#(yesterday i had 5 wins 1 draw and 1 loss)

[hotgrrlbummer]

been conducting an informal experiment in my all male chess club and i have discovered that the lower the neckline on my top is the more games i win

[be-ready-when-i-say-go]

Blighted

For my precious Sunshine, @5-secondsofcolor's birthday!! Which is technically now, because it is 1 AM on the 20th of May and I am a mad woman. Love you and I hope you have an amazing day, when you see this of course.

Here is your fic, FBI/Behavior Analyst!Calum. Female OC.

Ivy says she's cursed after taking the same career path that took her father's life. Calum's new on the team, a liaison and media specialist, but he's looking to get his toes wet.

AKA your regular old jaded pessimist veteran and bright eyed rookie buddy cop story. Please enjoy!

CW: In depth descriptions of death/crime scenes. Depictions of violence, gore, and blood.

Enjoy my masterlist (on a haitus)

Search for more writing in the h writes tag

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The whiteboard never leaves. It glows behind her closed eyelids. When staring down at the neck of a bottle, she sees it floating just as the bottom of her drink. She’s cursed. But she knew that the moment she tried out for the academy. The second the thought floated across her mind, she would be doomed just like her father. Ivy tried her best to reroute herself--she got into the arts, was first chair flute in her highschool’s orchestra. She was president of the Homecoming committees her junior and senior year, and worked during the summers at her church's camp.

And yet when she went into school for her degree, she gravitated towards psychology and criminal justice. She saw her mother’s fear. The closer it came to graduation and the more the two of them talked about what she would do after graduating, the more the thought lingered, I want to get into the Bureau like Dad. But she couldn’t utter that. She couldn’t say those words without tears welling up in her mother’s eyes.

Ivy suspected her mother always knew about the desires. Ivy didn’t remember all the nights clearly, but sometimes she’d peek out her bedroom door and see the glow of the light downstairs. Ivy followed it, side stepping the creaky fourth step from the top and from between the banister’s she’d find her dad sitting at the dining room table. The kitchen light glowed from behind him and his tie would barely hang on around his neck.

“Boo,” he’d say quietly, knowing the slight shuffle of Ivy’s feet.

“How’d you know I was there, Daddy?” she’d ask, carrying herself the rest of the way down the stairs and make her way through the living room to climb into his lap.

“I can hear your feet above me,” he’d respond, pointing above them.

And they’d spend an hour, sitting at the dining room table. Ivy asked about her dad’s latest trip. He only ever told her when she was young that they were helping save people, putting bad people away. Ivy wonders if this is where it started. If this was where her father casted the spell, leaving Ivy somehow starry eyed about what it really was he did. Ivy would always look at this job with a little bit of that hope that her younger self had, and she’d always be fucked to never be able to walk away from this line of work.

It would kill her--much like it had killed her dad. But unlike him, she’d see the bullet spiral out of the barrel. Her dad had her and her mother to get back too. It wasn’t a weakness. Ivy admired her father for sticking with his dreams and also making the hard calls to make sure his family knew he cared too. But the need to decide would always be a slight hindrance, would always be the key to living or dying in this line of work.

All that’s left of her father, besides the memories and a few of his old t-shirts that got remade into pillows, is the whiteboard she keeps at her desk. There’s a whiteboard for the entire team to use of course. But this whiteboard is the one that her father used in his office. The one where he made his notes, scribbles. The one she’d write notes to him in the bottom left corner that never disappeared until she wanted to replace the note with something new.

“Thomas, look alive, and enjoy.” The manilla folder hits her desk with a quiet thwack. Ivy blinks from the whiteboard up to her senior officer. Kennedy carries on, dropping folders on every desk and each one of them stands without needing any further prompting.

Kennedy’s been in the field for years. It was all over his face with the deep frown lines. His brow seemed permanently furrowed, as if he questioned every waking second. Ivy liked to tease he worried even about sleep. But no one could sink a decade and a half into this line of work and not come out on the other side with a healthy amount of suspicion.

“And where’s this new guy?” Kennedy asks, glancing over the office.

Ivy looks up from her copy of the file. She heard rumors of someone else coming by the office, assisting them occasionally on cases. But those rumors floated around weeks ago, long enough that she chalked it up to just that--rumors. It doesn’t shock her though. Things start at rumors often, and sometimes they come to fruition and sometimes they don’t. Ivy follows Kennedy’s eyeline and doesn’t spy any new faces.

“Want me to keep an eye out for any lost souls?” Ivy offers, glancing back up to Kennedy.

“Nah, I need your eyes on this one. Head up to the conference room and I’ll be there once he shows up.”

With a nod, Ivy closes the file. She swipes the whiteboard from her desk with a couple markers and heads up to the conference room. The rest of the team sat flipping through their files too, Jenkins sitting right near the front but moved down one seat. They’re not new, having been around for a couple years. But Ivy can tell their type--getting in chummy with the boss, trying too hard. They’re a good addition, but Ivy’s waiting for the day they take a hunch and it doesn’t lead to the results they want. A loss will show their true colors, how well they can handle being wrong sometimes. No one on the team is perfect, they’re all hedging bets. Ivy’s taken her lumps of hunches being made too late, or the wrong bets placed. They’re not often. No one likes them. But they happen.

Diaz, Russell, and Burke and scattered throughout the rest of the table. The three of them have been there longer than Ivy. But they all accepted her with open arms. Diaz and Burke were more muscular. They had the brains to match, but they came up the pipeline from their local PD departments and aren’t afraid to get into a tussle. More often than not, Ivy winds up pulling Burke from fights than she’d care to admit. Diaz’s much too big for Ivy to attempt physically restraining, so she referee’s those fights that he gets into.

Russell’s their man behind the screen. He was good at getting through the internet loops, figuring out how to sort databases for the information they need without so much red tape and delay. He preferred to stay behind the lines, but could handle a tussle. Ivy doesn’t count herself as the brains. But her gut had some sort of true north needle that, more often than not, was right. She could see patterns faster than most, could sniff the air after someone and assess how much she could and wanted to trust. Kennedy consulted her often. Whenever she felt like she had something, he’d hush the crowd for her to formulate the full thought. Kennedy didn’t always agree with her assessment, but had to listen to it. He needed to listen to it.

“Nope,” Russell huffs, shutting the folder. “Fucking hell. Kennedy told me it was rough, but I didn’t--I didn’t think it was this rough.”

Ivy settles in next to him sliding him a marker. She draws roughly a tic-tac-toe board. “It not getting easier for you is a good sign.”

Russell makes his first move, the marker squeaking just a little. Ivy follows up with hers. She knows if she makes it too obvious, too easy, Russell will forfeit the game. So she tries to play along, like she’s vying to win.

Russell places his second X though his hands shake just a hair. “Yeah, but compared to you guys, I feel like if someone took a gnarly enough shit it would make me queasy.”

“A bad enough shit could do that to anyone,” Diaz pipes in, his own folder still open but his forearms pressed down over the photographs. Russell’s been around the block, definitely seem some rough things, but has always had a softer view of the world. Still wants it to be good despite all the bad he’s seen.

Ivy places down her second O, noticing the pretty obvious wide open spot she left Russell but looks up to Diaz. “I think I heard through the grapevine you were on the losing end of one of those shits yesterday,” she teases.

Diaz reclines into his seat, his chest bouncing with his laughter. “All because of your cooking Thomas.”

“My cooking is not that bad,” she defends, the cap of her black marker pointing him out.

Burke snickers too with a shake of her head and opens her mouth to speak but the room fills with the voice of Kennedy. “Aren’t y’all old enough to be left alone not to talk about shit for five minutes?”

“Never too old to talk shit, sir,” Diaz returns, his smile lifting only half his face up. He’s a charmer, whenever they go out to bars out manage to get a moment’s peace not hounded by work, he never seems to be at a lack of folks coming up to him. He’s already got a girl, but with the hair that cascades always neatly placed and the dazzling bright grin, anyone could fall for it.

Kennedy huffs his laughter quickly and then shuffles deeper into the room. “We’ve got a new friend, so let’s play nice.” As Kennedy makes head way, Ivy notices the man behind him. He’s tall. The black dress pants and black dress shirt don’t hide everything beneath them, but Ivy’s not too shocked to see people who work in the field like that with some sort of muscular physique. There’s something about his face though--something about the way his brown eyes dart around the room and his smile never shows any teeth that something familiar tugs at her.

Kennedy goes around the table introducing Ivy first, then going to Russell, coming down to Jenkins, Diaz, and then Burke. Each one of them lifts a hand or nods at their name. “This here is Hood, Calum Hood. Joining us as a new liaison.”

Ivy’s no good with faces sometimes. But names she hardly ever forgets. Hood, she met him once a few years back at a lecture. Not that she did them often, but Kennedy got more face time. But he made sure to spread the love between the team. He asked her to tag along. Calum must’ve been in the crowd, had to be, and had to have asked a question because Kennedy told her to remember that name. And she had.

Kennedy continues on with something. Ivy suspects he’s warning Diaz to keep any hazy tactics to a minimum considering how much of a mess they’re walking into. Ivy nods once more at him, and then faces back to the whiteboard, the tap on her arm prompting her too. I’m a scaredy cat sure, but not dumb, it reads in Russell’s handwriting. She spies his X in the bottom corner, opposite of where he would’ve won.

“Pull up a seat, Hood. We’ll have more time for pleasantries once we’re up in the air. But I want everyone to at least be familiar with this case.”

“Yes, sir.” His voice is smooth, Ivy notes. A soft volume and accented but smoother than she would’ve pegged.

The team breaks down the file, recapping mostly what they’ve already read but Kennedy’s old fashioned this way, needing to make sure people have done their homework. It’s an extra step than completely necessary, but having the quick meetings has always made this team feel more like a second family. There’s always a common goal in mind for them and they’re always reminded of it. No matter what happens out in the field, they all want the same thing.

“We soar in forty-five minutes. So let’s hope wheels can turn in the air. Hood, I need you to keep in mind the local PD’s been taking a lot of heat for the last couple of months. So we don’t want to take too much star power, we’re only here to assist and whatever we can do to put the local’s good grace back onto that PD we need to.”

Not quite what she expected, though with his demeanor and looks, he’s sure to work a crowd or newsroom well. She’s sure he’ll be on the ground with them too.

“Understood,” he replies and with that, all of them push away from the table. ���Agent Thomas,” Hood says, reaching out almost as if to touch her elbow but never actually do it. He continues to speak once she looks over to him. “I-I don’t know if you remember. But we met at a lecture a couple years back that you held with Agent Kennedy. And I just wanted to say that I’m excited to be here, working with you all.”

“Thomas, here, does not respond well to flattery. Trust, we’ve all tried,” Diaz laughs, clamping down on Hood’s shoulders.

“I appreciate it,” Ivy responds. “Glad to have a fresh mind on the team.” There’s no smile, at least, not one she’d give Russell, Burke, Diaz, or even Jenkins. But Calum watches her give another curt nod with a quick quirk of her lips, and then leave, stacking her file on top of the whiteboard.

“Don’t sweat it. She’s in work mode,” Diaz assures. “We get off the clock and she’s a hoot. But on the clock, it’s strictly business. I will warn you, Thomas will burn you.”

Calum’s left, watching Diaz, Burke, and Russell leave. Jenkins turned tail the second Kennedy got done. It’s not that he wants to mix business with pleasure. He’s just been studying Thomas, attending as many lectures that she gives as he can. She didn’t always go directly by the book, there was something about her method that used the evidence, used science, but also had some sort of intuition. Thomas just knew things and when attempting to quantify it, she didn’t always have the words for it. Calum just wants to see that in action, understand what it is about knowing that isn’t always present in the facts.

The plane ride is comfortable. Plenty of seats even though they squeak just a little. Calum watches Thomas sit and everyone seems to sit spread out from there, keeping her at some sort of center. “Mobile. They don’t mind the hustle,” Ivy starts.

“Crossing state lines is risky, especially after the escalation,” Burke interjects.

“But wouldn’t that be a reason for it? If all the crimes look different, enough crossing state lines might make the unsub feel confident, like they’re getting away with something.” The entire plane turns to look at him. Calum freezes for a moment. He knows better. He knows so much better than that. Fuck.

“Valid. But we shouldn’t settle. Travel might be part of their job. We’ve got a good cluster to possibly estimate a home base. Get comfortable, perfect the craft here and then spread out. But why come back? Local PD's hadn't quite connected anything, until the return. More families, found exactly the same. Even when they cross state lines, all points wind back to a specific geographical location,” Burke returns.

“Hood, you got the inside of the media. What does it look like?”

Thirty minutes of his forty five was making sure that he could at least nail down this run through. And it’s easy, even with the squeak of Ivy’s dry erase marker, to run down the media reports, what information has been released and what hasn’t been released. He makes note of what the team doesn’t want to get out and what they do want to keep available to the public.

All the while, Calum watches the way Ivy writes over her board, the squeak over and over on specific strokes. He wonders for a moment what she’s writing, what it is that she needs to keep written track of. But he doesn’t get a chance to fully flesh out that thought before he finishes his spill and Diaz cuts in. They’re fast, not quite settling on any one theory. More like compiling the possibilities, not wanting to eliminate things but ranking how plausible they all could be until the pieces click.

The first thing after the flight lands, they head for the precinct. The lead investigator greets them, and there’s no pause. They’re pulled into the frenzy, looking at boards. Calum tries to keep his head in the game, but he is watching Ivy. The way she settles in her chair, her marker always moving. He’s not even sure it’s words anymore, just a constant circular movement. Sure he’s here to help regulate media outlets, and he can do that in his sleep if local PD and media follow his instructions to a T.

But he needs an in, to show he’s more than just the new meat on the chopping block. He’s worth something. “Is the last crime scene still available?” Calum asks.

The room turns to him, well most of the room does. Ivy keeps circling, but she speaks. “The plan’s to go in ten minutes. Whatever’s got you preoccupied, leave it in your go bag.”

Kennedy chuckles, tapping at her foot. “Give the kid a break. He was buried in news coverage the second we got into the door. But Hood, shake the cobwebs. This isn’t your small town’s rodeo anymore. If you need to be caught up, ask. But if you’re going to be in the room, keep those ears open.”

A task easier said than done, but he nods, resting his elbows on his knees. God, they’re going to think I’m an idiot. The room goes back to its normal buzz, but Calum keeps his head buried in his hands.

“Talk to me. What are your theories?”

Calum lifts his head. Ivy’s closer now. He can see the black marks on her hand from where she’s held it up against the swirls and lettering. “Clearly I’m barely treading water here.”

“First day nerves, but you can shake it. You wanted to see the crime scene. Why?”

“Why there? We have indications that the unsub spent a lot of time there, even with the interruptions they've seemed to caused. They're still meticulous. I want to follow their steps. What did they do first? And why? What do they need from a crime scene before it’s done?”

“Good. But what else?”

“What-what do you mean what else?”

She smiles, much different than the first one. It shows her teeth, a bit of a twinkle in her eyes. “What else?”

He goes quiet, reclines back into the seat and closes his eyes for a second. What else? There’s a lot else. “I mean, the next obvious thing is why these victims? But besides that, how comfortable is this person? Do they feel a need to be rushed, fast, get-in-get-out or can they blend in? I have a hunch they can blend in. Maybe people even trust them. They are perfectly ordinary and in essence, they have to be in order for the fantasy to work. Detection means they have to get sloppy. Being sloppy’s not an option, so blending in it is.”

“Bring that to the crime scene.” Something taps his knee and Calum cracks open his eyes to see her, standing. Her whiteboard still gently rests against his knee. She’s not looking at him though. Her gaze is locked onto the board next to him, displaying the crime scene photos.

“What’s your secret?” Calum asks. He’s almost positive she didn’t hear him due to Ivy’s lack of prompt response. But then she turns to him.

“Secret?”

“Thomas, Hood, you comin’ or what?” Kennedy calls. “I can deal without Diaz, but I need you, Thomas.”

“I’ll remember that,” Diaz laughs as they walk through the glass doors of the precinct.

It’s not Calum’s first time at a crime scene. But the second Calum steps through the door a chill runs through him. The carpet and walls are still bloodstained. Everything about it the scene just feels wrong, makes Calum want to immediately step back out of the house.

“You feel that?” Burke asks. She continues on deeper into the house, slipping into her gloves.

“This is when Thomas says she’s too Black for all this and gets the hell out of dodge,” Diaz barks. He squats down to the blood on the carpet. Ivy’s already deep into the house, seemingly guided by a force unwillingly to let her go. She doesn’t respond verbally, just lifts her hand, the middle finger extended out in the general direction of Diaz.

And Calum is standing near the threshold of the door, trying to pinpoint why it feels so cold in a house in Texas in the middle of the summer. His hands feel sticky even inside the latex gloves. His first step is shaky but he stops next to Diaz. “There are drag marks from the blood,” Calum notes. “This isn’t where they were killed, just staged.”

“The unsub staged all the victims here in the living room. We know that. Pictures show the parents at the ends of the sofa, children in the middle, dog on the floor.”

“But there’s blood on the walls. We know the Dad’s 6’1,” Calum returns.

“And we don’t have forced entry. So, whoever is wreaking havoc isn’t threatening enough for someone not to answer the door.”

Calum turns to the sofa where the family was found. “It’s picturesque, poetic even. You’ve got a whole family right here, at your will. They knock on the door. It’s dusk, sun’s just starting to set.”

“They have a ruse that gets them inside. We already know they have to blend in with the community. So what can you use to get into a house? Who gets into a house without a problem?”

Diaz goes into the kitchen where in the case file it mentions when the family was finally discovered food was still out on the table. “The window doesn’t have to last long. But it has to be just right. All three families were either eating dinner, or just done with dinner. So why dinner time?” Diaz turns from the stove to face Calum.

“It’s when everyone is together. They’re not just going after a family, but very specific family dynamics. Which means both parents need to present, two kids seems to be a minimum.”

“What’s the average dinner time you’d say? With this job, I eat whenever I fucking can. But before this, excluding people like us, when is the average person sitting down to eat?”

“6, 6:30 I’d guess. That’s assuming the average person is working a job that calls it at 5PM. A town like this is either on the verge of collapsing or being bought out. So I assume a lot of people are traveling outside to the city for work, so the commute might be even later. But I wouldn’t hazard any guesses that our unsub’s just haphazardly picking houses.”

“No, no, you’re right, Hood,” Diaz states, walking over to the table. “I guess what I’m saying is the timing. No one hears anything. But our unsub’s using a gun. That’s not quiet. And there’s not a lot of city noise this far out. They’re spending hours in the house and somehow getting out undetected. But striking at dinner time, with the setting sun, means this person’s around outside the house. But no one’s noticed anything out of the ordinary.”

“Hunting seasons,” Calum returns. “No one really flinches at the sound of a gun shot because people are hunting year ‘round here.”

“And it seems like humans are on the menu.”

“An appetizing thought.”

******

Ivy’s not sure when the chill finally left over the course of the day but it returns when she walks into the precinct and sees the entire room in a frenzy. Kennedy spies her and it’s just a look. Not much different than his resting face, but somehow she knows with that slight arch in his eyebrow. Another family--while they were proding over photos the killer was already moving on, already in the midst of their attack.

And it shouldn’t shock her. Well, to be more accurate, it doesn’t shock her and maybe that’s the thing that scares her. “I’ve been doing this too damned long,” she mutters to herself. “Hood, you’re with me. Get the address and let’s see what that gut of yours cooks up.”

“How’d--Is Kennedy going to be okay with that? The call just came in a few minutes ago.”

“Get the address and tell me how you like your coffee,” Ivy says. Kennedy’s going to come to the scene anyway, but she doesn’t tell Calum that.

There’s not another word before Calum passes in front of her. “Cream and two sugars,” he answers as he goes.

“So Black, got it.”

