#you have. no idea. how hard it was to whittle this down to 10 choices
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#you have. no idea. how hard it was to whittle this down to 10 choices#i did my fucking best [crying]#leonard cohen#david bowie#the cure#public enemy#nine inch nails#janet jackson#cocteau twins#sade#the smiths#de la soul
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In Theory
Work 1 in The Pen and the Sword aka. my jedi and academics AU
A stressed post-graduate anthropology researcher from Coruscant University enters the Jedi Archives for the first time and is promptly taken under the wing of one Master Archivist Jocasta Nu.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/32355310
—
Master Jocasta Nu felt the visitor before she saw them. Stress and a frenetic energy radiated through the force tangled with the unique threads of emotion and colour that made up their signature.
Closing the book in front of her with a soft thud, mindful of its frayed edges, she appraised the blue nautolan hurrying towards her. Their worn brown coat was unbuttoned and struggling to stay onto their shoulders, saved by the strap of the bag hanging off one side which the nautolan had one arm wrapped around. Apparently, the bag’s tie had lost the battle against the tide of flimsy and datapads making the simple bag bulge obscenely.
Ah.
A scholar.
Like the many before them, they had come to Master Nu’s beloved archives in hope of finding salvation in its hallowed stacks. With her guidance, they always did and more often than not, they would return again. And again.
However, this scholar was not one that Master Nu had seen before and as they glanced wide-eyed at the towering shelves, shying away from passing Jedi, she surmised that the Jedi archives were unfamiliar to them also.
They reached her desk out of breath.
“I need books on Kante martial arts and history. Do you have books on Kante? If it has historical martial arts then that would be incredible but I’m setting the bar low. Really, the bar is non-existent. Should I even be setting a bar I don’t know- do you know what the Kante are? Were? They’re extinct”
“Young one, breathe.” Master Nu said, lifting her hand to interrupt the rush of words. Her brow softened in sympathy, “How about you start from the beginning and tell me what your thesis is and then we’ll go about finding resources.”
She signalled to one of the Padawans stacking holopads nearby for them to take over monitoring the main desk and led Tema to one of the many sunlit alcoves tucked between the buttresses.
Settling on a cushion across the low table from the sleep deprived nautolan, Master Nu pulled out her well-worn datapad, ready to formulate a list of texts to recommend for this student’s project. She had gathered quite the collection of such lists over the years and took great pride in curating them. Often, she would continue to add to them in her spare time so that when the person they had been made for returned, it was waiting and ready. And, if Master Nu happened to enjoy the thrill of a hunt for obscure references through her own archives every now and again, that was her own business.
Stylus in hand, she was ready to begin.
“You mentioned martial arts?”
“Right. Yes. I’m studying the fighting style of the Kante people which they used to reclaim their lands 7000 years ago after it was conquered in the Chandrillan Divide. The politics of the reclamation itself have been documented to death but there’s kriff all discussing how they actually fought,”
Master Nu hummed sympathetically, listening as a classic university post-graduate research tragedy poured out in all its glory. The purple shadows smeared under Tema’s dark eyes suggested that more than one night had been lost to this.
It was a credit to her Jedi training and skill as an archivist that Master Nu could write notes, elegant script flitting smoothly across the datapad without misspelling a single title or name, while offering comforting hums and interjecting words of encouragement where Tema faltered.
“So now I need to piece it together myself in order to build a theory on how the Kante people approached battlefield strategy,” Tema finished, fidgeting with their bag strap.
Setting her stylus down, Master Nu surveyed the drafted list with a critical eye. It was a daunting selection. She weighed the situation in her mind and carefully turned the datapad off, placing it down with a muted click of metal on the polished stone table.
“That’s quite the task you’ve got” Master Nu said, “more than an Honours project scope covers.”
She loathed to discourage any scholar but there were limits to the workload that could be shouldered and she had a strict honesty policy. With all her Jedi compassion and experience ad Head Archivist, Master Nu knew how to recognise when a student needed guidance in whittling down their research focus to a reasonable magnitude.
“I know,” Tema sighed, shoulders sagging, “I know but my project topic has already been approved by my supervisor.”
“Dear, your project as it stands is enough to satisfy a PhD and beyond. I can tell you are passionate about it but it’d be a tragedy for you to fail because you tried to complete years’ worth of work in the 10 months you have.”
The blue nautolan wilted a little, head tails curling.
