regrettable and I’ve thought of little else since it happened.”

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot too and there’s a slight chance I might have overreacted,” Emma acknowledged, her fingers coming up to brush a stray strand of hair behind her ear as she did.

“I’m not so sure of that, love. The fault lies entirely with me. I was trying to mask my disappointment at not getting a chance to see you again and in doing so I undermined the value of your time and attention elsewhere.” Killian watched as a little bit more of that wall around Emma’s being seemed to crumble away. It honestly didn’t feel like he was saying enough to truly express how sorry he was, but she seemed to be accepting him, and that felt like the ultimate gift.

“Well that’s… honest,” Emma said, her surprise evident in her tone, like it shocked her that he’d be totally upfront with her in this moment. “Most guys wouldn’t admit to that.”

“Despite appearances so far, I like to think I’m better than most guys. Yet still, a better man would have respected your refusal and asked for a different day. Perhaps I could do so now…” Killian edged, his breath catching as he waited for Emma to reply.

“Perhaps,” Emma responded, her voice a more gravelly whisper as her eyes cast down to his lips for a brief glance before returning to his once more. “But here in America we usually exchange numbers first.”

“Is that right?” Killian asked with a chuckle, surprised but pleased at her direction in this.

“Mhmm,” she murmured back with a smile. “Gotta give ourselves a little time to get a better feel for each other. That way if we want to back out we still can, no harm, no foul.”

“Trust me, love,” Killian said as he stepped forward, moving closer to the pulsing energy she sparked into his life. “I’ve no intention of turning my back on this. You can rest assured on that front.”

“I would hope not. I mean you’ve gone to all this trouble…” Emma said with a laugh and the sound was intoxicating, filling Killian with a warmth he never wanted to fade. “So, are you going to take out your phone, or are you one of those people with a superhuman memory?”

“Right,” Killian said, a bit embarrassed at his continued lack of ability to keep up with her, but when he looked up Emma and passed her his phone she was smiling sweetly at him. Apparently his genuine sense of being overwhelmed by her was endearing, and he was grateful she took it that way instead of being turned off. This was pretty much the opposite of his cocky come on of the past, but it was also more genuine if he was being honest.

“Well I guess I’ll see you around then, Killian Jones,” Emma said with a smirk

“I’m counting on it, Emma…” Damn! He realized only in this moment that he didn’t know her last name but she filled in easily.

“Swan. Emma Swan.”

“Swan,” Killian repeated, tasting it on his tongue as he watched her return to her friends and lead them away. And though it was hard to watch her go, Killian knew that this was indeed a great day – because now he had a means to get to Emma and he had a path ahead of him where he could try to make her see how right they were together and how rare a thing this spark between them was.

Post-Note: Nothing is more fun for me than writing CS where Emma is a little guarded but taking the risk and Killian loves her almost from first sight. It never gets old for me, because I just love this couple so much. Anyway, since it’s a little slower of a burn than some of my other stories, next chapter will not bring the date, but no worries the one after that definitely will. In the meantime there will be cuteness and a bit more set up, but mostly just light hearted fluff for days. I hope you guys enjoyed and will continue on with me when I post again in two weeks (and I do mean two weeks this time!) and thanks so much for reading!

[heatherly84]

Ben’s Ultimate Movie Playlist

When he gave this to Zane and Xur, I have no idea. Maybe after they watched Star Wars, I dunno. But watching Star Wars was why. For him, it was actually really fun and exciting to be part of shaping how aliens see his planet. And also he just loves sharing the movies he likes generally.

It was those two goals that drove what ended up in this collection and what didn’t.

So. The list. Alphabetically:

Aladdin (1992)

This is actually Ben’s favorite Disney movie. That started for a typical seven-year-old reason (it was one of the only feature length animated Disney films that wasn’t about a girl), but frequent rewatching and the passage of time has just turned it into pure, unadulterated nostalgia. 

And The Band Played On (1993)

(Author’s note: Did not realize that alphabetizing the list would put the biggest downer on it so close to the top. Whoops. /o\)

This movie made the list, even though Ben has almost no other serious ones on it, because trying to explain the whole gay thing to Ziz and Zia was a nightmare for them as a family (obviously more Nat and Zach, but- Ben cared) and he thought of this movie as the ultimate one that shows what human society has historically thought about it. And maybe that’s something Zane might want to talk to the kids about, with some context to put it in. Essentially: this is Ben trying to help Zane parent. ...that the movie he chose is so depressing says something about how Ben feels about the idea of parenting.

Clue (1985)

Ben doesn’t watch a whole lot of mysteries, but when he was told that Xur liked them, he really tried to squeeze one he really loved out of his memory. This was the first result he got. Sure, it’s not exactly a mystery in the classical sense, but it has one and it’s also really funny. He especially loves that it has three endings (his favorite is the one where Miss Scarlet did it).

Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

Secretly, Ben likes musicals. He blames Disney on general principle. This one is one of his favorites, even though it does edge too close to more serious than he’d like, because he kinda identifies with Tevye. He’s a dreamer and a joker who resolves an incredibly serious issue at one point by just making up bullshit. Yeah, Ben relates.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

This one ended up on it because of the tendency people have to refer to Zane as Space Hitler. Yeah, Ben thought he’d give him a movie about plotting to kill Hitler when people call him Space Hitler and that seemed totally appropriate. Because Zane’s trying not to be Space Hitler anymore, and that goal is one Ben really wants him to succeed at. So he’s trying to show Zane the lens through which other people see him. He knows it’s something Zane already knows, but he wants it to be something Zane feels. Part of the magic of movies is that they can give people feelings in a way that history lessons and witness statements cannot. (Though he is genuinely anxious that when Zane watches the legendary scene of Hans Landa intimidating a dude into giving up the Jews he’s hiding in the floor, Zane’s going to relate more to Landa than to Shoshanna, the girl in the floor.)

Juno (2007)

The “find him a movie about it” school of teaching people things is an ideal that Ben comes by honestly because it’s how he was raised. If Squirrel didn’t know how to explain something to him, she’d find a movie, a TV show, or a book that did. This was part of a series on sexual responsibility that his mother put him through. She chose it because it got across very nicely “sometimes people get pregnant, and giving the baby up for adoption is a choice available to them- but that can be very hard, even if you’re very sure.” 

For Ben, this is a formative movie that he has a lot of feelings about because of that, but also? It’s funny. And sweet. And has a romance that gave him a lot of feelings as a kid who was bad at socializing, because Paulie Bleaker should not remotely have been able to get a girlfriend like Juno with how awkward he is, but that happens and in context, it even makes sense. Plus, the soundtrack is fucking rad.

Kill Bill - Vol. 1 (2003)

This is just straight-up a fun action movie, with awesome sword fights and insane karate. This edges out most other action movies for Ben because- well, he likes Quentin Tarantino. (He’s the only director represented on the list four times.) And on a somewhat tactless level, he hopes that Zane will identify with someone on a revenge quest for their child, and the twist that the child is actually alive, complete with happy ending. (I suspect that’s not going to be as cool for Zane as Ben is hoping.)

Kill Bill - Vol. 2 (2004)

Well, you can’t rec the first one without the second one! The second one is the one that has the happy ending!

Moana (2016)

The first movie to make it as part of Ben’s Intro To Human Religion series. Ben’s not a particularly religious person, but he recognizes how much of that informs human culture- and also that Zane’s kind of going through a crisis of faith right about now. So here’s a story about what humans think gods are like, what other gods are out there, and what kind of relationship some humans have with them. (Yeah, Moana and Maui have a relationship that’s between god and man. Weird to think of that way, huh? *g*)

Also, it’s just plain got a good story with cool characters and a good soundtrack. ...this is the second time that observation has been part of a movie’s selection for the list. It will not be the last.

Mulan (1998)

Ben’s second favorite Disney movie. (His feelings on Classic Disney, like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty is that yeah, they’re prettier, but he doesn’t like the stories or music as much.) This is very much his Weep A Lot Over My Daddy Issues movie, which is not really a secret. Mulan goes on the quest as part of her search for independent self-identity, sure (and he figures Zane can relate to that), but at the heart of it all, she did everything for her father. 

Ben doesn’t know what it’s like to have a father, but he likes to imagine it involves loving and being loved that much.

Plus: LET’S! GET DOWN! TO BUSINESS!

Newsies (1992)

Part of Ben’s secret love for musicals. This is a favorite- although he’s seen this five hundred times and actually still can’t describe the plot to anybody beyond, “Um. Strike, strike, strike, strike! ...?” But he remembers the songs and the dances. Holy fuck, does he remember the songs and the dances. If he wasn’t tall enough now to hit his head on the ceiling, he would probably still sometimes jump on his bed singing “King of New York.” 

Other than that, he’s also hoping to teach Zane to root for the underdog. Which is a pretty important component to human movies in general, actually.

Prince of Egypt (1998)

Another part of Intro to Human Religion. Ben finds the actual Bible very tedious, but discovered in films that a lot of the stories in it are fucking amazing. This is a good one for that because from the very beginning, the stakes feel tremendously high: it starts with Moses’ mother, a slave, trying to hide her baby from Pharaoh’s soldiers so that he isn’t killed. That is a strong as hell opening, and the movie is very good at keeping you on the edge and very invested in what’s going to happen.

