#keith is a professor who ACTIVELY does not want to be called by his last name or referred to by the title of professor

[karinyosa]

bizarre thing about my college experience is having any academic authority at all who i refer to by first name or even a nickname. what do you mean you want me to call you keith

[vldkeith]

character bios for my fanfic! 🎥🪩

y'all know how i'm writing a lengthier au fanfic right now right? well i have character bios/intros for it! these basically lay out who everyone is in this au. i just think it's neat and hopefully gets ppl excited 👀

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takashi shirogane - extremely talented actor with a lot of social capital, despite the fact that he is an out gay man. played the adorable, lovable leading man in rom-coms and sitcoms for a while and has recently graduated to more dramatic roles, which he excels in. everyone seems to love and respect him for the most part. picked up keith when he tried to steal his car at a younger age (10?) and hasn’t stopped looking out for him since; they’re like brothers. 

keith kogane - guy who hates celebrity culture but got foisted into it due to his association with shiro. has a reputation for being handsome goodboy shiro’s naughtier younger brother who flips off the camera, punches paparazzi, and has no filter. hates every moment he’s forced to endure hollywood life, but does so to protect and be there for shiro. has been smeared by the tabloids extensively, both for being a delinquent and for being gay. keith did not choose to come out, like shiro had before him, but instead was outed by a member of a gay forum he frequented who figured out his identity (he was 17 at this point). hates society and has a chip on his shoulder.

lance mcclain - starry-eyed hopeful fresh off of his first non-extra role and new darling of the press. gunning for lead man roles in romcoms; knows he’s bisexual but doesn’t want to come out for fear of his family’s reaction and because he believes it will smear his reputation and thus chances to get the roles he wants. this view is understandable and pretty accurate, but it means that he is actively hiding himself and presents intense complications when he and keith start being “a thing.” has a reputation for being charming (if a little sleazy) and flirty with women, which is both natural to him and carefully cultivated so he has the best chance at getting romcom roles. he idolizes shiro–in part because he’s an out gay man, though he’d never admit that–and wants to be mentored by him so badly he’ll make himself a nuisance in shiro (and keith’s) life until he can. 

(more under the cut)

allura altea - orphaned daughter of famous actress mother and professor father who died in a hit-and-run when she was 16. keith’s best friend; they’ve affectionately dubbed themselves the “dead parent’s society,” but the press likes to call them “?????.” allura was being brought up as a future actress by her parents, having starred in many dcom-esque roles as a child, but when they died she quit all of that and kind of just does her own thing now. currently, she’s enrolled in UCLA as a politics major. 

coran wimbleton-smyth - retired acclaimed director who occasionally signs himself on as a producer for works he thinks are particularly meaningful. he’s the producer for shiro’s next film, a sci-fi space opera a la the hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, and he’s gunning for shiro’s character to be explicitly gay. genuinely good-natured and wants to be involved with his projects; has a reputation for being the kind of director/producer to bring donuts in for everyone and cancel shooting days if the weather gets too hot. would support the current (2023) strikes. wants to see everyone succeed, but especially shiro and his family. 

hunk garrett - lance’s bestie and bisexual-awakening! aspiring personal chef to celebrities, but currently works at a restaurant and attends california institute of technology for engineering, because why not? met lance when lance went to eat at the restaurant he worked at and liked the food so much he asked to personally thank the chef; hunk had changed the dish last-minute as it went out the door, ratatouille-style, and so he gets the credit. they’ve been besties ever since! 

matt holt - lance’s young agent! saw potential in lance because of their shared personality-type, but he can be ruthless when it comes to matters of public opinion and which roles lance should take, which lance both appreciates and dreads. committed to doing what’s best for lance’s career, whatever the cost.  katie “pidge” holt - matt’s younger sibling that is pushed into lance’s orbit unwillingly due to her big brother’s job. hangs around because, whatever he may say, she really does like lance as a friend, and warms up to hunk quickly once they meet due to their shared interest in engineering/computers. has a geocities website dedicated to weird lizards and insects. low-profile enough to get away with things none of the others could manage.

nyma - shiro's ruthless but skilled publicist. knows how to turn public opinion around her finger, all while pretending to be innocent and nice the whole time. this doesn't mean she's uncaring, though; sometimes she'll let slip that she actually cares about shiro and keith's images because she cares about them, not just because it's her job and reputation on the line if she doesn't. isn't afraid to advise them to do painful and sometimes downright demoralizing things, but it's always in the interest of saving their necks, at least from her perspective.

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this isn't an exhaustive list of the voltron characters that will be included btw; i'm going to find a way to put adam & romelle in if i have to die for it. but these are the main cast i have so far :) let me know what you think!

[echodrops]

*Slides in on a office chair* Now that you shared some of your HaaH headcanons for Shiro and Hunk, can you do Lance and Lotor?

Didn’t want to post these until I finally had some time to update them a bit and trim out spoilers, but I got a second last night, so here you are:

HaaH Lance and Lotor headcanons:

(Under the cut to save everyone’s dash)

First, a warning: Neither one of these characters’ backstories or plot event headcanons remotely line up with the show, one because I originally wrote most of this stuff around the time season 2-3 was being released and two, because I stopped watching Voltron after season 6 and have no intention of watching the rest of the show due to my dislike for the directions the writing took. I went back and updated some stuff, such as the names of some of Lance’s siblings, to more closely match what came later in the show… but for the rest… I’m just gonna do my own thing and pretend canon does not exist.

Lance:

- The literal definition of “rich as fuck.” When relaxations on economic policy were passed in Cuba that increased opportunities for private business, Lance’s grandfather made a solid deal for three massive sugar refineries. Today, artisanal coffee houses across the world utilize the sugar refined in Lance’s family’s factories.

- Grew up in a giant villa on the peninsula just outside the town of Varadero, on a sprawling property that included a long stretch of beachfront and individual bungalows for visiting family members and the family’s several live-in staff members.

- The whole family is incredibly down to earth despite this. Lance’s aunt and grandmother insist on having a hand in every family meal, Lance’s parents always make time to be involved in the children’s activities, and Lance was taught from a very young age never to take advantage of people, regardless of their position in the world.

- Lance is the baby of his immediate family by almost ten years. He was an accident that occurred after Lance’s mother believed she was too old to become pregnant. Of course his parents never treated Lance like an accident and loved him, but still, Lance has never been able to shake the idea that he wasn’t planned—and therefore he wasn’t wanted.

- He has four older siblings, two sisters and two brothers.

- All of Lance’s siblings are extremely successful in their careers. Lance’s oldest sibling, his sister Veronica, is a captain of the Cuban Navy and commands the impressive warship Audaz. Lance’s second oldest sibling, his brother Yuniel, is a decorated conservational ecologist working to protect Matanzas’ native forests. Lance’s third sibling, his brother, Marco, is a famous solo folk musician who made it big in Cuba. Rachel, Lance’s closest sibling, runs an immersion-based cultural heritage museum that preserves the rich and complicated history of Cuba and its people.

- In short—Lance grew up surrounded by the rampant success of his older siblings, watching as they excelled at everything they pursued—which just bred a greater and greater sense of insecurity in him, as he feared he would never be able to measure up.

- On Lance’s eighth birthday, in an attempt to cheer up his very depressed youngest son, Lance’s father dragged the family’s telescope down to the beach so that they could watch a space shuttle launching from the cape in Florida. At first Lance couldn’t work up the slightest interest, but when he finally saw the huge plume of the shuttle, arcing off into the unknown depths of space, he had a Moment™. Lance knew, right then and there, exactly what he was going to do with his life, something that none of his siblings had ever achieved: he was going to go into space and explore worlds unknown.

- Lance decided that he had, absolutely HAD, to go to Galaxy Garrison when he grew up. This part worried his parents, who pointed out that Garrison was not only in another country but also a solely English-speaking school and extremely competitive. Nonetheless, Lance was determined that he would not settle for anything less than the absolute best.

- Was totally that space obsessed kid. Still thinks Black Holes are the coolest thing in the universe. His parents bought so much “Astronaut�� ice cream that they probably kept that entire industry afloat.

- Lance attended Garrison’s summer Astrocamp in Arizona when he was nine. Quickly made friends with his cabin-mate, Hyrum Tava. The nickname “Hunk” came about from a slip-up when Lance tried to compare his new friend to one of his favorite American cartoon characters, the Incredible Hulk.

- Even after leaving the Astrocamp, Lance and Hunk stayed close friends, exchanging frequent emails and phone calls, which helped Lance stay on top of memes popular trends back in the states.

- Shiro was Lance’s cabin leader at the Astrocamp, and his kindness and exciting stories about actually visiting space(!!) made a huge impression on Lance. Lance… may or may not have had a celebrity shrine to Shiro made of photos and news clippings taped to his wall for several years. Whatever, every kid does it and he took it down eventually, gosh!

- Identifies as bisexual, but has never successfully dated anyone, male or female. Due to several bad experiences and close calls, Lance doesn’t talk about his sexuality or express any attraction to men except around people he is extremely comfortable with. Hunk has known for years, of course. (In fact, it was Lance’s struggle with his feelings that helped Hunk develop strong sympathy for LGBT people, despite the fact that his religion is very against it.)

- Never had a real kiss. Might be just a tiny bit desperate to have a real first kiss.

- Also might buy a bit too much into the idea of needing to be stereotypically attractive to fit in. Although his nightly beauty regime is now a comforting routine, it originally stemmed from Lance being extremely self-conscious about his looks. He’s more comfortable about his body than he used to be, but he still frequently compares himself negatively against others; do you know what kind of hell it is to have to share a locker room with people like Shiro?

- Cries at the drop of a hat. Sad book? Sad movie? Abandoned kitten? Dropped something on his toe? Tears times ten thousand. Lance was never pressured by his family to “man up;” in fact, he was always encouraged to empathize, so Lance is extremely sensitive to others’ feelings. (He and Hunk are a great fit in this regard.) He can perceive even minute changes in people’s emotions and is always ready to cheer up people who are down.

- He can’t read Keith for crap though. Not really his fault. Keith’s a literal alien.

- Lance’s extreme empathy actually backfires on him. Because being sensitive to others is second nature to him, it’s often hard for Lance to remember that not everyone is as perceptive as he is. Lance has, many times, mistaken the other paladins’ obliviousness for indifference. Everyone on the ship cares deeply about Lance and would never want him to feel bad about himself—but not everyone on the ship is perceptive enough to notice when Lance’s insecurities are affecting him.

- Wasn’t put in the cargo pilot classes at Garrison because of his flight test scores—most green cadets have zero flight experience and all do pretty badly at first. Lance was placed in cargo class because he scored too high on a combat sensitivity test, indicating that he was a poor fit mentally for becoming a soldier. Fighting monstrous looking aliens is one thing, but Lance would have coped very, very badly if he’d ever been required to kill another human being.

- Struggled to fit in at Garrison. After the crushing disappointment of ending up in cargo class, Lance also dealt with a lot of people treating him like an outsider because he was an international student. “Why is someone from Cuba trying to join the U.S. military? Are you a spy?”

- Couple that with the complicated student visa process and how his status as an international student might affect his ability to take part in Garrison-sanctioned internships and cross-border activities, and Lance felt utterly alienated at Garrison in his first few months.

- May… or may not have done exactly what his parents taught him not to do by looking for a scapegoat to take out his frustrations on. Keith, the lone wolf, ace pilot pretty boy who was too cool to even talk to the rest of the cadets (really thought he was too good to even make eye contact with Lance, huh?!) was an obvious target. Keith had every single thing that Lance had ever wanted in his whole life—the combat class, the talent, the prestige, the respect, the effortless looks—and he didn’t even seem happy to have it!

- Lance had never hated anyone before in his entire life, but Lance hated Keith—Keith basically came to stand in for every obstacle in Lance’s way, every mocking insult thrown Lance’s way, every harsh reminder from the professors that he’d never even be close to good enough, never measure up when someone like that existed… Lance started to honestly believe that the only way he’d ever be able to achieve his entire life goal was if Keith was taken out of the picture—something that proved unfortunately true when Lance was bumped up to combat class the moment Keith went missing from Garrison.

- Lance never actually said any of this stuff to Keith’s face before Keith left Garrison (Lance dreaded his parents finding out he’d been rude), but he would shit-talk Keith to anyone who would listen, a bad habit that was reinforced by people actually accepting Lance more when he started gossiping and spreading rumors than when he’d just tried to be genuinely nice.

- Even though he’d like to repair his relationship with Keith now that they’re teammates, Lance has no idea how to do that after so much time has passed. He really has no clue how to treat Keith normally after building him up into such a bitter rival. It’s… a work in progress.

- A big fan of RPG games and roleplaying. Definitely gets the most in-character when it comes to Monsters and Mana. His favorite thing about meeting new cultures is discovering nifty space items that look like key items from video games. Used to play old school RPGs with his cousins every afternoon. Playing with Pidge is extremely nostalgic for him.

- Has a host of other hobbies that don’t get much use inspace but are nevertheless impressive: he can surf, dive, and was part of a traditional dance group all the up until he left for Garrison. He doesn’t tend to think much of his hobbies as they’re not exactly practical skills you need every day in a space war, but the other members of Team Voltron are quietly impressed whenever they’re reminded of the cool things Lance can do.

- Lance has the strongest bond with his lion of any of the paladins. His connection with Blue is so innate that he can actually activate Blue’s abilities from outside his lion.

- The first one of the paladins to transform his bayard and the only one whose bayard can take three forms. And no, none of the three is a sword because what was the point of that, even??? Lance can wield his standard blaster, a long rifle, and dual pistols. The strength of theshots from Lance’s bayard can be consciously controlled—his thoughts and intentions determine whether a shot has the strength to kill or merely stun.

- Lance’s incredible aim isn’t a natural talent. Actually he’s spent hours and hours in a shooting range he found in the castle, working on perfecting his shot. Just like the gladiator levels on the training deck, the targets in the range keep getting harder and harder, but Lance is progressing very well. No one but Coran knows that Lance has been training so hard with his bayard, since Lance desperately wants to pretend his skill is all natural and has sworn Coran to secrecy. Coran covers for him by pretending he’s sent Lance off on absurd cleaning missions all the time.

- Is 1000% Coran’s favorite of the paladins. Coran won’t even try to lie if asked. Although Coran has never expressed it out loud, he sees Lance as an example of the brave, kind-hearted son he would have hoped to raise—if his son had survived the war. (On Lance’s part, although he’s also never shared this, Coran reminds him very much of his beloved uncle, who passed away when Lance was very young, but whom he still remembers well and extremely fondly.)

- After his uncle passed away, Lance’s aunt moved in with Lance’s parents permanently, and Lance essentially helped to raise his two very young cousins, Nadia and Silvio. Lance does have very good experience with children—unfortunately for him, what human children respond well to doesn’t always work for Galra kids!        

Lotor:

- Has not spent 10,000 years kicking about the universe. We’re not doing that weird “If he’s immortal because of the rift creatures then how come his governess is still alive?” plot hole song and dance routine from the actual show. Lotor was born after the war decimated the Alteans 10,000 years ago, but due to Haggar’s condition (aka being, you know, dead), he was essentially unable to live on his own and was placed in cryostasis very shortly after being born.

- Roughly 20 years before the discovery of the Blue Lion on Earth, Haggar used advancements in quintessence manipulation technology to successfully revive the infant Lotor. But she didn’t wake him for no reason—she has a very specific intention for her son, a long endgame plan, of which Lotor and even Zarkon are currently unaware.

- We’re also not doing that dumb “How could Haggar—the only remotely Altean-looking being in all of Zarkon’s presence—possibly be my mother?” plot from the show either. Lotor is aware that Haggar is his mother, although he has never been able to infiltrate her research facilities and therefore has no idea how an Altean scientist ended up where she did, looking like she did, and siding with the Galra against her own people.

- Because his parents’ past and his own origins are such a mystery, Lotor is obsessed with learning the truth of the war, the Alteans, and every hidden secret from that time period, including Voltron and the mysterious “rift.” He devours any information he can get on this period of history, and especially on Alteans, voraciously.