“I don’t see what choice I have. I can’t form a thesis on the merits of Kante strategy without knowing how it worked at the individual level,” they said, resignation colouring their force signature grey with worry.
Master Nu paused, and after a moment spoke.
“Have you considered centring your project on the martial arts itself? At the individual level, as you say. Leaving the rest aside to focus on that should technically be within your project topic.”
Tema blinked, “That’s…that would work. Yes.”
Master Nu watched as they turned the idea over, considering how to approach it.
“Yes. That would make it more of a research-and-reconstruction project. A literature review with practical application.”
They gave a wry smile, “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”
Some of the frazzled emotion of their presence eased and a few threads of humour sparked in its wake.
“I could have saved myself from being sick from worry in the University ‘freshers yesterday.”
They flushed a little darker at that admission and Master Nu suppressed what would have been a rather unprofessional snort of amusement as she clicked the datapad back on. Ah, younglings. They never changed.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, dear. That amount of stress isn’t conducive to clarity of mind, I’d wager,” Master Nu soothed, deleting a few items from the list with a satisfied air, “You’re hardly the first person’s I’ve known to have an adverse reaction to academic stress. Now, I do believe this list is ready.”
Rising with more grace than her age suggested she was capable of, she smoothed the creases in her cream and straw-gold robes and led the way into the maze of columns and shelves. Tema followed a step behind in a manner that to any observers bore remarkable resemblance to a duckling following its mother – if ducklings were six-and-a-half feet tall, that is.
“Somehow I find it hard to imagine a Jedi getting sick from assignments,” they mused absentmindedly, tipping their head to catch some of the book titles they passed, “all this information – it’d be hard to fail.”
Master Nu chuckled at that, passing through an archway into a side corridor.
“I’m afraid it can happen to anyone. One of my agemates routinely emptied his stomach at the prospect of examinations – that one, in fact,” she said, gesturing to one of the bronze busts lining the hall. The metallic features gave the human man depicted a severe expression. In Master Nu’s opinion, it was rather true to life even if the beard was far to neatly sculpted.
“The poor man. Perfection was as much his vice as his virtue.”
She smiled fondly, crows’ feet crinkling with nostalgia at sharing this particular story – at sharing the humanity of someone so proud and distant both in life and artistic rendition.
Tema faltered and the markings on their head tails blanched light blue.
“Oh, uh, my condolences.”
“Hmm?” Master Nu turned to them, “Oh no, he’s not dead. He’s retired.”
“Oh,”
They blinked, nonplussed.
“This way, dear”
The pair continued on their winding path. Master Nu, frequently gesturing to some architectural feature or other with her datapad, began to explain how the Jedi Archival system worked, pausing every now and then to pull a tome from the shelves.
“It is what many have described as ‘archaic’,” she said, stepping deftly onto the fourth rung of a sliding ladder attached to one of the shelves to reach her next target, “but no one—and I mean no one—has said it is an ineffective system.
“At least not in my earshot,” she said with a laugh, pulling the volume from its place and passing it down to Tema. The rumours the initiates (and fully-grown Knights) liked to spread about Master Nu’s draconian defence of the archives may not be entirely accurate but were taken by most as a warning to avoid slandering the archive in her presence. She knew Tholme liked to stir the pot and recount tales of her lightsabre prowess to the initiates, no matter that the stories were thirty years out-of-date.
“That being said, it can take some getting used to. The Padawans and Knight Archivists are always around and willing to retrieve sources for our visitors.”
Master Nu dismounted from the ladder, blew dust from her sleeve, and turned a critical eye on to the stack of books and datapads in Tema’s arms that had been steadily growing in size. The scholar looked strong enough to take a couple more, taking into account that their bulging bag would not fit anything more inside.
“That’s the last one from this aisle.”
She clicked her tongue and marked a check on her list next to the sources they were borrowing. They were all copies, of course, or volumes easily enough to source a replacement that their loss wouldn’t be abhorrent. Nonetheless, clean records made maintaining the collection less stressful on her soul.
On that note, Master Nu was pleased to feel that Tema was no longer pouring stress into the force like an anxious firehose. And—
She stilled, tilting her head as a familiar presence tickled the edges of her senses.
“Master Nu?” Tema asked, noticing her change in manner.
“Nothing to worry about,”
She once again took the lead. Down the aisle, then one aisle to the left and as they rounded the corner Master Nu smiled at the sight before her.
