#and now I’m publishing before arguably the most important meeting of my career

[theharddeck]

i know you want it, do-si-don’tcha (hangman x reader)

Pairing: hangman x reader (no y/n)

Synopsis: hangman and his girlfriend walk home in the rain after a night at a dance hall, and warm up back at the airbnb.

Warnings: 18+ minors DNI, unprotected sex, oral (f receiving), bit of a praise kink (it’s Jake; you’ve got to), daddy kink if you squint (it’s Jake, you’ve GOT to), overstimulation, swearing for sure, lmk if I need to add anything else

Length: 5.8k

Title is from this song by Tanner Adell, and images are edited from Pinterest

On paper they seemed nice—refreshing! The land needs it! At least it’s warm out!—but when you and Jake pushed open the barn doors at the Broken Spoke at just after midnight to sheets of pouring rain, you would have to dissent.

Walking to the dance hall had seemed like a good idea when you and Jake left the airbnb some five hours ago. It wasn’t far, and parking was going to be a mess, and you were both in boots anyways—Jake in the ones he’d gotten for graduating college, you in the ones he’d gotten you just before the trip.

Walking to the dance hall had seemed like a good idea when you and Jake left the airbnb some five hours ago. It wasn’t far, and parking was going to be a mess, and you were both in boots anyways—Jake in the ones he’d gotten for graduating college, you in the ones he’d gotten you just before the trip.

The light brown leather was soft and they fit too perfectly for them to be off the shelf, but the fact that they didn’t have to be broken in meant you didn’t push Jake too heavily for details. You were grateful for that now, as you stood in front of streaming rain, wondering if the gorgeous leather was going to survive the night.

“We could call an uber?” you suggested, having to shout to be heard over the downpour.

“In downtown Austin, at midnight?” Jake called back, and when you looked over at him, his eyes were sparkling with laughter. You could see him trying to hold it in, knowing your aversion to rain, but he looked like he wanted to burst out laughing.

“We’re walking back in this, aren’t we?” you sighed, and Jake pulled you into his side, letting out his laugh.

“Afraid so, sweetheart,” he said. He pressed a kiss to the top of your head, and your arm curled around his waist reflexively.

You held out your hand from under the awning and the rain hit it with such force that it actually splashed back onto you. It was a warm night, late summer in Texas still pushing 80 degrees even though the sun had gone down hours ago, and the rain felt slightly cooling.

It could be worse.

You’d left your phones back at the airbnb, and it was just water.

You tilted your head to look up at Jake. His eyes were slightly squinted at the splash of water, a sheen of sweat from line dancing still on his skin. His five o’clock shadow was always more pronounced on the second day, and so tonight you could just see the beginnings of stubble across his jaw.

He really was too handsome to be real, especially when he looked down at you, his green eyes intense as always. His head tilted a little, like he hadn’t expected you to be looking back at him, and you smiled reassuringly, squeezing his waist.

“Okay,” you said, blowing out a long breath. “Let’s do it.”

Jake tightened his arm around you, before his hand fell from your shoulder, across your back, to hold the hand closest to him.

“Let’s do it,” he repeated, and the two of you stepped out from under the awning.

You couldn’t stop the squeal when the rain washed over you, absolutely unrelenting. It was cooler than you’d expected, sharp and hard, and it shot new energy through your veins. Jake seemed to reacting similarly, jumping back and forth to acclimatize himself to the water as his clothes soaked through. Water streamed off the brim of his hat, down over the black button down he was wearing, plastering it to his body.

You knew you looked a fool, drenched like a wet dog in the rain, just staring at your boyfriend, but he looked like a music video from the early aughts. Broad shouldered, white teeth, flashing grin as the water splashed off of him. His dark jeans stretched over thick thighs that could make you salivate on any given day, but now had water running down them, denim tight like a second skin. Jake kicked at a puddle, boots sending up a spray of water and as he laughed at the cascade in the streetlight, you felt your heart swell.

His unbridled joy was a beautiful thing, especially for its rarity. When he was on duty, he bore responsibility heavily, masking it under overconfidence and driving jibes. But this Jake—the one who laughed when he was soaked to the bone, unbothered by rain in the middle of a parking lot in Texas—this one was special to get to see.

He turned back to you, and you smiled softly at him, lashes heavy from the rain.

Jake pulled the hand he still held to draw you to him; you fit easily under his arm as the two of you started walking. Your arm around his waist, his over your shoulder, and you skipped a step to matched your pace to his.

Left - right - left - right, steel-tipped toes through puddles of rainwater.

A moment later, you felt something warm on your forehead as Jake settled his hat on your head. It sat low on you, resting on your ears rather than your temples, but it stopped the rain from falling into your eyes, and when you looked up at Jake, he was running a hand through his hair to fix it. His hair was getting long, flipping over the crown of his head, and the ends curling up almost to his shoulders.

Jake’s eyes narrowed to protect them from the rain, and water ran unprotected down his face. Your heart flipped at the little gesture, unprovoked and unexpected, but entirely natural to Jake, to look after you like that.

Thoroughly soaked, you didn’t hurry as you walked back. You were both drenched, so there was no point in running, and the night was warm enough that you didn’t worry about the chill.

A couple cars slowed as they drove by, trying not to splash you both, and you were content to walk in silence. There wasn’t much to say, and your arms around each other seemed a pretty perfect cap on the evening.

One truck honked as it drove by and you felt Jake look at you before cursing quietly under his breath. A moment later, his arm fell from around you and he started unbuttoning his shirt; you looked down and understood why.

Your yellow sundress had been opaque in the evening light when you’d left the airbnb, but soaked through, it was nearly transparent. The skirt was the perfect twirling length, falling to just above your knees, and the thick straps were wide enough to hide your bra straps, but the rain pressed it against your skin, and the red of your bra was clearly visible, as well as the black line of your panties.

“Jake, it’s fine—” you started, when you noticed he was glaring after the truck, unbuttoning the wet fabric with less finesse than normal.

“Not a word,” he said, looking sharply at you.

You closed your mouth.

He pulled off the button down, peeling it off his shoulders and wrapping it around you like a cloak. It wasn’t so oversized that it swallowed you, but he hung it stubbornly over your shoulders, buttoning it deliberately. It was too wet to feed your arms through it, and so it ended up like a cloak or a straightjacket, but Jake’s expression harbored no room for discussion. His brow was furrowed in concentration, jaw tight, and when he finished, you went up on your toes to kiss him before he stepped away.

His lips were warm, rain water coasting down his cheeks, and you felt him relax slightly as your mouth brushed against his.

“Thank you,” you whispered against his lips, and he grunted. You raised your eyebrows, still extended on your toes, weaving slightly till his hands came up to steady you while you waited.

“Welcome,” he said, begrudgingly. You could tell he didn’t like the idea of other people being able to see you exposed like that, just as he knew you didn’t want him to go all territorial about it. Sometimes it was hot, sometimes it was something that rubbed you wrong, because he had to know he was all yours. You could be stark naked on the street, and the only eyes you’d care were on you would be his.

You smiled, kissing him again quickly, then settled back into your boots.

“Besides,” you said, starting to walk again and gesturing at his chest, “pretty sure this is a more graphic image than what I was rocking.”

Jake looked down at himself, at the white undershirt that was absolutely translucent against his tanned skin. You could see the texture of his chest hair, the darkness of his nipples, the contours of his abs, looking like he was an Amercrombie model. Jake shrugged, unphased by his body being on display, and reached down to where your fingers peeked out from the confines of his shirt to tangle your hands together.

You walked on together.

The shirt wrapped around you was still warm from his body, and the contrast stoked something inside of you. He’d been so patient all night, guiding you through the foreign dances, never minding when you stumbled over his boots. He’d twirled you in his strong arms, made you feel light and beautiful, and reminded you how good it was to be on his arm.

To be his.

You turned down the street of your airbnb, and Jake dug around in his pocket for the key. He never let go of your hand, and that light contact had your body humming for more.

Jake got the door open, flipping on a tabletop light and propped it open with his hip as he reaching back into the rain for you.

A shiver worked over your skin as the water flowed over his skin, the sharp lines of his jaw, shoulders, arms, and Jake’s eyes clouded with concern as he noticed the tremor, and he pulled you quickly into the house.

“Baby,” he said quietly, voice chastising and caring at once, “why didn’t you say you were cold?”

He closed the door behind you, his long fingers undoing the buttons of the shirt he’d put around your shoulders. Absently, you knew you should help him, but he didn’t seem to mind, so you stood in a dripping pile in the mudroom as he reached the end of the column, and pushed the garment off your shoulders. It fell with a splat to the tile, and your newly exposed skin prickled with awareness.

Jake made a sound in the back of his throat like concern, and his hands skimmed down your shoulders from where he’d pushed the button down off you, finding the zipper of your dress under your arm. He pressed a kiss to your shoulder as he undid the zipper slowly, and another shiver worked over your skin.

You could feel warmth radiating off of him, through the translucent white of his undershirt, through the stretched denim of his jeans. You leaned slightly towards him as the material of your dress slackened as the zipper came undone.

“Jake—” you started, but he shushed you as he guided the straps down your shoulders. The dress pooled on the floor around your boots, his motions slow and gentle, his touch warm.

Jake stilled at the sight, and you felt his gaze travel up your body, his hands coming to your waist.

“Ah, sweetheart,” he sighed, and his thumbs smoothed over the skin of your stomach as his perusal fluttered beneath your skin. You watched desire flash in his eyes, his jaw clench at the sight of you, but then determination to care for you chased it away.

You whispered his name again, as your hands drifted over the thin cotton of his shirt.

“I know, baby, I’m hurrying,” he said, misunderstanding. Jake leaned into your touch as your hands smoothed over his shirt to his shoulders, but he turned his head when you rose up to kiss him. Undeterred, you pressed your lips against his cheek, his jaw, trailing down to his neck.

You loved the way his stubble prickled under your tongue, rough texture where there was usually smooth, and the rain water tasted sweet on his skin.

“You’re shaking, angel,” he muttered, voice strained as your tongue skated along his jaw. “Come on, stop that, let me take care of you.”

You shivered again, biting back a whimper as your mind ran through the many ways in which he could take care of you. Jake read your shiver as emphasis that he needed to work faster, and his hands tightened on your waist, holding you steady as he pushed away from you. You could see his eyes dilated from desire, but he still knelt in front of you, lifting one of your feet to pull off the boot. Your hands rested on his shoulder, fisting the thin cotton there as you leaned back against the door for balance.

His skin was warm like a furnace, and you wanted to curl up into his chest, warm your body with his.

“Jake, please—” you tried again, and the look he shot up at you as he pulled off your boot was frustrated.

“I know, sweetheart, let me just get these off of you, then I’ll get a blanket—“

“Jake,” you interrupted, “it’s not the cold.”

He stopped at your words, eyes flitting up to yours in confusion, before falling over your body. The goosebumps over your skin, the slight shivers, the uneven breathing—you watched it dawn on him that this was your reaction to him, not the rain.

He sat back on his thighs, looking up at you. His eyes were dark, his jaw loose, and he finished pulling off your other boot.

“Why didn’t you say something sooner, baby?” he asked, the slightest reprimand in his voice. His hands trailed up your legs as he leaned forward, not breaking eye contact, to press a kiss against your stomach, “You know I would’ve been on my knees way sooner for you.”

You whimpered, you couldn’t help it, and you saw his eyes darken.

“Tried to tell you,” you whispered, as his hands skimmed over your skin. His touch felt like sparks as he reached your underwear, fingers teasing along the edge of it.

“My pretty, needy girl,” he murmured, his fingers dipping under the hem as he started to pull them down your thighs. “Am I gonna find you wet under here, sweetheart?”

You squirmed as the material dragged across your skin, and then Jake exhaled slowly as you were bared to him.

“Angel,” he groaned, looking up at you, and before you could ask what, he ran a finger through your folds. Your body jerked at the contact, hand fisting his tshirt and your eyes falling closed. Jake pulled his hand away and you heard him hum as he brought his finger to his mouth, tasting you.

“What was it that got you this ready, baby?” he asked, voice low, as he returned his hand. He ran his finger through you, feeling, teasing, pulling through the wetness there and reveling in it. “Was it the dancing? Knowing every man in that hall was jealous of whose arm you were on? Was it those assholes in the truck, getting a glimpse of my girl—“

“You, Jake,” you interrupted, your hips chasing after his hand, knowing it was what he wanted to hear, knowing it was true. It wasn’t dancing, it was being in his arms; it wasn’t being exposed, it was him covering you. “Only you, baby.”

“Damn straight,” Jake muttered darkly, and his hand dropped as he leaned forward to bury his face in your cunt.

Your head hit the door as your back arched when his tongue speared into you. Jake’s hands gripped the back of your thighs, spreading you, and his mouth worked over you. Normally he’d tease you with kisses, brush his lips around your inner thighs and wait until you begged before he met your desperate need, but tonight you felt the urgency in his mouth, the possession.

He licked you hungrily, tongue flat and broad, before he worked his way up to your clit. When he stroked over the tight bundle of nerves you felt your legs weaken, leaning back against the door heavily, and Jake hummed against you. The vibration felt heavenly, but it was him, it was knowing he knew how good he was making you feel, that sent another rush of arousal through you.

“Fuck, sweetheart,” Jake mumbled against you as he lapped at you.

