#my track record with keeping these friends despite monumental effort on my end is. not great!!!!!!

[jedlknight]

idk i get that priorities change and i cannot ever expect for the status quo to remain constant but i would like to stop losing my friends every time they get into a serious relationship/get engaged/get married.

[matsuoclan]

you and me and this temptation

Pairing: Morgan x Det. Lucy Liang (f/f) Rating: Explicit (MINORS DO NOT INTERACT) Content: explicit sexual content, kissing, fingerfucking, dirty talk with mentions of exhibitionism/voyeurism, d/s undertones

Summary: The detective attempts to lay down some ground rules. Morgan does her best to sidetrack her.

Notes: Takes place sometime shortly after book 2, before book 3. Also brownie points to whoever can tell me who the mentioned siren is and what series they’re from!

[ read on ao3 ] [ masterlist ]

–

She’s doing this on purpose.

Lucy shoots another look at Morgan from across the table. All Morgan does is grin shamelessly and lick her lips, not at all paying attention to Nat’s mini lecture on various supernatural species.

“Sirens are incredibly rare that we know of. Most of them keep to themselves and try to interact with humans as little as possible until they have full control of their powers. There used to be a great family of them in Greece, and they’re probably still there, but the only one I know of is in Houston, Texas…Lucy, you still with me?”

Lucy jumps in her seat and smiles sheepishly at the vampire next to her. Morgan snickers. “Sorry Nat. Continue, please.”

“Hmm.” Nat trains a suspicious eye on Morgan but then turns back to the massive tome open in front of her. “Anyway, when they’re exercising their powers, some sirens can manifest translucent wings. The color will vary depending on the siren, and some are even said to have…”

Morgan shifts in her seat and once again Lucy’s gaze is drawn helplessly in her direction.

Every. Fucking. Time.

It’s been like this for over an hour. She watches as Morgan runs a slow hand through her hair and it’s not hard to imagine those fingers in her hair instead, tugging to give her that slight flash of pain. Morgan leans in like she knows exactly what Lucy’s thinking, eyes falling to her mouth, and even though there’s an entire table width between them, the heat that spikes through Lucy is enough to make her breath catch.

“Morgan, I am right here,” Nat snaps.

Lucy stifles a groan. Caught. Again.

“Yes, but can you blame me when the detective’s sitting there looking good enough to eat?” Morgan’s eyes haven’t moved, still trained on Lucy’s mouth, and Lucy shivers.

Nat splutters. “That’s hardly appropriate. Stop distracting Lucy, this is important knowledge for her to have.”

“If the detective wants me to stop distracting her, she can tell me herself.” Morgan smiles lazily at her. “Right, sweetheart?”

Lucy opens her mouth to respond. Mortifyingly, nothing comes out. Nat takes pity on her and sighs.

“We can pick this up tomorrow, Lucy. I don’t think we’ll get much further today.” She stands and closes the tome, setting it off to the side. “And Morgan, I’m serious, I want you nowhere near the library tomorrow.”

“We’ll see.”

“Nowhere. Near. The. Library,” Nat growls.

Morgan leans back in her chair and winks at Lucy. “Like I said. We’ll see.”

Nat takes her leave with an exasperated shake of her head and a muttered good-bye. With Nat gone, there’s nothing stopping Lucy from feeling the full weight of Morgan’s attention, and she shoves back from the table to put more distance between them before she does something incredibly stupid, like jump her bones in the middle of the library.

“I think we need to establish some ground rules if we’re going to keep this up,” Lucy says, gesturing between the two of them.

Morgan raises an eyebrow. “This is just sex. And you’ve liked everything so far.”

The arrogance. Lucy grabs a stack of books to reshelve them, just to give her hands something to do. Fortunately these books belong on the opposite side of the room and it’s with half relief, half disappointment that Morgan doesn’t reach for her when she walks by. “Yes, but—”

“You’ve liked every single thing I’ve done to you. Don’t pretend you weren’t remembering all the places my mouth and fingers have been just now.”

Lucy whirls around. “You can’t keep saying stuff like that when I’m working!”

“But you like it when I do.”

“That is so not the point.”

“It’s completely the point.”

“Fine,” Lucy grits out. “I do, but it distracts me, and I can’t afford to be distracted at work. Nat was right, this is important knowledge for me to learn, and I can’t learn any of it when you’re looking at me like...like that!”

“I want you,” Morgan says, shrugging. Like it’s as simple as that. “I don’t see any issue with letting that be known.”

“Morgan.”

“All right.” Morgan rises from her seat and slowly saunters over, collapsing into an armchair a few feet away. Lucy’s throat goes dry. “How about...I cut back by twenty-five percent?”

“Excuse me?” Lucy squints. Unbelievable. “Are you negotiating?”

“Yes. And sweetheart, I suggest you take it because you’re not going to get a better offer.”

Lucy turns on her heel and starts aggressively placing the books back where they belong. “Is it that hard for you to keep your comments behind closed doors?”

“Just my comments?” Even without a visual, Lucy knows exactly which infuriating smirk Morgan’s sporting as she speaks. “So you’re fine if everything else is out in the open?”

“Morgan.”

“You let me fuck you at the carnival where anyone could’ve seen, so the lady doth protest too much about this, methinks.”

Lucy drops a book.

“Actually, given our track record, I’m inclined to believe you have a thing against closed doors.”

The conversation has spiraled so completely out of control, but she shouldn’t have expected anything different when it comes to Morgan. It takes a massive effort for Lucy to turn back around and adopt a calm, pleasant expression. “Fifty percent and I’ll kiss you after we finish this conversation.”

Morgan’s eyes darken. “You’ll kiss me anyway.”

“You seem awfully confident that I’m a sure thing,” Lucy says shakily. A hysterical laugh threatens to bubble up inside her. She already knows she is. The slow smile unfurling on Morgan’s face says she already knows Lucy is, too.

“...aren’t you?”

Lucy doesn’t respond. She can’t.

“Fine, fine.” Morgan rolls her eyes and extends a hand in Lucy’s direction. “Come here.”

Lucy eyes it suspiciously. “Why?”

“A show of good faith. Kiss me so I know you’re good for it, and you’ll have your forty percent.” She pats her lap and motions again.

“Fifty percent.”

“That’s what I said.” Morgan is unrepentant in all her glory. “Come here, Lucy.”

One day she’ll figure out how to resist Morgan’s pull. It’s not good for her dignity that Morgan has all but figured out she only has to crook a finger and Lucy will come running despite herself. But until then...

Lucy takes two steps in Morgan’s direction. Instantly Morgan reaches out and pulls her in to straddle her lap, hands resting on her waist as she smirks up at her. The feel of Morgan’s warm hands through the thin fabric of her dress gives Lucy a full body shiver.

“Show me my good faith,” Morgan murmurs, and then Lucy’s kissing her.

Morgan doesn’t bother with easing into it. As soon as Lucy parts her lips, Morgan’s there, licking deep into her mouth until Lucy’s dizzy with want.

Everything about Morgan overwhelms her. Her scent, her taste. The way she sucks on her tongue kicks Lucy’s pulse into overdrive and she whimpers, body on fire. Morgan’s hands tighten at the noise and then she’s running them along Lucy’s shoulders, up into her hair, down her back to squeeze her ass...

Lucy jolts and bites down on Morgan’s bottom lip in retaliation. Morgan laughs roughly against her mouth.

“I like this tart side of you, sweetheart.”

“Saved it just for you.” Lucy leans back with monumental effort, panting. “Is that enough good faith?”

“It’ll do for now.” Morgan bumps her nose against Lucy’s. It shouldn’t be so charming, but fuck, it is. “Anything other ground rules you wanted to go over?

“No. Wait, yes.” This one hasn’t come up yet in the limited time they’ve been doing...whatever it is they‘re doing, but Lucy figures now is the best time as any to get it out there. She makes to get off Morgan’s lap to allow herself some distance for actual thought, but Morgan catches her waist and maneuvers her so that she’s sitting with her back against Morgan’s chest. “What are you doing?”

“Relax, sweetheart. It’s just more good faith.”

Lucy squirms. It feels remarkably like the time on the carousel, when Lucy thought she might explode from the tension. “I think you’re getting more out of this negotiation than I am.”

“Then get better at negotiating.” The hand Morgan has resting on her thigh tightens just a bit but it’s enough that Lucy has to fight from spreading her legs. “What’s the next rule?”

“...No one else.” Lucy swallows. “No one else if you’re fucking me.”

Morgan stills so suddenly Lucy wonders if she just made a huge misstep. Maybe that’s too much to ask, too soon. She’s not ignorant of Morgan’s past exploits. What was she thinking, asking Morgan something like that? They haven’t known each other all that long, and even if they could probably be called friends on the best of days, they don’t have a relationship where she can ask something as brazen as this—

“No one else,” Morgan agrees quietly. It takes a moment to register, and then the relief is dizzying. Morgan’s hand on her stomach curls and Lucy’s not stupid enough to think it’s possessive but she can pretend it is, for a moment. “That goes for you too.”

Lucy snorts in surprise. “Oh please. Did you forget who you’re talking to?”

“That ex of yours keeps sniffing around.”

It can’t possibly be jealousy she’s hearing, but Lucy calls on whatever bravery she has left to poke. “Worried you have competition?”

Morgan has the gall to chuckle. “Sweetheart, I’m the best you’ve ever had.”

“You are incurably arrogant,” Lucy grumbles.

“And one hundred percent correct. Is that it? All the ground rules?”

“For now.”

