#for being someone who is also emotionally volatile For The Record he's just way better at hiding it/making people believe otherwise.

[moe-broey]

Unsure if Moe's "Everybody HATES me and WANTS ME DEAD" prey animal neurosis is validated and vindicated in Askr where there ARE In Fact at least a handful of people and gods who do want it dead, or if people and gods wanting it dead Like For Real kind of puts things into perspective for Moe like huh. Okay. Well. That was fucking stupid.

[horizon-verizon]

Daemon and Corlys are presented as masterful at both politics and military strategy, even while besieged by grief and loss, while Rhaenyra is automatically assigned the trope of hysterical mother unable to make rational or good decisions as a ruler because she’s just too steeped in mourning and later too emotionally volatile to make the right decisions. Which is funny considering that it was Daemon who was presented as emotionally volatile for the bulk of his life (before he married Laena and had his daughters, at least).

HOTD attempts to make up for this by making Rhaenyra morally white instead of morally gray, but this change is rendered meaningless when ultimately her fate is even more miserable and gut wrenching, and still does not have history absolve her. And the argument will be that it shows how “both sides are bad” but Aegon II will never face rape, grooming, domestic violence, or gendered abuse, from anyone among the Greens/his family. His “sad” backstory is simply being neglected by his father and callously disciplined by his mother.

GRRM in part wrote Rhaenyra as a litmus test for the readers’s misogyny but in my opinion it falls flat because he gets caught up in doing that and forgets to give Rhaenyra some dignity or respect as an individual character. And it’s honestly the same issue he has in the main series. Pathologizing motherhood in particular, esp. in relation to women who are also in politics while being mothers. Fathers are never “too mad with grief” to rule competently or make good decisions; only mothers are.

Please check out the comments!!!!!! Conversation abt Daemon's irrationality.

GRRM in part wrote Rhaenyra as a litmus test for the readers’s misogyny but in my opinion it falls flat because he gets caught up in doing that and forgets to give Rhaenyra some dignity or respect as an individual character.

Yep. But I think that what went most wrong was that she only "came to herself" after Jace's death so she couldn't come up with either the Dragonseed plan AND/OR deliberate with Corlys on how to take back KL and contributing a critical element of that plan. GRRM could have fixed so much by doing either of these.

I recently ranted about this and you may have been the one to send the ask for it HERE. Essentially, George wasted his character (and no he didn't have to make her exactly like Dany to do so, I rant about it in that post) when he could have allowed Rhaenyra to more actively make strategies, be involved in logistics, or even flown on Syrax to war without actually having Rhaenyra wield a sword. How to make her unlike Rhaenys the Conqueror, who also didn't wield swords? Unlike the org trio, Rhaenyra has opposers, make them do stuff against her that she tries to come up stuff against but this happened and it wasn't her fault or because she didn't try. Make it so the recorders of history are more obviously trying to diminish her despite this thing she did and that things she did they were forced to record because it did something so impactful by scale or effect that they couldn't ignore it! Make it so that Rhaenrya does herself in, but she reasonably starts to suspect those around her bc either they were doing suspicious shit OR someone on the outside was making it seem that way!!! Improve the Iago-Othello potential storyline, make it more believable! Give her some journal entries, letters like you did for Daemon and Otto in Rogue Prince! Oh my god!!!

*[6/1/24]* I know that readers should be better read or read between the lines of anti-female ruler propaganda that Gyldayn and all maesters before him have been creating and that some even just miss the whole point of the Dance that GRRM does manage to convey [anti mobilized patriarchal violence against a woman trying to cliam power in her own right, not on the behalf of a male, and still being seen as a direct threat to male-privilege and authority]. BUT that doesn't stop the timeline of events from missing events where Rhaenyra could have done stuff to show more political acumen & resilience after years of sitting at council w/Viserys, ruling Dragonstone, and other pre-war incidents of her standing up for herself or vying for control against Alicent (the most prominent one being the dress moment, but also the matter of choosing the new Grand Maester after Viserys cuts himself).

As I said before [the linked post way above called "HERE"], it's like GRRM sacrificed this for the whole devastation of the war OR/AND contradicts himself and succumbs to the stereotype of irrational women vs sad, but capable men by not giving Rhaenyra more to do. Even as Gyldayn, Eustace, etc. already give stupid, hypocritical (say they praise a man for doing a thing, but castigate Rhaenyra for doing the same or perceived similar thing), misleading, and bad faith arguments. Like how Gyldayn presents his rationale for what he thinks is possible about Daemon and Nettles.

There were also medieval and early modern period female, woman histiographers, I just learned and really should have known, bc women were never just sitting idle! [moonlitgleek] That's a critique of the ASoIaF worldbuilding, really. How GRRM doesn't have even give a comparatively smaller number of socially unrecognized female historians to socially recognized male historians. Sarella Sand is the only known woman even interested in the scholarly career of a historian or maester that I can think of, besides Alysanne. A source that gives the woman/woman-related perspective a bit more voice in the pre-Dany Targ story that I think could have happened with Rhaenyra also writing letters, etc., like Otto or Daemon in F&B and Rogue Prince. *[6/1/24], END*

Rhaenyra doesn't have to be a Visenya/swordswoman to do war. Visenya wasn't just a swordswoman or face-to-face or on-the-ground physical fighter just as Aegon wasn't. She also did diplomacy well, even if with a much more direct threat of violence hanging in the air while she did so--the Aryyns. Unlike the org trio, Rhaenyra had children in/active in the war unlike Rhaenys and Visenya, too, so yes, she was going to have the fear of losing them or the grief of actually losing them--for GRRM's point about the devastation this war had on both sides so that the "worth" of the war is conveyed as not equal to personal loss, ironically calling back to how Rhaenys herself was lost in the Dornish conflicts and that mysterious letter that stopped Aegon from actually taking revenge.

But if you're going to say that Rhaenyra was wronged and that she should not be vilified for trying to get back what was stolen on account of her gender...do not make it so easy for the maesters to make it as if it were Rhaenyra's "unpreparedness" to debilitate her when she loses a child in said war fought for her and their rights in the first place!

[friendfromdsmp]

Here’s a take; I don’t think Adrien should have the Black Cat Miraculous

Now don’t get me wrong, I still think he can be a great superhero, I just don’t think he’s suited to that particular Miraculous considering he’s been consistently shown to have destructive tendencies and to lash out in anger or pain. I mean, if you include himself in Guiltrip, there have been four instances on-screen in which he’s actively attempted to Cataclysm people (himself, Scarabella, Kim and Dark Owl), one instance where he suggested it as a last resort (Sole Crusher) and two instances where he successfully - albeit unintentionally - did Cataclysm people (Uncanny Valley, Monarch). That’s seven separate occasions where Chat Noir using his power on a human being has come up, with two of those successfully landing, and even if you discount the times where he didn’t intend to do it or times when he only raised the last resort option AND the time he tried to do it to himself under Guiltrip’s influence that’s STILL THREE INTENTIONAL ATTEMPTS

Now if Chat Noir’s powers were something like Venom, Uproar or Gift, this wouldn’t be an issue. It wouldn’t be great, sure, but it would be a harmless, temporary effect. But Chat Noir has the power to disintegrate anything he touches and now we’ve seen the effects that has on a human being; it’s horribly painful and slowly spreads across their body until it eventually kills them. Do you really want to trust that sort of power to the kid with a track record of going after other people with it?

So let’s look at where Adrien’s strengths lie as a hero; what does he bring to the table outside of Cataclysm? The answers you typically see with him are loyalty, trustworthiness, humour and just being a generally supportive guy that Ladybug can turn to when she needs emotional support as well as backup. And I know there are retorts to each of these but I’m not here to discuss those - that’s for a later post. Right now I’m just considering which Miraculous is more suited to Adrien knowing this

My first thought was the Pig Miraculous, considering Gift is not only a physically harmless power, but almost always a pleasant one to experience, which could definitely help with him being the first person Ladybug turns to for emotional support and reassurance that she can do things. He’s consistently used to divert the attention of the villain and Gift could certainly do that. There’s no need to worry about what he’d do if he grew emotionally volatile himself because Gift can’t actually cause any physical harm. Perhaps it could teach him to manage his emotions a little better, or at least help him to calm down and think about how letting out his anger in unhealthy ways impacts others?

But for someone who doesn’t always keep a cool head and makes impulsive decisions at times, as well as someone who frequently makes the sacrifice play for Ladybug, the Snake Miraculous could be interesting. It would give Adrien the chance to act on his impulses without endangering the mission since he could have a do-over (not saying it’s morally right but at least he’d be able to reverse the damage instantly and he’d be the only traumatised party) or he could take all the time he needed to calm down and clear his head before getting back to the fight. It could also allow him to save Ladybug without sacrificing himself and thus taking himself out of the fight and leaving her to handle things all on her own; he could instead take the warning and get her out of the way ahead of time. It’s also a more versatile option for fights as opposed to Gift

[tothedarkdarkseas]

Headcanons about what Stu got up to when Muds was in jail? Headcanons about how the Now Now came about?

(Thank you so much! I’m getting looney today, it’s nice to have a distraction. Behind a cut again for length!)

So while Murdoc’s banged up in merry old England, the band seemingly relocates to California for at least a part of this phase, which is interesting. I do wonder how Stu liked that Venice lifestyle and I do wonder how much he can compartmentalize being on the Pacific. (Better by TNN’s inception than by The Fall’s inception, I would assume.) Being both a shipper and a Sad Sack I don’t necessarily subscribe to the idea that Stu was living his very best life, but I don’t buy that he was cooped up crying in his room all day. I don’t think he’d give Murdoc that much, for starters. I think coming back together around the start of Humanz was… sort of morbidly nice. No one’s doing anything too drastic, Murdoc’s older and more remorseful and Stu’s older and less emotionally volatile, but there’s a palpable sense of Everything lingering, there’s an understanding of things likely never being “right” between them. If we’re sticking semi-closely to canon and Murdoc’s really just gotten locked away unexpectedly for parking tickets, I’m not too sure Stu was devastated by the news– if anything I think he was irritated and inconvenienced, it was a reminder of what Murdoc is like, the sort of person he’s been all his life, and who he might just be too set in his ways to quit being. I don’t think Stu’s glad for it, but I don’t think his life stops.

As for P5, all his quotes are gold and Peak Stu, this is how I’d like to think he really is all the time. I think he and Murdoc both intentionally say things in interviews to annoy the other, they mischaracterize each other and their relationship purely for the satisfaction of knowing the other will see it and say “oh, piss off” out loud. Whether he’s out shagging girls in LA is irrelevant, but he is. Stu really should’ve had a string of C/B-list dates over Phase 5, that would’ve been great. In my perfect world, Stu in Venice buys a longboard and starts making his own kombucha (and makes himself very sick, at which point Noodle coincidentally starts fermenting and sharing) and has a few flings, none of which he’s lying to Murdoc about. There’s an understanding. They still aren’t really something, they’re just… not nothing. I guess my thoughts sort of break off from what is common and logical here because, in my mind, he’s already had this time apart between PB and Humanz to be on his own and be his own person, and it did ultimately still lead him back to Gorillaz and to Murdoc. This time, it’s… different. There’s a foregone conclusion to this. The band is still happening, right now, and there’s a certainty, a finality to having a clear-cut date for when Murdoc will be released and back in his life. There’s not such necessity in finding himself, because he’s already had damn near 10 years between the island and Detroit and he’s found that unfortunately, Murdoc’s fingerprints are burned down to the bone. So… I think he does what he can to enjoy it. He has his fun with the girls, has his time re-acclimating to the beach, does yoga and drinks nasty craft beer sometimes and performs. He enjoys not the process of finding himself, but the vacation from being someone he’s already, with much reluctance and a failed escape, come to terms with being.

With that said, I do think there’s a certain… “suspended” nature to their relationship at that point, and there’s some focus toward making it something a little less nebulous. They’ve been back in each other’s orbits and they’ve grown weary enough to accept certain things, and as his journal and all of TNN would imply, Stu’s definitely spending some time during the phase reflecting. A huge portion of this time clearly does go to deciding how he wants stay with Murdoc (as he knows he will, in some form or another) and what that means about him, where he is, the person he’s shackling himself to being. I think the album just comes from that, both from resentment and frustration over the situation, from the “freedom” his history with Murdoc has made him feel rather alienated from, from wanting to make a statement, to Murdoc, to himself; it is somewhat to the public, but at the end of the day, the very act of making a public statement is still for him.

It’s tough to give great answers because I’m of conflicting opinions on where exactly their relationship was when the incarceration happened. It’s pretty hard to deny that TNN is an album about Murdoc, and it’s an album with quite a few love songs on it– but for me, the bigger (and wonderful) thing is that those love songs don’t really make TNN a romantic album. There’s absolutely a confession in there, but… maybe it’s just me being committed to their maladjustment, but I don’t strictly hear it as a confession of something good. In a lot of ways, it’s more about finally saying what he doesn’t want anymore, what he isn’t satisfied by, and what he doesn’t want his life to be forever. For my purposes I think it’s fitting that the album Stu made for Murdoc, the gift Stu made for Murdoc, would paint a picture that quite honestly condemns them in many ways. One that is teeming with regrets and discussion of isolation, of personal failure, of distance, of feeling inhuman, of wanting to try something else to feel human again. It doesn’t paint everything they’ve been through as an epic romance but a broken relationship. And then it leaves where that goes open. I’m a bad 2Doc fan and I’ve gone on record as having Souk Eye Fatigue for a couple months there, but on its face I do think it’s super interesting that the sentiment of their big love song isn’t explicitly “I miss you” but “I still think about you.” There’s no denying this is still something very honest and something that matters in how they acknowledge themselves and their relationship, but I’ve got messed up priorities, and I hear the driving sentiment of the album as “I can’t get rid of you.” However, it’s also an acceptance of that being on both of them, for better or for worse.

I just really enjoy the fact that, while I agree it is a shippy album, TNN is also an album written to and for Murdoc where the chief message is “I am not happy.” I don’t think it’s necessarily suggesting Murdoc will “make him happy” but I think it’s… a reality he’s finally willing to admit. That all of this doesn’t work for him at 40. That living without Murdoc isn’t better for him now, not the way it might’ve been better 20 years ago, and the clinging to that idea of might’ve, the blaming, the running away, it’s just not doing him any good. It’s not making him happier. It’s putting their past on a shelf, still in view and in reach but off the table they’re sitting at. For me, TNN’s about simply saying, with neither joy nor hatred, that Murdoc is too much a part of him and he knows being rid of Murdoc just isn’t what he wants, and he doesn’t want the rest of the life he’s bound to to always look the way it does now. And maybe that’s not quite romantic enough, haha, maybe I look like a dour Daria-type to interpret it that way, but I think there’s a beauty in honesty and in not sugarcoating things to yourself and the people in your life. I think there’s something very cathartic about writing and releasing an album that feels like a slap in the face as much as it is an offer to finally… be something else. Something more than just not being nothing.