“Feels so good, baby,” you told him, and you let go of his shirt to reach up for his head. You brushed your hand over his forehead into his hair; his eyes fluttered as your nails scratched into his scalp and tangled your fingers into his hair.

Jake let go of one of your thighs to reach between your legs, his hand stroking between your folds as his mouth returned to your clit. His lips closed over you, his tongue circling, tasting, and he pressed a finger at your entrance.

His broad, calloused finger felt so damn good, pushing steadily and your hips canted forward.

“Shit, baby,” Jake whispered. “Look at you, pulling me in like this.”

You felt shameless, your body wanting more and more and more of him, and when you looked down to see your arousal glistening on his chin as he watched you, tightness coiled in your core.

“Jake, you look so good,” you had to tell him, your voice wrecked, and his eyes shot up to you. His eyes were blown wide and his chest puffed slightly at your words and he added another finger.

You moaned at the delicious stretch, at the look of wild pride on his face.

“You like how I look like this?” Jake asked, increasing the speed of his fingers, feeling your legs shaking. “You like how your man looks on his knees, how fucking gone he is for you, for your taste, for those little whimpers you’re making?”

His words curled over you and you nodded frantically, lost in sensation. Jake curled his fingers inside of you, knowing where you ached, and when his mouth returned to your clit, you gasped, pulling at his shirt. If he kept this up, you were going to come, and you didn’t want it to end yet.

He chuckled darkly but followed your pulling, rising up to stand in front of you. Taller than you again, and still in his boots, one of his hands rested on the door beside your head and the one that had been between your legs traced over your lips. You opened your mouth obediently, and Jake groaned when your tongue licked over his fingers, tasting how good he’d made you feel.

“Right back at you, darlin’,” he said. “I can’t think straight, not with you looking like this.”

He pulled his finger from your mouth, caging you back against the door, and he dipped his head to kiss along your jaw, down your neck. He found a spot that made you whine and when he sucked, your hips bucked forward; you both moaned when your heat met his thigh.

You ground against him, knowing you were making a mess, but the drag of wet denim against your core was nothing short of intoxicating. The rough friction, with the soft pull of Jake’s mouth at your neck, had you whimpering, and Jake’s hands dropped from the door to undo your bra. You vaguely registered it dropping to the floor, and the cool air on your skin before Jake’s big hands covered your breasts. His palms were warm, his fingers rough, and he squeezed as you rutted against him.

“Yeah, baby?” Jake pulled back slightly to ask, his panting breath on your neck. “You gonna get yourself off on my thigh?”

Shit, you probably could.

Just the thought of it sent another wave of arousal through you, and Jake groaned quietly as he felt the slide of you grow slicker against his jeans. He pushed his hips back into you slightly, and your hands scrambled to pull at his tshirt. You needed his skin, to feel him against you, and Jake released you so you could pull the thin cotton off of him.

His skin glowed golden in the dim light, tan and warm and your hands pushed over his chest, reveling in the feel of him. You could feel his breath stutter at your touch, and your hands turned downward.

“Baby,” Jake warned, as your fingers brushed through the hair below his navel.

“Baby,” you teased back, and then your breath caught when you felt him through his jeans. Jake’s hips bucked forward as you pressed your hand over his length. You could feel him, hard and hot, and you ground into his thigh, knowing how good he would stretch you, fill you.

Jake groaned, his forehead dropping to your shoulder and his hands bracing on either side of the door as you worked over him.

“Tell me quick, darlin’,” he said through a clenched jaw. “You feel too good and you’re not even fucking touching me yet; if you want to come on something other than my cock, tell me now.”

You whimpered, his frank words only spurring you on. You reached up to undo his belt buckle, then got the zipper just low enough that you could slide your hand inside his boxers to feel him. You both moaned when your hand closed around him, hard and pulsing, the tip already leaking precum.

“That last,” you managed to say, “I want that, Jake, please—“

“Thank fuck,” Jake gritted, and he reached down to pull your hands from him, lifting them above your head. With one hand, he held your wrists against the door and with the other, he hastily jerked down his pants. Still soaked from the rain, they only made it halfway down his thighs, and Jake abandoned them to get back to touching you, running his fingers between your thighs again.

“You’re so wet,” he murmured, and his brow furrowed slightly as he looked back up to check in with you. “Are you sure you’re ready for me, baby? We could—“

“I’m ready, please,” you breathed, your body canting away from the door. Normally you’d work up to taking his dick but tonight you wanted him now, bad enough to risk the immediate discomfort.

“Baby…” Jake started, but trailed off with a chuckle when he saw your determined glare. “Alright, alright.”

His hand drifted from between your legs to pump over his cock, working your wetness and his precum together, and you whimpered as he lined himself up to your entrance.

“Please, baby, please—“ you pleaded, and Jake slammed into you.

Fucking hell.

You knew he was big, you were reminded every time, but your body slacked against the door as he pushed himself into you. You wanted to push back, press your hips into him, but you were burning with the stretch and all your body could do was work to accommodate him.

“Sweetheart,” Jake soothed, letting go of your wrist to brush a hand across your forehead.

You squirmed, try to find an angle to alleviate the stretch and Jake choked when you worked farther onto him.

“Darlin’, you’re so tight, stretching so good for me…”

You felt drunk, you felt like you were floating above yourself, the only thing tethering you to this plane was the ache between your thighs and Jake’s voice. Your head rolled and Jake knocked the hat off your head, so his hand could rest between your and the door, cradling you.

“Talk to me, baby,” he said, and you opened your eyes to see his face so close to yours, watching you closely.

“You’re trying so hard not to say that you told me so,” you tried to laugh, but your voice was tight between pain and pleasure.

“I’m being pretty heroic right now, I think,” Jake chuckled, but you saw the tightness in his shoulders as he fought to keep still.

God, he was so good to you, checking in and holding himself off to make sure you were okay. It was a tight stretch, and it was uncomfortable in the moment, but his care was so sweet and you knew it’d be just that—a moment.

“I’d be mad if it wasn’t so damn good,” you whispered, and Jake’s hips jerked forward at your mild praise before he reigned himself in.

“Baby—” he warned, but you pulled your wrists from his hand to trace down his sides, feel his measured breath as he fought to keep from pushing into you harder.

“Thought you wanted to fuck me, Jake,” you pouted, and Jake groaned as his resolve crumbled.

“Alright, baby, hang on,” he gritted, and for anyone else it would’ve been the cheesiest line, but with Jake it was a warning.

He pulled out slow, the stretch heavy both ways, then pushed back into you, hard. The hand he had behind your head, protecting you from the door, held you in place as he shoved his cock up into you, and you cried out.

You felt so full, and then he pulled back only to push in deeper. He set a punishing rhythm, and your hands grappled for purchase, feeling his back flex under your fingers as he thrust up into you. Each stroke drove you against the wood door and you felt your skin dragging against the raw surface but it grounded you, something other than the pulsing fullness inside of you.

Jake lifted one of your legs to wrap around his waist and you moaned as it changed the angle. He pushed impossibly deeper into you, using your thigh for leverage, and ground against your clit at the top of his thrust. Jake’s breathing had gone uneven, and knowing he felt it too had you clenching tighter around him.

It was too much, it was everything, it was so fucking good you couldn’t handle it.

“Breathe, baby,” Jake gritted. “You feel so fucking good; stay with me.”

“Jake,” you sobbed, not even knowing what you were asking for. His hips stuttered when you said his name, and he drove into you harder.

The force of his thrusts lifted you off the ground, your leg on his waist hanging in the air and your tiptoe only barely grazing the ground when Jake pulled out. He was fully supporting you, fucking you into the door and each scrape of your back against the wood felt like the only countermeasure to the immense pleasure he was wringing out of your body

“So pretty, baby,” Jake groaned, and when you opened your eyes, his were dark, mouth open as he looked down over you. His panting breath was warm on your skin, and he shifted again, pushing you higher against the door so he could lower his mouth to your breasts as he pumped into you.

You let go of him to clamp a hand over your mouth to cover the scream that wanted to escape.

“None of that, baby,” Jake said immediately, pulling back from your chest. “I want to hear every sound you make, every noise my girl makes on my cock; that’s mine.”

You whimpered but nodded, dropping your hand, and Jake went back to your breasts. His tongue laved over you, teasing and sucking, and you felt the tightening in your core spread to your spine.

Jake released you from his mouth again, his head falling between your breasts. “I can feel that cunt tightening around me; are you getting close, darlin’?”

“I’m so close, Jake,” you cried. He thrust harder, grinding at the top to press against your clit, and you moaned loudly. He was so good, so strong and so big inside of you and you were swimming in it, so close…

“Fuck, baby, you sound so pretty,” Jake groaned. “My baby sounds so good working herself on my cock, doesn’t she?”

You nodded frantically, you were his, his, and he felt so damn good. You were so close, and Jake knew, he always knew.

His hand fell from the door to pull you tight down onto him, pushed with his dick deep inside you, not even a breath of space between your bodies. Jake used that closeness to grind against you, not pulling out, his pelvis over your clit, the pressure unbearable.

“Give it to me, baby,” he said, his voice as tight as his body, wound, waited for you. “Need to feel you come, baby, need to feel that cunt flutter around me, so come on, baby, come for your da—“

You shattered before he could finish saying it.

You keened, your body pushing off the door and spasming as waves of pleasure pulsed through you. You felt it in your fingers, you felt undone and baptized, white hot and unreal, and it sent you tumbling. Your throat felt raw and didn’t realize you were crying until you felt Jake’s careful hands, gently wiping under your eyes.

“You did so good, baby,” he whispered, and you realized your body was trembling at the force of what he’d just pulled out of you.

“Baby, you’re shaking,” Jake said, concern and pride mixing in his voice.

“‘s your fault,” you mumbled, tucking your head into his neck.

God, he smelled good, like sweat and rain, and the stubborn remnants of his cologne from hours ago. Your eyes felt heavy, your body even more so, and as you relaxed against him, you realized he was still hard inside of you.

You pulled back to look at him, his corded muscles pressing you into the wall. His jaw was clenched and he was breathing carefully through his nose, his nostrils flaring, but his hand on your cheek was gentle, controlled.

Damn, you loved this man.

Only he would take you dancing, laugh in the rain with you, fuck you up against a door without making it out of his boots, and yet tenderly wipe your tears before he finished.

“Baby,” you said softly, lifting a hand to run your fingers through his hair again. Jake leaned into your touch, his eyes closing for a moment when you scratched at his scalp, and he hummed.

“Anything,” he whispered. “Tell me what you need, angel, anything.”

“I feel empty, baby,” you told him, “need to feel you come.”

Jake huffed out a breath, and you slid a little down the door as he twitched inside you.

“Sweetheart, you’re gonna kill me,” he groaned. “I’m trying to make sure you’re okay, not—”

“I’m okay,” you assured him, leaning down to kiss him. When your lips met his, he drew in a deep breath, surging up to meet you, and you rolled your hips experimentally.

It was the most you’d been able to move yet, your body loosened by your orgasm, and the sensation had both of you freezing.

“Shit, baby,” Jake breathed.

“I know,” you whispered back. He was so deep inside you, it felt like you could feel him in your throat, but when you ground down on him, it was an entirely new sensation. You were too sensitive still, you weren’t going to come again, but it felt fucking incredible, and if Jake’s labored breathing was any indication, he felt the same.

“Sweetheart—“ Jake gritted, and you moved again. You pressed your forehead to his, sharing air as you swiveled your hips over his, fucking down onto him slowly.

Jake moaned against your mouth, a low, broken sound, and you wished you could trap it in a locket, the sound of your man, absolutely wrecked for you.

“Want to feel you, baby,” you whispered, lifting slightly to kiss his jaw, his neck, back to his lips.

“Christ—” Jake’s control snapped and his hands gripped your hips so tightly you knew he’d bruise.

He moved you over his cock, pistoning into you, and you drove your hips down meeting him. You felt his rhythm increase, and you knew he was close; your hand in his hair tightened, pulling slightly, and he groaned, his head dropping to your shoulder as he pumped into you.

“You’re taking me so good, sweetheart,” he panted, and as his words curled through you, you clenched on him again. “Such a good girl for me, aren’t you?”

Jake’s hips stuttered when you tightened and he reached down to circle his thumb over your clit. Your hips jerked when he touched you, and you moaned.

“Baby, it’s okay, it’s too sensitive, I don’t need to—“

“Who knows what you need?” Jake’s words were as forceful as his hips, driving into you. You whimpered as his fingers brushed over you, pleasure spiraling from your core, your body winding up again.

The sounds of Jake slapping into you echoed around the mudroom, punctuated by your breathless moans and his hoarse grunts. Your body hadn’t fully come down from your first high, and you found yourself gasping as he drove into you, pushing you back to that brink again.

“Asked you a question, baby,” Jake said. He leaned forward, pinning your hips to the door. You couldn’t move, couldn’t shift against him, could only open your hips wider as he moved over you, inside of you.

“You do,” you whined, legs beginning to shake again. At your words, Jake circled your clit again, his thrusts growing

“That’s right,” Jake said, almost growled. “And what my girl needs is to come with me, yeah? To milk my cock so she doesn’t feel so empty anymore.”

