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cardwellthaxton · 3 years

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What Trenton, New Jersey Home Sellers Should Do After a Poor Property Inspection

By Cardwell Thaxton

The inspection contingency in your sales contract is an inescapable reality with a traditional real estate transaction. Many Trenton, New Jersey home sellers fear the unknown of what lies behind their walls or under the floor. The best practice for home sellers is to have a pre-inspection before getting an offer. However, we will now explore what Trenton, New Jersey home sellers should do after a poor property inspection if you’re facing this situation.

Reinspect

It is not beyond the realm of possibilities that your report is incorrect, as inspectors have faced lawsuits for inaccuracy. But, do you find yourself seriously questioning the inspector’s professionalism after getting a poor property inspection? Then, Trenton, New Jersey home sellers should ask for recommendations for a highly reliable inspector from a trusted real estate expert like the professional investors at The Cardwell Thaxton Group. Because direct buyers work with a team of the most respected experts from every walk of the real estate industry, they can easily guide you to a reliable inspector. This team is ready to quickly jump into action, as it is their full-time passion to help home sellers solve their problems, be they time or financial crunches. Because a professional investor outlines everything that goes into calculating an offer, if the second inspection report should come out with poor results, a direct buyer will buy your home as-is and provide you with a fair offer that details realistic expenses for each issue.

Renegotiate

After a poor property inspection, Trenton, New Jersey home sellers may have buyers that will go forward with the sale. How the buyers choose to do so is dependent upon the deal’s terms. Bartering may be an option; perhaps the buyers have interest in a piece of antique furniture, large appliance, or other valuable possession your buyers may have enough interest in to save the sale. While it may be a painful sacrifice, you may have to consent to the demands to keep your deal depending on your circumstances. Another option is that the buyer requires you to complete any repairs out of pocket before the sale progresses. Often, sellers find themselves in a quandary, knowing the repairs will increase value, yet lacking the funds or the personal fortitude to go through living in a construction zone. However, buyers often go overboard with what they want, feeling they have you over a barrel. Why not reach out for a quick alternative to direct buyers like those at The Cardwell Thaxton Group who will provide you with a no-obligation offer, which will help you sort out the reasonable requests from those where the buyers have crossed the line into ridiculous demands.

Reconsider

If the worst fear should come to fruition and the buyer backs out, you should seriously consider changing course with your sales method. Maybe you just don’t have the time to resolve the flaws detected in the inspection, or you do not have access to the finances the repairs will require. In the meantime, because the disclosure process includes providing any known defects to the next buyer, when Trenton, New Jersey home sellers have a poor property inspection, unless you are willing to put in the time and money to make all of the repairs, you will need to sell as-is. Your buyer pool is now limited to a select group of buyers who are willing to take on your problems. If this is the case, a traditional listing with known faults usually lingers on the market. The longer a home sits on the market, the less the seller is likely to receive. Every day on the market and every price decrease is n the listing. Time also costs you money as each month passes and your bills continue to pour in. While your property was already listed, the days are adding up as you work with your buyer, leaving you in a less than advantageous position. When offers come in, buyers will seek bargain basement deals and typically make you insultingly low offers. Direct buyers want to see you get a fair price, so why not avoid the emotional roller coaster of waiting and being disappointed. The best part, your closing could be in as little as seven days. Why not reach out for a no-obligation quote from a professional investor like those at The Cardwell Thaxton Group.

Are you dreading the outcome of your home inspection? Why not just skip the sleepless nights and sell directly to The Cardwell Thaxton Group! We welcome you to contact us and share all of your concerns. At The Cardwell Thaxton Group, we take the time to listen to you and help save more of your money for you! You can rest easy when you work with the direct buyers at The Cardwell Thaxton Group, who offer solutions for any situation. Trenton, New Jersey home sellers can avoid all of the stress and hassle accompanying a less than adequate property inspection by calling The Cardwell Thaxton Group at (908) 456-1593 or sending us a message today.

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faiseuse-d-histoires · 5 years

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Here I am, posting the first chapter of my crackfic, based on the incorrect quotes I made.

Had she known what would happen this night, and all the disastrous events that would follow, Queen Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, Lady of Dragonstone, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the Unburnt, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons would have certainly decided to retire to bed early. VERY early.

. A crackfic AU where Daenerys had conquered King's Landing, and the King in the North desperately needs her help for the Long Night.

#game of thrones #daenerys targaryen #jon snow #got #jonerys #fanfiction #got fanfiction #got fanfic #game of thrones fanfiction #jonerys fanfiction #crackfic #asoiaf crack

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seth-storm · 5 years

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So I want to post incorrect quotes about my solo dnd campaign

And to do so I have to elaborate on the characters

“The Goddess”: The dungeon master, my best friend, and wonderful drawer who’s name shall not be said. My character, having full meta knowledge that she is in a campaign, chooses not to anger the Dungeon Master and instead refers to her as “The Goddess”.

My PC character, despite worshiping the Goddess infallibly, is a Bard. Her name is Story Ann Hizalia, a human girl with visions of being one of the great heroes of the time. She’s also EXTREMELY meta. Like, if the dm has said it, or I’ve thought it, she knows. She frequently references the modern era and other campaigns, confusing all the other characters. But she’s very happy and innocent, and despite all her meta knowledge can’t for the life of her pick up the flirting of the other characters.