- But even though he’ll take any pieces of information he can get, Lotor’s real favorite obsession is mythology. He’s a deep lover of folklore and fairytales, bestiaries and local legends, and more than one assassin has traded a good story in exchange for having his life spared. Lotor may or may not hunt for space cryptids in his spare time. However, no single legend occupies Lotor’s mind as much as the legend of the mythical realm of Oriande, home of the ancient Altean alchemists. As practical as he tries to appear, Lotor has never given up his deep-down childish wish to be the one who finds the promised land of Oriande and prove it is real. But when he thinks back… Where was it that he first heard about Oriande, again? Who told him…?

- That entire thing with the hidden Altean colonies is just… not going to happen. The writers were bad and they should feel bad. Although Lotor has looked, after 10,000 years and plenty of centuries of hiding any Altean connections, distinguishing those who still have Altean blood has become essentially impossible.

- Part of the reason Lotor has looked for Alteans is that he was born with a bizarre grab-bag of Altean instincts and abilities and no guidance on how to deal with them, because he’s certainly not going to reveal to Haggar that he has unexplained talents like precognition and the ability to speak to planets. Growing up with half of his bloodline extinct has been ROUGH on Lotor.

- Speaking of growing up… Even though he remains the crown prince on official record, Lotor took the first opportunity he could to leave his parents’ sphere of influence, and he has not physically been back to Galra Central Command in more than ten years.

- Lotor is effectively a universal wanderer. Aboard his personal ship the Urbanus (a Destroyer-class star cruiser which has been heavily modified and improved by Lotor himself), Lotor and his generals travel wherever they like, both within the Galra Empire and outside it, dodging Haggar’s frequent attempts to re-exert control over Lotor and even more frequent assassination and kidnapping attempts from Zarkon’s enemies.

- Although Lotor has a very specific goal in mind, progress on this goal has been slow and painstaking, and he’s often left waiting for the next bare bones clue to chase after; this has resulted in the young prince having an unfortunate abundance of free time, which is dangerous for everyone involved. In between progress on his mysterious life’s goal, Lotor and his generals frequently get into trouble with small planets, local governments, militaries both official and off-the-books, giant monsters, and at least two hundred museum curators. They may or may not be wanted for grave-robbing in 13 different star systems.

- Basically he’s space Indiana Jones, if Indiana Jones was still 20 and also purple and also not being paid enough to be a good guy.

- All that said, as much of a devil-may-care rogue as he’d like to be seen, Lotor did spend all of his childhood under the thumb of the empire’s brutal authoritarian dictators, and he is therefore every inch a crown prince; as befitting one of his stature, he speaks eight languages fluently, flawlessly matches his formal dress to the occasion, knows exactly which piece of silverware to use when, can engage in political battles of wits and diplomatic machinations with the best of them, and has been training in armed combat since he was three years old. Lotor’s impeccable manners and steely leadership ability were literally beaten into him, to the point that now, even among trusted allies, he sometimes finds it difficult to turn off his cold, calculated princely persona.

- Not that his generals really let him get away with that kind of thing for long. Only those who have lived with multiple older sisters can truly understand the constant state of teasing and mortifying blackmail that Lotor lives in. On official record, Lotor’s generals are a crack team of terrifying bodyguards; in practice, they’re more likely to be dragging Lotor for all he’s worth than rescuing him. They might keep up formal appearances in front of others, but they’re effectively a close-knit family behind the scenes.

- It’s not a coincidence that all of Lotor’s generals are women; besides generally being awful, most Galra men make Lotor uncomfortable. From a human standpoint, Lotor is ridiculously tall and powerful; but from a Galra standpoint, Lotor is a thin, unhealthy-looking thing whose stature doesn’t command authority or respect in the slightest. It’s exhausting feeling like you have to constantly prove yourself, so Lotor prefers to spend time with a group that doesn’t invite negative comparison.

- However, it should be noted that a Galra man having only female friends has completely different connotations than a human man having only female friends—Galra women are, on the whole, considered more aggressive, bloodthirsty, and over-bearing than Galra men, so any Galra man who would choose to surround himself with that many women must either be out of his mind or incredibly badass.

- When asked what it’s like to live with four beautiful women, Lotor is basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ personified. Despite living together for years, none of the generals are romantically interested in Lotor and he’s not romantically interested in any of them.

- Many people have incorrectly assumed that Lotor and Axca are a pair, but Lotor helped Axca escape from a slave colony and she will never let another man touch her in her life. Axca is extremely grateful and loyal to Lotor, but given that Axca was Lotor’s first real friend, he’s just as grateful to her.

- If you think I’m killing off Narti, you’re out of your mind.

- Despite the fact that Lotor does not feel connected to the Galra Empire or the Galra as a whole, he’s somewhat more traditional and more likely to conform to Galra social standards than he wants to admit (even to himself). He insists that he has no interest in upholding the classic values of the Galra or meeting their expectations for how a prince should behave—but in truth, it’s impossible to fully kill that deep-down desire to just fit in. When push comes to shove, Lotor always finds himself falling in line with the Galra’s oldest and most deeply ingrained beliefs.

- With Lance in the “has never had a real kiss” club. Is not with Lance in the “wants a real kiss” club. Lotor is actually uncomfortable with being touched by strangers (36 assassination attempts will do that to you) and doesn’t make real friends, let alone anything closer, remotely easily. Some people are open books; Lotor is that one book from Harry Potter that bites people’s fingers off when they try to open it. Once you’re in his inner-circle, he’ll let you hang all over him, but before that, the space bubble is ten feet in every direction.

- Doesn’t actually put any special effort into his appearance. He just Looks Like That™.

- In fact, he actually kind of hates that stupid cowlick hair that’s always in his face but no matter how many times he cuts it off or slicks it back, it just keeps falling right back in his eyes. He’s basically given up at this point.

- His sword’s name is Eris and it was actually forged in the heart of a dying star.

- Kova the space cat hates Lotor. Lotor hates Kova. It’s a mutually antagonistic relationship. Somehow though, Lotor never makes any effort to get rid of Kova and Kova never takes the opportunity to leave. No one else understands it either, especially since Lotor gets along great with basically every other animal he meets.

- He’s not a pacifist by any means, but he is painfully practical and knows that, on occasion, sparing the life of one’s enemy nets more gain than indiscriminately crushing opponents beneath his heel. More manipulative than outright aggressive, he’s easily capable of twisting even the worst of situations to his advantage. Has an unfortunate tendency to be overly cunning—sometimes the tricks and twists he comes up with are unnecessarily full of flourish just because he thinks manipulating people like pieces in a board game is extremely entertaining. Riddles and mind games are Lotor’s favorite—the more convoluted, the better.

- Although most people refer to him by the basic “Prince Lotor” (Lotori Ahn in Galra), Lotor’s full name and official title is Lotori Kir Ahnja Avel i’ya ne Daibazaal, His Royal Highness Prince Lotor of the First Star. As the emperors and empresses of the Galra are said to be physical representations of the goddess, the firstborn children of emperors/empresses are always called “the first star,” after the supposed first creation of the goddess.

- Extremely competitive, but mostly about weird things—like sure he’s going to win if you challenge him to a swordsmanship duel, but challenge him to a staring contest? Your eyes will rot out of your head before this boy will blink. Do not think he will let you beat him in a spelling bee. More than once the generals have had to drag him away from getting involved in the bizarre competitions of the alien cultures they come into contact with. He was 1000% ready to learn to knit eight-armed sweaters with Rikrik fur, thank you. Would totally take up pig-farming JUST to win an Earth state fair.

- Likes to collect interesting artifacts and trinkets of lost civilizations by force if necessary. His ship is basically a floating museum at this point. The generals are starting to worry that they’re going to have add a whole ‘nother deck for all the war prizes Lotor wins himself. Lotor’s gathering hobby extends to games too—he’s a big fan of games that involve sets of items, like Renni, the Galra collectible card game. Would 110% be that Magic the Gathering nerd back on earth.

- In terms of other interests, Lotor is the picture definition of a Renaissance man. Although he’s not a flawless genius savant in every field, he is wicked smart and has studied a vast array of subjects; he’s a capable engineer, a skilled mathematician, a deft philosopher, a good scientist, and extremely well-read, and he is not going tolet you forget any of those things at any point in time. Lotor is always going to be better than you, please just accept your fate.

- Art is… another story. He might be able to sketch detailed architectural blueprints without breaking a sweat but ask him to draw a dog and you’re going to be in for some trouble.

And that’s more than enough for now I think! XD

[i-write-shakespeare-not-disney]

Director’s Commentary- Lovesick Addiction, Keith joins Lance in church as he mourns

My commentary is in bold italics- I hope it’s okay I focused on the shoebox because the whole church scene was like... 6 pages and half of it was crying....

Keith chewed on his lower lip for a second before nodding. “I want to be here with you.” I’m gonna be honest. I know I’ve gotten feedback on the realism of Lance’s mourning, but I have no idea how realistic I made Keith as a partner who is also becoming part of it. I don’t actually know how hard it may have been for Keith to sit there and open the shoe box with Lance, but I like to think that although it is a bit uncomfortable, the jealousy is gone and it’s something Keith does want to actively be part of with Lance out of love for him. Which is why I made him stay even in the midst of Lance’s mourning period and after so long without hearing from Lance.

Lance turned toward him and put the box between them. He took a breath and stared at it for a minute. Keith kept his eyes on him while he prepared himself. Then Lance reached out and pulled the lid of the shoebox away. 

There were several papers, photos, and even pieces of jewelry. Lance let out a shaky breath and he let his fingers skim over the photos. They had a grainy sort of appearance, like they were photos taken with phones then printed at a Walgreens. A couple were those new, small polaroids. 

Lance looked at them and took a deep breath that left him in a shaky exhale. It kind of killed me not getting a chance to write this section in Lance’s POV because this is huge for him. He’s allowing and inviting both worlds to merge here in a place of faith which he had been lacking. He’s inviting this acknowledgement of both Allura and Keith as romantic partners and it’s HUGE, especially after so long keeping them separate and grieving her separately. “This was the first Christmas we spent as a couple. She gave me the cologne you saw in my bathroom that day.” 

He looked at the photo in Lance’s hands. The two of them bundled up with scarves and beanies and thick jackets so all you could really see was her hair spilling around her shoulders and their faces as they laughed in the middle of a kiss. 

It felt jarring to see Lance kissing someone else. The bitterness Keith used to have to stuff down wasn’t there, just… discomfort. I also really wanted this scene to show the growth and security Keith feels in the relationship. He would NOT have been ready for this if they’d opened the box all those chapter ago when Lance first mentioned the box. Lance put the photo back inside and looked at the others. There was a silly selfie of the two of them where Allura’s hair covered both their faces because the wind was blowing it. Keith could still see their laughing smiles between the strands, the scrunch of their eyes as they winced. There was one someone had taken of them while they sat, each with a book in their hands. Lance seemed to be looking up as if whoever was snapping the photo had called his name suddenly. Allura was leaning against him, focused on her book. They were both dressed up. 

“Where’d you guys go?” I know it seems like Keith asking stuff is just a given, but.... Honestly he could’ve stayed quiet the whole time and just let Lance talk when he needed/wanted. But I had this question from Keith’s end because I wanted to show that Keith is welcoming this information, this conversation. It’s not one sided. It’s a conversation and Keith wants to be part of it. He wants Lance to trust him with this, wants him to feel safe and comfortable talking about it. So he asks and he’s curious and it’s him opening that space for Lance. Reassuring him that he means it when he says he wants to be there. 

Lance smiled sadly. “That was after Ash Wednesday. See the smear on our foreheads?” He sighed. “We actually weren’t dating yet in that one. I also wanted to make sure people recognized that his relationship with Allura wasn’t always romantic. There was friendship there, a bond that went back to childhood. A closeness that grew before the romance. It’s mentioned either before or shortly after this excerpt but I needed to drive home the fact that Lance is not only mourning a lover, he’s mourning a friend. Even when he’s been with Keith for 30 years, he will still mourn Allura because she was still his friend of several years. But my dad kept telling me to buck up and be a man and ask her out already.” Keith hummed and nodded. He looked into the box and skimmed the other contents. “Are you sure this is okay?” Lance asked.

He met Lance’s eyes and smiled sheepishly. “It’s a little strange. But I’m okay.” He pointed inside the box. “What’s with the index card covered in algebra equations?” The index card, I just really wanted a mundane object that would show how easy and natural their relationship was but also didn’t want it to be a sticky note because of that Valentine’s day headcannon I have for them. 

Lance set the photos down and lifted the index card. There were a bunch of sticky notes attached to the other side of it, stacked sloppily over each other. 

“This is from one of the classes we shared for gen ed. She left me a note on it when I wasn’t looking, and I just found it between my study guides.” He peeled the sticky notes off and Keith saw some loopy, round handwriting scrawled across the other side in black marker. 

I like the look on your face when you get confused. It’s cute. -Ax

Keith knew exactly what she was talking about. That scrunch of his eyebrows, the way he pressed his lips together in a slight pout, the way his eyes would squint suspiciously, all topped with a slight tilt of his head. It was fucking adorable. So. I really liked the idea of creating a sense of similarity between Keith and Allura through Lance. The two people who love(d) him in this romantic way both knew him well enough to know what his confused face was and to find it endearing. They’re similar in their love for Lance, and it also shows that there’s parts that are integral to Lance that didn’t disappear after Allura’s death. Even if it’s as small as a facial expression. 

“The professor was trying to explain logarithms. I never understood those,” Lance said.  He flipped the edges of the sticky notes. “She used to leave me notes in my stuff. In my backpack. Between the pages of my books. In my wallet. Telling me to listen for the birds that day. Things that reminded her of me. Or just to remind me that… she loved me.” I want to expand on this in the prequels, but the idea was that Allura liked to mention things Lance could make poetry out of. While also letting him experience the present. As someone who knew she was on limited time, Allura was often the one reigning Lance back to just be present and enjoy the moment (something else Keith and Allura have in common) when Lance wanted to rush forward and plan the future. So she mentioned little things that could help him be present like bird songs.  He traced the loops of her writing and pressed his other hand to his eyes. 

He took a moment to pull himself together, placing the stack of notes back inside the box. While Lance breathed, Keith noticed the glint of a chain and a bracelet. The cross on the chain and the little infinity sign on the bracelet were the same as the ones Allura had been wearing in the photos. He could see them clearly on a small polaroid of Allura laying out in the sun- the very same cross and bracelet. I wanted the jewelry to stand out because they didn’t go to Coran and they weren’t buried with her. They were given to Lance. 

“She really loved you,” Keith said softly. 

Lance looked over at him and managed a nearly imperceptible nod. “I miss her. And it just sucks that… this isn’t the kind of missing someone where you know you can drive a few hours to see them or just wait a few months to be with them. It’s permanent. There’s no possibility at all and I can’t do anything about it.” Depending on how long you’ve followed me, you may or may not know I’m thanatophobic. So I basically put the fears I have of death into this. It’s kind of surreal trying to get into your head when someone is gone in a permanent way that has no chance of changing and I tried to phrase it in a way that would carry that weight of pain and finality. As he spoke, his voice broke more and more between whispers, some words barely distinguishable. “And when that reality hits me I just feel… so powerless and small.” 

Seeing Lance break down further, Keith got up and moved to the other side of Lance so he could wrap his arms around him. Lance pressed his hands to Keith’s chest. 

At first, Keith thought Lance was trying to push him back. That he might need space. But when Keith started to let him go, Lance’s body curled further into him. His palm pressed against his chest, seeking something. Seeking Keith’s heartbeat. Lance’s face tucked into the curve of his neck. Lance’s way to be present. The last time he did this was after a nightmare of Keith dying, so for Lance, the heartbeat is a way of comforting himself with the knowledge that the person he loves is alive. 

They stayed that way for a long time. Keith let his finger twirl an unruly lock of hair by his ear, his other arm wrapped around Lance and gently skimming his fingers over him back. Lance kept his hand at Keith’s chest, occasionally pressing harder, occasionally letting his hand slip before settling back in place. 