“Please, Jake,” you begged, as your body wound tighter. He’d driven you so high so quickly that you knew the crash could be violent, and when Jake pressed a gentle kiss to the underside of your jaw, you were off like a Roman candle.

Jake was muttering rough praise against you, but you couldn’t hear him past the ringing in your ears, the way your world blurred, and then finally, finally, the twitching of his cock as he emptied inside of you. Jake came with a shout, slumping against you and the door, his body sagging as he pumped into you. As your skin cooled, you shivered again, this time actually from the cold.

Jake felt it, because of course he did.

You thought he’d pull out of you, but instead he leaned down and lifted your other leg around his waist. You protested feebly, but he silenced you with his lips, lifting you into his arms as he carried you towards the bathroom.

What a picture you made in the mirror’s reflection.

Your hair, tangled and wild, your body absolutely bare except for the marks left on your skin by your lover. Jake was still partially clothed, his jeans now around his knees as he shuffled you into the room, his golden skin shining with sweat. He set you down on the vanity, and he reached around you to turn on the tap to warm up a washcloth.

You smiled at him, sleepy and happy, and he grinned back, quick and easy. You saw his dimple appear on his cheek, and your heart felt like it was absolutely sopping with contentment, and you thought that maybe there was something redemptive about summer rain after all.

[i-want-my-iwtv]

I hope the rumours of Louis being a brothel owner aren't true, but if they are I can sort of see why they're going for this route? I mean, with a black Louis they can't have him being a slaver anymore, so maybe they're trying to find something that is also morally reprehensible for him to be.

TL;DR: My kneejerk reaction was to be saddened, and I don’t like that this is starting up, and will continue to fuel, fandom drama. Ultimately, if we want peace, we’ll embrace the fact that the existence of this adaptation doesn’t take away from the existence of the books, and it also doesn't mean we have to acknowledge it.

It makes me wonder whether AMC wants us to make a storm about this. We’ll see...

After all, what makes this adaptation any more important than the graphic novels of the ’90s, the graphic novel Claudia’s Story, movie!IWTV, or movie!QOTD? In fact, many fans here on tumblr consider VC to be a trilogy only!!! and don’t accept the majority of the PUBLISHED CANON so what makes anyone think we have any obligation to swallow this AMC adaptation as some kind of gospel?

I see movie!QOTD as a buffet of ideas carried in an official fanfiction work, and I don’t accept as my headcanon the various things it changed about the books that I didn’t particularly like, such as merging Magnus and Marius (which, IMO, effectively made both characters more morally reprehensible). I accepted the things I did enjoy, like casting a Black/POC actress to play Akasha. I see this AMC adaptation as a buffet of ideas, some can be taken, and some not, it’s just another official fanfiction work.

[Anon, I need to catch other ppl up on the information, too.]

Deadline.com informs us that in the AMC adaptation for Interview with the Vampire, Jacob Anderson has been cast as Louis. I'm not familiar with him, but it looks like he’s a successful actor, from Game of Thrones and other things, he’s also joining Series 13 of Doctor Who. I’ll have to check him out from an acting standpoint!

Aside from his talent as an actor, this is by far the most controversial thing that's happened in VC fandom recently. I've been thinking about this for a few months now, talking about it privately online and offline, still gathering my thoughts. So this post is not engraved in stone, it’s initial thoughts on this.

I’m glad to see ppl talking about it and I’m sure we’ll have more public discussions. I’m trying to discuss it very carefully, but also, this is an entertainment blog, my opinions are mine alone, and I’m not looking for dogpiling on anyone, I have no obligation to respond publicly or privately to anything. Plenty of other ppl have differing opinions on this. So take all of the following with more than a grain of salt, I’m not being salty, I’m providing the links to the little info we’ve seen pulicly, I’m giving my initial thoughts, and I’m also trying to add a little levity because ultimately, again, this is an entertainment blog, and I try to add a little humor to help with such serious topics, humor can help ppl talk about controversial things.

-----

The casting of a POC/Black actor (I’m sorry I don't know the preferred terminology, let me know if you know what Anderson prefers) confirms at least one part of theilluminerdi articles that stated that Louis’ race will be different from the books. I didn’t post about these before bc I wasn’t sure how reliable theilluminerdi’s sources are (and I'm still not sure), but this was one major aspect that theilluminerdi announced before Deadline did, so now seems to be the right time to share those articles. For now, you can go check them out yourselves rather than have my reposting of the information, trigger warning: mentions of sex workers and race in the changes to the canon story of Interview with the Vampire.

>>>theilluminerdi articles from May 21, 2021 and July 15, 2021:

www.theilluminerdi.com/2021/05/21/interview-with-the-vampire-amc

www.theilluminerdi.com/2021/07/15/interview-with-the-vampire-amc-2

^Meme of Dr. Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park reads: “Your writers were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

I’m using that meme with a little levity here, clearly an AMC adaptation of vampires in which the producers/writers have chosen to change the race of a main character (arguably the original protagonist of the series) isn’t in the same VICINITY as the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park that broke out of containment and killed visitors to the park, but John Hammond’s intention for the creation of that park was very good, as I assume this race change was intended. Time will tell.

“But with this place, I wanted to show them something that wasn't an illusion. Something that was real, something that they could see and touch. An aim not devoid of merit.”

“Creation is an act of sheer will.” 

- John Hammond, Jurassic Park

Race is a more complicated subject than ever, so for AMC to make this bold change, I hope they have POC and Black writers on staff and are handling this very carefully. Even then, no racial group, including POC and Black people, are a hivemind, disagreements are bound to happen in the writing room, whether in good faith or bad. People have different intentions and motives, compromises will probably be made with the story in many ways, we all know how it goes with collaborations; the end product is a shared vision among multiple creators. This could be a potentially controversial adaptation, I don’t know whether they’re aiming for that or not, but with the elements it has so far, it seems to be headed that way.

Here's a comment by "Angellus" on the 5/21 article. It's undeniable that there's going to be the accusation of racism thrown at anyone who has any negative view of this change, regardless of their reasons. I find it unfair and narrow-minded that any negative response is automatically assumed to be coming from a racist point of view. To say that changing Louis' race is unequivocally an improvement fails to take into account how that change has a Domino effect on all of the other parts of the story. Not the least of which is that, if he is still a slaver/slave holder/plantation owner/(insert your preferred term) that adds a whole new racist element to his owning Black/POC people, even though, apparently there were Black/POC plantation owners. 

Not the least of which: How will this change impact his relationship with Lestat? Particularly when Lestat has the added issue of being described in those articles as having “mind control abilities” and “insistent that he gets what he wants and when facing rejection,” a terrible combination in terms of consent, even in a relationship of the same race, let alone invoking Caucasian/white dominance over Black/POC people, AND Lestat being the catalyst to Louis’ questioning his sexuality:

Lestat is insistent that he gets what he wants and when facing rejection, petulance can quickly turn to ruthless rage which causes frenzied acts of horrifically brutal violence. Lestat also has mind control abilities. Lestat initially infuriates Louis, but this soon turns to fascination which leads Louis to question his religion and sexuality. 

^Screencap reads: "I love how racist everyone is in the damn comments, this doesn’t pervert the story you’re all racist and it’s disgusting. I’m looking forward to it, I hope you keep crying your salty racist tears asswipes."

It makes me question whether Angellus truly believes what they wrote, if this is an ideology, or a troll. I would suggest their use of the term “pervert” is correct though, pervert means: “alter (something) from its original course, meaning, or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended.” That’s what this race change does, factually. Although, in this context, “distortion or corruption” carries a negative connotation. It would take a lot to show how this change does not meet the definition or “to pervert,” though.

I hope the rumours of Louis being a brothel owner aren't true

I agree 1,000%, I was hoping that these were just rumors. But, aside from the race change, if this were the only change, I find Louis being a brothel owner to be equivalently morally reprehensible to being a slaver/slave holder/plantation owner/(insert your preferred term). Ideally, they’d change his career to something that doesn’t involve benefiting from the bodies/labor of others in any morally reprehensible manner.

I mean, with a black Louis they can't have him being a slaver anymore, so maybe they're trying to find something that is also morally reprehensible for him to be.

He might still be a slaver. Who knows. Being morally reprehensible as a mortal man didn’t seem to me to be crucial to the story, but they still could have chosen something better. It seems to me like they want a brothel so they can have eye candy for an audience who want to see sex workers, maybe full frontal nudity. 

-----

What also gets my attention is that Anne and Christopher Rice have not yet posted publicly about it, which leads me to believe that this change wasn’t their choice. They take every chance to brag when they’re proud of something, every chance to crowdsource about casting ideas or which VC books Anne’s fans liked best, etc., and in this case, as of Aug. 31, 2021, (and to be fair, maybe I missed it), I haven’t seen either of them post about this on the official VC FB, Anne Rice’s FB, Annerice.com, Christopher Rice’s FB, or christopherricebooks.com. If it had been their choice, I think they would have gladly trumpeted their credit by now, but maybe they’re waiting to do it in a specific venue. Time will tell.

[thegreatkatedebate]

What an extraordinary week it has been for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.

Although the couple were married only on Saturday last week, they have already carried out their first engagement as a married couple, making a public appearance at a garden party, with 6000 invited guests, to celebrate Prince Charles’ 70th birthday (a little early perhaps as it doesn't actually occur until November.)

They were, by all accounts, a sensation. Meghan looked incredible, dressed in a stunning pink and taupe summer dress by Goat and a Philip Treacy hat, and chatted breezily with numerous guests. She opened her conversation, as has become her signature, with a breezy, “Hi, I’m Meghan!”

Although the Palace are unwilling to give any precise or exact commitments, sources are suggesting that we will be seeing much, much more of Meghan and Harry over the coming six months than might have been anticipated.

A trip to Dublin is apparently in the pipeline, and, possibly a mission to Australia, where the two will be representing the queen as part of their special detail as youth ambassadors for the Commonwealth.

It makes an extraordinary contrast to the early years of Kate Middleton’s marriage to Prince William.

Kate

was barely seen at all for quite a few years after they married seven years ago.

Indeed, one of her first moves was to insist that they moved to a remote cottage in a remote corner of Wales, on a small peninsula as far as it is possible to get from any attention.

William worked, theoretically, as an air ambulance pilot, although he was hugely criticized for not pulling his weight.

No one had any idea what they were up to tucked away in the country, although Kate would periodically take carefully choreographed trips to the local town in which she would be photographed shopping in the supermarket which helped show what an incredibly normal person she was.

For many months she was incredibly reluctant to appear even by William’s side, and it was a full six months before she had a solo engagement, standing in for Charles at a private dinner for 30 guests at Clarence House in November 2011.

Of course, many observers are suggesting that the reason why Meghan is so much more ready to meet the public in her role as a princess is because she is an actor, most notably in Suits.

Her whole life, according to this argument, was just a warm up for this moment, and so it is little surprise she was interview-ready and supremely well prepared for public scrutiny. Indeed, some say Harry shrewdly married a woman who clearly was not averse to fame.

But the argument that Meghan is a showbiz native and this therefore makes it unfair to compare the eagerness with which she has embraced her public role compared to Kate deliberately misses a very important fact; Kate and William began dating at university. They first met a full ten years before they got married.

It is Meghan who has been thrust dramatically and suddenly into the limelight, not Kate.

Meghan may be better temperamentally suited to the experience and she may have become famous in her career, but that doesn’t take anything away from the smiling enthusiasm she has brought to the job, in comparison to what has sometimes seemed rather sullen resignation on the part of Kate.

Of course, right now, you don’t need an opinion poll to deduce that Harry and Meghan are everyone’s favorite royals. What will be really interesting is how Meghan's popularity holds up over time.

Kate has not done well in this respect—one recent survey found the number of people who say they can relate to the onetime ‘girl next door’ is only 13 percent. It’s perhaps not surprising that her rating is way lower than Meghan at 29 percent.

It will also be interesting to see how much or how little work Harry and Meghan will do over the summer. Traditionally, the royal show comes to a big fat halt in the middle of June, shortly after the “Trooping of the Colour,” which is also the queen’s official birthday.

As The Daily Beast has noted before, the royals have a well honed pattern of engaging in an ever-increasing number of public appearances up until just about the moment that the royal accounts are published, and then disappearing from view for the summer.

Buckingham Palace then opens to the public (arguably the most incredible tourist experience available in London) and the royals more or less disappear until September.

My hunch is that Harry and Meghan will take advantage of the slack season to take an extended honeymoon over the summer, not least because June and July is the best time to go on safari in Africa, as it's much easier to spot animals in the dry season.

But to imagine that Harry and Meghan have structured the next few months solely around the likelihood of spotting the "big five" game (lion, leopard, rhinoceros, black and white species, elephant, and Cape buffalo) in Namibia is to do them down.

The wedding itself seems to have been crafted with great emotional intelligence. Although Thomas Markle created an unwelcome distraction, and it was clearly a huge mistake not to have him in situ several weeks before the wedding, the whole event was a deformalizing experience for the royals—from Bishop Michael Curry’s fire and love sermon to the carriage ride round Windsor Castle.

The very fact of having a wedding on a Saturday was in itself somewhat revolutionary, as the royals have always tended to get married on a Thursday or Friday, and would always expect public holidays to be granted in honor of the wedding.

Harry wisely avoided making a public occasion—or at least an official public occasion—out of the wedding by abandoning such precedents.