As ways to introduce Zane to the most popular theology on Earth goes, he figures this movie is better than most.

Psycho (1960)

Another that made the list because Ben wanted to have more mysteries for Xur and this was the closest he could think of. This DVD case actually has the plot summary on the back removed with a note stuck in its place that says, “Report back. I wanna know when you cracked the twist.”

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Another Tarantino. This one was chosen because it has more pop culture jammed into its first fifteen minutes than most of the other movies on this list combined. If you wanted to condense everything you needed to know but were afraid to ask about late 20th/early 21st century humans into one movie, it would probably be this one. 

Plus, how fucking legendary is Samuel L. Jackson doing that fake Bible verse?

Plus plus, also a great soundtrack!

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Ben realized at some point he had got this far without having even a single horror movie on the list. He’s not a huge fan of horror, but at the same time, he felt like he should make an effort to include one. Just for the sake of exposing them to the idea. ...also, this one’s scary as hell, even though there’s almost no violence and only one special effect in the whole damn thing. That’s actually a majorly impressive achievement.

It cemented its place when he realized that its plot is kind of also a mystery. (The next time he sees Xur, he is going to apologize for how many of his choices are only “sort of” a mystery or “also has a mystery,” nothing is straight-up procedural. He just doesn’t really watch them.)

Saved! (2004)

Continuing Intro To Human Religion, but also borrowing again from his mom’s series on sexual responsibility. (”Keeping the baby is a choice you can make, too.”) This one’s a comedy that’s also a great look at Evangelical Christianity (...it’s very critical of it). He thought it was probably a more helpful choice than Prince of Egypt was, since that one’s about the mythology that inspires people to believe, but this one is about how people who believe actually live. 

He did tape a note to the cover to watch Prince of Egypt first, though. The scene where Mary tries to get G-d to smite her really only makes sense if you already have the context that G-d smites people occasionally.

Se7en (1995)

“Finally, a mystery that’s pretty unambiguously a mystery! Shows police work and research! Excitement! \o/

...okay, yeah, it’s also a gruesome horror movie with a horrifying twist ending, but I’m doing my best here, okay?”

Does not count as Intro to Human Religion, but Ben did consider that some of the movies that are will probably give helpful context to this one.

The Shining (1980)

Also part of his “crap, I should add some horror movies” selection, although like Rosemary’s Baby, it made the list because it’s good and it’s scary, even without a lot of violence or special effects, just something that builds tension and builds it and builds it and builds it until the protagonist snaps and it’s almost a relief that you’re not just waiting for when he’s finally gonna do that anymore.

As human movies go, it’s a fucking great one.

Sound of Music (1965)

This movie appeals to Ben on several levels. One, it’s a musical, and it’s probably one of the best ones, at that. Two, Ben had a desperate hunger as a child for brothers and sisters, and this movie is about seven of them. Just watching them all together was the kind of thing that could suck him into a movie for no other good reason as a kid. Three, they’re siblings in a band. Fuck. Yes.

Oh, and there’s some cool historical drama stuff unfolding.

But mostly that siblings in a band thing.

West Side Story (1961)

Just one more musical! Just one! This actually isn’t one of his favorites (did they not have Latinos in the sixties? Were we invented by a mad scientist in 1985?), but he recognizes that its influence on how musicals would be made afterwards is important and worth acknowledging. Also, they managed to make Romeo and Juliet without suicide, that’s pretty cool.

And who among us could ever resist singing “I Feel Pretty” in the shower after hearing it for the first time?

Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968)

This movie is basically sibling porn* for people who used to fervently wish they had siblings. Ben grew up enraptured by the relationship between Mike and Philip as they go from stepbrothers to brothers. He also still falls over laughing over the line, “My sister’s locked herself in the bathroom and she can’t get out and I can’t get in and it’s my turn!” “Which sister?” “I don’t know her name yet, but she’s stuck for sure!”

It’s also basically “being a military family” porn for people who might be into that. Like, for instance, Xur or Zane.

[fesahaawit]

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017)

What up, y’all! Just got back and sobered up from our financial blogging conference, and thought I’d share some of the highlights from it.

Namely, the handful of new financial companies that were part of our yearly fintech competition I helped judge! It’s always so interesting to see how people use technology to solve our problems out there, and just like last year’s competition this one did not disappoint.

But first, gotta give it up to PT Money for organizing this amazing event each and every year (it was my 7th one attending!), as well as to all the other bloggers who volunteered their time to make it happen. If you’re a $$$ blogger or podcaster or just plain obsessed with personal finance, you NEED to come out to it one year and experience what it’s all about! I promise you will leave incredibly motivated or I will shut down this blog forever ;) (Or at least buy you a beer to cry into – hah)

So what happened at FinCon 2017?

Here are a few of the more exciting highlights… Because good luck telling social media people that what happens at FinCon stays at FinCon! ;)

Rapper Dee-1 crowd surfed while rapping his hit song, Sally Mae Back (Crowd surfed! At a financial blogging conference!)

Best selling author David Bach (of Automatic Millionaire fame) popped in to share his wild story on getting on Oprah for the first time, and how the Latte Factor is “not about the damn lattes!” Haha… Rebuking the hate he so often gets when people say they will never give up their coffees no matter how sexy compound interest is ;) He may or may not have also dropped a few F bombs on stage showing that he is definitely not one of the more stuffier financial “experts” out there. Super cool to run into him around 1 am on the last night too to talk shop! (Interesting fact: he’s fairly short)

Darren Rowse shared his story of how he became one of the world’s first professional bloggers when one of his camera reviews went viral over night. He’d later go on to start two majorly successful blogs, including the one most bloggers are familiar with and learn from: ProBlogger.com

Chris Guillebeau of The $100 Startup and The Art of Non-Comformity talked about how it’s perfectly okay to let a side hustle be just that – a side hustle! There’s no rule that you need to turn it into a full-time job if you’re perfectly happy with your current one. Just let it be your creative outlet while you bring home some extra side money! (I agree with this 100%!! Not all of us are born to run companies!!)

Cait Flanders held a presentation on writing Rockstar content that was packed solid which we think/hope went over pretty well! Interweaving the back story of Rockstar Finance and how it’s evolved over the years as well. (Cait curates it with me, and is one of my favorite bloggers on the scene)

A bunch of people from our community created a parody of The Office called The Floor which was shown at our annual blogger award ceremony and was downright HILARIOUS. Then ended with a surprise live musical performance by American Idol contestant Dalton Rapattoni! (It was all about the music this year, haha… Thx for putting it together, Scott Alan Turner!)

And lastly – we had one pretty damn fun Halloween party to wrap up the conference! Erik from The Mastermind Within said it best: “it was hilarious to see people with $1 million+ net worth’s singing Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back”.” Haha… That’s how we roll! If you can’t live it up, what’s the point of all that money??

As for the best costume of the night? I gave it to this guy. Can you tell why? ;)

(full back story here – he totally shaved his head for this!!)

Other interesting gems pertaining to yours truly: I randomly got interviewed in the bathroom, and I was  presented with the International Blogger of The Year award from UK’s SHOMO awards. Where I then made an acceptance speech that included “Long live the queen!” which I thought was pretty clever? ;)

Now to the Fintech Competition, and the 10 new financial companies to watch out for!

As I mentioned, I was one of the two judges for it again this year, where our ratings made up for 50% of the votes with the audiences’ making up the other 50%. We awarded two prizes for the night – $1,000 for first and $500 for 2nd – and below are my honest opinions of each, along with what they do. I’m not getting compensated by anyone listed here, and there are no affiliate links included at all.

Follow along and see if you can guess who won! :) In no particular order:

Agreeable (AgreeableApp.com) — Agreeable was one of my favorite apps who presented, and was built to help solve the problem of no shows whenever you go to meet someone off Craigslist or Facebook. Whereas currently you’re just $hit out of both luck and time when the buyer/seller doesn’t show up, with this app you’d actually get *paid* an agreed upon amount if anyone bails, ensuring that it’s in both parties’ interests to make the scheduled time. There were some privacy concerns I first had with this as it tracks both of your locations to confirm that the two sides made it to the meet-up okay, but after talking w/ one of the founders at a party afterwards I was impressed with their patent-pending solution to this. We’ll see if this puppy takes off, but I’m personally rooting for it to! (Also can be used for soooo many other areas in life too – imagine if Comcast or other services were forced to pay you if they never show up when they’re supposed to?? We’d all be rich! ;))

Birch Finance (BirchFinance.com) — This app was another killer idea, which I SWORE already existed but I guess not (a good sign that they’re onto something!). Basically, you tell Birch what credit cards you have and use, and then it’ll analyze them as you’re out shopping and tell you which ones to use to reap the *best* rewards, as well as *how much* you’ll get back by them, rather than you having to guess all the time. It’ll then show you other cards out in the market, and compare what would have happened had you used *those* cards instead of the ones you currently have. And since it’s all based on your specific transactions and spending patterns, you can see first hand exactly what your cards – or future cards – are worth to you. A pretty epic tool for any card hackers/lovers. (I’ll never use it since I’m a minimalist with just my one USAA card, but I’d be allll on it if I were in the rewards game!)