[pisati]

this came up on timehop almost a week ago. 

I’ve known for years that I have depression. I had my suspicions when I was 17, but thinking back, I was showing signs at 12-13. possibly even earlier. I recall an old social media post from that age, maybe an email or a blog post, clarifying to a friend that I didn’t want to die, I just wanted to sleep and not wake up for a long time. I can’t remember much farther back than that. I was always an emotionally volatile person-- I felt things so deeply even at a young age. my first guinea pig died when I was 8 or 9 and it took me years to get over. I wish someone would’ve noticed sooner. dad had his suspicions too, but he also tried to tell my mom she was depressed and medicate her without her knowledge, so. nobody really took him seriously. he wasn’t wrong, but he definitely went about that the wrong way.

there’s no point regretting, though, I guess. I couldn’t have known what to look for, I was a child. my mom only recently realized that her mother has had schizophrenia her whole life, after my brother did acid and it snapped something in his brain. some of the things he did and said reminded her eerily of her mother. she couldn’t recognize depression in herself, how was she ever going to recognize it in me?

from where I’m at now... I can’t believe I got through feeling the way I did. kind of like when I look back on those few years of my life when my anxiety got so bad-- I had no idea how I survived it. I wasn’t sure if I ever could again. 

I felt so bad before I graduated high school. there are pictures of my graduating class sitting on the bleachers outside, me sitting on the far left edge, by myself. either Charlotte wasn’t there that day or she’d wanted to be with other friends. I didn’t really know anyone around me. someone from yearbook pulled me out of class for an interview and told me they were talking to everyone who’d pulled some stunt or done something silly during the pictures (we had one kid who liked to dress up as Where’s Waldo, they interviewed him too). they asked me why, in every picture, I wasn’t looking at the camera. I told them I’d just been having a bad day, but I remember deliberately looking away during every one of those shots. I didn’t want a part of any of it. they made us sit for that picture, but I just wanted to be graduated already. gone. away from everyone there. I was so tired of being made to feel alone. barely opening my mouth all day, because Charlotte would leave me for other friends, and the few other people I knew did the same. I didn’t go in bitter; I probably tried a little too hard to make friends when I moved there. it took so many years of being forgotten and passed over to make me that tired. 

that was also the time when I would forego lunch on A-days to go straight to my AP lit classroom. sometimes I’d eat there, sometimes I wouldn’t. I was tired of sitting with my friend who wanted to sit with these popular girls who were lowkey super rude to me for literally no reason- I didn’t even know them. I felt like I knew the pattern on every floor tile in that school, but especially the tiles in front of my desk in AP lit. I couldn’t even look up from the floor. and nobody fucking noticed. I mean, my AP lit teacher did. I’ll always, always be grateful for her. I’m just sad that I couldn’t be there for myself. I wish people were more educated about mental illness back then, that someone would’ve intervened. maybe it wouldn’t have gotten so bad. 

when my anxiety got so bad I prayed that I’d *only* have depression again. it was so much easier to deal with. I don’t remember my depression being so bad my first two years of college; either it was drowned out by the anxiety or it actually did help to have good friends. but once I transferred and the anxiety dissipated, it came back full-force. 

when I was in high school, I remember being afraid to look at electrical cords. I’d picture them wrapped around my neck. once during a bad episode I got up and wrapped the cord from my blinds around my neck and pulled, hard. it scared me so bad I fell onto my bed and cried harder. I didn’t want to die, I just wanted the hurt to stop. when I got into my car accident senior year... it was midterms week. I’d joked that maybe since I almost died in a car wreck that I’d be excused from my physics midterm. but I remember that night, after I got home from the hospital, curling up in the shower and sobbing. for months I thought I wanted to disappear, but when I brushed that close to death it was absolutely terrifying. I’d never felt so grateful to feel water pouring down on my back. I felt so horribly alive. I walked to my physics class the next day and joked with a kid outside, to maybe a few concerned looks, about just being in the hospital. I took the exam. a boy I rarely talked to came up to me, wide-eyed, outside my locker, and asked if I was okay. he’d heard from my brother. 

sometimes, alone in my apartment in college, I’d picture the tau sigma and golden key honor cords I had tucked away in a drawer-- I wasn’t sure why they gave them to me so soon, but I needed a safe place to keep them til graduation. I pictured them wrapped around a door handle-- wondered how long it’d take for someone to notice I hadn’t been around. what a metaphor, too; strangled by achievement. grim, maybe a little too poetic. I tossed the idea, but the feeling didn’t quite leave.

the summer after I graduated college, I’d lost maybe 15lbs. I was too sad to get out of bed or even eat. A had given me his facebook password and told me to change it so he couldn’t log back in-- he was so tired of social media at the time and I understood. but later when I had my suspicions about a girl, I did something very uncharacteristic. I glanced through his messages with a mutual friend. he’d used the word “girlfriend”. he was red and she was blue and they were just purpling. I cried so hard I nearly had a panic attack and almost passed out on my floor. what was I ever? how can you be that close to someone and still be so easily cast aside? it took me a while to be able to eat Uncle Ben’s microwave rice again. it already tastes unnatural from all the preservatives, but the papery taste reminded me how much I wanted to die; how much food tasted like nothing and nothing felt good. I’d lie on my floor and cry, just trying to get the bad feelings out; I have vivid memories of Warpaint’s Today Dear paired with the blankness of my ceiling, the smoke detector and ceiling fan hardware cover breaking the emptiness. the feeling of damp carpet pressed into the side of my face, City & Colour’s Blood pouring into my ears.

I’ve given you more than I’m worth I want to dig my fingers into the earth I know there’s beauty buried beneath...

we were walking around DC that december, trying to keep warm while waiting for my mom to pick us up after a show that ended after metro hours. he told me everything that happened. she was a head case. so was the next one, I later learned. but by then it just felt like something broke. I just didn’t have the capacity to hurt anymore. I was at my last job, I was miserable, I was emotionally beat up. that was when it started to feel like being dragged facedown through gravel. even the little things I did-- volunteering, trying to work on crafts, playing with my rats-- didn’t seem to make anything any better.

I have a lot of memories from floors. I reblogged a quote yesterday about crying and noticing the paint on the wall trim; once you’ve been on the floor so many times it just gets old. the absurdity of it all. kind of like that time I was lying in bed, crying over my dad having passed (maybe a few months before at that point), and I suddenly heard my brother ripping a loud, forced fart in the other room. I couldn’t help laughing. what even is anything?

it was so hard to see any kind of light at the end of the tunnel. if there even was a tunnel, or if that just was how things were. I remember myself curling into the back cushions of the couch in my apartment in college, both wishing it were another person and feeling repulsed at the thought. trying to avoid becoming acutely aware of the quiet. I think even then I had some vague knowledge, maybe more of a rote script, that eventually it would be okay. one day, something would give. but I didn’t feel it. people could tell me all they wanted, I could tell myself til I ran out of breath, but I wouldn’t believe it til I felt it.

some days do still feel like I’m dragging myself through them. but looking back... it’s nowhere near as bad. sometimes I still get hit with the melancholy-- I’m not expecting not to, for the record. nobody can feel 100% all the time, it’s impossible. but I wish I could go back and somehow place this feeling in my brain all those times I needed it. I don’t even know if I can say I’m “back to where I used to be”, because I don’t even think I know myself without depression. it’ll probably always be a part of me. but sometimes I think about where I’m at and where I have the potential to go from here, and I just want to cry. but not in the bad way. it’s relief. so much relief. 

there’s no one thing that did it. there’s nothing that magically whisked the dragged-face-down-through-gravel feeling away. I didn’t get out of bed one day feeling better. it’s been a process and it continues to be a process. but I think this was what I wanted to feel back then. just the ability to be hopeful. to feel like things might work out. 

I did really have a rough go of it last year. I was already depressed as hell from being emotionally beat up by stupid boys, having to be stuck far away from friends, and having that miserable job. then I lost two pets, my grandpa, and my dad. lost my job. I can’t even hardly remember the last two and a half years of my life, if I’m honest. 

maybe it’s my job and the demands it has of me, but I feel like my memory has been improving the tiniest bit. just a little. I still have a piss-poor sense of time, and my insomnia has been ruining my functioning. I don’t know why odd-numbered years have been slightly better for me than even-numbered years, but it’s definitely a pattern. 2013 was good, 2014 was good for the first half, then came the worst summer of my life and the roughest christmas/new years I’ve ever had, 2015 was pretty good, 2016 was rough, 2017 was good for the first half and shitty for the second, 2018 was straight garbage, and 2019 has... honestly been pretty good. I got over half the year off work. I got to travel. I lost some pets, but I got lovely new ones too. I had the time for crafts, the time to write. I met some really wonderful people. I got to volunteer, and I got a new job that’s showing me what work should feel like. it’s opening doors for me for the future; I’m even beginning to see a possible future for myself in animal care. I’m taking better care of myself, I’m determined to get to the root of my autoimmune weirdness, and I’m finally going to move out again. I’m going to end this year on a good note, even if I end up staying home by myself for the holidays. 

I keep talking about it, but I think it’s worth talking about. I’m excited to see how much better this can get. I won’t get my hopes up, but I’m grateful for every little bit of improvement I make with myself. I want to be a mental illness success story. maybe it’ll be with me forever, but I’m learning to let the little things work. got myself colorful gel pens for work. I’ll draw smiley faces on notes. I wear animal-print socks almost every day. picked out patterns for scrub shirts that I like, that I can wear every day, that make me happy. bought little things for myself at the store, just because I like them. it doesn’t feel like going through the motions anymore. not all the time, anyway. 

it took me somewhere around 5 years to see the light at the end of the trauma tunnel, and I wasn’t sure I would. I’ve had depression likely for well over 12 years-- I never would have dreamed that one day I’d be fighting it and very slowly winning. I’m proud of myself now, for sure, but I’m even prouder of my past selves. for all the times I found myself on the floor, I always got up. for all the times I was too sad to eat, I made sure I ate something anyway. for all the times I wanted to wrap a cord around my neck or claw at my own forearms or veer into oncoming traffic... I put on music. I turned on a show. I scrolled tumblr. I cuddled a rat. I cried it out if I had to. I didn’t turn to drugs or alcohol or self-harm (well. physical anyway). I’m strong as hell and I always have been. I’m grateful for that too. 

[bgharison]

Which WIP?!

I have about three weeks between classes, my meds and my muse seem to be holding a tentative truce, and I really miss writing.  Wanna help me decide which rabbit hole?  I need to choose one and kind of stick with it.  My goal is to have a rough draft done by  August 19 and then edit during the semester.  (My goal is to start an original work in January 2020, so this is warm-up.)

I do find feedback and enthusiasm both validating and motivating, so if something makes you go “oooooooh” let me know?

Options below:

Option A:  Vaguely Pacific Northwest McDanno AU -- Steve returns from combat to his deceased father’s cabin, Danny is a journalist writing about missing children in the area.  Danny gets too close to the truth.  I only have three paragraphs of this written, but it’s outlined.  Inspired in part by the idea of a bearded Steve and Danny wearing jeans, boots, and scarves. 

(opening) He moved through the house, flicking on one or two lights, somewhat surprised that the electricity hadn’t been long since disconnected.  Since it wasn’t, the well pump still worked and the kitchen sink yielded fresh, cold water.  The aquifers here, in the northwest corner of the country, have the coldest, clearest water of anyplace he’s seen, on this continent or any other.  He cupped a handful of it and gulped greedily.  Even in the dim light, he could tell that the coffee maker had only a faint layer of dust.  It gave him pause, to think that someone had been keeping up the property.  His father must have arranged for a caretaker in his will.  

It didn’t occur to him to test the heat; he simply took off his boots and climbed, fully clothed, under the heavy comforter in the room that has remained unchanged since he left it almost two decades ago.

(random selection)  

“Go away, Danny,” Steve orders.  “I mean it.  Get the hell away from me.”

Danny wipes at the blood, dripping steadily now from his eyebrow, trailing down the side of his face.  His jaw clenches as he squares off against Steve.  “Why?  Because I caught you off guard, didn’t duck fast enough?  Come on, Steve, I know you didn’t mean --”

“That’s the point, Danny!” Steve explodes.  “That’s the fucking point.  Whether I mean it or not, this is what happens.  People get hurt.  The people I care about get hurt.”

“Yeah, is that so?  Well maybe the people I care about get something, too.”

“What?  What, Danny?”

Danny steps into his space and he can feel his own coiled tension reflected right back at him, in the stubborn set of Danny’s shoulders, in the heat radiating off his chest.

“This.”

Steve doesn’t have time to react before Danny’s hands are on him, wrapping around the back of his neck, his hip, pulling him in and down.  He tastes the tang of copper and iron as their lips crash together and for a moment it’s violent, and Steve falls into it.  Violence is familiar.

Option B:  Core Four AU Steve comes back from being presumed dead after the Hesse fiasco in North Korea and opens an acupuncture clinic.  Danny is building a new life on the island after losing his wife.  Steve starts to fall for Danny until he suspects that Danny is keeping a secret involving his little girl.  Kono is exasperated with all of the alphabet agencies that come into play -- CIA, FBI, ATF, and she just wants to know -- WTF?! Outlined but with two possible “reveals” I would need to choose from.  This one also give me an opportunity to play with world-building, because the setting is specific, involving an elaborate tree house, a zip line, and other things that end up getting SEALed in order to protect Grace. 

(There’s this)

“Kono, we are professional health care providers here,” he said.  “No dating clients.  And quit trying to set me up.”

“I’m asking for myself,” Kono said.  She beamed at him, a flash of white teeth and dimples.  “He’s adorable.  Like a . . . like a fluffy little lion cub.  I want to take him home and just --”

“Okay then, Kono, let’s get --” Steve glanced down at his schedule -- “Mr. Wilson into a treatment room.”

“Can I get him to put on a gown?” Kono asked.  

Steve looked at her sternly as she blinked in mock innocence.

(And this)

Then again, Danny wasn’t most people.  He noticed everything.  Too many years of training and practice to stop now -- besides, the stakes had never been higher, and his powers of observation, of reading people, of seeing through disguises and lies, might just be the edge that would keep him and his daughter alive until this mess was over.