Even holding it in Windsor was a departure from tradition but a shrewd one, as life in London continued undisturbed for the millions of citizens who couldn’t care less about the monarchy. The FA cup final was played as normal just hours after Harry and Meghan got married.

Meghan is creating a happy style for herself and her husband; non-paranoid, engaged, warm-hearted and laid back without being dismissive.

William and Kate might just have a bit to learn from the new kid on the block.

[hazlouquitefinished]

A SJPR Case Study: Hiatus to Early 2017

Since the “how do we know that SJPR is really fucking Louis over?” anons have been going around again, I thought I’d make a bit of a timeline/case study with some observations about SJPR’s promo tactics. We all know this stuff has been happening for years, but it’s pretty wild to see everything compiled into one place. 

@theyrereallyawful made a great couple of posts that inspired me to look deeper into this arena of thought, so check those posts out if you haven’t seen them yet. 

Some of this is going to analyze the 1D promo that happened around the HJPR split, and some of this is going to compare Niall/Louis SJPR promo.

For more of an in-depth post about Louis and Niall’s SJPR involvement, check my other post in this tag. I recommend reading both posts to get the full perspective.

Information/observation dump below the cut! All of this is speculation and shouldn’t be taken as 100% fact - I just wanted to throw some food for thought into the void. This is a really long post, be warned.

Have a happy Louis before you start. Look at that sweet sunshine-y smile!

We’ll start briefly at the beginning!

Early SJPR

On December 1st, 2015, HJPR split up. They were a UK PR firm that represented One Direction, among other acts. The split wasn’t very widely reported, aside from some PR-specific news outlets.

From PR Weekly:

Simon Jones, the “J” in HJPR, took One Direction with him as his client. 

I’m going to compare the UK online press from before and after the HJPR split, just for kicks.

All of these screenshots were taken from google.co.uk.

Before the HJPR split, when HJPR had control of 1D UK promo:

September 20, 2015 to October 3, 2015: 

A few filler articles, but most of them stick to the plot and talk about the AMF performance and MITAM. Not bad.

Earlier articles from August 2, 2015 to August 8, 2015:

That’s an entire page of the top results, and it only has a single baby article and two Zayn articles. Again, not too bad. 

**To clarify: I’m not making broad generalizations of 1D PR under HJPR overall. This is just an analysis of the PR immediately before and after the split. 

Let’s look at the post-HJPR-split articles.

At this point, SJPR was the one doing the UK promo for 1D. 

December 20, 2015 to December 26, 2015:

As you can see, the top articles are quite a bit different from the ones before the HJPR split. All of them focus on the Simon Cowell & Zayn feud, and Louis’ stunting.

Here’s some from a little while later, after the HJPR split had “settled”:

January 4, 2016 to January 11, 2016: 

Aside from the few articles about the Family Guy appearance, most of them are, again, about stunts. 

The focus shift is pretty clear from the pre-HJPR split to post-HJPR split coverage. Pre-split, HJPR covered music/career news. Post-split, SJPR immediately began to cover primarily stunts.

Let’s look at the official SJPR site.

SJPR Site

The “news” section of the site is a very interesting place to make observations. This content is directly from SJPR - they publish news on their more important clients, presumably to show how good they are at doing their jobs. (suppress your laughter, I know.)

It’s abundantly clear, however, that certain clients receive much more of SJPR’s effort than others.

I’m going to zoom out on most of these articles so that this post doesn’t get too long - I just want you to get an idea for how much content is put into each article. The lengths differ quite obviously. I’ll link each of them if you want to read the body of the article. 

The first article about 1D was posted on December 30, 2015, a month after the HJPR split. It’s about “History” dropping as the new single:

It’s fairly short, only a few paragraphs. In all honesty, it’s the best 1D article that’s posted for the entirety of 2015 and beyond. The rest of them go far downhill, as you’ll see. 

It covers the fact that “History” was chosen as the single and throws in an X Factor mention. This is also the only 1D article that has SM links included. 

The article was published a bit late, as the single was chosen halfway through December, but maybe SJPR was still having growing pains with the recent HJPR split on December 1st, 2015.

We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now, because this article doesn’t seem particularly odd......until you compare it to the previous article, the very first article posted to the SJPR news section.

This article, about Ant and Dec meeting the Prince, is WAY longer than the 1D article. It’s probably three to four times the length. 

Sure, Ant and Dec meeting the Prince is a big deal. But it’s a little odd that the final 1D single before their hiatus gets so little coverage in comparison, no? 

And besides, it’s not like 1D getting the short end of the SJPR promo stick is a trend, right? Right??

 Oh. 

1D gets a brief article - literally only a few sentences - for the Family Guy appearance, with no SM links, and Fearne Cotton gets a much longer and more involved article for a new gig.

Okay, so maybe that was just a one-off coincidence? Right?

One Direction, biggest pop band on the planet, gets a three-sentence wrap-up article for the success of MITAM, History, and the release of the History MV. No SM links included.

Meanwhile, Emma Bunton gets a 9-paragraph article for hosting Too Much TV.

The trend continues.

One Direction gets a two sentence article for winning a Brit in 2016. No SM links provided.

By comparison, All Saints gets a far longer article for their single.

So the trend is fairly obvious - One Direction always gets the short end of the promo stick as far as SJPR’s site goes. I get that this isn’t the most earth-shattering information, but I think it speaks volumes if you listen. 

Think about it: if SJPR isn’t even willing to put effort into news articles about arguably their biggest client, then how much effort are they going to put into the actual PR SJPR provides?

SJPR and Louis

Let’s go back to the press from the Feb ‘16 time period, and let’s start looking at Louis-specific press now.

Feb 14, 2016 to Feb 29, 2016 - The Brits happen on the 24th and 1D takes home an award with Liam and Louis present to accept. Here’s the press that results, using both “Louis Tomlinson” and “One Direction” search queries.

Yes, that’s a grand total of three articles about the Brits, which could’ve been a really great publicity point for 1D to have early on in the hiatus. The rest of the articles are about the baby, the girlfriend, the baby “mama”... You name it.

Let’s move on to the press that happens later in the hiatus. 

Late 2016

SJPR’s 1D/Louis/Niall content in the news section dropped to radio silence after February ‘16, aside from one Niall and one Louis article about Soccer Aid. These two were actually uncharacteristically good - lots of info about the cause, and the only good Louis article in the entire news section.

I assume that’s because Soccer Aid was tied to Niall. In my other post comparing Niall vs. Louis, you’ll see that Niall receives much better treatment from SJPR. This is enforced by the Brits article from SJPR’s site. Louis is tied to Liam, a non-SJPR client, so it was only two sentences long. As long as Louis is directly tied to Niall, he gets Niall’s level of SJPR promo. Otherwise, it’s back to radio silence.

Now, I don’t know if anyone took over for the UK promo from Feb to September of 2016, but SJPR did not cover 1D, Liam, or Harry - they only covered Niall and Louis for Soccer Aid, as I just mentioned. 

I’d assume that SJPR just dropped Niall and Louis to “low priority” while the guys’ solo projects were still being completed. They also could have been on temporary management of Louis/Niall while deals were being finalized, so they weren’t exerting as much effort as they usually would have. (I use “effort” loosely, of course.)

This makes some sense when you remember that lots of the big conspiracy articles about babygate slipped through the cracks and gained momentum during these few months of official SJPR site silence. I’m thinking of the Buzzfeed one in particular, which gained extremely widespread publicity and reached a lot of the GP in early April 2016.

On September 29, 2016, Niall signs to Capitol Records and UA’s report that his SJPR involvement will officially continue. “This Town” is released on September 29 as well.

Let’s take a look at Niall’s press from just prior to the single release, just for comparison’s sake. This was before SJPR officially took over again, so they were still possibly on “autopilot” or “temporary” privileges. Most of these articles are driven by other sources that would’ve had their own teams to drive his indirect promotion - Ryder Cup, Shawn Mendes, etc.

September 25, 2016 to September 28, 2016

All positive articles.

Onto the articles from the days immediately after the single release, and therefore the continuation of official SJPR involvement.

September 29, 2016 to October 1, 2016:

There’s no obvious shift in tone here - all positive articles about the single (aside from the “retrogressive” comment from The Guardian), and the stuff that’s not about the single is still positive cross-promo.

SJPR finally broke their 1D radio silence and posted a news article about Niall on the day of the release. It sets the tone for all of their subsequent Niall articles - most of them are involved and well-written, and SM links are always included. More on that in the other post I made comparing Louis and Niall’s SJPR experiences.

As I just stated, there was no obvious shift in Niall articles between pre-SJPR continuation and post-SJPR continuation. 

Louis, however? That’s a different story.

His official continuation with SJPR happened on January 7, 2017.

Here’s some of the press from just prior to the continuation - that’s all I’m looking at right now, the press immediately before it, not overall.

November 20, 2016 to December 3, 2016.

Oddly good, right? No stunting to be found, aside from a single baby article that’s from a celeb baby site. There’s even an article about Niall apparently confirming Larry, which we’d probably never see now, lol. 

January 7, 2017 - SJPR continuation is made official. Now to look at the press that resulted immediately after SJPR took Louis on as a client again.

January 7, 2017 to January 10, 2017:

Ah. So that’s what a focus shift looks like.

January 22, 2017 to January 27, 2017:

Rather night-and-day from the pre-SJPR news coverage and the “Niall confirming Larry” article, no?

And just for continuity’s sake: later on in the year, the trend was still the same. 

April 16, 2017 to May 9 2017:

Stunts galore, and not a single mention of music.

I think the “promo” from Summer 2017 and beyond is still fresh in our minds, so I won’t recap that. The same press trends continue to occur - all stunts, all the time.

Conclusions: TL;DR

One Direction’s HJPR promo immediately prior to the HJPR split was generally good

As soon as SJPR took over, stunting clearly became the focus of UK online promo

SJPR dedicated very little time and energy to 1D accomplishments on their official site, but they seemed to have BUCKETS of energy to spare when it came to their other (far less famous/successful) clients

From Feb to Sept 2016, press control was generally more lax - babygate conspiracy articles gaining widespread publicity - but stunt coverage still continued (this may have tied into one of the prior possible end dates of BG that was likely extended)

Niall promo and Louis promo began to diverge after Niall officially continued with SJPR

There was a brief lapse in stunty content just before Louis officially continued with SJPR, but they quickly made up for it with the months of bullshit he’s been enduring in the UK promo world since then

As I mentioned before, this post is merely a collection of observations and patterns, nothing more. In my other post in this tag, I talk more about how Niall and Louis’ SJPR support clearly differs. 

If anyone actually read this whole thing, props to you! I didn’t think anyone would get this far - I genuinely enjoy doing this kind of research and was compiling it more for my own thought process than anything. So if you got through everything, then you deserve another happy Louis:

By the way, if you’re angry - like many of us are - then I encourage you to (respectfully & kindly) tweet the link to LTHQOfficial.com to SJPR and co. It can’t hurt to show them that we have a successful fansite, and it makes me happy to know that his notifs are flooded with fans who promote his client far more effectively than he does. 

[thisdaynews]

World Cup 2026: Meet the future North American stars dreaming of success

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/world-cup-2026-meet-the-future-north-american-stars-dreaming-of-success/

World Cup 2026: Meet the future North American stars dreaming of success

At the Under-17 World Cup in Brazil this November, the US, Mexico and Canada took to the international stage – with thoughts already turning to the 2026 World Cup that will be hosted by the three nations.

Here, BBC Sport profiles three players – one from each country – who are already being described as future stars who could make their mark at the tournament.

Alvarez has a dog called Salah – named after the Liverpool forward

Efrain Alvarez (LA Galaxy & Mexico)

Date of birth: 19 June 2002

Position: Midfielder

Efrain Alvarez might just be the most coveted North American footballer since Freddy Adu. The 17-year-old LA Galaxy forward has been called “by far the biggest talent in the MLS” by none other than Zlatan Ibrahimovic.It’s little surprise then, that he’s the subject of an international tug-of-war.

Born in California to immigrant parents from Mexico, ‘Efra’ grew up in east Los Angeles and joined the Galaxy Under-9s when he was seven years old. Even at that age he was attracting some very influential admirers.

One of his matches that season was watched by Eric Cantona. Legend has it the former Manchester United player – then director of football at New York Cosmos – was in town for a few under-17s and under-19s games. But it was Alvarez who caught his eye, with Cantona saying:“I’ve seen enough; I just want to watch this kid all day.”

The Frenchman moved on but Alvarez progressed. For the under-14s, he scored a Cantona-esque lobfor his 24th goal in 19 games, and when he turned professional by joining the Galaxy’s second team aged 15 years and one month, he became the youngest signing in United Soccer League history, usurping Alphonso Davies, the Canadian now playing for Bayern Munich.

Alvarez is deployed mainly as a creative number 10 and has a left foot that can split defences in a second. He pairs it with an innate knack for finding the back of the net. The youngest player to hit a hat-trick in the USL Championship, he scored 12 goals for Galaxy II on the way to being named their 2018 Young Player of the Year. After making his first-team debut in March this year, he contributed three assists in 14 MLS appearances.

Ibrahimovic – who left Galaxy in November – has had nothing but praise for his protege.