A little blue and beige figure was hunched over a book resting on the floor, absentmindedly gnawing on her Padawan silka beads and completely oblivious to the world around her.
“Padawan Secura! Why am I not surprised?” Master Nu called lightly and the twi’lek girl jerked, breaking from her literature-induced reverie to scramble to her feet.
“I’m not skipping sabre class again. I swear!”
Had it been any other Padawan of Aayla’s age group, Master Nu would think that emphatic declaration of innocence meant the Padawan in question was skipping class. Skywalker came to mind as a repeat offender of that variety.
Only question was that Junior Padawan sabre classes were always on Taungsday afternoons—this afternoon—and had been since before Master Nu was a crecheling. She hummed, unconvinced.
“Knight Kenobi is doing catch-up lessons this week and he said my forms were good enough to skip.”
That explained it. It seemed only yesterday that he’d been roaming the archives as a padawan himself, tearing through histories of the planets he’d visited at Qui-Gon’s side with single-minded focus. Shame that his lineage had picked him up before her own could. He would have made a fantastic archivist despite his record of being convinced to scale the bookshelves whenever Vos got temple fever.
Well, at least Aayla’s fencing education was in good hands.
Master Nu beamed at Aayla, “Then good work padawan and, as you are free, would you like to join us in gathering sources for Scholar Induri here?”
Aayla brightened, “Absolutely!”
And then, remembering her diplomacy training, bowed to Tema, setting her Padawan beads swinging. “Nice you meet you, Scholar.”
She scooped up the book she had been reading and as she put it back in its slot, Master Nu glimpsed the title.
“Reading Bastilla Shan again are we Padawan?”
The padawan blushed, fiddled with her tunic and handily dodged the teasing with a question of her own, “What are we looking for, Master?”
“See for yourself, young one,” Master Nu passed over the datapad, pointing to the highlighted entries.
Aayla squinted at the handwriting for a second before passing the pad back and running away down the aisle, one hand skimming the shelf labels. Padawans were lovely to have around and, watching Aayla slide 4 meters down a ladder and return to them with a grin plastered across her face, Master Nu wondered if she should take another student. Or, better yet, invite her former Padawans around for tea to see if more Grandpadawans would be joining the lineage soon.
“Thank you, dear,” she gave Aayla a pat on the head, “I’ll leave you to your reading. Just don’t forget to remind your Master that he needs to renew the materials he borrowed last month.”
Then, she turned to Tema who hadn’t made so much as a peep the past five minutes, seemingly satisfied to observe the interaction.
“Let’s get these checked out so you can get to reading them.”
Back to the main desk, the archivist and scholar wandered, and a minute later there was a new name entered into the borrowing database.
“Again, thank you for everything, Master Nu” Tema said, gathering the stack back into their arms. They were a little overwhelmed but they were smiling.
“Dear, it’s no trouble. One last thing, are you planning on enlisting someone practised in martial forms in your project? Or were you aiming for a more theoretical illustration of your findings?”
Tema cast their eyes to one side and shifted their weight.
“Ideally, yes, but I have no idea where to find someone like that so…theoretical?”
They trailed off.
“Good. I’m free to ask around here, then,” Master Nu said, tugging Tema’s bag strap so it was in less immediate danger of falling of their shoulder.
“If you need any help at all, don’t hesitate to send me a message or drop by. My archive is always open,”
At that, she tucked a slip of flimsy with her com code underneath the top datapad in the stack and gave Tema a parting pat on the cheek. With hope in their step, the scholar passed back out the archive doors, into the sunlight of the hall beyond.
Content, Master Nu smiled and watched them go.
“Now,” she mused to herself, opening the roster of temple-bound jedi and beginning to peruse the list, “who to ask…”
Her thoughts turned to the bronze bust of a man whose devotion to esoteric research was only outmatched by his skill with a blade.
His legacy…
Her eyes caught on a name. Yes, that would do very nicely indeed.
In the interest of vetting the source she intended to recommend, Master Nu made a mental note to attend next week’s exhibition tournament.
#jedi#jedi culture#fic#my writing#jedi and academics#the pen and the sword#jocasta nu#repost#star wars
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How The MLQC Bois React When You Do A ‘Baby/Cutesy Talk’ To Them.
🖤🦋🖤Idk if anyone has done this one yet so here it goes...
𝚨𝖇𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖒𝖞 𝖜𝖗𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌: ✨ ALL my writing promts are gender inclusive and promote love, kindness and fun for all!