Speaking of which:

There are “seven” princes of this realm (eight, in reality), all of which SOMEHOW have romantic interest in Story. I can’t decide who to ship, the dm can’t decide who to ship, so we just kind of wait for the day one of them actually breaks through her oblivious bubble. Story refers to all of them but Sceleste and Philip by their last names.

Sceleste Arcturus: The High Prince of the land, also HIGH KEY THE MAIN VILLAIN, but Story is in denial that someone so sweet to her could ever be evil, even though he’s discretely tried to kill Philip multiple times.

Ludwig Wulfsharz: The edgy werewolf who’s actually NOT and is a big dork around Story. He’s leveled entire orc army camps and gives off a creepy aura. Everyone is scared of him... except Story. He gets embarrassed whenever she can make him smile (which is a lot), and everyone gets confused at the fact he is actually capable of smiling.

Revelor Everglow: Your typical flirty elf boyo. He flirts with Story incessantly, which she just takes to mean that he just acts that way. He calls Story his ‘perfect Lily’ and is a bit possessive of her, which she hasn’t picked up yet (it’s been subtle, which is surprising because nothing about Everglow is subtle.) Everglow is the only one who slightly understands Story’s meta knowledge, comparing life to a book instead of a bunch of words on pages and dice.

Severin Arsenault: Take the typical ‘unfeeling intellectual’ archetype and throw it out the window, because Arsenault is both smart AND has a sense of humor and joy in his life. Story loves that he breaks the archetype, even if he is still a bit awkward. He’s the shortest and youngest prince, which he is often teased about. Story is a good four inches taller than him (She’s 5’ 6”). Arsenault likes that Story holds so much knowledge but is still happy and carefree.

Maipi Keilani: This prince rules over the islands just off the coast of the continent, and is your typical Islander. Loud, fun, all smiles. Story has only met him once, but is currently on a quest that will take her to the isles. The dm is really pushing this whole ‘meet all the princes and love them all because I’m evil’ gig.

Eric Storssen: Storssen is the drunk, clumsy, but rusticly charming prince of the mountains. He loves to go skiing and is just generally happy and kind to Story. He treats her the most like a friend, but the dm says he does still like her. Regardless, Story appreciates that he’s just really chill and friendly.

Ashquar Al-Rashiid: The flirty and—dare I say it—most sexually driven of the princes, Story’s face is permanently red around him. It’s WORSE if she actually picks up on what he’s implying, but most of the time his mannerisms and seductive tone are enough to make her short circuit. However, Story does appreciate the fact he does most of this jokingly (or so the Goddess says, I have doubts).

And finally

Philip Arcturus: The RIGHTFUL High Prince, Philip was raised by a peasant family after being abandoned and adopted. Although perhaps ‘raised’ is too kind of a word. Try ‘brought up believing he was a major disappointment’. Philip, being the only prince who is (for the moment) without a kingdom, is one of the three people involved in Story’s actual adventuring group. Despite being midly depressed, he’s pure, sweet, and understanding. He tries to explain to Story there’s more to life than the next ‘plot point’, even though that’s sometimes hard for her to understand. Story occassionally calls him ‘Prince Charming’, even though he’s rather cowardly (unless it’s one of those times he climbs up a dragon’s neck and slits it’s throat (yes that did happen)).

Now for the only relevant character who isn’t a love interest:

“Lume”: He’s is not a prince, but an 18 year old boy Story rescued on her first mission as an adventurer. Whenever something stressful or climatic happens he can’t remember it afterwards, which is REALLY ANNOYING sometimes. Lume is a charmer who gets all the ladies and he’s so frustrated Story won’t just pick a guy. Whenever he expresses this to her however, she laughs and says she doesn’t need to “pick” because it’s not like that. Lume is also a Radiant, a long lost race that can do awesome things with light (and vaporize entire orc armies if they want apparently). They can probably do other things as well, but I don’t exactly know what yet. He’s the third member of Story’s adventuring crew, and Story often refers to him as her sidekick.

And the name of this campaign? Well I wanted it to be “Story’s Grand Adventures”, a cliché name for a cliché happy go lucky fantasy campaign. BUT NO, I was overruled. So, I give you the characters of...

Story’s Grand Dating Sim!

(SGDS, for short).

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therealms-number1angirl · 1 year

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Amon: Scenario: You pull over a man for trampling over a bakery cart, you find out that it's your father. How do you handle the situation?

Han: Well, first I would be like, '...Dad? You're alive? What the hell?'

#amon byrne #han alister #seven realms #incorrect seven realms quotes #incorrect quotes #source: parks and rec #this is the real reason willo said no to han going to wien house

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phoenixagent003 · 3 years

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In Defense of Fanfiction

So, fairly recently (at time of writing), a fellow writer decided to disparage authors who cut their teeth writing fanfiction which, in their words “actively teaches you to write worse.”

Now, as someone who did cut their teeth writing fanfiction, my gut instinct to seeing this tweet was to angrily quote tweet it with the reply “Oh fuck off.” But that much as a I wanted to do that, I didn’t for several reasons. For one, I just generally try to be restrained and selective for who I get that angry and confrontational with online, reserving it mostly for politicians, celebrities, and DC’s Titans. Entities at once morally bankrupt, and largely immune to any kind of damage that I personally can inflict due to an absence of actual humanity.