“You see when he plays, he’s all natural: the way he thinks, the way he moves the ball, the way he touches the ball,” the Swedish striker told reporters in July. “He’s by far the biggest talent in the MLS. He thinks football. He has that football in him, and it’s natural.”

Alvarez has always been regarded as the standout in a family that, he says, has “football in our blood”. Two of his older siblings have played professionally, with brother Carlos now at Las Vegas Lights alongside, as fate would have it, a 28-year-old Adu – one player who did not quite live up to the billing he was given as a teenager.

Yet while everything is sweet at the Galaxy, at national team level there have been hiccups. Alvarez represented the USA for three years and even captained the country’s under-15s at a youth tournament in Argentina, scoring a hat-trick en route to the title. Yet two months later, after a run of just one start in four games, he decided to ditch red, white and blue in favour of Mexican green.

The 23 potential World Cup 2026 venues in Canada, the United States and Mexico – 16 will be selected

“There were and still are no decisive factors, really,” Alvarez tells BBC Sport when asked about his decision to switch. “It’s just wherever I am happy. Right now, I’m happy with Mexico so, as long as I’m happy, it’s going to be Mexico. But in the future you never know.”

This November, Alvarez helped Mexico reach the final of the Under-17 World Cup – where they lost 2-1 to hosts Brazil.

Marco Ruiz, Mexico Under-17 coach, describes him as “very promising”, “committed” and “important to me”, yet despite being involved in more goals than any of his team-mates, Alvarez was also often the first player to be substituted. Boasting a thickset build reminiscent of a young Carlos Tevez, he does not share the Argentine’s tireless running and completed 90 minutes just once in Brazil.

“I have talked to him about dynamics,” Ruiz adds. “He needs to be a little bit more dynamic; if he moves a little faster, he will find better spaces to take advantage of all his talent.”

Alvarez’s World Cup campaign in a microcosm came in the semi-final against the Netherlands. Starting on the bench, he was introduced in the 73rd minute, equalised in the 79th, then in the shoot-out struck a horrible ‘Panenka’ penalty that was easily saved. Mexico still went through, and afterwards he suggested – in a very Zlatan-like way – that he would do it again: “Most do not dare. I dared.”

Somewhat enigmatically, Alvarez says he does not remember where he was when he learned North America will host the 2026 World Cup. Nor is he willing to gaze too far into the future. “I obviously want to go to every World Cup I can, every tournament, every game,” he says. “I don’t want to miss one game. But I take everything day by day, I don’t like to look too far forward.”

Giovanni Reyna (Borussia Dortmund & USA)

Date of birth: 13 November 2002

Position: Forward

Reyna has been playing in the U19 Bundesliga this season

The United States disappointed in Brazil, exiting the group stage following heavy defeats by Senegal and the Netherlands and a 0-0 draw with Japan. If their much-hyped forward Giovanni Reyna is seeking solace, he need not look too far from home.

Reyna’s father Claudio – who played for Rangers, Sunderland and Manchester City – crashed out of the same tournament in 1989 before going on to captain the USA at the 2002 and 2006 World Cups. Similarly, current US skipper Christian Pulisic failed to reach the knock-outs in 2015 yet is now setting the Premier League alight with Chelsea following a move from Borussia Dortmund.

‘Gio’ Reyna may then process the pain of the past month as a positive, as a rite of passage that all successful American soccer players must go through. Named after Giovanni van Bronckhorst, his dad’s former team-mate at Rangers, perhaps the hardest thing to accept will be that, arguably for the first time in his fledgling career, he was not the standout performer among players his own age.

Reyna was born in England and has been regarded as the jewel of his generation for more than a decade. Comparisons with America’s soccer sweetheart Pulisic were perhaps inevitable, but they sharpened this summer when, aged 16, Reyna signed for Dortmund after gaining a Portuguese passport through his paternal grandmother, Maria. The German club’s assistant manager, Jorg Heinrich, says Reyna is “similar… or maybe a little bit better” than 21-year-old Pulisic.

Such talk does not faze a teenager who has been encircled by expectation since his days dominating at Under-9 level aged five years old. Now 6ft 1in, he has an assertive presence on the field, can read a game well and is at his best when driving at pace towards defenders. He carries the ball quickly, but in a style closer to one of his favourite players, Kaka, than his compatriot Pulisic.

“Of course, it’s nice to be compared to Christian because he’s the best American player right now, but really I would like to create my own path,” Reyna, who exchanges messages with Pulisic, tells BBC Sport.

“It’s good to have someone only a few years older than me that I can look up to. We have similarities, but we are very different players, so I think some years down the line we can make a good duo.”

Media playback is not supported on this device

Three countries react to getting the World Cup 2026 bid

During Under-17 World Cup qualifying Reyna scored six times in six games, and in Brazil he wore the captain’s armband despite being the third-youngest player in the squad. “Gio is one of the best players I’ve ever coached in this age group,” says his US manager Raphael Wicky. “He’s a special player; a lot of technical ability. He can make a difference.”

At just 17, there are obvious areas to improve. In the 4-1 loss to Senegal, Reyna failed to find a way to impose himself on the game, and after the 4-0 defeat by the Netherlands his reluctance to press was highlighted by the Dutch coach as a reason for the comfortable scoreline. Wicky, however, believes his young captain is now in the perfect place to learn.

“Gio has made the big step up and at Dortmund there is no red carpet,” says Wicky, a former Switzerland defensive midfielder who spent 10 years playing in the Bundesliga. “You have to prove yourself every day. If you don’t, someone else will take your place. Gio has a lot of the qualities that a player needs, but football is not only attacking; it’s defending, commitment, mentality. That’s something he’ll learn at a top club in Germany. And if he learns that, 100% he will be there at the World Cup in 2026.”

For now at least, Brazil appears to be a mere bump in the road. In July, Reyna made his first start for Dortmund in a pre-season friendly against Liverpool and two months later coach Lucien Favre included him in his Champions League squad. No surprise then, that seven years seems like too long a wait.

“Of course 2026 is there, but for me, my goal is to be at the next World Cup,” he says. “I’ll be 19 by then and I think, all going to plan, I am more than capable of making it.”

Jayden Nelson (Canada & Toronto FC II)

Date of birth: 26 September 2002

Position: Forward

Nelson was nicknamed ‘The Canadian Valderrama’ by fans

There is a joke among the parents of Canada Under-17 players that the only thing bigger than Jayden Nelson’s afro is his potential. Born in Toronto but raised about 30 miles to the west in the suburban city of Brampton, he started out at the same club as Cardiff City’s Junior Hoilett, Brampton YSC.

A fearless winger with electric feet and an eye for goal, Nelson was playing for Canada Under-12s by the age of nine and within two years had been picked to join the academy of MLS outfit Toronto FC. On his reserve-team debut in April aged 16, he created three clear-cut chances in an eight-minute cameo. He has also since trained with the first team.

“Jayden’s strengths are in his ability to take people on, but what compelled us to put him in a professional environment was the confidence he has,” says Michael Rabasca, the Toronto reserve team coach who has since used Nelson in a further 13 games. “He has developed a confidence that enables him to succeed and perform each and every week.”

Again, playing at the Under-17 World Cup in Brazil held particular significance. Nelson grew up studying videos of Ronaldinho and the way he runs is more than a little similar: right foot repeatedly kissing the ball, silky body feints and stepovers. “I like how he took players on and how his motto was always to play free,” he says of the former Barcelona star. “It’s something I try to implement in my game too.”

Nelson – who is also eligible to represent Jamaica – netted five times, including a hat-trick against Guatemala, to help secure Canada’s place at November’s tournament. Yet with his country having never won a World Cup game at six previous Under-17 competitions, he was always unlikely to prove more than a tournament footnote. Three defeats sent Canada home after a week, but if one player did not deserve to be on the losing side in a cruel 1-0 defeat by New Zealand, it was the big-haired number 11 who fans nicknamed ‘The Canadian Valderrama’.

Nelson proved a tireless menace as Canada dominated possession. He had a goal chalked off by the video assistant referee and his constant dribbling was appreciated by the vocal Brazilian crowd, if not always by his coaches. There is, after all, a fine line between self-assurance and selfishness. “When you are facing four or five guys, it’s probably not the best time to go it alone,” says Rabasca. “Jayden has his strengths, but now he needs to learn how to incorporate his talent to the benefit of the team.”

For his part, Nelson – consistently described as humble and respectful by those who know him best – is aware his decision-making must improve if he is to realise his dream. “Honestly, since I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be a professional soccer player,” he says. “I knew I played for fun, but also knew I could go far because of the comments I was getting.

“Going forward, I’m going to be playing with older, smarter and bigger players, so I need to know when to dribble and when to pass. If I train more, work harder and stay humble though, I like to think 2026 is a realistic goal.”

Read More

[aurimeanswind]

Opening at the Close—Sunday Chats (12-3-17)

This is the last first Sunday of 2017, which is crazy to think. We are in the final stretch of 2017, arguably one of the worst political years for the US ever, one of my most difficult personal years, and also one of if not definitively the best years for video games.

The Written Word, 1000x Over

What’s also coming to a close is my habit of writing every day about games. It’s been a big project and exercise for me, and this week I will hit 1000 consecutive days writing, and then I plan on taking some well-earned days off, creatively. I’m sure my mind will still be buzzing with ideas, as it always is, but I think I’ve learned there is a bit of a balance with that; a give and take to putting in so much work.

I’ve got something going up on Tuesday over on IrrationalPassions.com that anyone interested in my writing career over the last 1000 days should definitely check out. I want it to be generally a surprise, the format at least, but it’ll be worth a read I hope. 

Today, in the spirit of this big thing I’ve been doing for nearly 3 years ending, I asked you all, lovely readers of Sunday Chats, to tell me a project that you embarked on for a great amount of time, and where it left you at its close. Writing is one of those things that I think will be inherent to a lot of my work going forward, no matter what, but it’s definitely changed a lot for me over this time. And I think big projects can do that to you, and how you feel at the end of them really have an effect on what you do in the future. They instill this knowledge that you carry with you.

Whether its a podcast, a website, a show, or something else entirely, I think there were a lot of great stories written in for Sunday Chats this week, so let’s take a look at them.

Boy howdy that sounds like an undertaking. I’ve been a bit familiar with script writing because I’ve looked at it as something I maybe wanted to do at some point, and the whole different look and feel for script writing really threw me off. 

But I can’t imagine that just because I can’t really see myself successfully setting up a scene or a shot. Now you, Ben, obviously I can see you doing it. You’re like Mr. Film Studies in my heart of hearts. That’s really incredible. I don’t know if you plan on selling the script or shooting it or making it happen, but I believe in you.

Good luck finishing it, and good luck with the rewrites. I know you can do it.

I think that feeling of moving on is natural. I think there are parts of IP that have felt that way for me too, and things have changed so much in that regard. 

But I think the managing people, and a team, that’s the thing to hold onto. That’s something that takes a level of dedication that I believe gets undersold a lot, because it demands so much of you and who you are. That person starts to change from the person you are with your friends to the one you are with your team, and that relationship is always different. At least, this is always in my experience. 

But that’s super rad! Running a theatre sounds like just... my god so much work. I think about budgets and sets and costumes, let alone actors, and people flaking, and choosing productions, and the upkeep on the technical side of things (lights, mics, etc). It’s like running a live TV show or a set, only there is no take-backsies when someone drops an F-bomb in frustration when they mess something up mid show, which I doubt happens but I feel like would happen all the time if I was in theatre.

PS: 300 days is not measly.

That’s a huge bit. For folks who don’t know, SMYN was a really important show to me and my personal growth, but also knowing when to put something to rest is a big thing too. 

It’s something I think about with Irrational Passions Podcast a lot, a show that isn’t necessarily in the running to be cancelled or anything here, but all good things must end, so it’s a long hard look at what that ending is, and where it goes from there.

But that show also clearly had a huge impact on your life beyond that. Just like IP has been for me, I think podcasting turns out to be one of the most oddly social experiences out there, not necessarily because of the listeners, but because of the guests and other podcasters you meet along the way.

Oh this, this definitely hits close to home. Being the editor is hard, because not only are you motivating people, but you’re also taking what they have then been motivated to write, and sending it back to them with red lines all over it.

But that coordination of getting an actual product done at the end of it all is something I don’t know. I think seeing the name in the print is a big deal. I only ever had one thing published for my college newspaper when I took my journalism class, and it was assuredly not my proudest work. I think if you look back and feel that pride, especially over two years, that you did something great, even if you had to carry the paper on your back sometimes.

Yeah that mid-project reflection is always fun. And I think if you look at how that show has changed as far as having guests and format, you should be proud. It’s become something with multiple voices that is something new and different every week, and I think that’s cool. We try and emulate that same feeling with guests on IP.

I love the feeling of collaborating with folks just as passionate and into something as you are. It’s been one of the best parts about Farm to Tower, which is hosted by four/five of the “hosts” of their own shows, so it’s kind of a powerhouse set of different ideas and personalities meshing together. 

But that’s awesome to feel surrounded with folks like that. I’m super happy to hear that man. I need to check out this show!

Christ, how I didn’t know Cameron’s character in this pilot episode was named Xander O’Neill until just now is embarrassing...

Now I love this too because Guide-work never gets thanked for it. This is the grunt work of all grunt work, and especially on something like Dark Souls, which just sounds so arduous. 