He pulled off the road onto the narrow gravel drive leading back to the beleaguered property that was not only his cover, but his home -- his fortress.  He pulled up to the gate and keyed in one of two codes -- the one that verified that all was well, and that he was not under duress.  The gate opened smoothly, its deliberately aged and tenuous appearance belying that it was part of the newly installed state-of-the-art defense.    

The drive was long, curving around dense areas of vegetation that still hinted at previous deliberate planning and careful attention.  With a bit of work, the grounds would once again be functional and attractive.  His Camaro handled the gentle incline with ease, and soon he was pulling into the ground level garage of his home, opening the garage door with another code.  It slid closed behind him, the motion sensors glowing at each other in the dim light.  A third code was entered at the door between the garage and the house, the heavy deadbolt sliding open.  Danny locked the door behind him and reset the alarm.

“You realize that three sets of coded entry is going to be difficult to explain to visitors,” a calm voice said.  The clink of glass on porcelain in the kitchen, along with the scent of rich Kona coffee, was welcome.

(And this)

Steve took the long way home, the windows of his truck rolled down, filling the cab with fresh, fragrant air.  He knew he would never tire of this, never tire of being back home, back on Oahu.  Pulling into the driveway was something that at one point, he was sure he’d never do again -- he’d never take it for granted.  The house itself felt in turn far too empty and far too full of ghosts, but he couldn’t imagine not living here.  He was making peace with both the solitude and the presences he couldn’t quite shake.  When Mary was well enough to be discharged, he would bring her here, where he could watch over her, protect her the way a brother should, care for her like she needed.  He’d drag her out into the sunshine and fresh air.  It would help.  It had to.  

He keyed in the alarm code and slipped inside the still house.  Ignoring the boxes half-packed in his father’s office, gathering dust, he headed for the kitchen.  

Option C:  A case from Danny’s past comes back to haunt the team and threaten the island.  This one is not really outlined.  Possibly gen/case fic, possibly newly McDanno, potentially an OC interest for Steve when the original profiler, who considers this case her one failure, comes to help (because I love playing with OCs and creating better love interests for him than the show manages to do, and I loved the dynamic with Steve and Alicia Brown, and even though I didn’t see it as romantic, I think Steve could fall for someone who is a match for him intellectually and who would understand what his years in the underbelly of Naval intel did to his psyche, and I love the ‘brilliant, mentally tough but physically vulnerable person matched with the brilliant, physically tough but emotionally vulnerable person” trope, sue me).  And I love exploring Danny’s back stories and volatility and the reasons that his marriage failed because his job came first.  We would see a darker Danny in this and that intrigues me. I might also jump the timeline for the first time (for me) put this post season-4, meaning Junior and Tani instead of Chin and Kono.  

There’s this:

“We called him the Holiday Weekend Killer,” Danny said.  “First body, just like this one, the Tuesday after President’s Day weekend.  We found the next body the day after Easter.  And then another the Tuesday after Memorial Day.  And then we ran ourselves into the ground all through the heat of the summer, got nowhere, and the fourth body showed up the day after Labor Day.  We missed Thanksgiving with our families with nothing to show for it but another dead woman -- this one we had to identify with dental records, because the son of a bitch had four days to torture her.  We took off twenty-four hours, Christmas Eve into Christmas Day, might as well, since we had no fucking leads.  He had almost a month with that poor girl, college student, aged out of the foster system, so no one fucking noticed she was missing until classes started again in January.  Christmas Day, no one even fucking knew that beautiful --”

 Danny broke off with a muttered curse and walked out of the room, pushing the doors open with such force that they struck the walls behind, the sound echoing as Steve and Max stood in shocked silence.

 “Give us a few, yeah, Max?” Steve said quietly.  

He caught up with Danny in the basement locker room, the soles of his shoes sticking out of the stall where he was retching over the toilet.  Steve grabbed a length of paper toweling and wet it at the sink.

Danny staggered out of the stall and silently accepted Steve’s offering, wiping his face and mouth.  He balled up the toweling and dropped it into the wastebasket, then rinsed his mouth at the sink, hands trembling on the faucet.

Steve waited, arms crossed, leaning against the door of the locker room.

“I’m sorry, Danny,” he said, when Danny finally turned off the water, leaning over the sink, his breath coming in ragged gasps.  “We’ll all understand if you need to sit this one out.”

It happened so fast that Steve flinched in surprise, Danny’s hand lashing out and shattering the mirror in front of him.

“Sit it out?  Why bother?  This fucking animal already destroyed my marriage, almost cost me my baby girl, not to mention the pile of pretty young corpses we processed.  Processed lots of bodies, Steve, but precious little evidence.  I’ll have them FedEx it to us, shouldn’t take much to send one fucking file box full of nothing useful,” Danny exploded.  “Sit this one out?  What, just do paperwork while I watch you and Chin run yourselves into the ground, while we all try to pretend that we aren’t worried sick about the possibility of this guy getting his hands on Kono?  While Max stacks up bodies in the morgue?  Bodies that no one claims?  Because this guy, this guy, Steve, he knows how to pick his victims.”

“Danny,” Steve sighed.  He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck.  “Danny, we have -- we have resources here, we can cut through red tape.  If it is the guy --”

“Cigarette burns on the soles of their feet, Steve, do you have any idea --”

Danny stopped short at the flicker of emotion that Steve couldn’t mask quickly enough.  He met Steve’s gaze and held it.

“Yeah,” Steve said.  “We’re going to get this guy, Danny.  Now listen, the first thing we need to know -- is this personal?  With him and you?  Is he here, now, on Oahu, because you’re here?”

[homosociallyyours]

Hey, Megan. This has mentions of abuse so if it triggers you don't read any further. What do you think about these new revelation in Johnny Depp case? I'm seeing two very conflicting arguments and I'm not sure who to believe at this point. Believing a female is the first instinct but apparently the evidence of abuse by her was submitted too.

Hey friend! Thanks for the message. I feel ok talking more about this even though I know it’s a difficult topic. I’m tagging this with abuse cw, domestic violence cw, and dv cw-- hopefully that will catch stuff for filters but if not I think it’s good to have a warning here too!

I’ll start off by saying I have been seeing a post going around about this that really upset me deeply. The entire point of it is that JD is innocent and should never have been “cancelled” and that now AH is the one who deserves to be “cancelled” because she’s the true abuser. I made a brief post earlier saying that my tendency is to believe a woman when she comes forward with abuse allegations, especially when there’s a big power differential between her and the person (man, in this case) she’s accusing, because historically women have not had anything to gain from being open about being abused. 

I don’t want to go into a list of names, but it’s really long and full of women who have produced evidence-- pictures, recordings, witnesses who corroborate their stories --only to find their own careers ruined. Yes, the tides are turning somewhat with the me too movement, but there are no guarantees. 

That being said, I’m reminded of some friends I had when I was younger. They had a particularly bad break up that ended with physical violence and both claimed to have been abused. I talked with both of them and I believe both of them. Often times abusive relationships look like one powerful abuser vs. one less powerful abused person, and I think that’s the dynamic that we’re expected to see play out along gender lines, but abuse looks a lot of different ways. Abuse can be verbal and emotional, and it can be physical in ways that don’t require a lot of strength or leave lots of marks. It can be quick and volatile and rare. It’s also possible, as it was with my friends, that both people are emotionally and physically harming each other. It can start out as something that seems harmless for both people and escalate into something more as other aspects of the relationship dissolve. 

At this point, we don’t know enough to know what was going on. The evidence that JD has brought forward (what little I could find online) definitely shows signs of physical abuse. So did what we saw from AH. I am not a black and white thinker, so for me this makes sense. The situation is colored in shades of grey, many of which I won’t be able to see from my vantage point as someone who knows neither of the people involved. If we were friends, maybe I’d have a stronger opinion. Maybe I would’ve seen abusive behavior from one or both people before, or maybe conversations with both parties would clear things up. But really we’re all just sitting here on the internet not knowing anything but the limited information we’re fed by the media. 

So. I would just urge people not to “cancel” anyone immediately. And for the people who want to be upset that JD was “cancelled” well. For me it’s better than the alternative. Yeah, I know some people will think that’s messed up, but I would rather not get into the habit of forcing someone who comes forward with abuse allegations (especially a woman or any marginalized person) to withstand endless questioning that assumes they’re lying just so that we don’t accidentally “cancel” someone (in this case a powerful white man). 

Finally (sorry I’m longwinded I know), you probably noticed that I kept putting “cancelled” in quotation marks. This word. Ugh. It’s fine for a joke, I guess, something along the lines of telling your friend they’re blocked/reported when they send you a post you don’t wanna see. But it’s being used seriously in this instance and that just won’t do. You can’t delete someone’s existence from the earth, and you can’t blot out their past. We are all problematic, we all do things that would absolutely appall one another. Just yesterday a friend and I were talking and it turns out we fundamentally disagree about what constitutes a reasonable omission of truth in a certain situation. My stance-- that it’s fine to not tell someone about an aspect of yourself if you feel it necessary for self protection --is most likely problematic to some people! That’s ok! 

You’re never going to understand or agree with everything another person says, thinks, or does. You can only draw lines for what you find unacceptable. Just like you can decide not to go to group activities with someone you don’t like, you can choose to not watch movies with a certain star or director. This can be arbitrary, even! You get to decide what you do. You don’t get to cancel the person, though. So yeah, AH isn’t cancelled and neither was JD. He still has jobs, he still has fans. 

ANYWAY a little tl;dr: we don’t know what happened because we don’t actually know these people or their lives, and can we maybe please stop trying to “cancel” anyone and maybe just decide on our own whether or not we’re going to consume their media? 

[queen-busybee]

In Happiness or In Trials

words: 2016

rating: T

pairing: Chlonath

Happy (very late) Valentine’s Day @miraculoussideblog ~! I’m a garbage fire and you definitely pulled together the end of this exchange. You’re a good friend and I’m sorry to make you wait!

Shout-out to @this-was-a-terrible-idea for the last minute Beta <3

They had an unspoken rule, a truce of sorts, that they abide by when things get like this.

The world had no right to know their business.

It didn't matter how big the fight was, or what it was about. When it came time for them to make an appearance, together, they feigned happiness. Hollow smiles, wooden hands holding onto each other, empty words and quieted personalities. Anyone who paid attention would know that something was wrong, but they were in a world where people cared more about themselves and the newest gossip than to pick up on the subtleties that Chloe and Nathanael had mastered over the years.

They didn't fight often.

Chloe had long learned the art of compromise and Nathanael was a gentle soul that gave more than he took, but it only seemed to make the real fights that happened, the ones that truces were made for, more volatile and explosive. He was not known for raising his voice, but there have been more than a few times Chloe had pushed him into yelling. She is known more for anger than sadness, but fights caused her to shut down. Uncooperative, unresponsive, utterly frustrating for him. It's impossible to work through a problem if half of the issue won't speak.

Someone's anniversary. They brought a gift, but Chloe couldn’t even remember who they're supposed to be celebrating. There are too many people, milling around and talking, a constant buzz of conversation that doesn't cease; flutes of champagne and wine that she doesn't dare drink. Next to her, Nathanael also stays dry. Another unspoken truce. After their first couple fights, they found alcohol only escalated their fights. Her hands shoving him, his fingers snaring her wrists, shadows of bruises on both of them.

Chloe should have known better. She should have known better for all of this. Her broken record, “You should have known,” played, over and over, skipping, scratched and worn from use. It echoed in her mind as she smiled at the people walking past her.

Because she has seen this before. Repressed memories that breach every time they fight, the echoing of the yelling down the halls of the hotel, the shattering of vases that her mother threw at the wall. Bare feet walking into glass; Chloe, numb, looking at the warm, wet blood between her toes, painting the tile. The pain didn’t register until Jean Jean picked her up and was already coddling her. Big, hot tears rolling down her cheeks as she wailed a harmony to the song her parents were screaming.

She remembered the way that her mother looked at her blood in disgust and the way her father rushed to her, kissing her head as Jean Jean cleaned her feet.

Every word, every fight between her and Nathanael tasted how the glass felt beneath her feet. Angry words that scratched up her throat and cut her tongue, tasted like red poison in her mouth. She felt like she was drowning in the blood, silencing her, thick and sticky, stuck in the back of her throat. His voice like nails scratching her ears.

Chloe smiled at another person who stopped to say hello. Her fingers tightened around his arm and she straightened, trying to seem bigger than she felt when the couple began talking to them. Small talk, dead words, pretending to care. It was easier when Nathanael was present with her. He may be standing next to her, but she could tell that he wasn't with her. They usually gave each other subtle looks and made tongue-in-cheek comments under their breaths, his fingers sliding down her side, caressing her waist, her hip bumping him to keep him in place when his words edged on the line of distasteful.

He stood away from her, close enough that her hand was wrapped around his forearm, but he wasn't beside her--touching her from shoulder to hip, an ever-present identity she relied on and loved.

Emotionless goodbyes; she still couldn't place whose anniversary they were celebrating. Nathanael usually opened the car door for her, mocking playful as people watched from the window.

"They are so in love; why doesn't my husband treat me like that?"

"I bet he cheats on her."

"Chloe was never one to be faithful."

Despite the words whispered behind their backs, they would smile and laugh at each other.

She watched as he walked to his side of the car. Throat closing in on her, she opened her car door and sat down.

Silence never scared Chloe.

Chloe was not afraid of much in life.

The quietness of a room, the intimacy of stillness between her and her partner, she welcomed it, felt safe in the heavy blanket of no expectations of conversations, the lack of judgment, the state of just being with Nathanael.

There were no words exchanged on the ride home. The radio played softly in the background. The steady hum of the car rattled inside of her, vibrations down to her bones.

Chloe was unafraid of silence, but this was something worse.

-

Nathanael loved Chloe.

He loved her more than he could put into words. So he put it into art. Everything he created was influenced and inspired by her; pieces of her personality he could physically manifest onto a canvas, into a sketch. The cheeky way she would say something, the way her hair fell down her back when she took it out of her ponytail.

He loved her even as she did things he didn't understand.

Fighting was natural. It was normal for people to argue with their spouse or to disagree with them and, he admitted, it didn't seem like they disagreed on much, usually. He couldn't even remember what it was about tonight. Something stupid.

It always was.

Something stupid, yet it mattered because they don't yell at each other over nothing.

His parents had taught him that arguments kept things running smoothing between partners. It was a medium of discussion, that got out steam and relieved tensions.

But it's impossible to argue with someone who won't say a word.

Oh, Chloe has plenty to say at the beginning of the argument. Her words slice in front of his; she's still herself. Angry and loud, brash with harsh words and names he knows she doesn't mean, but in the moment it frustrates him and gets him worked up.

He has never been able to pinpoint the moment that it changes for her.