And that all being said, this person was… well a person. A person with a narrow-minded and incorrect opinion, but still a person. And a fellow writer. So then I thought about refuting their bad-take, but that felt too much like swooping in to mansplain writing to someone who by all accounts seems to have been doing it at least as long as I have, and who’s been considerably more professionally successful at it.

Plus, like I said, I got my start in fanfiction. My origins are quite literally being targeted and attacked here. And feeling targeted can make people say and do some really stupid stuff if they don’t stop and think beforehand.

Basically, I didn’t want to start a Twitter beef over this because quite frankly the internet would be a happier place if we all just did that less, but I still saw a lot of bad arguments and missed points, so I couldn’t just say nothing. And so here we are, at a compromise between Twitter arguing and saying nothing—blogging about it.

The writer in question turned her single tweet into an entire thread that brought up a lot of very different, very unrelated issues, some of which I want to touch on as well, but before I do any of that, I want to answer the central argument, taking it as much as I can on face value and inferring as little else as possible: that fanfiction “actively teaches you to write worse.”

Does it?

Twitter is a terrible medium for communication. It rewards broad, inflammatory statements and its character limit leaves little room for nuance. Some people attempt brute-force circumventions of that limit, but most don’t, and the site isn’t suited to it. So it is unsurprisingly difficult to parse out exactly what they meant, but I can take a stab at it by covering as many bases as I could think of.

Does the medium of fanfiction inherently teach poor writing fundamentals, like prose, plot structure, or character development?

No. Writing, like most skills, is honed by practice. Every time you think about the best word to put on a page or the best way to structure a sentence or story, you are getting better at writing. You start a sentence, and think to yourself, “Hang on, there’s gotta be a better way to word that.” And that moment, where you reflect on your craft and look for ways and spots to improve it—that is you learning. Developing. Maybe you think of a way to word that sentence better, maybe you don’t. But the act of thinking, of searching, of even just acknowledging that it could be better is still work towards improvement. Doesn’t matter if it’s dialogue written for Harry Potter or for your original character, do not steal.

90% of fanfiction is crap. But 90% of everything is crap. Fanfiction is perhaps more famous for being mostly crap, but it’s really not hard to understand why. First off, the only barrier to entry for writing is basic literacy. If you can read this sentence, you can try your hand at writing. The difference between fanfiction and say, traditionally published works, is that fanfiction kind of keeps that low barrier to entry, whereas to get traditionally published you typically have to impress at least two other people—your agent, and then the editor you agent sends your shit to. And even then, that’s not a insurmountable barrier to entry. A metric butt-ton of people do it all the time.

In short, with fanfiction, the “slush pile” is open and visible, whereas with most other stuff, the only people who have to read that garbage are agents and editors, God have mercy on their souls. But rest assured, there is just as much shitty original fiction as there is shitty fanfiction.

In addition to the low barrier to entry, fanfiction is where a lot of people first dip their toe into this gig. And unless you are an unparalleled prodigy, when you’re new at something, you are bad at something. Which is fine. Doing something poorly is the first step to doing something competently. Practice is practice.

Now, you can practice something incorrectly and do yourself wrong—anybody who knows about proper weight lifting form can tell you that. But for the most part, a writer working on fanfiction is no more likely to do this than someone writing anything else.

The two exceptions I can think of are character and worldbuilding. Somewhat unique to fanfiction (we’ll talk about that in a minute) versus original fiction is that in fanfic, the characters and world are already established. Depending on the kind of fic you write, you may very well not get practice or experience making characters or worlds, since you’re using someone else’s work to basically cover that for you. So, sometimes, in this one specific area, fanfiction does feature something of a crutch that could theoretically lead to deficiencies in a writer’s fundamentals.

That said, that is very much dependent on the type of fanfic. Some works feature entirely original casts, telling a new story with new characters in an established setting. And even in fics which predominantly focus on the established cast, fanfic writers are downright notorious for adding new, original characters into the mix. Most of them are… awful. But we already covered why that is. Remember, bad writing is not the same thing as bad practice.

Ditto worldbuilding, where we’ve got plenty of fanfics that outright replace the world of the established story. The Alternate Universe concept is a very popular one in fanfic.

I will say in a closing than with worldbuilding and character, fanfiction does typically replace only one of these while keeping the other. Mainly because if you changed both, you’re liable to have left the realm of fanfiction altogether.

Does fanfiction, by its nature, leave you unprepared for making the transition to the professional writing world?

Let’s pretend for a moment that we didn’t just shoot down the idea that writing fanfiction means you never honed your ability to create your own original world and characters. That’s nonsense, but let’s say for purely hypothetical arguments sake, that if you start out writing fanfiction, your character-creating muscles will atrophy and you’ll only be able to work with pre-existing concepts, worlds, and characters. Does fanfiction leave you unprepared for making it in the world of professional writing?

For your consideration, I present: the very concept of episodic television. TV shows regularly bring on writers who did not originate either the show or its characters. TV writers craft stories borrowing a world and characters that somebody else came up with. The only difference between them is fanfiction is they got paid and get to be stamped as canon. Same muscles getting used. Same kind of exercise.

