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thebibliomancer · 3 years

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #234: The Witch’s Tale!

August, 1983

“Seasons of the Witch!”

If Wanda offers you a free Halloween mask, politely tell her no thanks.

A lot going on in this cover. Because this is one of those issues that summarizes a character’s continuity because wikipedia doesn’t exist yet and back issues aren’t super easy to get.

Last time: There was an Avengers/Fantastic Four sorta crossover where Annihilus tried to blow up the universe. The primary fallout of that is that Vision walked into a null-field and then collapsed. He’s basically in a robot-coma recovering.

This time: the Avengers bring Vision home in a tube.

It looks like the kind of coffin you shoot into space but it’s not. It’s just a life-support capsule that looks like a space coffin.

Now though it sucks that Vision is in a robot coma, this does mean that he and Wanda are back involved with the book again. We briefly checked in with them during the Trial of Yellowjacket arc.

But we’ve been pretty short of Scarlet Witch and Vision since #211 when they left the team to try to have a go at a regular life. I’ll summarize in brief how that’s been at the appropriate time. Point being, that’s twenty some issues with a very low amount of my second favorite comic couple.

She-Hulk and Thor carry the capsule into the basement of Avengers Mansion because that’s where their medical center is. The basement. Of course. Why wouldn’t you put your medical center in the basement. Best place for it.

Wanda thanks Wasp for inviting her (and Vision) to stay at the Mansion when they could have stayed at the Baxter Building.

Wasp: “Nonsense! That place was left in a mess by Annihilus! Besides, the Avengers take care of their own!”

(Tangentially, the Avengers have always been more of a family to Wanda than anyone else aside from Django and Marya Maximoff who raised her and Pietro. The Avengers are Wanda’s family basically.)

Also, it’s not said anywhere but I feel like probably Reed Richards never did do that procedure that was supposed to help Vision recover more quickly as distracted as he was by Franklin’s injuries.

While Wanda hovers (metaphorically) around Vision’s tube, Wasp reflects on how hard this is hitting her.

Wasp: “She and the Vision were such a strange match, but they’ve been so devoted to each other their marriage worked -- !”

Oof, that bold hurts, Jan.

Wanda asks for some time alone with her husband so the Avengers leave the basement level medical center, all thinking thoughts as often happens.

Wasp feels guilty because she’s the one that called Wanda and Vision into action but justifies that they were needed. Even though they didn’t really accomplish much.... Kinda makes it worse.

Captain America asks Thor off to have a private chat.

Captain Marvel laments that they couldn’t destroy the field before Vision was injured. And Starfox muses about the sensitivity he senses from Captain Marvel.

Kinda wondering if Stern is trying to set up a love triangle between Starfox, Captain Marvel, and She-Hulk.

Speaking of She-Hulk.

She-Hulk: Any of us could’ve wound up in a tube... or on a slab. But that’s the risk we have to take!

A very typically She-Hulk of this era kind of thought. She’s very direct.

Wasp calls a rain-check on apartment hunting. Which is what she and She-Hulk were doing before the whole invisible dome thing.

And She-Hulk finds other ways to occupy her time.

She-Hulk: “Hey, Starfox! You have any plans for tonight?”

Starfox: “Well, I’d considered checking out the local sights, but if you have a better offer -- !”

She-Hulk: “Spaceman, I can show you some things you won’t believe!”

She’s very direct.

Over at Captain America and Thor’s private conversation, Captain America catches Thor up on the happenings re: Iron Man, i.e. Tony Stark.

Cap(tain America): “It’s Iron Man, Thor... the Wasp and I paid him a visit to find out why he’d resigned from the Avengers. I... don’t quite know how to say this, but... Tony Stark hasn’t just left the Avengers! He’s given up his identity as Iron Man... turned his armor over to another man!”

Thor: “Eh? ‘Tis most passing strange!”

Cap: “That’s not the only thing that’s ‘most passing strange!’ When we talked to him, Stark was so drunk, I’m surprised he was able to stand up! And when I suggested that he’d had too much to drink, he ordered Jan and me out of his apartment!”

Turns out that off-panel at some point, Tony confided his problems with alcoholism to Thor.

Another example of the close relationship that Thor and Iron Man used to have and lamentably don’t seem to have anymore.

Cap even says that Thor has known Tony longer than the rest of the Avengers. While Wasp has been on the team just as long as Thor has, yeah, Thor has known the man in Iron Man longer.

So Cap asks Thor to try to talk to Tony because maybe he could get through to him.

Thor: “I could try, Captain! But if he rejected your advice, while under the influence, I fear for my ability to do better!”

Cap: “What about your mortal identity? Maybe if you approached him as Dr. Don Blake... man to man...”

Thor: “Mayhap. I shall give this thought.”

Thor then hammer-whirl flies off, leaving Cap to think about whether there’s anything additional that he could do, maybe in Iron Man #172, which was on sale at the same time.

Since this issue is otherwise going to be a lot of recapping Scarlet Witch’s entire life, why not pop into another book briefly for some additional content?

I’m the boss and I’ll allow it.

So over in Iron Man in general and issue #172 specifically, Tony Stark is on hard times. We know about the alcoholism and Rhodey taking over as Iron Man. But a man called Obadiah Stane is also attempting an incredibly hostile takeover of Stark International. He’s bought up all the company’s debt (and it has a lot), he has a bunch of civil suits pending against the company, and he’s secretly been the architect behind Tony Stark’s imploding life. That and Tony himself. Takes two to implode.

The last hope Stark Int. has is a writ that will force Stane to back off for a week or two. It’s not a lot but it’ll be some breathing room. Only problem is that it needs Tony Stark’s notarized signature before 5 PM and they kinda lost track of him after he broke into a museum to put on some knight armor and had to be bailed out of jail.

Rhodey decides to call Captain America for help and that’s how we get the asterisk indicating that you should check out Iron Man #172.

Cap does find Tony but unfortunately, Tony slips away in the confusion when an old Iron Man foe called Firebrand (unfortunately not a gargoyle) sets the hotel on fire because he’s just incredibly pissed off at the idea of Tony Stark.

Cap’s less-nice confrontation with Tony about his drinking is decent drama (but possibly not the right tactic to take) though so have some of that.

Anyway. Back to Avengers.

Meanwhile, over on Long Island and at the Cross Technological Enterprises building, industrial espionage gets aggressive as some men in jumpsuits and balaclavas climb the building to sneak in.

One of them is worried because that Avenger guy Hawkeye is in charge of security but the boss is like pssh Hawkeye is a chump with a broken leg.

Then Hawkeye arrives on a hover scooter because insulting Hawkeye probably just summons him to prove you wrong. He has that kind of contrarian energy at times.

He shoots all of their guns out of their hands and pins them to the wall with arrows all before they can really do anything.

His leg may be broken but his arms aren’t. And those are the limbs that do archery.

Sure, his style is slightly harshed by having only one swashbuckler boot on but that still doesn’t stop him from shooting arrows.

A woman and a photographer show up instantly to take pictures of Hawkeye’s cool victory. Apparently the woman is Sheila Danning and she says that she’s in charge of PR for Cross Technological Enterprises.

People showing up to take pictures of how cool he is makes Hawkeye feel very appreciated so he happily poses for some pictures with the captured intruders.

I feel like this is going to end up related to the Hawkeye solo miniseries that’s published around this time. The events of the miniseries cost Hawkeye his hearing but gain him a wife. So we’ll call it a net positive for Clint.

I’ll possibly summarize the relevant parts of the series when it becomes relevant to Avengers, which I’m sure it will.

Several hours later, back over at Avengers Mansion, She-Hulk wakes up after a night with Starfox.

So let’s discuss a thing.

In a later She-Hulk series, the moral iffyness of Starfox’s ability to shoot pleasure at people’s brains and make them become infatuated with him is explored. In a legal sense. As in, Starfox gets put on trial for sexual assault and accused of using his powers to seduce people.

The question is raised whether he had ever used his powers to seduce She-Hulk in regards to them getting together like this in Avengers. And when he won’t give her a straight answer, she beats the shit out of him.

Eventually, the case goes all the way up to the Living Tribunal, the cosmic judge of all realities because of course there’s one of those, and a mind probe proves that Starfox did not use his abilities to influence She-Hulk’s decision to have sex with him.

They’re both just horny people.

Anyway, Starfox and She-Hulk get on first name non-codename basis with each other. Then Starfox takes off to go explore New York, but he and She-Hulk do make plans to get together again in the evening.

She-Hulk’s post-implied-coitus giddiness is rained on when she learns that Wanda hasn’t slept at all and has spent the whole night at Vision’s side.

So now its time for She-Hulk brand very direct friendship.

She tells Jarvis to go make breakfast and she’ll deal with Wanda.

As we saw in and about the Trial of Yellowjacket, She-Hulk doesn’t really beat around the bush.

So when Wanda says she’d rather stay at Vision’s side rather than get breakfast, She-Hulk grabs her and tries to physically drag her towards self-care.

She-Hulk: “Look, watching your hubby won’t make him get well any faster. You’re coming with me! You’ll feel a lot better with a little breakfast in you!”

It doesn’t go over well.

Wanda blasts She-Hulk away and now Jen and Wanda are angry at each other and Wasp arrived just in time to play baffled mediator.

She-Hulk: “I hope you have a good dentist, Red!”

Wasp: “Jennifer!”

She-Hulk: “She started it, Wasp! I was just showing her some hospitality, and she sent me flying with her crummy hex bolts!”

Scarlet Witch: “What?! You physically pull me from my husband’s side, and you call that hospitality?!?”

Wasp: “Girls, girls! We’re all friends here! I know how upset you must be, Wanda, but you mustn't let worry get the better of you! I think we all need a spot of breakfast! Please join me, Wanda. The She-Hulk will relieve you at watching over the Vision... we all will!”

She-Hulk: “That’s what I was trying to tell her!”

Jen’s heart was in the right place but she lacks much in the way of tact?

Anyway, Wasp and Wanda set up in the library and Jarvis brings breakfast pastries to them, though Wanda refuses any.

Free breakfast aggros Captain Marvel and now she’s here too. That and She-Hulk trying to make up through a proxy.

Captain Marvel: “A little bird told me that you were serving your continental special, and I just couldn’t stay away!”

Wasp: “A little bird, C.M.?”

Captain Marvel, whispering: “Well, a big bird! She-Hulk radioed me that the Scarlet Witch was still a little down, and suggested that I might be of help, cheering her up!”

You have a good heart, Jen-Hulk.

Also, Monica just beams right in through the library window as a sunbeam before forming back into her human shape. And that’s delightful. But would be startling. Jarvis is startled. He’s seen it all but all keeps expanding.

Monica and Wanda briefly bond over both speaking French when Monica praises that Jarvis’ pastries rival the best of the French Quarter. Jan is a bit lost because she doesn’t know any French but Monica and Wanda were just very excited because they don’t get to French very often. The language.

AND with the ice broken, Monica smoothly shifts topics over to asking Wanda about herself.

Captain Marvel: “You know, there’s so much I’d like to ask you. I’ve read all about you in the files, of course -- but they’re so impersonal. You’ve led such a fascinating life.”

Scarlet Witch: “Fascinating? I suppose... but I was too young to appreciate some of the more fantastic moments.”

AND THEN WANDA LEGIT, NO FURTHER PROMPTING, STARTS NARRATING HER WHOLE LIFE STARTING FROM BIRTH.

DAMN WANDA, exposition under pressure?

So Wanda tells Monica about how she was born in WUNDAGORE, a Balkan mountain in Transia with a super-advanced city built on it. The High Evolutionary was making furries for reasons which escape me but it explains why a cow-woman answered the door when Magda, supposedly Wanda’s mom although that has changed, came knocking on the door.

She was double pregnant and on the run from a husband who had developed terrible problems and an attitude problem.

The cow-woman Bova, invited Magda into the city and helped deliver her children Pietro and Wanda. And then Magda walked off into the snow to die, pulling a Padme-on-purpose-but-years-ahead-of-time by dying just after having twins.

Her thought process was that Mystery Husband would come looking for her but if he found her frozen in the snow, he wouldn’t find out that she’d had children? I dunno, this logic is a bit spurious.

I’m glad that Wanda’s current in the year 2021 real mom isn’t someone who walked off into the snow to die because it seemed like a good idea.

Showing what an awful idea this was, Magda left Wanda and Pietro in the care of Bova who had no idea what to do with two babies. So she took the matter to the High Evolutionary who also didn’t want to deal with it and decided to dump the babies on a childless Roma couple.

High Evolutionary: ‘DOES ANYBODY WANT SOME BABIES?’

Except the comic doesn’t say Roma, they say the g-slur. I don’t think Marvel ever stops doing that. Its a weird case where the portrayal is overall sympathetic but tinged with stereotypes and using a slur.

Shape up, Marvel.

I also notice that Wanda’s recap leaves out Fake Dad Robert Frank, the Whizzer.

The first time Wanda’s parentage was Totally Revealed For Real, it was revealed that not only Magda but Robert and Madeline Joyce Frank were hanging around Wundagore waiting to give birth.

I’ve already been into it before but originally it was just the Franks kids but the Whizzer whizzed off in grief when he learned his wife died in childbirth. Then when someone got it into their head to retcon otherwise, Magda was at Wundagore and gave birth to twins and then the High Evolutionary had Bova try to give the kids to Robert but he ran off in his grief so shrugged and passed them off to Django and Marya Maximoff AKA the real parents even if not biological.

To editorialize, the Maximoffs actually raised Wanda and Pietro so no matter what, I’ll always consider them the twins’ real parents.

Anyway, the Franks aren’t part of this retelling. Which is funny because for a while Wanda thought the Whizzer was their dad and treated him like one and now she’s dumped him like raw meat for ease of retelling. Tsk tsk.

So, Wanda and Pietro lived a good life and “better parents could hardly have been found.” Then when adolescence happened, Pietro suddenly could run really fast and Wanda “discovered that strange, unpredictable things would happen if I was in a certain frame of mind and gestured in a particular way.”

That’s a pretty specific mutant power. And she relates that she kept causing accidents by gesturing in the particular way while in a certain frame of mind, it’s like, Wanda, don’t gesture that way? Get mittens or tie your fingers together. Its not hard.

Your powers are so specific!

Stereotypes happen and an angry mob burns down the Maximoffs’ camp.

Pietro ran Wanda to safety and the shock was so great that they got AMNESIA.

Marya, I think, died but Django survived and went a little mad with grief, assuming he lost his wife and kids.

For a couple years, Wanda and Pietro just kicked it around Eastern Europe, Pietro using his superspeed to catch game. Things were going okay but not great up until the time that Wanda wandered into a village and made the fuck-things-up gesture and whoops fucked things up.

I’m telling you, Wanda, mittens.

Anyway, she set a house on fire, WITH HER MIND, and now there’s an angry mob after her assuming that she’s a witch.

As sometimes happens in Marvel Eastern Europe.

The mob chased Wanda to camp where Pietro lost his shit and superspeed tried to beat up a mob but wound up getting pinned down and beaten.

Then Magneto showed up and yanked all the crude farming implements away and told the mob to gtfo.

Magneto: “Come no further, homo sapiens! The two whom you attack are under the protection of Magneto!”

An idiot: “With power such as his, he can only be Satan himself!”

An idiot who has the right idea: “Run! Run for your lives!”

Wanda thanks Magneto for the save and he demands “Let neither of you ever forget what you owe me... ever!”

Cool. Cool cool cool.

Wanda: “He took us in... fed and clothed us... but never did he show us any human kindness. We were supposed to be above that, he said... we were mutants, and under his tutelage, we became Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch!”

What a dick.

Anyway, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver were forced to join Magneto and his other agents Toad and Mastermind.

Magneto’s Brotherhood clashed with the X-Men multiple times. And then the Stranger just sorta yoinked Magneto into space.

Early X-Men is a bafflement to me.

Wanda: “Our debt had been repaid to Magneto many times over. We were beholden to him no longer... We were free. And... we were alone. We had just begun to realize the potential of our mutant powers, but we did not know how best to use them. Cut off from Magneto’s cruel exploitation, we didn’t know what to do. I don’t know what would have become of us, had we not been accepted as Avengers! The Avengers gave purpose to our lives, gave us something to be part of.”

Anyway, being on the Avengers meant dangers and foes to fight but it also meant allies, friends, and ROBOT BOYFRIENDS.

Wanda: “Were it not for the Avengers, I might never have met the Vision! He was the product of a laboratory -- and many thought him to be inhumanely cold -- but I grew to love the warm, feeling inner man.”

Of course, if you tell Vision he has feelings he gets mad and insists NUH UH.

And dating Vision pissed off Quicksilver who basically disowned Wanda for a while.

But who gives a fuck what Pietro says, Wanda also learned WITCHCRAFT and (although not explicitly mentioned) how to summon METEORS TO SMASH HER FOES.

And she got married in a double ceremony where the other bride married a tree! That tree part doesn’t get mentioned.

After this, Wanda and Vision went on a short honeymoon but found that the hashtag Avengers life kept them so busy that they didn’t have a lot of time to themselves.

Then Real Dad Django Maximoff showed up and Wanda and Pietro went with him to Transia to learn their backstory.

Annnnnd Wanda got possessed by Chthon. Won’t be the first time ha ha.

Thankfully, the Avengers managed to do a care bear stare to unpossess her. Oh, and Django died. A misstep if you ask me. There was too much character potential to just kill him off after one arc.

Alas, alas.

Anyway, the recap skips over a whole bunch of stuff and doesn’t mention Moondragon’s role but we get to the point where Wanda and Vision quit the Avengers.

Wanda: “When the Vision and I were finally reunited, our thoughts began to turn inward. Our life with the Avengers was fulfilling, but apart from our careers, we had no real private life of our own. Would society accept us on our own, away from Avengers Mansion? We didn’t know -- but we had to at least try to find out. Taking our accrued Avengers salaries, we bought a modest little home in Leonia, New Jersey.”

So a brief recap of their adventures in the first Vision and Scarlet Witch miniseries.

In the first issue, Captain America’s Halloween housewarming gift of a cursed book winds up being cursed and contains Samhain. When Wanda didn’t immediately free him, he got angry and turned some trick or treaters into monster versions of their costumes to attack Vision while Samhain attacked Wanda. She manages to set the cursed tome on fire, ending Samhain’s power. FOR NOW. Then Not-Actually-Their-Father-But-Doesn’t-Know-It-Yet the Whizzer shows up.