If he could, then maybe he would know her trigger.

He could find out what she hides in her past that pulls her away from him.

But sometime after the first hour, she falls apart. She no longer responds to him, cannot meet his eyes. The argument unresolved; Chloe no longer cooperating with him to fix the issue.

He can't patch things together without the materials. He's a needle with no thread.

She walked into the house before him, leaving the door open behind her and he trailed, quiet, watching her.

These nights resulted in him sleeping in the guest room. Once, he heard, that the way to a happy marriage is to never go to bed angry or upset and to always sleep in the same bed. It didn't matter if that meant no sleep. It was a sacrifice that had to be made. That would never work for them. A night's sleep usually brought Chloe from her reverie and would open her up to speaking again.

It was an awkward dance until they went to bed. All of his things were in their bedroom and their bathroom, so they would undress the day together, brushing their teeth in silence, standing next to each other, in the mirror with each other. He watched, waiting, ever holding out for her, as she washed her face clean from makeup. Then they moved to the bedroom.

It's like they didn't know each other anymore.

They turned their backs to each other as they dress. He heard her struggle with the zipper on the back of her dress, but she didn't ask for help. There was once a time she had to do it herself and she may need time to remember, but eventually she would.

Forty minutes and there were still no words between them.

They stared at each other from across the room, waiting, like a standoff, for the other to make a move. But Nathanael was already reaching for her. He, emotionally, could not reach out to her anymore. He would do anything for Chloe; he loved Chloe, but there are things he was not capable of doing.

He was exhausted. On any normal day dealing with a party full of people from a social class he had yet to come to understand was tiring and he would take comfort in the laughter and words of his wife. He would savor her kisses and her soft words and her wandering fingers, but this was not a normal night.

So he turned to leave the room.

"Don't..."

Nathanael paused and waited. Her voice cracked, was soft, barely audible. Maybe it was because he hungered for some sort of reaction from her. He was naturally attuned to catch her voice. He turned and looked at her.

She was so small.

Before they got married, Nathanael would have never used the word "small" to describe Chloe. She was larger than life, with a big personality and a loud voice, always taking up the entire room. But she was small when she was like this. Like a child. Fragile and soft, breakable.

"Please don't," she tried again, her voice faltering and she fell quiet for a moment. "Please... just... stay tonight."

He walked towards her, slowly, like he was approaching a skittish animal.

She almost was.

She got into bed first, sliding all the way over onto her side of the bed. Usually, she crowded the middle and complained about how it was cold if she wasn't against him. But when he got in behind her, she didn't move closer. She didn't look at him, either. Stubbornly facing away from him, but tense.

He couldn't just keep reaching for her; this was what he told himself. Yet he looked at the back of her head, of the way she was curling in on herself, and he hesitated.

You're not supposed to go to bed angry.

His ring felt heavy on his finger and his thumb twirled it a little. With the ring came so many compromises and vows, more than he really knew what he was signing up for when he married her.

But it was a symbol of his love for her.

So once more, he would try.

"Chloe," he said softly, reaching out to her, arm sliding over to curve around her waist. "You know I still love you, right?" Her body stiffened under his arm and he felt worry and alarm in his heart. "Chloe, I love you." He wasn't prepared for the tremble that her body gave and the soft sob that escaped her lips.

His arm pulled her against his body and he kissed along the back of her neck. "Oh, Chloe," he whispered. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm sorry," she said emotionally, her voice strained. "I'm sorry. I know I'm not a good wife and I shut down and I'm sorry. Please don't leave me. I love you so much."

Nathanael tightened his arm around her waist, making her fall silent. "You're not a bad wife," he said, slight disbelief in his voice. "I love you, Chloe. You're my wife. I would never leave you because of a fight."

She was silent. Then, softer, quieter, more fragile, "I'm sorry."

This would be all he got tonight, he could tell, but it was a start. It was a breakthrough, all considering. His arm kept her snug against his front and he breathed in the gentle scent of her hair, nuzzling her.

"Dans le bonheur ou dans les épreuves," he murmured into the curve of her neck.

In happiness or in trial.

He had promised in their vows.

[yellowmagicalgirl]

With The Distance Amplified Chapter Two

Light Years from You

Read on FFN

Fic summary: AU: After the battle with Zarkon, Katie disappeared from the Black Lion. A couple months later, the paladins receive a distress signal from the Black Lion, and find a group of prisoners that she rescued; one of them happened to have flown her to Kerberos. Background Kidge; Shiro and Keith are former foster siblings. Age Swap!AU/Paladin Swap!AU

Chapter Summary: Katie wasn’t able to reunite with her teammates, but she did leave a message.

Guess who finally updated! AU idea belongs to @sabertoothwalrus Chapter title comes from “Telescope” by Starset.

Dark purple lightning arced from the fingers of a Druid that Katie thought someone had shot, and then she felt an all too familiar push on her prosthetic. She was glad that most of her weight had been on it because at least then she could use her right leg to stabilize herself. She heard a crackle of static in her ear. Whatever spell the Druid had used, it wasn't an EMP. It had only affected her prosthetic; not her armor and definitely not her helmet.

"Katie? You there?" Lance said as she shifted her weight onto her left leg as best she could. So the Black Lion had finally found her. She frowned. Escape and home were so close, and yet she was firmly rooted to the ground with Druids fast approaching.

She yanked her helmet off of her head; there was information on it that could help the paladins. Maybe Matt and Hunk could decrypt what she hadn't gotten around to and find her dad. Too bad it also meant that they might hear the recordings that she had wanted to go back and edit so that her emotions wouldn't be on full display.

The tallest of the three aliens who hadn't turned on her and Keith was now specifically holding them back within the pod. Despite not having spoken in more than a year, he still knew her way too well.

"Use this to contact Voltron!" she said, kicking off with her left leg to give her helmet every ounce of starting momentum that she could.

"Kates, don't!" Keith pleaded as she threw the helmet. It was too late, though. She was already falling, the force of the throw too much for her unbalanced body. She hit the ground.

After the helmet crossed through the doors, the airlock of the ship closed. Katie lifted her head to see it fly away.

She was then yanked to her feet by bony hands. She bowed her head with a small smile, white and brown hair forming a shield between the world and her eyes. They would be okay. That was all that really mattered to her when the Druids teleported away.

She focused on that thought when the Druids alerted Haggar to their presence.

They would be okay. Whether or not she would be didn't matter. Keith would be okay, Shiro would have their foster sibling back, and the others would have closure. The rest didn't matter. She couldn't let it matter.

Especially not when Haggar once again called her Champion.

Keith looked up at Shiro slowly, the gold in their eye twisting, shrinking, and dimming until they were no longer heterochromic. In addition, some of the purple fur receded, but this only made them look paler. "Shiro?" they rasped before closing their eyes. Prior to today, it had been so long since they had heard their name. It had been so long since they had actually spoken rather than just make pained noises, and it had been a long time since even that. Their head began to feel hot with the feeling of being close to fainting or a panic attack, probably fainting. They hadn't had that much experience with shifting their body between human and galra, or at least not in their memorable lifespan. Now, especially with their recent blood loss, they were pretty sure the only thing keeping them conscious was a rapidly depleting store of adrenaline.

Shiro attempted to wipe away the beginnings of tears away from his eyes as he nearly ran towards Keith, but paused midway. They were injured, and given his poor ability when it came to medical situations he'd only make things worse.

"Um, hi, my name is Shiro," he introduced himself with a wobbling voice. "I'm the acting leader of Voltron, um, the guy with the mustache is Coran, he'll show you to our healing pods." Hopefully that sounded natural, and not like the kid who was playing at being leader like he still felt like sometimes.

The group began to walk away, though Lance lingered at the back. "Hey, Matt," he said. The oldest of their old lunch quartet hadn't started walking at all. "Are you going to be okay?"

Matt turned to him. "I'll be fine," he said with a softness that hadn't been there a year ago. "I just need some time alone right now. Call me when the mission briefing starts." Lance gave him a thumbs up and a sad smile before walking away.

"Are you kidding me, Katie?" Matt said to no one as he entered the ship, where several bags laid in the corner. "When will you learn that you're not an army?" As he walked into the ship, his foot brushed up against something. Matt looked down to where her helmet lay abandoned. He picked it up and cradled it in the place where it would be if she were hugging him.

"Since I don't know what the date or time is, I'm going to say right now is Day 1, time 00:00; I'll be using military time," Katie's voice said from the helmet.

Matt dropped the helmet, stifling a shriek.

Keith was half Galra. That was what the pod displayed on the diagnostics that were trying to calibrate for species. It wasn't taking as long as it had when Lance had been blown up, but it still was taking longer than Shiro had liked. He didn't really understand why they displayed that; was it possible that the Druids could change someone's species? Was that why Green had only said that Katie was 90% human? Then again, she had also said there were Alteans. Shiro would have to ask Hunk. Technically, Matt was better at bio stuff, but he was also more emotionally volatile at the moment.

Shiro gave one last glance at the timer on Keith's pod before exiting the room. They would be in there longer than the other aliens (all of whom had been able to fit, thankfully) due to prior blood loss, as well as any injuries they had received from both the escape and from fainting on the way to the pods.

"Hey, guys? Can you meet me in the lab?" Matt's voice said from the coms, sounding surprisingly chipper for someone who had been complaining about being somewhat tired prior to coming close to finding his sister, only to lose her again. Even if Shiro wasn't leader and already planning on checking up with the team, that would be good cause to check on Matt.

He arrived at the lab at around the same time as Allura, and had to practically shove his way through to see Katie's helmet hooked up to Matt's computer. On the screen, there was a line as well as a display for the time.

"Katie recorded a message, or rather, a series of messages," Matt said. "Maybe we can figure something out from them.

"I still need to land the ship," Allura said. "Let's end when we reach Olkarion."

After murmurs of agreement, Matt pressed play.

"Since I don't know what the date or time is, I'm going to say right now is Day 1, time 00:00; I'll be using military time since that's easier to keep track of. I set things up so that if anyone holds the face, er, opening of my helmet to paladin armor and either my head isn't in it or I'm in some state where I can't speak, the playback will start."Like I said, I don't know where or when I am, so I'm just going to start from the top. My name is Katie Miranda Holt, and last I checked I'm twenty-two years old. I'm from the planet Earth, and I'm the Paladin of the Black Lion of Voltron." She paused.

"So the last thing I remember is fighting Zarkon." A second pause, this time shorter. "Specifically, a giant robot version of Zarkon." Underneath the panic and awkwardness, she sounded incredulous, as if she still couldn't believe the event had actually happened. "Um, Robeast Zarkon? I unlocked the Black Lion's teleportation ability, and was able to steal the Black Bayard. Reclaim it? Is it really stealing when Black decided I was the better choice of Paladin?" Shiro winced; she sounded so confident in her bond (or at least the most confident since the recording had started) and what had he done? Usurped it in her absence. Black hadn't seemed to mind it, but what about her Paladin?

"Anyway, we were able to make a giant flaming sword when all five of us placed our Bayards in our lions, which im-" she said, before pausing. For a few moments, the only noise in the room was her shaking breath. "Zarkon's robot was stabbed," she said, sounding distant like she usually did after a flashback or while dissociated. "He tried to take me down with him by using the bond between him, me, and Black. I guess it was too much for me, because Black sent me to the astral plane, this time without a physical body as an anchor or anything. I don't know how long I spent there, but it was long enough to change me. Both in the way that Black meant I guess, and in a way that is way too similar to the last time I came back from space. A lot of my hair is white now, not just the streak. What I can see of it, anyways. It's still rather short.This planet has a breathable atmosphere and a nice and sturdy, erm I think that's a hollowed out tree that maybe Matt and the Green Lion will find me in, so I'm going to attempt to sleep. Hope the armor is bug repellent. You'd think that after not having a physical body for so long, you wouldn't be tired."

"Pause!" Lance shouted. Matt stopped the recording, and turned to look at him. "Sorry, but did anyone understand what she was talking about during that last bit? Like, before she started talking about whether or not she could survive. Or maybe the new body thing too?"

"While I wouldn't be surprised if the Black Lion cooked something like that up, I haven't ever heard of it," Coran said. "Things would certainly be easier if Black would just get rid of Zarkon's physical body."

"I'm sure she'll explain it later in the recording," Matt said as he turned back to his computer.

"And hopefully she doesn't cram her explanation with quantum theory," Lance grumbled.

"Day 1, time 09:42. I feel more rested than I did a few hours ago. Time to try and find food and water, since I don't know how long it will take Black to find me. I hope it isn't too long.

"Day 1, time 12:26. It's getting dark; the planet appears to have two lunar masses. I wish I knew the stars here. Even though I didn't know the exact constellations on Kerberos, I knew the stars and planets well enough to be able to find my way…" She trailed off, before speaking in a flatter, more monotone voice. "Find my way to Earth, even without just pointing myself at the Sun, despite it seeming like a perfectly valid option. Thanks, Keith.

"Day 2, time 07:58. Sunrise. I think this planet doesn't operate on a twenty-four hour system. So glad my suit has a clock. Still haven't gotten in contact with Black.

"Day 3, time 14:46. While I'm glad we stocked up on ration bars, half of one a day isn't cutting it as well as I thought it would. I mean, I'll be fine for now, and it's going better than I thought it would. Besides," She paused, and then said darkly, "somehow, I doubt they fed me well in the Arena. I survived it once, I'll survive similar circumstances.

"Day 4, time 02:54. I'm alive, and really want to edit this when I get home. Yesterday was uncalled for." And there was that old attempt at being a wise, totally-not-affected by her PTSD leader. Somehow, Hunk had thought that she had stopped that mindset.

"Day 4, time 21:46. For all that Black said that she wanted to protect me when she asked to modify my body, I really feel like I got punted onto a random jungle planet. Am I being too picky? Probably, but I'm hungry.

"Day 5, time 06:05. I found fruit. Well, since it looks like Earth fruits I'm calling them fruit. One's a giant blue strawberry, which is edible, but really bland. There's also one that looks like a banana but tastes like a pineapple. Well, at least I won't starve. Glad the suit has these bags," she said, referring to the bags Hunk and Shiro had used that one time to gather scaultrite.

"Day 5, time 7:92. Am I dying or is it just indigestion?"Day 5, time 15:37. Not dead yet. I'm going to try one fruit at a time."Day 5, time 17:28. I think I'm allergic to the pine-bananas. Quiznak.

"Day 6, time 12:39. If I ever get back to Earth, I think I'm going to go to therapy.