“Hmm.” Morgan ghosts her mouth over Lucy’s ear. “Before I agree, I think I need one last show of good faith. Just to know you can uphold your end of the bargain.”

“Morgan, you have a supremely skewed idea of what a negotiation is.”

“Maybe. But for some reason I don’t think you’re complaining.” Morgan slowly spreads her hand across Lucy’s stomach, brushing along the underside of her breast. Lucy fidgets in the cage of her arms and squeezes her thighs together as her breath quickens. “This feel familiar to you at all?”

“...The carousel. When we were undercover at the carnival.”

“Mmm. Made the entire mission worth it, having you perched so sweetly on my lap.” Morgan slides the straps of her dress down her arms, baring her bra. Lucy’s nipples instantly go tight.

“You made the most delicious little gasp when I put my mouth here.” She seals her mouth over the scars of Murphy’s fangs on Lucy’s neck and sucks hard. And even though she should’ve expected it, Lucy gasps all over again, body going taut.

“And that fucking little skirt, teasing me all night long.” A hand idly strokes up the inside of her thigh, close to where Lucy’s pulse is pounding between her legs. And just like that, Lucy parts her thighs. “If I had reached under your skirt like I’m doing now…” Morgan draws a finger over the front of her panties. “...would I have found you just as wet?”

“Y-yes.” Her voice comes out breathy.

“Would you have let me do this?” She pulls Lucy’s pantiest to one side. There’s no urgency in Morgan’s movements as she traces her fingers over Lucy’s entrance, circling her clit, seemingly content to just explore with featherlight motions. “Touch your pussy with all those people around? No closed doors to speak of?”

She palms the front of Lucy’s bra with her other hand and yanks it down, baring her breasts. “Would you have let me do this?” Morgan cups one of her breasts and tugs at her nipple and Lucy almost comes on the spot. “There’d be no hiding what I was doing.”

Fuck. Lucy shouldn’t want what Morgan’s describing in her ear. It’s way too public, way too filthy. But when Morgan touches her like that, all rational thought flees and the only thing left is the image of Morgan spreading her open in front of the carnival and not stopping until she’s screaming.

It’s more than a little scary how much Morgan can make her want.

Morgan sinks her teeth into Lucy’s earlobe at the same time she slides a finger inside her. “I think they’d be jealous of me, if they saw. It’s me who gets to touch you like this. My arms around your tight little body. My fingers fucking your pussy.” She slides another finger inside and strokes a finger directly over Lucy’s clit. Lucy spreads legs even wider, letting them drape over Morgan’s thighs. “It’s me who’s getting you off, and all they’d be able to do is watch…”

Oh god. Lucy lets her head fall back against Morgan’s shoulder and moans as Morgan fucks her with her fingers. Morgan keeps the pace aggravatingly unhurried, like she’s that certain her words are enough to wind Lucy up.

She’d be one hundred percent correct.

“Would you put on a show for them, sweetheart?” Morgan sounds supremely unaffected and Lucy hates her for it, just a little. “Let them see how wet you get at the idea of an audience? Moan when you come so prettily around my fingers?”

“Please. Please, Morgan.” Lucy writhes in her lap, not even sure what she’s begging for, but as always, Morgan knows exactly what she needs. She shifts the hand at Lucy’s breast to hold tight across her stomach and pushes a third finger into her. The pleasure building inside Lucy spikes sharper when Morgan finally, finally, speeds up.

“I’d let them watch if you asked. They can watch as much as they want and imagine they’re the ones you’re desperate for, but at the end of the day they’ll know it’s only me who’s allowed to do this.” Morgan pinches Lucy’s clit and the tiny shock of pain sends Lucy careening.

She cries out when she comes, grinding down on Morgan’s fingers as Morgan continues her strokes. Distantly she registers Morgan’s mouth on her neck again, and something that feels suspiciously like fangs dragging on her skin.

“Beautiful,” Morgan murmurs against her ear when she finally slumps back against her, completely spent. “So fucking beautiful.”

Lucy turns her head to get a look at Morgan but Morgan just kisses her, gentler this time. It’s a kiss without a goal, and Lucy’s happy enough to sink into it and be swept away. When Lucy finally draws back for breath, Morgan’s grinning at her in that self-satisfied way of hers and even after everything Lucy’s heart still skips a beat.

She leans in to press another kiss to the corner of Lucy’s mouth. “Sweetheart, we have a deal.”

[evangeline-of-montfort]

ash garden (iv)

chapters 1, 2, and 3 read it here on ao3

A few short years ago, I would have run like a coward. The urge to disappear into the early morning mist and climb into the mountains still pounds through me with every heartbeat. 

But I don’t, because I at least owe him this fucking much. 

The convoy rolls to a stop on the Hawkway, two armored transports and a funeral hearse, blacker than the night sky. Bile rises in my throat every time I look at it, so I don’t. I remain kneeling next to him, my eyes fixed resolutely on the ground. Even my pride can’t save me from the shame and rage rolling in my chest. 

Around six this morning, I finally picked up a signal on my broadcaster. I sent a message to the estate, and then I pitched the fucking thing off the cliff. It didn’t save Davidson, and I hate it for that. 

I hate myself for that.

The door to one of the transports opens, and I don’t have to look to see who it is. The wedding band on his left hand is indication enough. Silver and gold, intertwined forever. 

I think of the matching ring squeezed in my own hand, leaving angry red imprints in my palm. Tears burn the back of my eyes, hot and stinging. 

Blinking them away, I stand to face the man I failed most in the entire world.

Carmadon is a greenwarden made of stone, the lines of his face chiseled with pain. His white suit is rumpled, his eyes bloodshot. My heart twists even tighter at the thought of him falling asleep last night, waiting for a husband who would never come home.

“Evangeline,” he whispers. His gaze flickers from Davidson to me and back again.

“Carmadon, I’m so sorry.” I hate myself for the empty condolence.  I’m sorry is the most useless thought in the world to a grieving person. But, like before, my words fail me. There’s nothing to say. Nothing I can do to alleviate the pain that I caused.

Carm bows his head, the smallest of movements. “Could you—could you give me a moment?” he asks quietly. 

“Of course.” My mouth is so dry that the words barely make it past my lips. I leave too quickly, trying to run from the grief. No matter what I do, I won’t be able to get away from it fast enough. 

Elane waits for me by the convoy, the platinum engagement ring sparking on her finger like a firework. She wants me to know she’s there, giving me the space to run again if I need to. It’s a kindness I don’t deserve. 

“Love,  you are alive,” is the first thing she says to me. Her eyes linger on my dirty knees, my torn uniform, the tear streaks down my face. She brushes her thumbs over my cheeks. “I will—” The tiniest crack appears in her voice—“I will be eternally grateful for that.”

I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve any of it. My first instinct is to shut myself away, to let my walls come up and hide me until I’m ready. But that won’t help me or anyone else. With a monumental effort, I make myself talk. 

“If not for me,” I whisper harshly, my eyes landing everywhere but her face, “he would be alive right now.” My shoulders shake as a wave of emotion sweeps over me, a sea of feelings I know well.  Self-hatred. Denial. Grief. Rage. 

Elane’s gaze meets mine, and it’s like staring into a mirror to my own soul. “You think I don’t blame myself?” she asks. “He may have died saving you, Eve, but  I  was the one that asked him to go.” She’s crying now, trembling against me, and I fold her into my arms and try to wish away all her pain.

“It’s not your fault. It’s  not your damn fault.” I say it over and over again, like a mantra. Like a prayer.  

“Evangeline, I sent him to his death. ” Her voice shatters on the last word. “And I just—I just remember watching him leave, and praying you both would come back safe, but...”

“It’s not your fault,” I whisper again, sounding like a broken record. My eyes are fixed on Carmadon, kneeling beside his husband, his shoulders shaking. On Elane in my arms, her tears sliding beneath wet eyelashes.  Look what you did,  the entire scene screams.  Look what you did, you stupid, stupid girl. 

I’m not wrong—it  isn’t Elane’s fault. 