The spec script, the method by which most people showcase their ability to write for TV, is literally just fanfiction.

Then we have adaptations and retelling of both licensed and public domain properties, where once again, we have scores of writers, taking characters and concepts that they did not come up with, and using them to tell their own stories, or even just put different spins on the originals. What if Hades and Persephone, but without the whole “against her will” thing? Hey Marvel, can I use your Norse god character to tell a story about how societies built on the back of colonialism are inherently flawed and shouldn’t be preserved at the expense of the people?

The skillset of playing with other people’s toys to make something compelling is an incredibly valuable one for a writer to have. If anything, I’d argue that fanfiction is even better suited to teaching this skillset than writing original fiction.

And as a quick aside, that practice of playing with other people’s characters and constantly asking “Is this in character for them?” is a very useful practice that actually translates very well to writing your own characters. When you invented a character, it can be tempting to declare anything you write “in-character” since, well, you wrote it, and they’re your creation. But that thinking can easily lead to disjointed characterization.

I routinely ask “is this in-character?” while writing for characters I created. It makes me a better writer, and I learned how to ask that question and how to identify the answer from writing fanfiction.

Does fanfiction distort your sense of good taste?

This is the closest I could possibly come to agreeing with the original argument. The last time I was actively involved in it, the fanfiction community had pretty low standards, actually? I say this, because when I was writing fics, I was actually heaped with praise and attention, almost all of which was near universally good.

But I was not good. I was bad. I was very bad. Because I was in junior high, and an idiot, and those fics were the first thing I ever wrote that was longer than seven pages. But I updated my fics daily over the summer, in a very popular fandom that predominantly targeted people my age. So I got lots of fans and praise, and I started to think I was a good writer. Even worse than that, other people thought I was a good writer, and told even more people that I was.

Which is an affront to good taste.

That having been said, even though I do hold fandom and its nature partially to blame for the single most humbling aspect of my entire life, I also just hold adolescence in general to blame? Maybe? I like to think that much as I grew beyond my poor grasp of my own woeful incompetence, so too did my audience grow up and get a better understanding of what actually good writing is.

But then again, EL James and Reki Kawahara have made more money than I’ve ever seen in my life. So maybe neither fanfic nor adolescence is to blame. Maybe sometimes trash just sells.

As an aside, I hope this doesn’t come off as me trying to be mean or make fun of all those people who liked my old stuff. I know I’m embarrassed by it, and the only reason I haven’t deleted it all is because I need an ego check every now and again (and they’re also how I met my wife). But whether you also did a 180 on my old stuff as you got older or you still unironically think it’s good… thank you for the support. You are my humble beginnings and I would not be the person I am today without all of you.

…and that’s enough getting sentimental and making this about me, let’s go back to debunking opinions that are objectively wrong because I disagree with them.

The Other Stuff

I feel I’ve thoroughly said my peace on the original argument put out by my colleague. Namely, that they are wrong. But I’d also like to very quickly address the everything else they spewed out. My takes on this are considerably less long winded and probably could have been sanded down to a Twitter reply, but I still figure their inbox is getting enough shit already, and I want to make this more about the arguments than the person.

I’m not going to cover everything in detail, especially since I am super not qualified to speak on some of them—there is only so much I as a cishet dude feel comfortable giving my opinion on—but I will cover the bits that stood out and ground my gears.

EL James and Cassandra Clare are “fucking terrible”

No disputing the EL James part. Her character work is atrocious, her understanding of actual kink and BDSM dynamics and lifestyles is woeful, her plot bears clear evidence of serialized work that was not properly cleaned up prior to publication.

I haven’t read Cassandra Clare’s work. I have heard both good and bad things about it, but let’s say for argument’s sake she’s also not great.

This comment shows a distinct lack of knowledge of just how many authors, many critically acclaimed, write fanfiction on the side or got their start in it. Neil Gaiman writes fanfiction—and usually manages to get paid for it. I could go on with a long and yet still non-exhaustive list of authors who have done or still do it. Bottom line, there are some very high profile, not good writers whose start in fanfiction has been effectively weaponized against them to further underline their badness—“Of course EL James is bad. What did you expect from someone who started in fanfiction—while simultaneously many good writers have their connections to it downplayed by either choice or their own profile.

“Low effort formulaic lowest-common-denominator writing is bad actually”?

I almost brought this into main discussion, but I said I would infer as little as possible and on its own, this tweet didn’t directly say it was talking about fanfiction. I would argue it heavily implied it, and I very much doubt the author of the tweet would disagree with me, but I made the no inferring rule and I stuck to it.

I’m actually still going to take this argument on its own for a moment. I’ve already covered how and why fanfiction is generally seen as bad—low barrier to entry and the bad stuff is as easy to find as the good stuff—so I want to talk about something else. “Low effort writing is bad. No real arguments. I could jokingly say Neil Gaiman could drunkenly scribble something on a napkin that would outclass my best efforts, but I actually don’t have that low an opinion of myself.

Lowest-common-denominator writing is probably bad. In general, I think trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator is a good way to make uninspired trash, but on the other hand…fuck it, I’m liable to be included in that lowest common denominator most of the time. That’s the whole goddamn point of the LCD. It casts a broad net. And there’s a place for that. I don’t think it should be a big place, but still a place.