Budgit (BudgitApp.com) — Budgit is an automated budgeting and savings service that organizes your bills and spending so you can save for your goals. I tried real hard to figure out how these guys were different from all the other budgeting apps out there – and even posed the question during Q&A time – but even after doing so I was honestly still just as confused. They actually have this question posed word for word at the bottom of their website (“How is Budgit different?”) but the 3 answers given were “No ads ever”, “Hassle-free”, and “Secure and private.” Which I’m pretty sure most apps are?? All that said, as a budget guy I don’t think you can have *too many* apps out there spreading the good word, so I very much wish them all the luck and success as they can get. (PS: This app is not the same one as BudgIT)

College Backer (CollegeBacker.com) — These guys were pretty cool as they help get people to gift their child 529 contributions instead of more toys and “stuff.” Something I very much try to do every year too and rarely succeed! ;) And while like Budgit I couldn’t pin point how exactly this service is different than the others out there on the scene (there’s quite a few who let families and friends jump in to make this happen), I did like the general purpose of it and hope they take me up on my recommendation to pair these gifts with some sort of physical item too so the kids don’t totally hate opening up the gift of 529 funding, haha…

Honeyfi (Honeyfi.com) — Honeyfi is a new app *for couples* that makes sharing your budget and managing your money much easier together. Which I absolutely love! Honeyfi allows you to collaborate, link accounts, and even message each other at any time through the app so everyone in the relationship can be on the exact same page. There’s not many apps I can think of that focuses mainly on couples (actually, I can’t think of one?), so I’m really hoping this one takes off as I think they’re onto something good here… Budgets are even sexier when TWO people are involved!! ;)

KINFO (GoKINFO.com) — KINFO is an app for DIY investors that brings together information from hedge funds, insiders, analysts, bloggers and other private investors so you can see what everyone else is doing along side you. Particularly bloggers which the founder seems most excited about as it helps put all of our personal recommendations into one spot for people. Though as many of you know mine would look pretty boring as it would only show one fund: VTSAX :) I’m not sure if looking at what others are doing adds more or less noise into the decision making process (probably more?), but then again I was influenced to go All In with Vanguard from my peers so it could prove to be a pretty helpful resource.

Squeeze (Squeeze.com) — Squeeze is an app that helps you save by finding the best deals, promo codes, and coupons directly related to your current spending. It sounded a lot like the others in the field so I had a hard time putting them into their own special bucket, but needless to say you can’t have too many coupons in this hyper consumer world of ours… And as for branding, they absolutely NAILED it. Some of the other fintech names were pretty random!

Take Command Health (TakeCommandHealth.com) — These guys won my personal award for the best presentation, if only for the inclusion of photoshopped Trump and Obama pics littered throughout :) But their app was def. no joke. In a nutshell, Take Command helps you easily find the best option for health coverage by using big data to help source the best, and cheapest, health care options for you both on and off the exchange. They also shared the release of their small business feature which helps companies offer better and cheaper plans to their employees as well – something that many places are struggling hard with right now. So while the topic of health insurance typically doesn’t turn heads (at least for good reasons!), these guys had our immediate attention and I wouldn’t be surprised a bit if they hit a home run with this.

Qoins (Qoins.io) — Do these guys look familiar?? They should! I featured them here last year the second I came across them because they’re the FIRST to finally apply “rounding up” technology to debt!!! Which is something severely lacking in our industry… And while I had to recuse myself from voting on this one since I was definitely biased (they donated $$$ to our Community Fund over at Rockstar Finance), I was beyond pleased to see them here and thought they gave a great presentation. You can find my review of them here (I was the first ever blogger to share them!) but in a nutshell they round up all your transactions to the nearest dollar, and then uses the spare change to help pay off your debt every month. It won’t clear all of it, but every $30 or $40/mo helps!

WizeFi (Wizefi.com) — WizeFi is a paid app ($8/mo) that helps organize your finances, analyzing everything from your assets and liabilities to your insurance and spending habits. Once hooked up it’ll then estimate your future net worth if you continue spending the way you’re currently spending, and then compare it to your future net worth if you follow your custom WizeFi wealth-building plan. It comes with a super slick interface and the focus on net worth of course turned me on, but at the end of the day not too sure that alone is worth the $8. Especially since it doesn’t physically *move* the money for you like Digit or Acorns does and still requires you to take action (which most people won’t). I was also turned off by the mentions of an affiliate program for customers to make more money, both in the presentation as well as on their website (it’s prominently listed as the #3 reason to sign up?!), even though I’m sure the founder meant well. Overall would have been better if you had the chance to test out a free version, with an option to upgrade later to “pro” or something similar if interested…

Alright… Ready to guess who won?? Any really stand out to you??

Here were the 1st and 2nd place winners after all the votes were tallied up:

Birch Finance

Take Command Health

Honestly though, ALL of these guys came out winning as they not only got to pitch in front of tons of $$$ influencers and enthusiasts, but also landed on this illustrious blog here!!! Haha… Surely that’s worth at *least* $10.00 right? ;)

So congrats to everyone who participated. I wish I were smart enough to come up with my own money app! If you want to take a look at last year’s competition and results, you can find that here: Fintech Competition 2016

Next Year’s FinCon Event…

If you can believe it, plans are already in the works for next year’s conference! If you’ve always wanted to visit Orlando, Florida – now’s your chance! We’ll be partying it up with Mickey next year :) Learn more and pick up tickets here: FinconExpo.com/2018

So there we are – another great conference on the books :) THANK YOU thank you THANK YOU to everyone who came out and put up with me over the weekend! It was a blast hanging out with my 2nd family in the flesh, and I wish you all a most successful next year.

Special shout out to the following who really made me smile throughout: Chelsea Norton, Cait Flanders, Steve Adcock, Jim $, Shin, Bobby Lee, Pete McPherson, Latoya Scott, Fritz, Hélène, Hannah Rounds, the Tiller Team, Miss Mazuma, Optimal Finance Daily, John and Sharon Duffy, Shannon Austin, The Dumpster Dog, Miss Thrifty, Maria Nedeva, FIREcracker, and Romeo Jeremiah.

See y’all in another 11 months!

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017) posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

[heliosfinance]

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017)

What up, y’all! Just got back and sobered up from our financial blogging conference, and thought I’d share some of the highlights from it.

Namely, the handful of new financial companies that were part of our yearly fintech competition I helped judge! It’s always so interesting to see how people use technology to solve our problems out there, and just like last year’s competition this one did not disappoint.

But first, gotta give it up to PT Money for organizing this amazing event each and every year (it was my 7th one attending!), as well as to all the other bloggers who volunteered their time to make it happen. If you’re a $$$ blogger or podcaster or just plain obsessed with personal finance, you NEED to come out to it one year and experience what it’s all about! I promise you will leave incredibly motivated or I will shut down this blog forever ;) (Or at least buy you a beer to cry into – hah)

So what happened at FinCon 2017?

Here are a few of the more exciting highlights… Because good luck telling social media people that what happens at FinCon stays at FinCon! ;)

Rapper Dee-1 crowd surfed while rapping his hit song, Sally Mae Back (Crowd surfed! At a financial blogging conference!)

Best selling author David Bach (of Automatic Millionaire fame) popped in to share his wild story on getting on Oprah for the first time, and how the Latte Factor is “not about the damn lattes!” Haha… Rebuking the hate he so often gets when people say they will never give up their coffees no matter how sexy compound interest is ;) He may or may not have also dropped a few F bombs on stage showing that he is definitely not one of the more stuffier financial “experts” out there. Super cool to run into him around 1 am on the last night too to talk shop! (Interesting fact: he’s fairly short)

Darren Rowse shared his story of how he became one of the world’s first professional bloggers when one of his camera reviews went viral over night. He’d later go on to start two majorly successful blogs, including the one most bloggers are familiar with and learn from: ProBlogger.com

Chris Guillebeau of The $100 Startup and The Art of Non-Comformity talked about how it’s perfectly okay to let a side hustle be just that – a side hustle! There’s no rule that you need to turn it into a full-time job if you’re perfectly happy with your current one. Just let it be your creative outlet while you bring home some extra side money! (I agree with this 100%!! Not all of us are born to run companies!!)

Cait Flanders held a presentation on writing Rockstar content that was packed solid which we think/hope went over pretty well! Interweaving the back story of Rockstar Finance and how it’s evolved over the years as well. (Cait curates it with me, and is one of my favorite bloggers on the scene)

A bunch of people from our community created a parody of “The Office” which was shown at our annual blogger award ceremony and was downright HILARIOUS. Then ended with a surprise performance from American Idol contestant Dalton Rapattoni! (It was all about the music this year, haha… Thx for putting it together, Scott Alan Turner!)

And lastly – we had one pretty damn fun Halloween party to wrap up the conference! Erik from The Mastermind Within said it best: “it was hilarious to see people with $1 million+ net worth’s singing Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back”.” Haha… That’s how we roll! If you can’t live it up, what’s the point of all that money??

As for the best costume of the night? I gave it to this guy. Can you tell why? ;)

(full back story here – he totally shaved his head for this!!)