It’s mine. 

~~~

My head spins as I run, and run, and run. Evergreens cast lengthening shadows over the track, and all I can think about is that at this time yesterday, Davidson was still alive. He’s been gone for almost a full day now, but the earth keeps spinning despite his absence. Even though it feels as if it should have stopped. 

The world ended when Dane Davidson breathed his last, but still the sun rises and sets. 

I see him every time I blink. In those split seconds behind my closed eyelids, blood soaks through his shirt, turning his uniform the color of the dawn. His fingers clutch the silver chain at his neck, lifting the ring to the waning light. The rise and fall of his chest slows. And stops. 

I keep running.

I guess I still  am a fucking coward.

Carmadon made a broadcast at noon today, and now the entire continent knows how and why the premier of Montfort met his end. Following the broadcast was a state funeral. I didn’t attend. I didn’t watch. How could I, given that his death was practically my fault?

No one has seen Carm for the rest of the day, and the estate is lifeless without his presence. The entire place is wilting: flowers turn brown on the balconies, trees shed their leaves, fruit shrivels and discolors. All of nature grieves for his loss. 

If I were a better person and friend, I would go after him. I owed him more than words could describe—and I repaid the debt by letting his husband die. But I can’t find it in me to face his grief again. I don’t want to look into his eyes and see condemnation, conscious or not.

Elane is better than I am. She was good enough to stand beside Carmadon during the broadcast and the service, the former queen of the Rift giving her support for the world to see. I was still here, punching heavy things and crying. 

No one has tried to seek me out yet, giving me space to vent. But soon, I’ll have to grow up and head inside to face the consequences of my actions. Soon, I’ll have to talk one-on-one with Carmadon. If not now, then inevitably later. After all, I was the last person to see his husband alive; I was the person that  caused his death.

And I still have his wedding band on a chain around my neck, resting near my heart. It thuds against my chest as I run, in time with my footsteps on the track. I need to give it to Carm, but I haven’t found the right words to say for when I do. 

Perhaps there  aren’t any right words for this situation. Perhaps some are just less wrong than others. 

Alone with my thoughts, it’s easy for me to sense the intruder when he comes. Metal rings out in my perception: his uniform is cut with chrome lining, and a silver ring adorns his left hand. 

There’s only one person that could be. 

I slow to a walk as he nears the track. My heartbeat pounds in my chest, and I rest my hands on my knees as I try to recover enough to speak. 

“Tolly,” I say, and my voice hitches on that one word. “I–”

He sweeps me into a hug before I can get any further. “Little sister,” he says, his arms wrapped around me. “We’ve been worried. You have to stop scaring us like that.” 

I lean into his chest, feeling the warmth radiate from his torso. My brother is not a touchy-feely person. Moments of contact like these are rare, so I cherish them all the more. 

“I’m not little,” is all I can think to say, but saying that only makes me feel more like a child.

Ptolemus smiles as he pulls away. “Evie, I’m a head taller than you and twice as wide.”

“Oh, shut up,” I say. It comes out with more venom than I intend, and I flinch at the hardness in my own voice. 

Instead of looking hurt, my brother examines me closer, his eyes searching. “Are you alright?” 

“No, I’m not fucking alright.” Angry tears suddenly well up in my eyes again. “But the person you should be asking that question is Carmadon. Not me.” I swipe at my nose with the sleeve of my training suit. The skin there is already raw and red from repeating the action too many times today. 

Part of me feels ashamed at breaking down to Tolly. Neither of us cried much as kids, and it’s not like we’re strangers to death. But Davidson’s death feels like no other. My brain doesn’t know what to do with it, swinging wildly between utter denial and complete breakdown. It’s too big to process. Too  unreal to have possibly happened. 

“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay, Evangeline,” he whispers, pulling me close again. “But in the meantime, it’s okay to not be okay. Grief isn’t a contest. It’s not something you deserve or don’t deserve to feel. You are allowed to be sad and angry even if you weren’t hurt the  most .” 

“When did you become a therapist?” I snap, and immediately regret it. Everything is coming out harsher than I want it to. It’s like I can do nothing but push away the people I love. 

Somehow, my brother seems to have endless reservoirs of patience today. I hate that it probably comes from a well of sympathy I don’t deserve. “I’m married to a healer,” Ptolemus says, and I feel his smile as an infinitesimal tightening of his stomach. “It comes with the territory. And right now, all my therapist instincts are telling me to get you inside.”

“I’m fine out here.” 

“I can practically see your fingers turning purple.” He grabs my hand and turns it over to examine. “How long have you been out here, and when was the last time you ate?” 

“I—” I glance up at the sky. The sun is touching the horizon now, the sky bleeding red and violet. I’ve been here since mid-morning, but I’m not about to tell him that. 

Tolly scowls at me. My silence is as good as a confession for him. “That’s it. You need to come inside. You’ll catch your death out here.” When I still say nothing, he adds, “Don’t make me carry you.” 

I have at least enough pride left to walk on my own two feet, so I follow him grudgingly back to the estate. 

~~~

The soles of my feet scrape against the cobblestone path. The estate looms higher above me with each step as I trail behind Tolly, unwilling to go in. The lower levels have been teeming with government officials all day, and socializing—or worse, accepting condolences—is the last thing I want to do right now.

But Ptolemus doesn’t lead me through the entrance hall. We slip in through a side door, and he steers me down a hallway towards the kitchens. I stop short as something sparks in my perception, a feeling I would know anywhere. Elane’s ring. She’s here too. 

 Here, I realize as I look around the empty kitchen, but invisible.  

“Hi, love,” I say to the seemingly deserted room. 

No response, but I wasn’t expecting one. Elane will reappear when she’s ready, and not a moment before. We have different ways of handling our emotions. I rage and vent, not caring who hears me. She vanishes altogether to cope out of sight.

I help myself to a bowl of blackberries and a platter of cheese and crackers on one of the counters, suddenly ravenous. Tolly takes a seat next to me, leaving the one across from me for Elane. We both jump as her chair suddenly moves, scraping against the floor. 

“Hey.” She flashes back into view as she sits, still wearing her black gown from the funeral, and I think idly of her old Haven colors. Her red hair hangs limply against her shoulders, its usual luster gone.

With a pang, I realize she’s been grieving as well, but unlike me, Elane hates to be alone. I practically abandoned her for half the day, just when she needed me most.  Selfish.  

“I’m so sorry,” I say first. “I should’ve checked in on you.”

“Don’t worry about it: I had Lyrisa. I know you needed space.” To my relief, she smiles, and the expression reaches her eyes. “How are  you , love?”

I brace myself against another wave of emotion.  Wave is inaccurate at this point—it’s like a void that opens up inside me, draining me of everything else. “It still feels like a nightmare,” I admit quietly. “Like it couldn’t have actually…”

“I know,” Elane whispers. “Do you need to talk about it right now?”

Silently, I shake my head. The movement makes me dizzy, and I have to grab the counter to steady myself. Eating real food for the first time today has made me realize how hungry and thirsty I am. I don’t want to—and probably  can’t —do anything but change and go to bed. 

“Then we can talk about other things.” She reaches for my hand across the countertop, shivering slightly as she takes it in both of her own. “My god, you’re freezing.” Elane looks askance at me before leaning down to breathe warm air on our conjoined hands. “You’ve practically become a shiver, Evangeline.”

“I’m well aware,” I say. Her touch feels feverish to me, but that’s probably because my skin is ice cold. Experimentally, I try to wiggle my fingers individually of one another. It feels like they’re made of wood.

Elane laughs and gently presses a kiss to each one of my knuckles, her mouth warm against my skin. “Relearning basic motor control, are we? I can help you with that.”

“Get a room.” Tolly covers his eyes, feigning disgust at us both.

I leer back at him. “Like you and Wren are any better.” 

He makes a rude gesture and plucks a blackberry from my bowl. I snatch it from his hand and pop it into my own mouth. 

It feels good, this comfortable, easy rhythm between the three of us. It feels  normal  , but it isn’t the same  .  It’s impossible to ignore the void inside me, the grief that hangs over all of us, threatening to pop this fragile bubble of content. 

Because things aren’t normal any more. 

Davidson is gone.  