Paused at the desk of a detective, he looks over his shoulder. “Cream and two sugars,” he re-emphasizes with a tiny smile and holding up two fingers. Police station coffee’s never the best, but it’s better than nothing. When on a case, time is also imperative and they take what they can. Ivy fixes Calum’s cup first, slipping a lid on and keeping the stirrer through the hole. She pours her cup with no additions.

“Not even creamer? Not one?” Calum questions.

“Takes too much time,” she returns. “Burke, you staying?”

“Yeah, Russell got those files over just before the call came in. Besides that crime scene’s bound to be crowded as all hell and I swear if I walk into another house and catch a chill after seven years of doing this job, I just might quit.”

The two ladies laugh. Ivy recovering first to respond, “I need you to keep me sane even though you’re just as much trouble as Diaz.”

“Which is why I’m going to say here, work with Russell. We’re going to need Hood back before the 5’oclock news. Whatever you find at the scene will help solidify our profile and we need it soon. We need the hands on this clock, because it’s ticking ahead of us.”

Ivy nods. It’s no fun being behind. “Kennedy, we’re moving or we’re dying.”

“I trust you. There’s something off about that last one that I want to walk through again.”

“Let’s rock and roll,” she says to Calum, handing him his cup of coffee. “Mr. Cream-and-Two-Sugars.”

The drive is relatively short, all thanks to Ivy’s lead foot. But they need to get there fast, while things are still fresh.

“Did you always want to do this?” Calum asks in the silence of their drive. The radio doesn’t even play. Ivy knew he had questions. He wore them on his face, brows furrowing anytime he was the slightest bit hesitant about something.

“I don’t think I had a choice.”

“What do you mean you didn’t have a choice? We’ve all got choices.”

“My dad worked with the FBI until it killed him. And I think about how he used to tell me it was his job to help put bad people in jail. And I believed him.”

“The bug bit you before you even had a fighting chance.”

Ivy nods, taking a quick glance to Calum. “But if I had a prettier face, I’d stick with liaison too.”

Calum huffs out his laughter. “I went the journalism route first, sue me. Besides, that’s you admitting you think I have a pretty face.”

“I forget faces—so don’t think too highly of it. And I’m probably old enough to be your mother. You attended some lectures, I remembered your name. How’d you convert?”

It’s silent for a moment and Calum contemplates her statement, old enough to be his mother. “Given that my mother has shared her fountain of youth with my sister and I, you might be shocked to know I’m nearing 30. And I converted because of you and your work under Kennedy and his old superior Rogers.”

“All the greats,” Ivy teases, but she doesn't sound impressed. More like tired, used to it.

“But you’re different.”

“Yeah, because somehow the Bureau hasn’t realized their mistake.”

“Mistake?” Calum asks around his sip of coffee.

“Kennedy’s going to retire soon. He's done 15 with our unit. Another ten prior to that climbing through the ranks. Then they’re going to have to find a replacement.”

“You say that like it won’t be you.”

“Because it won’t.”

“You’ve been with Kennedy for so long. He’s obviously going to recommend you, Ivy.”

“He can recommend but people higher up get the final word.”

The truck stops just in front of the house, and Calum knows the most logical thing to do is just focus on the case, walk the scene. Do his job. But he reaches across the console and wraps his fingers around hers for a second with a squeeze. “You’ll get it. They’d be dumb not to bring you to the head of this team.”

“There’s an altar or a shrine. It’s small.”

Calum pauses with his hand on the door. Ivy continues beside him. “Go to the eldest child’s bedroom. In a corner you’ll see the small shrine. Our unsub left one at the last house. And the house before, I’d bet. And this house too. That’s what Kennedy missed. What other cops missed too. Make sure you get it photographed. Besides, I’ve been doing this job too long and don’t know if I’d even want the added responsibility if they promoted me.”

“How’d we miss that?”

“We didn’t miss shit. We saw it when we needed to see it. We see things when we need them.” It's the way she says it, like she has to believe that makes Calum believe too.

The sight rocks Calum--he knew it wouldn’t be easy. But he didn’t know it’d hit him like this. The room spins, just a little. And his heart racing. Mostly because he can’t stand the thought that this could be someone he knows. These people weren’t anticipating their would be like this. And what does that even mean for him? What does his end look like?

“Hey, whoa. Whoa.” An arm comes around his waist and he follows the lead of whomever’s grabbed him.

“I’m okay,” he breathes out. “I’m okay.”

“Yeah, I’m a fudge brownie. It’s okay to not be alright in there.”

Calum rests against the side of the house and squats down just a little. His elbows hit his knees. His breath is heavy, falls from his open mouth almost like he’s going to vomit. But his stomach’s not churning anymore. Not with the fresh morning air hitting his lungs. “Fuck,” he breathes out again, eyes blurring just a little.

“But you’re okay. Take a breather.” Ivy’s shoes turn up in the dirt. "Get him a water, will ya? Hood, take a minute. It's alright. I'll be inside when you're ready." Calum just watches her go. It takes a moment for him to lift his head. It has to get easier. Or least he hopes it does. It takes him a minute, inhaling deeply before he stands up straight.

The rest of them processing the scene goes by in relative silence. Occasionally, Calum pipes in with an addition to their theory. Ivy hums in agreement. And it’s not until they step out and slip out of their gloves that Ivy says anything. “This is why I drink my coffee black.”

“I’m sorry. I really--I don’t know why this one got me.”

“It’s the kids. Kids are the worst.”

Calum looks up to the sky. There’s a few clouds, but not many. “The photos are bad, but in person is way different.”

Ivy watches Calum, the way it takes him a second to come back to earth it seems. “Don’t ask yourself if it gets easier.” When his gaze lands hers, she can see the furrowed brow again. The question drips off his face. “You’ll only disappoint yourself. And this job’s not for the weak of heart. For the people that can’t take some losses with the wins.”

“You said it yourself. You wanted to put the bad people away.”

“Eight year old me wants to believe it’s as easy as putting the monsters away. Thirty-one year old me knows for a fact what the losses are, who gets caught in the cross-fire. It’s not easy, not in the slightest.”

“Innocent lives do add up.”

“Which is why I try not to do math on the job. They all slip up. They all reach a point where their methods don’t satiate the need. They all make a fatal flaw and counting the unfortunate lives on the way to that will have you walking from the Bureau faster than you can blink.”

“So what makes you stay? If it’s all so fucking bad, what keeps you going?”

Ivy nods to the car, pulling the keys from her pocket. “We need to solidify our profile and you need to run press ASAP. But to answer your question, the thing that keeps me going is that fact that they do get caught eventually.”

******

Eventually seems to come up faster than Calum anticipates. He was sure it would take weeks. After getting back to the precinct more information in Russell’s digging found a connection between all the families, a Venn diagram that overlapped to their X on the map. Another couple of days and it all unravelled. It’s a blur, when he tries to think back to it, on the plane. The only grounding thing is when one of the children, a little girl about 6, pointed out the tattoos on his hands. In all this time, he was sure the tattoos would be a barrier to entry--they’d somehow put him in a place that others would think he was nothing but trouble. But somehow, despite the terror she had done through, that little girl liked his tattoos, found some sort of comfort in them.

When he told her they were for his parents, she smiled at him. She said she wanted one for her parents too and then asked if he had anymore and how old he was when he got them. All of which Calum was more than happy to answer while the medic checked over her. Her older brother came soon after, asking a few questions, but overall he was much quieter than his sister. Understandable for what was endured. In the end, Calum’s just glad he didn’t see them staged on a couch, bleeding out onto the cushions.

There’s a small bit of turbulence and the shakes cause Calum to open his eyes for a moment. Ivy’s seated across from him, whiteboard on her lap, headphones in her ears. A tic-tac-toe grid drawn across it in the middle, but in the corners are some swirls, a crude drawing of the shrine from the case. Calum leans forward and tugs on the board just a little. She lets it go without a fight and hands over the marker.

Calum makes an ‘X’ in the top left. “You said this job doesn’t get easier.” He looks up to see if Ivy can hear him and is relieved when she pops out one her headphones. She raises her brows like she wants him to continue with the thought. And Calum’s not even sure he should. Instead, he hands over the board back to her. If seeing death doesn’t get easier, then maybe it just means he gets better at it. Maybe it means that not being okay with death is a good motivator to keep down this path.

“The job doesn’t get easier. You’re still human. You still want a spouse and a kid. You might want two dogs and a cat. You might want that white picket fence one day. You’ll want to close your eyes and not see death. You’ll want to walk down the street and see humans as humans again. You’ll have nightmares. Don’t hide from it. Nothing’s wrong with you for wanting that. But we’re in a world now where we see the horrors--what’s on the other side of everything you wanted. It’s a liminal space and it’s heavy to wade through.”

“I just want to not freak like I did the other day. It’s not easy. But sometimes I fear that maybe I bit off more than I could chew.”

Their game of tic-tac-toe has been forgotten, placed in the seat next to Ivy as she leans forward in her seat. “You said you were converted because of me. What exactly about me was it?”

“You just know things. When you walk onto a scene, you have an air of knowing. How can you just pick up on it in a snap?”

“Well,” Ivy laughs, “if that’s the only reason you want in, I warn you to get out.”

“I want to help. I want to save people,” Calum adds on. But then it hits him. Maybe this wasn’t the business of saving people as much as it was stopping people. Sure, they prevent future murders, but that didn’t always negate for all the lives lost. But they did save that family today. He saved that little girl that wants tattoos like his. “I want to save people and I want to stop people as well,” he finally adds on.

“There will always be monsters in this world,” Ivy warns.

“And there will always be heroes.”

“Make no mistake, Calum. We don’t have capes. We don’t swoop in all the time at just the right moment. Sometimes we are late. Sometimes we’re reacting more than we are being proactive. Sometimes we fuck up.”

His heart stops for just a moment at the mention of his first name. He’s always Hood, or at least has always been Hood. Just like she’s always Thomas to the team. But she said his first name. Unmistakably so. “Did-did you just use my first name?”

“You used my first name, first.”

When had he done that? He didn’t recall, but he couldn’t combat it either.

“Look,” Ivy continues, “the fact remains. We will fail. We will make the wrong call, or the right call just by the skin of our teeth. We will walk down the wrong direction only to figure out, we know it’s the wrong one. We get it right. A lot more often, we get it right and we minimize the death count. But we’re human--you don’t have to take it on if you don’t want. You don’t have to suffer.”

“If I don’t suffer and win, then that little girl suffers and loses. Then the next person loses. And the next. Their suffering or mine--the choice is clear.”

Ivy studies Calum for a moment. She sees the resolve on his face. Just how much sacrificing himself is a no brainer for him. It was a no brainer for her too. But admittedly, she was cursed. Maybe Calum wasn’t. Maybe she could save him, even if she couldn’t save herself. But she wasn’t in the business of saving people, only stopping them.

“I can’t stop you, can I?” she asks.

“Stop me from what?”

“Stop you from killing yourself with this job.”

“If it’s killing you, then why don’t you leave?” His head cocks to the side, now intrigued by her honesty.

“It’s like you said, I got bit before I could escape. I’m cursed. Are you?”

The little girl flashes through his vision again, and his chest tightens for a second before the relief kicks in. He could chase that feeling, the knowledge that he saved someone, one person. And that he helped put away one more person causing harm. “I am now. Ruined--because even though I can’t save them all. I can save some. I can help keep some people safe. I don’t think there’s a better reward than that.”

With a nod, Ivy looks back to their game on the whiteboard. They would’ve tied, she can see it after where she placed her ‘O’. But she hands it back over to Calum. “Kennedy’s going to shit himself when he realizes he’s got too hard heads on his team.”

“You’ll shit yourself when you realize you’re inheriting the second hard-head on the team after Kennedy leaves.”

Ivy scoffs. Of course, Calum still believes in the shiny idea that hard work yields rewards. “And this is where I can still tell you’re new to this--the dreams are still shiny and ideal.”

“All the work you’ve invested, they’d be--”

Ivy interrupts him. “I know, they’d be dumb not to.”

“Then why do you keep saying it won’t happen?”

“I’d call my pessimism a curse. But at this point, I think it’s a personality trait and the truth.”

“And let me guess, this is why you take your coffee black too.”

Ivy winks at him before her smile takes over her face. “You know it.”

[youtuberswithalex]

PRVL, Vol. 3, Ch. 5: Never Miss A Beat

Summary: As the tournament picks up speed, our heroes get a chance to relax and connect with their loved ones.

Word Count: 3,567

Warnings: Family argument, a bit of implied self-hatred

(Sorry for the short chapter, but future chapters will make up for this! Promise!!)

Masterpost – Volume 1 – Previous

------

BEEEEEEP!

Roman leapt out of his seat, screaming at the top of his lungs. “Yes!!! Yes, Yang!! I knew she was gonna beat them, I knew it!!”

“Wow,” Riad said. “I did not think she would be able to put up a fight against Flynt’s trumpet. That thing packs a punch.”

“That’s Yang for you! Always the biggest, strongest blondie you could ever lay eyes on!” He flopped back down, letting out an energetic groan. As soon as he was settled, he hooked onto Riad’s arm and cuddled in. “I’m absolutely ecstatic that she’s going to the finals! I can’t think of a single person left that’s deserving of the championship!”

“Not even Penny Polendina?”

Roman looked to his other side, where Thomas was shooting him an amused look. “No way!” he exclaimed. “I don’t care if she’s got those psychic swords or whatever they are; Yang could beat her no problem!”

Joan leaned forward raised an eyebrow. “What about Pyrrha?”

“Not even a chance.”

Riad chuckled. “Didn’t you say Pyrrha beat her in a match in Glynda’s last semester?”

“Shhh…” Roman reached up and put a finger to his lips, silencing him. “We don’t have to talk about that. Yang cannot be bested.”

“Uh, excuse me, did you forget that your sister is still in the fight?” Trix huffed, leaning down from the row behind to press her cheek to Roman’s.

He paused for a moment as his face heated.

“…I can think of one person who could maybe best Yang.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Next to her, Abeba nudged her with their elbow. “Come on, let him root for who he wants. Besides, you haven’t even had your match yet; we don’t know if you’ll be in the finals or not.”

Trix raised an eyebrow. “Very bold of you to assume Eve and I wouldn’t be able to take down a couple of first-years.”

“Yeah, and did you see their match against NDGO? It was a complete luck of the draw that they managed to win!” Keahi added from Trix’s other side. “STER’s going to wipe the floor with them, no question.”

Abeba leaned forward to look at her, narrowing their eyes. “Aren’t you from the same school as Team SSSN?” they asked. “How come you haven’t given them any pointers on their strategies and stuff? Help them prepare, you know?”

Keahi scoffed. “Come on, you think I actually pay attention to other people in fighting classes? I don’t know jack about them.”

Trix and Abeba immediately deflated and slumped against each other.

“Well, it was worth a shot,” Trix sighed.

“I tried.”

As the next teams filed onstage, Roman dropped his cheek against Riad’s bicep and let out a breath. Riad stared at him for a beat before taking one of his hands with his free one. When Roman looked up, he offered a soft smile and pressed their foreheads together.

“Hey,” he whispered.

Roman smiled back, but despite the red dusting his cheeks, there was pain behind his eyes. “Hey.”

“You’ve been awfully clingy these last couple of days,” he pointed out. “Is there something going on?”

He hummed and buried his face back into his arm. His eyes flicked around, and his lips pressed together; one could almost see the gears turning in his head as he thought about the words he wanted to say next.

“Are you… worried, at all, about this?” Roman softly asked.

Riad raised an eyebrow. “About what?”

“Us,” he replied. “Like… Do you worry that things are going to end soon? Badly?”

The soft smile fell from Riad’s face; he frowned, shaking his head.

“No, not at all,” he said, leaning to try to catch Roman’s eyes. “I wouldn’t be dating you if I thought that. What’s this about, babe? Where’d this come from?”

Roman gave him the quickest of glances before looking back at the battlefield. There was a moment of quiet between them; Riad didn’t rush him, despite the nerves beginning to build up inside.

Finally, he let out a soft sigh. “Anole really doesn’t like us being together.”

Riad felt his heart drop into his stomach. He opened his mouth to reply, but Roman pushed on before he could get a word out.

“We were talking yesterday morning, and he… he really thinks we’re going to hurt each other,” he continued, “As if we’re doing this just to mess with him. And, Riad, I…” He shifted to look into his eyes. “I need you to know that that is not why I said yes when you asked me to be your boyfriend; I really, truly do adore you and Anole has absolutely nothing to do with it!”

“I know,” Riad answered, having to force his words through a thick wall of emotion. “I never worried about that for a moment. I do feel the same way about you; please don’t worry that that’s why I asked.”

“I wasn’t,” Roman replied, despite the way his shoulders fell.

Riad paused for a moment, pretending he was watching the start of the next fight as he sorted through his thoughts. “…Anole really said that?”

Roman nodded. “And he implied that we dove into this without thinking… That I was being reckless.”

“You are,” Riad said. “That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s something I really like about you.”

Scoffing, Roman rolled his eyes. “Tell him that.”

“I don’t need to. You’re the only one who needs to worry about how I feel about you,” he firmly replied. “And that’s something Anole needs to learn. Not you.”

Roman slowly nodded in understanding and leaned back in his seat. “I just wish he would leave us alone,” he quietly admitted.

Riad wrapped an arm around his boyfriend’s shoulders and pressed a kiss to his temple.

“I’ll talk to him.”

 -------

Logan didn’t know how long he sat at the ocean docks after his parents left.

It was certainly more than a few minutes, if the ebbing stinging of his eyes was anything to go by. He could very faintly hear the announcers and buzzers from Amity Colosseum far, far in the air above; at least a couple of matches had come and gone, but he wasn’t paying much attention. Not when he could watch their boat disappear over the horizon.

While he felt no obligation to see them off after they set sail, he found that he wasn’t quite ready to head back to the dorm, or the arena, or… anywhere, really. At least not anywhere that he would have to interact with people. A weariness settled in his chest just at the thought.

He knew his parents needed to go. Vacuo and its citizens needed the two of them more than he did, and the ever-persistent Grimm weren’t going to let up during a worldwide tournament that just so happened to include their son. The fact that they were even gone for a couple of days was worrying; who knows what might have happened to the people they were protecting while they were away?

Logan knew this, and yet… he couldn’t stop himself from being sad to see them go.

So here he sat, in the midst of the stench of fish and tourists bustling around, watching a boat sail away as if it could grant him a few more minutes with his family before the long wait until they could see each other again.

Someone sat next to him on the bench, and he nearly leapt out of his skin; a coffee cup was offered as if nothing happened. Logan blinked and looked up to see Thamir softly smiling at him.

“Thamir,” he dumbly stated. “What are you doing here?”

“I saw you when I came by earlier on my way to my family’s house. Didn’t think you’d still be here on my way back,” he laughed. He pushed the cup towards Logan again as he took a sip of his own. “Figured I’d get you some coffee, since it didn’t seem like you’d be leaving any time soon.”

Logan glanced at it, and then back to him. “I… thought I was the one who owed you coffee after Team AMBR’s match?”

He shrugged. “Consider it a freebie,” he said.

Logan felt the corners of his lips tug up, and he finally accepted with a word of thanks before taking a sip. It was pleasantly warm, but not scorching hot, and just barely sweet and creamy— exactly how he liked it.

“So… Did your parents head out?” Thamir asked.

Eyes flicking to the boat, Logan nodded. “They weren’t able to stay away for long. Really, they probably shouldn’t have come in the first place,” he admitted, “But… I do have to say, I am… very glad they were here, even if they did have to see our loss. Perhaps even more so for the same reason.”

“They seem cool. It was really nice to meet them,” he said. “It must be intense, having a full family of Huntsmen.”

He sighed and looked down at his cup, where his fingers idly played with the rim of the lid. “It is rather extraordinary; I’ll give it that. I’m sure Roman and Calanthe could attest to my saying that it can get a bit overwhelming at times. There’s always training and jobs to be done, and hardly any time to rest.”