In issue two, the Whizzer is looking for Wanda’s help in regaining custody of his son Nuklo the Nuclear Man. With their help, Whizzer manages to get the court to agree to release Nuklo to his custody. But the lead doctor managing Nuklo is secretly ISBISA! ... Y’know, the Whizzer’s old foe from his All-Winner’s Squad days? No? Okay, well he also masterminded the nuclear ‘accident’ that led to Nuklo’s birth in the first place. And now he’s back to finish the job with radiation siphoned from Nuklo. In anger at Wanda being drawn into Golden Age drama, Vision reveals that Wanda isn’t the Whizzer’s kid but it little matters because Whizzer has a massive heart attack and dies. Nuklo helps defeat Isbisa and both of them are drained of atomic power leaving them human. Oh and Vision’s arm gets melted off. That’s kinda important.

In issue three, Vision is in a robot coma and he needs an energy donation from Wonder Man, his brain brother, to recover. Comic books! Vision has a meaning laden coma dream where Ultron screams at him a lot. Grim Reaper attacks and tries to kill Vision and Wonder Man while they’re incapacitated because he has one character beat and its that. But Vision manages to subdue him.

In issue four, is the pertinent one for this issue.

I’m going to say, I think the second Vision and Scarlet Witch series is better. This was a series of loosely related mishaps. The second volume does more with Vision and Scarlet Witch living in suburbia as a concept.

Anyway, in the fourth issue and in this Avengers recap of Wanda’s entire life, after Vision lost his arm, he and Wanda went up to Attilan to get it replaced. Because the Inhumans can casually just build him a new arm that works with his powers.

And people say the Inhumans aren’t good for anything.

While on the moon, Wanda and Vision decide to visit with Pietro and Crystal and their new daughter Luna. Pietro was even not a dick to Vision. It was a nice moment until Magneto barged in and started a fight by insisting he wasn’t here to fight while trapping everyone inside the building. Also, he threatened Bova to get information on who his kids were and frankly, that’s unforgivable. Bova is an angel. A cow angel.

They fight fight fight and then the fight is ended when Luna cries and Magneto realizes he’s doing a big superhero/supervillain fight in the same room as a fragile child and realizes ‘wow maybe i’m the dick here.’

Now the Vision and Scarlet Witch series ends with the internal-reveal that MAGNETO is the father (for now) of Wanda and Pietro. Magneto asking them to accept him as such. And on a confused moment of ‘shit what now.’

The Avengers issue picks up on that and finishes out the scene.

While Wanda is too stunned to know what to say, Pietro has some choice words.

He snatches his daughter away from Magneto and tells him fuck off, you’re no father to me.

Magneto’s argument is ‘hey genetics is the only thing that matters you’re my son like it or not.’

Pietro’s counter argument is ‘nuh uh’ and that Django Maximoff is the only man he calls father. And Wanda agrees.

Its good to see some Django respect.

Magneto tells them they’ll see the error of their ways and flies off.

Which is the wrong tack to take to prove that you’ve changed and are ready to get some good dadding in and won’t kill your granddaughter for being a human.

He’s super bad at this.

After that, Wanda and Vision went home to New Jersey and just stayed at home for a while, Wanda was so horrified by the reveal.

Wanda: “Even now, I can hardly begin to express the horror, the shame! It’s as if I suddenly discovered Hitler lurking in my family tree! Part of me wishes that he is really sincere about tempering his hatred for non-mutant humans. But even if he was telling the truth, that can never excuse his past crimes... Nothing can!”

Its really surprising how ready people are in-universe to compare Magneto to Hitler. From Wanda to Cap to Xorn.

Wasp: “Wanda... you mustn’t torture yourself this way! Magneto has no claim on you, and you’re certainly not responsible for him! I know it must be tough, but you can’t let him ruin the rest of your life!”

These are helpful things to tell Wanda to calm her down.

Less helpful is when Wasp speculates that hey maybe it was okay not to believe Magneto when he said he’s changed because maybe he’ll become worse! Maybe his newfound tolerance of humanity will lead him to try to save humanity from itself rather than wipe it out. In reference to how Moondragon tried to do that on that planet we never heard from again.

Wanda: “Heaven help us, if such a thought occurs to Magneto!”

I’m pretty sure he’s going to be too busy in the near future trying to be teacher to the most death-prone idiots this side of Westchester. And then after that when he decides to be evil again, he’s going to do some nonsense with Asteroid M. But I don’t think he ever hits the ‘save humanity from itself’ point.

Anyway.

Wasp and Captain Marvel reassure Wanda that if Magneto Strikes Again the Avengers will be with her!

The following day, Wanda returns to Leonia, New Jersey to put together a suitcase of stuff since she’s going to be staying at Avengers Mansion for a while.

Wanda: “Jan was nice enough to offer me a few of her things, but they’re all too small for my figure. And that robe the She-Hulk lent me last night fit like a tent!”

Wasp and Scarlet Witch usually look the same size and shape but that’s important canon body shape information for someone, I guess. If they wanted to draw Avengers But Not All The Same Paper Dolls character designs.

Anyway, the issue really ends with Dr Strange showing up to pull Wanda into a crossover with his own book in Doctor Strange #60.

Ergh. This era sure has a lot of stuff going off on the sides.

I’ll synopsize Scarlet Witch’s time in Doctor Strange’s book if it becomes necessary but I’ve already looked at five non-Avengers issue for this post and am probably going to have to cover the Hawkeye series in brief too when it intersects with Avengers.

Follow @essential-avengers for grudging contextualization of everything that’s happening in Avengers, when I feel like it. Like and reblog if you liked.

#avengers #scarlet witch #the vision #the Wasp #Captain Marvel #Monica Rambeau #there were more people but they're not very relevant #essential avengers #essential marvel liveblogging #because this is a big recap of everything wanda it has a lot of the g-slur in it #i've tried to not use panels where its used #and just up and cropped the high evolutionary one

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rorykillmore · 5 years

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now that they're starting to settle in, how do you think alana is going to get along with her canonmates going forward? and how do you think any rogue elements, like hannibal showing up or a murder mystery plot would affect that?

alana @ impending castmate drama: Boy.

okay well with will things are... obviously rocky, although like. alana can recognize that will is genuinely trying and has gone out of his way to do very kind things for her, like trying to give her a little bit of closure with abigail. she’s not like... actively holding a grudge against will out of spite or anything, it’s just hard for her to be able to trust him. she still cares about him, and she’s aware that he still cares about her, but she’s also aware that if shit started to get... Very real again, like if something with hannibal came up, that she probably?? couldn’t trust will?

whether it’s “i don’t trust him not to get himself hurt” or “i don’t trust him not to get someone else hurt” or “i don’t trust him not to ultimately side with hannibal” even she doesn’t quite know, i think, but any way you slice it will’s behavior tends to get. Volatile when that’s a factor. so she’s in kind of a weird place of sympathizing with will and caring about him too much and feeling too guilty about not believing him to want to cut him out of her life permanently, but feeling too... nervous about him to fully want to commit to rebuilding their friendship.

so it’s hard to say how things might pan out for them down the road. alana might fall back into being (by her standards) a little too attached to him in spite of herself if they spend enough time together, but if hannibal does show up i think that would be a serious obstacle for them...

and then with margot... it’s so interesting because i feel like in canon it was maybe like, circumstantially more easy for them to trust each other because despite the precariousness of that situation it was pretty clear that neither of them were crazy about mason. on denny they don’t have anything that... immediate or dire uniting them, so they kinda have to feel things out on their own. for alana’s part, she genuinely likes margot, and one thing i think is fun about them is that a couple of the ships we’ve done in the past have had our characters be COMPLETELY oblivious to their feelings until late in the game. with margot and alana, not that they have like, ‘feelings’ this early on, but just playing with this kind of lightly veiled mutual attraction that neither of them are sure they want to act on is fun and different!

but i think alana also has like, these subtle nagging doubts that she isn’t sure how to interpret yet. realistically speaking margot comes from a situation where she’d probably have a lot to hide, and it’s not like they know each other that well yet so she has plenty of reason to withhold personal information, which is all stuff alana can rationalize. it’s just that she’s really fallen into over-analyzing people’s intentions and worrying about trusting them so it puts her just a little bit on edge anyway. which is why i think if she found out about will and margot’s stuff it might... freak her out a little bit (although if she had full context she’d be much more pissed at like, mason and hannibal naturally, so it’d just depend on how that happens)

so a lot of it depends on how things play out, obviously they have... a lot of baggage to work through, but overall alana is such a resiliently loyal person that the closer they get the less likely she is to spook too much. she’ll want mason dead properly by the end of this, as she should,

as for freddie..... fucking freddie lounds. now that alana is properly involved in the mld and freddie is pretty set on continuing, well, her line of work, i think it’s pretty much a given that freddie is going to be a thorn in alana’s side. it’d be one thing if alana was doing something more like, private, and freddie wouldn’t have much to report about her or anything related to her work, but seeing as that’s not the case they’re probably bound to get into a few situations where freddie’s publishing stories that alana does NOT appreciate her publishing,

tony has described freddie and alana as like, a mean first grader who keeps pulling the pigtails of the girl she likes to get attention, which i think is a very apt if hilarious take. i think sometimes freddie isn’t even doing anything to be outright malicious but she’s so careless about boundaries that alana usually HATES it when freddie teases her regardless. which, then gives freddie the attention she wants of course,

but anyway i think there’s some potential for some interesting ground with them, like the fact that they did both care about abigail or like... as much as alana and freddie’s respective fields means they might be at each other’s throats at times, there are also occasions where freddie might be useful to some kinds of investigative process, so there’s always room for a teamup or two. whatever happens i think they’ll always be kind of, rivals who sometimes tolerate each other at best, but there’s room for that to be very dynamic which is fun

as for any potential curveballs... obviously hannibal would shake pretty much everyone up! as i mentioned earlier it would probably instill a lot of rockiness between will and alana. she’d want to keep will from getting hurt if she could, but honestly in that kind of situation she’d be a lot more likely to rely on margot or even freddie. margot and alana, as we know from canon, are very good at being pragmatic together when they want to be, and freddie... is someone alana can at least trust to have a strong investment in self-preservation. so. of course this kind of situation would also run the risk of getting messy just because alana’s so... catching hannibal really feels like the only path to any kind of closure for her, like she feels very personally responsible to handle that, so. idk who knows how deeply she’d get entrenched in That

and murder mystery plot seems like a really fun thing for all of them, like, if we can find a way for all of them to be involved in that?? maybe add some personal stakes or something. maybe we should toss around some ideas sometime because i feel like maybe the easiest way to start shaping this plot For Real is to nail down some definite things we want it to involve and then start building around them...

#thanks spear!!#im super here for castmate drama tbh #cuts dennys lvad wire #larkspear

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brynwrites · 6 years

Text

Ask Compilation.

Topics covered:

Chapter Titles

Nonbinary character shenanigans

These Treacherous Tides, the series

Marketing yourself as an author via blog

Starting back up with writing

Writing children

Writing fighting woman with big hearts

Differentiating casts who feel similar

Writing in your native language vs English

And a few notes from my lovely followers.

All other questions should be listed on the ask queue page. (Except the last two WIP related questions I haven’t gotten around to answering…)

Chapter Titles

@aithlynfreyeaesthetic asked: Hello, I hope you're doing well. Are chapter title absolutely necessary? I've been avoiding chapter titles purely because I'm horrible at titles, but I've just always wondered.

Not at all! The majority of fiction books don’t use chapter titles. They can be fun, especially in certain genres, but they’re in no way necessary.

Nonbinary character shenanigans

@thebravetinsoldier asked: Hi! I’m writing a steampunk story were the main character is being hunted because they’ve cheated death and become immortal by changing their “deceased” parts with robotics and magic. I really want this character to be nonbinary, but part of the explanation is that they’ve changed parts of themselves so much that they no longer remember if they were a boy or a girl. Is this a bad thing? Sorry for the bad formulation, English is not my first language.

First up, I want to clarify that there’s nothing inherently wrong with most concepts in which nonbinary people are robots or mythical creatures, but it does paint an uncomfortable picture simply because there are so few nonbinary character in existence who are actually human, creating a implication that nonbinary people are not-quite-human because humans are the ones who have binary genders.

You fix that particular issue with a small adjustment: Let there be fully human/non-magical nonbinary characters in the world, even if they’re just a side characters who only appears in one scene.

The main problem here though, is the idea that physical appearance determines identity. Rather than presenting the main character as not being able to identify whether they’re a binary gender, it’s far better to present it as them knowing they don’t (and have probably never) felt like a binary gender, and feeling happy with the way their body is androgynous, because they don’t feel the need to present as a specific gender*.

Let me illustrate it this way: A girl who losses her physical, female body (or is born in a male body) will be no less a girl, even if society tries to tell her that she could or should be a boy. With time, she’ll still decide she is in fact a girl, no matter what her body says. The same is true with nonbinary people. If a person composed of robotics and magic decides they’re nonbinary, then it’s because they’ve always been nonbinary; they might have just taken a while to figure it out, especially if they original had a body their society told them had to assign them a binary identity.

(*this is not a qualification of being nonbinary by the way, though it is a common feeling among many nonbinary people.)

These Treacherous Tides, the series

@kiarazuri asked: You’ve mentioned before that Pearl is set in a mermaid series called These Treacherous Tides (awesome title, btw) and I was wondering how many books you’ve got planned? Also whether or not any of the books will interact with each other or just be set in the same world?

The These Treacherous Tides series is going to be a more or less unconnected series of romance/family-oriented books about different species of merfolk (and humans), though I’m not opposed in any way to cameos, especially of side characters.

I don’t officially have a second book planned yet, but merpeople are one of my favorite things in existence, and the moment I finished Our Bloody Pearl I knew I wanted to write more books about them. I do have two concepts I want to play with in future books, so I’ll be fleshing them out further and picking a direction for them once I’m finished with We Are, We Are Monsters.

Marketing yourself as an author via blog

Anon asked: hi! i'm getting into the final stretch of writing my first novel (i have a few drafts left to complete and then i'll begin the self-publishing process!) and i was looking into how to market myself. among other things, i've been told to create a separate tumblr blog to post about my writing. obviously, yours is working very well! i was wondering if you would suggest doing this and if you have any tips to get it started/gain a following? thanks!

I would definitely suggest creating some kind of blog for writing, and in my experience the writeblr community here is very encouraging and one of the most interactive writing communities on the web. The one thing I will mention though, is that every follower you talk to (i.e. are acquaintances or friends with) are worth a hundred followers you don’t know. I owe all my success to having a ton of writeblr friends who have (and continue to) reblog my posts like they’re gold.

Check out my marketing tag for a ton of posts I’ve written about this! (Make sure you scroll down to the article on building an audience.)

Starting back up with writing

Anon asked: So I've just had exams so I had to stop writing for a while, but now I want to get back into writing my novel but I'm really struggling. I feel like I've forgotten everything ugh. Do you have any advice on how to jump back in?

My key tips:

Start small. Write 50 words. Take a break. Write another 50 words.

Remove distractions. If you’re on tumblr you’re not writing.

Don’t worry if your writing doesn’t sound good! (Follow the link for a full post!)

Writing children

@bloodybutterfly222 asked: Hey! I really love your tips, and I thought maybe you could help me with a problem I've been stumbling in. I have a story that partially revolves around parenting (bonding with a 2-year-old, more specifically) but I realized I don't know how to write children speech/dialogue. Since I've never had much contact with children myself, I'm even more at a lost about how to portray it significantly and yet accurately. Do you happen to have any tips on the matter?

I would love to help you, but I have little current experience in this area too. (Which I’m kicking myself over, because I did nanny through all of college, but I didn’t actually think about the way children speak while I was doing it and so when I write my own child characters they tend to be really stiff and generic.)

The one piece of advice I will impart is this: Children are a lot smarter and braver and more creative than they’re given credit for, and they really do say the darnedest things. Some of my most memorable experiences with kiddos:

An eight year old asked me where evil and sin came from if god didn’t create it and then had a theological conversation with me that most adults couldn’t match.

He and his younger bother decided the heroes of our story would win by buying the villain a million ketchup covered pancakes.

Same younger bother spent ten minutes jumping on his bed shouting chocolate chips at the top of his lungs because he didn’t want to sleep.

Also same young brother would tell everyone he was moving across the country for exactly seven years whenever he was angry.

Multiple instances of really polite 4-6 year old kids coming up to me while I worked retail at the Zoo, asking some variation of “Excuse me, miss, but would be okay if I could buy one of those cups, thank you” and then conducting the entire purchase on their own.

Writing fighting woman with big hearts

@tokinokagura asked: Hello Sir, Regarding your answer about strong female characters. In your opinion, where do females who are strong and independent yet have a very very kind side (like a fighting mom or big sis type, or a type who got something to be strong for) and also how do I approach this scenario of a strong independent fighting strong mother/big sis figure? Thanks in advance

There’s no trick to writing this sort of character; you just write them. Show her being both strong and nurturing, independent and compassionate. Explore the way these traits interact and enhance each other. Does she love her own freedom and want to provide others who are oppressed the same independence she’s found? Does she see compassion as something the strong are required to give? Does she believe true heroes are the ones who fight for others? Look deeper into how she became who she is and why she fights for those she fights for, and then carry that throughout the story in every scene, every choice she makes.

Differentiating casts who feel similar

@katekarl asked: Alright, I could use some help with this WIP. I have a heavy cast of female characters, and I need a way to keep them from sounding too similar. Some of them ARE similar, and the differences in worldview/personality/dialogue might be a little too nuanced. What are some ways that I can try and keep them from looking like they were copy-pasted into their different roles?

Bullet points!

Unless your world is heavy on the sexism and holds to very constricting gender norms, it shouldn’t make any difference that they’re all women; they should have just as diverse a range of personalities, hobbies, strengths, etc as if they were a group of any mix of genders, so long as the class and cultural diversity doesn’t change.

If your characters are too similar to differentiate between them, then you probably don’t actually need all of them. Any two characters who consistently make very similar choices should almost always be combined. If two characters are in fact making very different choices despite being similar in personality and background, then it might be time to sit down and figure out where those choices are coming from and adjust one of the characters to make the origin of their choices obvious.