✨I know that each and every one of our boys would love and support each and everyone of you and I hope that my readings portray that comforting, accepting and loving nature through and through~
✨And with that I hope you Spookies enjoy~~
☪ 𝕱𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖔𝖒: Mr. Love Queen’s Choice
☪ 𝕽𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌:18+ Has mild talk about sex, mentions drinking/alcohol.
☪ 𝕱𝖔𝖗𝖒𝖆𝖙 : Quick Read, bullet points
𝕶𝖎𝖗𝖔|10/10
He eats the baby talk up!!! And does it right back to you with so much ease!
You guys have full on conversations with just the two of you using baby talk towards one another.
And you both have no problem doing it in public and annoying all your friends with how mushy and maybe a bit cringey you two can be.
Most of your baby talk conversations is the two of you whining back and forth about wanting food.
“Aww, Kiro can I pwlese haves a snack now? It’s been a few howers pwlesee?! 🥺🥺”
“Bwut what if I want a snack moreeeee?!”
You two stare at one another intensely with large, watery, puppy dog eyes and quivered lips.
Neither one of you is going down this easily over the remaining sweet candy that you have left.
Kiro will ALWAYS use the cute talk on you when you are trying to keep him from eating sweets as Savin ordered. But the moment he brings out the cute voice and the puppy dog eyes you have lost.
It’s just so hard to not cave in to such a cute face!!!
But it’s okay because he can’t resist yours either.
You and Kiro’s guttonness and cutesy manipulative ways towards one another can sadly only go on for so long before the fun comes to a painful hault.
It seems that you two have indulged in a little too much of the sweet treats, leaving you both to most likely take up a very simple yet painful month of dieting.
Which is then filled to the max with pouty expressions and W words in hopes to just get one cookie from the bakery you passed on your daily run.
𝓥𝖎𝖈𝖙𝖔𝖗|5/10
The world will NEVER know this side of Victor.
He would probably throw himself off a bridge if anyone heard him use a cute voice towards you or anyone for that matter.
Even your future children and cute puppies will NEVER witness such a pure and child-like state with your stubborn CEO boyfriend.
BUT surprisingly enough he has done it a few times.
You always tease him for it since he likes to make fun of you for when you try to use your cute voice to beg for pudding or a longer time for your deadlines.
And although this tough looking CEO wouldn’t admit it, he likes seeing you pout your lip and add a W to every two words of sentence.
The one and ONLY time victor has ever used the cutesy voice on you was when you were really sick and asking for soup.
He was caring for you for about a week now with little to no progress of your health improving.
And aside for all the nagging you were getting from him for overworking yourself he was truly worried about you.
Now that your cold was coming to and end and with Victor in a tired state and comfortable enough to relieve himself of worry, along with being a bit flirtatious (probably from light sips of whisky he had been drinking to keep himself in motion) the cute words just kind of...slipped out...
You are in complete shock as your brain is trying to process what it just heard.
Did Victor really just say “does my whittle dummy want some swoup?”
Trust me he is just as shocked as you are as he quickly escapes the bedroom with cheeks as red as a cherry.
He is so shocked in fact that it takes you a good three hours to get your soup so he could have some time to regain himself after the embarrassing encounter.
To this day he is still haunted by it as you taunt him every once in a while for it.
*poking his forehead lightly with playful giggles* “Aww, Come on Victor, don’t chu want to mwake me some swoup?”
“If you have time to bother me then maybe I should consider raising your deadline to three days instead of the end of the week?”
And with that you scurry out at lighting speed leaving Victor to wallow in his face palmed blushes.
𝕷𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖊𝖓|8/10
Lucien LOVES the shit out of your cutesy talk.
BUT is probably the only one capable of not letting you get your way with it every time.
He loves to tease you not the other way around!
His plans would be foiled if just your cute little voice defeated him.
He will however use a cute voice in comparison to yours.
He likes when you say little words in a cute way like tank you instead of thank you or putting a w in pretty please
and he will repeat them back to you the same way you said it. In a mocking yet flirtatious kind of way.
After a soft chuckle Lucien looks to you. “Pweety Pwlease?” He questions as you puff your cheeks at the fact that he doesn’t seem phased by your cuteness.
His eyes however, quiver with complete delight at just how cute you are to him.
Your Scorpio boi can only hide his feelings for so long and despite his calming expression his eyes alone can only hold what is truly running through his brain.