But that’s awesome, and I’m sure some folks still use those guides today too. It’s kind of a piece that keeps living on. Again, thankless work. But you’re one of the hardest working motherfuckers out there Jake, so I know you put in 120% on that.

Ah Mr. Journalist and published author over here!

Another thing, like the newspaper, that is about building it up, tearing it down, and the result is a physical thing in your hand. I think holding that first published book in your hands is a feeling like... well, I can’t even imagine, honestly. That’s hugely impressive.

But it’s cool to know how long it took because I’ve known about The Spy and the Maven (a great tile, btw) for a while but I never had a good grasp on the timeline.

That’s still so rad, and people should read. Hell, I should read it. Now what do I have to do to be the voice of narration on the audiobook?

That’s really incredible! But whoa, 98-person class of graduates? That is crazy small. Mine was maybe close to 500? I think? Maybe 400? I don’t exactly remember, but there were a lot of us.

I’ve always wanted to do one of those deep-dive documentary style videos that has interviews and reflections and big, emotional looks back. And to be in charge of something like that for high school sounds really taxing, but also rewarding. The best part is I’m sure not only you look back on that fondly, but everyone in that class too, thinks of that thing as a great endnote to all that work.

Ahh yeah, there is always the project that doesn’t come to light. Honestly, I’m surprised this is the first one mentioned so far in these submissions.

I think it’s easy to be discouraged at it not coming to light, but those six months were assuredly not wasted. You spent time with people, you collaborated, and you made something, whether it released or not. Those skills were still put to use and used and crafted, so I think you look back at what you gained personally from something like that, and there is nothing to be discouraged about.

That’s incredibly awesome though, I’ll definitely look into this VR demo, just to see what it was all about. I hope in future, your next project, gets to see the light of day, and I wish you all the best luck in that.

Yeah and I very much understand this since you’ve been talking about it with me. I think that’s totally normal, wanting to stretch outside of the realm you are in because, at times, it can feel confining. It’s almost how I feel with writing now that I’ve “been in it” for so long.

But you can take that meticulous skill and apply it to something going forward. It’ll just make whatever the next kind of thing you work on that much better. 

And I hope all the folks that post in the YouTube comments talking about how hot those transitions are (see: me) made you at least feel a bit better about it.

I really would want to see this thesis. Obviously huge years for video games, especially with the release of the Wii, and I’d love to see your argument for them. But you should be proud of that. In all the things that folks have been able to walk away with from their projects, a degree is definitely fucking up there!

That’s awesome! Another look in the project, or a look from within. I think taking something apart and really picking at it on an analytical level has been some of the best and most fun writing I have engaged with. Those case studies, scripts for a new show I have been writing forever, have been those kinds of things, and really sitting in something, especially games, is incredibly satisfying for me.

What I love here too is that you’ve found something that speaks very directly to you too. I’ve been hearing all the good vibes on Night in the Woods lately, and I may have to see it before year’s end.

Thank you all, so much, for your stories and your projects. There were a few others that were submitted but they didn’t quite fit the format like the rest of these did. Or they were just jokes. Which is fine, but these all were too good not to highlight. I tried to get my friend Jazz to write in about her winning awards in journalism for reporting on excessive force from the police on her college campus, because it’s like, one of the (many) things I am incredibly proud of her for, but I figured I’d just embarrass her by giving her a shoutout here.

These projects remind me a ton of my writing one I am in right now, and of course, Irrational Passions, which had grown and mutated in ways I couldn’t expect. The running theme is exhaustion, pride, and many other mixed feelings. Thank you all for sharing these. I’ll let you know how I feel at the end of writing when it’s over in... well, two days. 

I wanted to write about games in this Chats as well, but it’s just far too long, and far too good to spoil. I have many thoughts of Wolfenstein 2, that’s really all. 

But it’s worth noting that even though I may not be writing everyday going forward, I don’t see Sunday Chats ending anytime soon. People just seem to like it too much, and I definitely love it.

But until next Sunday, at the very least,

keep it real.

[broadcaststorm]

Cisco Live 2017 - A new experience even for the 9th time

Cisco Live US (Las Vegas) has come and gone - quite honestly, this year was a very different experience for me. First, I didn't know I was going until 2 weeks before the conference - which leads to many challenges I'll describe below. Second, my wife came to the conference on a social pass for the very first time (to Cisco Live and to Las Vegas). Third, unlike my previous eight Cisco Live events (starting with "Party Like It's 1989" in 2009), I did not attend as a customer. I was not weighed down with a significant training, certification, and vendor meet-and-greet checklist that had no hopes of getting done in the conference's 5 days.

Late but great - learning side of CLUS 2017

In previous years, I have registered as early as 9 months before the conference began. NetVet status secured. Early access to scheduling sessions. I never had to worry about not getting a session I wanted - instead it was the usual multiple week drama in March or April trying to select one of the 5 classes (all of which I absolutely wanted to attend) because each one only had one offering, all of course being at the same day and time.

No - this year was quite the opposite for as any Cisco Live late scheduler knows, it doesn't take long for the popular sessions to get full and start the seemingly futile "wait list" game. Registering two weeks before the conference translates into playing that game for just about every session. So a different tactic for identifying and attending sessions was in order.

The short, short version (TL;DR even though that tag is sooo 2016) - unlike previous years of shotgun selection of various topics (based on in-flight or near term projects), I opted to have laser focus on two subject areas (VXLAN fabrics and SD-Access, if you’re curious).  Since scheduling sessions met with frequent "session is full" road blocks, most everything of interest ended up as a "favorite". The scheduler calendar view can't handle that many favorites though - even if there aren't many actual scheduled sessions.

However, you can get all schedule and favorites together in one view by printout out your schedule. It comes out in agenda format instead of calendar style but it is easily referenced - and is complete with room assignments. From there, the last task: rank the favorites so you know what your priorities are.

The first casualty of war is the battle plan

So, the plan of attack focused around one aspect of scheduling sessions that is communicated (by Cisco Live) but really isn't fully appreciated (by attendees): just because you scheduled the session doesn't guarantee you a seat. Many an attendee has been heard (or tweeted) complaining about not being given access to the session even though the had it scheduled. You see - 5 minutes BEFORE the session starts, anyone not scheduled but queued up will be allowed into the session. Once fire code room occupancy is reached, no session for you!

This is where my printout of favorites came into play - by knowing which of my favorite sessions were occurring and in which room it is occurring, I could very easily scout each location ahead of time to get an idea of the room size and interest in the session (queue size).

Now, regarding those complaints of being scheduled but not having a seat: in full disclosure, there were several sessions where the "wait list" line was admitted well before 5 minutes prior - leading to some legitimate grievances. However, for the most part, the 5 minute rule was honored - I know, because I was in many of those lines!

My strategy worked extremely well. With one exception, I got into every session for which I had registered or was marked as first favorite.

Phenomenal cosmic content, itty bitty little living space

Which brings me to that one exception and an area that the conference must simply do better at - room size selection as a function of the subject matter. I am relatively confident there is no reasonably accurate crystal ball which can properly anticipate subject interest (as a function of subject topic, attendees and other concurrently scheduled sessions) to then properly match the room size.

But - as Lee Corso is fond of saying - not so fast. The one, central (technical) theme at the conference (and arguably the most important) was "The Network. Intuitive" - around which a new platform of switching hardware and Software Defined Access was launched. Not surprisingly, there were sessions that covered multiple aspects of this new message and platform.

And, in an encouraging sign to Cisco leadership, every single session related to the new Catalyst 9K or SDA applied to "X" (wireless, e.g.) was full (from what I heard of the ones I didn't try) - and understandably so as there should be a large amount of interest in a new launch.

However, the "sold out" nature of those sessions needs a bit more context (such as when a substance or lifestyle behavior doubles your risk of cancer... from 1 in a billion to 2 in a billion).  My limited statistics, personal experience noticed that each SDA/Cat9K session for which I was interested was allotted a smaller room size than other topics.  As an example, and I'm horrible at head count estimates but, an overview of building VXLAN fabrics (2 yr old topic) was being held a room for 1000 people but was less than 50% attended... while the banner launch material for the new Cat9K and SD-Access were held in rooms for 150-200 people.

And, keep in mind, while the public announcement of the Catalyst 9000 was the week prior to Cisco Live, there were internal and partner launches prior to that. I’m sure the public session catalog couldn't say anything until the week before but otherwise it could not have been a surprise what the new launch and message at Cisco Live was going to be.

In short, the last minute scheduler take away is this: it worked and worked well for me.  Keep in mind there are high demand subjects (like new launches at the conference) that can divert you so just remain flexible - and that’s where many pre-prioritized “favorite” sessions in each time slot help immensely. 

The remains of the day

It was another record setting year for the U.S. edition of Cisco Live - early estimates of 28,000 attendees, use of multiple Vegas venues (for better or worse) to support the expanded content and activities, etc.  Despite the frantic run up I had prior to the conference started, I had a much more laid back experience in attending this year - simply because I had a narrow session focus and an open (social) engagement agenda.

Everyone should keep in mind that any conference will have logistical challenges arise. The real measure of a conference hangs on: (during the event) what's the response and (after the event) were they preventable and how are they prevented next year.

The latter requires awareness (conference surveys and Cisco Live blog reviews) so make your opinion be known! I can honestly tell you that Cisco is survey driven (to a fault sometimes!) and they do listen. Just look at Justin Cohen's blog about CLUS 2016 meals for further proof - the egg and cheese options this year hit the spot!

As for "live response" during the conference, the conference does a great job making important information known through social media - and for that, we have Kathleen Mudge (@KathleenMudge) and the Social Media team to thank!

For example, when lunch meals ran out on Thursday, many folks left (upset of course) and went to find their own lunch on their dime. Less than 15 minutes from event staff turning people from the lunch hall, the Social Media team was announcing that lunch vouchers were being issued - a $20 tweet right there.

Not sure when seating for the keynotes was opening up?  Tweet the question to @CiscoLive to find out... or, if you follow them (with notifications turned on), they were pro-actively posting that information.

Or, received that awesome #DEVNET solar 8000 mAh charger?  How about a reminder not to pack it in your luggage?

Better yet, unexpected punny banter with the team that just makes you laugh.

Wrap up

As I started off saying, this was my ninth straight Cisco Live. I am a Cisco Live champion/evangelist - for technology training for engineers in all stages of their career, to learning about ecosystem products, to #DEVNET, to engaging fellow engineers - whether at meal time, receptions, or in the Social Media Hub lounge.

While I think there are real growing challenges the conference is experiencing, it is worth the effort and the expense to get there.  The experience is definitely worth it - even after 9 straight conferences.

Disclosure

These thoughts, observations, and opinions are mine and mine alone.  No one asked me to write them or publish them.  As I said, I am passionate about Cisco Live and love personally writing about it to help people enjoy it more fully.  If you have trouble believing that, feel free to check out my previous blog posts about Cisco Live.

That being said, I am now a Cisco employee (Virtual Systems Engineer, Data Center) and am completely unaffiliated with the conference planning and execution. These are my words and not the words of Cisco.

[buildercar]

New Post has been published on http://www.buildercar.com/horacio-pagani-from-supercars-to-a-new-factory/

Horacio Pagani: From Supercars to a New Factory

Horacio Pagani hasn’t forgotten what it was like to be a young car enthusiast stranded half a world away in Argentina, desperate to work at one of the supercar makers of Italy’s Motor Valley. So now that he builds supercars of his own in the very same valley, his attitude to access is egalitarian. His cars cost millions, yet for about $37 anyone can book a tour of his new factory, and unlike Ferrari’s policy you don’t have to be a customer. As I arrive, a small group of tourists is being shown around. They’re busy photographing the carbon-fiber washbasins in the bathrooms.

They’re also among the first ever admitted, and I’m the first journalist. Pagani, 61, isn’t an architect, but he designed the place himself with the same verve and originality he injects into his cars. You’ll find the occasional direct reference to them throughout the facility. It’s an extraordinary place, and the fact it exists at all is even more extraordinary given the difficulty of establishing an automaker from scratch.

A completed Huayra BC awaits shipping in the new factory’s main assembly area. Yes, that’s plastic wrap on the tires. Behind it, two more BCs take shape.

Although his company hasn’t yet acquired the same fame or scale or racing success as the houses that Enzo Ferrari and Ferruccio Lamborghini built, few others have been able to develop a supercar largely unaided as Pagani has. And though he’s inextricably linked with those Italian legends, given his history and factory location he’s arguably better compared to engineers such as Gordon Murray or Ettore Bugatti—men who ran benign dictatorships that tended to produce better-engineered cars.

“A car has to make you dream. … If a car can light you up every time you see it, it has done its job.”

When Pagani walks into his factory, there’s the usual flurry of activity that surrounds the arrival of a very important person. Conversations end abruptly as attention swivels in the direction of the man who has become one of the great figures of Motor Valley in his own right, though he’s far from the uptight, needy attention-seeker type. A diminutive, avuncular figure, he’s dressed for our meeting in a Pagani tracksuit top (the zipper pull is in the shape of his trademark quad exhaust pipes), purple jeans, and gray Diadora sneakers. Abundant salt and pepper hair is pushed up and away from his face.

Pagani explains how his customers specify what they desire for their cars. Nothing he or his company offers is left to chance.