In my opinion, quirkier characters are always more fun than un-quirky characters, and there are a million different crazy and eccentric traits you can give your characters to make them stand out. (I have a post about developing side characters here which has a few more, similar concepts.)

Writing in your native language vs English

Hi, I can speak English on a B2/C1 level but it's not my native language. I want to write a novel but idk what language I should write in. I have a poetry blog in English and I used to write stories in English but I feel like something more serious requires wider vocabulary and better language skills in general. I have nowhere to post/publish it in my native language though, so it would probably end up forgotten if I were to write it in my native language:/ what do you think I should do?

I don’t have any advice other than this: You’ll get better at a language the longer to try to write more complicated things in it. If you want to write something more serious in English someday, the only way you’ll get there is by writing something serious is English now, even if you do a poor job of it at first.

Kind words

Anon said: I just wanted to say thank you for that fanfic answer and letting us in on what inspired you. I have an original novel in the works basically inspired by Steve and Bucky and wanting them to eventually build a definite relationship. But I didn’t want to write a fanfic, even though I love fanfic. It turned into a space opera thing

You’re very welcome! That sounds like an awesome space opera, and I wish you the best of luck with it! <3

Anon said: Hi I just saw what you said about writing through mental illness and I just had to tell you that it helped me so much! There is so much power in the advice and motivation you put there, thank you.

I’m glad it could help! I’ve been struggling as a writer (and human) with depression and anxiety for year now, and I’m just happy to share what I’ve learned <3 I’ll admit that some days I don’t... well I almost said I don’t win this battle, but that’s not a mentally healthy way of looking at it. Some days I have to give myself time to recoop. Some days, taking proactive steps towards tomorrow is the best course of action, even if that doesn’t include writing. (And the taking to best course of action is always a successful day, even if you didn’t get to any of the things you wanted to.)

Anyhow, I’m proud of myself for coming this far and I’m proud of you all for growing alongside me!

Anon said: Not an ask, rather a message. Sorry if it's in the wrong place--I'm kinda new. So, yes, I'm a newbie and I found your blog, and I love it! Keep on writing. I'll be looking forward your works. Cheers!

Thank you my friend! (This is exactly the write place. You’re so sweet to take the time to say this <3)

#writeblr #writing asks #ask compilation

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janiedean · 6 years

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www(.)slate(.)com/articles/arts/culturebox/2017/02/how_sensitivity_readers_from_minority_groups_are_changing_the_book_publishing(.)html This seriously worries me. Tumblr mentality spilling over real life

... yey.

okay, no rewind. first thing, I’m sad to say but tumblr mentality has spilled over irl a long time ago and at this point the only thing we can do is hoping this historical moment passes a long time ago (it had already spilled over the moment I had to read actual articles about people actually asking to remove Ovid from a ***classic literature*** curricula because there are rape scenes in the metamorphoses). whatever.

now about this, the problem is: I do think that if someone writes about X character that belongs to a minority they should do their research before touching the topic if they care to write a good book (if they don’t then it’s another problem entirely but let’s just assume they do), but it has to be a thing you do before you actually write that shit. I absolutely don’t agree with write what you know only because otherwise we wouldn’t be publishing a damned thing and honestly some people also write so that they don’t have to always rehash what they know, but if you’re doing a socially sensitive theme you have to try and do it right - if I decide I write a book with a trans character I can’t do it before I talk to a sizable amount of trans people and I don’t read more than a bit on the subject, same as if I decide to write a book set during idk the vietnam war where the protagonist is a ptsd vietnam veteran I can’t do it if I haven’t read a ton of lit/history books about the vietnam war and talked with a few psychologists or psych students or read something about ptsd. but that’s a thing that’s your duty as the author, if you want to do a serious book about a serious thing. if you just want to dick around it’s another problem entirely but let’s just say that I want to do that, it’s on me to do it, not on my **sensitivity readers**, and anyway a sensitivity reader (which once upon a time should have been called editor but never mind) shouldn’t have that much power, ie: once I read a tumblr post which basically said ‘white writers couldn’t ever write poc characters because they possibly can’t understand [now what POC meant in that sense is an entire other question that was left unanswered of course, bc poc doesn’t mean just black but nvm] but they have a moral obligation to because poc writers aren’t as popular/are hired less than white writers, and even at their best they will never get it right and they’ll fuck the poc characters up but who cares, they have to do it and take the criticism so they realize how it feels to be discriminated’.

now, I personally would never hear any advice from THAT above person if they were my sensitivity reader, because the concept that if I’m white then I can’t possibly get it right means that they already decided my work is going to suck ass even if it’s a masterpiece, and then... fuck that? I mean, I have no moral obligation to write anything I don’t want and with that attitude you basically make sure that someone is never gonna try to branch out. and where were the sensitivity readers when fifty shades came out, and all the subsequent YA porn books where it looks like your ideal man should be a stalker? we just don’t know, but no one cares to have sensitivity readers on ***that*** shit because guess what, it sells.

like, the problem shouldn’t be that you as a writer might offend someone with your writing because that can be because you’re actually offensive or because you’re nabokov and you wrote lolita and people who don’t get the point of it think it’s offensive and that it should be burned. you can’t start writing shit thinking of whether you’re going to offend someone or not with it because otherwise you’ll never get anywhere and you couldn’t touch one single sensitive topic (and on this, I’d appreciate sensitivity readers when it comes to atheist characters but NEVER MIND THAT XDDD /joking). what people should do is encourage potential writers who want to write socially sensitive stuff to talk to other people first and research their topic if it requires it.

What I mean is, let’s do a practical example: let’s take the basic lady chatterley plot (woman has a husband that neglects her both sexually and as a person and finds happiness with another guy who lives just under the husband’s nose). the original lady chatterly is already socially sensible because it has class issues and whatnot, but if you just want to write your torrid romance novel about the white suburban mom falling in love with the new white hot neighbor while her white husband doesn’t notice her existence and they have all the a+ sex in the world you’re perfectly entitled to and like, just get yourself an editor that will tell you if your porn sucks or not. there, this one’s easy.

but, let’s say that you want to have the white suburban mom being a victim of domestic violence instead of having the husband being just neglectful then you should research something about domestic violence and the effect it has on people. it has already become way more socially sensible, because you can’t just shrug it away and the sex she’ll have with her new guy won’t be the same as the sex she used to have with her husband, or alternatively, if the husband’s neglectful only you can have a difference between quick missionary and hot steamy long fucks with the new guy, if he’s abusive and he abuses her sexually you have to have nonconsensual vs consensual which is already a whole new heap of problems.

or, let’s flip it around: the domestic violence victim is a man, the wife is the one abusing him, he falls in love with the new female neighbor next door. this implies that you have to look into female on male domestic violence and research how frequently men aren’t taken seriously especially if the perpetrator is a woman, so you have the above plus this.

or, the victim is a man, the perpetrator is a woman, he falls in love with the male neighbor next door. in this case you have to make sure you know how to write a guy who has to get out of an abusive relationship and have a sexuality crisis if he didn’t know he was also into dudes.

or, all three are male, or all three are women: you have to look into statistics to see how male on male or female on female abuse works, on top of all of the above, on top of you have to know how to write an abuse victim. and, if there’s children involved? you have to deal with that too and you have to make sure the abuser isn’t a complete stereotype or some kind of boogeyman because that kind of story is effective if the perpetrator is someone who doesn’t look out of a twilight fanfic *cough*. if you make any of those characters trans then you have to look into it, too, if you make any of them not white or not your ethnicity you might wanna look into that too, and so on. and if you wanna throw in the lady chatterley class thing then you have to also think about what it means if some of the characters are rich, if others are poor, if they’re all middle class, if they’re all poor, all rich and so on.

what I mean is that the same plot, with some changes, can require zero research beyond what metaphors to not use while writing porn (example one) to a whole fucking lot of research and it’s on you to find people to discuss it with before and then to possibly proofread it before you send it to any publisher so you at least are sure you have a thing in your hands that doesn’t suck or has glaring inaccuracies. at that point your sensitivity reader should be able to give it a look and maybe give you advice which you should be able to reject if you don’t think it sound - for example, let’s say I write the above book in its most socially sensitive approach. like, dunno, let’s say the abuser is a cishet white man, the protagonist is a white ftm trans person who also can’t/won’t transition because of their abusive husband and the neighbor is, dunno, a black cishet woman. this would require a shitload of research should I try to write it. but then let’s say I do it and then I decide to write it from the pov of the abusive husband. which is a legitimate literary choice and I’m taking it with the entire intent of making him an abusive asshole without trying to justify his actions and to pull a less skilled humbert humbert in the world (because I’m not nabokov and no one is, but one could and should be able to write villains as a POV if they want to) and that I made sure to depict him as The Worst. if my sensitivity reader says that it’s offensive that I would write it from that guy’s POV in the first place and nothing else matters, it wouldn’t matter if I wrote the best book of the last ten years, it would still be deemed offensive. and that is a thing that shouldn’t fly - meaning, that if this is just a background check to make sure you don’t do bad representation (which you should have already done yourself anyway) it could have its usefulness, if it becomes a way to say that you can’t write what you want or problematic characters/villains shouldn’t be a POV choice even if you show them to be terrible then we’re straight into censorship land and that... shouldn’t be a thing.

tldr, you didn’t even ask for this entire rant but tbh I’m worried about that possible outcome (especially since that article mentioned roth which on this website is already hated as the champion of the white old man protagonist who wants to bang his students by people who don’t understand shit about either roth or writing in general) more than about checks on whether a thing is offensive or not, which anyway seems to me like is thoroughly ignored if the book sells (see: every other stalker seen as an ideal dude in YAs post-50 shades *sigh*).

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #abuse cw #rape cw #domestic violence cw #possibly #literature for ts #Anonymous #ask post

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superleeleehipster · 7 years

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Season 8 Caryl

So The Walking Dead season 8 premiere is in less than two weeks (9 days, holy crap!), and I figured I’d give in my two cents on the potential for some Carylness during the premiere as well as the entire season.

Speculation below the cut:

I’ve always hated the last few weeks before premieres to be honest. We get all of these reviews from various magazines and news sources about episode one, and it can cause some major stress leading up to it for people who actually read them. But unfortunately, at the end of the day, whether or not the episode is good is always arbitrary. Same thing with Caryl moments.

We know from TSDF page that Carol and Daryl share a hug and a brief conversation during the premiere, so there’s definitely some massive potential for good interaction. However, not a whole lot of commentary has appeared in regards to the way in which they interact. Brandon Davis said nothing about a Caryl moment, but then again he’s not a Caryl person, so his opinion should always be taken with a grain of salt. The only other source that we’ve heard from about the Caryl moment had said that “we don’t ship them anymore. Carol just looks like a friend Daryl desperately needs”...

First of all, who’s ‘we’? Secondly, for me it really depends on the reason as to why they don’t ship Caryl anymore to think like that. Is it because Carol and Daryl’s interaction in the premiere is more platonic? Or is it because so much time has passed and so little interaction has occurred between them that they’ve just given up on the idea that it’ll happen? B/c, logically, a relationship (or at least ambiguous potential of one happening in the future) would’ve happened by now, right?... if the writing was good, then yes it would’ve. So I wouldn’t get too worried about that review b/c, again, it’s arbitrary. I think they don’t ship them anymore simply b/c it’s been too long and the writers have failed to show enough that there’s a potential relationship there.

Now I’m not saying Caryl won’t happen, I’m just trying to make a point that the writers struggle with relationships. The vast majority of the relationships on TWD right now happened very suddenly, and with barely any progression to it. Denise and Tara were out of the blue, Sasha and Abe (although sweet) were still awkward and sudden, even Richonne’s canon moment was questionable. I swear to any Richonners reading this that I’m not downplaying your ship, I am simply stating that the writers should’ve done better for you. They had obviously progressed Rick and Jessie’s relationship before they actually kissed, most ppl knew that was going to happen eventually. Then Jessie dies, and literally the next episode, Rick and Michonne get together. Yes there was potential build up before they arrived at ASZ, but recent buildup was nonexistent. He was with Jessie, she dies, then bam, he’s with Michonne.

My point is, the canon moments for most of the relationships we’ve seen are often very out of the blue, and unfortunately I don’t see Caryl happening any differently. I’m sure when it happens we’re going to jump for joy... then start complaining about lack of progression beforehand. But it’s been a problem that the writers have had all this time. I’m not saying this to be negative, I’m only saying that just because there’s not much progression, doesn’t necessarily mean canon won’t happen. Is it the right way to write it? Fuck no, but we’re stuck with the writers we got.

In regards to Norman’s comments about various ships with Daryl, honestly, I don’t pay much attention to what he says most of the time. Ever since season 4, Norman has always been a bit uncomfortable with shipper questions. But he doesn’t like confrontation and he also doesn’t like letting people down, so he doesn’t ask “don’t ask me those questions please”. He is a people pleaser first and foremost, and he’d rather flirt the canon line with every ship than pick one to fangirl over b/c he’s seen the hate that comes from the shipper wars attacking each other. Is it the right way to play the field? Nope, but he doesn’t see it from our perspective. That’s why he’s sometimes described the idea of making Caryl canon almost scary b/c he’s seen the hate that can come from it. Melissa got a shit ton of hate after Beth died b/c there were stupid rumors about Mel’s influence on Beth’s death (none whatsoever). She still gets hate now from ageist assholes and the like, so I’m sure even Mel has some trepidation about them going canon. I’m not saying this to defend him, I’m just saying it to help ppl understand why he says stupid shit. Norman does have the potential to say really good things, but at the same time he’s said really crap things, so I just focus on the good. Keeps me sane XD.

At the end of the day, only listen to Norman if he’s flanked by Andy or Melissa b/c his answers will be much more thoughtful then... and for the love of god, run the fuck away if he’s flanked by Kirkman or Greg (especially).

8x01 Hug

Okay, so supposedly Caryl share another hug in the premiere (woo!) as well as a brief conversation. So far we haven’t really gotten the specifics on what this hug looks like or how it goes down, and we probably won’t until we see it for ourselves. What I will say is that oftentimes a caryl scene is downplayed to the audience, whether be from Brandon Davis or TSDF peeps. For example, in The Same Boat, the only thing we heard about the Caryl reunion was that “they share a quick hug”. It wasn’t that much to go on, and I know many of us were bummed at how that sounded. However, it wound up being more sweet than we anticipated. We got the soft shoulder grab and him asking, almost desperately if she was alright. Then the chin tilt, and then the hug with Daryl’s hand holding Carol’s head. Not to mention he stuck by her after, putting himself between her and the last Savior. That was a lot of detail within “a quick hug”, and I’m sure this one will be no different. Melissa and Norman, whether ppl like it or not, have very good chemistry, and they are able to use it and feed off each other to create powerful scenes, even if the writing sucks ass.

So when I think of the premiere hug I picture it as either Carol coming up and hugging him while he’s sitting on his bike and nuzzles him again (he does the same). Extra brownie points in that scenario b/c she’ll technically be in between his legs :D. Or Carol will say stay safe and walk away, but he calls her and walks up and hugs her, b/c he doesn’t know if he’ll ever see her again.

In regards to their brief conversation, since it’s brief I highly doubt they’ll talk about the really tough stuff, like Carol’s guilt over the girls or Daryl’s guilt over Glenn. I think it may just be them joking a little bit to ease some tension, and then they hug, and he’ll say “stay safe”, and she’ll say “nine lives” before pulling away. Personally I do hope that when the explosion happens later, that we get to see Daryl’s reaction. That’ll bring even more potential for an even greater reunion later on in the show b/c he won’t know if she survived the blast.

Season 8 Canon

Now I never really expected Caryl to go canon in the premiere (motherfuckers!), but I still very much expect canon by the end of the season. I know we’re very hesitant to believe anything from AMC, and we’re scared that they published those season 8 photos just to tease/torment us. But AMC isn’t dumb, they know that if they teased Caryl and (god forbid) had Carzekiel happen, then shit would hit the fan and not in a good way. That would be a complete bitch slap to the fans, and they know that a good chunk of them wants Caryl to happen. So I don’t see them promoting Caryl pre-season as a bad sign or just a stupid tease so they could get more ratings. I think they want people to tune in b/c they’ve got something big, and they know that if they put Carzekiel together then the ppl they’ve convinced to watch will just leave again.

I’m with Ripley, and I don’t think they’d go canon until the war is over b/c that’s just not a good time to do so. In fact I’d actually get more nervous if they went canon in the middle of the war b/c then they’d have more potential for more drama if they killed one of them off later. So I think we’ll get to see them interact throughout the season, and see the potential of a romance there. But I don’t think they’d be in the right mindset for romance until after the fighting is done.

Now hang on, bare with me for a second. I’m saying this because of Melissa’s recent interview about Carol’s mentality. Norman of course had said that Daryl’s not in the right headspace to have a romance, and we basically fried him on a stick for that, but Mel said something similar in that ‘Carzekiel’ specific article. They were talking about the potential for Carzekiel in season 8, but Melissa herself had said that Carol’s trying to keep herself from letting him in, or letting anyone in. She’s keeping everyone at arm’s length b/c she’s still having issues with having to kill people. I was hoping that after season 7 she would be on the mend with her inner demons but it still sounds like she will struggle with herself throughout the season. So it actually looks like neither character is in the right mindset for a romance, that’s why I think they’ll wait till the war is over for anything to happen.

Anyways, I do hope we get to see Caryl interact and heal together before the season ends though, b/c frankly, I’m tired of Carol being in a miserable arc, and I’m tired of Daryl being in a hot headed, revenge quest arc. Enough with the self tormenting, I want them happy!! But fuck everyone who says anything negative about this ship, I will fucking go down with it. I will never give up on Caryl!

Caryl on loves!

#cary #carol peletier #daryl dixon #melissa mcbride #norman reedus

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ifyouresure · 7 years

Text

for the girl who had everything

a little post-season add-on.

spoilers for the season 2 finale of supergirl.

AO3

—

A day after Lillian Luthor takes credit for saving the planet, the Tribune publishes an article that names Lena Luthor as Earth’s saviour.

An anonymous source lets slip to the press that it was really L-Corp that dispersed the lead that drove away the invaders – the DEO agrees that keeping that particular secret isn’t worth all the support and good press Cadmus would receive if the truth didn’t get out.

Kara pens the article, and conducts the interview with Lena. With the destruction of National City only barely avoided and everyone wanting to know exactly what happened, it ends up being the most desirable exclusive since Cat nabbed that interview with Supergirl all those years ago, when people didn’t even know who Supergirl was. When Lena Luthor was just a footnote in the stories about her brother Lex.