“Formulaic writing is bad” though? That I also just straight up disagree with. Formulas are a tool. And like every tool, they can be used really well, or really poorly. Used well, a formula can provide a solid structure around which to build interesting stories or ground the audience in otherwise unfamiliar settings. Don’t call a hammer a bad tool just because you’re hitting the nail wrong.

Several arguments discussing fanfictions relationship to queer and female audiences/writers/identities:

Nope, not touching that.

Oh fuck off.

Fanfiction isn’t collaborative or about community because “it's all corporate IP” and “Ultimately, someone else legally owns it, and you are choosing to give a corporate entity your creative energy.”

And this is actually something that’s been bugging me a while, specifically regarding the relationship people have with corporately owned IP and how it being owned by a corporation doesn’t automatically invalidate it as a source of emotional investment or cultural symbolism. But quite honestly, that really deserves its own post, so I’m just going to put a pin in this that and say we’re done here.

Glad I got all that off my chest.

So that was a thing. If you’ve got your own experiences with fanfic, good or bad, I’d love to hear them in the comments or over on Twitter.

If your curious about my history in fanfiction, like I said, it is all still technically out there, and very bad, but I’m not so much of a masochist that I’d link it here. I wouldn’t read it if I were you.

I write newer, much better stuff now. Some of it is here on this website, and some of it is in a novel coming out Fall 2021! Check that out instead! I promise it’s a much better use of your time.

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pumpkins-s · 7 years

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Interpersonal Mathematics

Read On AO3 Here

“Really?” She looks to him in askance, the odd edges of nerves leaving her expecting more. “That’s it?” He shrugs, looking bemused, and she snorts. “…Did you seriously have no idea that entire time?”

Lance throws up his hands, waving them about in a dramatic fashion. “I mean I knew something was up with you, but I didn’t necessarily think it was a gender thing! A person can have like...multiple things going on at once. And I was right! There was something—I just didn’t expect it to be as big as your family being kidnapped by aliens and you faking your entire identity, y’know?”

Pidge rolls her eyes, ignoring the panging clangs that never quite go away of your family, your family, where is your family, Katie? “Yeah, alright. Fair enough.”

(Or, in which Pidge is trans, damn well knows she's trans, Lance has no idea what he is, and they both learn to handle the complexities of gender identity, friendship, and each other, in that order.)

Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender

Relationships: platonic Pidge & Lance

Characters: Pidge, Lance

Written for the @voltrans-zine, with permission given to post the full piece now that preorders have closed.

Pidge would like to consider herself a fairly decisive person.

She would argue it’s part of her nature as a scientist. Outside of the realm of actual possibility (which, admittedly, has greatly expanded since entering Voltron), she’s not prone to daydream or fantasy. Why waste time considering things that could never feasibly happen when you could work towards a goal that was relatively graspable, after all? It’s just far more sensible.

Regardless, she’s never been much of one for dilly-dallying or the like when it comes down to it.

She is a scientist. A programmer. A paladin now, too, she supposes. And yes, a woman.

She was one of the quote-on-quote “early bloomers” in that particular discovery, as it might be called (or perhaps it might be better referred to a soul-searching type of decision? She supposes it depends on whom you ask, and their experience with the matter).

Either way, she’s always known what and who she was fairly quickly— from the time she was seven or eight, in the crawling, creeping sensations of yes, this is what I’m meant to be, and the rather memorable occasion not long after where that young, dauntless, and stubbornly optimistic version of herself (before she grew up, before she saw the world) had marched out to Matt in the shoe store during their annual back to school shopping trip with bright purple, sparkly Velcro tie sneakers strapped firmly to her feet, and Matt had looked down and giggled in amused confusion. “I think those are meant for girls, buddy.”

“But I am a girl,” she’d said firmly, and Matt had blinked, just once, considering.

“Alright.” he’d said, and that’d been the end of it.

(Well…no, obviously, that wasn’t the end of it, more like the beginning of an extremely long, arduous, and complicated process, but it makes an interesting marker point in her personal mental autobiography, if she does say so herself.)

Intellectually, of course, Pidge is vey much aware of the fact that some people are not so well decided and utterly sure in themselves. Such people waffle on their even most confident knowledge at times, their faith in their skill sets, on their own identity. They may be unwilling to decide such things permanently, or may lack faith in their own judgment, or simply not come into themselves in that capacity until much later.

It is not, however, a problem she has ever had much at all, excusing a few circumstances.

She simple does not have the time, she thinks, to be so unconfident in her own abilities, her own instincts. Not then, as a child, when the world was young and new and fresh and she’d needed all the time she had just to explore it. And not now, when the very concept of the metaphorical world, or perhaps more accurately universe, is vast and wide again in a whole new way, and there are so many people relying on her to keep her head on straight.

...Especially given some of those people are her own family, and they don’t even know it yet.

Similarly, Pidge would consider herself a fairly quick judge of character. She can be surprised at the capacity of a person even yet, naturally, but she often finds her initial assessments are not incorrect. A decent example of this might be Allura: the princess has certainly grown on Pidge over time, and she’s come to appreciate what Allura offers in bravery and reckless strength in the face of her cause, but none of her acquired fondness of the princess has negated her initial assessment of an ice- cold warrior queen in training running away from her own past.