We’re having coffee before taking the tour, and his sharp, expressive eyes dart around behind thin-framed glasses. They settle on a spotlight in the ceiling of the room. It isn’t pointing in the right direction. He summons son Leonardo, named after da Vinci, who supervised the factory’s construction. Leonardo appears with a ladder and aims the spotlight correctly.

You might be familiar with Pagani’s story. Born in Argentina to Italian immigrant parents, by his early 20s he had designed and built his own open-wheel Formula 2 car. But local work as an automotive designer and engineer was limited to making camper-van conversions. So in 1983 he set off for Italy with little more in his pocket than a couple letters of introduction to the titans of Motor Valley from none other than favorite Argentinian son Juan Manuel Fangio, which helped him get a menial job at Lamborghini.

“When you are selling cars before you have made them, your sense of responsibility toward your clients increases dramatically.”

His rise was meteoric, but his thinking eventually became uncomfortably constrained by his employer. The Countach Evoluzione concept he led the development of was among the first road cars ever constructed with a composite chassis, cutting a third of the mass from the standard car. But Lamborghini wouldn’t invest in an autoclave to make its own carbon fiber, so Pagani borrowed the money to buy one of his own and installed it at the company. He took the autoclave with him when he left to found Modena Design in 1991.

Early efforts 
such as this F2 racer won the attention of Juan Manuel Fangio.When Pagani found work at Lamborghini, Fangio would stay in the family’s two-bedroom apartment. The faded snapshots now hang on the wall of the factory.

There he made carbon-fiber parts for Ferrari’s Formula 1 team, among others. He started devel-opment work on his first car—the Pagani Zonda—in 1993, and it was shown at the Geneva show in 1999. His first factory and that autoclave have been overwhelmed by demand ever since. I ask him why, when dozens of other sports car and supercar startups have failed in that same amount of time.

“All the engineering and technology must be at the highest possible level,” Pagani says in Italian. “But the client doesn’t buy a car because it weighs a few kilos less than another. The client probably doesn’t give a damn about that fact. The car has to give you a strong emotion. A car has to make you dream. It has to light you up. If a car can light you up every time you see it, it has done its job.”

The new Pagani factory is a couple minutes down the road from his old production facility in San Cesario sul Panaro, near Modena. With a footprint about the size of a large car dealership, it isn’t exactly huge, but the facility will eventually allow the company to double production to roughly 50 cars per year.

“We designed all of it, my sons Leonardo and Christopher, our design team, and me” he says, waving a hand around. “Everything reflects our way of thinking, even our bath-rooms. We didn’t use an architect.

“The support of my family has been very important because I have been able to concentrate on the cars. I couldn’t forget about that side of things. I think the results are OK.”

He takes me outside into the public area, an L-shaped space that houses the museum on one side and a customer area on the other. Its steel frame supports vast glass walls and was inspired by an iron-framed greenhouse designed by Gustave Eiffel on the grounds of the French chateau of one of Pagani’s customers. Some of the steel beams have been designed to look like a Pagani suspension arm.

“The theme is the same as you see in our cars,” Pagani continues. “Our inspiration is Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo was a designer. He studied engineering and combined the technology of 500 years ago with art. And that’s what we attempt to do. We pay attention to the aesthetics, even the parts that aren’t visible. Like the suspension arm, we want it to stand alone as a beautiful thing that could be exhibited in a display case. We care about beauty. It’s a word the world has almost forgotten. But because the Italians created beautiful things in the past, we have a responsibility to keep beauty in mind.”

A dozen or so Zondas and Huayras are on display alongside a Lamborghini Countach 25th Anniversary, his Renault-engined F2 car, and a mini moto he made in his teens. It’s an extraordinary sight. This is the only place in the world other than perhaps Monterey Car Week (see page 102) where you can use the phrase “lots of Paganis.” The company bought back some of its early cars from customers because the founder couldn’t afford the luxury of keeping them for posterity in the early years. Their climbing values would have made them a good investment. The museum’s back wall is adorned with memorabilia, including the letter Fangio wrote to introduce Pagani to Enzo Ferrari.

“We could increase our profits to 500 million euros a year. But I don’t give a damn about that kind of thing.”

He leads me from the museum through a brick corridor and into the main assembly area. It has Roman arched windows that frame a finished and perfectly lit Huayra BC parked in the final inspection area. “Outside, everything is made of steel and glass,” he says. “Inside, we have tried to create an Italian flavor, right down to the bricks and the type of construction, and marble from Carrara—many things to make the project feel Italian.”

Pagani’s steel and glass architecture means his cars can be seen in natural light, even during harsh northern Italian winters. This is a 739-hp, track-only Zonda R from 2009 with a V-12 engine from the CLK GTR Le Mans car. If you ask nicely, they can still make you one.

And I thought the Ferrari factory was the most Italian place in Italy. Pagani has decided to out-Italian the old guard but with a sense of humor. The main assembly area is about the size of four tennis courts and is laid out like a piazza. There are original street lights, and in one corner sits a brick campanile, or bell tower, complete with a bell that tolls on the hour, sourced from a foundry established in the 15th century. Pagani needed to disguise an elevator shaft and thought this might be a fun way to do it. As he shows it to me, a worker strolls past whistling the theme to “The Godfather.” Maybe they do that for every foreign visitor.

The atmosphere is more like a high-end furniture showroom than a car factory. It’s quiet and smells nice, chiefly because little dirty work is done here. This is mainly an assembly operation: The cars are bolted together from a menu of exquisite parts, mostly made by outside suppliers and delivered in cut-foam trays like jewelry. Although the engine, gearbox, trim, and paint are outsourced to other suppliers—and there’s no shortage of good ones nearby—the carbon fiber could only be done in-house. Its intelligent, beautiful use has defined Pagani’s career.

So in a room on the mezzanine (where there are fewer dust particles than at ground level) held at a precise 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees F) and reverberating to a bad ’80s rock station playing Toto’s “Hold the Line,” about a dozen people, mostly women, press every curve of a Pagani into a mold by hand. Other carmakers might claim to build their products by hand, but panels are generally stamped out by a press. On a Pagani, every sinew really has been formed by hand. It’s the modern equivalent of the way a coachbuilder in the past would have shaped a panel with an English wheel. The idea of having a minor crash in one and asking these people to start that vast rear clamshell all over again is too embarrassing to contemplate. As I visit, they are making the first pieces for the new Huayra Roadster. Even at roughly $2.4 million apiece, all 100 were sold to existing Pagani customers before the silk was pulled off the car during the 2017 Geneva auto show.

Pagani’s back catalog. The Countach 25th Anniversary was his work too and a big seller, if not the prettiest of that model.

“When you are selling cars before you have made them, your sense of responsibility toward your clients increases dramatically,” Pagani says. “That’s why all of us, not just me, have to give so much more than we ever imagined. Why? Because the clients trust us. They send payment for something that they will have in two years, and we use the money they send to build the car. That’s a lot of faith.”

The same faith might allow him to expand the output of this new factory far beyond 50 cars each year. But in contrast to other CEOs who talk endlessly of expansion, Pagani would like to keep things this way.

“We arrived in 1999. That was the starting point, day one,” he reflects. “Without any financial support it was a very, very difficult task. But we believed in it, and we did it. We not only created a new way of building cars, but we created a name. Now we could create a second line of cars, thousands more of them, to increase our profits to 500 million euros a year. But I don’t give a damn about that kind of thing. We never wanted to be a second Ferrari or Lamborghini. With respect to the love and passion for Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati, and the motor history of Modena, we want to be something small but intelligent. We want to be here, in our place.”

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Why I want to get married again

When people whether or not I’m happy I always find it difficult to answer the question. Compared to what?

In 2011 career advice blogger Penelope Trunk wrote, “The culmination of my four-year obsession with happiness research is that I think people need to choose between an interesting life or happy life.” The post is a questionnaire which tells you whether you’re the kind of person who makes choices that lead to greater happiness or the kind of person whose choices maximize their interesting experiences.

I read that post, and it clicked for me why I wanted to leave Alabama. It helped me see that, yes, moving to a new city where I knew almost no one and had to re-learn how to do everything wasn’t going to make me happy. That wasn’t the point. It was going to be interesting. I saw that I will never be happy. I tried really hard in Alabama to be happy. It’s not who I am. It’s not what I value. Now I don’t know whether I don’t value it because I see it as impossible or I see it as impossible because I don’t value it.

I do know that since 2011 and now more happiness research has come out that making choices that maximize happiness can actually decrease well-being. That’s because well-being requires meaning, and happiness requires comfort. And meaning and comfort do not coexist very well.

Happiness is a hard word to wrap one’s mind around because it encompasses and hints at so many things. But something like comfort is a little more narrow. I was uncomfortable in Alabama. I was uncomfortable and bored. So, I made the choice. If I’m going to be uncomfortable anyway, I might as well be uncomfortable while I’m engaged in something I find interesting.

The thing that I was looking for that I didn’t realize I was looking for when I left Alabama was meaning. I wanted to matter to something and someone outside of myself. Religion had always provided that to me but as I began rejecting religious dogmas I had to also abandon the safety net of meaning and significance religion had provided me.

Megan McArdle just published It’s Divorce Season , which encourages couples to wait out the high-divorce month of January before calling it quits. Her reasoning is simple. Since the research shows you’ll be about equally as happy whether you stay together or divorce, why put yourself through all that discomfort?

Well, as someone who’s gotten divorced, I’ll tell you. Because divorce can help you build a more meaningful and interesting life.

It’s interesting to use happiness as a reason to stay married or get divorced. Why not personal growth? Why not measure how embedded you are in your community? Meaning, interestingness, self-actualization, etc. There are so many other, arguable more important, considerations.

If you can’t tell, I don’t regret my divorce. Do I wish had built a more meaningful and interesting life with my ex-husband? I guess. But the reason I got divorced is that I did not believe I could build one that was meaningful and interesting enough while still married to him. I’ll never know whether I was right or wrong. It doesn’t really matter.

What you might not have guessed is that I want to get remarried. Not to the same man. He’s a good man but we are not well-suited to each other.

I want to get married. But I do not believe it will make me happier. As McArdle pointed out, the research is clear that life events like marriage, divorce, even losing a limb or winning the lottery, don’t, on average, have a lasting impact on your baseline level of happiness.

I want to get married because I believe marrying the man I have in mind will help me build a more meaningful and interesting life. I believe it will help me in practical ways. Married people are wealthier and healthier on average than their single peers. Worrying about money and being sick are boring. Especially when you’ve been doing it for 31 years. I want that time and mental energy back so I can put to better uses. I’m marrying him because I know I can be wealthier and healthier with him than without him.

If I get married sometime between February 2, 2018 and February 1, 2019 it’ll be ten years exactly between my first and second marriages. The reason I can’t regret my divorce is that the decade between has been so good for me. I’ve used it very, very well. I haven’t been happy. I certainly have not been comfortable. But it’s been a decade I’ve found incredibly interesting and somewhat meaningful.

In the six years since my divorce I’ve resisted marrying again, despite several tempting offers. I always thought my refusal had to do with my incompatibility with the men offering. And it did, to an extent, for sure. But now I see how much the idea of marrying repulsed/scared/bored me. It scared and bored me for the same reason. Because I knew I hadn’t yet learned enough to do it much better this time.

Any marriage will be, in very important ways, less interesting than what I’ve done instead, which is meet and love and fuck and get to know and horrify and delight a lot of men. Each of them has taught me so much, about the world, and about myself. How could I trade infinite possibilities for the banality of believing I know who I’m going to grow old with?

Well the reason is this. I knew comfort conflicted with interestingness and meaning. Recently, very recently, I’ve come to recognize that interestingness and meaning conflict as well.

I am in still in love with all my exes. But I have one ex that I am least “over.” And he’s not the one I married. He’s the one I still think about all the time, the one I’ve had the most trouble accepting that I won’t get to marry anytime soon. Because I want to get married, and because I want to do a better job this time, I asked him recently what made me hard to live with. He told me. He told me I was selfish, and that I took criticism very poorly. That I often seemed to believe that I did not need to change.

He is right. I am selfish, and I do take criticism poorly.

He would have married me, despite my faults, because he knew I could and would change. But I rejected the offer because I didn’t want him to marry who he hoped I would become.

I found his feedback on me so very interesting. It was humbling and hurtful and offensive, of course. But mostly it’s so incredibly kind and flattering to have been known by someone I admire, respect, and love so much. And who is willing to humble, hurt, and offend me at no benefit to himself out of love for me, because it might help me grow into a better person. I hurt him very deeply, first with the myriad selfish and clueless things I did, then by refusing to believe that his criticism of my behavior was perceptive and well-intended. It hurt him that I so often didn’t think that changing my behavior according to his suggestions would make me a better person.

Here’s the thing. Marry someone who you trust to criticize you fairly. Marry someone you believe is trying to make you a better person, and who you believe is wise enough to counsel you on how to act. Because while I learned a lot about the world from these myriad men, this ex gave me something far more interesting, something only someone who loves me could. He gave me the opportunity to meet and get to know myself. I mostly squandered that opportunity while I was with him because I too often thought he was trying to hurt my feelings instead of make me a better person. I too often thought he didn’t know enough about how to be a good person to teach me how to do it. But mostly I too often confused criticism of my behavior with a rejection of me. I didn’t understand the difference between, “You did a bad thing,” and “You are a bad person.” Between, “I want you to stop doing that,” and “This makes me not want to be with you anymore.”