There are times the Professor falls victim to your cute ways but they usually end in some more...explicit moments with you. 👀
You learn rather quickly that this seems to be one of the very few things you have in control over Lucien, unlike the multiple ways he has control over you.
Though, your ways of manipulation are nothing to take lightly either.
Lucien seems to be really focused with work right now. Staying up all day and all night eyes glued to books or his tablet filled with words that just give you a bit of a headache.
And despite not hating Lucien’s passion and hardworking energy towards his career you are now starting to realize that it’s been almost a month since you have been close and intimate with him.
So much so that you can’t even remember what his gorgeous body looks like under all that lab coat.
And desperate times call for desperate measures.
Setting yourself up into cutness overdrive and plopping yourself right down and in front of your boyfriends work and onto his lap
along with a simple tilt of your head and eyes as wide as the moon doesn’t take long for all the blood to rush to you know where for Lucien.
And when Lucien falls victim to you he FALLS. but he’s not a man who enjoys failure. (So be prepare for one intense and intimate ride.)
His sex drive and stamina is not something to question and if you sneeze just two octaves higher than normal
you’ll most likely be attending his lecture with wet, shaking knees.
𝕲𝖆𝖛𝖎𝖓|7/10
Also loves your baby talk and will say it back to you casually.
It is something that he only does around you though and doesn’t let anyone see.
Gavin is 100% those TikTok videos where the girls are recording their boyfriends cutesy talking to them and then instantly start talking in a deep voice the moment they see the camera. 😂
Will use it a lot when you aren’t feeling good and goes nutso bananas if you use it to reward him.( Kind of like a puppy. 😂)
“Was ywu a tood boyfwriend today? Wes. Wes you were.” *Gives Gavin happy head pats*
Gavin is also a huge sucker for your cute ways and will not hesitate to compliment you on your new hair accessory, the way you did your makeup, or how you added a new watch to match the bracelet he gave you.
He’s actually really good at paying attention to small details despite not being the romantic.
And with this you'll find him getting you cute treats and toys to cheer you up.
And even if he truly doesn’t quite understand why you are so obsessed and squeal as loud as you can when you see pusheen he can’t say that he hates seeing how excited you get when admiring the cute and simple things of life.
One moment in particular that will always be engraved in Gavin’s head is seeing you hold the chubby grey cat plushie as much as you could in your arms
you were practically swallowed behind it, it was just as big as you were, if not more.
Seeing you walk through the store and doing your best to avoid falling over not daring to let go of the giant fluff ball of cuteness sent a pierce through Gavin’s heart.
How the hell can they be so cute?!? Was the only thought running through Gavin’s head the entire time.
And once he regained his composure he helped guide you through the store by your arm.
Sadly you had to part ways with the kitty plushie when a small child became just as in awe of it as you were and knowing she was the last one, handed it over kindly.
Seeing you a bit sad only put Gavin in a low mood before motivating him to an idea.
And with that; a few weeks later a new fluffy, plushie cat as big as your front door awaited the front of your apartment with a cute (is that letter blood stained???) note from Gavin.
𝐒𝖍𝖆𝖜|-9000/10
Hatesssss! The baby talk with a passion and will not ever use it with you.
You made the mistake to use it on him once and the amount of awkwardness in his expression was overbearing.
The two of you just sat in your apartment blinking wide eyed at one another in silence.
Shaw broke the awkwardness first by just flat out saying “yeah, no.”
And with that you sulked back into your seat realizing that he didn’t seem phased at all by how cute you were.
And for a moment a bit ticked off. I am cute Shaw?! Don’t ignore me like that! UGH! He can be so nerve racking sometimes!!
Despite not being a big fan of the voice, after dating Shaw for a while you have come to find that he doesn’t mind you doing cute things with him like cuddling up together, squishing his cheeks, or rubbing your face on his ect.
Playing with his hair when he’s strumming away on his bass or latching onto his neck when his skateboard slips from under your feet are some of his favorite moments with you.
But the big eyes and pout get him ALL the time!
He will try his best not to be swayed by them especially when the tears seem genuine.
Shaw and your relationship is like when the older sibling hits the younger one and they start crying and the older one starts to freak out. That. That’s you and Shaw.
𝕭𝖔𝖓𝖚𝖘|𝐒𝖍𝖆𝖜
When he gets drunk he uses the baby talk on you!
Will mumble on his words but tell you just how pretty and cute you are.