(She may not be royalty herself, or as in control of her emotions as Allura can be, but Pidge can with the utmost certainty recognize someone else fleeing from their own memories of what they have done, what they have let happen in their unplanned negligence. Allura let Altea burn while she slept, no matter how unwillingly, and Pidge had let her family be lost while she was thousands of miles away and could do nothing to prevent it. She can respect that they, at least, have that much in common in the unwanted guilt that rests on their shoulders.)

Point being, she can learn more about people like any other fallible being, but it’s additional data points, not a revision of her original hypothesis. No matter how much her teammates may grow as people and she may, in turn, grow to understand them, they are still at their cores at least in part what she started out with— Shiro is still a boy-scout-hearted inspiration to everyone who looks at him, Keith is still a hotheaded maniac with an obsession for speed, and Hunk is still a well-meaning teddy bear with the come-and-go intellect of a genius when he’s interested in a subject.

…With…one exception: Lance. The outlier to the average of this little equation.

No matter what she does, Pidge cannot seem to figure out the enigmatic puzzle that is Lance, in all his odd-edged, hyperactive glory.

Really, it’d almost be insulting, if it wasn’t weirdly interesting in a kind of bored fascination way.

…If Pidge is being honest, her first impression of Lance is that of somewhere between an idiot and, as the so delicately crafted term goes, a fuckboy.

Admittedly, her focus at the time isn’t exactly on breaking into the deep and meaningful parts of her teammates psyches. Or…much on her teammates at all, actually, but she thinks either way Lance’s attempt at something like a smooth and cool introduction wouldn’t have gone over well.

She simply isn’t a person for that kind of posturing—pretending such things is all in good fun, but putting on a false suave attitude in seriousness just makes something look stupid, in her personal opinion.

(She is sure Lance would disagree vehemently with that statement, but her point still stands.)

Over time, in being stuck with him in the close quarters that come with being a part of the same team at the Garrison, she reluctantly stretches her opinion of him to include a sentiment of something along the lines of not overall a bad person, former points not withstanding, but it isn’t until Voltron that her feelings on the matter change much beyond that.

Finding Lance after the explosion that destroys the castle’s crystal is…a shock. A data point incongruent with her previous knowledge of him, which had never displayed such an aptitude for... Well. She’s not sure whether to call it self-sacrifice or a suicidal streak. Another one of those cases where it depends on who you ask, she supposes.

That said, pretty much everything up until that point is a shock. The entirety of rescuing Shiro, subsequently finding the Blue lion, arriving at the castle, and most everything that comes after it is one big no-sleep, adrenaline-run rush of this can’t be real it isn’t feasibly possible but that hardly matters, survive this, move past this, they’ve got Matt and Dad you’ve got to survive this.

And of course, in the aftermath, in turning the castle into her battleground and losing Rover and watching Haxus fall to his death and realizing that yes, she has just killed someone to save her own skin and she’d do it again, it is easy to forget, to shuffle aside the anomaly of Lance in favor of so much new information to categorize, to reflect on.

(It is…odd, to look at her own picture of herself, in between the pieces that make up hacker and fighter and sister and all the other little snippets, and add killer to that image. She’s always rather easily conceptualized humans as just giant strings of something like computer code, what else is DNA, after all, and to filter through her own and find the pieces of programming necessary for that kind of thing is an experience, to say the least.)

She doesn’t really give Lance a second thought until well after all that, after they’ve seen him out of the cryopod and plied him with food, and she realizes yes, now, this is the moment. She bares the hidden parts of her metaphorical code and corrects an assumption she’d let lie, even encouraged, to protect her identity as Pidge Gunderson over Katie Holt.

Me. Pidge. Katie. Paladin. Woman.

On the one hand, their reactions are a relief. To have that assurance that, yes, they assumed she is a girl regardless, because body and voice and all the things not yet in her control do not define her. That her heart, her being, is woman, and that is enough.

One the other, it’s frustrating. To know for all her work, all her sacrifice, all the times her skin itched and crawled and she wanted to shout this was wrong, wrong name wrong pronouns wrong life, was for naught. They saw through her ploy anyways.

In a way, Lance’s overdramatic reaction is gratifying. At least someone had bought her disguise. Her efforts had not entirely been in vain. It isn’t until after that Pidge feels the numb worry in her tingling nerves and clammy hands as Lance side-eyes her on their walk back to their rooms, and that she wonders if his loud reaction had been for that reason.

(It is, admittedly, incongruent with what she knows of Lance, even admitting to the crueler aspects of her assessments of him, but fear is a curious thing, born from trial and error and superstition, and it is not always logical.)

“So you’re like—a girl?” he says, brash and unassuming and all the things that give Pidge a headache at the best of times. “A legit girl or…?”

She twitches, almost wanting to snap at him to define a legit girl, but restrains herself. “Yes Lance, I can assure you I’m one hundred percent girl.”

“...Huh.” Lance blinks. “Alright. Cool.”

Pidge rolls her eyes, ignoring the panging clangs that never quite go away of your family, your family, where is your family, Katie? “Yeah, alright. Fair enough.”