And he isn’t coming back.

~~~

taglist: @freaky-freiday @evangelineartemiasamos @farleydiana @fuvkingmagnus @folkoftheair @lilyharvord @scarletbarrow @gansey-just-gansey @glossy-vanilla @thatoddgirl777 

[minaminokyoko]

Venom: A Spoilertastic Review (that is mostly just a rant)

When the end credits to the Venom movie started, just as Eminem began his embarrassingly uninspired rapping, I turned my head to one of my two friends and asked her, "What the hell did I just put into my eyeballs?"

To be frank, Venom is one of the most peculiar, bizarre, baffling films I've seen in years.

I want to preface this review by saying I was against this idea when it was announced. I thought it was beyond idiotic to make a film about a supervillain whose entire creation hinges on a certain Webhead, and since Sony lent him out to Marvel Studios (the only smart fucking decision they've made in probably over a decade, imo), they went off half-cocked with the hair-brained idea that they could create an anti-hero solo flick for Venom instead. To some degree, sure, they were warranted because the general audience these days has low fucking standards and if you put the words "comic book movie" in front of them, they're usually going to lap it up no matter how terrible it is. After all, fandom doesn't care about things being accurate anymore, by this point, if you dangle fresh meat like Tom Hardy riding a motorcycle in front of them. As long as there's an attractive person at the helm, fandom will just adopt it as canon and ignore any red flags, as they have already done. That being said, I still think this is one of the most blatantly stupid things done for money and for notoriety from any studio toting around a popular comic book character.

Is Venom as bad as legendary awful comic book movies like Catwoman, The Spirit, Batman & Robin, Daredevil, Green Lantern, or Spawn?

Well, no.

And that's almost the only positive thing I can report about it, personally. 

In short, Venom is inept. That's the word I'd choose, aside from bizarre. It has no fucking clue what it's doing at any given time, from start to finish. It's too wacky to be serious, too serious to be a parody or satire, too mature for kids, too childish for adults, too mainstream for nerds, and too nerdy for mainstream. It's just a piping hot fucking mess.

So let's dive into why. Spoiler alert.

Overall Rating: D

Pros:

-Note: I am being very fucking generous by giving this movie points for anything at all, just so y'all know.

-It's not boring. Other comic book movies that have failed, whether it's the really bad kind or just the mediocre kind, have failed worse than this movie simply because at least there aren't any dead periods. Venom doesn't have awful pacing, even with its sloppy, uneven story. It moves along at a steady rate and you can never accuse it of being a borefest like Superman Returns or something. Even though most of it is incomprehensible from a story standpoint, it keeps your attention throughout.

-The doctor boyfriend surprisingly averted the usual stereotype/archetype for this kind of story. For example, in the first Ant Man, the cop boyfriend who is with Scott's baby mama is a smug, overprotective dickhead who later gets better. Most of the time when a main couple breaks up, the girl picks some douchebag who is either so much better than her former lover that it just feels insulting or it's just a one-dimensional asshole for us to hate so we want the two of them to get back together. Hell, doctor boyfriend was actually TOO nice and understanding and helpful. There is no way in hell I'd have stuck it out after seeing Eddie bite the head off a goddamn lobster. I'd have sent his ass to a mental hospital immediately, fuck the regular hospital. That being said, I like the movie averting the trope. It was a welcome change and was awfully refreshing too.

-Even though this is one of his strangest fucking performances to date, Tom Hardy is doing what he always does and gives 110% to a film that really doesn't even deserve him. I've already been hearing rumors that he's not pleased with the final product and that doesn't surprise me, but he does what he can with that awful script and I appreciate the effort. In fact, the only reason I sat through this turd is for Tom Hardy. He is a dedicated, talented actor and even when he's in tripe, he's still busting his beautiful ass to make the best of it anyway. I like him a lot and I'd go to bat for him any day, which is the only reason I coughed up the money for Venom when I knew damn well it'd be a trainwreck.

-The effects are at least decent. Not always. But Venom and the symbiotes actually feel as if they're really there and it's not just the actors staring at a ball on a stick. I appreciate it, since Sony goes in and out of quality regarding CGI.

-Despite the fucking travesty of a fake clown wig on his head, Woody Harrelson is an excellent choice for Cletus Kasady. Everyone knows that. I just hope they get him a better hairpiece next time, sheesh.

Cons:

-Jesus fucking Christ, where do I fucking start?

-Plotholes. This movie doesn't have plotholes--it has plot canyons. It's plothole Inception, for God's sake, with holes inside of fucking holes. It's so clear that the movie doesn't give a rat's ass about anything because there are some of the most ridiculous moments you're expected to swallow with the power of Willing Suspension of Disbelief. It's why it took me a whole two days to try and write a review/analysis of the film. There is so much wrong with it that I frankly wasn't sure where to start and how to process it all. The best I can try to do considering the overwhelming number of holes in the story is go chronologically. First off, Eddie stealing Blondie's confidential documents (Note: Michelle Williams' character was so bland and unimportant I can't remember her name and I don't care to look it up because we all know she doesn't matter, so she is now Blondie) but then not doing his actual job as a journalist when making wild accusations is the first monumentally dumb thing in the film. Why the hell did he go through the trouble of breaching her personal security and trust if all he was going to do was rant about it to the Bad Guy without proof? What did he think it would accomplish? Why would you just confront the guy instead of looking for more proof? Plus, you stole that information, which means it's inadmissable in court since it was obtained illegally, so you still wouldn't have a case anyhow. Any writer with half a brain cell would simply have it so that Eddie read the document, became curious, and started snooping around Life Foundation himself looking for hard evidence that would stand up in court to get justice for the victims. The way they did it in the film makes no sense, but it's because they wanted to bust up the couple and make Eddie a "loser" to kickstart the rest of the film. Then, the girl who tattled on the Life Foundation 100% did not need Eddie Brock to do that. She had full access to the lab and the trust of her superior. All she had to do was document everything herself, send it to Eddie to pass along to his boss, and then skip town with her fucking kids to avoid being murdered. Hell, she could have given it to the authorities anonymously. Third, why after everything went tits up in the lab did she fucking return to the lab as if they wouldn't immediately know it was her? She was seen outside the lab seconds before Eddie set off the alarms and her palm print is recorded having opened the door to the lab. Why the fuck did she go back after she let Eddie in there with no way to cover her tracks? And then she actually told on herself and Eddie, which led to her death. I can't comprehend that level of stupidity at all. It's staggering. Because I'm trying not to turn this into a seven-page single spaced review, I'm just going to stop here and not try to point out all the other plotholes in detail, like the fact that the cops only get involved one time and are never seen again despite the fact that they'd be all over the explosions and missing people associated with the Life Foundation or Eddie's phone working perfectly after he swam under the fucking bridge or Eddie leaving his phone for his boss instead of just sending him the goddamn pictures or the symbiote magically knowing where Eddie was after they took him from the hospital. We'll be here all day if I keep going. I'll just reblog CinemaSins' eventual video of this movie and feel satisfied that way.

-The movie makes zero attempts at explaining anything about the symbiotes except for "they're vulnerable to fire and sound frequencies, need a host to survive, and eat brains." What is even stranger about the lack of explanation is that this isn't a long film. They could have easily added about ten minutes into the story to give us an overview of where they came from, what their world was like, how they found human contact, and why they were on that comet. All we can do is infer things, which pisses me off because this is YOUR story and YOUR new continuity that you just fucking made up on the fly, so I don't know the rules here and it's shitty of you to just gloss over it all. Why is it called Venom? Is that a translation from whatever the hell the symbiote was called on its own planet? Did it hear that somewhere and decide it liked the word? Why? Why does it get touchy if you call it a parasite when that is literally what it is? Is it like Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective and it's just in denial? We have to guess that it knows whatever Eddie knows, but why does it have any conceptual knowledge of romance and relationships when it attempts to get Eddie to apologize to Blondie or when it says it "likes" her? Or that Eddie "changed its mind" at the end? And how can a symbiote even be a loser? That concept is almost universally human and it's a giant sentient piece of fucking tar? How can it possibly be a loser on its own planet? There is just no damn context for majority of the shit surrounding the symbiotes in the movie and it's all the more frustrating since we spend a great deal of time in the lab with them during the movie and yet we learn almost nothing.

-Eddie and the symbiote don't actually form a proper bond or partnership. This is one of the things that's irritating me about people who seem to have taken to the movie. I was told multiple times by people that the movie is stupid, but the repartee between Eddie and Venom is enjoyable. Not really, no. Are there quips? Yes, there are quips. But quips do not inherently create a bond. Anyone can bounce dialogue off each other. If said dialogue does not change the characters, then it's just lip service. Sadly, though, a lot of people don't notice that absolutely nothing between Eddie and Venom lines up. Venom helps Eddie survive the attacks, but is killing him in the process. It's self-interest alone. The truly confounding part is when they get Venom off of Eddie and find out Venom has basically been consuming Eddie's organs to stay alive inside him, Eddie acts betrayed and storms off, but then when Venom returns wearing Blondie as his guise, he just accepts it and they go off to the badly filmed climax. What the hell changed in between those scenes? Nothing. Eddie still runs the risk of dying being piloted by the symbiote, and while Eddie has motivation to stop Bad Guy (again, another character that is so thin I can't be bothered to learn his name) from bringing the symbiotes to earth, Venom is given zero reason to want that at all. As mentioned above, there's no backstory. Is Venom concerned his race will consume the earth? If so, who cares? There's seven billion people and Venom has already found Eddie, who is a suitable match for him to survive, so why does he care at all? Eddie would survive an invasion anyhow. It makes no damn sense. Films that have dealt with symbiotic relationships always establish a common ground at some point but Venom doesn't for some inexplicable reason. I'm incredibly frustrated that everyone's just going "tee hee, look, they're best friends now, it's cute" when in fact Eddie is just running around committing murder randomly without ever really contemplating how serious it is, even though he claims to only be eating bad people.