"Day 7, time 21:24. I think my near-lack of a sleep schedule is adjusting to this planet, which means that when I get back to the Castle things will be… hectic. Well, assuming that I didn't get dishonorably discharged for disappearing in the middle of battle. Already got that from the Garrison, I bet." Lance cringed, remembering the team's last twenty-four hours on Earth.

"Day 8, time 14:52. Is that a skyscraper? Or am I seeing mirages? I seriously doubt it's a flashback, given that as far as I know I spent the entirety of Hell-year either in the Arena, in a cell, or with Haggar and I really doubt any of those were on a planet.

"Day 8, time 15:34. I found a city, and it turns out that the skyscraper is a database for the Galra. I am so glad that there are easily-hacked maps. Maybe I can hack into it?

"Day 9, time 13:06." Katie's voice was shaking and fast. "Or rather, January 26, 2115, if I'm doing my calculations correctly. Quiznak, it's been three months. I really need to edit this; it's not like the team needs to hear all that." Matt gripped the edges of his chair. This had been recorded not even a week ago.

"Hunk, Matt, if you're hearing this then Happy Birthday. But that's… well, I guess it's important." A wince was shared by the two young men in question. "It's just not what I found in the Galra skyscraper. There were prisoner records, and -"

"Pause," Allura said. "I need to land the ship soon."

"Can she finish her sentence?" Shiro asked.

"Twenty ticks maximum." Everyone knew how Katie could get when she rambled.

"- I found Keith."

ed.

“- I found Keith.”

[chocoholicannanymous]

Ember pt 3 (Teen Wolf)

This is the last part of this fic, that was commisioned by @rubylis​ through @fandomtrumpshate​ 2017. Better late than never, right?

Part 2 here,  Part 1 here and  Flare here

As always, I own nothing except an overactive imagination, way too many plotbunnies and a worn red hoodie.

Ember, part 3

Stiles faces the camera, features deceptively relaxed and calm, but eyes hard. He waits for the light to change, just as he's been told – just like he's rehearsed – and when it does he counts to three before starting to talk.

“My name is Mieczyslaw Stilinski. Two years ago my Mark flared, and I've been hiding from the Council ever since.”

O---o--o---O

It's not a bad life, this new one. Oh, it’s unfamiliar, but it’s not bad. Just...hard. Strange. Like it should be someone else’s.

When Stiles wakes up in an unfamiliar room - or rather, when Stiles wakes up nothing makes sense. He should be dead. He planned on being dead. And yet. His body feels strong, and capable, and absolutely in no way dying. It makes no sense, fits none of his memories, just as the room doesn’t.

And then he sees Derek.

After that it’s easy to start putting the pieces of the puzzle together, and by the time someone comes to give him information (say, two, maybe three minutes after he first wakes up) Stiles has a pretty accurate idea. Not with all the details, no, but enough that not much of what the woman - Marin, she introduces herself as - says comes as a surprise.

Weres don’t do well with losing their Matches. Someone like Derek, who’s already lost so much (and yes, even as emotionally compromised as he’d been it hadn’t taken that long for Stiles to connect “Derek” to Derek Hale of Beacon Hills’s biggest tragedy) would have done even less so. It doesn’t exactly take a genius to figure out that Derek had been just desperate enough to not think, and risk everything, to give his dying Match the bite.

Because when he focuses Stiles can tell he’s been changed - and interesting, he’s almost completely certain he’s a were, not a Kanima. That’s another lie exposed, another strike for the Council then.

One day, he promises. One day…

The rest of the puzzle unravels inside his overactive brain, and Marin’s information just fills in blank spots and provides nuance. Such as the room, and the cabin, they’re in being located in a warded community - Stiles had hoped, but it’s good to have it confirmed - and that he and Derek are welcome to stay as long as they wish.

There’s one thing Marin tells him that’s a complete surprise though. Derek has given up his Alpha power, for Stiles.

He thinks about that one for a long time. The idea of someone giving up that kind of power is...almost unfathomable. Power is addicting, for one, and since Derek inherited his power from his family, sentimentality also plays in. Plus, you know, a hundred more reasons. And it could have come in very handy, too, for Derek to be able to control Stiles in some way.

Except Derek just gave it up. To keep Stiles safe.

That’s humbling.

It’s also another sign that maybe he and Derek truly are well Matched - the two of them, not just their Marks.

Stiles remembers thinking that if he could have Derek and his soul both he’d never give either up. Well. Looks like he’s getting his wish.

It’s not quite that easy, of course. As much as Stiles and Derek both would love to just lose themselves in each other the truth is they can’t. Not even having freed themselves from the council make them completely free. Because second chances never come for free, and the price for Stiles’s is everything else - including his humanity.

Teaching him to live with the change and find control has to come first.

It sucks.

Stiles expects focus to be as hard as always, control to be difficult, and finding an anchor easy as breathing - with Derek next to him, how can it be anything else?

Only it’s not. It’s worse than he could ever have imagined, and it’s a fight for every inch. His first full moon is, well, a disaster. Not even Derek can keep him from trying to run back to Beacon Hills. Regardless of the danger Beacon Hills is where his dad is, and caught up in instinct that’s all Stiles knows - his dad’s been his everything for years, and now he’s not here.

In the end the community’s magic users has to step in. Stiles wakes up the next day with an impressive headache, chained to the floor of a room he’s never seen before. Apparently they knocked him out after he tried to literally claw his way out - through Derek.

The shame over that lingers for months, which makes control even harder to find. Derek helps him through it all without reproach, and by the time Stiles has found enough of a balance for them to be able to focus on each other too that steady support has endeared the man even more to Stiles.

(Finding out that one of Derek’s reasons for giving up his Alpha power was so Stiles wouldn’t ever feel like Derek could control him has already made Stiles very close to falling in love.)

It takes the better part of a year for Stiles to get his werewolfiness in check - to be able to run free during the full moon, and to even think of doing anything but keeping himself under ironclad control. A year before his desire to run back to Beacon Hills and snatch his father away isn’t a danger to all of them. Before he can be trusted to keep his claws where they belong even when his emotions are running high. Before he’s safe to even consider dating. (Stiles is a teenager, okay, and one with a more than healthy libido. He’s learned the hard way why getting his hands on his gorgeous Match isn’t a good idea yet.)

The upside to that is that once it is safe Stiles and Derek have gotten to know each other enough that they can safely say that getting together is about the two of them, not about being Matched.

Not to say being Derek’s Match isn’t amazing. It is. Maybe it’s because Stiles is a were now, and that he and Derek are connected through the bite, through pack. Maybe it’s the magic of the Marks. Either way they can feel each other, and having that is, it’s everything. Stiles loves his dad, okay, he 100 percent does, and he knows it’s mutual. It’s just that the loss of Claudia Stilinski had left them both feeling adrift and unstable, and having Derek there as a constant and solid presence gives Stiles solid ground under his feet for the first time since. And the same, Stiles knows, is true in reverse.

They’ve both lost just about everything. They’re both giving each other exactly that. Everything.

If this is what Matches and Marks are truly about, Stiles thinks, it’s no wonder there are poets whose works deal solely with the subject.

Knowing makes him hate the Council even more for twisting it.

Still, here and now life is good. And then some Council-connected asshole tries to kill Scott.

It goes like this, he’s told once he’s no longer a frothing ball of fangs, fur and rage. Some Council flunky calls the Beacon Hills sheriff’s station, requesting assistance regarding Scott McCall. The thing is, the Beacon Hills sheriff's station? Is John Stilinski’s station. That means he’s the one who answers the call.

As he’s fond of saying, John didn’t get his job through his looks. He’s smart, intuitive, and a good detective. He also apparently has a much better idea of what his late wife was up to than anyone - she included - has ever realized. Add the bitterness of having lost his son because of the Council and the result is a man determined to not have others suffer the same.

He saves at least three lives that day simply by thinking faster than the other party.

As soon as the name Scott McCall is uttered John talks over the flunky, firing off questions too fast for the other man to actually answer them, ending with a oh-so-casual mention that Scott should be safely with his pack for the full moon. That stops the Council flunky dead, just as intended.

It’s Scott’s first full moon after getting the bite - a bite more of less brought on by medical emergency after his latest asthma attack nearly killed him - and well, records can be real slow to update. With Scott being a relative no one, having his status as a were out there before anything else can be said could be the only thing saving him from the very fate Stiles once feared enough to take poison.

John’s not about to let that happen on his watch.

Something about how the flunky reacts makes John nervous enough to set up a watch at the McCall residence that night, leaving him in a position to stop an assassination attempt - there can be no other description, he insists, for an attack using mountain ash, wolf’s-bane grenades and wolf’s-bane bullets. Not to mention the attackers doesn’t seem to care too much about the fact that there are two people living in the house.

And that’s before John realizes someone’d broken into his house while he was at the McCalls, most likely to get him too out of the way.

The cherry on top of that shit-sundae is that Scott is Marked and the Council doesn’t have his Match in custody. Nor do they seem very eager to rectify that, or even share information about who the elusive Match is. Leaving John and Melissa with Scott, a newly changed were, who is almost guaranteed to not be in control is Marked and a missing Match.

It’s a good thing Stiles only finds out afterwards.

A really good thing.

A week after that clusterfuck Marin passes on the information that his dad and the McCalls are safe, hidden in another of the secretive warded communities. She won’t tell Stiles where it is, or let him pass messages back - it’s still too dangerous to let anyone know he’s alive, especially with Scott being so volatile, and likely to set out on a hunt for his Match. She does promise, however, that once it’s safe they’ll find a way to transfer John Stilinski to their community.

It’s good, but it’s nowhere enough. Having just had the fact that no one is truly safe shoved in his face makes Stiles angry, angrier than he’s ever been. It’s not the kind of red hot fury that causes him to pop claws and want to kill people. It’s an icy-white one, cold and calculating, every part of brilliance from his human genius stoked by the wolf’s desire to protect his pack. The Council might have gotten away with killing his mom, but not this. Going after the only people Stiles had left in him to love (preDerek, obviously) just because Scott taking the bite to save his own damned life stops them from twisting his Mark to suit their own purposes is passing the point of no return.

Stiles might not have been willing to fight for himself, but he sure as hell will for the people he loves.

At first he wanted to find those faceless people trying to steal one of Stiles’s two friends and hurt them. Wanted to rip, and claw, and bite, and tear. their. throats. out. With his teeth. Now that he’s calmed down some he knows that’s not enough. Stiles wants to destroy them like they wanted to destroy Scott.

So he starts plotting. Living where he does Stiles isn’t without resources. First of all, the warded communities contain a lot of people who are just like him, in that they are in danger from the Council, and want to see it torn down. That’s good - he’ll need people like that.

Also, he’s got access to a lot of information he’s never known before, information the Council would prefer if no one knew, but it’s not enough. He needs more. Lots and lots more.

It’s time, Stiles decides, to play his hidden ace.

That ace consists of two sets of numbers that his mom made him memorize not long before she died. The first is a phone number, and the second an ID code of some sort that he leaves on the answering machine along with a number he can be reached on.

Then all he can do is wait.

That wait is why he didn’t make the call when his Mark flared, why he chose poison instead. Getting an answer will take up to 48 hours, time he hadn’t had back then. And no matter how much his mom believed that whoever answers could help, Stiles has limited trust in what they can do.

48 hours would have seen him locked up in a sub-training facility (provided he’d survived that long) and yeah. Locating someone in a sub-training facility, breaking in and freeing them is beyond a tall order, it’s pretty much impossible.

He’s got time now though.

The man that meets him looks like a librarian, meek and mild mannered - if you look at the surface. Stiles doesn’t do that. First of all because his dad taught him that appearances can be deceiving, second because going to school with Lydia Martin brought that lesson home big time, and third because he doesn’t have to.

Being a were has its drawbacks, true, but the heightened senses mean Stiles rarely has to guess about somethings. Like the fact that this man is lethal. It’s a thousand little things that a regular person wouldn’t notice, and that maybe one by one mean nothing, but put together it’s obvious.

He moves in a way that only a true predator does. He’s not a were (even if he could mask it from Stiles’s senses there’s no fooling the talisman Stiles brought) but he’s just as dangerous as if he were. Dangerous enough that Stiles isn’t 100% sure he could take the man in a fight, and that’s...chilling. Even more so as he’s also not sure he’ll be allowed to walk away without one if he fails to answer the man’s questions to satisfaction.

The interrogation - because that’s what it turns out to be - starts out with Stiles having to explain how he’d gotten the phone number and code he’d used. It continues to why, and how he can’t really be who he claims to be. It takes a lot more than Stiles had hoped to satisfy the still unnamed man, but at the same time that’s somewhat calming. Someone that careful about speaking to the right person for the right reasons should be safe to trust - at least a little.

In the end the man nods, and tells Stiles to call him Christian. It’s fake, obviously, but it’s better than “the man”, especially for someone with a parent in law enforcement.

“Did your mom ever tell you why she had that number?”

“She said it was for someone who owed her a favor, and who could help me if I had no other way out. ‘A hidden  ace in the sleeve’ she said.”

Christian nods, clearly agreeing.

“And why did you wait until now?” All things considered hangs in the air.

“Wasn’t until now I felt I could. Considered it, back when… But mom told me you’d need time to respond, and yeah, I didn’t have that. Had another option that didn’t need time though. I wasn’t exactly wanting to gamble on you being able to get me out of their claws, should I land in them.

“But now? Now I’ve got time, and a use for that favor that doesn’t depend on you being crazy enough to take on the Council to repay it.”

Christian looks at him strangely, and seems to be thinking hard. Stiles can tell that whatever’s running through the other man’s head is important, so he clamps down on his impatience and waits. He’s gotten better at that, thankfully.

When Christian finally makes up his mind Stiles has run through his contingency exit plans five times, in a different order every time, and he’s close to going for one of them.

“You know why I owe your mom a favor? No? It’s not a pretty story. A few years back my old military commander called in a favor. A huge one, meaning I had to disappear from the face of the earth for a bit.”

Christian smiles, a twisted mockery of humor that tells Stiles there’s a story there that he wants to hear but won’t.

“I’d been gone for five days, had another three left when my Mark flared. I made enough of a stink that they opened communications for me. When I got through one of my partners informed me he’d experienced the flare too, at the same time. And so had our third. Their Marks lined up, and from what we could tell, mine did as well.

“I know, a triple Match? Unheard of, but. It felt right. Felt like everything I never thought I deserved, but would give everything to have.

“Except our third, she was missing.”

Stiles thinks about going through that, about having Derek missing, and can barely breathe from how horrible even the thought makes him feel. Across from him Christian is nodding grimly.

“She’d just gone out for a quick errand, some important call, and got pulled into a wan. Everything pointed to her having been picked up for sub training, only it made no sense. Neither of us are the submissive type, but her the least. Out of the three of us, if I’d had to make the call, I’d have said Ha-Harry.