Thamir nodded. “I can imagine.”

“And that’s not even mentioning the impacts of being separated for long stretches of time,” he continued. “I was fortunate in that my parents could afford to stay home and take on few jobs while raising me; my mother originally insisted upon it, and Father wanted to keep that after she was gone. It was one of the most important things to him when he and Esther began to see each other. Very few children of Huntsmen are able to have that, unless they find a stable job in one place, such as the Reptilias.”

“Calanthe’s told me about that,” Thamir informed. “Her older sister had to take care of her when their parents were on missions, and then she was on her own after she left for Haven. She said it got pretty lonely.”

“Well… I suppose it’s just another part of the job,” he quietly replied. “Another sacrifice we make for the safety of humanity and faunus.”

Thamir fell into silence for a moment, staring over the ocean. He took a deep, weary breath.

“It’s not just a sacrifice for Huntsmen.” He turned to Logan. “It’s a sacrifice for the kids, too. I know time with your family isn’t the same as a life, but… It’s alright if you grieve it. You’re allowed to, even if you know it’s worth it.”

Just like that, the stinging in Logan’s eyes was back. He pressed his lips together and tightened his grip on his coffee, trying to keep his breathing steady. A lump formed in his throat, and it was harder to swallow it away than it should have been.

The echoing of a buzzer and a roaring crowd bounced around the buildings behind them, giving him just enough of a distraction to ground himself. He took a calming breath as music began to play.

Thamir bumped his shoulder against his. “You know… I remember you making a pretty hefty sacrifice a few weeks ago,” he said.

Logan frowned and raised an eyebrow at him. “You do?”

“Well, it wasn’t as big as leaving your family behind or anything, but it was still something you gave up to be ready for anything.”

“What was it?”

He pointed his thumb at the streets behind them. “The Vytal Festival Ball,” he stated, giving Logan a half-smile.

Logan scoffed and rolled his eyes. “That was not a hard decision to make,” he huffed. “Our missions were far more important.”

“Would you have gone if it was a different night?”

He blinked and looked at Thamir, who simply watched him with a soft curiosity on his face. Logan took a moment to consider the question before opening his mouth.

“I… do not know,” he admitted. “The chances would have increased, of course, seeing as the date was the main reason I chose not to attend, but, well… I still would not have had any preparations as to what to expect. I still don’t know how loud or crowded it would have been, nor how overwhelmed I would become.” Huffing out a weak laugh, he added, “I don’t even know how to dance, to be completely honest with you. For all I know, it would have been a disaster.”

Thamir hummed. “So… What you’re saying is, in two years, when we have the next Vytal Festival…?”

“I would not be able to tell you if I would go or not,” Logan finished.

Thamir nodded, and then he set his coffee to the side, getting to his feet. He turned and held a hand out to Logan.

“Well,” he said, “I can help you with one of those worries, at least.”

He furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”

“Let’s dance.”

If he’d had any coffee in his mouth, Logan was sure he would have choked. “W-What?”

“Yeah!” he laughed. “C’mon, I’ll teach you how. We can start small.”

Logan stared at him, frozen in place; after a moment, he let out a breath and took his hand.

“Well… Alright.”

He set his drink aside as Thamir pulled him up, taking both of his hands and holding them an arm’s length away. They started to sway to the music echoing through the area.

Though I can’t find what to say, I know that you’ll hear me If you’re in this game I play, I can tell you when I need you more…

Logan couldn’t help but chuckle as Thamir started getting more and more invested in the song; his shoulders moved, and his head bobbed back and forth. Thamir caught him watching and laughed, yanking Logan’s arms forward and back to the beat.

“The more you get into it, the more fun it is!” he exclaimed. “Try it!”

He rolled his eyes, but the smile didn’t leave his face as he attempted to copy Thamir’s movements. When he beamed, he couldn’t help but notice his face warming.

“I feel ridiculous,” he said.

“A step in the right direction, then,” he replied.

Thamir took a step and began to lead them into an achingly slow rotation around each other. Logan stumbled a bit at the first step, but was quick to follow. When they made it around a full circle, Thamir pulled one hand away and lifted their connected hands, taking Logan through a careful twirl.

Taking both of his hands again, he smiled. “You’re getting the hang of this pretty quick.”

Logan grinned.

 --------

Virgil threw his fist in the air and let out a cheer, nearly throwing his scroll out of his hands. “I think that’s the best score I’ve ever gotten!”

“There’s platinum?! I thought gold was the highest one!” Patton yelped.

“Nah, not even close. There’s a diamond tier, but you can only get it when you play a level on Multi-Extreme mode,” Virgil replied. He turned to Patton and reached across the space between their beds, holding his scroll out. “You sure you don’t want to give it a try? It’s pretty easy to get the hang of, even if you don’t know the music.”

Patton shook his head and waved him off. “It’s okay, really. I’m having more fun watching you!”

Virgil shrugged before looking back to his desk, where a rented gaming console projected his score. “Alright. Just don’t think you’re going to make it through break without playing a round with us. Ever since I showed him the game, Dad won’t let a person into our house without making them compete."

“Your dad plays Rhythm Hell?” Patton asked with a laugh.

He scoffed, rolling his eyes as he looked through the game’s available songs. “Dude, you have no idea. He dedicates a solid two hours every Saturday to touch up his skills.” A grin formed on his lips. “Any time we have a family event, he brings it along, and there’s a whole competition— he and Papi’s mom are, like, mortal enemies because of it. It gets intense.”

Patton grimaced. “Oh… Is she… Not a great person?”

“Huh?” Virgil frowned and looked at him, brow furrowed; when he realized what he was asking, he sucked in a sharp breath and waved a hand at him. “Oh, no, no! Not like that! Abuela’s really cool, she’s really chill usually! She just gets competitive like Dad does when it comes to video games. But it never gets aggressive, don’t worry.”

A sigh of relief tumbled out of him. “Good. Okay.”

Virgil offered a soft smile before turning back to the game. “Yeah, you won’t have to worry about anything like that when we’re on break,” he said. “We do have plans to head to Argus for a reunion, but no one is gonna be anything bad. Everyone’ll be excited to meet you.”

Finally settling on a level, the two settled into a relaxed silence. Heavy guitar and drums played through the speakers, just loud enough to hear, but quiet enough to not disturb the others in their hall. Patton watched as Virgil’s face dissolved into concentration; when the artist began to sing, he shifted and lay on his stomach, resting his chin on his arms.

“I am weak; can’t save myself, from my own flaws…”

“Can’t you see, I can hurt you…?”

An grin started to form on his face as he listened to Virgil’s soft singing. He buried his face in his arms to hide his huff of laughter.

Apparently, it wasn’t quiet enough.

“Are you making fun of me?” Virgil asked, no bite to the accusation.

Patton giggled. “No! It’s cute!”

A scoff rang out. “I’m not cute! I’m edgy.”

He bit his tongue to keep his argument back, not wanting to ruin whatever score he had at the moment.

There were a few more seconds of silence before Virgil’s humming resumed. Patton beamed and pulled his face up, turning to look at the screen, but sunlight glinted off of a picture frame behind it and dragged his attention away.

The photo showed a much younger version of Virgil nestled in the middle of their four-person family at a professional photo shoot. He was dressed in an outfit that Patton couldn’t dream of Virgil ever agreeing to today; a gray button-up, black dress pants, and a soft, purple sweater vest. His hair was short and spiked up, and his grin wide and front-toothless, but there was no mistaking it was him.

His younger sister sat next to him in a lavender blouse with puffy sleeves and light blue tights. Her hair looked like it might have been styled into a nice set of low pigtails at some point, before being ruffled and tumbled around. She and Virgil held each other’s hands tight.

On either side of them were their dads, looking exhausted but proud. Their matching white dress shirts were a bit wrinkled. They each lay a hand on one of their children’s shoulders, and a close look to their Papi’s arm revealed he was seemingly holding Crina in place.

Despite the frame of the photo looking relatively modern and clean, the actual photograph was worn and faded at the edges. A couple of creases circled what had once been their family. It was the only crooked one of three hanging on the wall, between one of Virgil and Chao at a graduation and another of their team in the cafeteria, taken early in their first semester.

Patton’s eyes drifted over to his own bare walls above his desk, looming over the clutter and mess below. His scroll sat on the corner of a stack of textbooks; it blinked with a silent unread message notification. He made no move to get up and check it.

On the shelf above, a picture frame lay face-down.

“Let it latch to the hope that I’m controlled…”

He glanced at the scorched handprint stained to the door frame. Guilt and shame built up in his stomach before he could tear his eyes away. He gripped his forearms tight until a dull ache began to make its way through the muscle.

“I’VE GOT A MONSTER IN ME; IT’S TEARING THROUGH MY HEART!”

Patton just about jumped out of his skin as Virgil began to scream-sing along to the music, leaping up onto all fours and staring at him with wide eyes. Virgil either didn’t notice or didn’t care, as he only continued and started to dance along.

“It won’t stop ‘til it breaks free, so make it stop before it starts!”

Forcing himself to release his breath, Patton lowered himself back into a sitting position and watched. Virgil’s score began to go down as the beats flew by unnoticed. His eyes squeezed shut, and a grim formed on his face around the lyrics. He lifted his hands into fists and bounced them to the rhythm of the drums that were practically shaking the speakers of the gaming console.

Patton huffed out a little laugh before glancing back at his scroll.

The light wouldn’t stop blinking.

I fear the monster in my soul, I fear the monster in my soul, I fear the monster in my soul, I fear the monster…

[gdwessel]

Wrestle Grand Slam in MetLife Dome Night 1 - 9/4/2021; Wrestle Kingdom 16 Will Be Three Nights, Two Arenas; NJPW Strong Episode 56 - 9/3/2021; Yuya Uemura v. Vinnie Massaro in West Coast Pro 9/10/2021

This is the second attempt at writing this post, as my laptop decided to give me the good old Blue Screen of Death in the middle of writing this before, and of course, Tumblr isn’t set up up save posts in progress. I had issues last weekend technologically too, so I get the feeling a new laptop may be in my future. This post may not be as long or informative as it was previously, as I don’t know if I have it in me to rewrite this all again.

In any event, Night 1 of Wrestle Grand Slam in MetLife Dome took place earlier today in Saitama, and you can see it now on NJPWWorld or FITE TV. This comes during a very busy weekend for wrestling, not just in Hoffman Estates, IL, either, with all the AEW, GCW and BLP events happening around ALL OUT weekend. Earlier as well, STARDOM held a critical 5-Star Grand Prix show (where I misspoke yesterday, it was Syuri, not Giulia, who wrestled Utami Hayashishita to a 20-minute time limit draw in the tournament today), NOAH ran a big-ish show, and DDT had a major show as well that saw the dissolution of popular heel unit DAMNATION.

Wrestle Grand Slam in MetLife Dome - 9/4/2021, Saitama MetLife Dome (NJPWWorld, FITE TV)

STARDOM Offer Match: Momo Watanabe & Saya Kamitani [Queen’s Quest] d. Maika [Donna del Mundo] & Lady C (Kamitani > C, Phoenix Splash, 12:02)

Robbie Eagles [CHAOS] & Tiger Mask IV d. Hiromu Takahashi & BUSHI [Los Ingobernables] (Eagles > BUSHI, Ron Miller Special, 11:40)

SHO [CHAOS] d. YOH [CHAOS] (Referee Stoppage, 24:41)

Provisional KOPW2021 No-DQ I Quit Match: Toru Yano [CHAOS] d. Chase Owens [Bullet Club] © (28:03) - Yano is the Provisional KOPW2021 Champion

Jeff Cobb [United Empire] d. Kazuchika Okada [CHAOS] (Tour Of The Islands, 27:41)

IWGP US Heavyweight Championship: Hiroshi Tanahashi © d. Kota Ibushi (High Fly Flow, 17:47) - Tanahashi succeeds his 1st defense

Tanahashi is still America’s Champion, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone to argue against that. Post-main, Tana declared that although it will take a long time, that the world will eventually get better, and he will still be in the NJPW ring when it does. Meanwhile, Ibushi wept to start the match, his first in several months following a bout with pneumonia. The loss makes me wonder what they will do with Ibushi next. He is not currently in the picture for the IWGP World Heavyweight title he (kayfabe) created earlier this year. He never got a rematch with Will Ospreay, who’s now absconded to NJPW Strong, and his scheduled match v. Shingo Takagi from Wrestle Grand Slam in Tokyo Dome has not been rescheduled yet either. I can’t imagine they would have Ibushi win a 3rd consecutive G1 Climax (or have him in a 4th consecutive final either). It just seems like the Golden Star has really fallen from the high of his victory over Tetsuya Naito for the Double Gold back in January, which honestly feels like years, not months, ago.

Cobb, as predicted, gets the win over Okada, which will lead to a rubber match happening during G1 Climax more than likely. Toru Yano, hair dyed for the first time in a long while, got very hardcore, including threatening to use scissors at one point, meaning NJPW’s plan to incorporate Nick Gage at some point is full steam ahead. Yano regains the KOPW trophy. There was no reason on God’s green Earth for there to be three different 20+ minute matches (two of which going almost 30) on this show. Not every match needs to be an epic, much less a freaking KOPW match, which is meant to be gimmicky and ridiculous by nature. I understand the need to reduce the number of matches per show, but the answer is not to bloat them. Tana v. Ibushi managed to keep it under twenty and that was the main event. Enough with this already.

SHO is, as expected, no longer part of CHAOS, and has instead gone over to the Bullet Club, specifically a new sub-faction called the House of Torture. This is a very very bad name. The group appears to be EVIL, SHO, Dick Togo and Yujiro Takahashi. Sub-factions in Bullet Club have always been successful and they do not tease a break-up angle within BC ever. Ahem. I get the short-term need; as with last summer, many of the critical Bullet Club members (in this case Jay White, Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa and presumably KENTA) are not in Japan right now, choosing to stay in the USA due to continuing COVID-19/quarantine issues. So numbers need to be made up. Creatively, SHO joining Bullet Club, much less a sub-faction, was the most boring route to take. Given his recent outing in GLEAT, succeeding in a UWF-rules match, as well as his MMA bona fides, one would have thought Suzuki-gun would be a better fit, or even the Empire, who need the numbers right now, as well as a junior member (if indeed SHO is staying as a junior). I can see an angle coming from this, depending on how tomorrow goes, but SHO in Bullet Club is just Meh. Whatever the case, SHO defeats YOH, and this angle will continue.

Los Dos Peligrosos are just cursed anymore, but it does make me think that Hiromu will win tomorrow. The STARDOM match was very good, and I hope that whatever contract entanglements were preventing previous STARDOM exhibition matches from being shown on NJPWWorld are being worked out, because I’d like to see more STARDOM on NJPWWorld if the STARDOM World app isn’t coming on Fire TV Stick. Tomorrow is another match.

The biggest news to come from this show is the announcement that Wrestle Kingdom 16 will not just be two nights, but indeed three, and at two different venues. The shows on the now-traditional January 4 & 5, 2022, dates will be at the Tokyo Dome, as with the last two years. Then, on 1/8/2022, NJPW will run Wrestle Kingdom 16 in Yokohama Arena, an obvious make-good for blowing off the August 8 Yokohama Bunka Gym date the last two years. This, honestly, seems really unnecessary. The two-night Wrestle Kingdom 14 was one thing, as the dates fell on a Saturday and Sunday, and there was a specific mission from Bushiroad, to legit sell out the Tokyo Dome; that they were able to somewhat naturally come up with the Double Gold Dash at the same time made this feel pretty special, especially with the final winner being Tetsuya Naito. This past January, we got another two-night WK, but that seemed out of necessity, with the attendance and match number restrictions foisted upon NJPW due to the pandemic. Three years in, and it seems like making this a three-night event is out of a sense of “because we can,” not because they should. There’s still time for me to change my mind, but I don’t see it happening, especially since NJPW has very much cooled off as a product in the pandemic years, although still by far the biggest promotion in Japan.

Last night’s episode of NJPW Strong was the BBQ Brawl, which, LORD that is an AWFUL name...

Josh Alexander [Impact] d. Daniel Garcia [FREE] (Divine Intervention, 10:38)

TJP [FREE] d. Rey Horus [ROH] (Mambe Splash, 11:06)

Hikuleo [Bullet Club] d. Matt Morris (Tongan Driver, 9:44)

Hikuleo gets the win in prep for the forthcoming (cough) tables match v. Juice Robinson. The second match was a rematch from a previous Strong episode, back in February. Garcia once again wrestles on Strong and AEW Rampage on the same night, losing in both cases, to Impact’s X Division champion, and Darby Allin, respectively.

Next week’s episode will be the final Friday night episode for the show.

Yuya Uemura’s excursion in the LA Dojo now begins in earnest with his first non-NJPW booking. This coming Friday, 9/10/2021 in West Coast Pro Wrestling (the same promotion hosting Minoru Suzuki v. Daniel Garcia on 10/8/2021) at their I Hate You With A Passion event, Yuya will take on veteran Vinnie Massaro. Massaro has been around the block a few times; he’s featured over the years on Lucha Underground and AEW Dark, and has also taken on the alter-ego Ultimo Panda on more than one occasion. He’s pretty active on Wrestling Twitter too, and is a pretty fun guy. 

Tomorrow is the second night of Wrestle Grand Slam in MetLife Dome, which will once again show on both NJPWWorld and FITE TV. Four title matches and another STARDOM match feature here.

- 9/5/2021, Saitama MetLife Dome (NJPWWorld, FITE TV)

STARDOM Offer Match: Giulia & Syuri [Donna del Mundo] v. Momo Watanabe & Saya Kamitani [Queen’s Quest]

Kazuchika Okada & Tomohiro Ishii [CHAOS] v. Jeff Cobb & Great O-Khan [United Empire]

IWGP Juniorheavyweight Tag Team Championship: Taiji Ishimori & El Phantasmo [Bullet Club] © v. El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru [SZKG]

IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championship 3-Way Match: Taichi & Zack Sabre Jr. [SZKG] © v. Tetsuya Naito & SANADA [Los Ingobernables] v. Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI [CHAOS]

IWGP Juniorheavyweight Championship: Robbie Eagles [CHAOS] © v. Hiromu Takahashi [Los Ingobernables]

IWGP World Heavyweight Championship: Shingo Takagi [Los Ingobernables] © v. EVIL [Bullet Club]

[lisandrosmartinez]

I normally only post the pictures but I saw someone on twitter do a realistic run through of our games this season so I thought I would do mine (except not the carabao cup games):

Crystal Palace: 3-1 loss. Poor result but I didn’t watch that game so I can’t speak about it

Brighton: 3-2 win. Won in the end because of a penalty given after the final whistle from a handball from the final kick of the game. The entire game was BAD but they fluked a win and it was one of the luckiest premier league games I’ve seen

Spurs: 6-1 loss. A complete disaster, nothing else can be said

Newcastle: 4-1 win. The result covers up that the game was 1-1 and pretty poor until Van de Beek & Pogba came on. However, in the end it was a good win because our best players can produce

PSG: 2-1 win. Excellent defensive peformance, I think our best game defence wise in a long time, also considering they were up against two of the best attackers ever

Chelsea: 0-0 draw. Bad game but they were bad as well so nothing happened

RB Leipzig: 5-0 win. Amazing game, everyone was on it and it was an all-around good peformance from everyone on the pitch. I think our best game this season and best in a long time

Arsenal: 1-0 loss. Especially embarrassing because Arsenal have been so bad this season. Everyone looked lossed, I don’t think anyone put in a convincing peformance

Istanbul Basaksehir: 2-1 loss. Awful. Especially frustrating in hindsight because we would be through to the RO16 had we won. Defensively chaotic, there was no positional awareness on the pitch

Everton: 3-1 win. I didn’t watch this game so I can’t say much except thank god for Bruno

West Brom: 1-0 win. West Brom have won one game this season and we only beat them from a penalty, and West Brom did have a penalty taken away by VAR

Istanbul Basaksehir: 4-1 win. Good game, everyone did what they had to do. Another thank god for Bruno game

Southampton: 3-2 win. Poor for the first 70 or so minutes, then Bruno and Cavani pulled it all off

PSG: 3-1 loss. It’s a loss so it’s obviously a bad game but losing to Neymar’s excellence isn’t that surprising so whatever. Nonetheless, defensively weak yet again. Also Fred’s red card was completely avoidable yet not avoided

West Ham: 3-1 win. Absolutely horrible for the first 60 minutes but with Bruno and Rashford coming on, and with Pogba’ first goal, it was a nice ending. But the first half has been some o the worst football they played this season

RB Leipzig: 3-2 loss. A complete embarrassment, because we only needed a draw. Wan Bissaka and Maguire, our big defence signings, were at fault for all three goals. AWB, this is rare from him but his positional awareness has been horrible for a while now but no one seems to be fixing it , whether that’s his fault or the coaching staff, I’m not sure. Maguire was as usual.