Eventually, Lance lifted his head. “I’m gonna pray a little,” he said with a tired, raspy voice. “Then we can go back. If you’d rather wait in the car, you can.” 

Keith hummed and looked around at whoever was left still praying. “Can you show me how? Teach me one of the prayers you like so I can do it with you?” 

I’ve mentioned why this last bit matters so much to me. I mean for one, it’s a big step that Lance made the step on his own to voluntarily go to church and another that he’s sitting to have his conversation with God. But there’s also so much in the fact that Keith is also offering to join him in this because he knows what it means to Lance. Anyway this is one of my favorite parts especially with the part the follows this where Lance gives him a simple little kiss and Keith is very confused and wondering if it’s allowed. That part, I think shows another merging of worlds for Lance. A merge of his faith with his identity as someone who loves a boy. 

[some-cookie-crumbz]

Stocking Around with You

Stocking Around with You - Kidge Fest Prompt 1 Fill Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Pairing: Kidge Summary: For Keith, it’s still a little strange but also extremely satisfying to have a place to go during the holidays. Little does he know, his girlfriend has been planning something just for his return. Standard Disclaimer: If you read and enjoy this, please give it a like/ reblog so I know if I should write more. AN: Don’t let the summary fool you; this is completely G-Rated. First day prompt is also the start of a small three part series written just for Kidge Fest! Enjoy!

He was still adjusting to having some place to be during the holiday season.

The Holts had taken a shine to Keith the moment Pidge introduced them, even before she made it clear that he was her boyfriend. He had already had a handful of run-ins with Matt from both his time in the Garrison and his time working actively with the Rebels to defeat Zarkon. Samuel Holt he recognized as a living legend amongst anyone who ever hoped to travel the stars; a man whom had been on more space missions and had a hand in almost every revolutionary development in space travel in the over thirty years he’d been involved with the Garrison. He idolized the man as someone whom had always aspired to be just as prolific in the field. He was intimidated by him as the punk boyfriend of the man’s only daughter. And while he knew Colleen Holt to be a sweet and devoted soul from Pidge’s reminiscence of her life before Kerberos, he wasn’t sure how far that kindness would extend to him.

He was an outsider being brought in. An outsider that had been in an intimate relationship with their daughter for well over a year before formally meeting the family. An outsider with a reputation for being volatile and impulsive and being the direct cause for several instances of heartbreak for his girlfriend. He had been uncomfortable with the idea of having his character and motivations and intentions picked apart by people he didn’t know and who didn’t know about him. He wouldn’t make excuses for his behavior or past mistakes – especially the decisions that had hurt Pidge – but the idea of having other voices berate him for those flaws made him uneasy.

He’d been hearing those things for years from both himself and the many foster families he’d been swapped around to. He didn’t want to keep hearing it.

Instead, however, the Holts had been warm and inviting and eager to give him a chance to impress or disappoint. Despite being a high ranking official with a laundry list of accomplishments to flaunt, Samuel Holt was a humble and affable man. He had shaken Keith’s hand and praised him for his accomplishments with both Voltron and the Blade, saying that he’d heard so many good things from both of his children. There had been no call-out of his mistakes or declarations of his unworthiness of Pidge or shot-gun chats; instead, he’d ended up having a rather enthralling conversation about the differences between piloting a Lion and piloting a fighter-class Garrison ship.

And Colleen Holt had been just as jovial and benevolent as her husband, with just as many accomplishments of her own to speak of. While she wasn’t a scientist like her husband or children, she was fluent in Italian, French, Spanish, Japanese and German. Before they had Matt, she had worked for a huge corporation – she explained that she was bound to secrecy since she’d left – and been the head of international relations. After Matt was born, she’d stepped down from the job to find something that would be more flexible with her schedule as a new mother. The university downtown had been eager to offer her a position as a professor and she’d been there ever since.

After that initial dinner, Keith felt like he belonged with them.

It was why he didn’t worry about knocking as he opened the front door, stomping the last bits of snow on his boots to the doormat outside. Bae Bae darted over, tail wagging so frantically that his whole rear end shook, tongue lolling out from his parted mouth as he released an excited whine. “Hey, bud,” He mused as he shuffled on to the tile and shut the front door, reaching out to lightly rub behind one perked ear.

“Keith!” Pidge called as she rounded the corner to join him in the entryway. She leaned up to kiss him as he tugged one of his gloves off, moving that hand to gently cup the side of her face. She hummed and pressed into his touch lightly. “How was the mission?” She mumbled against his lips, her hands coming up to start working at the zipper of his winter coat.

While Zarkon had been bested and peace seemed to come to the universe, there were rumblings in the underground of worlds that had willingly allied with the Galran ruler planning a rebellion in retaliation to Voltron’s victory. The Blade were following leads to get more concrete intel, but as of yet it was more like chasing shadows. “Hmm. Same old song and dance,” He said lightly, carefully shrugging out of his coat with Pidge’s help. She held it up so he could stuff the gloves into the large pockets before turning to head toward the coat closet. He watched her then chuckled slightly. “Wow. You weren’t kidding about being really in to the Christmas spirit, huh?” He laughed lightly.

She smirked at him over her shoulder as she opened the closet door. “I’ve never lied before, have I?” She mused. In honor of the oncoming festivities, Pidge was wearing a red skirt that had candy canes pressed to make heart shapes all over and seemed to be made wool to offer more warmth. She’d paired it with a pair of leggings that were covered in little gingerbread people decorated to look like Santa and Mrs. Claus. She had completed the outfit with a long sleeved shirt that had Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, in all his traditional Christmas glory, wearing shutter shades and the text “You bad, bro?” at the bottom.

“I’m afraid I’m gonna have to plead the fifth on that one,” He chuckled lightly as she returned to him, shutting the door with one sock clad foot.

She hummed in amusement, weaving her arms back around his neck and hanging off him like a sloth. “Oh? And why is that?” She laughed.

“Don’t play coy, Miss Holt. We both know why,” He teased back, rewarding her with another quick peck before she stood upright and led him to the living room.

The whole house was already decked out for the festivities – tinsel and lights twisted around every support beam and strings of popcorn hanging over the entryways - and they had just started trimming the tree. Matt and Sam were quick to greet Keith and ask him about his mission as they got to work. Pidge helped explain to Keith how they typically decorated – plastic ornaments going on the bottom, due to Bae Bae’s powerful Tail Whip, while glass ones went up higher – as Matt and Samuel put more lights and tinsel on the tree. They had just finished decorating the tree when Colleen came bustling out of the kitchen, a notepad in her hand and her purse slung over her shoulder.

“Hello, Keith! So glad you could make it!” She beamed, the two sharing a brief hug and Keith getting a small peck on the cheek from her.

“Glad to be here, Colleen,” He said, his voice warm and soft with sincerity. He then tilted his head a bit at the notepad in her hand. “Compiling a Honey-Do list for Sam?”

Colleen giggled and waved her hand lightly. “Oh, heavens, no! Matthew helps with most of the particularly tasking chores around here, anyway. No, I was getting together a grocery list. We’re teetering on the edge of being Mother Hubbard in those cupboards,” She mused lightly.

“Ah, finished taking inventory of what little we already have?” Samuel laughed, briefly exchanging a look with his daughter.

“Indeed I did. I hope you don’t mind having pizza for dinner, but there really wasn’t much left in the house for me to make. Matt, call it in for us in about fifteen minutes or so, okay? Dad or I will let you know when we’re on our way home so you can all help bring everything inside,” Colleen delegated evenly while Samuel headed back toward the entryway to get their coats.

“Yes, Ma’am,” Matt said, bowing at Colleen with a dramatic twirl of one arm before dipping at his waist. Pidge rolled her eyes while Keith snickered at both siblings’ actions.

Colleen giggled a bit and hummed, glancing over at Keith and Pidge. “For now, though, why don’t you settle in and relax, Keith? I’m sure you’ve got a bit of jet-lag from all that space travel,” She suggested before heading along after Samuel.

Pidge smiled and nodded, taking Keith’s arm and tugging him towards the mantel. “Come on, we can start a fire and you can tell me what exactly happened on your mission,” She said, nudging him over toward the couch settled behind the tree. Keith watched over his shoulder as she and Matt exchanged thumbs up behind his back, causing him to let out an intrigued hum. “What?” She asked, turning her full attention back to him.

“Why do I get the feeling that you’re all conspiring to pull a fast one on me?” He asked with a small chuckle.

She hummed and tapped at her chin in playful thought. “Well, you always have been a bit on the paranoid side,” She mused, slipping past him and heading toward the fireplace. He noticed that there were already a couple of logs settled inside. She grabbed a small book of matches from the top of the mantel, struck t, and then tossed it inside. It took her a bit of coaxing and puffing to get the logs smoldering proper, but in the end she succeeded.

Keith settled back on the couch and sighed as he watched her, letting himself be sucked in to the soft, plush surface beneath him. It had been a while since he’d been able to lean against something this comfortable. The bunk in his cruiser wasn’t the most uncomfortable surface he’d ever laid upon, but it was certain pretty high up there. Pidge beamed, hands on her hips, before turning and trotting over to cuddle up into his side. He lifted one arm to help her hunker down more comfortably against him and then draped the arm along her back, the two sighing contentedly in unison.

Or, he realized, maybe it was more that he had simply gotten used to having the Green Paladin sharing his space with him.

“So your mission went well?” She asked softly, glancing up at him through her bangs.

He leaned down to press a soft kiss to her forehead. “Mm. Don’t really wanna get in to that, though,” He mumbled.

She laughed slightly. “Oh? Not in the mood to brag about your accomplishments to make your lady friend swoon?” She waggled her eyebrows at him in a gesture painfully reminiscent to a certain loud personality they knew.

A bark of laughter clipped out of him. “Not much to tell, really; we didn’t really gain any new information or lose any ground so it was ultimately very meh,”

“Wow, it really must have been a boring mission if you don’t even have any interesting Blade shenanigans to share from the whole thing. I mean, you’ve always come back with hilarious stories about the Blade rookies getting overzealous and messing up the most basic of tasks,” She tsked lightly.

“Promise not to tell Kollivan since I’d never hear the end of it but… It almost felt like a waste of my time, honestly; would have rather been here than out there for the last five weeks,” He said, gently twisting a long honey colored lock around his index finger. Pidge had been growing her hair out for years and he had to admit he was a fan. Any hair style looked good on her, but he liked getting to play with the longer tresses.

“Because you missed all of this?” She asked, her tone a bit softer and sincere now. He appreciated that she knew exactly what that meant and nodded.

“When I was a kid, all I ever wanted was a family and a home to belong to. I would dream about it and wish for it all the time. Hell, there were even nights where I would pretend I saw a shooting star in hopes that my wish would come true,” He said gently. Her grip on him tightened a bit, both in reassurance and a bit of sympathy. Even before the two of them became romantically involved, he and Pidge had gravitated towards one another; an invisible pull between two people made from almost all the same stuff. Like they were cut from clothes so similar they were almost the same, to phrase it a different way. They had been able to strip away their bravados and bare their most naked, tender, and guarded secrets and feelings and heartbreaks to one another, unabashed and unapologetic and unashamed of them. They never judged one another or made a competition out of it; simply listened and offered the safe place to unleash all the darkness inside. She knew all his sad songs of loneliness and isolation just as he knew hers. “And I found that with Team Voltron, in a weird traveling-space-and-fighting-alien-Hitler sort of way. But… The simple and domestic of it all… I have that here. With you and your family. They’ve been so accepting of me and I just… I can’t express how much I appreciate it and love them all for it. And love you for taking a chance on me.”

He could feel his eyes getting a bit misty and swallowed thickly to try and regain some sense of composure.

“You’re so ingrained in the family that we got you your own stocking,” Pidge said while scooting up a bit to press a quick peck to his chin.

“Oh yeah?” He asked, coming out in a soft puff as he regained control. He didn’t want to get all mushy when he hadn’t even been back on Earth for a full hour.

She hummed in assertion before shifting to gently pull away, indicating the mantel above the fireplace. “Go check it out for yourself,” She beamed, giving one of his hands a brief squeeze.

He quirked an eyebrow at her before standing up and heading over to do as she suggested. The stockings were all simply but there was a comfort in the plainness of them. They were all one solid color with the first letter of their owner’s first name embroidered on the front; well, excluding Bae Bae, whose stocking was about half the size and had bones printed on the fabric it was composed of. Colleen’s was white with a red “C”; Samuel’s red with a white “S”; Matt’s was also white but the “M” was green. He wondered briefly is Pidge’s own stocking had been replaced to better match with her role as Paladin, given the stocking was green with a white “K”. And hanging right next to hers was a red stocking with a white “K” on it, a stocking meant to represent him. He reached out and lightly stroked the wool along the hem, the couch creaking softly as Pidge got up and began to join him.

He couldn’t help the smile that lit up on his face then perked up when he noticed something. He tugged a bit to lift the stocking in the air and realized that it felt oddly weighted down for something that wasn’t supposed to be filled for another twenty days or so. He looked over at Pidge to find her grinning at him like the cat that swallowed the canary; a look he’d often seen but never had directed at him. “There’s like, some kind of prank tool in there, isn’t there?” He asked, his smile becoming a bit cheekier.

She responded but rocking back and forth on the heels and toes of her shoes, looking about innocently and making a small “Maybe” noise. She leaned a little bit closer and nudged his shoulder with hers. “I guess your only option is to look inside, huh?”

He rolled his eyes a little bit and plucked the stocking up, shoving one hand in to rummage out whatever she’d hidden inside. Most like a fake piece of dog poo or one of those terrifyingly realistic looking moth things she’d made. He had learned after the incident involving that abomination of an “invention” of hers to, 1) Never trust her with mundane personal fears, and, 2) Never try to play a prank on Pidge Gunderson on April Fool’s without expecting some kind of retaliation. His fingers barely brushed the item as he reached farther in to get a better grip and his brow knit a bit. The item was lined with some kind of velvety substance but it was square shaped as opposed to the oval of the faux moth. It also didn’t seem to have any wings, which ruled out that option.

He pulled it out and tilted his head at the little black box settled between his fingers.

“Thank you,” Pidge sang as she plucked it from his grasp. She cleared her throat before she dipped down, setting one knee on the ground and keeping the other bent to keep her upright. When she glanced back up at him, she was still grinning, but there was a spark of nervousness in her bright gaze. Keith’s stomach flipped and his eyes widened as the pieces began to connect. “Keith, we’ve been together for basically forever at this point…”

“We’ve been dating for two years, five months, two weeks, four days, and thirteen hours. If you meant how long we’ve known each other, though, then the time equates to-!”

She snapped her fingers at him and put on a feigned pout. “You are not allowed to pull a me right now, you ass. Now shush your stupid pretty face and let me do this thing right,” She said evenly.

He made a show of pretending to zip his lips and flick away the key before letting her continue.

She nodded her approval before taking a small breath to regather her thoughts. “So, Keith, we’ve been together for a very long time at this point. You’re my biggest supporter and the first person to call me out when I’m wrong and you’ve never judged me for how I look or how I act or tried to insist that I be someone I wasn’t… You’ve always pushed me to be true to myself and you’ve helped to teach me to see so many things in different and new ways… You’ve been a great ally and a great friend and the greatest lover I could have ever hoped to have and you’ve inspired me to want to be a better version of myself… I love you more than anyone else in this universe and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. So… You in?” Her voice never warbled as much as it did as she spoke and, while her hands did shake a bit as she lifted the top of the ring box, it didn’t take away from the moment. She had to blink a lot to keep from getting overwhelmed by her feelings and crying but her gaze never strayed from his.

For as nervous as she was at being that vulnerable in front of him, she wasn’t going to back down from it, regardless of the outcome. He couldn’t help but smile at her transparency and sincerity, his own affection filling his chest with a warmth he’d never really known before. “Sign me up, Katie,” He breathed out, holding his hand out to her.