“But what really made the alarms go off was the fact that neither me nor H-Harry had been informed of a Match. That breaks all the rules, and it was worrying enough that I was pulled out and allowed to go back. We thought maybe it was because I was where I was. Except I got home, and there was still no contact, and when my old CO went snooping through records he couldn’t find anything about her.”

It sounds, Stiles thinks, like what would have happened to Scott had he not been bitten, and had someone other than John Stilinski answered the call. Both the disappearance, and the missing records - they’ve got access to topclass hackers, and no one’s managed to find even the slightest shred of information on his Match. All they have is Scott’s insistence that they’re out there, somewhere, and a sense of direction.

“Your mom was the one to help us. She got us the location of three sub-training facilities, and ranked them in order of most likely, and with that we were able to make a plan.”

Apparently, Stiles muses as the tale unveils, it isn’t impossible to break into a sub-training facility. Also, he’s clearly underestimated Christian. The man is insane enough to launch an attack on a Council facility, and brilliant enough to pull it off. Good to know. He also gets every single suspicion regarding what happens in sub-training confirmed, not that he needed it.

“Once we located her… She was unconscious, strapped to a bed, and showed obvious defensive wounds. It made no sense. She’s not a fighter, even if she can defend herself if needed. The way she works, she’d have either waited for us to come for her or for them to relax and then break out. For her to have fought…”

Not good.

“Yeah. Except whatever you’re thinking, it was probably worse. I checked her over, to see if she could be moved without extra caution, and let me tell you, I’ve seen women treated better in war zones - hell, I’ve seen war criminals treated better. In the end we counted six broken bones, a dislocated shoulder, a fractured wrist and several burn marks. I’m not even going to touch on what else they did. Suffice to say we sure as fuck didn’t need to run a rapekit.

“She wasn’t alone there - they had four others in various conditions. Two had been given the same treatment as our girl, only it must have been for a longer time. One was physically unharmed, but completely broken. The last one… She was braindead. They kept her on life support though, apparently as a warm body for when they wanted a fuck but weren’t up for the fight with the others.”

That...that’s Stiles’s worst nightmare right there, confirmed. He fights back the urge to throw up, and renews his promise to never let them take him alive.

“I can help you get away. You’ll never have to worry about the Council again, I promise you, but you’ll have to give up everything.”

Stiles starts to interrupt, but Christian raises his hand and continues.

“I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. You can bring a bag, and if your dad’s willing, him too. Just, you can’t ever return, and you can’t keep in touch with anyone here.”

“Yeah, no. I’m not saying I wouldn’t give up a lot to be safe, but that’s not what I’m looking for here. I already did that, okay, I allowed my dad to think I was dead and left him behind to avoid the council. And I think I’ve done fine, staying under their radar. So thanks, but no thanks.

“But just for the record? If I’d agreed, there’s no way I would have gone without Derek. My Match,” he clarifies as Christian raises a questioning eyebrow.

For the first time Stiles sees the man react, apparently shocked by the fact that Stiles is with his Match, and that they’re close enough that staying together isn’t optional.

“So what is it you want then?”

“Information. Mom said you had ways to get it, on just about anything. Well, that’s what I need. As much as you can get me. The Council’s taken too much from me already, and from so many others, and I’m done letting them. It’s time they’re taken down. But I need information to do that.”

Once again Stiles gets to watch as shock travels across Christian’s face, followed by a longer silence.

“And you think you can do that?”

“I’m not seeing anyone else stepping up. Are you?” The double entendre hangs in the air between them, vibrating like the challenge it is.

“So, can you do it? Can you get me what I need?”

Christian hesitates, and Stiles is preparing to push when he hears a low murmur coming from somewhere close to the other man. Judging from the way Christian cocks his head slightly and from the way his face tightens - just minutely, only visible to someone like Stiles - he’s listening to something. Someone? A communications device of some kind, probably.

This...could turn nasty. He starts running through exit strategies again, but before he can make a decision Christian swears in a low, almost inaudible voice.

“Dammit, Ha-...”

Then he takes a deep breath and says, reluctance clinging to his voice, “you’ll get your information”.

As it turns out, back when they’d broken into the Council facility to get their girl the invisible “Harry” (and if that’s his actual name, then Stiles’s is Mike, which… yeah) had not only gone through the computers to steal as much information as possible, but also left a data mining program behind. Which is good for Stiles, but (understandably) makes Christian furious.

There are a quite few more muttered curses, as well as a very pointed remark about people who have no concept of safety, and who don’t understand that Christian can’t protect them if they keep fucking secrets. Stiles sensibly chooses to not even touch that with a ten foot pole. He’d react the same way if it was Derek being reckless - and he knows Derek will be even worse once he finds out just what it is Stiles is up to now.

Stiles won’t apologize for it though, not even though he knows he’s put not only himself but everyone in danger. Just as he won’t be anything but happy that “Harry” did something equally dangerous. It’s selfish, sure, but if getting this information gets him even one step closer to taking down the Council it’s worth it.

It’s another hour before Stiles can leave, the portable hard drive that supposedly holds the keys to the kingdom hidden on his body. Christian’s twitchy, and it’s obvious why. He wants to help, but at the same time he wants nothing to do with any of it.

“Look, I..:”

“No. You feel like you should offer to help out, right? Well, I’m not going to lie, I could use the help. But I’m not going to take it. You have your Matches to take care of, to protect. Your girl? She needs you to stay the hell away from the Council, and I’m running full speed ahead in their direction.

“Sure, you or your… ‘Harry’ find out anything, and send it my way, I’d be very grateful. But this is my fight, my choice. I’m not risking anyone else.”

That, of course, isn’t exactly 100 percent true. He’ll try not to, but something tells Stiles that in the end he’ll have no option but to risk others. He just won’t do it unless it’s completely unavoidable, and honestly? He’ll probably try and only risk people who deserve it. People whose deaths wouldn’t be that big of a loss.

But not these three. Not after what they’ve already suffered.

Christian looks him over, nods and reaches out to take Stiles’s hand. His voice is dead serious once he speaks.

“Alright. Once you launch whatever attach you’re planning though? You let me know. You hear me? And if you don’t let me know you’re okay after, I’ll come for you. They get you, I’ll get you out. Your Match too. No matter what, I’ll get you out and somewhere they can’t touch you.

“And not because of what I owe your mom. Because what you’re doing? It’s something I should have done - that I would do if it didn’t mean risking the others. And for that, man, I owe you.”

Once he’s back home, and has had his eardrums practically shattered from a dozen lectures, as well as almost getting frostburns from the cold shoulder Derek shows him, Stiles starts going through the material he’s been given. (Well, once he’s had one of the resident computer witches - or “techno pagans”, apparently - check that the drive’s safe.) It’s a lot. It’s a fricking mountain of information, is what it is, and Stiles is going to find what he needs in it even if it means not sleeping for a year.

He’s a were, he’ll survive.

Probably.

Three days in Derek tranqs him, forcing him to sleep through the night, and when he starts up again it’s with Derek next to him. That works much better. Well, “better” as in that together they cover more ground and sometimes Derek picks up on things Stiles misses due to different knowledge bases. “Not better” as in now Derek is involved. Stiles would prefer if he wasn’t, but considering Derek feels the same way about him there’s really not much he can do about it without looking like a big, fat hypocrite.

In the end they find what they need to know - and of course, Stiles thinks, it’s magic - and he makes a plan. It’s a good plan, in terms of achieving their goals, but he’s fairly sure no one else will agree.

“Are you insane?” Marin isn’t screaming, unlike everyone else in the room, but that doesn’t make her any calmer or less angry.

“No. Look, this is the only way to go. Worst case scenario-”

“We all die.”

“No. Okay, yes, but that’s the worst case scenario for every single day even doing nothing, as long as the Council exists. So we’re ignoring that. The worst case scenario is we break the magic that allows the Council to track the flare, and find Matches, but everything else stays the same. Best case? We ruin them. We free everyone, for the rest of time. I’m good with possibly dying being the worst case scenario if we can win that.”

Stiles isn’t suicidal, regardless of others might think. He wants to live a long life, with Derek next to him, and the year and a half they’ve had together is nowhere enough. (He’s not sure any amount of time will really be enough.) Just… The way they’re living, hiding and in fear, it’s not good. For now they’re safe, sure, but only if they shrink their lives, if they cut themselves off from everything outside the wards. And it really is for now. Sooner or later the Council will find them. The world has changed so much that not even the strongest wards will keep them completely hidden much longer. Once the Council starts truly searching - and they will - nowhere and no one will be safe any longer.

He wants a life where he can run free under the full moon with Derek by his side. He wants a life where Scott can find his Match and be happy. He wants a world where that is possible, and he’s willing to risk his life for it.

It’s as easy as that.

He gets a solid team of five. Derek - who won’t stay away, no matter how many times Stiles begs him. Jana the techno pagan. Another witch, a white haired old man who calls himself Raven. A bounty hunter slash bodyguard by the name of Braeden.

And then he gets Jennifer.

Under any other circumstance Stiles would rather cut his arm off than work with her. For one, she’s batshit crazy. He’s not making fun, or light, of the mental health issues she’s clearly got, no. When he calls her that he’s referring to the fact that she’s killed seven people (that he knows of) in some power-raising ritual.

She’s living in the community only because she can’t be allowed to walk free - either she’d continue to kill people, or the Council would capture her and use her - and the team sent to stop her wouldn’t dirty their hands or their ethics by killing her.

Stiles would have done the deed himself if not for the cold facts: if Jennifer could be made into a weapon by the Council she can also be one against them. That had been a possibility he hadn’t been willing to throw away. After all, there was always the option of killing her later should she turn out useless - unkilling someone however…

There are three things Stiles knows to be undeniably true about Jennifer: She hates the Council just as much as he does. She hates her Match who betrayed her to them even more. She cannot be trusted.

And now he’s going to have to do exactly that.

O---o--o---O

Stiles gives himself a mental shake, forces himself out of the memories, and refocuses on the camera. He's only got so long, and it’s important he do this right. His job is drawing attention. From the regular people watching his broadcast, the ones about to have the Council’s crimes thrown in their faces in full technicolor glory thanks to “Harry” and his data mining. But also from the Council, and their goons. He’s bait, plain and simple, to make them focus on him and hopefully miss as Jennifer and Raven smash two hundred years of oppressive magic to impotent little pieces.

“I've been hiding from the Council, because I know their secrets. I know what they are. I know what they do - what they would do to me given even half a chance. I know what they’ve done to others, and that the ones they killed are the lucky ones.”

He talks about Scott, and the girl that’s his missing Match. He talks about the Hales, about the people his mom tried to help, about people that only exist as notes and pictures in stolen files.

When he’s done, eyes aching and voice hoarse, he gives the camera as hard a look as he can.

“I'm done. No more hiding. No more living in fear. No more allowing them to break and twist and murder people.

“It's time for them to fear me.”

~The End ~

[supere1113]

The Conflict Within Myself - Track 9: No More Favors

I wouldn’t call myself a people-pleaser, but...

You ever been fed up, like absolutely fed up with people because you’re doing all these things for them, laying down on a wire and letting that other person crawl over you at your expense, and they don’t even appreciate it, let alone return the favor? Yeah... that’s what this song is mostly about.

No More Favors comes from a place of aforementioned anxiety, depression and exhaustion, but adds a very pure type of rage to the mix. Rage over showing that you care for people (while struggling to care for yourself), then feeling unwanted by them because they never think you do enough, or they make you feel like you’re never enough.

When I was younger, I would get quite angry, but it would mostly be over people disrupting my patterns, be them based in the physical world, or in my mind (#AutisticLyfe). I still do, I just have better emotional regulation abilities now. Nobody really understands the way I actually work, comprehensively, so why would it be surprising that I advocate for doing things my way? And that not even coming from a selfish place. The point is, they don’t know quite how things should work for me all the time, so when it doesn’t, I won’t screw myself over by doing something in a way that doesn’t work for me. I imagine if you were me, you wouldn’t, either. (I got thrown off) Anyways, I’ll leave that between them and God, where all the variables are given. He’s got all of our backs. Sorry. Actually anyways, when people disrupt my patterns is one thing, often a forgivable thing. When someone makes me feel bad for being who I am, that’s a different story. I may still forgive them eventually so I can get peace from it (that’s ascension Evan talking lolz listen to him, not me).

I got hip to people doing this in my life after I graduated high school, during my first year of college. I was overworked, and then I find out that there were people in my life not doing right by my character and way of operating... #Yallgonmakemelosemymind. I got angry, but it was different this time. The emotions, all the volatile ones, were somehow amplified. The anger wasn’t anger, it was rage. I didn’t just feel offended, I felt attacked and deeply hurt by it. To be fair, I feel like anybody would’ve been that hurt. It’s the intensity of the emotions that I subconsciously found concerning. It never went this high before. But to be fair, I was experiencing something that would become pretty traumatic to me after I realized it was happening, so maybe I was, a bit more justified in feeling how I felt. Even with that, it was still too high. Too intense. Then, it would just vanish, so I guessed it was just a mood swing... I guessed.

People on the Autism Spectrum are often pressured to learn things that are considered normal and discouraged from doing things that people see as abnormal, but often, that very process, regardless of whether it’s coming from a place of love or not, can be detrimental to their entire state of being. It’s a lot like trying to run Windows on a Mac, only the Mac doesn’t suffer if you do that, it just doesn’t work as well as it does with iOS. With an autistic person, you suffer emotionally (and sometimes also physically) because your new operating system doesn’t work as well as the one you were born with. As if someone came into your house and not only taught you how neurotypical people operate, but changed your furniture around so that it better resembles that of neurotypical people and just... left. There’s a disconnect. A fundamental disconnect. Autistic absolution, shattered, and reformed into something of no use to them.

The worst part is that, presumably due to their lack of understanding of how you work, they are beyond reason when you try to help them better help you. That’s where lines like “I don’t wanna talk it out, ‘cause we won’t get anywhere” come from. I’m learning these days to not try to save everyone you may care about. Some people just don’t want to be saved. Like J. Cole said, “Don’t save her, she don’t wanna be saved.” I can’t always do God’s work for them. Sometimes he wants me to let him do it. And I am letting him.

This is exactly what had been happening to me for YEARS, but I didn’t quite understand it to be that yet, in Early 2017, that is. So to me, it was just rage coupled with that intense state I was talking about (I actually wrote and recorded No More Favors in this state. It was crazy).