But you know that if you bring it up to him he will never drink around you again so you have to keep it as a little secret between you and your friends
You even have recordings and voice messages of him drunk off his ass and calling you just to say.
“Babbbyyyy, I mwissed ywu so muchhh!! Ywu are dhe pwrettiest girl I know and I luv ywu and I just want to kiss your cute wittle face!”
He’s also a very clingy and loving drunk who can’t seem to stop from covering your face in kisses.
It is most definitely a moment in time that you will happily remember for years and years.
𝕿𝖍𝖆𝖓𝐤 𝖄𝖔𝖚!!! Spookies for giving this a read and for giving me the opportunity to share something fun and light hearted with you guys about all our favorite Evolvers.
✨ I am hoping that more writings are to come to you guys from me but this is all a fairly new and a bit out of my comfort zone to do haha so please be patient with me.
✨ But please be open to comment feedback you may have through this post and In my asks on what you thought about this and if you guys enjoy more bullet point writings like this or would like more of a story style. I would love to hear what you guys have to say!!!
#mlqc#mlqc lucien#mlqc victor#mlqc gavin#mlqc kiro#mlqc fanfic#mlqc fandom#mlqc fluff#mr love queen's choice#mrlovequeenschoice#mrlovequeenschoicegavin#mrlovequeenschoicevictor#mrlovequeenschoicelucien#mrlovequeenschoicekiro#mrlovequeenschoiceshaw#mlqc shaw#love and producer
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Joe Alwyn — Red Magazine (Jan 2020) interview
You’d think that a back-to-back Hollywood movie career and a megastar girlfriend might have changed Joe Alwyn, but he’s quick to assure Nathalie Whittle that his feet remain firmly on the ground.
“So you didn’t see the part where the aliens attack?” asks Joe Alwyn, a playful smirk on his face. He’s referring to his latest film, Harriet, which I had a sneak preview of the previous day, although the fire evacuation (false alarm) meant I missed the ending. The biographical drama tells the story of Harriet Tubman (played by Cynthia Erivo), the historic abolitionist who escaped slavery and led hundreds of others to freedom. Alwyn plays her insufferably cruel and capricious slave master Gideon Brodess. He is, of course, joking about the aliens. At least, I hope he is. Today, we’re tucked away in the corner of a dimly lit bar at London’s Covent Garden Hotel. It’s the sort of drizzly afternoon that might dampen the moods of most, but not Alwyn. He appears cheery and at ease, sporting country casuals: a grey mohair jumper, blue jeans, and brown boots along with an unkempt beard; perhaps an attempt to disguise the boyish good looks he’s become known for. He stops to interrupt me only once with a look of alarm: he’s forgotten to offer me something to eat or drink. I can have anything I want, he assures me.
At 28, Alwyn has had the sort of career trajectory that most aspiring actors wistfully dream about for years, even decades. His education included a degree in English literature and drama at the University of Bristol, followed by a BA in acting at London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. But within two weeks of his graduate showcase, Alwyn received a life-changing phone call. He refers to it as the thing “I owe everything to.”
“I’d just signed with an agent and I was kind of pinching myself, you know, how surreal is that?” he says. “She sent me a portion of the script for a film, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, that Ang Lee was directing. I’d grown up watching his films — Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi — so I couldn’t believe I was even going to do a tape for someone like that. I got my dad to film me in a scene in my bedroom and some mates to film me during a lunch break. The next thing I know, Ang wants to meet me in New York.” Cue a series of auditions and screen tests that led to Alwyn bagging the title role in his first big-budget Hollywood film. He was just 24. “It was so much so fast that I didn’t really compute what was going on,” he concedes. “Before that I was just a poor student who barely understood how people got auditions, let alone landed jobs.” Did he have any jobs before that? I ask. “I did have this one job in London,” he says wryly. “Do you know that frozen yogurt place, Snog?” I’m struggling to picture Alwyn serving up frozen delights. He’s laughing now. Was it a good gig? “Exceptional!” More laughter follows. “I mean, I was paid some money! Then I worked in a menswear shop. I did what I could to make some extra cash.”
A far cry from a frozen-yogurt counter, doors started opening to bigger and better opportunities as soon as Billy Lynn hit cinemas. The next script Alwyn read was Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite (released in 2019), in which he secured a small but riotous role as young baron Samuel Masham alongside acting greats Olivia Colman and Emma Stone. “Putting on giant wigs and running around in make-up and chasing Emma Stone through the forest — what more could you want?” he laughs. The film earned widespread critical acclaim, receiving seven BAFTAs and a record 10 British Independent Film awards.