Cat is back—and wow, Kara will never get tired of saying that, Cat is back—and she probably wants to break the story herself, but with that little smile she gets on her face sometimes, and a brisk “chop, chop”, she sends Kara on her way. Kara would like to believe it’s because Cat thinks Kara is really coming into her own—to be fair, she is, and Cat does think that—but Kara is certain it’s actually because she’s the only one who’s been able to get Lena to agree to an interview.

In the morning, Kara had called the number she has for Lena’s office three times, and each time the line had been busy – publications clamouring for a quote, probably. Only when Jess had texted her with a Just call her personal number, had Kara finally given in and called Lena’s cellphone.

Lena picked up on the first ring. Her voice had been so soft, and kind, and it had been so much, too much, not enough. Kara still shivers, when she thinks about it, still gets that racing warmth up her spine, like curling up under a blanket at home after a long day away.

That’s how Kara feels now, with the article published, alone in her empty apartment after being shoo’d away from work, with nothing but the thought of what happened two days ago and the memory of her name in Lena’s voice for company.

J’onn warns Kara and Cat himself that the DEO is not to be mentioned in the paper, and Winn returns to L-Corp to tell Lena the same. Even still, when Kara asks Lena what everyone’s been wondering – how she did it, how she saved the world, Lena puts on a humble smile—she’s always so humble—and says in that tone that’s just a little self-deprecating: “I had a lot of help.

“You wouldn’t believe how many people are out there every day, trying to protect this city,” she tells Kara, all the while staring straight at her, leaning forward, her head tilted just so. “People who jump into the path of danger and face it head on, just so the rest of us can feel safe.” Lena, Kara notes, does not include herself in that group of people. “The citizens of National City also deserve praise for their enduring courage and strength. And of course,” she says, lightly now, but serious, “the Cat Grants out there who inspire the rest of us to be hopeful.”

Last Thanksgiving, Lena had saved the aliens in National City when she rendered the Medusa virus that was spread across the city inert; this time, with a weapon in her hands that could exile her brother’s greatest rival, that would drive Supergirl away, she chose to do what was best for the Earth instead. Kara thinks that’s sort of poetic, in a way she can’t really put into words; not in this article, at least.

Off the record, as if she knows what Kara’s thinking, Lena says, “My mother synthesized a virus that would have gone on to kill most of the aliens in the world. My brother created a weapon that would have rid it of the rest. Sometimes,” she confesses, “I worry I’m not so different.”

“You saved us,” Kara counters, before clearing the ache from her throat. “You saved all of us.” Lena had smiled oddly at that, and said nothing.

Fleetingly, Kara wondered, in spite of what Lillian had said, whether Lena knew. Whether, when she’d given Supergirl the remote that might decide the fate of the planet, she’d also given Kara the ability to choose her own personal happiness.

(“Did you know he was dating Kara Danvers?”)

If Lena had known … Kara didn’t know what to think of that. So she didn’t.

At the end of the interview, when Kara is just Kara, when she’s just Lena’s best friend, when Kara loves Lena—and she loves Lena, always—Kara tells her how sincerely proud of her she is, how she thinks Lena is absolutely incredible, how Lena is so unfailingly good.

Lena smiles again, and says, quietly, “Thank you, Kara.”

When the elevator to bring Kara back down to the lobby arrives on Lena’s floor with a ding, and only after the doors have shut behind her, she hears Lena whisper to herself, so softly that even Kara has to wonder whether she’s imagining it: “I’m selfish. I am so, so selfish.”

Along with the interview, Kara includes a little addendum wherein Supergirl enthusiastically praises Lena, just as Lena had been so eager to praise everyone but herself.

Lena is on the cover of CatCo magazine the very next day. The issue sells faster than any issue ever printed before it, second only to Supergirl’s debut.

There’s something poetic about that, too.

It’s funny, how the city only ever seems to sleep when Kara wishes it were awake.

National City is calm in the aftermath of the attempted alien invasion – it’s like somebody actually slipped law-abiding serum into the city’s water reservoir this time. That, or there’s just something about catastrophe and suffering that brings out the best in people. After Myriad, there had been a period of calm, too, one that had lasted for weeks and weeks, up until the celebration at Kara’s apartment, when the pod—

Kara is at a standstill. It’s like time has stopped, and nothing she does will ever make it move again.

L-Corp and CatCo band together to organize the downtown restoration effort. Between the popularity of Lena’s interview, Supergirl’s fight with Rhea, and Cat’s speech, the three of them manage to attract half the city to help. It’s something, at least, something that sits warm and alive in Kara's chest, when she arrives in her supersuit and watches the citizens of National City work together to rebuild it, humans and aliens alike, working side by side.

They carry on until the sun is purple and bruised in the sky. Cat does what she does best, directs people when they’re lost, tells them what to do when they aren’t sure. Kara gathers the other aliens with super strength to do the heavy lifting, brings people together like she does metal with her heat vision.

And Lena – Lena keeps everything in order, provides support whenever it’s needed, does absolutely everything within her power to help.

Kara doesn’t think Lena has ever done anything for herself, not once. Not when she betrayed her mother, or, Rao, when she pressed that key and sacrificed Jack to save Supergirl.

From a few yards away, Lena catches Kara’s eye as she’s talking to a group of volunteers. She smiles prettily, and Kara stares and stares, until she’s not sure if the sympathy she finds in Lena’s face is real or not. Kara can’t imagine what Lena could possibly mean when she calls herself selfish.

When the sun sets and everyone turns in for the day, after Kara watches Lena shake hands with as many people as she can, a car drives Lena back to her office. That’s where Kara finds her later, when she lands on her balcony: Lena at her desk, bent over her laptop with a mountain of paperwork. She gets up to let Kara in when she knocks.

“Isn’t the work ever done?” Kara teases after stepping inside.

“For a Luthor?” Lena grins, and she pauses just long enough for Kara to wonder. “I’m afraid not.” She sits back down at her desk and shuffles her papers. “There’s still so much to do, and National City won’t rebuild itself, Supergirl.”

“Not if you don’t rest, it won’t,” Kara replies gently. “You must be exhausted, Lena. You should get some sleep.”

Lena smiles, distracted. “I should,” she says, even as she scrolls through a document on her laptop. They don’t say anything for a while, and a companionable silence settles over them.

“Thank you, by the way,” Lena says after some time, holding up the latest issue of CatCo magazine, “you flatter me.” Kara tenses up, not at all expecting those words while wearing her supersuit. She only relaxes a little when she remembers the quotes.

“Of course,” Kara replies. “I was just telling the truth.”

“You were very generous. At any rate, I think this will go a long way toward regaining the city’s trust after I brought about the invasion,” Lena says dryly.

“None of that was your fault,” Kara interjects quickly. “Everything you’ve done has been to help others.”

“And yet, I always seem to be doing such a poor job of it,” Lena says, only half-joking.

“Don’t say that,” Kara insists. “All we can do is our best, and I know you’re doing everything you can. You’re a hero, Lena.”

Lena looks unconvinced, but she purses her lips uncertainly and nods, looking back down at the work on her desk.

“Can I ask you something?” Kara asks, after the rigid shape of Lena’s body has softened.

“Yes,” Lena answers.

“Why did you give me the remote?”

It’s about as close to asking Lena what she meant without asking her outright, and Lena seems to realize that – that Supergirl had somehow heard what Lena said to herself after Kara Danvers left her office. That, if she liked, she could take the out Kara’s given her. That this is about as close to a confession as she’ll get from Kara. For now, at least.

“Besides the very real possibility that my murderous mother would jump the gun?” Lena jokes weakly. Kara doesn’t say anything, and Lena stares for a moment, silent, before nodding slowly, like she had expected nothing less. Her watch clicks against the surface of her desk.

“You know,” Lena whispers quietly, as if the room would shatter if she spoke any louder, “I still think about that night last year. When you begged me not to turn the key my mother gave me. When the fate of the city rested in the palm of my hand.” She closes her eyes. “When you told me to be my own hero.”

Kara nods even though Lena can’t see, listening intently. Lena eases her laptop shut, and when she opens her eyes again, they’re almost black in the absence of light.

“Then, there was Jack, and you were dying, and you—you both kept calling my name.” Lena stands, stepping out from behind her desk and walking over to her bar so that Kara can only see her profile. She braces her hands against it, hunched over. Lena laughs bitterly. “And then, god, the remote.

“I never asked for any of this,” she says. “I never asked for all these choices and all this power. I’ve had the whole world in my hands more times than I can remember, and I don’t understand why.” The wood under her hands groans under her weight. Kara wishes, briefly, that she’d turn around. “Every time I try to do the right thing, it’s never enough. It’s like I’m being tested over and over again, and nothing I say or do will ever prove that I can be trusted. I’m so tired, Kara.”

Kara startles at the use of her name, then shudders as that familiar warmth prickles up her back. “Lena—” she begins, without really knowing what she’s going to say.

“And they’re right,” Lena goes on quietly, so that Kara almost doesn’t hear. She stops speaking immediately. “I can’t be trusted. Because it’s so tempting, each and every time, to make the choice that would bring me happiness, to do the selfish thing.” Lena grips the ends of the bar tightly, her frown heavy on her face, her shoulder blades protruding sharply from under her blouse; she’s still wearing the dirt-stained one she had on earlier. “To do what my mother wants so that she’ll finally love me,” she says, breathing harshly, “to let you die so that Jack and I could be together.” She turns away, so that Kara can only see the back of her head, her hair sweeping softly across her shoulders; even now, as sad and angry and despondent as Lena is—as sad and angry as Kara is—Kara can’t help thinking of how lovely that motion is, can’t help remembering the last time they’d hugged, hyperaware of her arm around Lena’s neck, Lena’s hair brushing against it.

Kara doesn’t know what to say; she can only think of how determined she had been, when she was fighting Superman, how determined she was to live, how tightly she’d held Alex in her arms when she flew the three of them to the Fortress of Solitude.

How Kara has not once in her life protected Kal-El the way her mother had wanted her to.

“And, worst of all, the remote,” Lena says again, her shoulders scrunched up around her ears.

“You wanted to kill us?” Kara guesses, voice kind and not at all accusatory. “Me and Superman?”

Lena laughs, loud and sudden. “No,” she says. “No. What I wanted …” She doesn’t move or speak for a minute.

“I couldn’t have that temptation in my hands again,” she says instead. “To click that button when there was another option. To click it too soon because I … because if he was gone, then maybe I …”

Without a single word of warning, Lena swipes her hand roughly across her bar. A decanter of scotch and several glasses fall in an earsplitting cascade of crashes against the floor, and Kara would jump, if she wasn’t frozen on her feet, as if, one by one, Lena’s words had pinned her to the spot.

Golden liquor splatters around the room, against the walls and Lena’s desk and even Kara’s boots. A million shards of glass skitter in every direction; a few jump back at Lena and scrape her legs, but she pays them no mind.

“Because when we touched,” she says finally, facing Kara again, and all of Lena is resigned – the droop in her shoulders, the tone of her voice, the sad little curl of her lips, “when we hugged, it was like the world was in my hands again, and the temptation was too much, and I could have it all, I could have it all, I could have it all.”

Kara swallows hard. She remembers the sparring session with Clark, before the fight. For a brief, shining moment, she’d had everything she ever wanted—family, friends, a job she enjoyed, people she loved—and she had been so afraid of losing it all.

Lena had already lost it all.

Blood trickles slowly from the cuts on Lena’s shins, and she looks at Kara, smiling ruefully. “I wouldn’t be able to bear the praise, if people knew. If I had clicked that button to save the Earth when, all the while, I would know I was also doing it for myself. So, I was selfish. I gave you the remote, so that I wouldn’t have to make that choice, so that I wouldn’t have to bear that burden. So that, when the time came,” Lena says, taking an unsteady breath, “you could bear it instead.”

An eternity passes before either of them moves again and, even then, it’s only Lena, who walks carefully back to the balcony door and leaves it ajar, glass tinkling beneath her feet on her way over. Then, she gathers her things at her desk, folds her jacket carefully over her arm, and slings her purse on. Lena passes Kara on her way out, and only when she’s halfway out the door to her office does she speak again.

“So, forgive me,” Lena says, her voice smooth and calm – beautiful, even, “if I don’t want to be called a hero.”

Kara doesn’t call Lena for five days. Lena doesn’t call at all.

Weeks and weeks pass, and Kara goes through the motions. She goes to work during the day, writes little puff-pieces about the new dog shelter on Parada, because National City is still in nearly crime-free stasis. At lunch, Kara walks past Cat’s glass office to eat on the sunlit terrace, and Cat throws her this look, this pinched grimace; it’s only a matter of time before she calls Kara into her office and asks her why she looks like someone ran over her four cats.

In the summer, the sun sets at about eight in the evening. Kara sits in her window to watch it every day. Five minutes after the sky goes dark, Kara texts Lena. She tells her about her day, tells her something funny Winn did at the DEO, relays one of Cat’s more impressive insults. Then, she asks Lena about her day, how she’s doing, how work on the transmat portal is going, because Kara hasn’t allowed herself to go see Lena, not when Lena so obviously doesn’t want to see her. She wishes Lena well, and doesn’t say anything else after that because, even though it’s late in the evening, Lena is probably still at her office, working.

At the end of the day, Kara goes to sleep. The sun rises at about six in the morning, and Kara lies in bed to watch the sky light up, and she repeats her routine all over again.

Every night, the sun sets a little earlier than it had the day before, and rises later the next. Some days, Winn is off in his own little world, grinning at a text from Lyra on his phone; on the days Carter visits the office, Cat’s words soften. Some days, all Kara says is good night.

Lena never texts back. It’s the single thing that never shifts in Kara’s life, the constant point around which everything else revolves.

“Kiera!”

“Yes, Ms. Grant?”

“Why does your face,” Cat says without looking up, her hand twirling in a vague circle, “look as if someone ran over your cats?”

Kara sighs. “I don’t have cats, Ms. Grant.” Cat waves her hand dismissively. “It’s, uhm, I’m just …”

“Surely you aren’t still moping about your boyfriend. From what I’ve heard, he’s not even worth your time.” Kara doesn’t say anything, and Cat looks up. “Well?” she says, gentler now.

“It’s …” Kara doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know how to explain to Cat how, the more Kara misses Lena, the less she seems to miss Mon-El. Like Lena’s absence has gradually replaced his. Like the hole he left in her heart has morphed and changed, and there’s only one thing that can fill it now.

And she misses Mon-El, she does, but she also doesn’t think he’s ever cared so much, felt as bad about something he did as Lena does. And Lena didn’t—Lena hasn’t done anything. She literally gave Kara the remote so that she couldn’t do anything. And if that’s Lena’s version of selfish, well, Kara has to wonder who raised her to think like that.

Then again, she really doesn’t.

But Lena doesn’t answer Kara’s calls, and Lena doesn’t reply to her texts, and Lena is just gone, where, before, she was everywhere, and Kara doesn’t think she was taking Lena for granted before—she’s not sure she will ever take anything for granted, not when it can all be gone in a second—but it’s different, now that Kara doesn’t have her.

The truth is, Kara has never had a friend quite like Lena before, either. Family, sure – in fact, Alex and Lena are startlingly similar in so many ways: so unwilling to see the best in themselves, never doing anything in their own self-interest, and always, always thinking of others, and thinking of Kara. But friends?

Kara has never had friends like Lena.

Cat has that look on her face now, the one that’s half concerned that Kara has been standing in her office and hasn’t said a word for an entire minute, and half irritated that Kara is still in her office and hasn’t said a word for an entire minute. Kara almost tells her that it’s nothing like that, but that would feel a little like a lie.

“It’s nothing,” Kara hastens to say instead, and that’s a lie, too, because this is everything. Cat raises one eyebrow. “It’s … it’s nothing.”

“Well, fix this … ‘nothing’ of yours. I don’t pay you to make sad puppy faces and to stand still. Move along.”

And, Rao, that’s … Cat is spot on, as usual.

The problem is, Kara doesn’t know where to go from here.

She’s standing at the centre of the world, with everything just beyond her reach, and it’s all spinning around her.

(Standing on the pile of her unanswered texts, maybe.)

Kara doesn’t know what she’s allowed, doesn’t know because she hasn’t felt this out of her depth before, not for a long time now. Even her daily messages feel like this gross intrusion, like Lena would ask if she wanted to know about Kara’s day. Like Kara wouldn’t have to read L-Corp’s press releases, because Lena would want to tell her about all of it in person over brunch.

“Just go talk to her,” Alex says.

Kara groans. “I can’t.” She grabs two drinks from her fridge and places one in front of Alex before sitting down.

“Why not? You’re great at talking yourself out of stuff.”

“This isn’t just some problem I can talk myself out of. This is …” Kara makes a frustrated noise, “this is my life, this is important.”

Alex nods slowly. Her nails catch against the label on her drink. “You know,” she says carefully, “before Maggie and I started dating, we had a lot of problems, too. We weren’t sure about what we wanted, and that led to a ton of misunderstandings, and, for this huge chunk of time, I felt like I’d never get anywhere. But then, on Thanksgiving, Maggie got shot, and she came over and she told me what she was thinking, and now we’re here.” Alex smiles brilliantly. “And we’re getting married. Not tomorrow, and maybe not even ten years from now. But I know that she’s the one for me, and I told her that. I told her that I was in it for the long run, and I told her what I wanted.”

“But we aren’t like—” Kara’s mouth clamps shut, her words sticking in her throat like they had talking to Cat. Alex leans forward to grab Kara’s hands, and Kara wants so desperately to squeeze back as hard as she can.

“Miscommunication is killer, Kara,” Alex tells her earnestly. “Do you know what you want?”

“I …” Kara thinks suddenly of Mon-El, and her first thought is of how she may never see her mother’s necklace again. Then, she thinks of Lena, and wonders if she also feels as if her happiness is hinging on this one thing.

But then, she must. That’s what she told Kara the last time they saw each other. It’s Kara who hasn’t been saying anything this entire time.

“Yeah,” Kara says. “Yeah, I think I do.”

Alex nods again. “Do you think Lena wants the same thing?”

“Yes,” Kara answers, and her certainty sits sweet and lovely in her chest, “I think so.”