I don’t want to seem overly negative by criticising every win but it should be clear now that a lot of our wins have been fairly lucky this season. Results are results and winning is amazing but the overall performances from the squad have been so bad this season. It seems like they’re in this constant pattern of just switching on in the last like 20 minutes and while those 20 minutes can be fun to watch, yesterday is proof that it’s not sustainable and doesn’t work because it didn’t work in the game that mattered the most. Also, the defence has been so bad this season we’ve had good moments but in general it’s been bad. A lot of the goals we’ve conceded haven’t been unlucky goals but more errors on the part of our defenders especially when it comes to set pieces. You have to ask the question what is the manager and coaching staff doing, why have they not changed anything and do they plan on changing anything or is this how they want to continue into the future. It also begs the question that as we come up to 2 years since Ole was appointed as interim manager, has he actually improved anything in terms of style of play and coaching patterns or have the last two years, especially the good moments, just been down to individual brilliance. I know that no one wants this manager ‘merry-go-round’ as they’re calling it, but does anyone really think we can go further with Ole I feel like we reached the peak with him and it’s not going to get better than this, but it possibly could get worse

[purplesurveys]

1011

1. Five facts about your current relationship OR five facts about your single life.

a) I haven’t been truly single in...around 6 years, so it’s been a bit of an adjustment.

b) It was my last day as an intern yesterday (but they hired me, so I’m staying after all, haha) and since I’ve felt like I gained a family in the last two months, I thought it would be okay to give professionalism a break and share what had actually been going on with me on my first day on the job, aka when the breakup was still fresh and I was still figuring out how to function all over again. It unsurprisingly surprised everyone and my superior said something like, “Omg it’s the [company name] curse; it’s so strong it broke you guys up before you even got hired” which got a laugh out of me.

c) I’m not interested in seeing other people.

d) Probably wouldn’t be, for a long time. My trust has been irreparably broken.

e) Seeing couples in public has now become annoying. I’m happy for them, but it’s still annoying.

2. Five facts about a past relationship.

a) I’ve known her since kindergarten, but we didn’t become friends till 7th grade and didn’t start dating until junior year of high school.

b) We were legal with her family and her parents loved me and I them. On the other hand, I was never able to come out to my family because she broke up with me before I could be able to do so.

c) She introduced me to vaping.

d) We were never able to truly travel together, which we always planned to do after graduating. The farthest we reached was Batangas.

e) She never knew where she wanted to eat whenever we were out, so I was mostly the one who decided which restaurant we were going to have lunch or dinner in.

3. Five facts about your mother.

a) She has always worked in hotels, which is great because it has always allowed us to get room and buffet discounts, heh.

b) Her family (aka my grandparents, her, and my uncles) struggled financially for a little bit when my grandpa lost his job when she was in college. When her friends would go to fast-food restaurants, my mom would always decline, saying she had schoolwork to finish. In reality she just couldn’t afford anything, and the only money she held was for public transport.

c) She is a little childish considering her age, and I cannot stand her petty tantrums. She was childish even when I was a kid, and I believe my emotional well-being suffered because of that.

d) She has a high pain tolerance and the only time I’ve seen her struggle was when she was getting a tattoo on the back of her shoulder.

e) She is also extremely religious and it especially grinds my gears when she gets hypocritical about it, which is just about all the time.

4. Five facts about your father.

a) He has only ever dated my mom.

b) He grew up extremely poor and at some point his parents actually stopped being able to afford his tuition. Instead of being kicked out, a few nuns who served in the school paid my grandparents a visit and told them my dad would be given a scholarship since he had good grades and it would have been a waste if he got expelled.

c) He was a dancer in high school, knows how to play the guitar, and he also apparently knows how to draw very well. There’s a lot I don’t know about him, considering he has worked abroad my whole life.

d) He breaks or loses his reading glasses once every few months. I know which parent I definitely take after.

e) I have never seen him cry.

5. Five facts about your sibling. If you have more than one, pick one. Or do them all!

a) She had problems crying in school until she was in around 2nd or 3rd grade.

b) She’s in college and is currently taking up digital filmmaking.

c) She’s the biggest introvert I know. I’ve never seen her be willing to do anything silly; not even with her friends.

d) She can’t handle spicy food.

e) Her main interests have shifted from Harry Potter, to One Direction, to 5SOS, and now K-pop. I believe she’s into Seventeen the most.

6. Five facts about your town.

a) The upper part of the city offers amazing views of the Metro Manila skyline, which has recently made the place a kinda popular nightlife destination.

b) There’s a lot of hidden gem restaurants here but because most people spend more time complaining about how far my city is and how difficult it is to get to than actually just making the damn ride over here, the restaurants stay hidden and uncrowded. Their loss.

c) Used to be massively underdeveloped for most of my childhood and teenage years. Now there are several malls and I can easily go to a McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks right outside our village.

d) Because you basically have to drive through a mountain to get to the upper part of the city, it’s not the safest highway and fatal crashes are unfortunately common.

e) The city is known for its suman, except I hate Filipino rice cakes and this actually doesn’t do anything for me.

7. Five facts about your house.

a)  It used to have a balcony until we had that transformed into another bedroom. So technically it is still a balcony; it just hasn’t had that purpose for a while now.

b) My mom used a little cheat in our dining room and installed a huge wall mirror. Most people visiting for the first time always note how much larger it made the room (and thus the house) look.

c) I live in a neighborhood where the houses are of the same model and look (think the Squidville episode from Spongebob). That said, balconies are included in all properties. When my parents decided to renovate ours and turn it into a room, so many houses slowly followed suit as well. It was amusing to see it unfold, knowing the idea undoubtedly originated from us. It was like a revolution.

d) We don’t have a gate, which irritates me to no end because it allows noisy neighborhood kids to just march and run around our property. Sometimes they even make it to our carport and backyard, ugh. :(

e) Speaking of backyard, the landscaping for it used to be a pebble mosaic designed to look like a swan. But over the years the quality deteriorated, so my parents to opted to have the pebbles crushed into tiny rocks and embedded onto the ground. I don’t exactly know what this technique is called, but yeah.

8. Five facts about your niece or nephew. If you have more than one, pick one. Or do them all! Skip if you don’t have one. I don’t have any, but I do have a godson so I’m going with him as I don’t want to leave any section blank.

a) He was born sometime in December. I honestly don’t remember when, loooooool. Worst godmother ever.

b) He’s actually one of my first cousins, but I guess my aunt saw something in me and wanted me to be his godson. I’ve been a terrible one, though; I’ve never bought him gifts or money or anything – to be fair, I was made a ninang when I was like, 14 or 15 lmao.  But I can definitely make up for it now that I’m starting to earn my own money.

c) He’s the calmer, sweeter version of his older brother. His kuya was a pretty naughty kid when he was his age.

d) He mainly speaks English, as how most younger parents raise their kids these days. He understands Filipino of course, but he mostly communicates in English.

e) The last time I saw him, he was in the middle of a ridiculously adorable interviewing phase where he’d approach anyone in the family and start asking them a series of questions: what’s your favorite color? What food can’t you live without? What’s your favorite subject in school? Would you rather win $1 million dollars or know how to fly? It typically got exhausting after the 25th question, but it was so cute nonetheless. None of us have any idea where it came from.

9. Five facts about your education.

a) I went to a private, all-girls, Catholic school from kinder up to high school, and then moved to a public, co-educational, non-sectarian university for college. It was the very epitome of culture shock, lemme tell ya.

b) Some classes I had in my first school that might be uncommon in others have included penmanship (because my school has its own brand of cursive), environmental education, and I don’t remember what this next class was called anymore but we were basically taught how to write professionally? Like how to write cover letters and resumés and all.

c) My first school is extremely homophobic and went so far as to ‘hire’ spies  tasked to check up on who’s been in same-sex relationships, list them all down, and report them to the guidance office so that they can be called one by one and be interrogated, and for the most part, pressured to come out. I don’t know if they still do this, but the younger batches are definitely more vocal and woke now thanks to social media and I doubt those practices would still fly today.

d) My university education was a breath of fresh air. Suddenly people were wearing sleeveless tops, mobs and rallies were a common sight to me, and my instructors were now atheist and not shoving Catholicism and Jesus and salvation down my throat. I loved every single day of it.

e) The most interesting class I took in college was a course called Pornography in Electronic Media, under the broadcast communication department. Getting to tell people I take a class where we sit down to watch porn was such a fucking ride.

10. Five facts about your job.

a) I got hired last Wednesday, but I had been interning for the company for around two months before they extended the offer.

b) I’m pretty much gonna be doing the same things I did as an intern, except I’m now accountable for any boo-boos I make HAHAHAHA. Also, I’m gonna be paid a lot more, obviously, which is sweet. I really thought we interns were severely underpaid considering the work that we help with on a daily basis.

c) My role is going to be with another department which is a little scary because it means the things I learned with the department I actually interned at will be pretty much useless. I’ll be starting from scratch again, but I’m still excited.

d) It’s a work-from-home situation, which is a relief for me because I don’t have to wake up early and I don’t have to face traffic. 

e) My job interview for the position was actually a bit of a bomb because I absolutely fumbled with and messed up the first question I was asked; and since first impressions matter, I really thought I lost the gig from the very start of the interview. I made up for it as the interview continued and fortunately was able to break the ice and build a rapport with the team members who spoke with me, and I guess I did enough for them to want to take me in anyway.

For those who are curious, I blanked the fuck out when they asked “Tell me something about yourself that isn’t in your resumé.” Slowest 15 seconds of my life.

[wrestlingisfake]

G1 Climax B Block final preview

This is the final round of B Block matches in this year’s G1 Climax tournament.  Whoever finishes with the most points at the end of this show will win the block.  (If there’s a tie for first place, the man with the best record against the other leaders wins.)  The B Block winner goes on to face the A Block winner on October 18.

In each block match, a win is worth 2 points, and a loss is worth 0.  In a 30-minute time-limit draw, the participants get 1 point apiece.  No championships are at stake, but as always in New Japan, a non-title victory over a champion gives you the right to demand a title shot.

EVIL (6-2, 12 points) vs. SANADA (5-3, 10 points) - Evil can win B Block by winning this match.  Sanada can only win the block if he wins this match and Tetsuya Naito loses to KENTA.

From 2016 to 2020, Evil and Sanada were a top heavyweight tag team representing Los Ingobernables de Japon.  But then they met in the New Japan Cup this year and Evil was particularly heartless.  Little did we know then that Evil would go on to defect from LIJ to Bullet Club.  Obviously LIJ was heartbroken and betrayed, but we never really heard from the member who was closest to Evil.  I’ve been waiting for this one-on-one encounter.

Curiously, though, Evil’s story has shifted away from his betrayal of Naito to trouble brewing within Bullet Club.  Jay White and Evil aren’t even in the same block, and we now know they can’t possibly meet in the finals, but they’ve been snipping at each other in post-match interviews for a couple of weeks.  It’s a point of pride for Evil to reach the finals where Jay could not.  But win or lose, something’s up with Evil and Jay, and I don’t know when it’s going to explode.

Could Jay screw Evil in this match?  That’d be the play in WWE, but it’s not a very New Japan sort of thing to do.  Then again, the Ospreay vs. Okada finish last night has me second-guessing what New Japan would or would not do.

Bullet Club intrigue aside, the bottom line for me is that Evil’s run as top heel has run its course and everybody would be better off with a Sanada push.  I don’t know if Sanada can or should win the G1.  But I’m a lot more interested in him reaching the finals than seeing Evil do it.  All Evil can do is win and chase Naito again, and we’ve seen that.  We’ll probably see it again no matter what.  So as long as that’s happening either way, we might as well get a Sanada push too while we’re at it.

Tetsuya Naito (6-2, 12 points) vs. KENTA (4-4, 8 points) - Naito is the IWGP heavyweight champion and IWGP intercontinental champion.  Kenta holds a contract to be the next challenger for the erstwhile IWGP United States championship.  Kenta is mathematically eliminated, but Naito can still win B Block if he scores more points than Evil or Sanada.

Kenta famously did a run-in on Naito’s victory celebration in the Tokyo Dome back in January, and got a title shot out of it in February.  But he didn’t really feel like he belonged at that level, and I never bought him as a serious threat to Naito.  I still don’t, frankly.  It would make sense for Kenta to win to set up a rematch for the title down the line, but I’m not terribly excited about that prospect.  I’m more interested in seeing Kenta pursue the US title, which I think he could actually win.

I feel like Naito has to lose to ensure that Evil vs. Sanada is for all the marbles.  But I also think it’s telling that most of Naito’s block matches have been very long, getting up near the 30-minute time limit to tease a draw.  A draw for Naito would have the same impact on Evil vs. Sanada as a Naito win, though, so I don’t know if there’s any point to that except to fill time.  This match is kinda hard to read, so I’ll just go with my gut and pick Kenta to win.

Zack Sabre. Jr (5-3, 10 points) vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (3-5, 6 points) - Sabre is one of the IWGP heavyweight tag team champions.  Like I said yesterday, Tanahashi and Kota Ibushi have feuded with Sabre and Taichi for the tag title all summer.  Ibushi’s win over Taichi last night could mean a renewal of that program, and if Tana can win beat the other tag champion that would all but clinch it.

If Sabre wins, his 12 points might be enough to match the top score, but none of the potential tiebreaker scenarios work in his favor, so he’s as mathematically elimianted as Tanahashi.  So this is really just about Tana trying to get back into title contention, and Sabre trying to put Tana out to pasture once and for all.  Honestly, as much as I like Tanahashi, I’d prefer to see Zack just win here to get it over with, so he can move on to new business.

Hirooki Goto (4-4, 8 points) vs. Juice Robinson (3-5, 6 points) - Goto is one of the NEVER trios champions, but I think Juice may be less interested in that prize than chasing Kenta’s US title contract.  Neither of these guys can win the block, so it’s all about trying to finish with as many points as possible.  Goto will want to get to a winning record, while Juice would at least like to tie his personal best score of 8 points.  Either of these guys could get the win, but I think it’ll end up going to whomever has the bigger role to play over the next few months.  I have a feeling that’s Juice.

Toru Yano (3-5, 6 points) vs. YOSHI-HASHI (1-7, 2 points) - Yano is the provisional KOPW 2020 champion or whatever that is.  I’m real curious when and how he’s going to defend that thing.  Yoshi is one of the NEVER trios champions, and I bet he’s real glad the KOPW trophy exists to prove the trios belts are no longer the most pointless title in the company.

Yoshi has had a rough run in this year’s G1, which really shouldn’t surprise any of us.  But he is a champion now, so his fans would at least hope for him to get up to 4 points.  It should be feasible for him to pull it off against Yano.  But Yano is the x-factor of B Block and you can never assume he’ll be an easy win. 

I’m less concerned with who wins this thing than with Yano coming up with something genuinely creative.  I’ve been loving his shtick this year, but he’s already gone through most of his bag of tricks, and I don’t want to see him tape a guy to the barricade again just because it’d work.  He should do Yoshi the honor of pulling out something new.

Yuya Uemura vs. Gabriel Kidd - This isn’t a G1 Climax block match--it’s just a prelim match featuring the young boys.  As of last night’s show, Yota Tsuji is leading this informal series, with a 6-4-2 record against the Uemura (5-5-1) and Kidd (4-6-1).  So to you or me it doesn’t seem like it matters who wins this last match.  But among the Young Lions, everything is a competition, so you can beat Kidd and Uemura want to go tooth and nail for second place.  I’m thinking Kidd wins this one.

[cocochannel00]

Harry with kids #2 Never home (part 1)

kids: Connor (17), Rebecca (15), Grayson and Riley (13), Victoria (10), Casey (5) 

Let me know if you guys want a part 2! Also p.s I doubt Harry would ever neglect his family like this

"Mom we're home!" yelled Connor, your 17-year-old son, who had just gotten back from football practice.

"You think you could wash my uniform tonight? I've got a game tomorrow and it's starting to smell." Rebecca, your 15-year-old daughter, asked as she threw her soccer bag on the floor and pulled it out.

"You do know that the washing machine doesn't have a passcode on it and you don't need to be 18 or older to use it right, Becca." You say sarcastically.

"Fine I'll do it" she grumbles and starts reading the detergent boxes as you laugh at how clueless she looks.

While you were helping her set it up the twins, Grayson and Riley, ran off the bus and into the kitchen looking for food.

"Boys there are no snacks until you finish your homework and besides we're leaving to go see Connor's game in a couple of hours and you can eat there" you explain as your second youngest child, Victoria, who's 10, came grumbling into the house with her recorder in hand.

"What's wrong baby?" You ask as you picked her up from the ground and sit her on the stool.

"Dad never showed up to my concert at school today and he promised he would," she said on the verge of tears.

"I'm sure daddy feels very sorry that he missed it but you know daddy is really busy with the new album," you tell her as you hugged her tight.

"I wouldn't bank on dad's promises Vicca. He isn’t known to keep very them well" Connor explains grumbling as he walks in with his football padding.

"CONNOR!" You yell as you see tears come down Vicca's face.

"What mom you know it's true.... He's promised to come to my games and he hasn't shown up to one and it's the state championship tonight." Connor says while grabbing a water and heading out the door.

"Hopefully he manages to make it this time," you say with a bit of hope that your husband Harry will get his act together.

Afterward, you text Harry and tell him that he better make it to Connor's game and that Vicca was crying cause he didn't go to her concert. He texts back saying he'll be there but you are still skeptical that he will show up.

"We're leaving in a half hour for the game and I expect everyone to be ready to go!" You yell from the kitchen as you lay your head down on the cool countertop in order to try and relive the headache forming from the stress of having all your kids upset.

You go upstairs and walk into your youngest child's room. There you find your 5-year-old daughter Casey coloring a picture of what looks like a family.

"Look mommy, I drew a picture of our family. I'm gonna give it to daddy when he comes home" she says excitedly as she holds up the paper.

"It looks beautiful Casey now let's get you changed into your jersey," you say as you find Connor's jersey number sticking out of a pile of her clothes.

Once everyone was ready you head out with all your kids hoping that Harry would make it.

You all cheer loudly as the buzzer rings signaling the end of the game. You could not be more proud that your son had helped his team win a state title.

You and your kids ran to the field to go congratulate Connor on his win. As soon as he saw you guys he ran up to you and gave you the biggest hug that made your heart melt.

"I am so proud of you Connor you have no idea. I love you so much!" You say forcing yourself not to cry.

He chuckled a bit. "Thanks mom I love you too" he said.

Casey starts pulling on his pants and signaling for him to pick her up. Connor puts her on his shoulders and starts running around.

You being the mom that you take a picture of the two from the back as Casey's jersey had Connor's number on it.