She gasped quietly before smiling from ear to ear, a few tears spilling over in her joy. The ring was a simple golden band, but he noticed a small engraving along the interior. He made a note to ask her about it later. The minute the ring was settled on his finger, he scooped her up and into his arms, leaning down to kiss her eager and giddy. She squealed softly in delight, arms looping around his neck, and melted against him eagerly. “I was planning to propose to you on Valentine’s Day, just so you know,” He mumbled against her lips when they pulled back. There was no malice in his words, though, and the grin of pure adoration on his lips only solidified that he wasn’t particularly perturbed.

“You snooze, you lose, beautiful,” She purred back, slinging her favorite pet name at him, before pulling him in for another kiss. This one was a bit slower, more composed, but still had all the same enthusiasm at the previous one.

When they pulled away, he leaned his forehead against hers, a grin turning up his lips as a thought occurred to him. “So is this why your parents decided to make a grocery run at eight o’clock at night?” He asked teasingly.

Pidge flashed him a half-hearted glare. “I’d just like to mention that you were supposed to be here six hours ago,”

[bosstoaster]

I just realized the Advent prompt I sent wasn't particularly winter-y so here's a second try: Shiro and Keith stay at the Garrison for Chrismas break because neither of them has family they can/want to visit. (Could also be in the Hogwarts AU maybe?)

(I wanted to go Hogwarts but I couldn’t since Shiro does have a loving family in that AU.  Which is a sign I didn’t originally come up with the idea, ahaha.  So have the Garrison stuff)

Keith knocked on the door to Shiro's dorm, double checking his phone to make sure he had the right number.  At least he was unlikely to disturb someone if he was wrong.  The hallway was eerily silent, considering it was normally home to over a hundred Galaxy Garrison seniors.  At the moment, it held a small fraction of that.  The nearby cork board was filled with flyers and decorations, mostly seasonal and neutral.  Snowflakes and Snowmen were pinned jauntily, in direct contradiction to the desert heat outside.

The door in front of Keith clicked, then opened.  Shiro peered through, then offered an easy smile and stepped out of the way.  "Hey.  You're a little early, sorry.  Come on in."

"Thanks," Keith replied, just a touch wary.  

Honestly, he wasn't quite sure why he was here.  Last time he'd spoken to Shiro had been... good.  Better than most times.  Keith had already admitted to himself he couldn't hate Shiro.  He should, since the reason Shiro was assigned to him was to make him be a perfect little golden soldier boy like the man himself.  But Shiro never acted like Keith expected, and-

Well, Shiro was here, and not home with family like nearly everyone else.  Apparently they had something in common, this winter break.

It wasn't a surprise that Shiro's dorm was spotless.  Keith had never seen him without a hair out of place, so why should his living space be any different?  There were two beds, one slightly mused and the other neatly made.    A small screen floated on top of a dresser, currently displaying a computer desktop.  The side of the room with the made bed had a few decorations, bands that Keith didn't recognize and what looked like a movie poster.  The other was completely barren.

Finally, Keith turned to face Shiro.

Then paused.

"What are you wearing?"

(read more below)

Shiro looked down at himself, brow furrowed.  He had on a loose, old looking t-shirt with some band logo on it,  a slouchy beanie, and a pair of jeans.  Slowly, he looked back over at Keith.  "What about it?"

For a moment, Keith just gestured, not quite having the words to articulate why the clothing was wrong.  "You- you look different."

"Because I'm not wearing the uniform?" Shiro asked, a laugh finally slipping into his voice.  "Neither are you."

No, Keith was wearing his usual not-a-uniform outfit, black pants and a black shirt, but that was different.  "Yeah, but-  I look like me, still.  You don't look like you."

Lips curling up, Shiro rolled his eyes.  "Of course not.  I told you, give them the minimum of what they want, then leave it be.  I look like how I'm expected to look when I have to, and the rest of the time I dress like a normal person."  

That was still too much to process.  He hadn't thought Shiro would dress in the uniform when he didn't have to, but this was different.  He'd expected button downs, maybe with a neat looking sweater.  Slacks, if he had to guess, not jeans.  

"Do I need to change, or will you manage to reorient your world view?" Shiro drawled, one eye raising.  It made the effect of the casual outfit worse, honestly.  "Deep breaths, maybe."

Keith shook his head, collecting himself.  "I'm fine," he replied.  "Sorry."

"Nah, you're fine.  I know it's different.  I think my roommate is the only one who's really seen me dress down, and that's only because he sees me on weekend study binges."  Shiro shrugged and flopped out on his bed.  

...Really?  No one else?  Keith had always assumed Shiro was popular.  He had an easy charm around the other students, a friendliness that Keith utterly lacked.  It was a military institution, the goal was to do the best, and Keith wasn't really great at.. words.

But maybe Shiro was just friendly, not really friends.

Maybe Shiro was a little lonely too.  Keith knew how nasty people could be to anyone who showed them up.  

One more thing they had in common.

"Wanna sit on the bed, or use the chair?"  Shiro nodded to a desk chair along his side of the room.  

Keith pulled over the chair and sat down in it, hands folded in his lap and grabbing at the fabric.  "Did you have a plan, here?" He finally asked.  "I, uh- we said we were going to ignore the date, but I don't know what that means, exactly."

Shrugging, Shiro gestured to the floating screen.  "I've got games and movies," he offered.  "I'd say we could get in some sim practice, but it's totally shut down right now.  All the way off and locked up.  I can get us in, but it'd attract attention.  Not really worth it.  Same for the hangar."

Well, that sucked.  Keith wouldn't have minded getting in some real practice.  Not the way he had to hang back and wait for the rest of the class, but to work with Shiro and just go.

"I'm good with either of those options," he finally replied, leaning back.  At Shiro's look, he shrugged. "I really don't care.  And I'm the one coming into your space.  Do what you'd normally do, and I can just be here."

That should have been torture, but Shiro was easy to be around.  By now, Keith was used to studying together, so it wouldn't be that much different to watch a movie or something.

Shiro tilted his head, then nodded.  "Alright, here.  I have a couple of games you can play two player.  Let me set it up."  He pulled a controller off his desk and activated the console.  The menu appeared on screen, and after a couple of minutes of fiddling, Shiro reached under his bed for a box, and pulled out a second controller.  "Here."

Accepting it, Keith flipped it over in his hand.  "What game?"

"I have a couple of racing games," Shiro offered.  "As close to the sims as we'll get.  None of them are realistic, but it's still flying around in space."

Keith's brows rose.  "You mean Star Race: Voyages?"

That earned him a grin.  "I have Voyages and Solar Sailing.  Have a preference?"

Unable to help it, Keith shot him a smile.  "I haven't played Solar Sailing in years.  Let's do that one."

With a nod, Shiro loaded the game up.  The familiar music played, and the now outdated graphics flashed previews of the tracks.

Just the sight made Keith's heart feel a little warm.  He'd played hours of this as a child, old even then.  He'd curl up with the tiny screen on the couch while his father worked on - whatever he'd used to do.  As a kid, Keith had just assumed it was grown-up stuff, and so had blocked it out.  Now, Keith wondered if he'd been working on what would eventually take him away.

The thought only slightly soured the bubbling nostalgia.

"Jeez, it's been forever for me too," Shiro grumbled.  He pressed a few buttons hard.  "I have to get used to the old controls again."

Keith grinned.  "Good, it means I'll win."

"I didn't say that.  Which course?"

"Asteroid Belt Battleground."

Shiro snorted and eyed him.  "Now you're just being a dick."

The wording made Keith jolt.  He still wasn't used to Shiro cursing, especially directed at Keith.  He'd called instructors jerks, or said some test or class was bullshit, but nothing like this.

It was different.  Not so much like mentor and reluctant student.  Not like they'd been shoved together by the professors to make Keith be a better wind-up soldier.  Like they were just regular friends.

Keith kind of liked it.

"Gotta press my advantage, right?"

Nose in the air, Shiro turned away.  "Just for that, I'm not going to show you any mercy."

But Keith only snorted.  "You never planned on showing mercy in the first place."

Shiro’s shark grin proved he was right.

The first round, Keith kind of won.  Not really, because the computer actually took first place, and Keith got second, with Shiro trailing in at fourth.

"Rematch," Shiro snarled, sitting up properly.  "I've got it now."

Keith curled up in his chair, knees to his chest just like he had as a kid.  "Sure you do.  Let's see it, then."

The next round, Keith still won, but only after a long lap of trading first and second place.  In the end, Shiro had pulled ahead, but an NPC used a special item that blew him off track, letting Keith take first place.

"That doesn't count," Keith said, shoulders tense.  "You had that one."

Shiro sighed.  "Nah, should have been watching out for that cannon.  I saw it was coming, I just thought I was going to get around the curve fast enough.  You won fair and square.  But next time, I've got you."

So it went, trading back and forth between who won.  It was clear that Keith knew the game better - Shiro finally admitted he had this particular version for collectors completion, rather than a particular fondness for it.  Eventually they switched over to Voyages, where Shiro won three times in a row before Keith finally managed to figure out the updated controls.

Then Shiro's phone buzzed.  He paused and held up it, then sighed.

"Something wrong?" Keith asked, glancing over.  "If you need me to go, I can."

Shiro shook his head.  "Nah, I'd rather do this.  Just family obligation stuff."

Pausing, Keith gave a short nod.  "Oh.  I figured- huh."

"You figured I was alone?" Shiro asked, voice gentling.  He sighed and shrugged.  "Not exactly.  Don't worry about it.  It was just a text.  Another round?"

Keith's shoulders tensed as he looked Shiro over in a new, less flattering light.  Who just ignored their family like that?  If Keith had the chance, he wouldn't toss it aside like it didn't matter.  "What kind of obligation?"

This time, Shiro's brows came together.  "The kind that doesn't matter," he shot back.  "It's not really your business, Keith."

"No, it's not," he said.  Taking a deep breath, Keith shook his head.  "I just didn't expect it of you.  Why are you here instead of with your family, then?"

Shiro put down his controller completely.  "Because there's no point.  We don't celebrate Christmas, and even if I went home, they wouldn't be there."  It was said casually, flatly, but there was something deeper and more complex hidden in his voice.

Even if he'd known Shiro better, Keith wasn't sure he'd be able to figure out what was lurking there.  This really wasn't Keith's strong point.

"Fine.  Sorry."  Keith scrubbed over his face.  "I just hear a lot of, you know, 'oh, my parents did this nice thing, what a pain in the ass'.  It's really-"  He shrugged and looked away, teeth pressed tight to stop more words.  "It's none of my business."

"It's really not," Shiro said, voice still dark.  "But, no, it's not like that."

Finally, Keith swallowed and nodded.  "Okay."  Then he looked back over, finally seeing Shiro's face.

He was holding himself tight, face mostly blank.  It looked out of place with the casual clothes, and the easy smiles Keith had been getting till now.

Maybe he really shouldn't have pushed.  

"Sorry," he murmured.  "I believe you.  I do."

"Thanks," Shiro replied, clearly only slightly mollified.  "I get it.  Honestly, I do.  There are so many spoiled jackasses who don't appreciate anything in this program.   The academy attracts rich brats with just enough brains to think they can do everything in the world.  And you-"  He sighed.  "It's not my business either."

"No, it's not," Keith agreed, with a little more sympathy for Shiro's initial response.  "Yeah, you're not like that.  I was just surprised."

Shiro shrugged.  "I'm a little like that.  Can't say I got in purely on my own merits.  There was the money to pay for good schools and tutors and extracurricular stuff.  I'm an idiot, I know I owe something to them for that.  But that doesn't mean I want to spend the holiday alone in the apartment."  He let out a dark snort.  "Did that the last three years in a row."

Oh.  

Maybe Shiro could be alone in a slightly different way from Keith, but they ended up in the same place.

Right here in Shiro's dorm, playing video games.  

Standing up, Keith moved to sit down on the bed next to Shiro.  There was still a couple of inches between them, just because Shiro had naturally wedged himself against the wall, and Keith was half hanging over the edge.

Which was good.  Keith wasn't really comfortable with being that close.

But this he could do.

Shiro glanced over, eyes wide.  Then, slowly, he nodded.  Thankfully, he didn't comment.  Shiro seemed to have picked up on when Keith really didn't want to talk about something.  He'd push, when it was motivated, but otherwise he let it be.

It was part of what made him so hard to hate.

"Another round?" Keith asked.

Shiro's tilted his head.  "Back to Solar Sailing?"

"Actually, I'm good sticking with this for now.  I want to keep beating you on your home turf."

Slowly, Shiro smiled, smaller than before but warm again.

He understood the implied apology, and it was accepted.

Shiro got it.  Shiro was slowly learning to speak Keith's language, but he'd respected it even before he had.

Maybe someday, Keith would tell Shiro about being alone.  Maybe someday, Shiro would tell Keith about what his obligation was.

But it didn't need to be today.

Today was video games, and ignoring the Christmas cheer outside.

That was a language they both spoke.

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/sports/superstitious-minds-the-rituals-that-obsess-winners/

Superstitious minds: The 'rituals' that obsess winners

“It’s not really superstitious. It’s a thing you do every time. There are guys literally that think they won’t play good if they don’t do the same thing (every time),” Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Seth Jones tells CNN Sport, speaking ahead of the NHL Playoffs’ start.

Let’s face it, even if you might find it hard to admit, we all probably have a few habits that get us out of the house and through each day.

A Montreal Canadiens video crew chronicled Andrew Shaw’s intriguing pregame routine — including slashing a teammate in the knee pad and orchestrating 50 different handshakes — in which he admits: “I’ve added little things that I find just help me get ready for the game.

“I think now it’s just being superstitious going into every game. Most players do have a routine. If they say they don’t, they are lying to you.”

‘Rigid routine’

When NHL players are asked about their pregame routine, they often answer in a sheepish, almost noncommittal way — “Oh that’s not me but let me tell you about my teammate.”

Many players don’t readily expand on their daily routines likely out of fear of not wanting to sound odd or give away a secret that an opponent, or even worse a teammate, can use against them.

Winnipeg Jets forward Mark Scheifele warns: “We have (Dustin) Byfuglien on our team who is a big jokester, so anyone who has a superstition probably needs to get rid of it if you play on the Winnipeg Jets. If you set your sticks up a certain way. You put your pads a certain way. Buff’s gonna knock ’em over.”

Even so, Scheifele, who is the Jets leading goal scorer, has a ritual that ‘afflicts’ several other NHLers — wanting to be the last skater off the ice after the warm-up.

“I am the last one to go off. I like being on the ice. I like shooting around. I like it when no one else is out there. The way I look at it is that if I’m the last one off the ice, I’ve prepared the most.”

READ: Carolina Hurricanes — NHL side dividing opinion with outlandish celebrations

Rock, paper, scissors

Problem is that the Dallas Stars’ Tyler Seguin has the same last man mentality — cue an impromptu game of rock, paper, scissors.

“It’s not like I have ever gone up to Tyler and said: ‘Hey, let’s play rock, paper scissors to see who gets off the ice last,’ says Scheifele. “Sometimes I would just give it to him. Or he would give it to me.

“And then one time he put out his dukes like he wanted to play rock, paper scissors, and I was like this is awesome. I think that’s the fun part of hockey. Obviously, we are competitors but that is a fun way to settle that score.”

When St. Louis Blues forward Ryan O’Reilly arrives at the arena, he’s intent on chilling rather than warming up.

“When I get to the rink, the first thing I do — I get in the cold tub. Its one of those things that wakes myself up. It gets my legs feeling the right way.”

Speaking of cold, according to Florida Panthers defenseman Keith Yandle, his former teammate Jeff Halpern, who is now coaching with the (Tampa Bay) Lightning, used to put his skates in the refrigerator.

“I remember seeing his skates in the fridge and thought that was kinda of … something quirky,” laughs Yandle.

READ: Filip Forsberg on his journey from Sweden to the Nashville Predators

‘Stick in the bathroom’

Other notable pregame routines center around food, with carb consumption high on the menu.

“Chicken and pasta. I think everyone does it. Grilled chicken and penne vodka (sauce),” said Yandle.

It’s pasta and chicken every time for Vasilevski, who is also intent on not varying his breakfast.

“Eggs, bacon, toast, latte. I’m doing latte at home. I have a big café machine. I can be a barista at Starbucks at this point.”