“Does she know?” Kara shakes her head. “Maybe you should tell her,” Alex says gently.

Kara calls Lena only once. Lena does not answer.

“Lena’s phone. Please leave a message after the tone.”

She leaves her message. Life goes on.

There’s this new clarity with which Kara views and understands everything. Kara still watches the sun set, but now she texts Lena in the afternoon. She still watches the sun rise, but she flies up onto the roof of her building to do it, because she likes to let the warmth envelop her, thrives in the feeling of the entire city coming alive around her. Kara tells Lena about her day, about her herb garden, about how Lena would like how the basil has sprouted today, how the undersides of the sage in her garden are precisely the colour of Lena’s eyes.

Once, in a press release, L-Corp announces that they’re exploring new uses for the transmat portal, and the possibilities of interstellar travel. Kara suggests in a text that it could be used to help aliens seeking refuge on Earth. In her next public appearance, Lena hints at a new project L-Corp is working on in collaboration with President Marsdin herself, and says, “The inspiration for this project came from a very close friend of mine. I hope to share it with you soon.”

So, Kara doesn’t stop texting. The world spins a little slower around her.

Every few days, Kara has movie night with Alex; three or four times a month, she hosts game night with her friends. The crime rate starts to ramp up again in the city, which isn’t good, but Supergirl and Guardian are always there to save the day, and Snapper starts giving her more interesting stories.

Family, friends, job.

Unbidden, Kara thinks again of the events of last year, of Myriad; remembers how time had stopped, as it has now. She remembers how the pod landed in National City. How, only two days later, Kara met Lena Luthor. How time had started again.

At the end of the summer, someone knocks on Kara’s apartment door, just once. It’s eleven; Kara has already texted Lena good morning. She goes to answer the door.

Lena stands on the other side. She smiles awkwardly, holds up her phone, and says, “Good morning, Kara.”

Kara shivers, just a little, warm and familiar, and she moves.

#supergirl #supercorp #iys #fic #this is ... je ne sais pas #it's not even a pot #it's like it was supposed to be a pot but it didn't work out and it turned into a plate #but not even a good plate more like a flat non-circular disk

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andrewdburton · 4 years

Text

How will the coronavirus affect your personal finances?

How quickly things change.

Last week, the coronavirus (or Covid-19, if you prefer) was a distant problem. It was something other people in other places had to wrestle with. Sure, there was a looming sense that maybe this runaway train was steaming our way, but it still seemed distant enough that maybe it'd stop before it reached us.

Not anymore. Now it's clear that the coronavirus isn't just headed to the U.S., it's already here in our communities.

I'm fascinated by the financial implications of the coronavirus. They're going to be huge — they're already huge — but I don't know who is going to bear the burden or how we, as a society, are going to make sense of this in the long run.

The stock market is tanking, obviously, and will likely continue to tank for some time. But I expect (hope?) that when the dust has settled, things there will largely return to normal.

Yes, I know it's impossible to make predictions about the market's direction. But I believe the current movement is largely due to the coronavirus and its immediate implications. When this event has receded into the past — in a few months, say — I expect stocks to regain most of what they lost. Not all, but most. (And again: I could be full of shit. Don't make any market moves based on what I personally believe will happen. I'm just a random guy behind a keyboard.)

But outside the stock market, there are a whole host of financial implications. We're entering uncharted territory. I don't know what to expect, and I don't think anyone else does either.

Here are some of my questions.

What Happens When Events Are Cancelled?

Many places — including here in Oregon — are banning large gatherings.

What happens to gatherings that have already been scheduled? I expect some events (such as the Portland Timbers match on March 28th) will be postponed. This should have a minimal financial impact on all parties. It simply shifts all of the money-related stuff to a later date.

This has been one of the toughest articles I've ever written. As I'm sitting at my desk composing it, new updates to the situation are occurring. Just now, for instance, Major League Soccer announced that it's suspending the season for thirty days. Rather than re-write as news hits, I'm going to leave the article as it was in the moment I wrote it.

Other events, though, will have to be cancelled. What happens then?

For instance, Kim and I have tickets to see an April performance of The Illusionists at Portland's Keller Auditorium. This event falls inside the 28-day ban on large gatherings in this state. I highly doubt this event well be re-scheduled. I expect it to be cancelled.

So, what happens when this event is cancelled?

Under normal circumstances — if the event were cancelled for any other reason — I'd expect to receive a refund for the ticket price. But what about now? Will ticket holders still receive refunds? Or will the production company say, “Sorry. This is beyond our control. You're out of luck.” I can see that happening. And I'm not sure I'd complain.

What about St. Patrick's Day? I consider this kind of a silly holiday, but it's a Big Deal to a lot of people.

Perhaps because it occurs in early spring, St. Patrick's Day fosters events with large crowds. Here in Portland, that means the Shamrock Run, in which 30,000+ people gather in the cold and the rain to run through downtown. That's been postponed. And Savannah, Georgia, home to the second-largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the country, just cancelled the event.

When I posted about this on Facebook, one of my friends noted that formal disaster declarations allow insurance claims to be filed. This sounds great, in theory. Disaster declared, so both the production company (or event producer) and potential attendees all get their costs refunded. Yay!

Or is it “yay”?

Doesn't this simply shift the financial burden to another party? If, as appears increasingly likely, we experience large-scale cancellations, won't this effectively gut the insurance industry? Do they have enough financial reserves to cover something of this magnitude? I find that unlikely. So, what happens then?

Here's another real-life dilemma.

The first-ever Financial Freedom Summit is scheduled for May 1st in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm supposed to speak. I haven't booked my flight yet, and at this point I don't know whether I should. While St. Louis hasn't been hit as hard as the West Coast, it's beginning to feel the effects, and events are being postponed or cancelled.

Will the city (or state) eventually issue a ban on large gatherings? How long will this ban last? I believe we're at the front-end of the coronavirus vector curve here in the U.S., but how long will it be a concern? Will we still be talking about this in late April and early May? Or will we be done with it in a couple of weeks?

If I had to guess, I'd say things are going to peak by the end of March, and that by the end of April, we'll mostly be back to normal. But what do I know? Again, I'm just a random guy behind a keyboard.

If I did book my flight and the event were cancelled, would I be able to get my money back? Airlines seem to be making some accommodations, but for how long? For now, I'm holding off on any decisions. (Worth noting: Not everyone has been able to get ticket refunds from airlines. Some are simply out of luck.)

Over at I Will Teach You to Be Rich this morning, Ramit Sethi published an excellent piece on the coronavirus: Panic is bad, but overreaction is good.

What's Going to Happen to Small Business?

In reality, I'm less concerned about how Big Business is going to weather this storm and more worried about how small businesses are going to hold things together.

Take restaurants, for instance. It's been a couple of weeks since I dined out — hey, I'm following through with my resolution to spend less on food in 2020! — but I can only imagine that things are slow slow slow. (In hard-hit Seattle, layoffs have already begun.)

To check my hunch, I messaged my friend Kyra Bussanich. Kyra's the only four-time winner of Cupcake Wars and owns a local gluten-free bake shop. “Have sales slowed at all?” I asked.

“Oh gosh yes,” Kyra answered. “And if things continue, I don't know if there'll be a bake shop when this blows over.”

Things are so bad, in fact, that she's taken a part-time job to make ends meet — and is even considering applying for a full-time job. All this while trying to run her business, a business that's struggling because of the coronavirus.

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At the end of our conversation, Kyra gave me some words of advice for how to help. “If there are artists or small businesses you love,” she said, “I urge you to go buy gift cards to them and when this all blows over, redeem those gift cards.”

GRS reader Christine runs a small business that gives food tours in Nashville. She says that new bookings have stalled. Plus, folks are cancelling travel plans, which means she's refunding tour tickets. “I had a plan for a recession,” she says. “This is like somebody turned the faucet off.”

So, as bad as things seem for big companies like Apple and United Airlines, they're even worse for small businesses.

I should note that not all small businesses are being affected. As you know, my family owns a small firm that manufactures corrugated packaging. Custom Box Service is humming right along. In fact, things are busy right now, which is a good sign.

How Will the Coronavirus Affect Personal Finances?

As a personal finance writer, though, my biggest concern during this crisis is the impact it's going to have on individuals.

I know I just updated my article about what to do when the stock market crashes on Monday — and I stand by my advice there — but there's more to personal finance than stock-market investing, right?

How is all of this going to affect workers? If Kyra's Bake Shop has to shut down — even temporarily — she loses income as an entrepreneur, but suddenly her employees are out of work. If my girlfriend's dental office decides it can't (or won't) see patients, she'll have to go without an income for a while.

Fortunately, Kim has savings. So do I. We can weather the storm. Not everybody can. In fact, most Americans have little (if anything) saved.

If you're thirty-something with a family, a mortgage, a car payment, and credit card debt, then what happens when you lose your job (or experience a layoff) because people stop coming to where you work?

In a normal economy, this happens constantly on a very small scale. People no longer use typewriters, so a typewriter firm goes out of business and its employees no longer have jobs. But that's a tiny handful of businesses. Now, today, this is problem is wide-spread and happening all at once.

This isn't me making stuff up. This is happening to our family and friends right now in the real world.

What happens when many people experience this at the same time? What then?

The Independent, a British publication, recently opined that the coronavirus will bankrupt more people than it kills. I suspect this is true. From the article: “We may look back on coronavirus as the moment when the threads that hold the global economy together came unstuck.” I hope not.

The financial effects won't simply come from lost wages. Many folks who succumb to the coronavirus in the U.S. — and I truly hope this will number in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands — could face high medical bills.

For 81% percent of people who contract it, the coronavirus is mild, which means it feels like the flu. For 14% of people, however, it's severe enough to require hospitalization. Another 5% of those infected suffer symptoms so severe that they need intensive career. (Generally speaking, they need artificial respiration.) And roughly 3% of people die from infection.

While I keep GRS largely politics-free, health care is one rare exception. Our current system is ridiculous: expensive and outmoded. This coronavirus may finally serve as a catalyst for change. Maybe.

What Happens in the Long Run?

I have other questions about what will happen in the long run.

Can the national (and global) economy simply take a two- or three-month break, then resume as normal as if nothing happened? What happens in the meantime? How do we care for our at-risk populations and for those who already struggle to make ends meet?

How do we improve our ability to handle black swan events like this in the future?

Will this crisis change anything about how we live and relate to each other? Is it possible that this could perhaps alleviate some of the partisan bickering we've been experiencing in recent years?

It's my deepest hope that this unprecedented event will draw people together in a way that we haven't seen in this country for some time. I hope that the spirit of cooperation blossoms and that people and and government and business find solutions to make sure everyone comes happy and healthy and financially secure.

Unfortunately, I don't think that's likely to happen.

I don't have any answers here, obviously. All I have is a lot of questions. I suspect that's true for everyone. For once, this really does seem like a case of “this time is different”.

Moreso than usual, there'll be a zero-tolerance policy regarding politics in the discussion for this article. Some things transcend politics. This is one of those things.