-Nitpick: Fridging two different female characters, the homeless lady and the Life Foundation tattletale, rubbed me entirely the wrong way. Both of them were in Eddie's vicinity, both die, and both are never brought up again or shown to have impacted Eddie's motivation or life. They are simply used and discarded, which is another thing that makes this movie feel so hollow.

-The tone is all over the fucking place. It can be argued that Venom never went full serious and is always sort of tongue-in-cheek, but there's just this ridiculous whiplash feeling when you watch it spike from an action scene to "wacky" Brock antics to Venom quips. Eddie's personality even before the symbiote is just confusing as hell. It's like stuffing a bunch of random character traits into one man and all of them are fighting to get out at once like the characters from Split. The most consistent thing is he's sarcastic, but even then his moods range far too widely to get a bead on him. He can be dry one minute and then frantic and excitable the next, and that's before the symbiote. After the symbiote, it's like they gave Tom Hardy cocaine and steroids. The man's acting is simply all over the damn place. He accepts near-impossible things sometimes with a shrug and other times he freaks out. The movie just doesn't know what the hell it's attempting to accomplish, and that's why mood and tone are important to set from the get-go with a film. It just slingshots between a faux-horror film and a snippy action flick over and over again until your head feels pulverized.

-The final action sequences is one of the dumbest, messiest things since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It's an ugly, dark, jumbled up mess. It's so indistinguishable that Godzilla (2014) can take potshots at it. Why in perfect blue hell did they choose two symbiotes with such similar appearances to showdown with each other on top of a rocket at night? It's so hard to see what the two of them are doing, who is winning or losing, or what kind of movement is happening at all. We also are never given the full range of their abilities, so the only real stake is when they pull off their hosts and their bodies are vulnerable, but even then it appears that Venom can raise Eddie from the dead seconds later anyhow. I'm stunned the movie couldn't even do a fake out death properly, which is so fucking easy that even Disney can do it. Eddie dies and is revived in less than fifteen goddamn seconds. The camera doesn't even linger on his body to sell the emotion (not that we'd ever have one, he is just barely a character anyway) before it just takes it right the hell back. That's filmmaking 101, for God's sake, and the movie blows it too.

-The last scene in the movie. In its entirety. I haven't been that exasperated since I stupidly forced myself to watch Pacific Rim: Uprising. There are so many things wrong with it that it's hard to know how to tackle it. I don't care that Eddie stopped that guy from extorting the shop owner--he openly turned into a 10 foot tall alien and ate a guy in front of her, and the movie just laughs and shrugs like it's just totally fine, like that woman isn't about to lose her shit, call the cops, or fuck, the NSA/FBI/CIA/Avengers on Eddie for making her a witness to murder, and endangering pretty much anyone around them. To say nothing of the fact that there is no reason a 10 foot tall alien with a million sharp teeth needs to say a single word to threaten someone. You are the threat, buddy. Your existence is the threat. Why did you need to insist on threatening to bite things off? You're terrifying and nothing you say is going to somehow make you scarier, especially when you just ate the guy anyway. It's like they just made that scene for the final trailer, much like that "I thought she was with you" comment all the way back in Batman v. Superman despite in-canon it made no sense. It's so unnecessary. And don't get me started on the fact that the crook actually asked the giant alien who it is. Fuck you. That was a lazy, transparent attempt to spoonfeed the wretched cliche that Michael Keaton's Batman made famous. (Consequently, all movies ever, please stop doing this cliche. Stop it. Just find another way to announce yourself. It's really tired, y'all, let it go already.) No human would ever look at that thing and ask it who the fuck it is. He'd piss himself and die of fright. Period. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Piss. Die. Period.

-Nitpick: Why was there that weird Godzilla (2014) trailer noise every time Venom attacked someone? Did they just steal it from public domain? They used it almost like the Inception horn cliche that Hollywood was obsessed with for a while and it took me right out of the scene every damn time.

-Nitpick: They really thought we're so stupid that we needed Kasady to actually say his character's name out loud. Look, you fuckers, you know goddamn well that end credits scenes are extras and that people can go home and Google things instead of you literally spelling it out for us. Hell, you know that not that many Average Joes and mainstream people went to this movie anyway since Venom is a second-stringer villain and your main demographic is die-hard Eddie Brock fans anyway. So having Kasady say the damn name “Carnage” in the post credits scene really was the final fart in my general direction. Give us some fucking credit, man. Venom has barely five plotlines to his whole character anyway. Of course we knew you were going to drop Carnage for the Sequel Hook, you condescending twat of a film.

Look, I get it. I'm hypercritical because I write fiction for a living. There are plenty of movies where turning your brain off is required in order to enjoy it, but I think this movie is asking me to get an entire lobotomy to be able to swallow the big-ass pill it's offering. It's just so sloppy and uncaring and yet it's holding its grubby little hands out for your money and your love and I think it's undeserving of it on every last level. It has zero comprehension of what it's trying to accomplish since it's a money grab, and its artistic choices are nothing short of bonkers. It's so strange that it even veers outside of the So Bad It's Good category for me. I can't in good confidence recommend it to anyone even though it's almost like a study in what not to do in both comic book movies and movies in general. It's weird in a distasteful way rather than in a charming way for me, honestly. I know people have rallied around it for being different and out there, but I don't think different and good are the same thing in Venom's case.

[khalilhumam]

What the FinCEN leaks reveal about the ongoing war on dirty money

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/what-the-fincen-leaks-reveal-about-the-ongoing-war-on-dirty-money/

What the FinCEN leaks reveal about the ongoing war on dirty money

By Matthew Collin Are global banks helping facilitate crime and corruption throughout the world? Over the weekend, those concerns seemed validated when journalists at Buzzfeed and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) announced they had obtained a large cache of financial records that showed some of the biggest banks in the world have been hosting Ponzi schemes, moving money around for billionaire friends of Vladimir Putin, and providing services to known terrorist financiers and arms traffickers. Since then, the newspapers have been abuzz with stories of wrongdoing, the stocks of several international banks have tanked, and even former presidential contenders Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have weighed in. And the stories are likely to keep coming.

The leaks provide a small snapshot of the US government’s attempts to keep tabs on financial crime

The files in question were reports collected from banks by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the arm of the U.S. Treasury tasked with keeping tabs on and combating money laundering. In the U.S., when a bank spots a client or a transaction that raises suspicion, they are required to file a suspicious activity report (SAR) and submit it to FinCEN. A SAR usually contains basic information about the client and transaction, as well as a short narrative written by those at the bank in charge of worrying about financial crime. There are no hard rules on what constitutes a suspicious transaction and so banks may rely on a number of criteria. One common sign of suspicion is one in which a client attempts to avoid attention from the authorities by making several deposits below $10,000, which is an automatic reporting threshold. Banks might also be more likely to report on transactions involving unclear sources and beneficiaries, or those connected to jurisdictions with a history of financial crime. Banks and a few other regulated industries file roughly 2.2 million of these every single year. SARs are one of the primary means through which “financial intelligence units” such as FinCEN monitor the financial system, relying on the private sector to sound the alarm when something is amiss. The cache of 2,100 reports that reporters got their hands on is just a small sliver of the roughly 12 million SARs FinCEN has received since 2011. By the media’s account, it is a list of reports assembled during congressional investigations into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, as well as several other law enforcement investigations. The small sample means that it is hard to infer much about the overall state of money laundering from what was released, and because these were SARs that had already piqued the authorities’ attention, it is not surprising that they detail some pretty bad behavior. These leaks also differ from previous bank leaks such as the Panama Papers in a crucial way: They are a snapshot into financial crime that banks are openly reporting to the authorities. This means, on a basic level, the reporting system is functioning. But the same leaks also show that banks frequently filed a SAR months after the transaction had taken place, and sometimes multiple times on the same client without anyone seemingly taking any action. This is frustrating because there has been a seismic shift in anti-money laundering (AML) enforcement in the past two decades. In the years following both 9/11 and the Great Recession, pressure on banks to be on the lookout for dirty money swelled. Since 2008, U.S. regulators have handed out nearly $30 billion in fines to those found to have facilitated money laundering, sanctions evasion, or terrorist financing. But the presence of many of the accounts in the FinCEN SARs leak, even after banks were slapped with large fines and deferred prosecution agreements, suggests that banks have yet to truly rehabilitate, that the international financial system is still rife with dirty cash. It is also possible that, in some ways, recent efforts to clamp down on money laundering might have made FinCEN’s job a lot harder than it used to be.

US authorities are receiving too many useless suspicious activity reports

In response to a surge in regulatory pressure, banks and other financial institutions responded not only by investing more in their compliance departments: They also began sending in more SARs to FinCEN. This behavior made sense because banks will get into serious trouble with the authorities if they fail to file a SAR on a client who later ends up getting caught laundering money, but there are no repercussions to filing a report that ends up being a false alarm. This leads banks to file “defensively,” issuing a SAR on a client if there is even a whiff of suspicion, shunting the investigation over to FinCEN employees to deal with.

Figure 1. The number of SARs that lands on each FinCEN employee’s desk is skyrocketing

This wouldn’t be a problem if FinCEN’s resources were rising commensurate with the increase in its paperwork. But that’s not what is happening: Since 2001, FinCEN’s staffing has increased by only about 70 percent, from 178 people to an estimated 300 or so this year. But since 2003, SARs from banks have quadrupled. The average FinCEN employee now has 4,000 SARs a year to investigate from banks alone. At those levels, there is no way for an investigator to reliably separate the signal from the noise. What little evidence we have on defensive filing suggests it makes for a less effective anti-money laundering system. A study by economists Brigitte Unger and Frans van Waarden found that in the late 2000s, SARs filed by banks in the Netherlands were falling at the same time they were skyrocketing in the United States. Despite this, conviction rates for money laundering-related offenses in the Netherlands actually increased over this period, while they remained relatively flat in the U.S., suggesting it is the quality, not the quantity of the reports that matters.