Ottawa Senators defenceman Thomas Chabot doesn’t want to disrupt his meal routine but also doesn’t want to tire of it.

“Chicken and pasta at home and on the road, I’ll do salmon and rice or salmon and pasta. Just ’cause we play so many games, I feel like I’ll get tired of chicken and pasta and I don’t want to get tired of it ’cause I like it.”

Scheifele is a fan of beet juice, while Arizona Coyotes forward Clayton Keller has a soft spot for sweet potato.

The Washington Capitals’ Stanley Cup run last season highlighted Alexander Ovechkin’s carb-powered Italian combo.

The Russian forward has a local Italian restaurant — Mamma Lucia — deliver to him before every home game, chicken parmesan, pasta, bread, and four separate sauces — alfredo, meat, mushroom marsala, and marinara.

“There’s no shame,” Ovechkin’s teammate Brooks Orpik told the Players’ Tribune. “It’ll be 11 in the morning, way before anyone is really thinking about eating lunch, and Ovi will walk into the dining area yelling, “Mama Lucia! Mama Lucia! [sic].

“I don’t know. It’s weird, but it seems normal now. Then, a few hours later, he’s outskating everyone on the ice, knocking guys on their asses.”

READ: Gabriel Landeskog — From Stockholm to NHL stardom

‘Great One’

Widely known as the best player to ever play the game, “The Great One” Wayne Gretzky, told Graham Bensinger in 2016, that back in his day, Snickers, hot dogs, and Diet Cokes were the fuel that powered him through.

Compare this to three-time Stanley Cup champion Sidney Crosby. The Pittsburgh Penguins captain counts on a simple peanut butter and jelly before each game.

But don’t let the simple sandwich fool you. Crosby’s before-the-puck-drop rituals might be the most well known. But as someone who has won multiple Olympic golds and Stanley Cups, who can say they aren’t working?

“There is just too many, it’s hard now after you do things for so long to know what is a superstition and what’s just part of your daily routine,” Crosby acknowledged in a 2017 post-practice interview. “There’s a lot of guys in here that have them — they just don’t want to admit it.”

During Crosby’s sixth season, a HBO camera crew followed “Sid the Kid” during his pregame routine — willingly taking the long way around the arena as to not walk in front of the visitors’ locker room.

The aforementioned Jones, who says he is not really superstitious, is quick to smile and highlight one of his teammate’s routines. “Boone Jenner is one of the weirdest ones I’ve seen on the bench.

Every time he comes on the bench from a shift, he’ll take (a sip of) water, then Gatorade, water, Gatorade, spit, spit … there is like a certain sequence to it. And if he messes it up — he’s done.”

Jenner counters with, “I’m not the worst.” But in jest seems to admit that if he has a good game or scores, the next pregame meal must be reenacted – right down to the same time, same table and same guy paying the bill.

Meanwhile, the Columbus Blue Jackets’ Cam Atkinson almost appears to laugh in the face of superstitions — the All-Star forward wears the #13 on his back.

When called out about the monotony of his chicken and pasta routine, Atkinson countered: “you should ask (Johnny) Gaudreau about his pre-game lunch.”

At this point Atkinson cracks a big smile. Atkinson knows the Calgary Flames star well. So, well that Gaudreau actually wears the #13 in homage to Atkinson.

“Gaudreau has pasta but has never had pasta sauce in his life. So he gets a big bowl of pasta with nothing — not even butter, no cheese, nothing. I don’t know how you can do that.”

Gaudreau too seems impervious to all of this. “I’m not superstitious at all. I was born on August the 13th. Friday the 13th.”

‘Left side first’

Minnesota Wild goalie Devan Dubnyk, a 10-year NHL veteran, has learned not to allow specific routines to dictate his game approach.

“You can’t just throw away a game because you are superstitious. I always told myself is to make sure to never let it affect what you are doing if you are unable to do it. That’s the difference to having a routine and superstition.”

Then again, someone like Anaheim Ducks forward Corey Perry, a 2-time Olympic champion and Stanley Cup winner, readily admits that he counts on his elaborate routine to prepare him for a 60-minute game.

“I stretch at the same time,” he told the Players’ Tribune. “I ride the bike the same amount of minutes. I get dressed left foot first — everything left side first. Touch all the doors on the way out (to the ice). The list goes on and on.”

Team-based Stanley Cup Playoff rituals vary; refusing to shave in order to grow thick beards as their teams advance toward the Final, or the subtle tradition of “to touch or not to touch” the conference championship trophy en route to playing for the Stanley Cup, and lest not forget one of the most unique title winning traditions — spending the day with the trophy.

Confidence is key

There is scientific reasoning behind the myriad of rituals on display in the NHL.

George Gmelch, a professor of anthropology at the University of San Francisco who has studied superstition in baseball for decades, says that superstitions tend to be more prevalent in areas where there’s a lot of uncertainty — such as elite sport.

“What they’re really doing is giving themselves confidence,” said Gmelch.

“If I do these little rituals, then I’m gonna feel confident going into this activity, and I can succeed and do well.”

So for the next two months as the post-season plays out, before the coveted Cup is lifted skyward, keep an eye out for the unique – dare we say fun — individual routines. But whatever you do, just don’t mention the word superstitious.

[katya-is-here]

Letters From Lance Chapter Four

Hey guys! Thanks again for all your support! The Klance feels are coming soon. Right now we're just surviving some Klangst. Also Shiro is and always will be Best Dad of the Year! Enjoy!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/katyaszew

Summary: 

It's been a few days since the drive-in incident and Lance's anxiety begins to kick in. He writes a letter to you about how all his friends and classmates are working on class projects or heading to exciting exhibits, while he spends his time in Shiro's office and wandering the school halls...alone.

When Morvok, who's part of Team Galra, confronts him about his little showdown with Sendak, Lance begins to realizes he made a huge mistake. If having feelings for Keith, a.k.a Mullet wasn't bad enough now there's more school drama.

← Read Chapter Three

CHAPTER FOUR

Rooftop Shenanigans 

Dear friend,

I'm scared. Hell, that took awhile for me to admit to you. It's been a few days since I last wrote you a letter. Shiro said it'd be a good idea for me to get some fresh air, take an extra curriculum class, something, anything to get all this shit off my mind. If you haven't been able to tell, I have anxiety. Not the kind where I like to talk about it, thank you very much. But as I was saying...I'm scared. Scared I won't ever be able to see Keith again. Scared I will see him again. I dunno. It's weird. Life's weird.

Being bi means I like both guys and girls. I don't pick a side like a kid picks fruits over vegetables. Bi means I can fall in or out of love with anybody I want to. Who wrote the rules to love, right? But love freaks me out just as much as sex or dating does. It hurts my head and makes me feel like I'm taking exams over and over again. I didn't mean to "fall in love" with Keith. It just...happened. And I screwed it up.

A few days after that drive-in incident I hung around Shiro's office, avoiding Keith at all costs. I sat on a step ladder taping up posters about the next school field trip.

"Lance," Shiro called.

I peeked over my shoulder, and yawned. "What's up big guy?"

Shiro sighed. "Okay, okay, you can call me big guy here, but outside the office it's Mr. Shirogane, please."

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. Hey, where are we going for the big school field trip this year anyway? Wanna let my folks know." A poster slipped from the wall.

Shiro snatched it. He grabbed the roll of duct tape and ripped a piece off with his teeth. Damn was he cool — liked to consider the guy my hero. "A skiing resort up north. It was Allura's choice for a theme this year."

"And she gets the final say because...?"

"She's in charge of planning school activities and has been Lion Academy's top student since her grade school days."

I jumped from the step ladder and stretched. "Skiing should be dope, I guess."

Shiro fixed the poster in place and put his hands on his hips. He looked proud. "I'll be chaperoning the trip along with Coran and a few other professors, so no monkey business."

I held back my laugh. He was such a dad! "Monkey business? What...what does that even mean dude?"

Shiro rubbed his nose bone. "I didn't have my coffee today so don't test my patience, Lance."

I grabbed my backpack, shrugged and headed for the door.

"Where're you going?" Shiro asked, surprised.

I grabbed the doorknob. "Gotta go meet up with Pidge and Hunk. Their science exhibit is tomorrow so we're gonna go hang 'cause they'll be gone for a few days."

"And then what?"

"Hm?"

"Figure out what extra courses you're gonna take?"

I shrugged. "Give me whatever." I bolted before Shiro could give me his dad lectures. The halls were empty every Sunday. Some students went home to visit their parents, others were taking road trips, while I always stayed behind, my thoughts brewing with the fear that if I left the academy the doors would be closed on me forever. I scratched off the thought and took out my phone. I dialed Hunk's number. Ring. Ring. Beep.

"Hey buddy!" Hunk shouted.

His voice burst my eardrum. Loud echoes blared in the phone. "Where are you? Thought we were hanging out at the cafe today with Pidge?"

"Oh fudge!"

"Fudge?"

"I totally forgot. Hang on...PIDGE!" Hunk shouted.

I moved the phone away from my ear and grumbled.

"Hey, Lance." It was Pidge.

"Hey Pidgey-p—"

Pidge cleared her throat. "We got the days confused."

"What?"

I heard Hunk whimpering the the background apologetically.

"Yeah, the science exhibit starts today and ends on Tuesday. Hunk messed up the days."

"I'm sorry! I'm so, so sorry, Lance!"

I sighed. "Guess that leaves me with Dad."

"Who?" Pidge asked.

"Shiro."

"Ah!" Hunk shouted. By the rustling I could tell he grabbed the phone from Pidge. "Maybe that's a good thing."

"How, exactly?"

"'Cause Shiro's a great guy! Plus, maybe he can help out with the big Klance issue."

"The what?"

"Klance. Keith x Lance," Hunk explained, "It's your ship na—"

"Gotta go!" I shouted.

"Wa—"

Beep. I hung up. Silence. I jammed my earbuds into my head and headed for my locker. As I turned, the walls of light blue metal captured me into a feeling of conformed distress. A couple was studying on the tiled floors, laughing and sharing jokes about Coran's latest lecture how space is our friend, but also our greatest fear. It looked...nice, how bundled up they were, smiling, touching, laughing. For a second I was mesmerized until I felt a hand go to my shoulder. I jumped. Morvok, one of Team Galra's basketball players stood there, arms crossed. I raised a brow.

"Yes?"

"How DARE you try to put a fight up against Captain Sendak like that! Coach Zarkon is going to have YOUR head and I'm going to watch every second of it you shriveled up bean!"

I grabbed a few of my books, gave a fist bump to the picture of my family and slammed my locker shut.

"Dude, that was days ago. Just forget that shit ever happened and move on."

Morvok, short and stumpy, wobbled in front of me. "WAIT—wait!" He was out of breath.

"Need a minute?"

Morvok raised a finger.

"Well go ahead, I'm waiting."

He slammed his fist on the lockers. "Will you STOP?"

I shrugged.

"Sendak is comin' after you buddy, and it's not gonna be pretty."

"For what? I didn't want to fight him. I fought —" I paused. "—Keith."

Morvok's sharp teeth grinned. "And because of your little smack down we lost one of our best players!"

"Keith quit?"

The bell rang. Morvok gasped. "Shit! I can't be late!" He took a deep breath, stuck out his chest and ran away on his tip toes. Talk about a Napoleon complex.

I leaned against my locker and watched as only a few students rushed round the halls. I didn't feel like going to class.

Pigeons rested on the rooftop, pecking at the sun cooked pavement. I leaned against a railing, staring at the empty track field, where dried leaves danced. The scent of Autumn filled my nose; apple tarts and cider. I rested on my arms, closed my eyes and listened to the twirling wind. It kissed my cheeks. A chill ran down my spine. It was...refreshing, new. But I hated it, because summer was so far, far away. That and swimming. Out of everything in the world, water was the only thing that ever calmed me down.

I took out my phone, hoping to get some updates from Pidge or Hunk.

"Really?" I mumbled. A black, blank screen stared back at me. The battery was dead.

The wind whistled and blew my hair back. Peeking through my strands of hair I saw someone running the track. It was...

"KEITH!" I shouted. Why did I say that?

Keith didn't stop running, but looked up and tripped over a hurdle. He lay there on his back, his shorts wedged between his legs. I ducked behind the railing and peeked through the bars. Keith jumped to his feet and tied his hair back into a little bun. It was growing out again into that stupid mullet. If only I could take a picture of this moment. Stupid phone.

But as I watched him carefully, my heart drummed a thousand beats. I tried to calm it, focusing on my breathing and shaky palms, but I felt woozy. So I rested my head on the hot pavement. Pigeons cooed and bobbed their heads beside me. I closed my eyes. Thoughts of Keith's stupid mullet swam through my mind. Stupid, stupid mullet.

For what felt like three minutes turned into three hours. Groggy and covered in feathers I woke up to an orange sky, buzzing mosquitoes and untied, dirty shoes. I turned on my side and saw Keith sitting beside me. He tossed rocks at the rusty door and leaned back under the evening's setting sun.

I yawned. "Thought you didn't want to see me again?"

He tossed a rock. "I don't."

I turned over and looked at him. He was all sweaty, covered in grass stains, chalk and pavement residue. He smelt like dirty gym clothes and laundry sheets. He took out his phone and tossed it at me.

"What's this?" I asked. I yawned and looked at the phone. Text messages from Hunk flooded the screen.

"Hunk Gar-bear wouldn't stop spamming my phone, thinking something tragic happened to you."

The messages ranged from Hunk panicking like some overbearing mother, to him about to take a taxi back to the academy with a swat team.

"Why?"

"Looks like your phone's dead."

I sat up and stretched. "Y...yeah."

We both looked up at the setting sun, our shoulders inches apart. For a few minutes we didn't say anything and just kind of sat there. Then Keith stood up, shoved his phone into his back pocket and walked toward the door.

"Mullet."

Keith didn't turn, but stopped.

"I'm sorry about—"

"Like I said, don't bother. It's classic Lance. I'm used to it."

I stood up. Next thing I know I'm standing beside him, our eyes locked on one another.

The door rattled open. Shiro stood there, out of breath and panting. Keith straightened his posture, and rushed to Shiro's side.

"You okay?" he asked.

Shiro nodded and glared at me from under his white fringe of hair. "You...you had me worried sick Lance!"

I shrugged. "Unneeded drama is so toxic."

Shiro approached me and yanked me forward.

"Ow! Ow! Ow, man! Easy!"

He pulled me down the stairs, focused and sweating. "I was this close to calling the cops."

"Why do you care so much?"

We were mid-way down the stairs. Shiro stopped. Hesitated. "You're a good kid, Lance." He turned. "I don't want you to end up screwing up your life, okay?"

I nodded. "But I was just sleeping on the roof. You could've checked the cameras."

"That's not the point!" He yelled, but sighed and calmed his nerves.

"The point is...?"

We reached the bottom step. Our voices echoed. Shiro held me in place, his eyes angry, but warm. "Stop butting into other people's business and focus on your own future."

"What're you talking about?"

"I overheard you and Morvok in the halls."

"He's a piece of shit. Why worry about it?" I headed for the door. Shiro stopped me.

"Because Sendak and Team Galra are the bread and butter of this school. If you cause any issues you won't only lose any chances of a scholarship, but you'll have to leave the school."

"That's NOT fair!" I shouted.

Keith closed the metal door behind him and sat on the top step.

I glared at him and pointed. "The only reason I got in this stupid mess is because I wanted to help HIM out."

"I can take care of myself, Lance," Keith said.

"Oh yeah?" I shoved Shiro aside and climbed a few steps. He held me back.

"LANCE! Enough."

"NO! I'm sick of his freakin' shit, acting like a lone wolf, emo kid. Lighten up, bub! Maybe if you showed any ounce of emotion Sendork wouldn't be running our lives right now."

Keith slammed his palms onto his knees and scowled. "Are you joking right now? You're the moron who hides the fact that we shared tons of bonding moments!"

"NOT true!"

"Sob! Admit it Lance. You can't cope with the fact that you have feelings for me. You can't even act normal around chicks."

"Oh and like you can?"

"I'm gay, Lance! Remember? Do I have to waste my time and define it for you?"