“...I thought you might be trans, honestly,” Lance says after a pause, squinting at the ground. “Like you were clearly uncomfortable getting changed around other people and you were so tiny for a dude so—“

“I am trans,” Pidge says before she can think about it, and only afterwards doubles back and properly registers that Lance had meant he thought she was a trans man, followed by the rather jarring realization that perhaps she hasn’t exactly made clear to the team that she isn’t…well. Cis. “I mean...”

(It isn’t technically their business, either way, she supposes, but she had wanted to tell them. Had wanted to be honest in this very crucial piece of what made her herself.)

“Oh.” Lance stops in the hall. “…Oh! Okay, yeah, that…that makes sense, in retrospect.”

“...Yeah.”

“So is everyone in your family just short then?”

She punches him in the side, ignoring his squeals of delighted laughter, and chases him down the hall yelling empty threats. And somewhere, in the mental files and folders of Pidge’s brain, the section on Lance reorders itself ever so slightly without her permission, straying somewhere into not bad, not bad at all, maybe even good.

...Somehow, Lance becomes a regular part of daily life after that.

(Arguably, the same thing might be said of the other occupants of the castle, given there are only seven of them on board and they see each other day in and day out, but she digresses. There is a fine line between housemate/teammate, and friend whom you relinquish semi-consistent time and attention to, and somehow Lance burrows his way into being both the former and the latter.)

He attaches himself to her with vicious, hard-won, blind enthusiasm, much as she has seen him do with Hunk, and despite her hesitations, she lets it happen. There is no Garrison to hide from anymore, no secrets to keep, and having friends here will not risk compromising her cover or intervene with her ability to search for her family.

Lance is odd in a very distinct and individual way. He is sharp edges and loud words and all the things that Pidge is not. If her mind is a computer, she thinks, then his is something of a cluttered chess game with loud music blaring in the background.

But he is smarter and kinder than she originally gave him credit for, and he accepts all the odd-shaped remnants of her without question, and so he grows on her.

He does dumb things (and learns from them, amazingly) and picks fights he can’t win to make himself look cool and robs a space mall fountain with her just to help her buy a video game instead of doing something he fancied instead, and he is…no longer an annoyance or hindrance, but an expectation of fun and excitement.

Lance makes no sense in the general order of things, really, because Pidge is decisive, truly and practically. She formulates opinions of people and they do not waver and they do not change, ever, and yet Lance does. He somehow rapidly spirals from problem to acceptable to friend, and Pidge is left floundering in the wake of exactly how this occurred without actually regretting any part of it.

And yet even then she cannot close the file. She sits with all the disjointed pieces of Lance and tries to arrange them into a complete human equation and is left with gaps. There is always a persistent feeling of something missing, of knowing it’s there and still not being sure of what, and it leaves her wondering if this is what Lance felt like all the way back in the Garrison, when he looked at her and knew there was more to find but didn’t know what.

(Gender and identity and Kerberos and all the little pieces—in retrospect, the fact that Lance even guessed there might have been multiple things she was hiding was pretty impressive, given how much of herself Pidge had tucked away.)

“Do you miss not having girl’s stuff? Like…dresses and cheap lip gloss and the ugly hairbands and all that?” he asks her once, long after the video game is bought and the wiring issue is solved, controller tucked in his hands as he squints at the screen, and she blinks and wonders if this is a case of a question being a whim or a long time coming. Maybe both.

“Yes and no,” she says, pondering the answer slowly. “I liked some of those things, yeah, but I don’t need them. They were nice when I was younger and first transitioning, because they made me feel more sure of myself, I suppose, but it just…feels different now. I don’t need to look feminine or dress as such to know I’m a woman. I just am.”

“Weirdly eloquent response there, Pigeon,” he answers after a long moment, and she blows up his character on the TV screen in retaliation, grinning widely at his loud exclamation following.

“Why did you even ask, anyways? It’s a bit of an out-of-nowhere question.”

Lance shrugs, nose scrunched up and the first inklings of uncomfortable crawling across his face. “Just thinking.”

“...Alright.”

“I think I would miss them,” he says loudly. “If I were you. But—y’know—I’m not you so…”

Pidge pauses her game and wonders if this is one of those times the ever-expanding folder of Lance needs to be edited upon. “You can tell me anything, you know.” And what a trip that is, to repeat the same words she’d heard her parents say, after Matt had brought her home from that shoe store with those purple Velcro sneakers and had spoken to them unsurely in a low voice as she played with her toy cars spread out over the living room floor, and a million little things had come together for her family to finally make sense of Pidge properly for the first time in her life.

She’s probably not the most emotionally competent person for this sort of thing, and definitely isn’t an expert outside of her own experience, but she’s all Lance has got out here, if this is what she thinks it is, so she’ll have to do.

“Yeah, I know,” Lance says, not meeting her eyes. “I’m fine, Pidge. It’s nothing.”

And she lets it go, because some people are decisive and fast moving and know who they are almost immediately, and others aren’t. Pidge is an early bloomer and a scientist and pragmatic. She knows what she wants out of life and she takes it with as much certainty as she can guarantee.

Lance is wide and open and fluid and changeable. He’s the kind of person to demand an audience when he wants to and then duck into the corner to avoid stepping on people’s toes if he deems it necessary.

He is not her, and that is fine.