Despite capacity constraints, US authorities are now monitoring financial crime on a global scale

FinCEN receives suspicious activity reports only from banks operating in the U.S., but due to the country’s unique position in the global economy, that reporting goes well beyond U.S. borders. As pointed out by my colleague Eswar Prasad, the U.S. dollar is still the most common currency used when someone makes an overseas payment. But when a bank makes a transaction in U.S. dollars, it typically is required to do so through a “correspondent” bank based in the United States. Banks maintain these correspondent relationships for precisely this purpose: To help them transact in foreign currency and to move money between banks that have no existing business relationship. But the moment a U.S.-based bank handles the transaction, it has fallen into the reach of the SAR reporting system.

Figure 2. Many countries are reliant on the United States for cross-border payments

Figure 3. Jurisdictions with more correspondent ties to the US had more banks appear in the leaked SARs data

Data from The Clearing House and the International Monetary Fund suggest that, on average, around 80 percent of banks in a country have a correspondent relationship with a U.S.-based bank. And those with closer ties to U.S. banks saw a much greater chance that they would end up in the leaked data: After controlling for GDP per capita and several other factors, countries where the share of banks with U.S. correspondents were 10 percentage points higher see a nearly 4 percentage point increase the share of their banks that were connected to a SAR. The end result is that a lot of cross-border banking ends up in the purview of the SARs reporting system. Roughly 90 percent of the entries in the database released by the ICIJ involve payments between two banks outside of the U.S. There are even flagged transactions that begin and end in the same country: Payments from Nigeria’s First City Monument Bank to two other banks in the same city were reported to FinCEN by Standard Charter, the bank that facilitated the transaction. The result is that FinCEN is privy to reports on a significant share of global transactions. But the power of a global monitoring mechanism should include a responsibility to ensure that information gleaned is used to make AML enforcement efforts more effective. This makes FinCEN’s ability to wade through and follow up on reports as well as provide their information to overseas counterparts even more crucial.

What could the US be doing better?

Aside from a terse statement issued by FinCEN, the leaks have been largely met by silence by authorities and banks. There have also been some grumblings that they will hurt the fight against financial crime because it will make it harder for banks to trust authorities with classified information in the future. A productive way forward would be to use the momentum of the leaks to discuss real ways in which the U.S. can improve its efforts to fight money laundering at home and abroad. First, the detection of financial crime requires resources, so better funding for FinCEN should be a no-brainer. Its budget in 2020 was $120 million, which is slightly less than the production cost of the last Jumanji movie. But budget increases have to come with more boots on the proverbial ground. Despite overtures by the U.S. Treasury to start relying on artificial intelligence to improve tracking, it is unlikely that FinCEN is going to get much better at identifying and following up on cases without lowering its report-to-human being ratio. Second, given the expanding global nature of SARs, a more radical solution would be to better automate the process that FinCEN and its counterparts in other countries use to share information. Currently, financial intelligence units (FIUs) who are members of the Egmont Group (a bit like The Avengers but with more spreadsheets) can request and send information on a case-by-case basis by using a secure messaging platform managed by FinCEN. But that messaging system has been described by some as outdated, and it requires either a requesting FIU to know what they are looking for or FinCEN to have determined the SAR as being relevant. Moving to a system where SAR databases can be, at a minimum, pinged for hits (as European countries have experimented with) before a formal request for information is made would help speed up cross-border collaboration. Third, FinCEN and the U.S. Treasury also need to set incentives for banks to go beyond just reporting, and when they do report, to do so accurately. After more than a decade of large fines and deferred prosecution agreements as well as costly investments by banks in their compliance departments, the FinCEN leaks have revealed that the system still isn’t working. Banks are doing their duty in reporting suspicious activity, but many haven’t shown much interest or ability in going further than that, particularly with clients that bring in a steady stream of revenue. The authorities will need to go back to the drawing board to figure out what measures would be most effective at getting banks to embrace compliance over profit. At the same time, U.S. authorities need to find ways to incentivize more accurate reporting. FinCEN recently announced upcoming plans to issue new guidance to banks on improving their AML effectiveness and providing “useful” intelligence to regulators and law enforcement. But it is unclear that this will reduce the incentives for banks to file defensive SARs unless FinCEN develops a clear, agreed-upon metric for accuracy that it can use to push back on banks that overfile. Finally, despite leading the charge against financial crime globally, the U.S. is woefully behind on making its own economy less hospitable to laundered assets. It is the only major economy that does not routinely and automatically share bank account information that foreign authorities need to track down tax evaders. It is also astonishingly easy in many states for foreigners to obscure their wealth by creating an anonymous shell company. A bipartisan bill requiring new companies to report the identity of the ultimate beneficiary to FinCEN recently passed in the House of Representatives, but has yet to receive a vote in the Senate. If it truly wants to improve its footprint in the war on financial crime, the U.S. will need to go further than this, but it would be a start.

The data and code used to create the figures in this piece are available for download here. 

[torentialtribute]

Pip Hare on beating the odds as she prepares to compete in Vendee Globe round-the-world race

On November 8, 2020, sailor Pip Hare is at the start to compete in one of the most demanding sporting events in history.

Since the first edition in 1989, only 167 newcomers have tried to run the 24,000-mile, non-stop, round-the-world Vendee Globe race. Only 89 have completed

But for Hare the beginning of the line is a triumph, a journey that has been in the making for ten years and that has seen her languishing in a serious traffic accident, a serious lack of financing and more than a little skepticism.

Pip Hare prepares itself

Pip Hare prepares to compete in the 2020 Vendée Globe round-the- to participate in the 2020 Vendee Globe around the world race "

Pip Hare prepares to compete in the 2020 Vendee Globe around-the-world race

The 45-year-old has planned the campaign since he was a solo sailor 10 years ago

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The 45-year-old has been planning the campaign since he was solo toilens 10 years ago.

When asked why she keeps going, the Poole-based sailor has a simple answer: & # 39; I am a person by nature that was never finished fi.

& It has nothing to do with medals or awards, accolades are absolutely unimportant to me. I'm just curious. I always want to know.

Hare has rented IMOCA 60 Superbigou for the duration of the Vendee Globe campaign "Haas has rented IMOCA 60

Hare has rented IMOCA 60 Superbigou for the duration of the Vendee Globe campaign] Superbigou

for the duration of the Vendee Globe campaign

The 45-year-old, raised in East Anglia, felt never intended for such a monumental task.

The dream of the Vendee Globe began to form when it entered its first transatlantic race on its own, the OSTAR, in 2009.

To prepare, Pip decided to cross the ocean in advance, taking her 56 days from Uruguay to the UK, and by the end of that year she had crossed the Atlantic three times.

& # 39; The Poole-based racer said: & # 39; That first trip was t and I learned all my lessons. when I reached the bottom, when I learned to sleep well, to manage myself psychologically, I learned everything about myself and how I could reconcile things.

& # 39; There is no one else and you cannot sob in a hankey or say that you cannot do it. It is all self-taught.

In April 2018, Pip was knocked off her bicycle in Poole. She broke her pelvis and only became fully mobile in December.

She added: & # 39; It's still pretty painful, especially when I'm cold and wet. & # 39;

It will probably hurt her for the rest of her life, but she is quite predictable

& I could have been killed very easily by that truck, so it makes you realize how much you want to live in your life & # 39;

Haas has had Haas has had Haas has had Haas has had

Haas has had to make many sacrifices and the financing remains the most important obstacles for her

Hare has also stopped her full-time coaching job and does not use campaign financing to make a living.

She will participate in an oard IMOCA 60 Superbigou who was rented four times worldwide in February by the owner Jaanus Tamme on favorable terms after the French sailor Vendee campaign broke through and was renovated to reach the racing condition.

Compatriot Alex Thomson is the same age and is on his way to a fifth race in the specially built £ 5 million boat with the track record of 74 days in his sights.

The IMOCA 60 is the standard used by all competitors during the Vendee Globe

The IMOCA 60 is the standard boat is used by all participants during the Vendee Globe

Campaign Leader

There were other challenges, particularly fundraising, Chris Adams, one of 15 unpaid, part-time volunteers who the campaign assisted, said: "If you ask Pip what is happening at night, it is not only in a 60-foot boat in the Southern Ocean, it is financing the campaign.

& Many companies simply could not include us in the budget and they never get the chance to be involved in such a thing.

& Could we involve these people through a collaborative approach? We did that and the response in the community was fantastic.

<img id = "i-6c8b6f3ca4bc2deb" src = "https://ift.tt/2YIQLHT "height =" 476 "width =" 634 "alt =" Chris Adams (left) serves the campaign leader for Hare's Vendee Globe bid "Chris Adams (left) serves the campaign leader for Hare & # 39; s Vendee Globe bid"

Chris Adams (left) serves the campaign leader for Her & Vendee Globe bid

Completed as next step on his journey Pip the Round The Island Race – one round of the Isle of Wight – on June 28, crossing the line 10th in 10 hours, 42 minutes and 27 seconds.

For the race, she was assisted by a team of eight consisting of young sailors, supporters and volunteers.

& # 39; No, I thought she would always do it. That has never been a question for me, & one answered.

Around 1,200 boats entered the The Island race this year, with Hare crossing line 10 "class =" blkBorder img-share "

Around 1200 boats entered this year's Round The Island race, with Hare crossing the line 10th

Despite the setbacks, Hare continues to operate.

She has also completed the Three Peaks Yacht Race.

After learning that he had no more than five, Pip and her friend Charles promptly became the first person to join the team.

Hare, who admits she & # 39; is a completely different person & # 39; on the boat, is now working with Australian speed record world record holder Paul Larsen for double-handed Fastnet race, starting on August 3.

Larsen said : & # 39; She stuck her neck out with this campaign.

& # 39; She can do it & # 39;

& # 39; She can of course she can. The best Vendee Globe stories aren't the winning boats, it's the big adventures that hit the audience, and it's the amazing things. She can make so much history.