"Dad never made it did he?" Connor asks you as you try and stop Grayson and Riley from beating each other up.

"I'm sorry baby he didn't come but I'm sure he is excited that you won" you state trying to bring the mood up again.

"Figures...." Mumbled Connor just quietly enough for only you to hear.

"Well let's go, I think I've had enough disappointment for one day" Becca says as she carries Casey to the car.

"I'll meet you guys at home, Josh is having a party at his house to celebrate and I'm going to swing by for a bit," he says.

"Please be safe and try to remember curfew this time," you say before kissing his cheek and walking to the car.

The ride home was silent and you could feel the tension build as you pulled into the driveway and Harry's car was there.

Everyone got out and as soon as Becca opened the door Casey launched herself towards Harry as the rest of your kids headed to go watch tv in the living room.

"Hi baby how are you today," he says to Casey as she giggles in his grasp.

You walk towards the medicine cabinet and grab the Advil from the shelf.

"What's wrong babe? Stressful day today" he asked while looking at you from across the room.

"Sure you could say that" you grumbled as you sat on a stool slightly mad at Harry.

"Casey go with Grayson and Riley and show them your picture," you told her as she ran out to go find them in the living room.

"Y/n, what wrong?" Harry asks as he comes behind you and wraps his arm around you. You shrug his arms off of you and walk to the otherwise of the counter.

"Do you know how upset Vicca came home today because her dad didn't go see her concert today, or how mad Becca was yesterday because you missed her soccer game because of album promo. Let's not even start on the look of disappointment Connor had when I told him you never made it Harry. He won states, Harry, states" you rant to him as anger started to boil in you.

"I'm sorry I missed all of that but you know how hard I’ve worked on this album. You know I have to work with the schedule Jeff gives me" he said trying to gain sympathy from you.

" I get that Harry but you can't keep blowing off your kids like this. It's not even this week, it's every week H! When was the last time you went to see one of Connor's games? When did you last talk about soccer recruitment with Becca? When was the last time you came home and had dinner with your kids Harry! That's my problem" you tell him.

"Don't you think I want to be here for all of that Y/n!" He yells at you. "I'm trying but it's not that easy to make my schedule revolve around games and dinners and every other thing that happens in this house!" He exclaims.

You look at him and hold back the tears that are threatening to spill over because of his statements.

"Maybe you should just leave if this family involves to much commitment. Correct me if I'm wrong but that's what you signed up for when you had 6 kids Harry" you say as you walk into the living room.

You hear Harry calling your name as you send your kids up to bed.

Casey runs up to Harry and hands him her drawing. Harry gives her a hug and asks her why not everyone was smiling.

"That's cause they are not happy because you broke your promise to them. Goodnight daddy!" she says as she runs back up the stairs.

You turn your back to Harry, afraid that if you look at him you'll break down.

Just then Connor walks into the living room. "Hey mom Josh gave me some cookies if you want-" he stops mid-sentence as he sees Harry.

"Your late for curfew Connor," Harry tells him while looking at his watch.

"Yeah well, I was celebrating my state title not like you would know since you've never come to a game" Connor replies back.

Harry began to get frustrated. "I'm sorry I couldn't make it but I'm very proud of you however that still doesn't excuse you for being late," Harry says as he tries to calm down.

"You don't get to discipline me because you're never here. Mom basically raised us on her own while you were off touring the world." He yells back through gritted teeth and clenched fists.

"I will not have you speak to me that way Connor Robin Styles," Harry says as he gets up in front of Connor.

"I'll say what I want because you are never home, therefore, have no power over me. You're a horrible father" Connor spits out.

"Boys tone it down you'll wake the rest of them up," you say trying to prevent a full-on screaming match.

"Not now Y/n," Harry says angrily.

"Don't talk to mom like that she's done nothing wrong. Your lucky you still have her cause if I was her I would leave your sorry ass in a heartbeat" Connor shouts back.

"Stop fighting!" Becca yells. "Dad you have no right to yell at us because you haven't raised us," she says from the bottom of the stairs while Vicca rushes down the stairs and hugs you as she cries.

"Are you and daddy going to get a divorce?" Vicca asks as Grayson and Riley come down with Casey in their arms.

You look at Harry as your own eyes starting to water. "No ones getting a divorce don't worry," Harry says quietly as he looks straight at you.

Casey runs into his arms as she has no idea what's happening.

You sniffle. "Alright guys it's over let's all head up to bed. Connor, can you please bring Casey up to her room when you go?" You ask and he nods.

"Ok come here and I'll give you a kiss before you go" you say as you give each child a kiss on the forehead before pulling Connor aside and giving him a hug.

"I'm so very proud of you and no matter what happens we will all always be proud of you. You have grown up well. Thank you" you tell him as he pulls you in for a tighter hug and you feel his tears on your shoulder.

"Thank you mama" he whispers before taking Casey upstairs with him.

"Y/n....." Harry says at a loss for words.

"H just drop it I think we've had enough arguments today. I'm going to bed" you say as you walk up the stairs to your room, leaving Harry alone.

You do your nightly routine and wipe away your tears as you get ready for bed but as soon as you get into bed you realized you forgot your phone downstairs.

You walk down and see Harry hunched over on the couch crying. It breaks your heart to see him like this no matter what happened in the last half hour. You walk over and sit next to him and slowly wrap your arms around him.

He grabs you and sits you down on his lap as he cries into your shoulder. "Shh... it's okay. You'll be okay" you whisper repeatedly in order to calm him down.

He sniffles a bit "Maybe they're right Y/n, maybe your better off without me" he says glumly.

You grab his chin and forced him to look you in the eye. "Harry Edward Styles I don't ever want to hear you say that ever again. I love you so much and could never live without. Please don't say that" you cry as he hugs you tighter and rubs your back.

"I'm sorry I've put you through this for so long Y/n and I'm sorry for being a horrible father to our children. They are the most important things in the world to me and I can't even raise them" he says.

"You're a great father H their just upset that you keep promising things you can't keep. You know they love you as much as I do right?" You ask as he looks at the drawing Casey drew.

"I guess but I don't know how to make up for all the times I've screwed up. Connor's games are over, the concert was today.... I don't know what to do" he says burying his face deeper into the crook of your neck.

"You can start by make breakfast in the morning. Then apologizing to Connor for tonight and go watch Becca's soccer game tomorrow. Tomorrow night we can have pizza for dinner and have Vicca and the twins give their own concert. If you give Casey a hug I'm sure she'll forgive you on the spot" you tell him as he chuckles at the last one.

"Ok, but how do I make it up to you?" He says looking up at you in a way that makes your heart clench.

You smile. "Make our kids happy and come to bed with me so we can get some sleep," you say as you begin to get up.

"Have I ever told you how much I love you" he asks while holding you close.

"Every day of the week, now come on" you tell him as he gives you a passionate kiss before you have the chance to move.

"Well, I love you so much Y/n. I don't know what I'd do without you" Harry said kissing you again.

You got into bed and cuddled up to Harry hoping to forget the argument for the night.

[mebongster87]

Jon has been playing the game of thrones and “Dance with Dragons 2.0″ is coming in 2019

Yesterday, Game of Thrones gave us a teaser “#For the Throne” of what’s coming in April 2019. While they provided us with no new footage in the teaser, it is literally teeming with foreshadowing!!!

Here is the link for the Video.

https://twitter.com/GameOfThrones/status/1062359268203077633

One thing that made me sit up and take note is Cersei’s voiceover at the beginning of the teaser. I think what she says over the shots that are shown is really important because it hints at Jon playing the game of thrones, aka Political Jon theory!!!

As I talked about in my last post, voiceovers being used in these trailers are super important because what is being said over the shots being shown, depicts crucial foreshadowing for what’s to come and what’s going on under the surface.

In this teaser, first, we have Cersei reminding us of what she had said to Ned Stark in Season 1.

“when you play the game of thrones..you win or you die..there is no middle ground”

What this simply means is that you have to play the game if you want to survive! If you don’t play the game like Ned Stark, or like Robb Stark, you end up beheaded or brutally murdered at a wedding! This also means that if you play the game of thrones and you don’t win, you end up dead. There is simply no two ways about it. This is a game of survival of not only the fittest but also the cunningest!

Cersei overseeing the destruction of the Sept of Baelor with wildfire in a power move that completely removed all her immediate enemies from the board. She took out House Tyrell (Loras, Margaery, and Mace), the High Sparrow and all his sparrows, and Kevan Lannister (who was being a thorn in her ambitions to becoming the Queen or remaining as the Queen Regent to Tommen) in one fiery move.

“For the Throne”....she was willing to kill just about anybody...

the repercussion of it was Tommen jumping off his window and committing suicide. Yet that did not deter Cersei from claiming the Iron Throne. She played the game of thrones, albeit at a great personal cost (her humiliating walk of atonement and loss of her kids), and won the Iron Throne and that’s why she is still alive. (Though not for very long).

Next shot from the teaser is of Jon drawing Longclaw from his scabbard and facing the Bolton cavalry charge. Cersei’s voiceover says..

This shot is pure gold! It is loaded with subtext and here’s what I believe D&D are trying to imply...

When this scene takes place in the Battle of Bastards, Jon has basically fallen prey to all of Ramsay Bolton’s ploys...he misjudged the scope of his enemy’s evil schemes, did not pay attention to any of Sansa’s advice, and ended up seeing Rickon getting speared with Ramsay’s arrows in a gruesome manner...then as if things weren’t bad enough..Jon loses his cool and charges towards Ramsay and his army....which spurs Ramsay to unleash his cavalry on Jon! And voila..we have a fantastic and truly great cinematic moment of Jon drawing up Longclaw ready to ride or die. 

At this specific moment of the battle, Jon has already lost. He does not get killed because his own cavalry comes to the rescue and also plot armor!! This is an example of getting played by your enemy...then why are they saying “You win” in the voiceover?

Because Jon ultimately ended up winning the Battle of the Bastards and that is only due to the fact that Sansa was willing to play the dirty game of politics....She played her cards right with Littlefinger and was successful in getting the Knights of the Vale just at the right moment to come and rescue Jon’s brooding and trampled arse on the battlefield.

In short....Sansa had to play the game to win this battle.

What this means for the future (especially during Season 7 and 8) is that Jon will have to step up and start playing the game of thrones and in my personal opinion, he has already been playing it with Daenerys and Cersei in S7...

At this point, it’s almost safe to call it in for Jon as the next King of the 7Ks...so given Cersei’s quote..how does he win the Iron Throne?...by playing the game of thrones and winning it....and how do you do that? By being a political player and doing all kinds of morally questionable and outright dubious things to survive and protect the ones you love. Things like from pretending to bend the knee to right down to sleeping with a potential threat in order to get them emotionally invested in a battle for survival. The only difference here is that Jon isn’t looking to win the Iron Throne, he does not even know that he is the heir to it yet...he is simply looking to survive and protect the North.

Jon has been playing the political battle since Season 7 and to further drive home this point we have this next shot of Ned Stark getting beheaded from Season 1...when Cersei’s voiceover says “Or you die”.

We know Ned Stark got beheaded because he refused to play the game of thrones....chose to do the right thing by informing Cersei that he knew the truth about her children which triggered a series of events which culminated in his death. Ned chose honour and love for Sansa when he admitted to committing treason right before his beheading.

Ned got beheaded but Jon will survive because he will choose dishonour and love for Sansa, and the Starks, and the North, to play the game and win. Jon absobloodylutely hates having to do things this way, but circumstances (aka Daenerys) has forced his hand.

“For the North and the Starks”...Jon is willing to do just about anything to protect them..

This will clearly change in S8 (after the Army of the Dead are defeated) and become “For the Iron Throne”.....because Jon is a threat to Daenerys’s claim to the Iron Throne, him being the trueborn son of the late and erstwhile Crown Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. As long as Jon is alive, Daenerys’s claim stands on loose ground and will be contested....Daenerys will sooner dracarys Jon than give up on her lifelong ambition to take the Iron Throne. “Dance of the Dragons 2.0″ is a matter of life and death for these two.

“I am the last Targaryen...I was born to rule the seven kingdoms and I will take what’s mine with fire and blood”...GRRM and D&D did not make her spew those words incessantly for 7 seasons and 5 books for nothing. The pay off to those statements will be that she is willing to unleash hell in the form of Dragonfire on Westeros to achieve her goals..that’s her “For the Iron Throne” motive. This is diametrically opposite to Jon’s motives. He does not want the throne but if he and by association, the Starks, have to survive then he has to fight Daenerys. Jon and the Starks will only survive if Jon wins the Iron Throne, or else Daenerys will have them all roasted for treason.

The transition from Jon to Ned further locks down the “Jon is Ned 2.0″ parallels but with a twist...and here is proof of that

Remember what Sansa said to Jon...

Sansa: You have to be smarter than Father, you need to be smarter than Robb. I love them, I miss them, but they made stupid mistakes and they both lost their heads for it.

Jon: And how should I be smarter...by listening to you?

If Jon does not heed Sansa’s advice and act way smarter than Ned and Robb, by becoming a political player and playing the game of thrones, then he will end up exactly like how Ned and Robb met their demise. Jon is going to survive and the only way he could’ve is if he played the game. The rule of the game dictates that.

Since Jon already knows what happens when you don’t listen to your hot sister-cousin-wife, who is soon to be unveiled to be the most astute player of the game, he becomes the player in Season 7 and will continue to do so in S8.

And that’s how the trailer sort of supports Political Jon theory, I think!

As for the rest of the teaser...one, other thing caught my attention and literally blew my mind!!!! This next sequence of shots foreshadows “Dance with Dragons 2.0″ and a political match between Jon and Sansa...here’s why.

 If you look at the above clip, you will see the Dothraki charging and Daenerys on Drogon coming to attack (I know these clips are taking from Field of Fire 2.0, further cementing Daenerys status as the antagonist of this battle) but you have Sansa sitting at the helm of the Knights of the Vale, almost like she is facing off Daenerys, with Jon caught in the midst!!!!”Every battle..every betrayal”...”Jon chooses House Stark and Sansa over House Targaryen and Daenerys and triggers treason/betrayal for love!”

This is how Dance of the Dragons 2.0 happens...Jon needs an army to match Daenerys’ armies of Dothraki, Unsullied and the dragons. How does he get those armies??? By striking a marriage alliance with Sansa who has the backing of the North, the Vale, and the Riverlands....

The moment R+L=J is out, Jon will be unnamed as King in the North....(Littlefinger’s prophecy)..

The Northern lords won’t back a Targaryen who has taken up with a foreign whore (also a Targaryen)...all those times Lord Glover went on and on about Robb’s mistakes and how he lost his head over this, it wasn’t for nothing.....if you think Jon is repeating Robb’s mistakes, well think again!

Bronze Royce said “A targaryen cannot be trusted!” all the while looking at Jon..that was D&D telling us that Jon will have trouble maintaining support from the North and the Vale after R+L=J!!!

So what’s the solution?

Good ol’ Dadvos already gave that to us in Season 6...

Sansa: The North remembers...they remember the Stark name..People will still risk everything for it...from White Harbour to Ramsay’s own door...

Davos: I don’t doubt it..but Jon does not have the Stark name...

Sansa: No..but I do..

Sansa: Jon is as much Ned Stark’s son as Ramsay is Roose Bolton’s..There’s also the Tullys..they are not Northern..but they will back us against the Boltons without question...

Davos: Stark, Tully, and a few more Houses and we will start to look like a winning side.

Replace the Boltons with Daenerys and throw in House Tully, the Vale, House Tarly (because Sam), House Greyjoy (because Theon) and Jamie Lannister...and you do start to look like the winning side...

Cue Varys’s statement from Season 5...”The 7Ks need a ruler, stronger than Tommen but gentler than Stannis, a ruler loved by millions with a powerful army at his back and the right family name.”

And that’s how you get JonSa as endgame with Starks sitting on the Iron Throne...a time for wolves!!!

JonSa fam, what do you guys think?

[patriotsnet]

How Can Republicans Win The House

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/how-can-republicans-win-the-house/

How Can Republicans Win The House

House Republicans’ 2022 Strategy To Beat Democrats: Target Socialist Agenda And Job Killing Policies

How Republicans can win back the White House

House Republicans have laid out their path to winning back the chamber they came close to flipping in 2020. They plan to rely on a similar playbook: slamming the Democrats as socialists who will implement “job killing policies,” while at the same time downplaying any divisions within the GOP.

Since President Biden has taken office, the National Republican Congressional Committee has honed in on the impacts of closing the Keystone XL pipeline and delays in reopening schools.

“It’s going to come down to two different agendas: one is about freedom one is about having the right to self-determine your economic freedom, your individual liberties. The other one is about big government,” National Republican Congressional Committee chair Tom Emmer said in a call with reporters on Wednesday.;

“Every voter is going to have a clear understanding of the Democrats’ socialist agenda and the damaging impact it’s going to have on their daily lives.”

The party is;targeting 47 Democrats and needs a net gain of five seats to flip the chamber. The committee has split its targets into three categories: battleground districts where Mr. Biden lost or won by less than 5%; districts where House Democrats trailed his margins or where they won by less than 10%; and districts in states expected to add or lose congressional districts.

“Liz Cheney not losing her position really showed, ‘Okay we’re going to move on,'” she said.

Reality Check : The Democrats Legislative Fix Will Never Happenand Doesnt Even Touch The Real Threats

Its understandable why Democrats have ascribed a life-or-death quality to S. 1, the For the People bill that would impose a wide range of requirements on state voting procedures. The dozensor hundredsof provisions enacted by Republican state legislatures and governors represent a determination to ensure that the GOP thumb will be on the scale at every step of the voting process. The proposed law would roll that back on a national level by imposing a raft of requirements on statesno excuse absentee voting, more days and hours to votebut would also include public financing of campaigns, independent redistricting commissions and compulsory release of presidential candidates’ tax returns.

There are all sorts of Constitutional questions posed by these ideas. But theres a more fundamental issue here: The Constitutional clause on which the Democrats are relyingArticle I, Section 4, Clause 1gives Congress significant power over Congressional elections, but none over elections for state offices or the choosing of Presidential electors.

Opinion: The House Looks Like A Gop Lock In 2022 But The Senate Will Be Much Harder

Redistricting will take place in almost every congressional district in the next 18 months. The party of first-term presidents usually loses seats in midterms following their inauguration President Barack Obamas Democrats lost 63 seats in 2010 and President Donald Trumps Republicans lost 40 in 2018 but the redistricting process throws a wrench into the gears of prediction models.

President George W. Bush saw his party add nine seats in the House in 2002. Many think this was a consequence of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America nearly 14 months earlier, but the GOP, through Republican-led state legislatures, controlled most of the redistricting in the two years before the vote, and thus gerrymandering provided a political benefit. Republicans will also have a firm grip on redistricting ahead of the 2022 midterms.

The Brennan Center has found that the GOP will enjoy complete control of drawing new boundaries for 181 congressional districts, compared with a maximum of 74 for Democrats, though the final numbers could fluctuate once the pandemic-delayed census is completed. Gerrymandering for political advantage has its critics, but both parties engage in it whenever they get the opportunity. In 2022, Republicans just have much better prospects. Democrats will draw districts in Illinois and Massachusetts to protect Democrats, while in Republican-controlled states such as Florida, Ohio and Texas, the GOP will bring the redistricting hammer down on Democrats.

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Voting With The Party

This section was last updated in 2014.

The following data comes from OpenCongress, a website that tracks how often members of Congress vote with the majority of their party caucus.

The average Republican voted with the party approximately 93.6 percent of the time.

The average Republican voted with the party approximately 94.3 percent of the time.

The top Republican voted with the party approximately 98.2 percent of the time.

The bottom Republican voted with the party approximately 75.1 percent of the time.