Other interesting gems pertaining to yours truly: I randomly got interviewed in the bathroom, and I was  presented with the International Blogger of The Year award from UK’s SHOMO awards. Where I then made an acceptance speech that included “Long live the queen!” which I thought was pretty clever? ;)

Now to the Fintech Competition, and the 10 new financial companies to watch out for!

As I mentioned, I was one of the two judges for it again this year, where our ratings made up for 50% of the votes with the audiences’ making up the other 50%. We awarded two prizes for the night – $1,000 for first and $500 for 2nd – and below are my honest opinions of each, along with what they do. I’m not getting compensated by anyone listed here, and there are no affiliate links included at all.

Follow along and see if you can guess who won! :) In no particular order:

Agreeable (AgreeableApp.com) — Agreeable was one of my favorite apps who presented, and was built to help solve the problem of no shows whenever you go to meet someone off Craigslist or Facebook. Whereas currently you’re just $hit out of both luck and time when the buyer/seller doesn’t show up, with this app you’d actually get *paid* an agreed upon amount if anyone bails, ensuring that it’s in both parties’ interests to make the scheduled time. There were some privacy concerns I first had with this as it tracks both of your locations to confirm that the two sides made it to the meet-up okay, but after talking w/ one of the founders at a party afterwards I was impressed with their patent-pending solution to this. We’ll see if this puppy takes off, but I’m personally rooting for it to! (Also can be used for soooo many other areas in life too – imagine if Comcast or other services were forced to pay you if they never show up when they’re supposed to?? We’d all be rich! ;))

Birch Finance (BirchFinance.com) — This app was another killer idea, which I SWORE already existed but I guess not (a good sign that they’re onto something!). Basically, you tell Birch what credit cards you have and use, and then it’ll analyze them as you’re out shopping and tell you which ones to use to reap the *best* rewards, as well as *how much* you’ll get back by them, rather than you having to guess all the time. It’ll then show you other cards out in the market, and compare what would have happened had you used *those* cards instead of the ones you currently have. And since it’s all based on your specific transactions and spending patterns, you can see first hand exactly what your cards – or future cards – are worth to you. A pretty epic tool for any card hackers/lovers. (I’ll never use it since I’m a minimalist with just my one USAA card, but I’d be allll on it if I were in the rewards game!)

Budgit (BudgitApp.com) — Budgit is an automated budgeting and savings service that organizes your bills and spending so you can save for your goals. I tried real hard to figure out how these guys were different from all the other budgeting apps out there – and even posed the question during Q&A time – but even after doing so I was honestly still just as confused. They actually have this question posed word for word at the bottom of their website (“How is Budgit different?”) but the 3 answers given were “No ads ever”, “Hassle-free”, and “Secure and private.” Which I’m pretty sure most apps are?? All that said, as a budget guy I don’t think you can have *too many* apps out there spreading the good word, so I very much wish them all the luck and success as they can get. (PS: This app is not the same one as BudgIT)

College Backer (CollegeBacker.com) — These guys were pretty cool as they help get people to gift their child 529 contributions instead of more toys and “stuff.” Something I very much try to do every year too and rarely succeed! ;) And while like Budgit I couldn’t pin point how exactly this service is different than the others out there on the scene (there’s quite a few who let families and friends jump in to make this happen), I did like the general purpose of it and hope they take me up on my recommendation to pair these gifts with some sort of physical item too so the kids don’t totally hate opening up the gift of 529 funding, haha…

Honeyfi (Honeyfi.com) — Honeyfi is a new app *for couples* that makes sharing your budget and managing your money much easier together. Which I absolutely love! Honeyfi allows you to collaborate, link accounts, and even message each other at any time through the app so everyone in the relationship can be on the exact same page. There’s not many apps I can think of that focuses mainly on couples (actually, I can’t think of one?), so I’m really hoping this one takes off as I think they’re onto something good here… Budgets are even sexier with TWO people are involved!! ;)

KINFO (GoKINFO.com) — KINFO is an app for DIY investors that brings together information from hedge funds, insiders, analysts, bloggers and other private investors so you can see what everyone else is doing along side you. Particularly bloggers which the founder seems most excited about as it helps put all of our personal recommendations into one spot for people. Though as many of you know mine would look pretty boring as it would only show one fund: VTSAX :) I’m not sure if looking at what others is doing adds more or less noise into the decision making process (probably more?), but then again I was influenced to go All In with Vanguard from my peers so it could prove to be a pretty helpful resource.

Squeeze (Squeeze.com) — Squeeze is an app that helps you save by finding the best deals, promo codes, and coupons directly related to your current spending. It sounded a lot like the others in the field so I had a hard time putting them into their own special bucket, but needless to say you can’t have too many coupons in this hyper consumer world of ours… And as for branding, they absolutely NAILED it. Some of the other fintech names were pretty random!

Take Command Health (TakeCommandHealth.com) — These guys won my personal award for the best presentation, if only for the inclusion of photoshopped Trump and Obama pics littered throughout :) But their app was def. no joke. In a nutshell, Take Command helps you easily find the best option for health coverage by using big data to help source the best, and cheapest, health care options for you both on and off the exchange. They also shared the release of their small business feature which helps companies offer better and cheaper plans to their employees as well – something that many places are struggling hard with right now. So while the topic of health insurance typically doesn’t turn heads (at least for good reasons!), these guys had our immediate attention and I wouldn’t be surprised a bit if they hit a home run with this.

Qoins (Qoins.io) — Do these guys look familiar?? They should! I featured them here last year the second I came across them because they’re the FIRST to finally apply “rounding up” technology to debt!!! Which is something severely lacking in our industry… And while I had to recuse myself from voting on this one since I was definitely biased (they donated $$$ to our Community Fund over at Rockstar Finance), I was beyond pleased to see them here and thought they gave a great presentation. You can find my review of them here (I was the first ever blogger to share them!) but in a nutshell they round up all your transactions to the nearest dollar, and then uses the spare change to help pay off your debt every month. It won’t clear all of it, but every $30 or $40/mo helps!

WizeFi (Wizefi.com) — WizeFi is a paid app ($8/mo) that helps organize your finances, analyzing everything from your assets and liabilities to your insurance and spending habits. Once hooked up it’ll then estimate your future net worth if you continue spending the way you’re currently spending, and then compare it to your future net worth if you follow your custom WizeFi wealth-building plan. It comes with a super slick interface and the focus on net worth of course turned me on, but at the end of the day not too sure that alone is worth the $8. Especially since it doesn’t physically *move* the money for you like Digit or Acorns does and still requires you to take action (which most people won’t). I was also turned off by the mentions of an affiliate program for customers to make more money, both in the presentation as well as on their website (it’s prominently listed as the #3 reason to sign up?!), even though I’m sure the founder meant well. Overall would have been better if you had the chance to test out a free version, with an option to upgrade later to “pro” or something similar if interested…

Alright… Ready to guess who won?? Any really stand out to you??

Here were the 1st and 2nd place winners after all the votes were tallied up:

Birch Finance

Take Command Health

Honestly though, ALL of these guys came out winning as they not only got to pitch in front of tons of $$$ influencers and enthusiasts, but also landed on this illustrious blog here!!! Haha… Surely that’s worth at *least* $10.00 right? ;)

So congrats to everyone who participated. I wish I were smart enough to come up with my own money app! If you want to take a look at last year’s competition and results, you can find that here: Fintech Competition 2016

Next Year’s FinCon Event…

If you can believe it, plans are already in the works for next year’s conference! If you’ve always wanted to visit Orlando, Florida – now’s your chance! We’ll be partying it up with Mickey next year :) More details to come…

So there we are – another great conference on the books :) THANK YOU thank you THANK YOU to everyone who came out and put up with me over the weekend! It was a blast hanging out with my 2nd family in the flesh, and I wish you all a most successful next year.

Special shout out to the following who really made me smile throughout: Chelsea Norton, Cait Flanders, Steve Adcock, Jim $, Shin, Bobby Lee, Pete McPherson, Latoya Scott, Fritz, Hélène, Hannah Rounds, the Tiller Team, Miss Mazuma, Optimal Finance Daily, John and Sharon Duffy, Shannon Austin, The Dumpster Dog, Miss Thrifty, Maria Nedeva, FIREcracker, and Romeo Jeremiah.

See y’all in another 11 months!

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017) published first on http://ift.tt/2ljLF4B

[tragicbooks]

<p>7 surprisingly sweet moments you may have missed in this week's 'Game of Thrones.'<br></p>

Welcome to “A Song of Nice and Fire” Upworthy’s weekly series recapping one of the most brutal shows on TV. Since brutality is not really in our wheelhouse, Eric March has taken it upon himself to dig deep, twist and turn, and squint really hard to see if he can find the light of kindness in all the darkness. He may not always succeed, but by gosh if he won’t try his best.

Here’s what he found on this week’s "Game of Thrones."

Someone's got a case of the Mondays! Image by Macall B. Polay/HBO.

This show'll break your heart. Even with the forces we think we're kinda maybe supposed to be rooting for (sorta? It's maddeningly unclear) on the march, a lot of bad stuff still manages to happen on "Game of Thrones," not infrequently to characters you only just started to care about (RIP Dick Tarley).