"SHUT UP!"

"Alright!" Shiro shouted. " He pushed me back. "E—NOUGH!"

"With pleasure," Keith said, headed for the door. He shoved against me. Shiro grabbed him.

"Don't even think about it, Keith."

Keith sighed and tensed up.

Shiro took us outside the academy and sat us down on an old, fusty fountain. He tossed us two juice boxes and paced the grounds.

"What're we five?" I asked.

Keith tossed his box at my head. "Don't lie, you're addicted to this shit."

"Am not!"

Shiro cleared his throat. Pigeons flew overhead. "Okay, I'm just gonna ask because I care. What caused this?"

Keith sighed. "Lance cheated on me with some slut."

"Dude!" I shouted. "Don't be so honest."

"Why not? He asked."

I face palmed. "That doesn't mean you have to be so blunt!"

Shiro folded his arms over his chest. "It's none of my business but you're both in the wrong here."

"Me?" Keith said, surprised.

Shiro nodded. "Lance opened up to you a few days ago and you brushed him off."

"Oh, and that's so wrong." Keith gestured all of me. "HE broke my heart."

"But he's trying to fix this mess."

"I don't care."

I scowled. "This is a waste of time, Shiro."

Shiro mulled over his thoughts. "Looks like the only time you two get along is when there's some kind of competition involved."

Keith and I exchanged looks. Our gazes burned.

"So I've decided. You two will participate in the skiing competition during the school field trip."

"Daddy says what now?" I mumbled.

Shiro chuckled. "There were competitions going on anyway and as the school counselor and trip chaperone, it's my job to get as many students involved."

"What's in it for us?" Keith asked.

Shiro looked up into the orange skies and grinned. "Haven't decided on that yet, but boy will this be fun."

The wind whistled and danced round Keith's scratched up, grass stained face. He looked at me, serious and cold, but grinned.

"Challenge accepted."

I looked away and took a deep breath. I felt nauseous.

Wish me luck,

Lance

[marshmallow-the-vampire-slayer]

MTVS Epic Rewatch #165

VM 3x07 Of Vice and Men

Stray thoughts

1) This is probably the episode I relate the most to Veronica, and not precisely in a good way. I kind of see one of the worst parts of me in her, and it’s a sobering mirror to look into. 

The previous episode ended with pretty much every man in her life disappointing her in some way or another. But the thing about Veronica is that she doesn’t settle with letting others know she’s disappointed in their actions. No. She has to torture them with her disappointment and to keep reminding them at every turn how low they have sunken and how big of a disappointment they are. She really does love riding her high horse. 

2) EXHIBIT A.

KEITH: Where are you staying these days? If I can be so bold. You didn't come home last night. KEITH: I called Logan's room at the Grand. He...said he didn't know where you were. Thing is, I think he was telling the truth. VERONICA: I didn't come home last night, you didn't come home the night before that.

Veronica has every right to be disappointed in her dad. He’s not making stellar choices in his love life, that much is true. But a) I don’t think what he’s doing in his personal life constitutes a reason for Veronica to move out of his house, especially because he was keeping her out of it; and b) she was purposefully trying to hurt him and, worst of all, worry him. What’s more, not only is she worrying him by not letting him know where she’s staying at but also she’s trying to make him feel it’s his own fault she’s giving him reasons to be worried about. What kind of logic is that? “Oh, you’re having an affair with a married woman and I disapprove of it, so I’ll just stop sleeping at home, I won’t answer your calls and I won’t let you know where I’m at so that you can worry yourself sick believing I’m being kidnapped, raped, or murdered. Same thing!” 

Keith was already aware that Veronica was disappointed in him and that she didn’t approve of what he was doing with Harmony. But that wasn’t good enough for Veronica. She had to make him suffer until he acted the way she wanted him to. She’d done it before (Rebecca, Alicia.) And every time, Keith gave in because his daughter is more important than any woman in his life. The problem is, no one is ever going to measure up to Veronica’s standards. So he’s giving up on having a life of his own just because his daughter is kind of a brat. And she’s not even a little kid, come on! 

(I’m not saying Keith should’ve pursued his relationship with Harmony, all I’m saying is that he shouldn’t have been made to make that call because of Veronica, it should’ve been up to him.) 

(also, let me be very clear about this, I may be too hard on Veronica in this review precisely because she reminds me too much of myself.)

3) It’s actually a miracle Piz didn’t ejaculate on the spot right there and then.

4) Rewatching this episode (and the season so far), I kind of get why someone who started watching the show during season 3 would ship Veronica and Piz and dislike Logan. So far, Logan had been painted as dubious at best, and Veronica was constantly suspecting him. Why would a new viewer distrust our narrator, you know? (of course, those of us who had been watching since the beginning knew better than judge anyone by Veronica’s book... the girl is not always right.) On the other hand, there was Piz, who is kinda cute (annoying haircut aside) and is clearly in love with her and pining over her with his puppy dog eyes and he’s like the ONLY man in her life who hasn’t disappointed her. It really was very heavy-handed, but whatever. And to top it all off, you have the writers putting them in this very rom-commy scenario... 

(of course, I’m like ew ew ew look at that creep staring at her! but for someone who had zero idea about the history of the show and its characters, maybe this was cute?)

(but like ew ew ew)

(ew)

5) EXHIBIT B.

LANDRY: Veronica, I am recommending you for a summer internship at the FBI.He hands the papers to her. She scans the top sheet.

VERONICA: Fifteen hundred words on why I'll benefit from the program

LANDRY: Yeah. They take it seriously. Fill that out, and I'll accept that in lieu of your "plan a perfect murder" paper. We both know that you can do that in your sleep, right? The guy who runs the intern program in Quantico is an old undergrad buddy. I'll see that your application makes it into the small pile, if you know what I mean.

VERONICA: Got it. Thanks

VERONICA VOICEOVER: No term paper, a dream internship, and all I have to do is keep my mouth shut.

Veronica has made up her mind about what kind of person Landry is simply based on a specific detail she’d learned about his personal life. As quickly as she had put him on a pedestal, she had taken him down and envisioned him as a corrupt and sleazy would-be villain. Of course, he’s just trying to bribe her into keeping quiet! There’s no way he could actually want to help her out because he sees potential in her! Does the fact that he’s sleeping with the dean’s wife speak well of him as a person? Of course. Does it make him any less of a good professor? I don’t think so. Just don’t take lessons from him on personal stuff, you know? Keep it strictly curricular, girl! 

6) And we come to the part where I kind of side with Veronica. I’m sorry, Logan, you’re my boy, but I can’t have your back on this one.

LOGAN: Look, I'm not here to talk about Mercer. Okay? I just... I don't know. I want to make things right between us. VERONICA: You tell me your friend couldn't have raped a girl because he was with you this summer. Then you won't tell me what you were doing or why you can't come forward to provide an alibi, so how exactly do you propose to make things right? Are you gonna hypnotize me? LOGAN: I don't know. I was hoping your desire to find the real rapist might outweigh your need to drag me over the coals. VERONICA: Who says I can't do both? LOGAN: Hey, Veronica! Trust me. It is better for everyone if this secret stays that way, okay? Please, have a little faith. VERONICA: How bad does your alibi have to be if Mercer would rather stay in jail than divulge it?

Veronica was right. If neither Logan nor Mercer wanted to come clean with their alibi, that meant that what they had been doing at the time of the rape had to be WORSE than RAPE. There’s no way around it. Logan was kind of asking the impossible of Veronica. He was telling her: “Hey, I’ve got this huge secret I am actively trying to keep from you because I don’t want you to know it, but you just have to trust me it’s all cool.” Sorry, but no. That’s not how it works. You can’t demand others to trust you. You need to prove yourself trustworthy. And Logan was doing the opposite of that. (I get why, like 100%, but more on that later.)

7) EXHIBIT C. 

Logan was nothing short of falling to his knees and begging. You can see how much it scared him to see Veronica so angry and disappointed in him (they way he moves, how he plays with his shirt, how unsure he is when asking certain things...) Veronica is fully aware she has this power over him, she knows her disappointment in him is making him squirm and she’s kind of getting off on that (again, you can see it in the way she walks, hands in her pockets, chin lifted, barely looking at him when addressing him...) She’s in the position of power, and she wants to make the most of it. She wants to see him suffer just a bit more (of course, in her mind, this is payback because he’s keeping this huge secret from him, and let’s face it, she probably thinks he cheated on her because that’s what she always thinks even if history has always proven otherwise.) So, obviously, she leads him on to believe she could be cheating on him if she so pleased...

LOGAN: Your dad called me last night. He woke me up wanting to know where you were. VERONICA: Is that so? LOGAN: So, where are you staying these days? VERONICA: It's better for everyone if that secret stays that way.

8) Don’t you think Veronica should know better than to go for the Occam’s razor theory? 

VERONICA: Have you ever heard of Occam's razor, Meryl?

MERYL: Is that a space laser?  Has it already been invented?

VERONICA: No, it's a theory. Basically, the theory states that when given a set of possible explanations for a phenomenon, we should embrace the least complicated. So... I guess I'm saying that if on the one hand, you have Sully inventing a space laser, and on the other, maybe he wants to break up but is taking the coward's way out...

MERYL: You're saying maybe he's breaking up with me? I hope that's all it is. At least then I'd know he's okay.

There’s no doubt Meryl’s theory was ludicrous, but between her laser theory and Sully giving her the cold shoulder, there were a million other possibilities. And besides, this is Neptune. The easy answer is hardly ever the right one. 

9) This was a Buffy cameo I wasn’t expecting...

10) Who was surprised Vinnie had been following Keith and Harmony and captured them on their illicit glory? 

11) Yet again, Veronica gets on her high horse to judge Meryl. Throughout the whole episode, she considers Meryl is gullible and, well, stupid. I mean, how could anyone trust their boyfriend when they’re performing a disappearing act? 

VERONICA: You have a fight, and then he's not around when you fly in. That doesn't make you the least bit suspicious?

MERYL: No.

Meryl was not stupid. She loved her boyfriend, and more importantly, knew him extremely well. And she knew for a fact everything that seemed to have happened was very unlike him. More importantly, whether he was cheating on her or trying to break up with her was a little importance to her. She just wanted to make sure he was okay because she loved him. 

12) And this is the Veronica I like the least. (this reminds me a lot of how she immediately hated Parker just because she was a girly girl...)

VERONICA: When was the last time you saw him? SCARLETT: In physics lab, on Thursday. Wait. He's not around? Is he all right? MERYL: Actually... VERONICA: Dig the outfit. Is that from Dolce and Gabbana's study-buddy collection? MERYL: Veronica. SCARLETT: It's Friday. I'm going to a club after. VERONICA: Scarlett, did you happen to notice whether Sully invented a space laser of some sort? MERYL: You don't have to be mean. VERONICA: I'm sorry, Meryl, but Scarlett here has either stolen your boyfriend or she wants to. That's just the way it is. You can choose to be a patsy... Or you can choose not to be.

She was making a lot of judgments about this girl who she had just met based solely on the way she was dressed. That’s misogynistic and idiotic, and I’d like my heroine to be better than that, please and thank you.

13) Okay, I need to remember this. This was Mercer’s alibi so far...

VERONICA: Mercer couldn't have raped Stacy, either. Wait. Unless he pre-recorded his show so he knew he'd have an alibi. PIZ: I seriously doubt it. VERONICA: Why's that? PIZ: It's a call-in request show.

She figured it out right there! I seriously can’t believe I actually bought it wasn’t Mercer. Like, they revealed all the clues, it was all there!

14) Oh, and then we get to the scene...

VERONICA: I got what you need to get Mercer out of jail. It's yours, Logan. No one has to know where you were that night...no one except me. LOGAN: Can you leave it alone? Can you trust me? VERONICA: No, I can't. I'm not built that way. LOGAN: Who gets blackmailed by his girlfriend? Oh, I guess I do. We were in Tijuana. You know, we partied all night. I mean, it was no big deal. And when we got back to our rooms, he started making these drinks, flaming DPs. You know, you set a shot glass of rum and amaretto on fire, and you drop it in a beer. VERONICA: Hold on. Let me get a pen. I want to jot down this recipe. LOGAN: He set the room on fire. VERONICA: He did? And where were you for all this fun? LOGAN: Asleep in my room. VERONICA: Alone? LOGAN: Yeah, alone. VERONICA: Well, then, you're not really much of an alibi, are you? LOGAN: We were in Mexico, Veronica. We had adjoining rooms. I mean, the door between the rooms was open. I could hear them. VERONICA: Them? LOGAN: There were girls in his room. Is that what you want to know? I am your boyfriend, Veronica, and you're treating me like a criminal. VERONICA: You could have told all this to Lamb. LOGAN: By the time we got out of the room, the fire was spreading. The whole motel was going up in flames. Okay, w... And, I don't know, we had to get out of there. VERONICA: You didn't stick around to try to help? You didn't see if everyone was okay?

LOGAN: You know, it's because of the look on your face right now that I didn't want to tell you. I did what nine out of ten guys in my situation would have done. I ran. You know, so, either Mercer sits in jail here, or he gives his alibi and sits on his ass in some Mexican jail. At least here he's innocent.

I can understand both sides in this scene.

On the one hand, I get Veronica. I get why she needs to know what happened. Logan was keeping something secret from her that could potentially be worst than rape. How could she let that go? I know I wouldn’t. But even if it wasn’t about the gravity of the secret, there’s also the question of honesty. Logan was demanding Veronica to trust him while at the same time being dishonest. It’s a contradiction, one that can’t be overlooked. 

On the other hand, I get why Logan was reluctant to be completely honest about what had gone down in Tijuana. He knew he’d been negligent and reckless, and that’s an understatement. He makes the point that 9 out of 10 guys would’ve done the same thing, but he knows Veronica expects him to be the only guy out of ten who would do things right. And he wishes he would be that guy, too, for her. He’s ashamed he couldn’t live up to her expectations, and disclosing this secret will remind him of how he will never measure up to her standards, of how he always fucks up. 

And this is the part where I relate the most to Veronica. You know that look that she gives him? I’ve given people I love that look. I’ve judged them and made them feel like shit because they’d disappointed me or hadn’t lived up to my high standards. And why would people be honest with you when they know you’ll give them that look, when they know you’ll make them feel like a piece of shit? Who would willingly put themselves in a situation in which someone else makes you feel that way? Who would want to get that look? No one, of course. That’s when self-preservation kicks in. All it got me was people shutting me out because they knew how I’d react to things they’d done. They weren’t looking for someone to judge them. They were looking for a friend to hear them out and maybe help them go through something. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m not sure Veronica has. 

footnote of sorts: I think that ultimately what hurt Veronica the most wasn’t the fact that Logan had run away from a building on fire but the suspicion of him cheating on her. 

15) This is another flaw of Veronica. She has a tendency to use her personal experience and make overgeneralizations. 

KEITH: But I want you to understand that this is not just some fling. Veronica... This is something special. VERONICA: "This is something special." Where have we heard that before? Oh, yeah, from every john we've ever caught with his pants down. KEITH: Veronica. VERONICA: So if Jake Kane thought he and mom had something special, would that have been okay? KEITH: Harmony is leaving her husband. VERONICA: Listen to yourself. Does her husband know this yet? Yeah. Look, Dad, do what you got to do, okay? I've seen too much working here to ever be surprised again.

This is yet another lesson she never quite learned. I’m sure that every cheating affair they had worked on had probably turned out the same way. Does that mean that every situation is the same? Of course not. There are exceptions, there always are! We might never know if Harmony was really going to leave her husband or not because she wasn’t given the chance to. For all we know, she might have done it. But that’s beside the point, really. The thing is, Veronica tends to decide the outcome of a situation or to make rash judgments of people she’s just met based on her previous knowledge of similar situations/people. And quite frequently, her preconceptions were proven to be wrong. Yet, every single time she sticks to them and she hardly ever keeps an open mind about considering a different possibility. (it doesn’t help that on the rare occasions in which she lets her guard down and lets herself believe people might act differently than expected, they disappoint her...)