Reality Check : Biden Cant Be Fdr

Theres no question that Biden is swinging for the fences. Beyond the emerging bipartisan infrastructure bill, he has proposed a far-reaching series of programs that would collectively move the United States several steps closer to the kind of social democracy prevalent in most industrialized nations: free community college, big support for childcare and homebound seniors, a sharp increase in Medicaid, more people eligible for Medicare, a reinvigorated labor movement. It is why 100 days into the administration, NPR was asking a commonly heard question: Can Biden Join FDR and LBJ In The Democratic Party’s Pantheon?

But the FDR and LBJ examples show conclusively why visions of a transformational Biden agenda are so hard to turn into reality. In 1933, FDR had won a huge popular and electoral landslide, after which he had a three-to-one Democratic majority in the House and a 59-vote majority in the Senate. Similarly, LBJ in 1964 had won a massive popular and electoral vote landslide, along with a Senate with 69 Democrats and a House with 295. Last November, on the other hand, only 42,000 votes in three key states kept Trump from winning re-election. Democrats losses in the House whittled their margin down to mid-single digits. The Senate is 50-50.

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The 2024 Presidential Election Will Be Close Even If Trump Is The Gop Nominee

One very important thing we should have all taken away from both the 2016 and 2020 presidential contests is that the two major parties are in virtual equipose . The ideological sorting-out of the two parties since the 1960s has in turn led to extreme partisan polarization, a decline in ticket-splitting and and in number of genuine swing voters. Among other things, this has led to an atmosphere where Republicans have paid little or no price for the extremism theyve disproportionately exhibited, or for the bad conduct of their leaders, most notably the 45th president.

Indeed, the polarized climate encourages outlandish and immoral base mobilization efforts of the sort Trump deployed so regularly. Some Republicans partisans shook their heads sadly and voted the straight GOP ticket anyway, And to the extent there were swing voters they tended strongly to believe that both parties were equally guilty of excessive partisanship, and/or that all politicians are worthless scum, so why not vote for the worthless scum under whom the economy hummed?

The bottom line is that anyone who assumes Republicans are in irreversible decline in presidential elections really hasnt been paying attention.

Can Republicans Win The House

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee came out with a memo yesterday asserting that the House was not likely to land in Republican hands, but Nate Silver thinks its more likely than Democrats may want to admit:

The DNCC memo, of course,; is meant to serve a purpose other than providing an accurate forecast of November theyre trying to make sure that the base doesnt become so demoralized that they stay home and make a bad election even worse.

Im still not certain that Republicans can take back the House, but its certainly possible for the reasons Silver points out.

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How Republicans Can Win In 2022

STUART WESBURY | Special to LNP | LancasterOnline

For Republicans, the only goal must be to win back the U.S. House and Senate in the 2022 midterm elections.

That should be easy. In November, even though Donald Trump was not reelected president, the down-ballot races boded well for the GOPs future. But we Republicans are not acting like we want to win anything. So where do we go from here?

Of late, Republicans have separated themselves into several distinct groups, each with a different attitude and view.

For one group, retribution is the goal. These enthusiastic Trump supporters, distressed by the seven Republican U.S. senators who found Trump guilty in his second impeachment trial, are in a very unhappy mood. While the Republican Committee of Lancaster County did not pass a vote to censure Sen. Pat Toomey, other local committees did. The Pennsylvania Republican Party rebuked, rather than censured, Toomey.

The other senators who voted with Toomey to convict Trump were subjected to a variety of admonishments, as was, most notably, U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. It began to look like an inquisition.

This is very serious. A very large group of Republican voters, numbering in the millions throughout the United States, are similarly angry. They continue to challenge the validity of President Joe Bidens election, wrongly insisting victory was stolen from Trump in November.

In other words, the fight goes on and many solid Republicans are on the proverbial chopping block.

Republicans Will Likely Take Control Of The Senate By 2024

How the GOP can win the house in 2022

The usual midterm House losses by the White House party dont always extend to the Senate because only a third of that chamber is up for election every two years and the landscape sometimes strongly favors the presidential party . But there a still generally an out-party wave that can matter, which is why Republicans may have a better than average chance of winning in at least some of the many battleground states that will hold Senate elections next year . If they win four of the six youll probably be looking at a Republican Senate.

But its the 2024 Senate landscape that looks really promising for the GOP. Democrats will be defending 23 seats and Republicans just 10. Three Democratic seats, and all the Republican seats, are in states Trump carried twice. Four other Democratic seats are in states Trump won once. It should be a banner year for Senate Republicans.

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Reality Check #: The Electoral College And The Senate Are Profoundly Undemocraticand Were Stuck With Them

Because the Constitution set up a state-by-state system for picking presidents, the massive Democratic majorities we now see in California and New York often mislead us about the partys national electoral prospects. In 2016, Hillary Clintons 3-million-vote plurality came entirely from California. In 2020, Bidens 7-million-vote edge came entirely from California and New York. These are largely what election experts call wasted votesDemocratic votes that dont, ultimately, help the Democrat to win. That imbalance explains why Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 and came within a handful of votes in three states from doing the same last November, despite his decisive popular-vote losses.

The response from aggrieved Democrats? Abolish the Electoral College! In practice, theyd need to get two-thirds of the House and Senate, and three-fourths of the state legislatures, to ditch the process that gives Republicans their only plausible chance these days to win the White House. Shortly after the 2016 election, Gallup found that Republican support for abolishing the electoral college had dropped to 19 percent. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, a state-by-state scheme to effectively abolish the Electoral College without changing the Constitution, hasnt seen support from a single red or purple state.

Why Republicans Are Likely To Win The 2022 Mid

The public opinion in the United States may indeed be generally opposed to the Republican Party coming to power in the 2022 mid-term election, yet we should not close our eyes to the fact that the GOP is still well-positioned to take back the House and change the balance of power in its favor.

Taking a glance at what happened during recent months, it seems highly probable that the Republican party may have little to no chance to win the 2022 mid-term election. The first and the most noticeable incident that helps this idea prevail is that it was a Republican president who instead of leading the country towards peace in a time of crisis back in January, actually added fuel to the huge fire of division and riot in the U.S. and encouraged his extremist supporters to attack the Capitol Building, creating a national embarrassment that can hardly be erased from peoples memory.

To compound the puzzle, while no one can deny the destructive role the former president Donald Trump had in plotting for and leading the , in the battle of Trump against the truth, the members of the Republican party chose to opt for supporting the former at the cost of sacrificing the latter; It was on this Wednesday that Republican leaders in Congress expressed their opposition to a proposed bipartisan commission designed and created for investigating the Capitol riot that was carried out by Trumps supporters.

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The Plausible Solution: Just Win More

Whether the public sees Democratic demands for these structural changes as overdue or overreaching, the key point is that they are currently exercises in futility. The only plausible road to winning their major policy goals is to win by winning. This means politics, not re-engineering. They need to find ways to take down their opponents, and then be smarter about using that power while they have it.

They certainly have issues to campaign on. In the few weeks, we have learned that some of Americas wealthiest people have paid only minimal or no federal income tax at all. Even as the Wall Street Journal editorial writers were responding to a Code Red emergency , the jaw-dropping nature of the reportfollowed by a New York Times piece about the impotence of the IRS to deal with the tax evasions of private equity royaltyconfirmed the folk wisdom of countless bars, diners, and union halls: the wealthy get away with murder.

Of course this is a whole lot easier said than done. A political climate where inflation, crime and immigration are dominant issues has the potential to override good economic news. And 2020 already showed what can happen when a relative handful of voices calling for defunding the police can drown out the broader usage of economic fairness.

Filed Under:

For The People Act Matters

Gerrymandering, under state laws, can be done by the party in power. That means the GOP has a significant advantage as they control the legislature in most states. In some states, redistricting is done by an independent commission, but that’s a rarity. According to Ballotpedia, the GOP has a trifecta in 23 states, compared to the 15 by Democrats.

In a bid to break their dominance over redistricting, the Democrats have introduced HR 1 or the For The People Act. Amongst other things, the bill bans partisan gerrymandering and state-level voting restrictions, which would make it harder for the GOP to limit voting rights. So naturally, the party filibustered the bill in the Senate. TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier told Mother Jones, “Absent the passage of HR1, the GOP is poised to gerrymander their way to a House majority.”;

If HR 1 is passed, it would abolish partisan gerrymandering by state governments in favor of independent commissions. It also invalidates existing maps that have the intent or effect of unduly favoring or disfavoring one political party over another. This is an issue that has to be fixed in Congress because as the Supreme Court ruled in 2019, federal courts cannot review partisan gerrymandering. There is however some hope for Democrats. A stripped-down version of HR1 has been proposed by Sen Joe Manchin. It does get rid of some of the more controversial measures but keeps in the ban on partisan gerrymandering.;

You May Like: Did Any Republicans Vote For The Aca

Republicans Can Win The Next Elections Through Gerrymandering Alone

Even if voting patterns remain the same, Republicans could still win more seats in Congress through redistricting

In Washington, the real insiders know that the true outrages are whats perfectly legal and that its simply a gaffe when someone accidentally blurts out something honest.

And so it barely made a ripple last week when a Texas congressman said aloud whats supposed to be kept to a backroom whisper: Republicans intend to retake the US House of Representatives in 2022 through gerrymandering.

We have redistricting coming up and the Republicans control most of that process in most of the states around the country, Representative Ronny Jackson told a conference of religious conservatives. That alone should get us the majority back.

Hes right. Republicans wont have to win more votes next year to claim the US House.

In fact, everyone could vote the exact same way for Congress next year as they did in 2020 when Democratic candidates nationwide won more than 4.7m votes than Republicans and narrowly held the chamber but under the new maps that will be in place, the Republican party would take control.

If Republicans aggressively maximize every advantage and crash through any of the usual guardrails and they have given every indication that they will theres little Democrats can do. And after a 2019 US supreme court decision declared partisan gerrymandering a non-justiciable political issue, the federal courts will be powerless as well.

How The Republicans Can Win The White House In 2016

The Republican Party finds itself in an odd place heading into the 2016 presidential election. Theyve made tremendous gains at the state level under President Obama, hold a near-unbreakable majority in the House, and now control the Senate as well.

But theyve come up short by a significant margin in the last two presidential elections, where turnout is higher and the electorate is more diverse, and have plenty going against them in the next one.

Presidential elections are unpredictable and it often appears that one party can’t lose until it does. Democrats bounced back from three demoralizing blowout losses to win in 1992 against an incumbent, President George H.W. Bush, who seemed unbeatable earlier in his presidency. Republicans could do the same in 2016.

So what does the GOP have to do to finally crack the White House? These are some broad theories on how they win:

Cut Into the Democratic Base

The guiding principle behind a number of Republican candidates is that the party can only win when it reverses its losing margins with Democratic-leaning groups. That means winning converts among the most important planks of President Obamas winning coalition young voters, minorities, and single women.

Recommended Reading: What Is The Lapel Pin Republicans Are Wearing

[magnesiaandlemonjuice]

Friday 29 December 1826

8

11 55/60

came to my room at 9 5/60 - finished dressing - breakfast at 10 1/4 - read the paper - wrote under the seal of my letter to Mariana a thermometical account of the weather with short observations from Friday 15th instante mense up to this morning at 11 a.m. and sent off my letter, 3 pp. [pages] the ends and under the seal all very small and close, to Mariana ‘Lawton Hall, Lawton, Cheshire, Angleterre’ at 11 35/60 - very affectionate letter - the world might read it, but there are a few sentences tho’ not too kind yet rather too explanatory - she will surely be satisfied on the subject of Miss MacLean say that it is clear comparisons I have made must have been in Mariana’s favour, or I should not have decided as I have done - Own my high admiration of Miss MacLean but ask am I certain that nearer intercourse could never lower her in my opinion? no! She herself often says and laments that my estimate is too high - Perhaps it may - perhaps it must be so - But I wish not to be undeceived - our relative situations do not require it - with Mariana how different! we must know each other as we are, that there may be no unreasonable expectations on either side which it would be impossible to fulfil - satisfied with what Mariana said at Manchester on leaving Buxton - she has ever since followed up the train of sentiment in word and deed, and it is enough - her mind takes a tone when with me of which perhaps she is not fully aware, and with which I am fully satisfied - she may mend the spell of romance, and make it as good as new again - she has nothing to fear, except in imagination from Miss MacLean or Mrs Barlow she needs not the assistance of the former, or of anyone to make me happy - she is all I wish her to be except in health - advise her to try the effect of wearing her stays looser - more than usual tightness may occasion the burning pain succeeded by sickness of which she complains thought of her on Xmas day - her letter had given me new life - ‘my child’ too childish - Mrs Barlow too dull’ - mentioned our dinner and how we had to wait - had had another talkation with MacDonald on Monday - had mentioned her taking the ale at Shibden - her prevarication - my loss of confidence - probable determination to talk to her no more - could scarce endure her - had told Miss MacLean of her being occasionally oddly confused whether from something on her mind or in her blood I could not tell - but we should go on as we did and begged her not to name it - tell Mariana what Madame Huchez’s young partner says - advise her to have 2 gowns - 1 brodée 1 plain - In conclusion add

‘I may and do lament that Fortune has denied me that which you most value on earth’ - (top of page 3 of Mariana’s letter) - ‘Do have the goodness to banish immediately from your mind so impudent an untruth - May I look within and around you then say who has a heart whose best affections are better returned than you own - who has made ampler means of being happy store your mind with firmness and with fortitude - elevate it by reflection and the love of right, and self-confidence will soon follow and, with it, that high, interior dignity which, after all, forever charms us most, and wins, even from the world, its warmest praises and its best esteem - Look Mary! Look within and around you - then say who has a heart whose best affections are better returned than your own - who has ampler means of being happy? - save in health, you are all that satisfies that one who is now and for ever very especially and entirely yours -’

Immediately after sending off my letter i.e. from 11 35/60 to 1 25/60 wrote all but the first 4 1/2 lines of yesterday and so far of today - From 1 1/2 to 2 10/60 making alterations in my general daybook on account of Mrs Barlow’s having some days since paid me the 3/60 for a fiacre entered Friday the 8th instante mense - I have had plenty of scratching out and altering in all my account books of this year - Surely I shall have less of this work in future - Mrs Barlow call at 1 50/60 shewn in to my aunt - went out at 2 35/60 - 10 minutes talking to my aunt and Mrs Barlow then went out with the latter - we walked to the barrière de l'Etoile - took a turn round the garden and grounds of Mont Etienne then a turn backwards and forwards in the avenue de Neuilly then to Quai Voltaire Numero 15 - Mrs Barlow walked back with me as far as the Bains Vigier on our side then I returned with her went upstairs with her to her room for 1/2 hour and got home in 1/4 hour at 6 10/60 -

we had in returning got on the subject of my giving her back her letters I plainly said I would not without she gave me mine she said I had promised I suspected her was unkind ungenerous &c [etcetera] &c [etcetera] she railed against π [Mariana] seeing her letters I told her a suspicious person was to be suspected I had thought ever since last night of her telling me about denying in three years that I had ever loved her she cried raved whined coaxed would turn back with me from her own fate she cried and roared all the way and we talked so earnestly the people must observe us when I went upstairs with her the scene continued I said I had suffered enough from letters mentioned the case of eliza raine and said we could not answer for ourselves then she wheedled and at last to get away more quietly I let her fancy she had perhaps persuaded me to let her keep her letters for me why so keep to have both mine and her own I will be determined she shall either return me mine or I will not return hers tis true I think I not nur prudent to trust her she may do as she likes I will be firm that it was of as much consequence to me as to her that π [Mariana] above all people should not see either her letters or mine it would make a pretty blowup if she did shall make this the means of shewing Mrs B [Barlow] she is merely as my mistress and that I am firmly bound to π [Mariana] what can the woman mean by all this raving she says she would not care what the world thought of but for janes ssake - in saying I should not like the chance of her aunts sseeing my letters my prejudice was against her she was too calculating she said she was now all my friend all for me for Mrs Bs [Barlow’s] taking me and not Mr Bell they are a queer set I think but I will have my letters or keep Mrs Bs [Barlow’s] in spite of all her tears and raving and coaxing -

Hurried home to Dinner - Dinner at 6 20/60 - went into the drawing room a little before 8 - fell asleep and slept till 10 - then came to my room - By the way Mrs Barlow asked me this morning to go to the Theatre Français with her and Jane and Monsieur and Madame Pouciègle which I declined - from 10 to 10 1/2 wrote the last 24 1/2 lines - very fine day -

Marginal Notes

Fine frostyish morning

Fahrenheit 40o at 9 5/60 a.m. 42 - 11 - 43 1/2 - 1 3/4 p.m. 46 - 2 1/4 - (darkish) 45 10 1/2 -

SH:7/ML/E/10/0037 & SH:7/ML/E/10/0038

[gdwessel]

World Tag League 2020 & Best of the Super Juniors 27 Night 15 - 12/5/2020; NJPW Strong Episode 18 - 12/4/2020: Road to Detonation Night 2

Only four wrestlers remain in contention for Best of the Super Juniors 27, after today’s show from Sendai. You can see it now on NJPWWorld, which also saw the return to action for Double Gold champion Tetsuya Naito, and his WK15 Night 1 challenger, Kota Ibushi.

- 12/5/2020, Kagoshima Sun Arena Sendai

Best of the Super Juniors 27: SHO [CHAOS] d. Yuya Uemura (Shock Arrow, 15:01)

Best of the Super Juniors 27: DOUKI [SZKG] d. BUSHI [Los Ingobernables] (Jorge Rivera Special, 10:59)

Best of the Super Juniors 27: El Desperado [SZKG] d. Robbie Eagles [CHAOS] (Pinche Loco, 14:47)

Tetsuya Naito, Shingo Takagi & SANADA [Los Ingobernables] d. Kota Ibushi, Satoshi Kojima & Tomoaki Honma (SANADA > Kojima, Moonsault Press, 14:20)

Best of the Super Juniors 27: Taiji Ishimori [Bullet Club] d. Master Wato (Bloody Cross, 15:34)

Best of the Super Juniors 27: Hiromu Takahashi [Los Ingobernables] d. Ryusuke Taguchi (Rollup, 25:30)

Looks like Taguchi gave Hiromu a bit of a time in this one. Essentially, everyone except Hiromu, Ishimori, Despy and SHO are out of contention, after DOUKI’s upset win over BUSHI. Naito and Ibushi had staredowns and such post-match. First, the updated table, then the scenarios for the four who remain in contention to make the Final on the last group stage day tomorrow.

Despy: 12pts (6W 0D 2L) SHO: 12pts (6W 0D 2L) Hiromu: 12pts (6W 0D 2L) Ishimori: 12pts (6W 0D 2L) BUSHI: 8pts (4W 0D 4L) Wato: 8pts (4W 0D 4L) Eagles: 6pts (3W 0D 5L) Taguchi: 6pts (3W 0D 5L) DOUKI: 4pts (2W 0D 6L) Uemura: 0pts (0W 0D 8L)

Here’s what will get two of the remaining four into the Final:

El Desperado: With head-to-heads over SHO, Hiromu and Ishimori, all Despy needs to do is beat BUSHI tomorrow to make it into the Final on 12/11/2020.

SHO: Faces Ishimori, needs to beat him in order to advance for sure. Potentially could go through with a draw against Ishimori, AND one of the following: Hiromu losing to Master Wato OR Despy losing to BUSHI. Lost to Despy, but beat Hiromu head-to-head. SHO’s path is more than a little convoluted, honestly, but weirder things have happened.

Hiromu Takahashi: Needs to beat Master Wato, and hope for a win/draw by Ishimori in order to advance. Beat Ishimori on the first day of the group stage, but has head-to-head losses to Despy and SHO, both.

Taiji Ishimori: The reigning IWGP Juniorheavyweight champion needs to both beat SHO, and hope one of Despy or Hiromu lose their matches, as both of them beat Ishimori during the group stage. Much like Dangerous Tekkers yesterday, I don’t see him going to the Final, because he needs an opponent at WK15. 