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/coronavirus/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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Ever since her mother walked out, Trix McCabe has been determined to make it on her own. And with her near-magical gift for pulling valuables off unsuspecting strangers, Trix is confident she has what it takes to survive. Until she’s caught and given a choice: jail time, or go live with her long-lost family in the tiny town of Rocksaw, Kansas. Trix doesn’t plan to stick around Rocksaw long, but there’s something special about her McCabe relatives that she is drawn to. Her aunt, Mia, bakes pies that seem to cure all ills. Her cousin, Ember, can tell a person’s deepest secret with the touch of a hand. And Trix’s great-aunt takes one look at Trix’s palm and tells her that if she doesn’t put down roots somewhere, she won’t have a future anywhere. Before long, Trix feels like she might finally belong with this special group of women in this tiny town in Kansas. But when her past comes back to haunt her, she’ll have to decide whether to take a chance on this new life . . . or keep running from the one she’s always known. With lovable and flawed characters, an evocative setting, and friendships to treasure, A Constellation of Roses is the perfect companion to Miranda Asebedo’s debut novel The Deepest Roots. A Constellation of Roses by Miranda Asebedo Publisher: HarperTeen Release Date: November 5th 2019 Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Book Links: Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41021973-a-constellation-of-roses Amazon: https://amzn.to/31zyTR2 Bookdepository: https://www.bookdepository.com/Constellation-Roses-Miranda-Asebedo/9780062747105?ref=grid-view&qid=1568883944503&sr=1-1 B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-constellation-of-roses-miranda-asebedo/1129473584#/ Google Books: https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/A_Constellation_of_Roses.html?id=TBb9wQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y iTunes: https://books.apple.com/us/book/a-constellation-of-roses/id1451488194 Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/hk/en/ebook/a-constellation-of-roses Favorite Quotes: "Fortune telling isn't a science. It's an art. And sometimes art is messy." “When I remove my hands from my face I see that he’s grinning too. That scar pulls at his eye, and that’s when I realize that it only does that sometimes when he smiles, not every time. I don’t know why, but this seems important." “Scars tell a story, even when we don’t want them to.” "How do I stay active when I have frequent bladder leaks?" "I can run away as easily as I have all the times before. I slipped up going back to the starlight. I won't make that mistake again." “It’s both beautiful and frightening to feel like you’re being seen, truly, for the first time.” “All I know is that it’s the good memories that cut the deepest, because those are the ones where you remember what you’ve lost.” “I earn my money now. I don’t steal it. You don’t steal from a town where you mean to put down roots.” “I’ve been invisible for months at a time while I was drifting, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let someone make me feel that way on purpose.” Review: A Constellation of Roses by Miranda Asebedo is such a good book. I really enjoyed this one. Trix McCabe is a 17 year old girl who is gifted with being able to pick pocket without ever raising suspicion. She has been living in a motel ever since her mother left. She pays for this motel with cash every week. Her life is not great. It isn't even good. Drug addicts and johns visit this place all the time. The last thing that Trix feels is safe or loved. Everything is better than being back in the foster system. One day Trix is picked up by the cops and she has a choice to make. She can go to jail or she can move in with her long lost relatives in the middle of nowhere. Trix chooses not to go to jail. On top of everything these women has magical gifts. Trix has no idea what she got herself into. I thought the magical realism in this book was so good. Asebedo did such a great job with this concept of secret special magical gifts. This story has a lot of raw emotions and I really needed that in a book right now. I felt like this was such a beautiful story that focused on family and forgiveness. Trix has such a heartbreaking story and I am glad that Asebedo was able to tell it. Even though this book handles several heavier and difficult issues, Asebedor handled it was grace. I thought she did a great job making sure there was still hope in the book. Plus the humor helped. I can't get enough of this book. You should definitley check it out. Excerpt: Chapter 1 My hand slips into the woman’s gaping purse like it’s my own. Fingers nimble and sure on her wallet, I brush against her as if I am just impatient to get through the crowds of people milling around in the Eastside Mall. It’s not hard to do. Everyone here is in a rush to get to the next big sale. That’s why I always pick this place. And because it’s lightly patrolled by burly security guards who stand idly outside upscale department stores and watch for the wolves among the placid, woolly shoppers. My touch is only the softest graze against the woman; she doesn’t even notice. Before I can inhale a full breath of her expen- sive perfume, I’m gone, her billfold in hand. I stuff it into my beat-up bag and lose myself in the throngs of people. This is the third wallet tonight, and by the glimpse of the designer insignia, I’m guessing that I can retire for the evening. I only need enough to cover the week at the motel and maybe something to eat a couple times a day. I steal just enough to get by. No more, no less. I follow the stream of other shoppers as they trickle out of the mall, but when they go to the parking garage to load up their Mer- cedes and their BMWs, I pull on my hood and walk into the wind. It’s barely September, but lately the evenings are cool enough to make me hope I remembered to turn the radiator on low before I left the motel. One of the security guards making the rounds in the parking lot briefly scrutinizes a girl with a black hoodie and ripped jeans and says something into his walkie-talkie, but I don’t worry about him. You see, I’ve got a gift. Once I watched a movie about this little boy who could heal people with his hands. They said he had “a gift from God.” I’ve never seen God, and from the few times I prayed with the pious foster mom whose husband whipped me with a belt when I spilled juice on their new carpet, it became clear to me that if there was a God, he didn’t see me, either. But my gift is okay, too, regardless of where it came from. My hands are swift, undetectable. I was born a thief. I’m sure there are more people out there like me. Some strange twist of DNA giving us gifts like perfect pitch or immor- tal cells or quick hands or even healing ones. I don’t think I was chosen or found worthy. I think I’m just damn lucky. Sometimes for fun I like to watch the security-camera footage at the bodega next to the Happy Host. I wander in the aisles, loading up, barely a shadow on the screen above the register, just someone in a hoodie with her hands firmly in her pockets. No one sees a thing. Ever. I catch a city bus on the next block, careful not to meet the eyes of the other commuters as we make our way to the west side of town. Sure, most of these people are the unseen—the busboys, the cleaning ladies, the trash collectors. But a few are thieves and pickpockets like me, and they’re on their way home, some licking their lips and others licking their wounds. I want to blend in with the unseen. Nothing in my bag but minimum wage and an empty lunch box, not stolen rent money. Instead I stare at the sturdy shoes of the older couple sitting across from me, their clasped hands resting between them on the vinyl seat. I get my sketchbook from my bag and begin to draw those hands with stolen pencils. Sketching my surroundings is something I’ve done since I was old enough to notice the shadows moving from the small split in the curtains of whatever motel room I was living in, some desperate admiration for the way dark and light give depth and meaning to everything. I use short, scratchy strokes to show the way the couple’s fingers intertwine, nicks on the knuckles where the dry, red skin has split. There’s something beautiful about the way her hands look as rough and cracked as his, so you can’t tell which hand belongs to which person. I like the bus because it makes me feel connected to other people, sharing their stories, even if only for a little while. But eventually, I always remember that I am still alone, and I close my sketchbook and watch the street signs for my destination. I get off at the dark stop two blocks away from the Starlite Motel. Keeping my head down and walking quickly, I ignore the voices and laughter from the doorways and the parking lots I pass. I don’t want to buy anything, and I’m not selling, either. As I get closer, I see that the motel sign says NO VACANCY, which means that the ladies who are my neighbors are probably working. Mom used to work with them sometimes, too, when we lived here. Until she said she was going to get a pack of cigarettes one August afternoon and never came back. That was a little over a year ago, in one of those brief, hopeful lulls when she said she was going to get clean again. I’ve been a lot of places since she left, but I keep drifting back here. I guess because it’s familiar. When I get to the Starlite, there are a lot of cars in the parking lot. It’s Friday, and men do stupid things with their paychecks. I stop at room 7 and, looking over my shoulder, I pull my keys out of my pocket. Once I’m inside, I immediately lock the door behind me and do a quick inspection of the room. I am alone. Mel, the night manager, has kind of a soft spot for the kids who live here, and that’s why he lets me rent a room even though I’m by myself and not eighteen. There aren’t many of us at the Starlite. Me, Charly, and the Quinter twins. Charly shares room 11 with her mom, and Janie Quinter, barely older than me, and her twins are one door down in room 12. The twins are little, though, and usually Charly watches them when their mom is working. Shane used to live here, too. I dump the wallets out on the queen bed. The coverlet is a faded floral print, and it sort of matches the brown carpet and the yellowed curtains. I thumb through my haul, checking every pos- sible pocket for cash that might be hidden. I peel out carefully folded, clean bills. That’s what I like about rich people. Even their money smells better. There’s three hundred seven dollars. Sighing in relief, I clutch the crisp cash to my chest. It’s enough to pay for another week at the Starlite and food for a while. Not a bad night at all. I take half the money and cram it into the jar I keep in the toilet tank, careful to screw the lid back on tightly so my stash doesn’t get wet. No one ever thinks to look in the toilet tank. They always look under the mattress, in the top drawers of the dresser, the cupboard in the corner. I shove the other half of the money into my pocket to pay the rent. The stolen billfolds go in the metal trash can I’ve designated as the burn trash. There’s a small outdoor grill behind the Starlite, and I burn everything but money. I’m not stupid. Credit cards, IDs: those are traceable. I only take the cash. Marie leaves the bot- tle of lighter fluid out there. Who knows what the young, pretty maid burns, but I’m not alone in my activities. My stomach growls. I check the small clock that hangs above the kitchenette area. Calling it a kitchen is a little extravagant when it’s really only a hot plate and a bathroom sink with a dish drainer next to it. I should’ve stopped at the QuikMart to grab a bite on the way home, but it was late, and I knew I should get back before Mel started playing cards with the old man who lives in room 2. Once they start drinking, it’s hard to say if my rent will make it into the till or into the game. I hesitate by the door. I don’t want to go all the way back to the QuikMart, so I do something nice for myself. I order a pizza. Not a cheap one, either. I order one of those deluxe ones from Sal’s, the kind that leaks grease through the cardboard so it leaves stains on the coverlet. I can live off one of those for a couple of days. Then I leave the motel room and lock the door behind me. Hood up, head down, I make my way to the main office. “Trix! Hey, Trix!” The sound of my name seizes my shoulders and urges me to run before I recognize the voice. Charly. “Hey,” she says, jogging up beside me. “Thought that was you. Rent time, huh? Mom just sent me to pay for next week, too.” She holds up the wad of cash so I can see it, the cheap gold rings on her fingers glinting in the lights from the neon NO VACANCY sign. “Don’t flash that around,” I hiss, watching the two guys leaning on an Impala in the parking lot. I don’t know if they’re staying here or waiting for someone, but I don’t want to catch their attention by looking like we’re two easy marks. Charly shrugs and stuffs the money in the pocket of her snug jeans. “What’s the fun of having money if you can’t show it off?” she asks. “Anyway, what are you doing tonight? Can I come over?” “Aren’t you watching the twins?” I ask. “No, Janie’s sick, so she’s not working.” Charly’s a year younger than me, but there’s a tightness in her face, a hardness that makes her seem older. I don’t know; maybe I look that way to other people, too. “You can come over if you want,” I tell her, knowing there’s a fifty-fifty chance she’ll blow me off. Anytime a boyfriend texts, she bails on plans with me. But tonight, I could use the company. I haven’t spoken to another person in nearly a week. Just me in a crowd, me in my room. Just me, alone. Sometimes drifting can be lonely, and it would be nice to feel that somebody cares I’m here. So I add, knowing it will sweeten the deal, “I’ve got a pizza com- ing.” Charly grins, revealing the large gap between her front teeth. “I’m starving.” We both go into the empty motel office, the small bell on the door alerting Mel and Room 2 Old Guy in the back room that we’re there. Mel lumbers in and leans on the front desk, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth. “I’ve got the week’s rent for room 11,” Charly says, holding out the wad of cash. Mel takes it, making a face at the crumpled bills. “Tell your mama to stop leaving her shit in the only working dryer,” he grumbles. “Yeah?” Charly says, crossing her arms. The motel has a tiny laundry room with two machines that are out of order more than they’re working. I just wash my clothes in the sink. “Why don’t you fix the other damn dryer, Mel? And since we’re bitching, tell Marie to stop stealing my stuff when she comes in to change the sheets.” Mel grins. He likes spunk. “Room seven,” I tell Mel, handing him my money and avoid- ing the argument altogether. “Another week?” he asks, as if he’s surprised. This will be my second week in a row here. I know I should change motels again, but this one feels safe to me. I guess it’s because Mom and I lived here for three years before she left, which makes it the longest time we ever lived anywhere, and the closest thing to a home. The picture I drew with stolen charcoal pencils on the day we moved in is still on the wall, still hidden behind the generic framed picture of a palm tree on a beach that hangs in every room at the Starlite. “Just one more,” I tell him. “Tell Marie I’ll pick up clean sheets tomorrow. I can change them myself.” Marie’s okay, but Charly’s right: that girl’s got sticky fingers. I would know. “Sure, kid. You going to be in your room tonight? Check out the free movie channels. Some kind of promo from the cable company.” I shrug. “Yeah. No big plans.” Or any in recent months. Charly and I wish Mel good luck with his card game, and then she leaves me at my door to go down to her room. “Let me grab something to drink,” she says. “I’ll be back in a few.” I unlock my door and go inside, carefully locking it again behind me. If I know Charly, she’ll be bringing back a red plastic cup nearly full of vodka she swiped from her mom, and a few cans of soda to cut it with. The guy who fills the vending machine by the front office has a thing for Charly, and he’s always leaving cans of Sprite or Coke by her door like they’re bouquets of flowers. Surprising me given her track record, Charly gets back before the pizza. I know it’s her from the way she kicks the door with the toe of her worn-out sneakers because her hands are full. “Open up. It’s the police,” she bellows, knowing it will terrify all our neighbors. Laughter peals outside the door. Charly never could keep straight-faced during a joke. I peer at her through a crack in the curtains, just in case, before I open the door. There’s a few muffled thuds and then some swearing from the room next door when they realize it’s just Charly out there. She whisks inside with her arms full of exactly what I thought she’d have. When Charly’s mixed us drinks with the cheap plastic cups from the kitchenette, she spills her guts as we lounge on the hard bed, the television turned to a comedy on Mel’s free movie chan- nel. She and her mom are on the rocks again, and she has to dump Dante because he’s still cheating on her, this time with some rich girl on the East Side. Nothing is good anymore, she says, not like it used to be. She twirls her hair as she talks, sips carefully from her drink before she drops her next words. “Let me come with you next week.” “What do you mean?” I ask her, taking a slug of the drink and wincing at the burn. Charly was a little heavy-handed with the vodka, which doesn’t surprise me now that I know she wants something. “You never stay here long anymore. Not like when your mom was still around. I know you’ll leave again. So take me with you.” She looks down into her cup. “I want out. I’m tired of living with my mom. I’m tired of the johns hanging around, and babysit- ting every night, and just living in this shitty motel.” “So you’re just going to drop out of school and hit the road?” I ask. “Why not? You haven’t gone to school regular since your mom left.” I read once that when you lose an arm or a leg, sometimes you get phantom pain, this ache where there’s nothing left to hurt. That’s what it felt like, since Mom walked out. I know she felt like she could never forgive herself for all the things that had happened between us, and maybe she could never forgive me, either, but somehow her absence hurts even more than having her here. You can’t forgive someone if they never come back to you. It wasn’t that I didn’t like school, it was just that I had lost interest in books and tests and tardy slips when Mom left and what small foundation I had crumbled apart. Also, you need a guardian to enroll, and I’d sworn off those about six months ago, after I’d run away from my last group home. “You going to get a job? Or am I supposed to be your sugar mama in this scenario?” I take another swig of the drink and let the vodka sing in my bones, willing it to drown out that phantom pain. “I’ll find a way,” she says. “If Shane was here, he’d help me out. He was going to get us out of here, you know. He promised.” I know she means well when she brings him up. I know she has as much right as I do to say his name. He was my boyfriend for only a year before he went to prison, after all, and Shane had been Charly’s brother all her life. But it stings anyway. I set my cup down on the nightstand and slide off the bed. I go into the bathroom, shut the door, and sit down on the edge of the grimy bathtub. I only need a minute. I haven’t talked about Shane or Mom for a long time. It’s easier that way. I hear Charly standing on the other side of the door. “I’m sorry,” she says, her voice muffled. “I shouldn’t have brought him up. We just haven’t talked about him in forever, and I thought you were probably over him by now.” There’s a soft clink of her rings against the knob, but she doesn’t turn it. When you live in a motel with paper-thin walls, you learn to respect boundaries. “It wasn’t your fault, you know. Even if you’d been with him, it wouldn’t have ended any different.” I hear the scrape of her rings as she pulls her hand away. The truth is, I am over Shane. Or I think I am, anyway. Mostly now I feel guilt when I remember him. My gift would have protected him if we had been together when everything happened. But even Shane didn��t really believe me back then. It was luck, he said, when I tried to convince him. I stand up and flush the toilet like I’m not a coward hiding in a motel bathroom. There’s a knock at the door, three times, quick and insistent. Charly calls, “Pizza’s here!” “Wait! Look before you open it!” I shout, flinging open the bathroom door. But it’s too late. Two uniformed police officers are standing outside. “We’re looking for Trixie McCabe,” the younger, female officer says, her hands on her belt. “There’s no Trixie here,” Charly lies easily, starting to close the door. “You have the wrong address.” The other officer, an older man, puts up a hand to stop her from shutting them out. He stares at me where I stand dumbly in the frame of the bathroom door, the toilet still running behind me. He’s seen me already, and slamming the door or running isn’t going to make any difference now. I hear swearing and slamming, other people in the Starlite getting out before the cops come knocking on their doors, too. The older cop holds out the same photo the foster homes always use when I run away. Long dark hair, light-olive skin, and gray-green eyes that glare angrily into the camera. “Miss McCabe, we’re going to need you to come with us,” he says. About the Author: Miranda Asebedo was born and raised in rural Kansas with a love of fast cars, open skies, and books. She carried that love of books to college, where she got her B.A. and M.A. in English, with an emphasis in Creative Writing and Literature. A Seaton Fellowship recipient, her short fiction has appeared in Kansas Voices, Touchstone, and Midway Journal. Miranda still lives on the prairie today with her husband, two kids, and two majestic bulldogs named Princess Jellybean and Captain Jack Wobbles. If Miranda's not writing or reading, she's most likely convinced everyone to load up in the family muscle car and hit the road. Author Links: Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16987401.Miranda_Asebedo Website: https://www.mirandaasebedo.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MirandaWriteNow Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mirandawritenow/ Giveaway: Prize: Win a copy of A CONSTELLATION OF ROSES by Miranda Asebedo (INT) Starts: 5th november 2019 Ends: 19th November 2019 Photo Credit: Alexis Bestwick Fan Art / Photo Credit: Elvishness a Rafflecopter giveaway Tour Schedule: https://fantasticflyingbookclub.blogspot.com/2019/09/tour-schedule-constellation-of-roses-by.html November 18th The Unofficial Addiction Book Fan Club - Welcome Post November 19th Bookish Looks - Guest Post Books and Blends - Review Book-Keeping - Review + Favourite Quotes The Reading Corner for All - Review Book Blog London - Review + Favourite Quotes November 20th Wishful Endings - Guest Post Here's to Happy Endings - Review + Favourite Quotes Belle's Archive - Review + Favourite Quotes We Live and Breathe Books - Review What's She Reading? - Review November 21st NovelKnight - Interview onemused - Review Dazzled by Books - Review + Favourite Quotes Avid Reader - Review Booked J - Review November 22nd A Book Addict's Bookshelves - Guest Post Confessions of a YA Reader - Review + Favourite Quotes For The Love of Fictional Worlds - Review Morgan Vega - Review + Favourite Quotes bewitchingwords - Review + Favourite Quotes November 23rd Book Rambler - Review Sometimes Leelynn Reads - Review + Favourite Quotes The Clever Reader - Review + Favourite Quotes To All The Books I've Read Before - Review + Playlist biblioxytocin - Review + Favourite Quotes November 24th L.M.Durand - Interview The Shelf Life Chronicles - Review The She Revelation Book Blog - Review + Favourite Quotes emily the book nerd - Review + Playlist The Heart of a Book Blogger - Review + Book Aesthetic Instagram Schedule: November 18th FFBC Tours TUABFC November 19th Bookish Looks Book-Keeping The Reading Corner for All Book Blog London November 20th Wishful Endings Here's to Happy Endings Belle's Archive November 21st NovelKnight onemused Avid Reader Booked J Dazzled by Books November 22nd Confessions of a YA Reader For The Love of Fictional Worlds Morgan Vega November 23rd Sometimes Leelynn Reads The Clever Reader biblioxytocin November 24th L.M.Durand The She Revelation Book Blog emily the book nerd The Heart of a Book Blogger The Shelf Life Chronicles

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5 Reasons it Feels Good to Be a Work at Home Mom

The choice of whether and how to work once you become a mom can be a difficult one that leaves you constantly questioning whether you made the right decision.

If you’re currently a stay at home mom, working at the job of raising your kids and keeping up with the house, you likely wonder at times, “what if” I started working again?

Oftentimes, moms who stay at home with their kids feel guilty when they get the urge to have a job outside their children, even if they’re considering work from home options.

After all, despite all the joy they bring, the kids are certainly enough of a “job” even if you don’t also factor in the laundry, housework, and cooking.

Does the urge to have your own business therefore make you a “bad” mom who doesn’t love her kids enough to want to devote 24/7 to them?

Well of course not, but our own internal self-doubt, as well as potential disapproving comments from our circle of stay at home mom friends, can certainly make us feel that way.

If you have a desire to start your own business and work from home, here are five reasons you should kick the shame out of your head and start feeling good about that possibility.

1. It’s Good for Your Mental Health

Studies show that moms who work at least part time are happier than stay at home moms.

A 2012 Gallup Poll showed that stay at home moms were more likely to report anger, sadness, and depression than moms who worked.

The stay at home mom was also less likely to say she smiled or laughed a lot, learned something interesting, or experienced enjoyment and happiness the previous day.

A 2011 study published in the Journal of Family Psychology had similar results.

There, mothers who worked at least part time reported better overall health and fewer symptoms of depression than stay at home moms.

While neither study explored the “why” behind these results, it makes sense that when a mother gets a chance to connect with other adults and pursue a job she enjoys, it makes her feel good.

As much as we love our kids, they are a 24/7 job, which can get isolating and overwhelming if we don’t pursue other interests.

If you’re considering having a business from home, rather than having a job outside the house, this decision has the potential to make you even happier because you won’t have any of the guilt associated with “leaving” your kids when you go to work.

2. You Develop a Strong Individual Identity

You may have heard other moms say, or even thought to yourself, I’d like to have some legacy in my life that’s more than, “I spent my life driving kids to soccer practice.”

Motherhood comes with more joys than any job could ever provide, but at the end of a long day, we often don’t feel like we’ve accomplished anything beyond just being a mom.

And it feels good to have an identity beyond being somebody’s mom.

We usually don’t get many props for keeping the kids alive and the house at least passable.

When you have your own business, your successes in helping clients, reaching your income goals, and collaborating with other entrepreneurs bring about a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that doesn’t come with motherhood.

This may, in part, explain why moms who work are less depressed than stay at home moms.

3. You’re Not Missing Out on the Opportunities SAHMs Get

When stay at home mothers consider working, one of the big hesitations is what milestones and unique opportunities they’ll miss out on with their children.

If your children are young, you want to be there for their first steps and the new words they produce almost daily.

As they get older, there are the opportunities to volunteer to go on class field trips, and to attend class parties and performances that happen during school hours.

As a work from home mom, you control your schedule. There’s no boss to approve your afternoon off and no HR department to tell you you’ve used all your vacation and personal days.

You have the ability to schedule in the class field trip the same way you would a business meeting or client call.

Essentially, you have the best of both worlds in that you get to be involved in all the important aspects of your child’s life, while still having that important identity outside of being someone’s mom.

4. Increased Financial Stability

Who couldn’t use a little extra money?

Even if you’re financially stable without working, think of the extra trips you could take, the times you could say “yes” to your kids without thinking about money, and the assurance you would have if something went array with your partner’s job.

Not having to worry about finances, or just knowing that you’re solid even in the event of an emergency, takes a huge weight off your mind and opens you up to being more present with your kids and your partner.

And what if having your own business would give you more than your family needs?

Think of the things you could do.

When your child’s field trip permission slip came home you could check the box saying you’d send extra money to cover the kids whose families can’t afford the fees.

You could give freely to a charity, or start a charity around a passion of your own.

We learned the other day how volunteering is scientifically shown to make us happier because of the feeling of giving to the community is gives us.

When you're able to use your extra dollars to give to those in need, it's certain to provide you and your family with that same sense of happiness.

There’s just no downside to having more money!

5. You’re Providing a Strong Role Model for Your Children

No matter what direction your children decide to go in when they grow up, running your own business beside them provides your children with the best possible positive role model they could have.

Whatever you do, you are going to be your child’s most influential role model, at least when she’s younger.

Showing her that you can make dinner, run three kids in different directions, and help four clients with your product or service all in one day sends the message that she can do anything she wants to do.

Having a job outside being mom can also foster your child’s independence.

When he sees that mommy's sole function is not just to provide for him, he’ll not only be interested in the other people you’re serving, but will also learn that he can make his own sandwich if mom has a phone call at lunch time.

Ready to Get Started?

If you are currently a stay at home mom considering or actively looking for a home based business, we can help.

Kids Party Characters owner Cheryl Jacobs is a successful entrepreneur who has started 10 businesses, but who was once a single mom with no money who had to find a way to feed her kids.