I care, like a lot, and I was also encouraged not to care so much about other people and their concerns by some people close to me. That doesn’t work for me because, as with most people on the spectrum, I don’t have an ability to ride the in-between as easily as some people do. I mentally operate in a world of absolutes while interacting with an outside world of entropy. That is the fundamental nature of my existence. Where am I going with this?

I figure I’ve communicated the main points of the song with this above.

Now instrumentally, No More Favors is like Metal, Hard Rock, Alternative and EDM splashes, and most interestingly, Trap. All these are all present in the musical composition of this song! Trap beats were very popular across the 6 years of this album’s creation, but I didn’t want to put very many (if any) on the album. I didn’t want it to sound trendy, and I wanted it to stand out as a beautiful inventory of emotional baggage, so to speak lolz! But I realized that Trap’s mainstream renaissance was a part of the history of this album’s creation. It just wasn’t the vibe... until I found out the original pop rockish-type of drum beat I made for No More Favors wasn’t enough for me (plus, I don’t think I was able to make it  as good as I wanted. Trap was different story). I had just gotten some new sounds that were trappy, so what did I do? I made a trap beat. Only difference was this one was significantly better and better executed than literally ALL of my other trap beats. It was enraged. It was massive. It was destructive, and it was also still very elegant and even cinematic, like I wanted all of Conflict to be.

So, let’s do a headcount here: we got crippling Anxiety, Depression, exhaustion and an inner, mood-swingy rage that exacerbated all the other things I was dealing with. I became paranoid, my depression could’ve been considered severe now, and I all but stopped sleeping. Where could all those feelings and emotions happening almost simultaneously possibly take you now?

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/sports/im-alive-i-survived-says-the-queen-of-bare-knuckle-boxing/

'I'm alive, I survived,' says the 'Queen of bare-knuckle boxing'

Bec Rawlings, the self-styled “Queen of bare-knuckle boxing,” is remembering the terror of living with an abusive husband. Though the 29-year-old Australian doesn’t cry anymore when talking about her miserable marriage, some wounds will never heal.

Nearly six years on, she can sleep now without fear of being murdered and no longer flinches when touched. “It gets easier day by day,” she says candidly. “I’m alive, I survived.”

The former UFC fighter, a mother of two boys, a bare-knuckle world champion, is opening up because she wants to help those who may be suffering like she once did.

She wants to tell victims of abuse that they are not to blame, that they are not weak. “I’m the definition of a powerful woman,” she says. “That it can happen to me means it can happen to anyone.”

Rawlings did not press charges against her now ex-husband Dan Hyatt, the father of her youngest child. Since their relationship ended, former MMA fighter Hyatt has been found guilty of physically and emotionally abusing girlfriends in subsequent relationships and Rawlings regrets not taking her case through the courts.

“I could’ve saved them if I went ahead and pressed charges,” says the Tasmanian, ruefully.

“The only way I feel I can make up for that is to share my story and hope someone reads it and realizes that if it can happen to someone like me, who is so strong and looks fearless, it can happen to anyone. It doesn’t mean you’re weak, you’re not pathetic, because that’s how I felt.”

In the dead of night, with her two boys, Enson and Zake, and little else in tow, Rawlings mustered the courage to leave her husband and her home in 2013. Had it not been for her sons, she says, she would probably have stayed in a relationship which as emotionally abusive as it was physical.

“I left to save them,” she says. “Once he threatened to hurt them that was my switch to get out. If I never had them, I would never have made it out.”

Visit CNN.com/Sport for more news, features and videos

Rawlings met Hyatt in 2010 and within three months she says he began to belittle her, to play with her mind, the torment turning physical when Rawlings became pregnant with Enson. It was relentless. It was daily. It was hell. But crushed by his fists and by fear, she stayed.

“Looking back, I see the flags early on in our relationship,” the boxer admits with the help of hindsight.

“He was a pro fighter himself so even when I tried to fight back I couldn’t win. It was impossible for me to defend myself. He’d burn and tear my clothes. There were times that I had no clothes because he would destroy them.

“He always said he would hunt us down and hunt my family down if I ever left and that was always in the back of my head — that he would find us and would kill us.”

Hyatt was released from prison eight months ago and in an email to CNN the Australian described his relationship with Rawlings as “toxic” and “volatile” but refuted the allegations of violence made by her and described her claims that he threatened to kill the boys as “disgusting.”

“Bec is as much a victim of our relationship as I was myself,” he wrote. “That may not be a popular opinion, but its [sic] the truth and it’s been my story since day one. I was a poor partner and an even poorer father, but I am certainly not the picture Bec likes to paint of me when media comes calling.”

For Rawlings if any good has come from the bad it is that it was her ex-husband who introduced her to MMA, setting her on a path to UFC, bare-knuckle boxing and world domination. “I’m happy, strong and healthy,” she says. “I’ve got a good life and he hasn’t so that’s the ultimate revenge, success.

“It’s definitely a bitter-sweet story because I found fighting and MMA when I started seeing him, so he brought something cool into my world and, obviously, my young son Enson.

“It’s definitely made me the strong person I am today. I know going into training, going into fights, no-one can hurt me as much as he could. He’s definitely given me a strength I never knew I had. That’s one of the positives I can take. If he couldn’t break me, no-one can.

“It also taught me to love myself, to never let myself be in that position again. I put up with it and went through with it because I thought I deserved that and because I didn’t love myself and I believed what he was saying.”

The Australian has come a long way since her professional debut as an MMA fighter in October 2011. Knocked out in the first round by a head kick, it was a fight which, Rawlings jokes, “scared my mother for life.” Her mum has not attended a fight since. These days she will record a televised bout, watching her daughter only when secure in the knowledge that she is unharmed.

Standing at 1.68m (5ft 6in) and competing at a fighting weight of 57kg (125lbs), the athletic Rawlings, who once described herself as a “wild child” and has the moniker “Rowdy Bec” stitched onto her fighting shorts, isn’t big in stature, but she does nevertheless stand out.

Sometimes her hair is purple, other times white and dreadlocked. There are also the tattoos. Lots of them. She has, she thinks, about 60, all inked by the tattooist who was her first sponsor.

One tattoo is a big red heart at the front of her throat, another the word “Riot,” her ex-husband’s nickname as an MMA fighter, still visible under a red “VOID” stamp. Her left leg is adorned with a tattoo of a hand pistol tucked into a garter.

Like most who earn a living with their fists, Rawlings has swagger (“I definitely think I’m going to be dominating this sport for a long time”) but the bluster isn’t relentless.

She isn’t afraid to talk about her traumatic past and laughs when speaking about one particular weakness. A design on her right leg has yet to be completed because, she says giggling, she is a “cry baby” when it comes to getting inked.

But Rawlings can tolerate pain better than most, though the Australian stresses that the majority of her training sessions are spent mastering the art of avoiding crunching blows to the head by a clenched bare knuckle.

How does it feel to be bashed in the face by a fist flying at such a force that the eyes begin to weep and swell? Rawlings laughs.

“To be punched bare-knuckle, it doesn’t feel any different to the MMA gloves,” she explains.

“When you get punched by a big boxing glove it’s more like a thud that rings your head. With MMA gloves and bare-knuckle, it’s like a real sharp sting. If you’ve ever been hit on the nose with a basketball, it’s kind of that feeling. That stingy, eye-watering feeling.

“To hit someone bare-knuckle you feel it on your hands more. You can’t be throwing punches 100% and you definitely have to be careful with where you’re throwing the punches.

“You don’t want to be hitting people at the back of the head, or the side of the head, because you’re going to do damage to your hands, so you’re going to have to be precise and aim for the softer parts of the body and the face, look after your hands that way.

“You definitely throw a lot less punches and focus on speed, precision and power.”

Rawlings says her hands swell easily, but with the added composure that comes with experience the bumps, cuts and redness were not as significant after her second bout compared to her debut.

To strengthen her hands, she practices an ancient Kung Fu method called iron palm training, which includes punching sandbags and rubbing a special oil onto the hands to help them heal.

“Basically, you’re calcifying your knuckles, so they get hardened and less prone to injury,” she says.

Rawlings is currently training for her world title defence on February 2 in Cancun, Mexico, against Cecilia Ulloa Flores. Though only her third bare-knuckle fight, she is confident.

“I get called the bare-knuckle queen and I feel like the queen of this sport,” she says.

“I don’t think anyone’s got what I have. My skill is getting better and better every fight and I’m going to go out there in February and show that I’ve evolved as a fighter again.”

Typically, Rawlings trains for three to four hours a day, starting with a 2-3km early morning run before returning home to feed her boys and take them school.

With the children in the classroom, she embarks on a two-hour boxing session in the gym, comprising of either sparring, bag work or pattern drills, returning home for lunch and to collect the boys from school. Mid-afternoon and there is more to be done, either improving her cardio, endurance or explosiveness.

Sometimes she will have to drag her sons, now aged eight and 10, to the gym. They have known of no other life, but occasionally they will grumble. With the boys developing their own interests, the family dynamic is slowly changing Rawlings admits, but she is adapting.

“You’ve got to be able to give your kids attention and love and you also need to find the time to train. That’s my job. It’s how I put food on the table,” she says.

“It’s stressful and hard, but it’s also my motivation. They keep me hungry, they keep me motivated to do better. It’s definitely a blessing in disguise.”

After being released by UFC following four successive defeats, Rawlings was offered a contract by the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC), the first promotion to be sanctioned to hold regulated bare-knuckle events in the US since 1889.

She is earning a decent living competing in a sport she describes as the “ultimate test on your body, heart and soul,” and wants to create a legacy. She has, she says, found her calling.

“I love the adrenaline of it. I love the rawness of the sport,” she says wholeheartedly.

“It’s not just the physicality, it’s not just the athleticism, it’s your mentality and your heart to fight and keep going.

“I’m forever tested no matter how my fight goes. I learn something new about myself and I think that’s what keeps me coming back for more and it’s the same with training.

“I think I lost the love of it [fighting] under UFC. I let the bright lights, the stress of making weight, get to me. I started questioning myself and forgot what I was doing it for. I forgot that I loved fighting, that it made me a better person, and I forgot that.

“My coach and anyone who has seen me fight say I’m a natural. I was made for this sport and I feel like that in training and when I fight.

“I feel like I’m meant to be in this sport and this was my calling.”

[cathrynstreich]

First-Time Homebuyers Get a Break With Lower Mortgage Rates

(TNS)—Economic gurus got one part of the mortgage forecast for 2019 correct. We’re certainly seeing a volatile year for rates.

What they didn’t see coming: Mortgage rates tumbled in March, the biggest one-week fall in a decade.

Now—instead of seeing mortgage rates edge closer to 5.25 percent, as some had predicted we’d see in 2019—we’re looking at an average 30-year rate near 4 percent.

The rate drop comes just in time for the spring home-buying season and will make monthly payments less expensive.

“This drop in rates is going to give the housing market a boost,” says Bill Banfield, executive vice president of Capital Markets for Quicken Loans. “It could help to make people come back into the market and consider buying a home.”

Mortgage rates have fallen by a full percentage point since late 2018. Going back four months or so, most forecasts weren’t expecting mortgage rates to drop as low as 4 percent for borrowers, Banfield says.

“This is a surprise to a lot of people,” Banfield says.

The average 30-year rate was 4.1 percent as of late March, the lowest rate since Jan. 2018, according to Bankrate.com data. But rates started to rebound a bit upward in early April. The average 30-year rate went back to 4.29 percent as of April 3, according to Bankrate.com.

By contrast, the average mortgage rate was 5.1 percent as recently as mid-November, which was a seven-year high, according to Bankrate.com. The average was hovering around 4.75 percent as 2018 drew to a close.

We’re talking about some real money here for homebuyers. Take a $200,000 mortgage. The mortgage payment for principal and interest would drop by about $120 a month if your rate is 4.1 percent instead of 5.1 percent on a 30-year mortgage, according to Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate.com.

For the mortgage alone, the payment would be about $966 month at the 4.1 percent rate. It’s sort of like getting more than one month free each year.

For a homebuyer who was priced out of the market last spring, the lower rates could help get them back in the game.

Being able to lock in a 30-year fixed rate near, or even below, 4 percent helps put some “wind in the sails of homebuyers from an affordability standpoint,” McBride says.

The 30-year fixed rate mortgage remains the dominant loan for middle-class borrowers, particularly first-time homebuyers.

“This is a very attractive rate, which will lift the key spring home selling season,” says Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics.

How attractive? Well, it’s just a notch above the record low of 3.5 percent in late 2012. And if you go back 30 years, homebuyers were looking at an average 30-year rate of 11.13 percent in early April 1989, according to Bankrate.com’s data.

To be sure, many younger consumers cannot afford some of the homes on the market now, as prices keep going up in some markets. For-sale signs aren’t flooding the landscape, so the lack of available homes remains a problem. In some cases, too many buyers continue to be chasing too few sellers.

Lower interest rates would make payments more affordable and offset some high prices. But the drop in mortgage rates won’t solve all problems.

“It is not going to take a first-time buyer from a small home to a big home, but it does definitely have a small effect on purchasing power,” says Tim Gilson, associate broker for Keller Williams Domain and the Gilson Home Group in Birmingham, Mich.

But given the competitive nature for some well-priced homes, Gilson says younger buyers may still want to consider the benefits of having a good down payment.

“Cash on hand is the element that will put a buyer in a better position,” he says.

Here are some points to consider if you’re shopping for a mortgage.

Research First-Time Buyer Programs “Virtually all banks (and some non-banks) have some form of first-time homebuyer programs,” says Keith Gumbinger, vice president for HSH.com.

You might be able to get some sort of subsidy on a down payment, perhaps a reduction on closing costs. Or maybe some lenders offer a mortgage to first-homebuyers through a relaxed credit score or some more wiggle room relating to how much debt you’re carrying relative to your income.

Quicken Loans, for example, notes that you may be able to qualify with a median FICO score of 580 or higher for a Federal Housing Administration loan to get a home or to refinance an existing loan.

Gumbinger says an FHA loan is a favorite of first-time homebuyers, as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development does not use risk-based pricing. In some cases, first-time buyers can find programs that offer a mortgage with down payments for 3 percent or 3.5 percent of the purchase price.

“Some of these changes reflect the reality that first-time homebuyers find it challenging to find an attractively-priced home. A smaller down payment can mean a larger mortgage and higher monthly payments. Many of these programs look to soften that impact,” Gumbinger says.

Flagstar Bank, one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, rolled out its Destination Home product in March, which offers the option for a zero-down, 30-year fixed mortgage to consumers who have credit scores of 600 or higher and meet other criteria. There’s no private mortgage insurance involved.