For Pip, it is a goal to beat Dame Ellen MacArthur & # 39; s current record of 94 days for solo-navigating by a woman.

& # 39; When I step on this boat, especially when I am alone, I am completely free of the perceptions and ideas of other people.

] & # 39; It fully enables me to be the person that I am capable of.

& # 39; The only person you are responsible for is being able to be yourself.

& # 39; If you make the effort, you will get the rewards back and if you don't, you won't.

& # 39; It's that simple. & # 39;

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[junker-town]

NFL players turned MMA fighters tell of pioneering a new career path

MMA's doors are open for former football players when their NFL careers are over.

Sixty-seven seconds into the first round, Matt Mitrione and Fedor Emelianenko collided with simultaneous right hands that knocked both fighters to the canvas. Mitrione scrambled to his feet first and seven seconds later landed another right hand that knocked the 40-year-old Russian unconscious, securing Mitrione the biggest victory of his career.

“He’s easily the best person I’ve ever fought,” Mitrione said of Emelianenko after the fight. “He’s not arguably the greatest heavyweight of all time; he is the greatest heavyweight of all time. He’s arguably the greatest fighter of all time.”

The pinnacle of Mitrione’s athletic career was supposed to be on the gridiron — maybe a game-winning sack in the Super Bowl. Instead, it came in front of more than 12,000 fans in Madison Square Garden in June.

Seconds after his knockout victory at Bellator 180, Mitrione put on the jersey he donned during his time with the New York Giants — appealing to the hometown fans he once played in front of at Giants Stadium.

It wasn’t an unexpected result: Mitrione entered the night as the slight betting favorite. But it would have been unfathomable just eight or so years ago, before Mitrione and others blazed a trail for former football players to try their hand at mixed martial arts.

A journey from the football field to the cage

“Who wants to get punched in the face willingly? That’s crazy.” — Matt Mitrione, MMA heavyweight

Mitrione started 35 consecutive games from 1998 to 2000 at defensive tackle for Purdue — a team that had Drew Brees at the time and made the Rose Bowl in 2000. But even with a collegiate career that included 36 tackles for loss, Mitrione wasn’t selected in the NFL draft.

He battled his way on to the Giants’ roster as an undrafted free agent, appearing in nine games with the team in 2002.

But his time with the team was doomed by a foot injury that kept him out for the entire 2003 season. The Giants released Mitrione in 2004 and attempts to keep his NFL career alive with the San Francisco 49ers and Minnesota Vikings fizzled.

By the end of 2005, Mitrione was out of the NFL for good.

Mitrione’s post-football career began when he started a sports nutrition company that sold supplements. One of his buyers was childhood friend and then-Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Jayson Werth, who first offered the former NFL defensive lineman a chance to fight.

“Werth became an amateur MMA promoter and asked me to come on one of his shows and help sell some tickets, so I said OK,” Mitrione said. “I just wanted to use the opportunity to make sure that Werth was happy — he wasn’t charging any money to take our product to the Washington Nationals and the Philadelphia Phillies. So I was like ‘Well, this is something that will appease him and will be good for the company as well. It’ll be fun for me to do it.’”

A career in the sport wasn’t close to a reality in his mind, though.

“Who wants to get punched in the face willingly? That’s crazy,” Mitrione said. “I was training for about six months — I got injured — I ended up not fighting on [Werth’s] show. I became friends with a guy he was training with and six months later, I was on The Ultimate Fighter and that was the beginning of my career. I only went on The Ultimate Fighter to promote my company.”

After a win in the first round of The Ultimate Fighter — the UFC’s reality show — Mitrione lost in the quarterfinals. But he did enough to impress the promotion and earn a spot on the UFC’s roster. In December 2009 he made his professional MMA debut with the UFC.

Nearly eight years later, Mitrione’s 17th professional fight was against Emelianenko, a legend in the sport who decimated all challengers for the first decade of his career. Several years removed from his prime, Emelianenko aimed to recapture some of his former glory in New York City.

Mitrione shut the lights out on that dream with a thunderous punch.

Never has he fought on a bigger stage and never has he stood across from a more well-known fighter. It may even be the most significant victory ever for the brief list of former NFL players who have made the transition to MMA.

MMA is a tough road to financial success

“If you’re planning to be a pro MMA fighter, you’re not going to do it to make a big paycheck right away ... you’re doing it for the love of it.” — Austen Lane, MMA heavyweight

Conor McGregor is on track to receive upwards of $100 million when he fights Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a boxing match on Aug. 26. It will be easily the largest payday of the brash Irishman’s career in combat sports, but he’s also made a more than comfortable living in his four years in the UFC.

McGregor’s monumental rise to become the biggest star in the sport has meant multimillion-dollar checks for his most recent MMA fights. In June, he cracked the top 25 of Forbes’ list of the highest-paid athletes.

But his pay is far from the norm. His rough climb to the top, however, is a story many fighters can relate to.

A week before McGregor’s first fight in the UFC in April 2013, he collected a welfare check of €180 (roughly $204). This, despite the fact that he accumulated a 12-2 record as a professional fighter in Europe.

“It takes a lot of time, obviously a lot of effort, and a lot of fights just to get in the position to where you’re making a lot of money,” Ariel Helwani of MMAFighting.com said. “People think that just because you make it to the UFC that you’ve made it — and it can take you 10 years to get to the UFC — but typically unless you’re some kind of big free agent signing that they’ve signed, you’re going to come in making $10,000 to show and $10,000 if you win. You might get a bonus here and there, but you’re not making big money at all.”

That’s a stark contrast when compared to NFL players who have a minimum salary set at $465,000 for the 2017 season.

Austen Lane, 29, spent three seasons with the Jacksonville Jaguars before bouncing between the Kansas City Chiefs, Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears in 2013 and 2014. After five years in the NFL, the 6’6 defensive end retired with 17 career starts and three sacks under his belt, collecting about $2.37 million in earnings along the way.

Now, Lane is an MMA fighter who made his professional debut in April and defeated his first opponent by technical knockout in 14 seconds.

His second fight was just as quick, with Lane knocking out another opponent in a matter of seconds. But a 2-0 record means he still has a long way to go before he gets any kind of significant pay for fighting.

“If you’re planning to be a pro MMA fighter, you’re not going to do it to make a big paycheck right away,” Lane said. “I think that might turn some guys off. If you’re trying to be a pro MMA fighter, you’re doing it for the love of it.

“You go from [an NFL salary] to fighting on your first pro MMA card and making about $600 a fight. Obviously there’s a definite pay discrepancy, and that’s even in the UFC too. You look at UFC fighters, they’re not making millions of dollars.”

For Lane, the love of the sport is there. He was just 6 years old when the UFC’s inaugural event was held in November 1993, but Lane remembers getting a VHS of UFC 1 and watching it with his stepdad as an elementary school student.

Even during his NFL career, Lane was already looking forward to a career in fighting.

“When I was with my last team, the Bears, I was doing jiu-jitsu tournaments during the offseason, which is probably frowned upon because of risk of injury,” Lane said. “When I won them I couldn’t accept the cash prizes. I’d just sneak out the back door and say ‘Hey, sorry I can’t accept anything like that.’ So when I was with my last team in Chicago, I kind of knew what I was going to do next and that was MMA for sure.”

For Eryk Anders, a love of MMA came much later.

Seven years ago, he became a hero in a single play at Alabama — drilling Texas quarterback Garrett Gilbert in the back in the final three minutes of the 2010 BCS National Championship Game. The sack forced a fumble that gave the ball back to the Crimson Tide and essentially put the game on ice.

Anders’ venture into the NFL was much less fruitful. He signed a contract with the Cleveland Browns as an undrafted free agent, but didn’t stick with the team through training camp. He then had brief stints in the Arena Football League and Canadian Football League.

Still in the middle of his athletic prime, Anders had to face the reality that his football career had run off the rails before it ever left the station.

“I was working the 9-to-5, just doing the desk-job thing, which did not satisfy me at all,” Anders said. “I had the urge to compete in something and there’s just not a whole lot of things for adults to compete in.”

That competitive drive led him to an MMA gym in Alabama. Two months later, he was lined up across from another fighter.

“It wasn’t sanctioned, it was in a boxing ring in a bar in Huntsville, Alabama,” Anders said. “That was my first fight and I don’t recommend anybody doing that because I didn’t know anything. Luckily I came out on the good end of it — I knocked the guy out in 53 seconds and I’ve been at it ever since.

“I thought it would be fun and that happened about five years ago. Now I do this full time. I coach jiu jitsu, boxing, I train people, and I train myself.”

Anders, 30, currently has an 9-0 record as a professional fighter. He earned a first championship belt in June with a unanimous decision victory that made him Legacy Fighting Alliance’s middleweight title holder. Four weeks later, he made his UFC debut against Rafael Natal, a tough veteran with 16 previous UFC fights on his resume.

The big stage didn’t intimidate Anders, though. It took him less than three minutes to knock Natal out and formally announce himself as one of the most promising up-and-coming contenders in the UFC’s middleweight division.

In case you missed it... that left hand tho @ErykAnders | #UFCLongIsland http://pic.twitter.com/l85ov4LpeL

— UFC (@ufc) July 22, 2017

But for both Lane and Anders, the prospect of making money anywhere near the equivalent of McGregor, or even a player on an NFL practice squad, is far on the horizon. Couple that with the danger of stepping into a cage across from another man aiming to injure and MMA is a road that still doesn’t draw many former football players.

The threat of injury may deter more former NFL players

“People are punching you in the face. No matter how tough somebody is, when they have pads on them, the game changes a whole lot.” — Eryk Anders, MMA middleweight

Johnnie Morton racked up 8,719 receiving yards over 12 seasons in the NFL. He’s behind only Calvin Johnson and Herman Moore on the Detroit Lions’ all-time franchise list in the category.

But at age 35, he decided to give MMA a try. After training for only two months, he got in the ring in June 2007 to disastrous results.

Just 38 seconds into his first fight, Morton was clubbed with a right hand that left him motionless on his back. Adding insult to injury, news that the former receiver tested positive for steroids broke less than two weeks later.

Morton never fought again.

It’s the most obvious and inherent risk that comes with fighting in mixed martial arts. No matter how well someone’s physical skills translate or how well the fight pays that athlete, there’s still a realistic chance of a loss that carries devastating consequences.