Cheryl loves mentoring other moms through the early stages of entrepreneurship, and has opened up memberships to KidsPartyCharacters.com as a way of cutting down the learning curve and getting busy moms into profit as soon as possible.

With membership you’ll get an exclusive territory in which to book parties, the right to use our 200+ costumes, access to our casting director and acting coach, and business training and support from Cheryl herself and the team at KidsPartyCharacters.com.

If this sounds like an opportunity that might be a good fit for your life, schedule a free, no-pressure chat with Cheryl right here and she’ll answer any questions you have and lead you in the right direction.

Also join us on Facebook to learn more about how fun and rewarding a Kids Party Characters business can be.

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gossipnetwork-blog · 7 years

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'Game of Thrones' Season 7 Episode 6 Recap: A Major Fan Theory About Daenerys' Dragons Was Just Confirmed

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'Game of Thrones' Season 7 Episode 6 Recap: A Major Fan Theory About Daenerys' Dragons Was Just Confirmed

Quick Q: You’re stranded on a deserted island (more of a small rock than an island) with water all around you. The water is covered in a thin layer of ice that may or may not hold your weight. Oh, you’re also trapped on all sides by an army of undead soldiers. Who would you choose to take with you?

If you didn’t answer Jorah, Tormund, Beric, and Jon Snow…well, you’re wrong. The big action on Game of Thrones this week took place north of the wall and it covered air, land, and sea. So, let’s dive into this extra long episode, shall we?

Let’s start with the fact that things were never going to be great for our merry band of misfits adventuring north of the wall in this episode. We open on them trekking and bonding; Gendry has never seen snow, Tormund reveals how Wildlings keep warm up there, and Beric defends selling Gendry to Melisandre. It would be endearing if we weren’t over here waiting to find out what will go wrong during this misguided expedition—but we don’t have to wait long.

The crew is caught in the winds of winter (not George R.R. Martin’s unreleased sixth book, unfortunately). Visibility is about zero, except they spot that a black blob in the distance is a bear, and Gendry is able to see that the bear has the blue eyes of the dead. That is some good eyesight. They don’t have much time to ponder before a group of undead bears descends. It’s not quite the enemy we expected for this crew, and we meet our first casualty: RIP, Thoros. Your ability to resurrect the dead will not be forgotten.

The group moves on and spots their first two-legged White Walkers near the arrowhead-shaped mountain The Hound saw in his vision. It’s a small traveling group. Team human baits them with a fire. Ultimately, Jon’s Valyrian steel sword is able to defeat most of the group of White Walkers by taking out the leader, which is a pretty nifty fact we learned during this struggle.

Jon dispatches Gendry to Eastwatch to send a Raven to Daenerys (he makes it back to the wall in bad shape, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Gendry has had his fill of snow). The rest of the team essentially has no choice but to forge ahead. The men wrangle their undead loot to bring back to Cersei, and a thundery noise from behind lets us know that the terrifyingly large army of mobilized White Walkers is upon them. Their choice becomes clear: death by ice cold water from the frozen lake in front of them or death by violent undead humans behind (and also in front and on the sides). They opt against certain death on the ice lake and make it to the tiny rock island in the middle, surrounded. It seems like they’re SOL until the weight of the walker army cracks the ice and and large numbers begin to plunge through, which gives pause to the hundreds left on shore. The two sides are caught in a sort of standoff/staring contest and our men don’t seem to have a plan. After a chilly night stranded in the middle of the lake, The Hound kills time by throwing a rock at a jaw-less skeleton man, which provokes him to shuffle over to rock island now that the lake is re-frozen over. His emboldened, undead friends follow—and the epic penultimate episode clash really begins.

Down south, things are a little calmer (and warmer). Before the raven from Eastwatch arrives at Dragonstone, Dany talks to Tyrion about how heroes don’t interest her (heroes do stupid things, then they die), nor does the petty one-upsmanship of men who try to win her heart—and she uses Jon’s quest as an example. Tyrion echoes Jon from a few episodes before talking about being a different kind of ruler and taking things slower and less violent to avoid a “brittle” power. He’s thinking about the long term and who can succeed her as a ruler. Dany is done thinking it seems, and she blames Tyrion’s long-term planning for their early losses. She wants to get on the throne and be part of the action, and she’s fed up with Tyrion giving her shoddy counsel and worrying about old Lannister loyalties. She gets Gendry’s raven, and, if anything, Tyrion’s suggestions and talk push her to take to the skies. He pleas for her to stay and do nothing, which she’s not interested in doing again. This time she flies in a super-chic winter coat version of her go-to look, and with all three of her dragons.

Back north, where she’s headed, the plausibility of the small group of men holding off this giant army for as long as they did is weak at best. Still, we’re cheering for the good guys here, so it was nice to see them prevail. There’s minimal carnage on the living side (as in no major characters die after Thoros), and just when the tables start to turn, we get our first real taste of what’s truly a song of ice and fire. Dany comes in and warms things up with some fire breath, taking out a lot of the army in the process. I had been wondering if dragons were all-weather animals. The answer is a resounding yes.

The crew is about to make a great escape with the team on dragonback, but Jon has to play the martyr and fight off every leftover skeleton coming his way. That leaves enough time for the Night King to whip out his premium version of Cersei’s dragon spear crossbow completely undetected. He nails one of the dragons circling overhead right in the chest like an Olympic javelin thrower (I’m unclear as to which one it was). We now know of something that can definitely kill dragons. This death was a hard one to watch, even for the characters on screen, right down to the slow, tortured slide into the water.

The Night King is ready to lock and load again as Jon considers facing him. He takes one for the team by telling Dany to GTFO. He doesn’t reach the Night King, but he DOES get mauled by a couple of undead soldiers and knocked into the freezing water. Things don’t look great for our King in the North, but you heard Beric: There’s a reason the God of Fire brought him back, and it wasn’t to just die by drowning at the hands of two white walkers. Dany and friends manage to miss the next ice spear as they fly away, almost at the expense of Jorah. The army of the dead begins to retreat and Jon somehow emerges from the lake next to his sword, his wet clothes freezing fast. More walkers are headed his way and things don’t look good. That is, until he’s saved in the eleventh hour once again when his Uncle Benjen comes in on horseback swinging his fire ball chain thingy. He sends Jon and the horse back to the wall, but doesn’t join and save himself because there’s “no time” (which was a little confusing, two people could definitely have gotten on that horse). Jon arrives at the wall much like Gendry, alive, but barely. Nothing a little Ikea rug can’t fix.

When Jon comes to, Dany is at his bedside and she’s been crying. Jon feels awful about her dead dragon (but she’s crying about YOU Jon, duh), and she explains how they’re her children and the two have ~ a moment ~. Hand holding, staring, and nicknaming is involved. They kept it PG, though the show is fully teasing us now, even if Jon is “too little for her.” I can’t say I’m mad about it, even though I maybe should be because we should not be encouraging aunt/nephew relations.

Anyway, Dany can no longer deny Jon’s warnings about the army of the dead. She saw it with her own eyes and agrees they will team up to fight this shared enemy whether he bends the knee or not. She is out for blood…or whatever is going through the Night King’s veins after his savage takedown of her dragon child. Jon knows the way to Daenerys’s heart and calls her queen. So, they both got what they wanted and gave what they thought they wouldn’t. Cute.

A massive white walker battle isn’t the only drama we saw up north this week. We got some icy scenes in Winterfell, and I’m not just talking about the weather. We first see Arya reflecting on a happy moment from childhood, when she got to practice archery with Bran’s bow “against the rules” while Ned watched on and encouraged her (remember those season one days?). It would be sweet if she didn’t have an ulterior motive. She doesn’t wait long to bring up the letter she found to Sansa and insists on reciting the traitorous piece of parchment back to her. Sansa is visibly upset, but Arya truly doesn’t care and cuts her down pretty badly. She’s Ned’s daughter, and she can’t understand a world where a Stark wouldn’t rather die than write a letter turning on her family. They argue about who had it worse in their long journeys back home and shared suffering isn’t enough to bridge the gap between their differences.

PHOTO: HBO

Sansa retreats to the counsel of Littlefinger, who likely has her where he wants her, which is seeing Arya as a stranger. He reminds her Brienne is here to protect both her and her sister and plants a very dangerous idea by casually mentioning the two Stark women harming each other. With this conversation in mind, Sansa sends Brienne away in her place when she receives a summons by Cersei. She will not face the woman who caused her so much suffering. Instead, she’ll send arguably her only completely loyal ally in her place. Brienne protests—she doesn’t trust Littlefinger. Sansa makes it very clear she doesn’t need looking after. We’ll see about that.

Littlefinger’s words still in her mind, she sneaks into Arya’s room like a true sibling. She goes for her sister’s luggage under the bed and finds F***ING FACES INSIDE. Sansa is, understandably, freaked out. Arya sees her sister snoop and is happy to explain the world of the Many-Faced God and the Game of Faces. Sansa is now officially terrified by what both of her only living (real) siblings have become. Arya teases Sansa about wearing her face and becoming “someone else,” a.k.a. Sansa. She picks up her new fancy Valyrian steel knife but instead of attacking her sister she hands it to her and walks out, leaving Sansa petrified.

We end the episode where we began: north of the wall. The army of the dead have found big ass chains somewhere to recover the dragon from the depths of the frozen lake. Once he’s back on solid ground, our Night King graces the dragon with his magic touch, and we get an echo of this season’s poster images: a single blue eye as it becomes a zombie dragon. This is a game changer and one of the show’s biggest cliffhangers (and a popular fan theory). There’s no known precedent for an undead dragon and what type of fire (or ice) it might breathe. It would seem that in addition to a fatal ice spear, the living dragons now have another looming threat. Let’s cling to the hope that even in death, Dany’s dragon might stay loyal to its mother. I have a feeling we’ll find out whether or not that’s true the hard way.

And some things we can’t forget:

-MVP for this episode go to those badass fire swords. Imagine if every battle on this show had those?!

-The moment between Jorah and Jon about Jon’s sword Longclaw was so nice. Jorah’s father meant so much to Jon way back when, and it’s a nice gesture for Jon to offer the sword that’s been synonymous with him to it’s “rightful owner.” It’s hard to argue with family lineage, but I’m happy to see the sword stay in Jon’s possession. It’s basically an extra limb for him at this point.

-Arya has some girl power moments this episode. Her angry talks with Sansa are heavy with identity themes, and when she’s recounting her archery story, about how the rules said she couldn’t shoot and be a knight, she says, “the rules were wrong.” Later, she returns to this thought in her room with Sansa and says, “The world doesn’t let girls just decide what they’re going to be.” Arya was the right person to say these quotes, but that doesn’t meant they don’t apply to both women in the conversations. Sansa followed the rules, and they weren’t right for her either. She definitely didn’t get to choose what happened to her.

-Is Jon so sad about Dany’s dragon because of the dragon friend he made last week that might have stirred up some Targaryen feels? TBD. Beric also mentioned that Jon doesn’t look like Ned. This whole season basically has been ‘Will Jon Find Out Who He Really Is Watch 2017’.

-Speaking of Beric, his “death is the enemy” conversation with Jon is a pretty great double meaning for this episode/season/show. So is his “we’ll all be right behind him unless the Lord of Light is kind enough to send us a bit of fire” eulogy to Thoros, which was actually major foreshadowing.

-Am I expected to believe that Jon survived a winter wind storm, a very physical fight with an army of dead men, a fall into a frozen lake, a fast ride on horseback through the frozen north of the wall, almost dying of cold, and his man bun stays in place? Can we get a hair tie recommendation from this guy?

-For the zillionth time this season, I got major Harry Potter vibes from the battle. Remember when Harry and Dumbledore go into the cave in book six and have to fight of a lake full of bewitched corpses with fire after Harry is dragged under? Sound familiar?

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-Also, when Jon kills the white walker leader it felt like this moment from the last movie:

-It’s 2017 and we don’t have high speed air travel, but Dany has the best transportation in Westeros. Can we get a dragon please?

Miss our other Game of Thrones recaps from this season? Check out:

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ronaldmrashid · 7 years

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Financial Dependence Is The Worst: Why Each Spouse Needs Their Own Bank Account

If you plan to get married, then you better plan not to get divorced. Otherwise, what’s the point? You’ll end up wasting money on lawyers. You’ll absolutely disrupt your finances. And if you have kids, they might have to go to therapy in order to make better sense of the cruel realities of the world.

According to a 2013 Kansas State University study of more than 4,500 couples, it found that arguments about money was by far the top predictor of divorce.

According to creditcards.com, approximately 7.2 million Americans (4.4 million men and 2.8 million women) have hidden a bank or credit card account from their live-in spouse or partner, the report found.

What’s going on? For one, if you are constantly feeling financially constraint, there’s no surprise that your relationship will suffer. Therefore, making enough money to live a comfortable lifestyle is important. Then getting 100% on the same page when it comes to spending and reaching financial targets is the obvious next step.

But even rich people go through breakups all the time. So clearly there’s something else going on after a couple starts earning a comfortable income as the hidden bank and credit card accounts survey indicates.

Welcome to the terrible world of financial dependence, where no matter how much your household earns, you’ll never feel free if you aren’t earning your own income.

Why Every Spouse Should Have Their Own Bank Account

One of the best gifts you can give your spouse is the gift of financial independence. I’m not talking about showering your spouse with riches once you get married. I’m talking about supporting your spouse in making his or her own fortune in addition to contributing to the family fortune.

After all, financial independence by definition includes being financially independent from each other. Many of us remember the sheepish feeling of having to ask our parents for money growing up. The same feeling still exists as an adult without your own bank account.

Over the years, I’ve had over a hundred spouses tell me how they wish they had their own money to spend freely without fear of judgement from their spouses. Let me share three specific examples.

Husband of a heiress who lives in a mega mansion.

“Sam, the reason why I spend so much time trying to become a published author is because I want to make my own mark. Right now, I’m seen by strangers as just some chump who married into money. No matter how much I tell people I married for love, nobody will fully believe me. I want my own identity. I want to eat what I kill. I want to have the freedom to buy what I want without drawing from a pool of money my father-in law left us when he died. I don’t deserve it. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined a poor kid raised by a single mother would one day be asked to host political fundraisers at his home. I need to right the scale. “

Business school classmate who married a Google engineer back in 2007.

“We live a comfortable life down in Menlo Park. Google’s stock is up more than 4X since we graduated back in 2006 and we feel financially secure. It’s wonderful being a full-time mother of two, but it’s exhausting as you’re now finding out. I had a great 10-year career working as a chemical engineer until we decided it was best for me to stay home. He made more and the family benefits at Google are amazing. But ever since I decided to be a SAHM in 2012, I miss the feeling of being able to make my own money and spend money on silly things without having to explain myself to my hubby.

Although we are a team, I’m always second guessing whether I should spend on even the simplest of indulgences. For example, when my back and hands were starting to kill me from having to rock my youngest to sleep for an hour each evening, all I wanted was to get an hour long massage. But instead of charging $120 on our joint credit card where he checks each line item, I decided to just spend $20 in cash on a chair massage at the mall because I was afraid he’d complain that he could easily give me a massage for free! I love my husband’s frugal ways, but his massages don’t come close to what professional hands can do.”

A reader shared one of the reasons why she got a divorce.

“We never made a lot of money, around $85,000 combined, or so I thought. He liked to handle the finances so I just let him do his thing. Then one day I found a pile of ATM withdrawal receipts stuffed in his coat pocket that totaled about $8,000 over the past three months. When I confronted him about the receipts, he admitted he had a separate account used for playing poker. He didn’t want me to worry, explaining to me poker was just a fun outlet.

It turns out he was actually a great poker player and had over $50,000 in the account! I was pretty proud of his success in the beginning, but then I realized he wasn’t always going to play poker during the nights he said he was. I won’t get into the details, but I strongly believe that if your partner isn’t completely honest about you about money, he’s probably hiding something else as well.”

Reason #1: The Release Valve

The common reason for each spouse wanting their own bank account is the desire for independence as all three examples demonstrate. There’s no greater feeling than being free to do whatever you want with your own money. Because it is impossible to 100% agree on every single aspect in life, having your own bank account provides a release valve when partners don’t completely see eye-to-eye on a particular expense so that pressure doesn’t build up to the point of explosion.

In the massage example, the husband couldn’t fully empathize why his wife would want to spend $120 + tip on a massage he thought he could provide for free. And because his wife doesn’t have a salary, she felt guilty spending $100 more than what she could get for a 25 minute chair massage at the mall.

Over time, resentment builds up by the wife, especially since taking care of two young children is way harder than going to work at Google for 10 hours a day. The husband, on the other hand, might disagree with her assessment and may begin to resent her for thinking this way given he’s purposefully shielded her from all the corporate BS he’s had to deal with.

Without a release valve, the chance for arguments and ultimately divorce increases.

Reason #2: The Insurance Policy

Having independence is just one reason why each spouse should have their own separate bank account. After all, before each partner met, each enjoyed independence for years. The other reason for having your own financial account is insurance.

Let’s say something bad were to happen to you and the legal system somehow ties up your assets in probate despite a clearly written will. Or perhaps your life insurance company decides not to pay out the claim you spent 15 years paying. Who knows what snafus await after an unfortunate event. They happen all the time.

If you have your own finances, you can more comfortably wait out the storm while the legal system makes you whole. In other words, your bank account is your worst case scenario. Knowing that my wife has her own healthy bank account let’s me die more peacefully knowing that at the very least, she’ll do just fine without me and our accumulated wealth and vice versa.

Related: How Much Life Insurance Do I Really Need?

Reason #3: The Financial Trainer

Just like how a workout buddy helps motivate you to do one more set or eat one less slice of pizza, your spouse can help motivate you to earn and save more as well.

By having separate financial accounts, you can clearly see where each of your finances stand. You can challenge each other to see who gets to a certain savings amount first. Or if your starting amounts are vastly different, you can challenge each other based on a percentage increase amount. The number of different challenges and the ways to get there are endless e.g. the many different types of side hustles and investments one can undertake to boost their income.

The ultimate goal is to push each other to achieve optimal finance performance while concurrently building a stronger financial life together. If you completely co-mingle your funds, it’s hard to tell exactly how much you’ve contributed to the household. The more murky your contribution, the easier it is to feel demotivated or be misinformed by how much you’ve contributed.

Keeping separate bank accounts also minimizes the temptation of “cheating” by overly relying on your spouse. Don’t take away your spouse’s sense of pride and accomplishment like the man in example #1.