16) If it wasn’t enough, she goes for the jugular. 

KEITH: I know you, Veronica. You're not that jaded. VERONICA: I didn't used to be. I had this one shining example that gave me some faith.

poor Keith.

17) Vinnie might be one of the sleaziest and most corrupt characters in Neptune, but credit where credit’s due, he proved he wasn’t a total waste of a human being in this episode, ok? Not only that, he sort of kind of showed that he cares? One might think he’s an actual person with feelings and stuff? Like, I’ve never heard him sound as genuine as he did when he said this to Veronica:

VINNIE: What the hell are you thinking, Veronica? You got no business being in a place like that. You got me?

18) At least she apologizes and admits she was wrong...

VERONICA: Meryl?

MERYL: Yeah?

VERONICA: I'm so sorry that I, you know... jumped to the wrong conclusions.

MERYL: It's okay, Veronica. I never would have found him without you and I know what it looked like. If I hadn't been in love before, I wouldn't have believed it, either.

What Meryl tells her is very important. Meryl wasn’t an idiot. She understood perfectly well how the situation looked like to an outsider who didn’t know her or her boyfriend and what their relationship was like. And I don’t think it was just a question of being in love. After all, being in love can be one-sided. I think it was about Meryl knowing the person she loved better than anyone else.

19) At least one good thing came out of Veronica shutting out the two men in her life. I’ll always be a sucker for Logan and Keith talking and bonding, okay? Even if it’s over Veronica cutting them off of her life. And he showed some respect, okay?

LOGAN: Hey, Mr. Mars. KEITH: Logan, everything okay? LOGAN: Yeah. Uh, I'm looking for Veronica. I think she's trying to hide from me, actually. KEITH: Yeah, she's been keeping me out of the loop, too. You might try Wallace's. She said she was staying with him.

20) Okay, this is the part that doesn’t make sense and seems OOC to me. Veronica left her drink alone for a minute, returned, drank and started feeling groggy immediately. Her alarm should’ve gone off right then, but okay, the feeling passed and I guessed she was a momentary thing. But more on this later... 

21) Oh, this little piece of shit, how I hate him.

LOGAN: Hey, I'm looking for Veronica. PIZ: She was around earlier, but I haven't- LOGAN: Is she with Wallace? PIZ: He's out of town at a motel... studying. LOGAN: Hey, 'cause Veronica's dad thought that, uh...

22) And then, as she’s still walking across campus, Veronica staggers and the dizziness returns. And yet she keeps on walking and she walks down the stairs to the parking garage? At that moment, we hear her voiceover. She knows what’s happening to her. She’s fully aware of it.

VERONICA: I know this feeling. I can't believe this is happening to me...again.

She’s dizzy but she understands. And yet she continues to walk into the garage, a place in which she would be most definitely at risk instead of trying to go back to campus and asking for help? This is what’s totally OOC to me. What was she gonna do? Drive her car in that state? I get that they had to get Veronica alone so that the rapist could ambush her, but don’t have the smartest character in the show act so stupidly and recklessly when she clearly knows better! This could’ve been easily avoided just by removing the voiceover. Like, she’s walking into the trap while saying to herself “oh I know what’s been done to me and I understand I’m walking into this trap.” ????????????????

This scene still gives me chills, though.

23)

VERONICA VOICEOVER: So, what would Stan Marsh say in a situation like this? I think we all learned a valuable lesson about faith. You give it to the people you love. But the people who really deserve it are the ones who come through even when you don't love them enough.

[marymosley]

Why Antifa Is The Keyser Söze of Social Unrest

Below is my column in the Hill newspaper on yesterday’s hearing in the Senate, which ended abruptly with Sen. Hirono walking out after a confrontation with Sen. Cruz over his objection that the Democrats were avoiding direct criticism of Antifa. In roughly 50 hearings as a witness in Congress, that was a first for me. I have been in a hearing with a lock down but I have never been in hearing with a walk out. I was not sure if I was expected to turn off the lights after both senators left.

The dramatic ending of the hearing however quickly supplanted the underlying issue. As I stated in my testimony, I am less concerned with Antifa’s role in the protests as its role in the growing anti-free speech movement in the United States.

Here is the column:

If you read the coverage online or watch the cable networks, the extremist movement known as Antifa is either the new Al Qaeda or the new Big Foot. President Trump wants to have Antifa classified as a terrorist organization, while various Democrats insist it is simply a conservative phantom. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler even insisted that violence by Antifa is a myth and called the accounts imaginary.

While I oppose designating Antifa as a terrorist organization, its existence is certainly not a myth. Indeed, it may be the most successful movement against free speech in modern history. However, its structure and tactics avoid easy detection, which is why so many people claim the group is an apparition. It is true that whenever such spontaneous and concentrated violence erupts, many people tend to believe it is Antifa.

Antifa is often the culprit on university campuses. In the film “The Usual Suspects,” the character Virgil described the invisible villain Keyser Söze. He is “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.” Antifa does exist and the last few weeks demonstrate how skilled it is as the Keyser Söze of social unrest in America.

Antifa was founded on a rejection of formal structures and leaders. Many associated groups are part of Anti-Racist Action and a loose coordinating organization known as the Torch Network. This lack of structure not only appeals to the anarchist elements for the movement but serves to evade both law enforcement and legal challenges. The threat of Antifa is not its role in civil unrest but its activities attacking free speech.

Both far left and far right groups have been identified in riots in various cities. These extremist groups use social media and the internet to sow disorder, hide their identities, and frame other groups for their activities. Notably in the last week, Richmond police identified both Antifa and the Boogaloo Boys in violent protests in that city. It is part of what Attorney General William Barr refers to as the “witches brew of violent groups on both sides” such as Antifa and some other similar groups.

Antifa members have been arrested and involved in violence in the cities. The president of the Portland National Association for the Advancement of Colored People wrote in the Washington Post to denounce the “white spectacle” of the recent violence. He asked, “What are antifa and other leftist agitators achieving for the cause of black equality?”

The answer is that Antifa is not an ally to Black Lives Matter. It is all about revolutionary change and using demonstrations to trigger greater social unrest. It follows the same purpose mistakenly spoken by former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley following those riots during the Democratic National Convention in 1968, “The police are not here to create disorder. They are here to preserve disorder.” Antifa causes such violence.

Antifa has found allies while the movement has grown. It primarily targets conservatives and the free speech community, so it has not been a major concern of liberals. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. This was after Antifa had been involved in numerous acts of violence and its website was banned in Germany. His own son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer.

That fact is that Antifa works to strike fear not in the heart of Trump but in the heart of anyone who will oppose the movement. The Antifa handbook states how the group has rejected the idea of free speech and has spent years organizing protests to prevent opposing views from getting heard. That practice has been adopted by other groups as well. Antifa violence can give colleges or politicians cover for barring conservative speakers. Nancy Pelosi has called for the revocation of a permit for a conservative prayer group viewed as a security matter in San Francisco.

George Washington University student Jason Charter has been charged as the alleged “ringleader” of efforts to take down statues across the capital. Charter has been an active Antifa member on campus for years. Following his arrest, he claimed the “movement is winning.” It is winning partly since local officials order police to stand down or drop criminal charges to avoid conflict. But it is winning mostly since people remain silent.

Silence kills free speech. Antifa knows that. It is the silence of professors who watch as their colleagues are harassed, investigated, or threatened. It is the silence of students who watch as others are attacked for dissenting ideas. It is the silence of reporters who watch as other journalists are fired or forcibly retired for challenging orthodox views. Finally, it is the silence of those politicians who dismiss the destruction of property as a case, in the words of Pelosi, that “people will do what people will do.”

Antifa will do a great deal of damage if allowed.

That is why, for academics and writers, Antifa’s presence is menacing, not mythological. As Virgil explained, Keyser Söze became the “spook story that criminals tell their kids at night.” Some politicians want to portray Antifa as a spook story that Republicans tell their kids at night. However, it is no illusion for those who have been the targets of Antifa and related groups.

Antifa has achieved the agenda against free speech to a degree that even critics like me never imagined possible. It simply took inaction from our government and silence from our citizens. Threats against free speech are reaching a critical mass in our schools and on our streets. We can either take action or remain passive bystanders to what inevitably comes next.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University who will testify today before the Senate Judiciary Committee on antifa and the movement against free speech in America.

  Why Antifa Is The Keyser Söze of Social Unrest published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/can-nra-keep-country-music-stars-muzzled-las-vegas-shooting/

Can NRA keep country music stars muzzled after Las Vegas shooting?

The country music industry and the National Rifle Association (NRA) has had a very close interconnected relationship for the past decade with stars such as Blake Shelton, Lee Brice, and Florida Georgia Line. The NRA Country director stated in 2015 that it's no surprise about the connection as "most of their members love country music." When singer Meghan Linsey first started her country duo Steel Magnolia, a partnership with the National Rifle Association was suggested as a way to grow their audience. The proposal, which she refused, was a commonplace example of how intertwined gun ownership is with country music. The mass shooting on the final day of Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas has emboldened some country musicians to call for gun control, even as many others declined to weigh in. Plenty of artists avoid the issue because there’s a real risk of backlash as gun lobbyists have bolstered a connection between the patriotic themes found in country music to gun ownership in recent years. “I just feel like you’re so censored as a country artist,” said Linsey, an independent musician who took a knee after singing the national anthem at an NFL football game. “I feel like the labels like to keep you that way. They don’t want you to speak out. They don’t want you to say things that would upset country music listeners.” She added: “People worry about being Dixie Chick-ed.” The Dixie Chicks still loom large as a lesson in country music politics. The hugely popular group was boycotted after lead singer Natalie Maines criticized then-President George W. Bush on the eve of the Iraq War in 2003. The National Rifle Association has further strengthened the relationship between guns and country music with its lifestyle and music brand called NRA Country. NRA Country has sought to tie the music to gun-linked activities like hunting or outdoor sports, but without mention of political issues. Since about 2010, the NRA Country brand has been placed on country music tours and concerts, merchandise, an album called “This Is NRA Country,” a music video and more. It features performers such as Hank Williams Jr. and Trace Adkins. It’s unclear how much the NRA has spent on the brand, and representatives of the group did not respond to requests for information from The Associated Press. Country duo Big & Rich, who have performed at NRA-sponsored events, were at the festival just hours before Stephen Paddock began firing from his room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. They said it wasn’t the weapons that were the problem, but the man using them. “I think if a man has ill will in his heart, then there’s weapons everywhere,” Big Kenny said. “I mean he can pick up a -- anything -- make a bomb, put it in his shoe. We have somebody trying to blow up stuff on trains constantly.” The shooting changed the mind of Caleb Keeter, a guitarist for the Josh Abbott Band, who was among those at the festival during the attack. He wrote in a widely shared tweet that he had been a lifelong Second Amendment supporter: “I cannot express how wrong I was.” Keeter said that a single man laid waste to a city because of “access to an insane amount of firepower.” Paddock had 23 guns in his room, some of which had attachments that allow a semi-automatic rifle to mimic a fully automatic weapon. Others, including Jennifer Nettles of the band Sugarland and Sheryl Crow, have joined the call for gun control. But there are risks. When country artists have in the past tried to wade into gun politics, it can turn into a no-win situation. Tim McGraw had to defend his participation in a benefit concert for victims of a mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut after criticism from gun rights advocates. His opening act, Billy Currington, pulled out of the performance over the controversy. “As a gun owner, I support gun ownership; I also believe that with gun ownership comes the responsibility of education and safety — most certainly when it relates to what we value most, our children,” McGraw said in a statement in 2015. “I can’t imagine anyone who disagrees with that.” Many artists expressed grief over the Las Vegas killings without wading into politics. Alongside her husband Vince Gill, Amy Grant led a prayer at a vigil in Nashville on Monday, a day after the shooting, while Maren Morris released a song called “Dear Hate,” in which she but declares “love conquers all.” Eric Church angrily said “no amount of bullets” was going to take away his memories of those fans killed, before debuting a song written in memory of the victims called “Why Not Me.” John Osborne of the duo Brothers Osborne was in tears on national radio talking about the deaths of fans who they considered family. Keith Urban struggled to talk about the shooting to his 9-year-old daughter. Jason Aldean, who was on stage at the festival when the shooter opened fire, said, “This world is becoming the kind of place I am afraid to raise my children in.” Many others have donated to funds set up to help the victims and countless other selfless acts have brought the community even closer to support one another. Singer Rosanne Cash, a longtime gun control advocate, called on the country music community to do more in an op-ed in the New York Times. “It is no longer enough to separate yourself quietly,” Cash wrote. “The laws the N.R.A. would pass are a threat to you, your fans, and to the concerts and festivals we enjoy.” Now, less than a week after the deadliest shooting in modern American history took place at a country music festival – 58 people were killed and more than 500 were wounded at Las Vegas’ Route 91 Harvest fest by an attacker firing from 32 floors above – country artists seem, at least for the moment, less willing to openly embrace the NRA. Media outlets attempted to contact 37 of the artists featured on the web site of NRA Country, the organization's music-affiliated offshoot. Three of those acts – Florida Georgia Line, Thomas Rhett, and Luke Combs – clarified that they have no ongoing partnership with the organization. Representatives for several artists, such as Blackberry Smoke and Sunny Sweeney, declined to comment; reps for more than two-dozen artists – including Justin Moore, Hank Williams Jr., and Jon Pardi – did not respond. After more than 24 hours, only one group, the Nashville duo Love & Theft, would confirm they remain partnered with the organization. "What you're seeing with the country music community right now is that everybody is just laying low," says Don Cusic, professor of music industry history at Belmont University in Nashville. "They are stalling for time." Over the past week, several of the organization's most successful artists have decided to clarify that they are not presently affiliated with NRA Country, including Florida Georgia Line, the platinum-selling bro-country duo behind hits like "Cruise," and Thomas Rhett, the fast-rising country superstar whose song "Die a Happy Man" was one of the single biggest hit country songs of 2016. Both artists partnered with NRA Country in 2013 as the organization's featured Artist of the Month, participating in a variety of promotional campaigns, including ticket giveaways, videos, and lyric contests. As one of the genre's most prominent stars, Blake Shelton has long been one of NRA Country's flagship artists, hosting shooting events in 2011 and 2012. "This is about a right that I want to support and that I believe in," he said of a skeet shoot event in 2012, "and if I can have fun while doing that, that's even better." NRA Country has continued to promote their partnership with Shelton in recent years, even though last year Shelton's representative declined to clarify his relationship to the organization (He was removed from NRA Country's website not long after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting). But this week, the representative finally did clarify: "Blake does not have a partnership with the NRA." The NRA and NRA Country did not respond to a request for comment. NRA Country has fostered close commercial ties with many of country music's biggest stars in recent years and has been seen as a valuable platform for up-and-coming country acts. Its biggest promotional tool is the organization's Featured Artist of the Month campaign; the sponsorship encourages country artists to have their name associated with the NRA in exchange for the advertising of an artist's new album amongst the promotional channels of the NRA, which boasts millions of dues-paying members. Its platforms include NRATV, the organization's digital television network, and American Rifleman, the NRA's flagship publication. The Featured Artist Campaign has brought about successful partnerships in recent years with up-and-coming artists like Chase Rice and Lee Brice. Those artists were among those who did not respond when asked if they are still involved with the NRA. The apparent hesitance comes after Rosanne Cash urged artists to disavow the organization in a New York Times op-ed Tuesday morning. "I encourage more artists in country and American roots music to end your silence," she said. "The laws the N.R.A. would pass are a threat to you, your fans, and to the concerts and festivals we enjoy." Caleb Keeter, guitarist for the Josh Abbott band, a group who performed in Las Vegas this past weekend, spoke out the day after the shooting on Twitter. "Until the events of last night, I cannot express how wrong I was," said Keeter, a self-described second-amendment supporter. Most haven't gone that far, instead offering ambiguous expressions of frustration with the status quo of gun violence. "It is beyond time for our country, and the world, to unite and do whatever we can to stop all this madness," Kid Rock tweeted on Monday. The last time NRA Country faced any degree of scrutiny came after 2012's Sandy Hook elementary-school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Within several months of Newtown, the names of the organization's two most popular partnered artists – Luke Bryan and Shelton – were removed from NRA Country's website. In recent years, however, NRA Country has experienced some degree of success at making continual inroads with the mainstream country music industry. NRA Country has found new ways to access some of country's biggest names via indirect channels like its recent online TV show, "On Location." The show, hosted by an NRA-supported up-and-coming country singer named Morgan Mills, has succeeded in expanding the NRA's visibility and exaggerating NRA Country's mainstream viability in Nashville by scoring red-carpet interviews and face-time with artists – including Tanya Tucker, Lauren Alaina, and Cole Swindell – who are otherwise not associated with the organization. Although many of NRA Country's artists remain unproven niche genre artists with little national visibility, over the last two years the organization has fostered early promotional partnerships with upstarts Jon Pardi and Luke Combs, partnerships that have paid off for the organization as the singers have become two of the industry's biggest breakout stars. When young artists like Pardi and Combs go on to become major names in country music long after partnering with NRA Country, the organization enjoys the credibility-boosting stamp of approval that comes with listing those artist’s names as "Featured Artists" on its website. This week a representative for Combs confirmed that the singer is "not an officially partnered artist with NRA Country." Rather, his affiliation with the group, like the other featured artists, is only for a set period of time. In Combs' case, it was November 2015. In the coming months, Cusic speculates that the decision to partner with NRA Country for new artists may become that much more difficult. "I don't think anybody is going to be making that decision in the short term," he says. "In the beginning stages of a career, it's an advantage to have an organization like the NRA behind you. The problem is, when something this controversial comes along, then it flips." On Monday morning, NRA Country's website listed 39 artists who have partnered with the organization over the years. As of press time, the number of NRA Country partnered artists on the site had shrunk to 37. The names of Thomas Rhett and Florida Georgia Line were nowhere to be found.