“A lot of guys have egos that couldn’t handle getting beat up in front of family, friends, everyone on the block, loved ones, grandma, grandpa,” Mitrione said. “I have a big mouth and I’m pretty obnoxious. So I fought a lot and got beat up a lot, so that concern wasn’t overwhelming for me. Getting my ass kicked in front of five million people wasn’t that much of a concern for me.”

But Mitrione played sparingly in just nine NFL games. Those with more longevity with the sport bring with them much more bumps, bruises and the possibility of a history of concussions.

“When I tell people I used to play in the NFL and now I do MMA, the biggest thing they say is ‘Aren’t you worried about CTE and head injuries?’” Lane said. “[In football], we’re banging heads in practice at least 40 or 50 times a day and this just goes on and on and on. In MMA, I only spar really hard like two or three times a week, and that’s with headgear and 14-ounce gloves. I definitely think concussions are a problem more in the NFL by far than training in MMA.”

Still, both sports bring the risk of head injuries in a way that other sports don’t. That alone can be enough to dissuade other former football players from fighting professionally.

Do similarities between football and MMA allow for easier transitions?

“They’re both leverage sports. They’re both speed sports. And they’re both power sports.” — Tareq Azim, MMA coach

Brock Lesnar is a bona fide freak of nature. He’s on the short list of athletes who have ever had an NFL contract and a professional MMA fight, but his story is much different from the rest.

A 6’3, 265-pound mountain of muscle, Lesnar was the 2000 NCAA Heavyweight Champion in wrestling during his time at the University of Minnesota. He parlayed that into a successful career in pro wrestling, becoming a WWE champion just two years later.

In 2004, Lesnar decided to put aside his wrestling career and attempt to make it in the NFL, despite not playing football since high school. He earned a contract with the Minnesota Vikings and spent the preseason with the team, but didn’t make the final roster.

He returned to wrestling, but two years later, Lesnar again announced a departure. This time, he dove into the world of MMA and in his fourth pro fight, won the UFC heavyweight championship.

The formula for success for Lesnar in all of his ventures has been simple: He’s bigger and stronger than his competition and surprisingly agile given his size.

They are the same advantages that have led to success for Mitrione, Lane, Anders, and other former NFL players who have transitioned into MMA — even if those attributes aren’t as pronounced as they are with Lesnar.

“There’s a lot of correlation [between football and MMA] because it’s extremely physical, right? It’s physical abuse,” said Tareq Azim, founder of Empower Gym. “They’re both combat sports. They’re both leverage sports. They’re both speed sports. And they’re both power sports.”

Azim was a linebacker at Fresno State, but brought with him a lifetime of training in martial arts. He says his understanding of leverage and hand techniques gave him advantages on the field.

Now he’s an MMA coach who works with championship-level fighters like Jake Shields and Gilbert Melendez, as well as NFL players like Marshawn Lynch and Marcus Peters.

“They’re not coming in here fighting. They’re learning the art, they’re learning it as a craft, they’re learning it as a sport, and they’re learning how to apply it to their chosen fields,” Azim said.

Before Lane retired from the NFL to pursue a career in MMA, he found the benefits of training in both sports.

“I wanted to find a boxing gym just to keep my hands fast,” Lane said. “I really liked jiu jitsu too, because it was really good for my hips. It opened them up and made me a lot more loose and more mobile.”

Many of the same physical abilities required to be successful in football translate well to MMA.

“My whole life I’ve been training short-area quickness, speed and explosion,” Anders said. “It all translates into mixed martial arts whether you’re throwing punches on your feet, or kicks, or wrestling. At the same time I was never training kicks or punches so I had to learn how to throw punches properly, and how to kick with proper technique. Now that I’ve got those techniques down, the power and explosion come into play.”

Those skills aren’t useful solely in football and MMA, though. Professional wrestling has also provided a path for the powerful and explosive.

Pro wrestling used to be the avenue of choice for former football players

“I feel like a guy who fizzles out of the NFL or the CFL or college football would be more inclined these days to try MMA, as opposed to pro wrestling like they were 20 or 30 years ago.” — Ariel Helwani, MMAFighting.com

Near the top of the WWE’s list of current stars is Roman Reigns — a 6’3, 265-pound wrestler described in his official bio as an “agile, imposing juggernaut.”

But long before his time as a champion with the company, he was known as Leati Anoa’i — an All-ACC defensive lineman at Georgia Tech who was trying to cut his teeth in the NFL.

His 29.5 career tackles for loss in college and 12 sacks earned him chances with the Minnesota Vikings and Jacksonville Jaguars, but he made neither squad and turned to the Canadian Football League. After a handful of games with the Edmonton Eskimos, Anoa’i turned to pro wrestling.

Unlike MMA, wrestling does not feature legitimate matches. Instead, the scripted and choreographed contests are driven by storylines with characters who rise through the ranks if they can capture the attention of the WWE and fans — whether that’s cheers or boos.

The high-flying acrobatics and physicality of the WWE require wrestlers to bring a blend of size, athleticism and charisma. Roman Reigns has unequivocally captured that.

But that mix of skills and personality isn’t easy to find. For decades, parsing through football players with careers that ended prematurely has been a good place to start the search.

WWE stars like Goldberg, Hacksaw Jim Duggan and Mojo Rawley all had brief stints in the NFL before finding success in pro wrestling. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson played defensive tackle for the Miami Hurricanes and spent time with the CFL’s Calgary Stampeders before beginning his wrestling career.

Johnson, 45, made his way into the world of wrestling in 1996 — three years after the UFC’s first event. Fourteen years later, he said he would have begun a career in mixed martial arts instead of wrestling had the sport been further along.

“There’s no question about it,” Johnson told Helwani at UFC 119. “I love this sport and I’ve thought about competing in the octagon. It’s something I would’ve loved to have done, but I went another route.”

Even as late as 2007, long after Johnson became a mainstream star in professional wrestling, he says he was still considering MMA.

Yup, I considered @ufc 10yrs ago. My goal was @GregJacksonMMA as my coach & 2 full yrs to train. Smartened up 'cause I prefer my jaw in tact https://t.co/p0Yn9n7MGq

— Dwayne Johnson (@TheRock) July 23, 2017

Has MMA now reached a point where the next Dwayne Johnson would aspire to be a UFC champion instead of a WWE champion?

“I do feel like a guy who fizzles out of the NFL or the CFL or college football would be more inclined these days to try MMA as opposed to pro wrestling like they were 20 or 30 years ago,” Helwani said. “The sport is more popular ... it’s a little more mainstream. I get the sense more athletes are watching it — when there’s a big fight you’ll see a lot of football players tweet about it or basketball players. It’s definitely on their radar more than 10 years ago.”

Still, there are plenty of reasons why the transition from football to MMA isn’t more common. The most significant is money, and that likely won’t change soon.

Unionization efforts could open more doors for elite athletes

“There’s no union, there’s nobody to stand up to them and say ‘Hey look, stop being selfish pricks.’” — Matt Mitrione, MMA heavyweight

There’s a labor fight on the way between the NFL and NFL Players Association. In 2011, the negotiation of a new collective bargaining agreement caused a 132-day lockout, but was resolved in time to avoid the cancellation of any regular season games.

Finding a resolution in 2021 may be even more difficult.

But even the idea of a union fighting for athletes is still a foreign concept in MMA, where fighters receive a disproportionately small percentage of the pie.

“There’s no union, there’s nobody to stand up to them and say ‘Hey look, stop being selfish pricks. Break off this money,’” Mitrione said. “You can’t give us 15 percent of the total revenue and think that’s enough money. Can’t do it. Break off 45 to 55 percent, you guys keep your 45 to 55 percent, and let’s have a real job here.

“There’s so much money that was made in the UFC and that money wasn’t divvied up properly. If it was, all the NFL washouts who are MMA hopefuls would have a viable career in something other than football. Where they could make legitimate money, comparable money, or even more and go forward from there.”

According to documents obtained by Bleacher Report, UFC fighters receive about 15.6 percent of the company’s revenue. Recent efforts to unionize have made very little headway.

“I certainly believe that the fighters need some kind of collective bargaining deal,” Helwani said. “The UFC’s TV deal is up in a year and a half, and there’s been talks of them looking for anywhere from $400 million to what they’re making now, which is a little over $100 million per year — and that’s just from Fox Sports alone. The fighters make zero percent of that.

“If they had more of a unified front they could fight for things like a base pay and revenue sharing. Those would certainly be things that would be on the table and are things that could definitely get done if they were to get together.”

But some major challenges stand in the way of an MMA union.

For one, fighters are reliant on just a few paydays per year and are hesitant to jump into a labor dispute that could keep them out of fights. Also, there are several different MMA organizations and a blanket association to represent all fighters may be unrealistic.

Among the differences between organizations is the ability to sell sponsorships. In 2015, the UFC sold uniform rights to Reebok, disallowing all other sponsors from advertising with the fighters during bouts — a policy no other promotion has.

“That was a hell of a kick in the nuts to lose all that money,” Mitrione said. “There was nothing you could do about it. You find yourself being their bitch and you’re calling them up being like ‘Hey man, I just had a fight and I haven’t had a check in the mail. Am I gonna get one?’ Then you’re begging your boss for money? Like ‘Please sir, can I have some more?’ like you’re Oliver Twist asking for a second helping.”

How far is MMA from a real unionizing effort? And how far is the sport from being a more viable career path for top athletes?

“Twenty or 30 years from now, we’re going to look back on this era and just kind of the deals that fighters were involved in and what they were and weren’t getting, and look and say ‘Wow, I can’t believe that’s the way things were,’” Helwani said. “We’re in like 1920s football. We’re playing with leather helmets right now when you think of how much has changed. The sport is still in its infancy and a lot will change over the next few decades.”

As that change occurs, perhaps MMA will one day draw more athletes away from the NFL. For now, it occasionally gets some of the scraps.

The NFL chews up and spits out athletes in droves. The average length of a career in the league is about three years, leaving many of the nation’s best athletes with no choice but to look for a new career path in their mid-20s.

For a few, MMA has provided that option.

For Mitrione, it offered a road that most recently stopped off at Madison Square Garden — the most famous venue in the history of combat sports, which hosted eight Muhammad Ali fights — and a win over the best heavyweight in MMA history.

It will be a long climb for Lane or Anders or any other former football player to match or surpass Mitrione’s accomplishment. And it may be an even taller task to reach a point where their pay is on par with their NFL counterparts.

But the competitive fire that fuels many on their way to the NFL has fueled the few who have attempted the transition to MMA. And as the still-young sport continues to grow, it stands to pull more former football players in the future.