Yet, it's not all unstoppable frozen killing machines, deadly mind games, and bright young men cut down in the prime of youth.

Here are the silver linings and genuinely nice moments you may have missed:

1. Drogon shows restraint by not burning literally everything and everyone.

Good show, you guys. Image by Macall B. Polay/HBO.

Incinerating a couple of treasonous lords is just another Tuesday for everybody's favorite flying flame-thrower. This time, however, Drogon had the impeccable fashion sense to leave Dickon and Randyll Tarley's stylish cloaks behind. How do you say "that's progress!" in High Valyrian?

Later, the deadly dragon demonstrates even further chill by accepting a face rub from Jon and, even more importantly, not eating and/or barbecuing him (the King in the North, it continuously turns out, is family, but still).

Yeah, Drogon roasted thousands of men to death just last week, but whatever. You gotta figure ... when it comes to a giant, amoral, fire-breathing dragon, it's gonna be two steps forward, one step back.

2. The old guys in the North acknowledge that Sansa wears that wolf queen cloak pretty damn well.

Over the past several episodes, we've begun to get the impression that yes, duh, Sansa is actually good at this lording thing. It's a revelation that finally makes its way through the thick, arbor red-addled skulls of some assorted old northern and Eyrie lords who come to realize this week (a little too late, guys!) that they kinda wish they voted for the competent, savvy woman when they had the chance.* Even Arya finally acknowledges that being the boss seems to agree with her sister, even if she does so grudgingly and passive-agressively with a whiff of "be careful I don't stab you."

Sure, Sansa's a little power hungry (aren't we all?), but being a wee bit shifty, while not being an outright psychotic murderer is exactly the right posture for the Westerosi ruler who doesn't want to get shivved, beheaded, burned alive, flayed, eaten by dogs, or some worse thing that, dear God, I hope doesn't get deployed in season eight.

Inasmuch as anyone can "got this" on "Game of Thrones," Sansa has got this. And people are finally figuring that out. Slow, but steady, everyone!

Good, too, on Masie Williams for playing their entire interaction like the world's most annoyed little sister — the contrast with the (significant) stakes was A+.

*There's a lesson here. It's going over my head, presently.

3. Cersei allows Jaime some bro time with Tyrion.

Queen gotta get her "staring blankly into the middle distance" in. Image by Helen Sloan/HBO.

Sure, she suspects Tyrion murdered their father (true!) and her son Joffrey (untrue!), but she knows Jaime has a soft spot for his valonqar, she likes Jaime, and, hey, it's nice for the two of them to get to hang out before the baby (the baby!) arrives.

Also, it never hurts to source a little timely intelligence on your biggest geopolitical foe and turn it to your advantage. But ... you know, details. Jaime and Tyrion got their bro time!

4.  Arya and Littlefinger kill some time playing hide and seek!

Skulking around a frozen castle, drilling with swords, hauling grain, and trying not to get killed by ice zombies can be stressful. What better way to relieve it than with a fun, friendly game the whole family can enjoy?

It's a small castle, but Petyr Baelish and the tiniest, most murder-y Stark are both naturals, natch. And while neither finds the other, Arya does uncover a sweet note Sansa wrote home (under duress) way back in season one, urging her brother (RIP Robb Stark) to pledge his loyalty to the Lannisters! What are the odds?

(Even pausing right on the frame, it was next to impossible to make out what this note actually, you know, said. Credit to Twitter user Daemon Blackfyre for doing the old gods' work here).

The note they made Sansa write to Robb after Ned was betrayed. #ThronesYall http://pic.twitter.com/3MSnFxjutv

— Daemon Blackfyre (@Dpzzle) August 14, 2017

5. Pretty much everyone is really putting that teleporter to good use!

Westeros is roughly the size of South America. Yet, this season, and this episode especially, people seem to get around really, really fast. Like the Dothraki last week, Jamie two weeks ago, and Jon before that — basically everyone everywhere has been zipping across the continent at lightning speed, petting dragons one minute and stalking ice zombies the next. Going from glowering around a rocky island fortress to glowering around a distant blacksmith shop and back to glowering on that rocky island in what seems like an hour-and-a-half.

While slow-burn character development has its place or whatever, we're on season seven here, people! Fast-forwarding this stuff is a marked improvement on previous seasons when characters would spend 17 episodes chatting and riding horses, conquering neighboring cities, or walking from one castle to another very-similar looking castle, like, five miles away.

Mad props to whatever time-traveler saw fit to drop by and introduce quantum teleportation to the Seven Kingdoms. It's a good look.

But we wouldn't want to get too ahead of ourselves, which is why it's super nice that...

6. Sam (accidentally) preserves some sense of story pacing.

Fellas, we've all been there. Your girlfriend discovers your best friend is actually the trueborn heir to the Iron Throne, thus solving the whole puzzle of the whole show, but you can't be bothered because you're mad about some dumb stuff going on in your personal life.

**what it's like being a woman** GILLY: here's the biggest reveal of the season it says— SAM: could you shut up I'm tired of this let's go

— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) August 14, 2017

Nevertheless, with everyone blasting themselves to and fro over the content to get that plot stuff done, it's heroic of Sam to slam on the brakes a little here for the audience, even if it required being unreasonably rude to Gilly in the process.

Hey, at least Little Sam gets to learn how to read!

7. The gang puts aside their differences!

This terrified striding will show 'em. Image by Helen Sloan/HBO.

Yeah, it sucks that the one guy (Beric Dondarrion) sold the other guy (Gendry) to a murdering witch, and that the third guy's (Jorah's) dad's job was to kill all of another guy's (Tormund's) friends and that yet another guy (the Hound) used to work for the family that killed the guy the sixth guy (Jon) thinks is his dad but isn't. But credit to The Hound for politely pointing out that none of that matters, and really, they should all be friends and focus on finding a solution to the real head-scratcher: what to do about the horde of walking dead people slowly staggering forth to kill them all.

When you've got a suggestion in a group setting, it's always nice to put it respectfully. Cheers to The Hound for personifying class.

Random acts of niceness:

Davos gives those two gold cloaks some free, organic Westerosi Fermented Crab Viagra before Gendry brutally war-hammers them to death. Hope it was an enjoyable last few seconds!

Varys expresses some regret for being adjacent to so many murders. Points, I guess.

That's all for now! Join me next week when, hopefully, Cersei aces baby yoga, a doubled-over Littlefinger explains the whole silly prank to Sansa and Arya and the Night King calls the entire thing off after realizing eternal life is pretty cool on its own without having to kill a bunch of mortal beings to feel better about yourself.

[socialviralnews]

<p>7 surprisingly sweet moments you may have missed in this week's 'Game of Thrones.'<br></p>

Welcome to “A Song of Nice and Fire” Upworthy’s weekly series recapping one of the most brutal shows on TV. Since brutality is not really in our wheelhouse, Eric March has taken it upon himself to dig deep, twist and turn, and squint really hard to see if he can find the light of kindness in all the darkness. He may not always succeed, but by gosh if he won’t try his best.

Here’s what he found on this week’s "Game of Thrones."

Someone's got a case of the Mondays! Image by Macall B. Polay/HBO.

This show'll break your heart. Even with the forces we think we're kinda maybe supposed to be rooting for (sorta? It's maddeningly unclear) on the march, a lot of bad stuff still manages to happen on "Game of Thrones," not infrequently to characters you only just started to care about (RIP Dick Tarley).

Yet, it's not all unstoppable frozen killing machines, deadly mind games, and bright young men cut down in the prime of youth.

Here are the silver linings and genuinely nice moments you may have missed:

1. Drogon shows restraint by not burning literally everything and everyone.

Good show, you guys. Image by Macall B. Polay/HBO.

Incinerating a couple of treasonous lords is just another Tuesday for everybody's favorite flying flame-thrower. This time, however, Drogon had the impeccable fashion sense to leave Dickon and Randyll Tarley's stylish cloaks behind. How do you say "that's progress!" in High Valyrian?

Later, the deadly dragon demonstrates even further chill by accepting a face rub from Jon and, even more importantly, not eating and/or barbecuing him (the King in the North, it continuously turns out, is family, but still).

Yeah, Drogon roasted thousands of men to death just last week, but whatever. You gotta figure ... when it comes to a giant, amoral, fire-breathing dragon, it's gonna be two steps forward, one step back.

2. The old guys in the North acknowledge that Sansa wears that wolf queen cloak pretty damn well.

Over the past several episodes, we've begun to get the impression that yes, duh, Sansa is actually good at this lording thing. It's a revelation that finally makes its way through the thick, arbor red-addled skulls of some assorted old northern and Eyrie lords who come to realize this week (a little too late, guys!) that they kinda wish they voted for the competent, savvy woman when they had the chance.* Even Arya finally acknowledges that being the boss seems to agree with her sister, even if she does so grudgingly and passive-agressively with a whiff of "be careful I don't stab you."

Sure, Sansa's a little power hungry (aren't we all?), but being a wee bit shifty, while not being an outright psychotic murderer is exactly the right posture for the Westerosi ruler who doesn't want to get shivved, beheaded, burned alive, flayed, eaten by dogs, or some worse thing that, dear God, I hope doesn't get deployed in season eight.