It’s a rapid escalation of little things then, once it has her attention. Tiny data points picked up from observation and plugged into the half-finished equation of Lance in the interest of completing the puzzle. A silent pondering of not like me, very much not like me, but maybe like me yet still. She knows these signs, can point to them in her own history, but Lance is the anomaly to all her patterns, and it leaves her wondering on the potential surety of her findings.

Because Lance is everything—he is loud and brash and boyish, and quiet and thoughtful and mature. He makes terrible, flirty jokes, and then on occasion wrinkles his nose and walks away from the boy’s talk. He hangs off Allura like she’s a goddess and then sits and compliments her outfits and offers to do her hair with innocent enthusiasm. He is blurred lines and complexities in so many ways she too was and is, and Pidge isn’t sure he even knows it yet.

(Then again, the same things might be said for her. She is a woman in sure identity and mind still living in her little boy disguise that is a stolen mockery of her brother. An example of mind over matter in its finest, the physical losing value in the face of circumstance and confidence in what makes her herself.)

Lance gets the start of his own purple shoes moment, so to speak, in the inevitableness of the tiny things coming to a head all at once in an unexpected occurrence that seems plain on the surface, much like her own. These aren’t enormous revelations, sweeping statements clawed in panic and triumph (no, those come after). These are the little ticking-over happenings, the quiet, mental, oh, here we go, seeping slowly to the surface.

Self-discovery is not fast and dramatic, it is a crawling, sleeping, wondering thing, filled with questions and contemplations long before decisions or revisions, even Pidge knows this much.

They end up on a planet, on one of those semi-impromptu departures from the usual Galra-fighting schedule to assist a planet in need with its own problems, with a sacred temple that men are not allowed to enter.

(They come across a lot of amazing alien cultures, Pidge will admit, but the matriarchies, even the hyper-religious ones, are pretty damn cool.)

It’s a breathless relief, following an unwanted fear that they will somehow burrow their eyes beneath her skin and claim she is not woman enough, when they let her in after Allura without question. She is a woman. She is welcome here, in these alien eyes that hold no concept of human demands that state she is not quite right.

And then they usher in Lance after them, pulling the temple doors shut on the boys’ confused faces as they lead Lance inside and push him into place with her and Allura, and Pidge is left watching Lance’s wide eyes and wondering if aliens see more than she gives them credit for, after all.

Afterwards, when Keith and Hunk knock Lance’s shoulders gently and tease him in good fun about all his beauty regimens making aliens mistake him for a girl, Pidge watches Lance’s unsure grin, his shaking fingers, and keeps her mouth shut.

(It is quite possible they saw in Lance what he does not yet see in himself, and this is not her place, to tell Lance’s story for him.)

Because the thing about Lance, Pidge thinks, is that he is one of those people who do not know themselves quite yet—who trip over their own insecurities and easily succumb to questionings of their feelings. He is as she is, she suspects, she knows, in the itching feelings of not quite right, not quite yet, in this thing they call us, but otherwise he is nothing like her. Pidge knows her mind, her body, her (albeit likely metaphorical) soul, because in this world where everything is unsure and dangerous, the only thing she can truly rely on once her teammates are gone is herself. Lance is a rapidly spiraling game of impromptu and anomalies, the only file she ever had to completely rewrite, and he is still learning himself as much as she is, if not more.

Later, much later, he comes to her room, arms crossed and feet shuffling, and she turns on the video game console without a word, handing him a controller and fighting back a pleased grin as he patiently waits for her to get set up so that she can be player one, as always. He is so much more giving than she ever credited him for, in the beginning, and it is only fair she returns the favor.

So she considers it, and she gives him her waiting silence, because a person like Lance just wants a friend, someone willing to hold the pause until they are ready.

“...I don’t think I’m a boy,” he says eventually into the steeping silence of the simulated nighttime of the castle, and Pidge pauses the game. “I don’t think I’m like…a girl, either, but—I guess it was always there, y’know? Since I was a kid. It all felt…off. But after you, I started thinking about it, and then I couldn’t stop, and…and…”

“Alright,” she says, repeating his pointedly simplistic answer from a long time ago, and shrugs, smiling unsurely when he looks to her, which he mirrors.

“Yeah?”

There are still things to consider after this, so many things. Questions of pronoun experiments and preferences, of terms of address and potential appearance changes desired, of the long discussions she has already been having with Coran about programming the med bay to manufacture the hormone doses she was on before leaving Earth that Lance may now want to be a part of.

(...But there is time for all that later.)

For now, this is Lance’s beginning moment. His own foray into the first speaking of it as the way he and the world perceive him reorder themselves slowly. He will not suddenly wake up tomorrow and find everything makes sense all at once, but there will be the first prickling of knowing, of awaited change, and that is good.

They have time for the logistics, for the science and the decisions and the rewriting. For once in her life, Pidge bids herself patience, to let the both of them figure out the complexities of being in peace.

They have all the time in the world. In the universe, even.

(Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, in between the bits of Katie and Pidge and Paladin and Team, the file on Lance, idiot and annoyance and friend, rewrites itself slowly once more, filling in the gaps with completed lines of ah, there it is.)

“...Yeah.”

#Pidge #Lance #voltron #my writing #voltrans zine #pidge & lance #Interpersonal Mathematics (Voltron)

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