The Horrors Of Having Separate Bank Accounts

I know by now a lot of you are completely befuddled with the idea of giving each spouse the gift of financial independence. I don’t blame you since for so long, the tradition has been for the husband to earn and the wife to stay at home. But it’s the year 2017 folks, modern up!

Believe in equality between men and women. Every little girl and boy growing up today should believe they can have a fantastic career and be financially independent on their own.

If you are financially independent, you can weather a breakup much easier. Don’t think divorce won’t ever happen to you since the statistics prove otherwise. If you are financially dependent on a person you no longer love, life won’t be easy.

But to recognize the other side, here are some aghast comments from my post, How To Overcome Money Addiction, when I wrote, “I borrowed $10,000 from my wife” to invest in an Austin, Texas real estate crowdfunding deal.

Aghast comment #1

“I will state flat out that I think everything should be shared and that I am a bit alarmed that you ‘borrowed $ from your wife’ although I don’t know your situation, I just want you to succeed, marriage and all, especially with all the baby talk on this blog as of late.”

Aghast comment #2

I hope you don’t take offense, as I have never looked into any surveys or studies on the subject, but I know several people whose marriages have ended and many of them kept separate accounts. It just seems like (to me) the two becoming one should mean everything!”

Aghast comment #3

“My wife and my finances are completely merged, so the concept of borrowing money from her is ridiculous!”

I have no problem with couples 100% mixing their finances together. I hope you have no problems with the way we’ve set up independent financial accounts and a joint account. But let me explain anyway why I used the term “borrowed.”

Since we first met, I’ve always wanted to give my wife everything I could conceivably offer. From paying off her college loans after my third year of work, to buying a house in San Francisco for both of us to live a more comfortable life while young, I’ve always had a desire to provide. Some might say these actions are the result of true love.

I owe her a lot because she has been with me since the beginning when we were broke college students. During my senior year while I was interviewing for jobs in NYC, she’d wake up at 5:30am just so she could call and make sure I wouldn’t oversleep for a 7am interview. We have a special relationship because money was never a deciding factor for why we came together. Further, I never want money to ever aversely affect our relationship.

I’m proud to say that she has never needed financial help from me. She enjoyed a fantastic 13 year career and was able to negotiate a severance in 2014 with some coaching by yours truly. She continued to work for two years after I negotiated my severance, even though she didn’t have to because she felt a great sense of accomplishment being her own financially independent woman. But after two years, I was too bored at home and wanted to spend more time with my best friend.

Because I care for her so much, I felt bad during my cash crunch to ask her for money to cover my investing addiction. I know we are life partners and share everything, but I just hate asking anybody for any money, especially someone I care about the most. Conversely, it’s easy to borrow money from a bank because you don’t nearly have the same relationship with an amorphous institution as you do your spouse.

We have separate bank accounts along with a joint bank account to provide maximum flexibility. We loved encouraging each other to save aggressively while we were both working. Now as business partners, we share profits evenly and always remind each other to mobilize our capital each month. We talk about all large financial decisions like buying a car or a house before doing anything, and for everything else, it doesn’t really matter.

The Stay At Home Spouse

So far I’ve addressed separate financial accounts between two working spouses. But how does a stay at home spouse expect to earn his or her own money if he or she doesn’t have a job? Well that’s easy. Being a stay at home parent is easily worth the median income of your city. And if you don’t believe so, then take the number of hours your stay at home spouse works and multiply it by the average hourly cost for daycare or a nanny. That is the amount of money he or she deserves to make.

Now take that monthly salary and subtract it from the day job working spouse’s salary, and that figure should be his or her income which can be spent however he or she chooses. Of course, it’s a good idea not to spend it all. The money should be allocated similarly to the way the day job working spouse’s money is allocated in terms of savings, investing, spending, and so forth.

If you believe in happiness, then you believe in financial independence for both spouses. And if you believe in financial independence, then you should not be opposed to each spouse having a separate bank account along with contributing to a joint account. The ultimate goal is to create household wealth together, while also ensuring each spouse never loses his or her freedom.

Happy Independence Day America!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Readers, what are your thoughts about each spouse having their own bank account? If you are against financial independence, please explain. Don’t you think happier spouses result in happier marriages? What is the downside of having separate bank accounts plus a joint account?

The Average Net Worth For The Above Average Married Couple

Poor Little Rich Women (The New York Times)

from http://www.financialsamurai.com/financial-dependence-is-the-worst-why-each-spouse-needs-their-own-bank-account/

#Financial Samurai

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ronaldmrashid · 7 years

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Always Be Grinding! Financial Samurai 2017 Goals And Outlook

Happy New Year Everyone!

Hopefully all of you survived and are ready to rock it in 2017! I spent a lot of time over the holidays thinking about why I failed at so many things, and the consistent answer I came up with was that I wasn’t grinding hard enough.

Why did I gain 5 lbs instead of lose 5 lbs? Answer: Because I didn’t grind hard enough at the gym and give a crap about the way I looked. I worked out maybe twice a month on average and didn’t watch the quality of food I ingested.

Why did I lose all my tennis league matches? Answer: Because I didn’t grind hard enough on the court. I wasn’t practicing my serve and volleys as much as I should. Instead, I was just playing fun matches that did nothing to improve my skills.

Why was my online traffic only marginally up in 2016? Answer: Because I didn’t grind my mind hard enough. Instead of writing more posts, introducing new mediums of communication, addressing new topics, and publishing a new ebook, I left things status quo. I told myself in my 2016 review post I was most proud of not quitting. Come on. That’s weak! Writing is like a full body massage compared to digging for coal or constructing a house in the middle of a Texas summer.

It’s so easy to get soft in America, especially as you get older. As a result, my theme for 2017 is: Always Be Grinding. ABG baby!

Related: Perpetual Failure Is The Reason Why I Continue To Save So Much

Things Feel Different Now

I haven’t been this excited since I first got a job out of college when the sky was the limit. For the past 10 years or so, I’ve been questioning what’s the point of working so hard if the government is just going to take more from us than what we’re able to keep. To finally get some potential tax relief is thrilling!

Everybody should strive to have a higher savings rate than their effective tax rate. Can you imagine saving just 10% of your gross income while paying a 20% effective tax rate? What a joke. Politicians are laughing all the way to the bank for being able to keep the masses enslaved so they can remain in power.

The upside to a corrupt and inefficient government with trillions in unaccounted for tax dollars (see the Dept. of Defense) is that it pushed me towards a life of leisure. I would never have engineered my layoff in 2012 had the correlation between effort and reward stayed intact. I never would have started a lifestyle business either. It’s been fantastic paying less in taxes and not having to work for anybody since my departure. My stress level has gone way down as well.

But now that the correlation between effort and reward is tightening up, it’s time to grind until the window shuts again! Without further ado, here are my goals for 2017. They are divided into three categories: Business, Personal and Personal Financial.

Business Goals

1) Focus on growth by broadening the audience. I’ve received plenty of feedback that I need to write more for the mass market. Even though my advice holds true whether you have $1,000,000 to invest or $1,000 to invest, readers have told me they can’t get their heads around larger numbers. As a result, some readers will tune out and that’s bad for growth.

It’s not my fault the median home price in San Francisco is ~$1.1M. I just write about my first-hand experiences to keep things authentic. Personal finance is too important to be left up to pontification. But I acutely realize the way to mega millions is to relate to as many people as possible. At the same time, I don’t want to make up things I’m not interest in or am not going through.

Therefore, I’ve decided to add my best friend, Sydney from Untemplater, on as a regular contributor. She’ll focus on broader personal finance topics, family finances, women’s finances and be my podcast partner in our little Dojo Talk podcasts going forward. I’m confident there is a great need for expansion in these categories on Financial Samurai.

Sydney is great because she’s living the dream as a business owner and freelancer ever since she engineered her layoff with a severance package back in January 2015. I was her coach. Here’s her severance negotiation story, which I’m so proud of!

2) Publish a new ebook by July 18, 2017. Despite the rise in interest rates, it still takes a gargantuan amount of money to generate $1,000 a month in passive income – we’re talking $300,000 in capital at a 4% gross yield. I was so focused on building a large municipal bond portfolio after the sell-off in November and December that I forgot I could easily write a new ebook and earn $1,000 a month with no downside!

Therefore, I’ve decided to publish a unique book on real estate investing. It’s going to be one of the most entertaining and thorough books about real estate on the market. It’ll be an actionable book that anyone from beginning investors to experienced investors can use to help create wealth, build passive income and avoid extremely bad mistakes. I promise to write in my usual no BS style.

3) Focus on three business partnerships. I’ve got about 10 business partnerships with Financial Samurai right now. It’s very easy to get spread too thin as the main writer and business development guy. Instead, I need to identify three things I’m most passionate about and tilt my writing towards these three topics to build a deeper portfolio of articles. Then I need to identify the three best products that match these topics to create incredible business synergies.

I’m currently most excited about entrepreneurship, real estate crowdsourcing and family finances.

I’ve got so much to share about being an entrepreneur and earning side income after eight years. The upside is unlimited when you work for yourself. So many people believe they can’t do anything because they don’t have an idea or don’t believe in their abilities. The truth is that nobody has everything figured out in the beginning. They just start, learn and pivot as they go.

Real estate crowdsourcing is the perfect solution for real estate enthusiasts like me who don’t want to buy another physical property for a while. Dealing with tenants and maintenance issues as I get older is very counterproductive to living a good retirement life. However, real estate has been instrumental in achieving financial freedom (~50% of my passive non-online income) and I want to continue investing wisely in various projects around America for hopefully higher returns.

Finally, talking about important family financial issues will be topic du jour for 2017 now that I’m hitting middle age. I’ve already tested the waters with posts such as, Is Private Grade School Worth It? and Scraping By On $200,000 A Year to a warm reception. Now I plan to go deeper. Sydney is really going to be of great help in this endeavor.

4) Send two to four e-mails a month. I’ve been paying $150 a month to send out only one newsletter a month for the past couple of years. What an underutilization of resources. What’s held me back from sending more e-mails is believing I have to write meaty e-mails to add value. Instead, I plan to write shorter, punchier e-mails to connect with all my newsletter subscribers. There’s like 30,000 of you or so. All I’ve got to do is get into a routine, come up with a consistent topic, and not worry too much about trying to impress.

Personal Financial Goals

1) Create a million bucks of wealth. Last year my goal was to growth my net worth by $500,000 because I had a neutral-to-bearish outlook. Given I’m now bullish on my business, it’s only logical to shoot higher. In a strong business environment, valuations for businesses start expanding like magic. If I can grow earnings and expand valuation multiples, then growing wealth becomes much easier.

The equity you own in your business is one of the biggest reasons why everybody should start their own business. Not only can you make money every month from your business, you might also have the option to sell your business based on a multiple of revenue or earnings one day. As an employee, you can only sell your talents to the highest bidder. As a result, you’ll always be stuck having to trade your time for money.

I already spoke to the CFO and CMO of one publicly traded company and one private company about a potential acquisition. As a result, I’ve got an idea of the valuation of my company. Now all I need to do is grow my brand, traffic numbers, search rankings, and revenue and I’ll be set!

Value Creation Scenario

Potential acquirer: We’ll offer you $6,000,000 for Financial Samurai based on a 8X operating profit plus a $500,000 earn out if you stay for two years.

Me: Given my operating profit is growing by 25% a year for the next two years at least, and the S&P 500 is trading at a 18X operating profit multiple, let’s split the difference. I’ll sell for $9,750,000, based on a 13X operating profit multiple, and will stay on for two years at $200,000 a year to make sure everything transitions smoothly.

Potential acquirer: You’ve got yourself a deal.

See how easy it is to create some wealth? All you’ve got to do is create something of value. I don’t plan to ever sell my company, but for the right price, I will and then start a new company. That’s the American dream.

Related: The First Million Might Be The Easiest

2) Invest at least $20,000 a month without fail. The $20,000 a month doesn’t have to be in the stock market. It can be in bonds, real estate crowdsourcing, private equity, private debt, or paying down a mortgage. I actually did a deep dive analysis of my investing habits for 2016, which I’ll share with you guys in an upcoming post. It’s pretty eye-opening how much we think we invest versus how much we actually invest. By investing $20,000 a month minimum, I should be able to grow my net worth by at least $240,000 this year.

3) Start earning $20,000 a month in passive/semi-passive income by year end. My passive income is currently averaging about $17,600 a month over the past six months. To increase my passive income by $2,400 a month, I’ve got to publish my real estate book by year end, market it well and update my severance negotiation book for 2017. My products will be my main passive income growth driver once again.

The other growth driver will hopefully be the redeployment of roughly $400,000 into higher returning investments compared to the ~4% return that money was getting in a CD and a LIBOR+ private investment. Instead of earning $16,000 a year from the $400,000 investment, I could feasibly earn $32,000 a year, or $2,667 a month total ($1,333 extra) via an 8% returning investment. Hence, my focus on higher income producing investments for this year. Thank you bond sell-off!

RE outperforming since 2001, and roughly inline with the S&P 500 since 2011 at ~12% annual return

4) Spend like I’ll be dead within 10 years. I’ve been frugal my whole life. It’s one of the main reasons why I was able to hit the eject button at 34. But, I’ll be 40 in 2017 so it’s time to live it up for the second half of my life. You don’t have to be as stealth in middle age because people are more accepting of those who’ve spent 20+ years working. If they aren’t, then they’re just being jealous idiots who weren��t willing to work hard for a long enough time themselves.

I will buy my mid-life crisis car that costs $60,000 – $80,000. I will pay an extra $100 for Economy Plus seats to Hawaii each way (still can’t afford first class comfortably). I will buy the latest version TV instead of buying the previous version to save $300. I will pony up $400 more for 1 TB of hard drive space for my new laptop. I will pay $6.25/hour for parking after driving around the block once. I will turn the heat on full blast when it gets to below 60 degrees. I will always pay up for convenience gosh darn it!

Every time I buy something, I feel guilty for not using that money to invest because I’ve been an investing addict since sophomore year in college. I also grew up middle class working summer jobs at McDonald’s and moving furniture. My upbringing is probably the reason why I felt so comfortable giving over 500 Uber rides as a financially independent adult so far. I’m not too proud to do whatever it takes to support my family.

Therefore, I plan to always invest the $20,000+ a month first before splurging on anything to counteract my the uncomfortableness in spending.

5) Don’t chase the stock market. Although I’m bullish on my business, I’m lukewarm on the stock market and the economy. The higher rates go, the more consumers get squeezed. The period between 2009 – 2016 was a great time to focus on growth stocks. For 2017, I think it’s a great time to focus on income now that equity valuations are stretched and the bond market has finally sold off some. Always be vigilant about protecting your gains.

Instead of having a majority of my public investments in stocks in 2016 (~70%), I’m rebalancing to 40% stocks and 60% bonds (80% municipal bonds). Besides stretched valuations and more attractive income yields, I think there will be roadblocks on Capital Hill to pass what everything Trump has promised.

With 40% exposure to stocks, I’ll still be able to participate reasonably well in any further exuberance. Further, I’m already highly leveraged to the tech industry through my SF real estate holdings and corporate consulting business.

I just feel way too lucky with my investments now after a +10% unexpected return in 2016. To now be able to get a ~4.5% gross yield on the fixed income portion to cover two mortgages that cost 2.5% and 2.375% is nuts!

Related: The Proper Asset Allocation Of Stocks And Bonds By Age

Personal Goals

“When you’re coasting, you’re going downhill.” – Unknown

1) Scare myself out of my comfort zone. I haven’t been personally challenged in a long time. With a portfolio of over 1,300 posts on Financial Samurai, I know with decent confidence that if I write 152 new posts a year, I should be able to grow traffic and revenue by ~10% a year if I do nothing else. But writing 2-4X a week is an easy goal to achieve.

Once I turn 40 this summer, I think it’ll be fun to challenge myself with more live events. I’ll first start with my Dojo Talk podcasts with Sydney to improve my speaking skills. Then I’ll move onto bigger audiences if I have the opportunity. I’ll be the moderator for a panel of crowdsource company CEOs in San Francisco with an audience of ~100 – 200 people sometime in February. That should be fun. I’ll post the details here once I know more.

The other thing I’m considering is being a more public figure starting in 2H2017. By July 1, I’ll have collected the final severance payment from five years ago. Further, I’ll have hit my five-year goal of seeing whether my writing can stand on its own without my promotion. Now that it has, to be able to combine a public persona with my writing could be a very powerful combination.

2) Really make a difference in 12 people’s lives. At the end of the day, the best feeling in the world is when a reader sends a private e-mail or writes a comment that says how much a particular article or the site in general has helped them achieve their dreams. Being online for almost eight years has enabled me to read people’s stories on how they’ve changed over time.

Without positive reader feedback, it’s harder to keep going at my pace long term because I also occasionally get haterade from random folks who are upset with their lives. Instead of choosing to see what’s possible, they adopt a welfare mentality and lash out.

If enough haterade piles up, it makes me want to just take a break and relax since I’m not getting paid by readers to write anything. With most of my traffic coming from organic search, and most of my online income passive as a result, there’s no need to write much of anything anymore.

Here’s a comment a newish reader left that gave me a power up.

I salute you brother as well. Fight on!

3) Start a family. It’s about time we start a family. My wife and I feel we’ve done everything we’ve wanted to do as adults. We’ve both engineered our layoffs. We don’t have the itch to travel too much anymore after visiting over 60 countries. We have no desire to climb anybody else’s corporate ladder, but our own. After two years, our house is finally remodeled to the way we want. We have a digital business that allows us to be present for our child. Finally, we’ve developed a steady stream of passive income that should support a family of up to four comfortably in expensive San Francisco or Honolulu.

With so much responsibility in raising a child, it’s only natural to plan as thoroughly as possible before becoming parents. I commend those of you who had the courage to have multiple children earlier on and make things work. I’ve seen so many things go wrong with a relationship after having children, it’s made me nervous.

If we do successfully start a family, my number one goal will shift towards not dying before 69. I’d like to live until my child officially becomes an adult. Now where are my veggies?

Readers, what are some of your goals for 2017? How do you see the economy, the government, the real estate market, and the stock market doing? Will you always be grinding in 2017 on something to improve your situation?

from http://www.financialsamurai.com/always-be-grinding-financial-samurai-2017-goals-and-outlook/

#Financial Samurai

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