Inasmuch as anyone can "got this" on "Game of Thrones," Sansa has got this. And people are finally figuring that out. Slow, but steady, everyone!

Good, too, on Masie Williams for playing their entire interaction like the world's most annoyed little sister — the contrast with the (significant) stakes was A+.

*There's a lesson here. It's going over my head, presently.

3. Cersei allows Jaime some bro time with Tyrion.

Queen gotta get her "staring blankly into the middle distance" in. Image by Helen Sloan/HBO.

Sure, she suspects Tyrion murdered their father (true!) and her son Joffrey (untrue!), but she knows Jaime has a soft spot for his valonqar, she likes Jaime, and, hey, it's nice for the two of them to get to hang out before the baby (the baby!) arrives.

Also, it never hurts to source a little timely intelligence on your biggest geopolitical foe and turn it to your advantage. But ... you know, details. Jaime and Tyrion got their bro time!

4.  Arya and Littlefinger kill some time playing hide and seek!

Skulking around a frozen castle, drilling with swords, hauling grain, and trying not to get killed by ice zombies can be stressful. What better way to relieve it than with a fun, friendly game the whole family can enjoy?

It's a small castle, but Petyr Baelish and the tiniest, most murder-y Stark are both naturals, natch. And while neither finds the other, Arya does uncover a sweet note Sansa wrote home (under duress) way back in season one, urging her brother (RIP Robb Stark) to pledge his loyalty to the Lannisters! What are the odds?

(Even pausing right on the frame, it was next to impossible to make out what this note actually, you know, said. Credit to Twitter user Daemon Blackfyre for doing the old gods' work here).

The note they made Sansa write to Robb after Ned was betrayed. #ThronesYall http://pic.twitter.com/3MSnFxjutv

— Daemon Blackfyre (@Dpzzle) August 14, 2017

5. Pretty much everyone is really putting that teleporter to good use!

Westeros is roughly the size of South America. Yet, this season, and this episode especially, people seem to get around really, really fast. Like the Dothraki last week, Jamie two weeks ago, and Jon before that — basically everyone everywhere has been zipping across the continent at lightning speed, petting dragons one minute and stalking ice zombies the next. Going from glowering around a rocky island fortress to glowering around a distant blacksmith shop and back to glowering on that rocky island in what seems like an hour-and-a-half.

While slow-burn character development has its place or whatever, we're on season seven here, people! Fast-forwarding this stuff is a marked improvement on previous seasons when characters would spend 17 episodes chatting and riding horses, conquering neighboring cities, or walking from one castle to another very-similar looking castle, like, five miles away.

Mad props to whatever time-traveler saw fit to drop by and introduce quantum teleportation to the Seven Kingdoms. It's a good look.

But we wouldn't want to get too ahead of ourselves, which is why it's super nice that...

6. Sam (accidentally) preserves some sense of story pacing.

Fellas, we've all been there. Your girlfriend discovers your best friend is actually the trueborn heir to the Iron Throne, thus solving the whole puzzle of the whole show, but you can't be bothered because you're mad about some dumb stuff going on in your personal life.

**what it's like being a woman** GILLY: here's the biggest reveal of the season it says— SAM: could you shut up I'm tired of this let's go

— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) August 14, 2017

Nevertheless, with everyone blasting themselves to and fro over the content to get that plot stuff done, it's heroic of Sam to slam on the brakes a little here for the audience, even if it required being unreasonably rude to Gilly in the process.

Hey, at least Little Sam gets to learn how to read!

7. The gang puts aside their differences!

This terrified striding will show 'em. Image by Helen Sloan/HBO.

Yeah, it sucks that the one guy (Beric Dondarrion) sold the other guy (Gendry) to a murdering witch, and that the third guy's (Jorah's) dad's job was to kill all of another guy's (Tormund's) friends and that yet another guy (the Hound) used to work for the family that killed the guy the sixth guy (Jon) thinks is his dad but isn't. But credit to The Hound for politely pointing out that none of that matters, and really, they should all be friends and focus on finding a solution to the real head-scratcher: what to do about the horde of walking dead people slowly staggering forth to kill them all.

When you've got a suggestion in a group setting, it's always nice to put it respectfully. Cheers to The Hound for personifying class.

Random acts of niceness:

Davos gives those two gold cloaks some free, organic Westerosi Fermented Crab Viagra before Gendry brutally war-hammers them to death. Hope it was an enjoyable last few seconds!

Varys expresses some regret for being adjacent to so many murders. Points, I guess.

That's all for now! Join me next week when, hopefully, Cersei aces baby yoga, a doubled-over Littlefinger explains the whole silly prank to Sansa and Arya and the Night King calls the entire thing off after realizing eternal life is pretty cool on its own without having to kill a bunch of mortal beings to feel better about yourself.

from Upworthy http://ift.tt/2hZzr0g via cheap web hosting

[fesahaawit]

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017)

What up, y’all! Just got back and sobered up from our financial blogging conference, and thought I’d share some of the highlights from it.

Namely, the handful of new financial companies that were part of our yearly fintech competition I helped judge! It’s always so interesting to see how people use technology to solve our problems out there, and just like last year’s competition this one did not disappoint.

But first, gotta give it up to PT Money for organizing this amazing event each and every year (it was my 7th one attending!), as well as to all the other bloggers who volunteered their time to make it happen. If you’re a $$$ blogger or podcaster or just plain obsessed with personal finance, you NEED to come out to it one year and experience what it’s all about! I promise you will leave incredibly motivated or I will shut down this blog forever ;) (Or at least buy you a beer to cry into – hah)

So what happened at FinCon 2017?

Here are a few of the more exciting highlights… Because good luck telling social media people that what happens at FinCon stays at FinCon! ;)

Rapper Dee-1 crowd surfed while rapping his hit song, Sally Mae Back (Crowd surfed! At a financial blogging conference!)

Best selling author David Bach (of Automatic Millionaire fame) popped in to share his wild story on getting on Oprah for the first time, and how the Latte Factor is “not about the damn lattes!” Haha… Rebuking the hate he so often gets when people say they will never give up their coffees no matter how sexy compound interest is ;) He may or may not have also dropped a few F bombs on stage showing that he is definitely not one of the more stuffier financial “experts” out there. Super cool to run into him around 1 am on the last night too to talk shop! (Interesting fact: he’s fairly short)

Darren Rowse shared his story of how he became one of the world’s first professional bloggers when one of his camera reviews went viral over night. He’d later go on to start two majorly successful blogs, including the one most bloggers are familiar with and learn from: ProBlogger.com

Chris Guillebeau of The $100 Startup and The Art of Non-Comformity talked about how it’s perfectly okay to let a side hustle be just that – a side hustle! There’s no rule that you need to turn it into a full-time job if you’re perfectly happy with your current one. Just let it be your creative outlet while you bring home some extra side money! (I agree with this 100%!! Not all of us are born to run companies!!)

Cait Flanders held a presentation on writing Rockstar content that was packed solid which we think/hope went over pretty well! Interweaving the back story of Rockstar Finance and how it’s evolved over the years as well. (Cait curates it with me, and is one of my favorite bloggers on the scene)

A bunch of people from our community created a parody of The Office called The Floor which was shown at our annual blogger award ceremony and was downright HILARIOUS. Then ended with a surprise live musical performance by American Idol contestant Dalton Rapattoni! (It was all about the music this year, haha… Thx for putting it together, Scott Alan Turner!)

And lastly – we had one pretty damn fun Halloween party to wrap up the conference! Erik from The Mastermind Within said it best: “it was hilarious to see people with $1 million+ net worth’s singing Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back”.” Haha… That’s how we roll! If you can’t live it up, what’s the point of all that money??

As for the best costume of the night? I gave it to this guy. Can you tell why? ;)

(full back story here – he totally shaved his head for this!!)

Other interesting gems pertaining to yours truly: I randomly got interviewed in the bathroom, and I was  presented with the International Blogger of The Year award from UK’s SHOMO awards. Where I then made an acceptance speech that included “Long live the queen!” which I thought was pretty clever? ;)

Now to the Fintech Competition, and the 10 new financial companies to watch out for!

As I mentioned, I was one of the two judges for it again this year, where our ratings made up for 50% of the votes with the audiences’ making up the other 50%. We awarded two prizes for the night – $1,000 for first and $500 for 2nd – and below are my honest opinions of each, along with what they do. I’m not getting compensated by anyone listed here, and there are no affiliate links included at all.