Marry someone who trusts you to criticize them fairly. Early in our relationship I asked one of my exes what he did wrong in his past relationships. He thought for a second and said — I shit you not — “Nothing really.” I guaran-damn-tee you he’s walking away from this relationship with roughly the same attitude. Even when I was leaving him, he could only focus on what was wrong with me that I would want to leave. He never stopped to think for a second, “This is a sane, rational person who I want to be with. What do I need to change about myself to make her want to continue to be with me? What do I need to change about myself so I don’t make the same mistakes again in my next relationship?” He did the same thing to me that I did to my ex. He did not trust me to tell him how to behave differently because he thought he was already better at relationships than I am because he was so much more familiar with more my flaws and failings than his own.

My next marriage will be more interesting because I will not waste time with a man who I don’t trust to see me accurately and show me who I am for the purpose of making me better. Nor will I waste time with a man who doesn’t trust that I see him accurately and can show him who he is for the purpose of making him better.

Early on in our relationship I told the man I want to marry some things that he could do better. And folks, I’ll be damned if he didn’t change those things about himself. Not for me, we weren’t that close yet anyway. For himself. Because he genuinely wanted to be a better person and he trusted my advice on how to become one.

The ex also sent me a TED talk on how to look at love. The basic premise was that the purpose of love isn’t to make you happy. Love can and should be meaningful. Love isn’t about what love can do for you at all. It’s about what you can do for someone else.

Last night I was talking to my mom and she said that she feels sad when people talk about marriage as hard work. She said that with the right person, it’s not. I didn’t get married to anyone I dated over the past six years because just getting along with them was such hard work. It was hard work because we were constantly hurting each other’s feelings accidentally and then instead of smoothly accepting responsibility and working toward change, we were both blaming each other, getting defensive, etc.

I liken it to writing. If you find it difficult to put words on a page, if that’s the hard part of writing for you, you’re not a writer. You’re in the wrong profession. Go do something else. Writing is the easy part. Research, interviews, editing, promotion, those are the hard parts. Those are what turn good writing to a great piece of work.

Similarly, if getting along, living together, day-to-day shit is difficult, you’re in the wrong relationship (or, like me, you’re immature and not really ready for any relationship). Career progression, volunteering, being there for your friends when they need you, participating in the community, these are what take a self-centered, shallow relationship that’s aimed at feeling good and turn it into a meaningful partnership aimed at something higher.

Finding out what makes my partner feel loved and figuring out how to do it is the only hard work I want to put into my marriage. Getting along is not something I want to spend any more time struggling with. I wish I’d known that the point of my relationship with my ex wasn’t to make me happy or to make my life more comfortable or even to make it more interesting. I wish I’d known that the point of my relationship with my ex was to create meaning for myself in finding ways to make his life more pleasant, meaningful, and interesting.

The meaning is in loving him, and in doing so freeing up his time and energy so he can love others in our community. I knew I wanted the benefits of marriage like division of labor, specialization, and economies of scale. What I didn’t know was that the point of these efficiency gains is to help him waste less time chasing money, sex, and entertainment so he has more time for meaningful pursuits.

The meaning is in learning who I am through him, and becoming a better person by listening to his advice.

I will never again love someone who thinks they are better than me at things they are not better than me at. Because that person won’t listen to me about how to get better, even though they should. They rob me of the opportunity to find meaning by making them better. And I will never again think I am better than my husband at things I am not better than him at. by doing so I have robbed myself of the opportunity to find meaning through self-improvement.

I believe that I can become a better person by listening to the man I want to marry about how to behave because I believe that he can see me accurately if I am honest about who I am. I know that I can make him a better person because I’ve seen him see himself accurately, trust my advice, and make big, important changes. And I believe that I can make his life more pleasant, meaningful, and interesting. These things are interesting and meaningful to me.

It will be difficult for me to learn how to be honest with him. I do not feel known or understood yet. Nor do I feel like I know and understand him. I’m still keeping certain things to myself and trying to hide or downplay things about myself that I’m ashamed of because I like him so much and am so impressed with him. It will be difficult for me to learn how to be vulnerable in front of him. It will be difficult for me to admit when I feel jealous or petty or hurt over nothing because I’m ashamed of those feelings. I’ll have to learn to trust that he sees me accurately despite my attempts to obscure and hide. I’ll have to learn to trust that his criticism is well-intended and valid. And I’ll have to trust that he’s being honest about when and how I make his life more pleasant, meaningful, and interesting. And when I’m not.

This time, ten years later, I finally am beginning to understand what I want to get out of marriage, which is the same thing as what I have to give. I don’t want to work on getting along or being happy. Those aren’t goals worth pursuing. I want to work on deriving meaning from meeting his needs. I want a marriage that enables us both to create more value than we would on our own. I want to orient my marriage around allowing us both to work harder for others than we did before we married. Because we are better people than we were when we met.

Why I want to get married again was originally published on

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F-Bombs Away!

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/f-bombs-away/

F-Bombs Away!

The surprise attack on Hawaii came on a quiet Sunday morning, and it fell to the president of the United States to rally a confused and stricken nation one day later in a momentous address to Congress:

“Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941—a date which will live as totally fucked up—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of Japan.”

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That’s the power of language at work. And who can forget the image of an American commander in chief in Berlin on the front lines of the Cold War: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this fucking wall.”

Let’s be mature about this. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan both surely dropped a choice word or two in private, even on solemn subjects like Pearl Harbor and Soviet tyranny. Democrat Beto O’Rourke, meanwhile, has not actually signaled that he will make the F-bomb a central part of his rhetorical arsenal in the unlikely event he becomes the next president.

He is, however, apparently hoping that vulgarity will be an engine of his political revival in the Democratic presidential contest. In doing so, he is part of a confluence of factors serving to mainstream what once counted as the most forbidden entry in the roster of four-letter words.

Notice to reader: The examples above are just two of 14 profanities in this story. Editors decided to skip the coy dashes and asterisks and more straightforward [expletive deleteds]. How else to handle it when a candidate for president infuses a policy statement after a horrific mass shooting with the phrase, “This is fucked up”?

On social media and in interviews, O’Rourke’s profanity has proved to be something of a political Rorschach test.

Pro: He has found a searing and even eloquent way of cutting through the madness and violence of the age. The real obscenity, by these lights, is routine mass shootings and the paralytic response they engender from the governing class, to which O’Rourke’s incredulity is a powerfully authentic rejoinder.

Con: O’Rourke’s profanity is risible, a perfect summary of a campaign that even before was mocked for its alleged preening and Wayne’s World affect. Even if the first time he dropped the F-bomb came as a genuine outburst, his repetition on Twitter and now official campaign T-shirts reveals calculation and contrivance—making his vulgarities the opposite of the authenticity they supposedly convey.

Either way, the Texan’s coarse language is a frivolous dimension of a serious question for Democrats: Should progressive leaders confront the rawness and norm-shattering nature of President Donald Trump’s political style with something similar? Or should they stand for a return to standards that used to be assumed for any presidential contender—including language reflecting the gravity of the office, or at a minimum was G-rated?

Before O’Rourke, the public figure who arguably was most notorious for his prolific use of the F-word was Rahm Emanuel, who kept the salty parlance of a political operative even as he became a member of Congress, White House chief of staff, and mayor of Chicago.

Emanuel, who calls himself “a reformed swearer,” acknowledged in an interview, “I’ve got this notorious reputation and I’m not saying that I don’t swear but you’ve never heard me publicly swear. … I actually don’t think it’s the right thing to do.”

“I think people are being exhausted by vulgarity and I think [the candidates] should be engaging people on the future” through the power of ideas, Emanuel explained.

But some other Obama White House veterans were more tolerant of O’Rourke’s rhetorical excesses.

“It’s good for him to show a little emotion and get angry so that people can see exactly where he stands and that he will fight for what he believes in,” said Stephanie Cutter, Obama’s former 2012 deputy campaign manager and cofounder of Precision Strategies.

“Most candidates do talk like this and they talk like this to their teams and at the bar with reporters, and they get credit for being real people and not engaged in some veneer,” said former Obama press operative Ben LaBolt. “Beto has used it to demonstrate outrage about some really outrageous issues that the United States should have been able to solve many years ago, and so his approach would distinguish himself from somebody who would serve in the Senate and say ‘my dear friend’ and ‘my dear colleague.’”

By so frequently crossing a line that once might have been career-ending, O’Rourke is partly changing the political culture, and partly reflecting changes that are already underway.

As far back as September 2014, Trump tweeted: “Every time I speak of the haters and losers I do so with great love and affection. They can not help the fact that they were born fucked up!” More recently, in late March of this year, Trump told a campaign rally that Democrats should stop “defrauding the public with ridiculous bullshit.”

In June 2017, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who recently ended her presidential campaign, tried to stir a conference on technology and democracy by imploring, “If we are not helping people, we should go the fuck home.”

At the start of the year, newly elected Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib made a splash by saying of Trump, “We’re gonna impeach the motherfucker.”

Another newly elected member of Congress, Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, was recently quoted by The Cut noting the annoyance of being asked as a female candidate about her “self-care” on the campaign trail: “I’m like, ‘I don’t have fucking self-care! I’m running for Congress.’”

But O’Rourke is the one who has made the word his signature. After making his Texas Senate race surprisingly competitive, before narrowly losing, in 2018, O’Rourke went viral with his concession speech in which he praised supporters, “I’m so fucking proud of you guys.”

When he began his bid for president, O’Rourke was scolded at a campaign stop by a voter who urged him to “clean up his act” and not use profanity in ways were children will hear it. “Point taken, and very strongly made,” O’Rourke replied, promising to “keep it clean.”

But last month, meeting with reporters after the mass shooting in his hometown of El Paso, O’Rourke seemed impatient with what he regarded as the naivete of some questions about Trump’s role in inciting violence. “Members of the press, what the fuck?!” he exclaimed.

There are two facts about the F-word that most people learn early in their teenage years: The reaction it gets depends on context, and its shock value tends to diminish rapidly. O’Rourke’s initial uses of the word did seem a little like a young person at a family dinner:Wonder how the table will respond?

On balance, O’Rourke seems pleased with the reaction, at least among the people he cares most about. After new shootings in Texas, he went on CNN last Sunday morning to say: “We’re averaging about 300 mass shootings a year. No other country comes close. So, yes, this is fucked up.” He also defended his swearing by saying that it was “just honest” and important “to shock the conscience of this country.”

O’Rourke’s campaign also noted that all of the proceeds for his profane T-shirt go to March for Our Lives and Moms Demand.

Brit Hume, the prominent Fox News journalist, commented on Twitter, “As if his sewermouth will somehow give his argument more power.”

But Matt Bennett, a Democratic strategist unaffiliated with any presidential campaign and long-time gun control advocate, believes O’Rourke was rightly trying to shake people and signal that conventional politics isn’t adequate in the context of recurring mass murders.

“I think he’s decided that profanity can help him add emphasis where other language fails,” said Bennett. “Indeed, how else does one underscore their anger with, frustration at, and contempt for public officials who fail to act in the face of such horror? We all have been railing about this for years (decades in my case). How else do we signal that this situation is singularly obscene?”

George Lakoff, a retired Berkeley linguist who has written extensively on how Democrats sometimes lose political arguments by not effectively employing the power of language, was uncertain on the wisdom of O’Rourke’s shattering of old proprieties. “It’s basically saying: This is really important. Pay attention.”

O’Rourke may have grabbed attention, but it’s not clear how long he will keep it, at least based on the power of profanity. Forty-five years ago, the country was shocked by the prodigious use of Oval Office profanity—often as part of contemptuous and vindictive rants against opponents—by Richard Nixon and his aides when the White House tapes were released. The news media, reflecting the standards of the time, didn’t print the words but replaced them with “[expletive deleted].” Anticipating Tlaib by several decades, protesters outside the White House gates carried placards saying “Impeach the expletive deleted!”

But a generation that currently has made a star of Lana Del Ray and her album “Norman Fucking Rockwell” with its hit song “Fuck It, I Love you” isn’t likely to stay shocked, or perhaps even interested, for very long by O’Rourke’s language.

Back in 2004, when then-Vice President Dick Cheney told Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy to “Go fuck yourself” on the floor of the Senate, many news organizations debated internally about how to report the obviously newsworthy exchange—since it involved words that were forbidden by their editorial standards.

Those qualms seem irrelevant in the current climate.

Veteran reporter Nicholas Lemann, a former dean of Columbia University’s school of journalism, said these days, as politics grows more openly coarse, the news media should have no compunction about just reporting exactly what public figures say. The old notion of news organizations as a kind of unifying public square, in which editors had to primly enforce rules to ensure that the most sensitive people in the audience weren’t offended, has gone by the wayside now that every online reader is essentially his or her own editor.

“If they said it, you should quote it,” Lemann advises.

Another journalist, James Fallows, also served as a stint as a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, who he recalled sometimes swore in private but very rarely.

He sees O’Rourke’s language as a sign of the times.

“As an old guy,” said Fallows, who last month turned 70, “I’ll avoid any decline in civilization, but I guess until recently public figures felt that they had to observe a public-private barrier. … Politicians have always been earthy people, but we are seeing the time, at least for the moment, the earthiness membrane is being pierced or is permeable.”

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