Before the tournament began, i said on the podcast that I saw the Final being El Desperado v. Hiromu, and I think I am going to keep that prediction. We shall find out tomorrow!

NJPWWorld’s Friday night New Japan of America offering NJPW Strong aired last night, the second part of their Road to Detonation series. 

Sterling Riegel d. The DKC (Inside Cradle, 8:22)

Alex Zayne d. Blake Christian [GCW] (Taco Driver, 8:43)

Elimination Match: Juice Robinson, David Finlay Jr., Brody King [ROH], Karl Fredericks & ACH [FREE] d. Jay White, KENTA, Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa & Hikuleo [Bullet Club] (King > KENTA, Gonso Bomb, 13:51) Order of Eliminations: - Many > Hikuleo, OTTR - White > Fredericks, OTTR - Tonga > Robinson, OTTR - ACH <> Tonga, OTTR - Finlay > White, OTTR - Loa > Finlay, OTTR - King > Loa, OTTR (lariat) - King > KENTA, Gonso Bomb

Potential ROH World Champion Brody King (he faces Rush at ROH’s Final Battle PPV on 12/19/2020) last eliminates KENTA, assuredly setting up a match for KENTA’s IWGP US challenge rights briefcase that has been going on since the summer. The further we get into NJPW shows in Japan happening, the more laughably out of date these Strong shows are getting. KENTA and Tama Tonga look completely different here to how they look currently. We know neither FinJuice, GoD, KENTA nor Jay White are in the USA at the moment. Alex Zayne has now reported to the WWE Performance Center (along with the Rascals. Good luck to them.). This show was a great idea when we didn’t know how or if NJPW was going to continue in Japan. Now it’s laughable how far out they’ve taped these shows, and how prolonged the KENTA briefcase saga has become. Perhaps a rethink into 2021 because if they keep going from the same set of tapings....

I am unsure if there is an episode of Strong next week, as one is not listed on either NJPW site, and Super J-Cup 2020 is due to air on Saturday 12/12/2020. That too is pre-taped; Chris Bey of Impact will be challenging for Impact’s World title against champion Rich Swann at their live Final Resolution PPV event that night. Lio Rush was mooted to be at AAA’s Triplemania, also that night, however it seems he is not booked now. This is going to be the least Super J-Cuppy Super J-Cup ever, even moreso than last year’s edition. I’ll save that rant for when I write up the event itself. There’s a 50/50 chance there’s an episode next Friday. We’ll see.

Tomorrow is the final night of group stage matches for both BOSJ27 and the WTL. It will be a 10-match show, and I assure you what’s listed below will not be the match order. 

- 12/6/2020, Fukuoka Convention Center

World Tag League 2020: Hiroshi Tanahashi & Toa Henare v. Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa [Bullet Club]

World Tag League 2020: Juice Robinson & David Finlay Jr. v. Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI [CHAOS]

World Tag League 2020: Tomohiro Ishii & Toru Yano [CHAOS] v. Taichi & Zack Sabre Jr. [SZKG]

World Tag League 2020: EVIL & Yujiro Takahashi [Bullet Club] v. Bad Luck Fale & Chase Owens [Bullet Club]

World Tag League 2020: Shingo Takagi & SANADA [Los Ingobernables] v. Great O-Khan & Jeff Cobb [The Empire]

Best of the Super Juniors 27: Ryusuke Taguchi v. DOUKI [SZKG]

Best of the Super Juniors 27: Master Wato v. Hiromu Takahashi [Los Ingobernables]

Best of the Super Juniors 27: SHO [CHAOS] v. Taiji Ishimori [Bullet Club]

Best of the Super Juniors 27: Robbie Eagles [CHAOS] v. Yuya Uemura

Best of the Super Juniors 27: BUSHI [Los Ingobernables] v. El Desperado [SZKG]

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): Hey, everybody! It’s Slack chat time!

We’re in the middle of another media cycle involving questions about the positioning of congressional Republicans vis-a-vis Trump. Basically, after his press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, people are asking why the GOP doesn’t do more to restrain Trump. So … here’s the question for today:

If you’re an elected Republican serving in Congress, is the Trump presidency worth it to you? You get wins on policy right now but you’re staring down likely losses in 2018 and maybe beyond. OR would you rather we have a President Hillary Clinton right now? You’re presumably not getting the policy outcomes you want but would likely be looking forward to gains in 2018 and perhaps 2020.

(We’re also asking this from the Democrats’ POV, but let’s start with Republicans.)

FWIW, I’ve gone back and forth on this in my head since we decided on this topic yesterday. At first I thought the answer was obvious. Now …

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): I would rather have a President Hillary Clinton.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): #actually

clare.malone (Clare Malone, senior political writer): I’d rather have Trump.

natesilver: I don’t have enough information to answer the question.

micah: OMG

natesilver: Am I in a swing district?

micah: You’re the collective congressional GOP.

clare.malone: Hmm.

Now I’m waffling.

micah: So, my first thought was that the answer was OBVIOUSLY Trump.

natesilver: Just to complicate things … for me, the answer to this question is narrower if you’re asking me as a member of Congress as opposed to, say, a Democratic or Republican voter.

clare.malone: It depends on what you think the ultimate goal of Congress is.

To get elected again, to live another day?

Or, to accomplish something ideological?

natesilver: If you’re a member of Congress, you’re probably very concerned about re-election. And clearly you have much safer chances of re-election as a swing-seat Republican under Clinton than under Trump.

clare.malone: So. What’s the ultimate goal of a party’s caucus in Congress?

micah: OK, if it’s ideological/policy, it’s 100 percent Trump, right? The Supreme Court alone suggests that. Or, look at Trump’s effect on the judiciary more generally:

clare.malone: Right.

But if it’s about getting re-elected, then they want Clinton.

So I guess I don’t know the answer because I don’t know the goal of the Republican congressional caucus.

nrakich: You guys aren’t looking at the big picture! It’s not just Congress. State governments are important too — maybe even more important than the federal government, since it’s where much of the policy that affects people’s lives is made.

As you’ve written, Clare, the Obama years really weren’t too shabby for Republicans. They earned a stranglehold on 26 state-government trifectas (full control of the governorship and state legislature) and have used them to pass stricter laws on abortion, labor, etc. than they would have in Congress.

And if we’re focusing on Congress, that state government control is going to let the GOP continue to draw congressional district lines in 2021 unless something changes.

The Trump presidency threatens to effect that change.

natesilver: Can I ask for a redirect, Micah? Maybe we should be saying, “Are Republicans better off with Trump than with Clinton?”

And obviously there are a lot of subheadings under “Republican.”

micah: Yeah, but I don’t want to pick one subheading because then the answer is obvious.

Let’s disentangle all the subheadings!

natesilver: Ezra Klein argued recently that it was obvious that Republicans had made a good bet to stand behind Trump in 2016, because it had paid off with the SCOTUS picks. But I think it’s way too early to conclude that.

nrakich: I agree.

micah: This is actually kinda making my brain hurt …

I think Ezra is right …

natesilver: CONTRARIAN NATE SAYS RAWWWWWR

micah: In the short term, it’s paid off huge. And likely in the long term with the Supreme Court.

But if Trump sparks a wave of progressive activism — that’s obviously bad for the GOP.

But but politics always goes in cycles — back and forth, back and forth. From Clare’s piece:

So if your argument is that a backlash makes winning not worth it, then winning would never be worth it.

clare.malone: Why is it too early to conclude that, Nate? Because he might fuck up the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation?

natesilver: Because what if Republicans lose elections for the next 20 years as a result of a backlash to Trump? And, also, the public turns against every policy Trump once liked? ICE is abolished and single-payer medicine is established.

nrakich: That ^^

I also think Supreme Court picks are overrated. In the long run, they balance out — the next Democratic president will probably get a couple too. And it’s unpredictable what a justice does once he or she joins the court. Plenty of Republican-appointed justices have turned more liberal over the years.

micah: If there’s a backlash to Trump, eventually there will be a backlash to that backlash, no?

nrakich: If I were congressional Republicans/Republican voters/Republican squirrels/whatever, I would also be worried about Trump’s long-term effect on Hispanic voters.

clare.malone: I don’t know if I agree on that Supreme Court point, Nathaniel. This conservative majority could be a pretty powerful influence on judicial policy for decades. But yes, I do think it’s right to look at how growing demographic groups react to a political party.

But what are our parameters now?

micah: Republican squirrels.

clare.malone: jek;atw’ljrt

micah: Inequality these days is nuts.

nrakich:

(Yes, I know that’s a chipmunk)

natesilver: Here’s how I’d put it: There is almost always a backlash, which the party pays in the form of (1) tending to lose seats in Congress, and (1b) in state government and (2) some degree of thermostatic movement of public opinion against them, e.g. the public actually becomes more liberal when conservatives have been in power for a while and vice versa.

Those are BIG consequences so the question is — how much do you get out of it?

micah: A lot. I hate to keep going back to the Supreme Court, but …

nrakich: Probably not as much as they’d be able to with a different Republican president.

Marco Rubio could still win the primary, guys.

micah: #2020

natesilver: Hmm. So far, the GOP has gotten (i) a tax bill; (ii) 2 Supreme Court picks; (iii) lots of aggressive enforcement actions on immigration; (iv) lots of actions to sabotage Obamacare; (v) lots of … eccentric foreign policy behavior that they might not like; (vi) a trade war that they probably don’t want.

clare.malone: So they got three things they wanted, on average (if you say they wanted half measures on a couple things Trump went full throttle on).

That’s not so bad.

nrakich: But they also got some not-so-great stuff, even on policy.

micah: If you think Trump has been a mixed bag in terms of delivering on policy and ideological goals, then the answer is clearly President Clinton?

nrakich: Right.

micah: IDK, I can’t get past SCOTUS.

natesilver: I’m not saying it’s nothing. It’s quite a bit! But part of it is that they aren’t necessarily likely to get a whole lot more — or at least not a lot more of the stuff they like.

Democrats may or may not win a chamber of Congress — but even if they don’t, the GOP majorities are likely to be reduced down to a bare minimum.

micah: Republicans control all three branches of government, most states, etc. — I’m just very resistant to any argument that they’d rather the world look any other way than it currently does.

nrakich: I do think this question is incomplete without knowing how 2018 turns out.

natesilver: And 2020.

micah: Guys.

natesilver: And 2022.

micah: You are all basically saying, “We can’t answer this question until it’s answered for us.”

natesilver: I’M NOT THE ONE WHO ASKED THE QUESTION, MICAH!

micah: You agreed to the topic!

clare.malone: I’m stressssssed.

nrakich: I’m so sorry, guys. (I was the one who had the idea for this Slack chat topic, dear reader.)

clare.malone: lol, it’s fine. But now I know Rakich is a chaos monkey.

nrakich: Chaos squirrel.

clare.malone: I mean muppet.

natesilver: Let’s take what’s maybe an easier case. Let’s say Republicans lose in a wave election in November — they lose, say, 45 House seats, plus lose the Senate. Then Trump also loses in 2020 and they lose another 5 Senate seats or so.

Is it worth it then?

micah: I think the answer to that question is … yes.

natesilver: Yeah, I think that’s wrong, Micah.

clare.malone: Yeah, that would be bad.

The Senate loss is a little far out, though.

natesilver: Democrats will just undo the GOP’s tax policy.

nrakich: Micah, you think Republicans would take a teensy list of policy priorities in exchange for undoing all the electoral progress they’ve made for the last eight years?

micah: First, I don’t think it’s a given that the Democrats reverse that tax bill.

Second, I think that GOP progress was always fleeting, Nathaniel. See thermostatic point above.

You’re basically telling me that we return to a 2009ish-type government, but that the Supreme Court is conservative for at least a generation or so.

If I’m subscribing to the false idea that these elected officials and their voters want to win elections to achieve policy/ideological outcomes — which I am for this convo even though it’s not really right — then that last conservative majority on the Supreme Court is incredibly valuable because it’s really the only branch of government that doesn’t sorta inherently swing back and forth.

Control of the White House and Congress is always temporary, so I’m not super fussed about losing the gains I’ve made.

nrakich: But the alternative under President Clinton is that you lock in Republican control of the House for probably 10 more years and the Senate for perhaps a generation.

micah: I don’t think we know that.

natesilver: Are you reading too many liberal hot takes about the Supreme Court? The Supreme Court has already been conservative for many years. What would give the Democrats the best chance to make it not conservative is to have a majority of senators *and* the presidency.

micah: I haven’t been reading any takes — I just got back from vacation.

Now it’ll be MORE conservative!

natesilver: Would Clinton have gotten her justice appointed in a 52-48 Republican Senate?

micah: Probably not?

clare.malone: A more moderate one, yes.

micah: Wouldn’t she have nominated Merrick Garland?

clare.malone: Maybe, but maybe not.

micah: I have a hard time imagining Republicans confirming any Clinton nominee.

clare.malone: Clinton was never going to be able to nominate a Ginsburg type from the start.

natesilver: In FiveThirtyEight canon, she would have gotten Garland appointed on Earth 2, but in exchange for a bunch of Republicans being appointed to the cabinet.

But here’s the thing. With Trump in power, Democrats are probably going to end up with somewhere between 47-52 Senate seats after this year. Obviously a reasonably wide range there and I think they’re underdogs to take the Senate, although it’s competitive.

By comparison, though, if Clinton were president, where would Democrats end up? I haven’t done the math in detail, but I’d guess somewhere in the range of like 39-45 senators. They’d be in a lot of trouble, as Nathaniel said.

And they wouldn’t have had Doug Jones win that race in Alabama (in part because there would have been nothing to appoint Jeff Sessions to.)

nrakich: Yeah, in the Senate, Democrats are way overexposed in 2018 — a bad cycle for them could lead to the loss of 8+ Senate seats. There are 31 red states and 19 blue states in the U.S. — that means that the GOP “should” have 62 senators. If that scenario comes to pass, partisan gravity is going to make it very hard for Democrats to get back to a majority until party coalitions change, which can take decades.

natesilver: If you’re down to, say, 42 senators, you’re going to have a lot of trouble getting a liberal Supreme Court nominee for the foreseeable future, no matter who is president.

micah: OK, so yeah, let’s take this full on from the Democrats’ perspective: Would you rather have a President Clinton?

clare.malone: I think yes, you’d rather have Clinton. micah: Couldn’t Clinton have locked in a moderate court, though?

clare.malone: Not necessarily, Micah.

nrakich: I’ve been an electoral hipster on this topic for a while. Back in 2015, I wrote a semi-tongue-in-cheek article arguing that Democrats should cede the 2016 election to Republicans because Democrats need to rebuild their bench on the state level.

I mean, this is all hypothetical. But under a President Clinton, Republicans would win most of the governorships and state legislatures this year and in 2020. That would allow them to draw Republican-friendly House maps for all of the 2020s.

clare.malone: What if she wins two terms and Ginsburg retires when Democrats are in a better place in the Senate?

nrakich: It’s very hard for a party to hold the White House for four consecutive terms.

natesilver: There’s probably no universe in which Democrats would ever have had both a Senate majority and a President Hillary Clinton.

She’d have started out at 48, lost a bunch this year.

Then maybe you gain a couple back in 2020, which isn’t a bad map for Democrats.

But then you’re back in 2022 and midterms don’t usually go well for the president’s party.

nrakich: What do we think Clinton’s approval numbers would look like if she had won? My guess is they’d be pretty close to Trump’s right now. She’d have no policy wins to show off (since Republicans would control Congress), and those Republicans in Congress would be stirring the pot over her emails and other stuff, presumably.

micah: My first thought on this was … If you’re a progressive, and you care about an equitable society, the environment, health outcomes, etc. — I’m not sure there’s any argument that you’d prefer President Trump to President Clinton.

The only counter to that is if Trump sparks a generational counterswing — in which the next 5-8 years are bad for you, but the next 30 are good as a result.

natesilver: But presidencies always spark a backlash. That’s a given, or at least pretty close to it. The questions are (i) how soon the backlash comes, (ii) how big it is, and (iii) what Republicans accomplish before the backlash.

micah: That’s my point, Nate. I think it’s only “worth it” for Democrats if the backlash is historically huge.

natesilver: See, I disagree, because I think Trump’s accomplishments have been on the modest side.

clare.malone: One good thing for Democrats under Trump is the new bench that they seem to be developing.

natesilver: I mean, the party was sort of running on fumes.

clare.malone: In the long run, improving their prospects on the state level might serve them well. I’m not sure that would have happened under Clinton. They might have continued to paper over the state losses under Obama.

nrakich: Exactly, Clare. After a President Clinton, what would have come next? They’d be out of gas, and then you’d have a President Trump (or similar) in 2020/2024 anyway, plus you’d have missed your window to affect redistricting.

natesilver: Although — one thing we’re neglecting to mention here is that there’s a lot of damage Trump could do, e.g. to America’s international image, that isn’t really a *partisan* concern per se.

micah: That’s what I was typing!

It’s not just “accomplishments.”

It’s the whole Trump effect.

The illiberal stuff.

natesilver: But again, that, too, could spark a long-term backlash.

clare.malone: Yeah, the Trump reflection on the country in the eyes of the world is sort of a known unknown.

How much is it going to screw the country long term?

natesilver: And also, having a President Clinton (as Rakich was getting at) may have led to a Trump-type Republican getting elected in 2020, only with much bigger majorities in Congress.

clare.malone: Other countries might not trust our word on international treaties we want to make, etc., etc.

nrakich: America’s image bounced back pretty well from the Bush years, right? Although I think this is another level than that.

clare.malone: I dunno re Bush.

micah: Yeah, opinion of the U.S. (and the American president) shot up after Bush — and has dropped back down under Trump:

natesilver: Yeah, I don’t think this is comparable to Bush.

micah: OK, what if Trump leaves America 20 percent less democratic (small d)?

natesilver: Although, I also wonder if our allies sort of recognize that Trump’s an outlier instead of the permanent state of affairs.

nrakich: True, but I also wonder if he confirms what they secretly thought about the U.S.

clare.malone: Why would they not assume that another Republican president would now take policy positions more like Trump’s because that’s what Republican voters want?

nrakich: But then again, European allies are also dealing with their own Trump-like, anti-immigrant, populist figures.

micah: Yeah, it would be a mistake to think of Trump as an outlier.

natesilver: What if Trump sparks a backlash to populism in Western Europe because people associate populism with Trump?

micah: I sorta buy that.

Well, no … I don’t.

natesilver: There’s already a little bit of evidence of that. Populist candidates generally underperformed their polls in Western Europe in 2017. Eastern/Central Europe is a different story, it’s very important to say.

micah: To start to wrap this up … clearly most congressional Republicans are still happy with the tradeoff, no? (To shift the convo from what we think to what they think.)

nrakich: … are they?

Not to be a broken record, but you keep hearing about how, off the record, lots of Republicans say they’re fed up with Trump.

natesilver: Given how many congressional Republicans retired, the prima-facie evidence might be “no.”

nrakich: I bet plenty of them would take a President Clinton right now so they could try over again in 2020 with Mike Pence or someone more palatable to them. Plus, congressional Republicans were good at being the opposition party under Obama. They could have kept going with that. It was once they started needing to govern (i.e., with health care) that they sorta fell apart.

micah: If that were true, wouldn’t they be more forcefully rebuking/restraining Trump?

clare.malone: Maybe they’re waiting for the midterms to be over.

nrakich: I don’t think they would be, because they’re afraid of getting Sanforded.

If they’re ever going to break with Trump publicly (barring a major Mueller development), it would be in the time between this year’s primaries and this year’s general election. So I guess it’s too early to tell.

natesilver: Micah, I don’t think that necessarily follows. One thing about being a Republican in Congress is that it’s politically hard to oppose Trump, even if you think he’s terrible for your party and the country in the long term. Maybe that’s why so many of them are retiring.

micah: That’s partly true, but I also think much of the media is projecting when they imagine all congressional Republicans hate Trump.