Follow along and see if you can guess who won! :) In no particular order:

Agreeable (AgreeableApp.com) — Agreeable was one of my favorite apps who presented, and was built to help solve the problem of no shows whenever you go to meet someone off Craigslist or Facebook. Whereas currently you’re just $hit out of both luck and time when the buyer/seller doesn’t show up, with this app you’d actually get *paid* an agreed upon amount if anyone bails, ensuring that it’s in both parties’ interests to make the scheduled time. There were some privacy concerns I first had with this as it tracks both of your locations to confirm that the two sides made it to the meet-up okay, but after talking w/ one of the founders at a party afterwards I was impressed with their patent-pending solution to this. We’ll see if this puppy takes off, but I’m personally rooting for it to! (Also can be used for soooo many other areas in life too – imagine if Comcast or other services were forced to pay you if they never show up when they’re supposed to?? We’d all be rich! ;))

Birch Finance (BirchFinance.com) — This app was another killer idea, which I SWORE already existed but I guess not (a good sign that they’re onto something!). Basically, you tell Birch what credit cards you have and use, and then it’ll analyze them as you’re out shopping and tell you which ones to use to reap the *best* rewards, as well as *how much* you’ll get back by them, rather than you having to guess all the time. It’ll then show you other cards out in the market, and compare what would have happened had you used *those* cards instead of the ones you currently have. And since it’s all based on your specific transactions and spending patterns, you can see first hand exactly what your cards – or future cards – are worth to you. A pretty epic tool for any card hackers/lovers. (I’ll never use it since I’m a minimalist with just my one USAA card, but I’d be allll on it if I were in the rewards game!)

Budgit (BudgitApp.com) — Budgit is an automated budgeting and savings service that organizes your bills and spending so you can save for your goals. I tried real hard to figure out how these guys were different from all the other budgeting apps out there – and even posed the question during Q&A time – but even after doing so I was honestly still just as confused. They actually have this question posed word for word at the bottom of their website (“How is Budgit different?”) but the 3 answers given were “No ads ever”, “Hassle-free”, and “Secure and private.” Which I’m pretty sure most apps are?? All that said, as a budget guy I don’t think you can have *too many* apps out there spreading the good word, so I very much wish them all the luck and success as they can get. (PS: This app is not the same one as BudgIT)

College Backer (CollegeBacker.com) — These guys were pretty cool as they help get people to gift their child 529 contributions instead of more toys and “stuff.” Something I very much try to do every year too and rarely succeed! ;) And while like Budgit I couldn’t pin point how exactly this service is different than the others out there on the scene (there’s quite a few who let families and friends jump in to make this happen), I did like the general purpose of it and hope they take me up on my recommendation to pair these gifts with some sort of physical item too so the kids don’t totally hate opening up the gift of 529 funding, haha…

Honeyfi (Honeyfi.com) — Honeyfi is a new app *for couples* that makes sharing your budget and managing your money much easier together. Which I absolutely love! Honeyfi allows you to collaborate, link accounts, and even message each other at any time through the app so everyone in the relationship can be on the exact same page. There’s not many apps I can think of that focuses mainly on couples (actually, I can’t think of one?), so I’m really hoping this one takes off as I think they’re onto something good here… Budgets are even sexier when TWO people are involved!! ;)

KINFO (GoKINFO.com) — KINFO is an app for DIY investors that brings together information from hedge funds, insiders, analysts, bloggers and other private investors so you can see what everyone else is doing along side you. Particularly bloggers which the founder seems most excited about as it helps put all of our personal recommendations into one spot for people. Though as many of you know mine would look pretty boring as it would only show one fund: VTSAX :) I’m not sure if looking at what others are doing adds more or less noise into the decision making process (probably more?), but then again I was influenced to go All In with Vanguard from my peers so it could prove to be a pretty helpful resource.

Squeeze (Squeeze.com) — Squeeze is an app that helps you save by finding the best deals, promo codes, and coupons directly related to your current spending. It sounded a lot like the others in the field so I had a hard time putting them into their own special bucket, but needless to say you can’t have too many coupons in this hyper consumer world of ours… And as for branding, they absolutely NAILED it. Some of the other fintech names were pretty random!

Take Command Health (TakeCommandHealth.com) — These guys won my personal award for the best presentation, if only for the inclusion of photoshopped Trump and Obama pics littered throughout :) But their app was def. no joke. In a nutshell, Take Command helps you easily find the best option for health coverage by using big data to help source the best, and cheapest, health care options for you both on and off the exchange. They also shared the release of their small business feature which helps companies offer better and cheaper plans to their employees as well – something that many places are struggling hard with right now. So while the topic of health insurance typically doesn’t turn heads (at least for good reasons!), these guys had our immediate attention and I wouldn’t be surprised a bit if they hit a home run with this.

Qoins (Qoins.io) — Do these guys look familiar?? They should! I featured them here last year the second I came across them because they’re the FIRST to finally apply “rounding up” technology to debt!!! Which is something severely lacking in our industry… And while I had to recuse myself from voting on this one since I was definitely biased (they donated $$$ to our Community Fund over at Rockstar Finance), I was beyond pleased to see them here and thought they gave a great presentation. You can find my review of them here (I was the first ever blogger to share them!) but in a nutshell they round up all your transactions to the nearest dollar, and then uses the spare change to help pay off your debt every month. It won’t clear all of it, but every $30 or $40/mo helps!

WizeFi (Wizefi.com) — WizeFi is a paid app ($8/mo) that helps organize your finances, analyzing everything from your assets and liabilities to your insurance and spending habits. Once hooked up it’ll then estimate your future net worth if you continue spending the way you’re currently spending, and then compare it to your future net worth if you follow your custom WizeFi wealth-building plan. It comes with a super slick interface and the focus on net worth of course turned me on, but at the end of the day not too sure that alone is worth the $8. Especially since it doesn’t physically *move* the money for you like Digit or Acorns does and still requires you to take action (which most people won’t). I was also turned off by the mentions of an affiliate program for customers to make more money, both in the presentation as well as on their website (it’s prominently listed as the #3 reason to sign up?!), even though I’m sure the founder meant well. Overall would have been better if you had the chance to test out a free version, with an option to upgrade later to “pro” or something similar if interested…

Alright… Ready to guess who won?? Any really stand out to you??

Here were the 1st and 2nd place winners after all the votes were tallied up:

Birch Finance

Take Command Health

Honestly though, ALL of these guys came out winning as they not only got to pitch in front of tons of $$$ influencers and enthusiasts, but also landed on this illustrious blog here!!! Haha… Surely that’s worth at *least* $10.00 right? ;)

So congrats to everyone who participated. I wish I were smart enough to come up with my own money app! If you want to take a look at last year’s competition and results, you can find that here: Fintech Competition 2016

Next Year’s FinCon Event…

If you can believe it, plans are already in the works for next year’s conference! If you’ve always wanted to visit Orlando, Florida – now’s your chance! We’ll be partying it up with Mickey next year :) Learn more and pick up tickets here: FinconExpo.com/2018

So there we are – another great conference on the books :) THANK YOU thank you THANK YOU to everyone who came out and put up with me over the weekend! It was a blast hanging out with my 2nd family in the flesh, and I wish you all a most successful next year.

Special shout out to the following who really made me smile throughout: Chelsea Norton, Cait Flanders, Steve Adcock, Jim $, Shin, Bobby Lee, Pete McPherson, Latoya Scott, Fritz, Hélène, Hannah Rounds, the Tiller Team, Miss Mazuma, Optimal Finance Daily, John and Sharon Duffy, Shannon Austin, The Dumpster Dog, Miss Thrifty, Maria Nedeva, FIREcracker, and Romeo Jeremiah.

See y’all in another 11 months!

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017) posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

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10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017)

What up, y’all! Just got back and sobered up from our financial blogging conference, and thought I’d share some of the highlights from it.

Namely, the handful of new financial companies that were part of our yearly fintech competition I helped judge! It’s always so interesting to see how people use technology to solve our problems out there, and just like last year’s competition this one did not disappoint.

But first, gotta give it up to PT Money for organizing this amazing event each and every year (it was my 7th one attending!), as well as to all the other bloggers who volunteered their time to make it happen. If you’re a $$$ blogger or podcaster or just plain obsessed with personal finance, you NEED to come out to it one year and experience what it’s all about! I promise you will leave incredibly motivated or I will shut down this blog forever ;) (Or at least buy you a beer to cry into – hah)

So what happened at FinCon 2017?

Here are a few of the more exciting highlights… Because good luck telling social media people that what happens at FinCon stays at FinCon! ;)

Rapper Dee-1 crowd surfed while rapping his hit song, Sally Mae Back (Crowd surfed! At a financial blogging conference!)

Best selling author David Bach (of Automatic Millionaire fame) popped in to share his wild story on getting on Oprah for the first time, and how the Latte Factor is “not about the damn lattes!” Haha… Rebuking the hate he so often gets when people say they will never give up their coffees no matter how sexy compound interest is ;) He may or may not have also dropped a few F bombs on stage showing that he is definitely not one of the more stuffier financial “experts” out there. Super cool to run into him around 1 am on the last night too to talk shop! (Interesting fact: he’s fairly short)

Darren Rowse shared his story of how he became one of the world’s first professional bloggers when one of his camera reviews went viral over night. He’d later go on to start two majorly successful blogs, including the one most bloggers are familiar with and learn from: ProBlogger.com

Chris Guillebeau of The $100 Startup and The Art of Non-Comformity talked about how it’s perfectly okay to let a side hustle be just that – a side hustle! There’s no rule that you need to turn it into a full-time job if you’re perfectly happy with your current one. Just let it be your creative outlet while you bring home some extra side money! (I agree with this 100%!! Not all of us are born to run companies!!)