Movie TV Tech Geeks News

[michaelwalshblog-blog]

Presidential paranoia: Does Mueller have a mole in the White House?

Donald Trump has long spoken in conspiratorial terms about a host of issues. (Yahoo News photo illustration; photos: Alex Brandon/AP, AP, Drew Angerer/Getty Images, Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

President Trump has a long history of consorting with conspiracy theorists, including Alex Jones and Roger Stone. He has expressed paranoid speculation about global warming, foreign business competition and the American electoral system. That attitude has infected his administration, where, according to a report in The Times, “White House officials privately express fear that colleagues may be wearing a wire to surreptitiously record conversations for [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller” — an unprecedented level of suspicion at the upper echelons of an American presidency.

Are those fears justified? How did we get to this point?

Michael D’Antonio, the author of Trump biographies “Never Enough” and “The Truth About Trump,” said the president has confessed to being a little paranoid and suggested this can help someone succeed in business.

“I think Trump is temperamentally inclined toward conspiracy theories and, at the same time, disinclined to do the work of studying matters fully,” D’Antonio told Yahoo News. “It takes a flexible, curious mind to seek out competing ideas and weigh them. Then it takes even more rigor to fashion a complex solution to a vexing problem. It’s much easier to listen to one or two voices who affirm your preconceptions and dismiss all others because they are somehow against you.”

According to D’Antonio, paranoia is an easy way out for someone like Trump who is so upset by the prospect of being wrong that he almost never admits that he is.

“This frame of mind allows him to cling to the belief that anyone who criticizes him is out to get him and that their observations are attacks which must be met with a force that is, in his words, ‘ten times’ greater. Paranoia justifies obliterating opponents because they don’t just disagree, they are out to get you,” he said.

Donald F. McGahn, an American campaign finance lawyer, exits Trump Tower in New York City, Jan. 14, 2017. (Digitally enhanced photo: Stephanie Keith/Reuters)

On Sunday, the New York Times published an in-depth article about the hostility and clashes between Donald F. McGahn, the White House counsel and assistant to the president, and Ty Cobb, a lawyer tasked running with the Trump camp’s response to the federal investigation into Russian meddling. A particularly revealing passage states that White House staffers fear their colleagues may be wearing a wire to help Mueller:

“Tension between the two comes as life in the White House is shadowed by the investigation. Not only do Mr. Trump, Mr. Kushner and Mr. McGahn all have lawyers, but so do other senior officials. The uncertainty has grown to the point that White House officials privately express fear that colleagues may be wearing a wire to surreptitiously record conversations for Mr. Mueller.”

There is no outside evidence to support those fears, but it would be a remarkable development, almost certainly unprecedented, if investigators were recruiting White House staffers to secretly record other members of the administration.

To be sure, historians and White House experts say it’s unlikely law enforcement and intelligence agencies have resorted to this tactic, now or in the past.

“As far as someone wearing a wire from the special prosecutor, I don’t know of that ever happening before. And certainly if it happened during the Watergate investigation, it never became public,” “Richard Benedetto, a retired White House correspondent and professor of journalism at American University, said.

Benedetto suggested the White House staff must feel an awful lot of pressure from the Mueller investigation and the media right now.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller departs after briefing members of the U.S. Senate on his investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 21, 2017. (Digitally enhanced photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

“There’s a Mueller story in the press almost every single day — many times more than one,” he said. “That causes a lot of people to not only soul-search but look over their shoulders.”

Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University and Yahoo News contributor, said it is not surprising that staffers would worry someone is wearing a wire given the White House’s chaotic response to the Mueller probe and Trump’s own extreme defensiveness.

“He’s got these outside lawyers and White House council. Trump sort of breeds suspicion and paranoia in people around him — and for good reason. He intentionally attacks them in front of one another and undercuts them behind their backs,” he said in a phone interview.

Dallek suggested that this fear among his aides and lawyers is a reflection of the frequent leaking to the press from people privy to sensitive meetings, as well as “the culture of paranoia that has gripped this White House and the culture of conspiracy theories that Trump has fostered.”

Behind this fear, he said, is a “very aggressive special counsel with a team of leading lawyers pursuing criminal charges on an array of issues that directly lead to the president in some cases, including obstruction of justice.”

But, he said, “In terms of evidence that people are entering the White House wearing a wire on behalf of the special counsel, there’s obviously no evidence of that. That would be unprecedented.”

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for National Security Advisor, waits for an elevator in the lobby at Trump Tower, Dec. 12, 2016 in New York City. (Digitally enhanced photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Dallek told Yahoo News he doesn’t know of an instance in which a White House aide did the bidding of an investigation by wearing a wire. He said anyone who may have had a reason to cooperate with investigators, such as Manafort or former national security advisor Michael Flynn have already left Trump’s inner circle.

Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor in the Securities and Commodities Fraud Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said fears of a staffer wearing a wire likely are the product of “the active imaginations” of administration officials, betraying the lack of trust that pervades the administration. He suggested that Trump’s management style of fostering competition for favor may contribute to this atmosphere, which he adds is counterproductive to mounting a legal defense.

“You have a team that is so dis-unified that you have the lawyers hiding information from each other, openly talking in public restaurants about their distrust and dislike of each other, screaming at each other,” Mariotti told Yahoo News. “When you are fighting a federal prosecution, you need to be unified and present a common united front.”

According to Mariotti, the government wants people who are the subjects of investigations to be at odds with each other so these differences can be exploited to make them provide information. He said he would expect the president’s legal team to be more unified, with open discussion about the best path forward and tight control over what information is revealed to the outside world.

“An operation that’s more like that is Mueller’s operation,” he said. “Everybody in the outside world is trying to find out what that guy’s doing and it’s not always easy to do.

But for pro-Trump media, the president’s paranoia (and by extension his staffers’) is entirely justified because they see him as under siege by the political establishment and a liberal media.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza‏ and right-wing sites like Breitbart News seized upon a new report from CNN to argue that Trump had been vindicated for claiming — without presenting evidence –- that Obama wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower.

Trump: I was "wire tapped" CNN: Haha. That idiot @realDonaldTrump thinks he was wiretapped. ..Six months later.. CNN: Trump was wiretapped

— Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) September 19, 2017

So Obama WAS wiretapping @realDonaldTrump after all–once again Trump is right & the media hyenas prove to be wrong

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) September 19, 2017

But they are overstating the facts. On Monday evening, CNN reported that Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was under FBI surveillance as a result of his consulting work for former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Russian party. At some point last year the surveillance was dropped, but resumed, under a new warrant, as investigators turned their attention to ties between Trump’s associates and suspected Russian operatives. U.S. investigators reportedly listened to Manafort’s conversations sporadically before and after the election — including when he was Trump’s campaign chairman. It was not known whether the agents picked up calls with Trump.

“Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” Trump said in the first of four tweets accusing his predecessor of malfeasance in March.

At the time, Trump’s accusation was widely ridiculed and dismissed, provoking a rare response from Obama through his spokesperson, Kevin Lewis: “A cardinal rule of the Obama administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”

In a court filing on Sept. 1, the Justice Department said that there is no evidence to support Trump’s claim. The department’s National Security Division and the FBI confirmed that “they have no records related to wiretaps as described” by Trump.

Paul Manafort, campaign manager for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, is interviewed on the floor of the Republican National Convention at the Quicken Loans Arena July 17, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Digitally enhanced photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

To state the obvious, for the FBI to monitor Manafort because of his Ukrainian and Russian connections is not the same thing as Obama personally ordering a wiretap on Trump himself.

Even though there is no evidence of Trump being wiretapped, David M. Shapiro, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former FBI special agent who worked in counterintelligence against the Soviet Union, said he would not be surprised if it turns out that the real estate tycoon had been tracked by the intelligence community — but for his foreign business dealings rather than politics.

“If you’re running an intelligence operation, it’s largely based on risk assessment like anything else in law enforcement. You don’t want to throw good money after bad adventures,” Shapiro told Yahoo News.

Shapiro said surveillance of suspected foreign agents is a high-risk activity for law enforcement, reserved for figures who are believed to be major actors. Even before he became president, Trump was a prominent businessman with investments and interests overseas.

“I don’t think Trump has been treated unfairly here,” Shapiro said. “Although — like a lot of what Trump says — there are kernels of truth to what seems like madness at times.”

Read more from Yahoo News:

Confront Trump or try to work with him? California Dems are at the forefront of the debate.

In the age of Trump, tired are the peacemakers

Trump warns U.S. may have to ‘totally destroy’ North Korea

Fish it out, dry it out, throw it out — how one family is coping with the Houston flood

Photos: World leaders’ faces react to Trump’s U.N. speech

[norfolkrp]

Congratulations Felicty, you’ve been accepted as original character Lance Stirling! Go ahead and set up your account, be sure to message the main from it.

Also, be sure to:

Make sure your ask and submit are open.

Follow everyone on the masterlist.

Track the tag norfolk: starter for open dash convos.

And tell us your initial reaction to Norfolk in the tag norfolk: talk!

Name/Alias: Felicity

Age: 21

Pronouns: she/her

Timezone: EST

Personal tumblr: i have a personal but i use synodicdeicide (indie rp) more. so that’s the best contact option!

Activity level:  I’m on summer break right now, but I’m working full time at my internship until Aug 4th, and then I’ll be free (outside of my social obligations). I am a full time student and I have a research position, so I’ll probably be able to get online about 3 times a week (consistently) after the semester starts. Some weeks will be more but I don’t want to overestimate and then like never be on lol.

Triggers: None

What’s the secret password?:  Removed.

How did you find us?:  Mimi told me about you guys!

What character are you applying for?  Lance Stirling (original character) Anything else?:

Nope!

Writing sample:

The bright and unforgiving July sun is assaulting through the windshield of the 2004 Honda that Lance calls his car. The thing is on it’s last legs and in a way Lance pities the geriatric hunk of metal, the same way he would an elderly dog. He has left his grandfather’s assisted living facility, and is heading to the Norfolk University campus. It’s strange to think that, had he started classes as soon as he had graduated high school — rather than flying across the country to find his mother, who had clearly no interest in him despite her words — he would have already graduated from the sprawled, green campus. He will graduate in spring, he’s made sure of that by taking classes through the summer months. Two blocks of classes, at that. Eight weeks of classes he doesn’t care about just so he can have enough credits to graduate and (hopefully) find a job. Lance turns the air conditioning to full blast. He thinks of his parents and wonders what they would have thought of him now. Of his life in Norfolk. Of his walking through dreams like some people walk through National Parks.  Of his being an art student — he can’t imagine his father would have expected that one.  He wonders what he would have been, he’s always wondered:  What if I hadn’t left, what if they hadn’t died, what if she hadn’t given me up….   the endless scenarios eat at him constantly, day and night. In his dreams the scenarios haunt him.  His dreams are rarely based in logic, in reality, but when they are they taunt him. Perhaps that’s why he learned to find the dreams of others; of girls who dreamed of ballerinas and boys who dreamed of football players. How simple their worlds. To Lance the simplicity of other’s lives is the biggest fantasy. Pulling his backpack from the back seat of his car, Lance takes a deep breath to prepare himself for the boredom of his introduction to psychology lecture — a mandatory University course that he has left off until the last minute knowing it would be excruciating. The Professor’s monotone, sleepy voice, and the dull chill from the central air system. He knows will doze off. He always does. Some habits never change, no matter how hard you attempt to kick them. Lance snorts as he thinks of this, at the very least he has one constant in his life.

2. ORIGINAL CHARACTER

Full name: Lance Stirling

Age: 23

Sexuality: Bisexual

Species: Dreamwalker

Claimed Power: N/A

Psychic ability: N/A

Occupation:  Art student at Norfolk University & barista at The Brew

Address:  Raven’s Row (Mimi & I discussed our Judah and Lance being flatmates, so that’d be chill if that worked out, but if not that’s fine too!)

Quote: “Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”

MBTI: INFP

Positive traits (3): Friendly, kind, calm

Negative traits (3): Passive, lazy, capricious

Face claim: Keith Powers

Biography:

In the mid-nineties, after two and a half years and four miscarriages, Amanda and Jason Stirling decided to go another route. Adopted at birth by the upper-middle class couple from the suburbs of Annapolis, Lance spent most of childhood wanting for nothing.  The majority of his childhood was spent staining his jeans in the grass as he rough-housed with neighborhood children in backyards filled with lush grass and dotted with daisies.  He was happy for those short years. They passed away in a car accident. Aged seven, Lance was sent to live with Jason’s father — Nathaniel — a man in his late fifties, a professor of History at Norfolk University.

Lance did not care much for school. Always distant in class, dozing off or daydreaming rather than paying attention. The problem was only exacerbated during Lance’s teenage years. On the weekends, he could sleep for fifteen hours at a time, assuming his grandfather did not force him out of bed. To appease his grandfather, he joined the cross-country team at Norfolk High School, though he attended practice only when he felt like it and only pushed himself enough to keep up with the average runners on the team.

During his years at the high school, Lance spent most of his time in the art room, it was the only place in the brick building where he could manage to stay awake.  It was there, in the room with the paint-stained floors and the splintered easels, that Lance bring his dreams to the waking world. The dreams that had become more vivid, more wondrous, more pervasive than anything in his waking life.  Living was black and white — dreaming was technicolor.

He often dreamt of his parents, of the childhood home in Maryland. After graduating from Norfolk High, Lance spent two years in Maryland, searching for his birth mother and was disappointed when he found her living in a crime-ridden neighborhood in Baltimore with a boyfriend and four kids younger than him. It made him feel abandoned, and unwanted. And he felt guilty for looking for her when the parents who loved him as their own had not lived long enough to raise him. At nineteen and a half, he returned to Washington, to Norfolk. To the place he started to think of as home, only after leaving.

His grandfather suffered from a severe stroke shortly after Lance’s return. He survived, but only continues to do so with very much assistance. Lance has since had to move out of his grandfather’s house and has started his own life, taking up Art at Norfolk University, hoping that he’ll be able to make some kind of living off of it one day.  When not asleep or in class, he works at The Brew and uses most of his salary (and tips) to pay for the small amount of tuition he has to pay — he was given a scholarship thanks to his grandfather’s many years of tenure prior to his absence for his health —  to pay the menial rent of the Raven’s Row apartment, and to help out with his grandfather.