To qualify, the borrower or the property must meet some low to moderate income guidelines. The mortgage can be made for a home in a low- to moderate-income census tract in markets where Flagstar has bank branches. Or a low- to moderate-income borrower can purchase in any tract, as long as it’s a county where Flagstar has a banking presence. The maximum loan amount varies by state. The rate on the Destination Home product will vary based on the market. Recently, the annual percentage rate was 4.756 percent.

“We’re seeing a robust start to the spring with this product,” says Beverly Meek, first vice president and Community Reinvestment Act director for Flagstar.

Flagstar also has a gift program that offers up to $2,500 in certain markets. That gift program can help a buyer overcome the hurdle of a down payment or closing costs, depending on the loan product and other factors.

Consumers need to understand that many different homebuyer programs exist and will vary by bank and non-bank, as well as by state, Gumbinger notes. HSH.com lists a variety of state-backed homebuyer programs.

It makes sense to shop around and talk to different lenders about the mortgage options that might be available to you. Look into options for locking in a low rate, too, in case interest rates shoot up unexpectedly.

A variety of options exist. Quicken Loans has a RateShield product where someone can lock their rate for up to 90 days. If rates dip by the time they commit to a home, the shopper would get that new lower rate. Unlike some other rate locks, Quicken says a purchase agreement is not needed to lock a rate with RateShield, so consumers can shop with more certainty.

Expect a Few More Hurdles The Federal Housing Administration is toughening up its standards for mortgages made to homebuyers with small down payments, low credit scores and high levels of debt. More than 28 percent of mortgage approvals made in the first quarter of 2019 had a credit score of less than 640.

Lenders expect that there will be some tightening of credit, particularly for buyers at the margin who may be taking on riskier loans. Nearly 83 percent of FHA home-purchase loans made in January went to first-time homebuyers, according to FHA. Just under 40 percent went to minorities.

The tighter standards would impact those who have the weakest financial profiles—FICO scores under 640 with debt-to-income ratios above 50 percent.

Gumbinger notes that loans with the lowest credit scores tend to default at a much higher rate. He says lenders are afraid that if they issue too many loans that later fail, HUD will no longer allow them to write FHA-backed mortgages.

“The FHA change does mean greater scrutiny,” he says, noting that higher-risk applications would go through a manual underwriting process.

“It’s fair to say that some buyers won’t be able to get a loan until their financial profile improves a bit,” he says.

To be fair, a low credit score and high levels of debt going in significantly increases the risk of a loan failure. Consumers don’t want to end up dealing with the “emotionally difficult loss-of-home foreclosure process,” either, he says.

“Better to wait and try again at a later time to help improve the odds of success,” Gumbinger says.

The financial crisis—and housing market crash in 2008—led to greater disclosures for consumers and more scrutiny.

“While there are a number of low-down payment, and even some no-down payment, loan options in the marketplace,” McBride says, “do not confuse this with the wild, wild West days of 2004-2006 when exotic and creative mortgage products got mainstream homebuyers into trouble.”

Step Back and Do More Research If your budget is tight or your credit isn’t great, it may be best to start out talking with a HUD-approved housing counselor. See www.hud.gov.

Beth Martinez, who works on financial and homeownership education for the Michigan State University Extension in Detroit, says a HUD housing counselor can help a consumer improve a credit score over time by identifying trouble spots. There may be ways to spot errors and figure out ways to reduce or eliminate outstanding debt.

“It can take from a few months to two years to improve a credit score,” she says.

But it could help many entry-level buyers and others get a mortgage.

“Improving a credit score improves the chances of being approved for a mortgage loan and can lower the interest rate that the consumer qualifies for,” Martinez says.

©2019 Detroit Free Press Visit Detroit Free Press at www.freep.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

The post First-Time Homebuyers Get a Break With Lower Mortgage Rates appeared first on RISMedia.

First-Time Homebuyers Get a Break With Lower Mortgage Rates published first on https://thegardenresidences.tumblr.com/

[guywithtime2kill]

Adventure Time: "You Blew It Man!" An Essay Adventure Time“You Blew It Man!”Hello everyone! I’ve been a fan of Adventure Time since its conception, and I’ve often read the thoughtful and intriguing discussions posted on this subreddit. However, I was often hesitant and nervous about positing my own opinions of this show, especially since I was shy and never quite built enough confidence to put myself out there. Now that it is all coming to an end, though, and I see just how loving, dedicated, and supportive the people here are to Adventure Time and for each other, I wanted to post something. Thank you for helping me gather the courage to speak about this crazy, unique, sprawling, imaginative, daring, silly, philosophical, emotional, hopeful, and very mathematical show. It’s a long list, and it’s a testament to this “kid’s cartoon” with all of its creativity and heart that I could use a thousand more words and still have more to say. In the ever expanding and inventive medium of television, Adventure Time proudly stands on its own as a beacon of childhood and hope.To be entirely truthful, Finn the Human is not my favorite character. He is not always interesting and entertaining; and, in his more emotionally volatile years, he can be painful to watch as he flounders in a swirling, violent vortex of relationships and heartbreak. Even at his most selfish and vulnerable, though, Finn is loyal, caring, and righteous; in the context of a coming of age epic, he makes for a great and compelling main character. His development is gradual and meaningful, and this development of his character as he matures and grows is significant enough that we observe a different Finn in each season without losing sight of his heroic heart and noble spirit. There’s the head-strong adventure-seeking child of Season 1, the more accepting and quietly emotional adolescent of Season 3, the sexually awakened and selfish teenage of Season 5, the contemplative youth of Season 6, and the insightful and intelligent young man of Season 7 and Season 8. The episodes focusing on Finn may not always be of high quality, but they all do their best to work in service of his character.The gradual growth of Finn from season to season as he enters manhood is surely impressive, but to see how he also maintains his most important characteristics while he still changes is frankly astounding. Even the best of animated main characters such as Steven Universe or Aang (not “Ung” from the movie adaptation, God help us all) from Avatar: The Last Airbender often stagnate for long periods of time or occasionally act out of character. There are definitely a few hiccups in Finn’s development, such as the return of his arm in “Breezy” (Finn still gets some great development in Season 6 and I love this episode for its handling of depression, but this arm conflict was a big missed opportunity). However, unlike with Aang or Steven, we never lose sight of Finn as a character. He always stays the one true hero of Ooo, and all I can say to that is, “Schmowzow!”Now, I want to discuss a controversial episode which not only showed Finn at one of his lowest emotional points but also hurled a blazing spear of such tremendous velocity and intense force that it impaled and scattered the entirety of Adventure Time’s fan base. This episode is Season 5’s “Frost and Fire.” I was fifteen, just starting high school, at the time. I remember Cartoon Network absolutely hyping the shit out of this new episode, the advertisements exclaiming this was an event not to be missed. Will anything happen to Finn and FP? Is Ice King going to threaten their heating relationship? Stay tuned at (insert time here) and watch the sparks fly! The commercials were probably not that cheesy and strained, but from the crude way a large portion of the fan base strived to match any of the characters into a forced romantic relationship and the poor treatment the channel later gave to its more quality shows, they might as well have been that cringe inducing. The ads were also manipulative in that they influenced many anticipated fans to believe the episode would potentially be another emotionally draining melodrama which further developed Finn and FP’s relationship into something akin to “true love.”It is perfectly understandable why fans held this view, for Cartoon Network was also manipulative in the way they advertised Season 4’s “Burning Low,” a good episode in its own right, as essentially a love triangle among Finn, PB, and FP. The episode certainly possessed romance and dramatic tension, but the focus was on Finn finally expressing his emotions to Bubblegum and the rage he feels for being so conflicted. Flame Princess’s characterization is actually rather thin, and she has very few lines of dialogue here. However, as the commercials depicted and exaggerated, the episode’s drama was genuinely engaging and the emotions brutally raw. More importantly, Finn and FP officially kissed on screen, which solidified their relationship status for many of the fans. There was an intimacy there which few shows, even those developed for adults, could capture well. In addition, Finn is compelling and human enough character that we want to see him succeed and find someone special to live his life with. For a maturing adolescent wandering through a cheerfully bleak land of isolation and sweetness, FP was someone wonderful. If anyone doubts the impact and influence “Burning Low” had on fans, the episode is recorded to have the highest ratings in the show’s entire run, right in the middle of a season with heavy episodes like “I Remember You” and “The Lich.”Of course, Adventure Time doesn’t act like most television shows and is nearly unpredictable, which directly puts it at odds with fans who want to take a more conventional and traditionally satisfying route. If television shows were like rivers with the occasional twist and turn, serenely flowing to their natural conclusions, then Adventure Time is a torrential rapid which breaks off into hundreds of smaller tributaries before pouring up a cliff side as a reverse waterfall, defying the gravity of expectations as it strives for the clouds themselves. And in the midst of ever expanding, the main river takes a moment before flowing naturally again to tumble and swirl into the violent whirlpool that is “Frost and Fire.”There are probably several reasons why this episode plummeted into controversy, but the most important one is also the easiest to identify: Finn and FP broke up over a wet dream. There’s no point denying whether what he did was truly wrong: Finn experienced a sexual awakening and exploited the insecurities of his trusting hot tempered girlfriend and a demented old soul to manipulated them into harming and potentially annihilating one another, all because he wants to get aroused. Consequently, Ice King lost his home, FP lost her only friend, and Finn utterly blew it. I remembered thinking what the Hell just happened, more so than the average episode. Why would Finn act like such a prick of a dick? In retrospect, the answer is simple: Finn is a teenager, and teenagers can do some really stupid shit. As a teenager at the time, I was too self-absorbed to understand why Finn did that shit, but I definitely thought what he and the show did was stupid. Finn is certainly a noble and heroic spirit, but he is also figuratively and literally human. He has no one like him who fully understands what he is going through and how to confront such feelings like arousal. Jake, the wonderful brother he is, simply does not comprehend this aspect of Finn. He does know about prophetic dreams and fate, though, which is why he encourages Finn to commit the deed. Therefore, Finn is essentially alone stumbling in the dark chambers of the dungeon of adolescence, and he poked some big ass monster with his sword trying to find the way out.However, adolescence is not the only reason why Finn acted this way; selfishness is another integral aspect of Finn’s character which motivates some of his actions, and it’s just prevalent enough to be more than just simply being naïve or bull headed. Finn has occasionally harmed others, usually unintentionally, in order to help himself or someone for whom he cares deeply. Unintentional or not, though, the pain is very real. Take Season 2’s “Storytelling,” for example, when Finn abuses multiple innocent animals to create a good story for Jake, or “To Cut a Woman’s Hair” when Finn tries to save Jake from a witch’s bottomless bottom by stealing and/or harassing princesses for their hair. Or how about “Another Way,” where Finn beats up anything and everything to get his foot healed and avoid his fears, or that time in “Sons of Mars” when Finn essentially killed the King of Mars out of his deep caring and tunnel vision to save Jake, or “The Lich,” where Finn steals from every princess in Ooo in order to help BILLYEEE for a highly ambiguous purpose? Better yet, what about “All the Little People,” where Finn gets a chance to play God and fiddle with the lives and relationships of tiny figurines without once questioning their own individuality?The reason Finn’s selfishness is not addressed more often is because Finn has enough of a conscience to later realize what he did was wrong and apologize for said wrong doing. These apologies were enough to patch up the problems with most of the characters he harmed. However, his crime in “Frost and Fire” cuts too deep into a very complex relationship to be forgive so easily with words. As Magusmirificus refers to, this is the point where Finn needs to stop viewing his life as a video game and treat it and the people around him with nuance and consideration. Considering Finn’s own father is Martin, a pompous dingwad who is sucked so far up his own ass that he’s his own black hole, distorting everything around while he himself is filled with nothingness, it is amazing Finn is not even more selfish. That is because Finn has friends who care about him and a brother who loves him. Finn has, as Martin puts it, “a star to revolve around.” The pain Finn feels may last for some time, but it is not forever, and as we see in Season 7, he becomes all the better of person and friend precisely due to everything he has gone through. From here on out, Finn eventually conquers his selfishness and becomes truly selfless.Not everything following “Frost and Fire” is great: Finn is too horrifically awkward to watch in “The Red Throne” considering he already tried this with PB earlier in “Too Old” (an episode I personally really like), and Flame Princess is not strong enough of a character to carry said “Red Throne” or the rather lukewarm “Earth and Water.” However, there is something beautiful in seeing Finn grow in episodes that range from very good to downright brilliant. That is because the crew is so dedicated to Finn as a character and put a lot of effort into making the arc “Frost and Fire” ignited truly work.In addition, there’s really no way to get around this episode when revisiting the show; it is too grounded in the series’ past. We have Finn’s slight selfishness as a character and his initial sexual arousal from “All the Little People” come into play. There are the prophetic dreams and Cosmic Owl from “The Final Frontier” as well as a callback to PB’s probable German roots. We have Ice King’s tragic backstory being acknowledged as Finn abuses him. And, of course, there is the collapsing relationship between FP and Finn that started from “Incendium” onwards. Likewise, the episode greatly influences the events to come that will affect Finn and his friends’ lives. Such events include Finn and FP’s breakup, the destruction of Ice King’s home, the dissolving of Finn’s demon sword due to Ice King’s antics, FP dealing with her betrayal and her subsequent transformation into a ruler who focuses on trust, Finn’s torment and anguish following the breakup, the introduction of the grass sword, the loss of Finn’s arm and the birth of Fern. Many of these plots last several seasons, even extending to the end of the series, and they all stem from the tragedy which occurs here. As suggested by “The Comet,” even the most insignificant act has consequences which go far beyond what we can see and feel. This immaculate randomness and the very real and caring individuals it encompasses is what life is all about.A major component of Adventure Time’s success and identity is its portrayal of childhood and its real sense of hop, that everything will turn out all right. However, in order to confront maturity and retain such hope, Finn, that boy adventurer in a bear hat who in some way represents all of us, has to be challenged in the face of all sorts of adversities, whether it’s candy zombies, selfish acts, the Lich, sexual awakenings, an uncaring father, isolation, or the death of a best friend and brother. If hope can survive that, through apocalypse, adolescence, and loss, then even wonders like Ooo can prosper from destruction, and a young man can have a life that is happy and truly worth living.I know that this was a long ramble which went everywhere and nowhere in particular, but I’m glad I was finally able to speak my mind on this special show. If you still hate this episode with a fiery passion or icy disdain, that is perfectly fine! If you think I’m full of it and want to set me straight, I would welcome such a conversation. To be able to discuss this show, no matter the opinion, is fun, educational, and helps me to become a better and more understanding individual. My only hope is that you give this episode another chance and try watching with a fresh perspective, for even when you become an adult, as a wise nut once said, “You never really stop growing.”Thank you.