Cait Flanders held a presentation on writing Rockstar content that was packed solid which we think/hope went over pretty well! Interweaving the back story of Rockstar Finance and how it’s evolved over the years as well. (Cait curates it with me, and is one of my favorite bloggers on the scene)

A bunch of people from our community created a parody of “The Office” which was shown at our annual blogger award ceremony and was downright HILARIOUS. Then ended with a surprise performance from American Idol contestant Dalton Rapattoni! (It was all about the music this year, haha… Thx for putting it together, Scott Alan Turner!)

And lastly – we had one pretty damn fun Halloween party to wrap up the conference! Erik from The Mastermind Within said it best: “it was hilarious to see people with $1 million+ net worth’s singing Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back”.” Haha… That’s how we roll! If you can’t live it up, what’s the point of all that money??

As for the best costume of the night? I gave it to this guy. Can you tell why? ;)

(full back story here – he totally shaved his head for this!!)

Other interesting gems pertaining to yours truly: I randomly got interviewed in the bathroom, and I was  presented with the International Blogger of The Year award from UK’s SHOMO awards. Where I then made an acceptance speech that included “Long live the queen!” which I thought was pretty clever? ;)

Now to the Fintech Competition, and the 10 new financial companies to watch out for!

As I mentioned, I was one of the two judges for it again this year, where our ratings made up for 50% of the votes with the audiences’ making up the other 50%. We awarded two prizes for the night – $1,000 for first and $500 for 2nd – and below are my honest opinions of each, along with what they do. I’m not getting compensated by anyone listed here, and there are no affiliate links included at all.

Follow along and see if you can guess who won! :) In no particular order:

Agreeable (AgreeableApp.com) — Agreeable was one of my favorite apps who presented, and was built to help solve the problem of no shows whenever you go to meet someone off Craigslist or Facebook. Whereas currently you’re just $hit out of both luck and time when the buyer/seller doesn’t show up, with this app you’d actually get *paid* an agreed upon amount if anyone bails, ensuring that it’s in both parties’ interests to make the scheduled time. There were some privacy concerns I first had with this as it tracks both of your locations to confirm that the two sides made it to the meet-up okay, but after talking w/ one of the founders at a party afterwards I was impressed with their patent-pending solution to this. We’ll see if this puppy takes off, but I’m personally rooting for it to! (Also can be used for soooo many other areas in life too – imagine if Comcast or other services were forced to pay you if they never show up when they’re supposed to?? We’d all be rich! ;))

Birch Finance (BirchFinance.com) — This app was another killer idea, which I SWORE already existed but I guess not (a good sign that they’re onto something!). Basically, you tell Birch what credit cards you have and use, and then it’ll analyze them as you’re out shopping and tell you which ones to use to reap the *best* rewards, as well as *how much* you’ll get back by them, rather than you having to guess all the time. It’ll then show you other cards out in the market, and compare what would have happened had you used *those* cards instead of the ones you currently have. And since it’s all based on your specific transactions and spending patterns, you can see first hand exactly what your cards – or future cards – are worth to you. A pretty epic tool for any card hackers/lovers. (I’ll never use it since I’m a minimalist with just my one USAA card, but I’d be allll on it if I were in the rewards game!)

Budgit (BudgitApp.com) — Budgit is an automated budgeting and savings service that organizes your bills and spending so you can save for your goals. I tried real hard to figure out how these guys were different from all the other budgeting apps out there – and even posed the question during Q&A time – but even after doing so I was honestly still just as confused. They actually have this question posed word for word at the bottom of their website (“How is Budgit different?”) but the 3 answers given were “No ads ever”, “Hassle-free”, and “Secure and private.” Which I’m pretty sure most apps are?? All that said, as a budget guy I don’t think you can have *too many* apps out there spreading the good word, so I very much wish them all the luck and success as they can get. (PS: This app is not the same one as BudgIT)

College Backer (CollegeBacker.com) — These guys were pretty cool as they help get people to gift their child 529 contributions instead of more toys and “stuff.” Something I very much try to do every year too and rarely succeed! ;) And while like Budgit I couldn’t pin point how exactly this service is different than the others out there on the scene (there’s quite a few who let families and friends jump in to make this happen), I did like the general purpose of it and hope they take me up on my recommendation to pair these gifts with some sort of physical item too so the kids don’t totally hate opening up the gift of 529 funding, haha…

Honeyfi (Honeyfi.com) — Honeyfi is a new app *for couples* that makes sharing your budget and managing your money much easier together. Which I absolutely love! Honeyfi allows you to collaborate, link accounts, and even message each other at any time through the app so everyone in the relationship can be on the exact same page. There’s not many apps I can think of that focuses mainly on couples (actually, I can’t think of one?), so I’m really hoping this one takes off as I think they’re onto something good here… Budgets are even sexier with TWO people are involved!! ;)

KINFO (GoKINFO.com) — KINFO is an app for DIY investors that brings together information from hedge funds, insiders, analysts, bloggers and other private investors so you can see what everyone else is doing along side you. Particularly bloggers which the founder seems most excited about as it helps put all of our personal recommendations into one spot for people. Though as many of you know mine would look pretty boring as it would only show one fund: VTSAX :) I’m not sure if looking at what others is doing adds more or less noise into the decision making process (probably more?), but then again I was influenced to go All In with Vanguard from my peers so it could prove to be a pretty helpful resource.

Squeeze (Squeeze.com) — Squeeze is an app that helps you save by finding the best deals, promo codes, and coupons directly related to your current spending. It sounded a lot like the others in the field so I had a hard time putting them into their own special bucket, but needless to say you can’t have too many coupons in this hyper consumer world of ours… And as for branding, they absolutely NAILED it. Some of the other fintech names were pretty random!

Take Command Health (TakeCommandHealth.com) — These guys won my personal award for the best presentation, if only for the inclusion of photoshopped Trump and Obama pics littered throughout :) But their app was def. no joke. In a nutshell, Take Command helps you easily find the best option for health coverage by using big data to help source the best, and cheapest, health care options for you both on and off the exchange. They also shared the release of their small business feature which helps companies offer better and cheaper plans to their employees as well – something that many places are struggling hard with right now. So while the topic of health insurance typically doesn’t turn heads (at least for good reasons!), these guys had our immediate attention and I wouldn’t be surprised a bit if they hit a home run with this.

Qoins (Qoins.io) — Do these guys look familiar?? They should! I featured them here last year the second I came across them because they’re the FIRST to finally apply “rounding up” technology to debt!!! Which is something severely lacking in our industry… And while I had to recuse myself from voting on this one since I was definitely biased (they donated $$$ to our Community Fund over at Rockstar Finance), I was beyond pleased to see them here and thought they gave a great presentation. You can find my review of them here (I was the first ever blogger to share them!) but in a nutshell they round up all your transactions to the nearest dollar, and then uses the spare change to help pay off your debt every month. It won’t clear all of it, but every $30 or $40/mo helps!

WizeFi (Wizefi.com) — WizeFi is a paid app ($8/mo) that helps organize your finances, analyzing everything from your assets and liabilities to your insurance and spending habits. Once hooked up it’ll then estimate your future net worth if you continue spending the way you’re currently spending, and then compare it to your future net worth if you follow your custom WizeFi wealth-building plan. It comes with a super slick interface and the focus on net worth of course turned me on, but at the end of the day not too sure that alone is worth the $8. Especially since it doesn’t physically *move* the money for you like Digit or Acorns does and still requires you to take action (which most people won’t). I was also turned off by the mentions of an affiliate program for customers to make more money, both in the presentation as well as on their website (it’s prominently listed as the #3 reason to sign up?!), even though I’m sure the founder meant well. Overall would have been better if you had the chance to test out a free version, with an option to upgrade later to “pro” or something similar if interested…

Alright… Ready to guess who won?? Any really stand out to you??

Here were the 1st and 2nd place winners after all the votes were tallied up:

Birch Finance

Take Command Health

Honestly though, ALL of these guys came out winning as they not only got to pitch in front of tons of $$$ influencers and enthusiasts, but also landed on this illustrious blog here!!! Haha… Surely that’s worth at *least* $10.00 right? ;)

So congrats to everyone who participated. I wish I were smart enough to come up with my own money app! If you want to take a look at last year’s competition and results, you can find that here: Fintech Competition 2016

Next Year’s FinCon Event…

If you can believe it, plans are already in the works for next year’s conference! If you’ve always wanted to visit Orlando, Florida – now’s your chance! We’ll be partying it up with Mickey next year :) More details to come…

So there we are – another great conference on the books :) THANK YOU thank you THANK YOU to everyone who came out and put up with me over the weekend! It was a blast hanging out with my 2nd family in the flesh, and I wish you all a most successful next year.

Special shout out to the following who really made me smile throughout: Chelsea Norton, Cait Flanders, Steve Adcock, Jim $, Shin, Bobby Lee, Pete McPherson, Latoya Scott, Fritz, Hélène, Hannah Rounds, the Tiller Team, Miss Mazuma, Optimal Finance Daily, John and Sharon Duffy, Shannon Austin, The Dumpster Dog, Miss Thrifty, Maria Nedeva, FIREcracker, and Romeo Jeremiah.

See y’all in another 11 months!

10 New Fintech Companies To Watch Out For! (Plus Highlights From FinCon 2017) posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