They didn’t all retire, after all.

natesilver: And you know what really wouldn’t be fun? Having the same dilemma if you’d lost control of Congress anyway, which is probably more likely than not this fall.

(Of course, this is a bit self-fulfilling; one reason the GOP is favored to lose the House is because of all the retirements.)

micah: OK, final thoughts?

nrakich: This is how I see it:

Under President Trump, Democrats have a good chance to win back the House in the short term and be competitive in it throughout the 2020s (because of redistricting). In the Senate, they will probably maintain their small deficit in the short term but remain competitive in the long term. State governments are likewise competitive again for a decade or so. In the Supreme Court, a conservative majority is achieved and lasts an indeterminate amount of time.

Under President Clinton, Republicans would have kept/augmented their House majorities this year and drawn district lines to make it very hard for Democrats to win the House again until 2032. In the Senate, they would blow Democrats into oblivion with the bad Senate map in 2018, and the Senate wouldn’t be competitive again for several years either. In the states, Republicans likewise lock in control for another 10 years. And in the Supreme Court, Democrats get a liberal-to-moderate court for an indeterminate amount of time.

Your mileage may vary, quite a bit, for how to weight those. But I personally think the Clinton presidency one is the better scenario for Republicans, and the Trump presidency is the better scenario for Democrats.

I will now go collect my contrarian card at the front desk.

natesilver: I wouldn’t go that far. I mean — the default, certainly, is that you’d rather win the presidency than lose it. I do think, though, that it’s far from obvious that Republicans are better off with Trump and that people who think it’s obvious don’t have enough of a long-term view.

micah: I think it’s obvious.

[fossadeileonixv]

Sick and Theo-red.....

Does that work? A play on words of sick and tired? Maybe? Maybe not? Oh well....

Forget ratings for yesterdays match. It blew and we got lucky. Actually hold on.

Donna 8, Theo 1, Hauge 7, everyone else 5.5.

Moving on.... let’s talk about some things that we know are problems that aren’t changing. After that some new things we learned yesterday.

KNOWN PROBLEMS

Theo has reverted both offensively and defensively. His offensive ‘style’ has turned into that of the fastest 12 year old on the field that dribbles a hundred miles an hour into turnovers without ever looking around. He can’t find a teammate. He’s not creating anything. Even worse opponents have learned that if you just steer him to the outside he will eventually give you the ball back. Candreva ate his lunch yesterday. Defensively.... he just can’t be bothered. The guy that became a defensive stalwart last summer is long gone. His last good game was against Lazio before the holidays and he’s getting worse by the week. 

Theo Part 2 He is even worse after he has time off. The last 4 times now he’s missed a game due to suspension, injury or international break he has had 4 clunkers. If not for Hauge our record in those games would be a perfect 4 for 4 in losses. Is there any explanation for this? Anyone? Bizarre, right?

Bennacer has not been the same since he came back after the first of the year. He may not be the same til next year. It’s hard to say whether the problem is physical or mental (bit of both?) but he is currently a shadow of his former self. This season has become a lost year for him. 

Pioli is better off without options. Give him 12 fit players and a bunch of primavera guys in the stands and it’s a win every time. Give him a full or near full group at his disposal and he gets way too creative with his lineup and subs. 

Calhanoglu is a mess. I don’t care what he did for Turkey. I think it’s high time for him and Ibra to take another long ride along the coast together. 

Samu and Saele are what they are. If you’re expecting something else from them then I have some Enron stock to sell you. 

THINGS WE LEARNED

Calabria being out may be a bigger issue than we first realized. Dalot is NOT the answer. Kalulu needs some seasoning but makes the most sense. I thought Saelemaekers was a nice idea by Pioli yesterday. Not terrible. Stay tuned on this one. With only 9 games left this could get messy. 

Last summer you could argue, quite successfully I might add, that no one made better use of his subs than Pioli. He always seemed to pull the right string at the right moment. It was uncanny. Now? Now I see a disturbing similarity between his rotations and what Pirlo has been doing wrong all year at Juve. What’s that you ask? All year long Pirlo has tried to resist what works for Juve. Time and again he starts one lineup but uses his 5 subs to eventually put his best XI on the field. It was fine for a while as Juve would often sputter for 60 minutes but then salvage the game late. Now it works less and less as I think his players have realized that he just doesn’t know what he’s doing. No confidence in the coach makes for bad mojo. 

Yesterday was a perfect example of this for Pioli. He started Krunic, Saelemaekers, Bennacer and Castillejo all in positions where I believe he had better options. By the end of the game he had brought on Kalulu, Tonali, Rebic and Hauge. 

Does Kalulu make more sense at RB? Yes.

Does Tonali make more sense in the MF over a struggling Bennacer? Yes.

Is Rebic a better player than Castillejo? Hell yeah.

Is Hauge better than Krunic? That’s probably a wash. 

So why start what looks like a rotational XI rather than your first XI? It’s the first game after the break. A win right off the bat would be huge. The next game is in 7 days. You got 9 games left in 50 days. Just play your best guys already. Start the best XI and sub as needed. If at all. It feels like he’s trying to prove something when all he needs to prove is that this team can finish top 4. That’s all we want coach. 

Keep up this nonsense of trotting out new lineups to start every game and you will lose these guys quick. That will lead to a mess.

GOOD THINGS

Donna is a beast. Kjaer and Tomori are a delight. That’s all folks.

LAST THING

Going into the final 10 games 20 points looked like it would be enough to keep us top 4. Five draws against the top half teams (5 points) and 5 wins against the bad teams (15 points) would do it (20 points!). So far so good.

Cheers

Lisi

PS: Donna still isn’t going anywhere.

[mrskeithgreen-blog]

Pressing On

What word do I hate most in the English language? Cancer. To be honest, I don’t think anyone likes cancer; except maybe pharmaceutical companies.  But as I sit here reading the last brain scan results I am wondering how in the world this has become the norm?  When my kids were babies, or at least the first baby, every cough made me call the doctor.  That’s how cancer makes you feel every day of your life.  No cough or ache or pain goes unnoticed.  I would say I was born to be a caretaker.  It comes naturally to me which is why I wanted to be a nurse at a young age and wanted to have a lot of kids.  While I did not finish nursing school, I did end up with a lot of kids and a husband with cancer 4 times.  I think I get on his nerves being to motherly so he ‘forgets’ to tell me when something feels off.  He told me a few months ago that he is not going to live his life worrying about every little cough.  While I agree worry is not something I waste time on, I do take notice and get things taken care of.

It was about that time that we were preparing for the routine 6-month post brain tumor scans and doctor visits.  During that 6-month period after surgery, his vision had improved quite a bit and it seemed that he had about 75 percent vision.  When I would say I still didn’t think it was a good idea to drive, he would point out every old driver in every parking lot and tell me how terrible they were at parking and that compared to them his vision was stellar.  Did he think I enjoyed driving Miss Daisey around every day?  It’s a wonder I knew how to drive at all when I was alone in the car since he is such a great backseat driver.  I just smiled and said pretty soon you will be able to drive again and then I promise you will get 100 percent of the errands to run and kids to take to school and run to dance, soccer, baseball, football, basketball and friends’ houses.  Until then, I will be doing all of the driving.  

 It turns out you don’t know what you can’t see.  At the 6-month follow up scan and appointment we were told there was a significant change in the brain activity compared to 3 months prior.  After some more tests it appeared that he had again lost more vision.  The 75 percent that he had in November was down to 50 percent by February.  He had no idea.  The only way I can imagine it is if someone is standing behind you or at 5 o’clock, you don’t know they are there because that is beyond your scope of vision.  For Keith, regardless of which eye is closed, he couldn’t see you until you are between 9 and 1.  In the last few weeks, that has dropped even further and his window of clarity is only from 10-11 with some fuzzy pockets and some completely black pockets.  I honestly can’t comprehend it and I am with him 24 hours a day.  He does amazingly well for having limited vision.  Today he described what he sees as having a slow refresh rate of a tv.  For someone so intelligent and so hard working, I can see the frustration on his face when trying to read a text or an email. Thankfully he had a good typing teacher in high school; you’re not supposed to look at the keys when typing 😊

Since that discovery on the scan in February, the doctors were optimistic that this was a minor setback and that it’s not cancer coming back.  They called it radio necrosis, which basically means that the radiation he had done after surgery is causing some tissue to die and it is making the area inflamed and there are some leaky vessels.  Nothing a steroid taper couldn’t take care of and the vision should start to come back.  So, started the dreaded steroids.  On most days, he has an incredible optimistic outlook and a great sense of humor. Other days, he says or does something and refers to the third person steroid saying things like, “you’re not going to believe what the steroids said to Bob last night…” naturally I just shake my head because what can you do.  After a few days of steroids, the headaches stopped but the vision seemed to be getting worse.  The doctors said to give it more time and set another appointment.  By the next appointment his vision was down even further and when asked what side effects he was experiencing with the steroids he started with his list and they said, “wow, you have every one and then some!” Since the steroids didn’t seem to be working, they suggested a clinical trial for a new drug that is designed to cut off flow to the blood vessels causing the problem.  Since they seemed confident this drug would work, we asked if it was only available in the trial or could we just get the drug.  First of all, the drug is over $100,000 per dose and he would need at minimum 2 doses.  If we got into the trial, the drug is covered.  The down side is that it is a double-blind study so you have a 50/50 chance of getting the real thing.  Since his vision seemed to be getting worse and this seemed the best option, we signed up for it.  After doing all of the necessary tests and scans to prep for the trial, we received the response back that he was denied.  

It was about this time that we received a call that Keith’s ex-wife had suddenly passed away so all medical appointments and decisions were put on hold as we had to begin planning a funeral and going through all of the legal issues not to mention trying to figure out how to tell a 10-year-old and 14-year-old that their mom had passed away.  These two kids are absolutely amazing to say the least. Most people don’t have to deal with addiction, divorce, cancer, or death of a parent until much, much later in life and they have been dealing with this most of their lives.

The day after the funeral Keith had a few ‘episodes’ of confusion and memory loss that was extremely concerning.  He snapped out if it within about 20 minutes.  He convinced me that it was just all of the stress of the funeral and the lack of sleep and everything involved in going non-stop for the past week and that he was fine.  When he told me that he was freezing cold and he had a metallic taste in his mouth I said I am calling the doctor.  The doctor on call said to increase the steroid and keep a close eye on him.  Trust me, he doesn’t get far out of my sight.

The doctors called in another brain scan and scheduled us to meet with the team.  Yesterday, what I thought was going to be a quick visit and maybe a change of meds turned into a 6 hour, 7 doctors, a chest x-ray, 2 blood draws and surgery prep. It seems the cancer is back in the brain.  Surgery is scheduled in 10 days.  There is a chance they get in there and it is just the radio necrosis, but all signs point to cancer.  

To say the wind is knocked out of his sails would be an understatement.  Keith is one of the most upbeat optimistic people I have ever met so to see him with anything less than a smile makes my heart hurt.  He is not afraid of death, he has complete faith that our heavenly father is waiting for him when the time comes.  Being the selfless person that he is, he is worried about me and the kids. While it feels like we have known each other for much longer, we have only been married for two and a half years. In our short-married life, we have experienced cancer 3 times now.  We are not promised that tomorrow will be easy or even that we will have a tomorrow. That said, I do not believe that means you give up trying.  Trying to be better, and do better, and love those around you.  Sure, there are days where I would love to stay in bed all day but then I look at my husband and kids and see the hope and love in their eyes and press on.  Philippians 3:13b says “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Rather than showing our kids a ‘life sucks’ attitude and ‘why is this happening to us?” we choose to wake up every day thankful for one more day here.  We chose to turn the “why is this happening?” into “what is God trying to teach me right now?”

I think the hardest part of all of this for me right now is seeing the change in my husband.  He has lost the sparkle in his eye that made me smile.  The loving, compassionate, sweet man I fell in love with is still in there but this cancer monster keeps taking over and I have to remind myself that this isn’t him and keep hope that this is temporary.  Of course, the thoughts of him waking up from surgery and not knowing who I am crosses my mind.  The possibility that with surgery his vision may worsen and stay that way permanently is on his mind.  My heart is heavy this week and the tears are many; I can’t seem to get them under control right now and I’m usually pretty good at that.  I know we will get through this and it will make us that much stronger, but a little sunshine and a nice boring stretch would be ok too…

[tipiktj]

Human Nosedive Between reality and fantasy

In the third season of the famous series on Netflix "Black Mirror", The main theme of "Black Mirror" plays on looking ahead for a bright future for human in light of the high technological developments and its struggle with the human nature that leads to its destruction. The first episode of the third season came to bear the idea that we currently live in reality, which can be summarized under the title "The Deceptive Face of Virtual Life" or as described by the writer of ​​the episode, Charlie Broker, "It silences the idea of ​​acceptance and the image that we like to draw on ourselves to show it to others." What is different in this episode is that it is very close to our current reality - unlike most of the episodes of the series that depend on forward looking after decades - but the "Nosedive" episode is not completely far from what we currently live in, and our "killer" feelings towards our virtual life.

At the beginning of the episode, we get to know the sweet girl "Lycee" in the way that people get to know each other in this imaginative world through evaluation numbers (Lycee points 4.2). All the characters in this world have evaluation numbers that they get through their dealings with each other, even if there is no relationship that brings them together. These evaluations increase each person’s numbers and thus his evaluation, and the most ideal is certainly who is his evaluation 5. This case is not very different from what we encounter now in the reality of the virtual world, who contains his account on ten friends, in any social networking site, certainly differs from who owns One hundred, and the higher the number, the higher the evaluation.

I watched a lecture on the TEDx Videos on YouTube , Bailey Jarnell - Top 100 Most Powerful Women. She is an award-winning digital marketer, public speaker and businesswoman with a talent for helping people tell better stories and specializes in digital marketing - says that one of the causes of stress due to social media is what she called "social currency", which according to her definition is like the dollar, she says: "it is a currency that you literally use to value a good or service On social media, these likes, comments and posts have become a picture of the social currency and on this basis we give things their value, which is called marketing economy of interest. This limited interest becomes a valuable recorded process, which is great when we sell albums or clothes, but the problem with networking is that we are the product. " This really applies to our virtual lives and to what was presented by the episode "Nosedive", as we seek to attract attention, to turn ourselves into human goods that inspire the admiration of everyone, even if the image is fake, and because the image language has a central weight in our lives, the final shot is summarized in Episode All That Bailey Jarnell Wants To Say. For more on this watch the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czg_9C7gw0o Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health? | Bailey Parnell.

While watching "Black Mirror" episodes, we are accustomed to the gray colors that reflect the symbolism of the depressing future, but this episode, on the contrary, differs in its colors. Those around them also have the same degrees. These colors are not real, they are like fake pictures that decorate virtual reality, these colors we know from Instagram filters, Snapchat , tiktok filters or photo editing programs that improve our real photos, to turn this world into pink pictures that resemble advertising posters, or the image of dreams that we see in sleep, Or alertness, but it's certainly not the reality, it's the nightmare in which the heroine wants to live.

The music also added a dreamy atmosphere in keeping with the rosy picture of the life of the heroine in this virtual world, something that we are not used to in “Black Mirror” episodes, and music was used in the first half of the episode in which Lacey’s dreams flourished. "Before everything turned against her. A golden opportunity came to "Lacey" to rise from 4.2 to a higher evaluation than that, which is a wedding celebration of her childhood friend Naomi, who has a rating of 4.8. Because her obsession with ratings began to dominate her, she even accused her brother of failing in his life because his ratings 3.

 The cruel aspect of the world of this episode is that a few evaluations of a person mean a lot, as their negative effects are reflected in all aspects of his life. For example, the owner of the evaluation of 1 or 2 may not open the doors of the shops, and he may not be allowed to walk freely in the streets, because People will treat him like an outcast, and he will get less ratings from them even if they don't know him, he will not be able to book flights, and he will lose opportunities to go out on romantic dates, and of course he will lose his friends like "Chester" Lacy's fellow in the work who lost his ratings after he split up From his Lover, so that all coworkers decided to give him low ratings, and to turn his life into hell, and everyone begged with him to restore his good ratings again.

 After Lacey failed to reach her friend's wedding, she could not conceal her feelings, she announced her anger, and she lost her temper, which caused her annoyance around her, which led to giving her low ratings that reduced her overall evaluation, turning from 4.3 to 2.8, which made her psychologically pressured , it increased her insistence to go to the wedding again to regain some high evaluations, this phobia is a phobia that affects a person when he feels a loss of his position in society, as if he misses a social event, or his contact with others decreases, which is reflected in his psychological effects, so he feels fear, stress and gets hurt Depressed.

On her wedding trip Lacey in the last half of the episode, the Bastille grades began to fade into darkness and gradually return to grayscale. On the way, Lacey meets a woman named Suzan, who offers to deliver her to her nearest station. Lacey refuses to help her - although everyone refused her because her evaluation is low - only because this lady evaluates her differently, but Lacey accepts her lack of trick. The woman spoke to her about her life before her evaluations decreased and that her excessive frankness and anger after the death of her husband, who suffers from cancer, caused her evaluations to decrease and people hate her, but in the end she did not regret her losing these hypocrites. Lacey refused to be like Suzan, she refused to take off the dress of this world because she became addicted to her and did not imagine her life without him, but after arriving at the wedding and she had lost everything she was unable to conceal her angry feelings, she revealed the true face of her friend Naomi and the truth Her relationship with her was not as good as she claimed.

All this imagination raises fears within us of the future, but what really increases this fear is that this life system will actually become reality. For example, since 2018 the Chinese government has planned to implement a social credit system whose purpose is to assess the eligibility of trust in the Chinese people, which amounts to about 1.4 billion people. , And it will start at the end of 2021, but it has already started tentatively / experimental in Soju. The nature of the system gives each citizen 100 points in his account related to his identity card or his account on social media, so if the individual does a good thing like volunteering in a charity or contributing to recycling garbage, donating blood, or sending positive messages about his country through the communication sites, then His reviews will increase and in return he will get a free subscription to the gym and discounts on public transportation tickets and fewer waiting times in hospitals, either if he does bad things like crossing the traffic lights while they are open, or cancel reservations or books of comments or incorrect assessments on any service or even dealings With someone with fewer reviews, his ratings will be reduced, he will be punished with canceling flight reservations easily, he will get lower internet speeds and will be prevented from booking in restaurants that will be limited to those with high ratings only.

Although this episode is on the surface of the third season of the Black Mirror series as a nice episode compared to the upcoming episodes that show the unknown future, it is still a strong and emotional slap in the face of the viewers. While most of Charlie Brooker’s work is based in essence on the future question “What if,” this episode is a demonstration - with brightly colored aspects - of the life we ​​are heading towards, with little insight. Yesterday, we depended on the fact that our electronic life is adjustable, including our speech, our outward appearance, and our mental health, but it is impossible to keep up with this comic drama in our real life unless our goal in life is to lose self-esteem. The thin line between maintaining an outward appearance and true self-esteem is gradually becoming disorganized in this era; This episode aims to warn the viewer of the consequences of this fade.

 Today, more than 4 billion people are using the Internet, and most of the youth of this generation spend most of their time on social media, sharing our personal and professional feelings and accomplishments through the Internet, and preserving our documents no matter how important they are through it as well, this is a type of addiction that does not seem to be able to Stop it, prevention therapy doesn't make sense here, harm reduction is our greatest hope at the current stage, and what Charlie Brock writes seems to be a detailed guide to what to prepare for.

Finally, can we close our eyes and claim that what is happening in this Science Fiction series is just a fantasy, can we guarantee that this will not happen personally to each of us?

Written by Talal Mohd @TipikTJ

Specialist in Marketing and Entrepreneur