Having further honed his craft in subsequent films Mary Queen of Scots and gay-conversion therapy drama Boy Erased, Alwyn is about to enter into unknown territory. This Christmas, he’ll play Bob Cratchit in his first-ever TV drama, BBC One’s A Christmas Carol; a “darker, twisted, less glossy” version of the Charles Dickens classic. He’s “feeling good about it,” but I’m curious as to how he’s approached this change of scenery. Was he not nervous? “Oh, very. I tried to watch other people. It’s the second time I’ve worked with Guy Pearce [who plays Scrooge] and I asked him a lot of stuff, which probably annoyed him. I watched the way he works and the questions he asked on set when he was approaching a scene.”
Two people who will definitely be watching Alwyn’s TV debut are his mother, a psychotherapist, and his father, a documentary-maker. “They’d better be watching!” he laughs. Born in London’s Tufnell Park, Alwyn recalls being given stacks of videos every birthday and “watching them to death, until the tapes burned up.” One of his favourites was The Mask of Zorro. In fact, he was so obsessed with it that he and his best friend took up fencing lessons at a local community centre in Crouch End, where, by chance, he was spotted by a local casting agent for the hit British romcom Love Actually. She asked him to audition for the role of Sam; he breaks into a wide smile when I ask what he remembers of it. “I didn’t know much about what the film was; I was most excited about the fact I got the day off school! But I remember being in a room with Richard Curtis and Hugh Grant reading scenes, many of which didn’t make it into the film. And I left the audition thinking, ‘I really recognize that guy from somewhere’.”
Alwyn didn’t get the part. Instead, he forgot about acting for a while, with the exception of summer holidays, where his parents would send him and his older brother off to “some drama camp as a way of preoccupying us.” He explains that when he later realized he wanted to act on a serious level, he kept it a secret. Was it because he was worried how his parents would react to a somewhat precarious career choice? “Well, it meant putting myself out there in a performative way, and that wasn’t necessarily something I did or was used to doing. It felt like it should be quite a ‘look at me’ job, and that wasn’t really how I felt growing up. I wasn’t a painfully introverted kid, but I wasn’t a particularly extroverted one, either. So maybe I was self-conscious about the idea of saying to people, ‘Look, I can do this’.”
He credits drama school with giving him “permission” to go for it. “Plus my parents were great about it. They’re both freelance themselves, so while they recognize the perils, they also couldn’t say to me, ‘We can follow what we want, but you can’t’. There wasn’t a boundary, which helped a lot.”
I wonder if it’s been difficult acclimatizing to the level of fame that’s come as result of his roles. “There have definitely been changes that have taken some getting used to, whether it’s sitting down and doing an interview or someone recognizing you,” he says. “There are things that have changed in my life, but I still very much feel like the same person. It probably helps that I’ve been hanging out with the same friends literally every day since I was 12 years old. Maybe it’s when those things change that people change, I don’t know.”
It’s fair to say that the level of interest in Alwyn has, in part, been heightened by the fact that, in his spare time he plays the role of Mr. Taylor Swift. The pair reportedly met in late 2016 and became in item shortly afterwards. I’ve been warned ahead of our meeting that Alwyn “doesn’t talk about that”, and he’s keen to justify his stance in person. “I feel like my private life is private and everyone is entitled to that.” he says. “I’ve read stories recently about people like Ben Stokes and Gareth Thomas, which are a gross invasion of their privacy and of their lives. It’s disgusting. That’s not journalism, that’s just invasive.”
It must be tough, I suggest, being in a relationship that is surrounded by so much scrutiny. “I just don’t read the headlines,” he says. “I really don’t, because I can guarantee 99% of them are made up. So I ignore it.” Recent rumours suggest the pair are engaged, and are owed in part to one of Swift’s latest songs, Lover (’My hearts been borrowed and yours has been blue. All’s well that ends well to end up with you’), as well as a piece of string tied around Swift’s finger in a Vogue cover shoot. According to die-hard fans, this means something. But to Alwyn, it’s clear it means nothing at all. Is he never tempted to respond to the mistruths, to shut them down? “No, because it’s just pointless,” he sighs. “It won’t change anything. I just don’t pay any attention. I have my life and it’s kind of separate to all that stuff.”
I’m curious as to how much time he gets to simply enjoy the success he’s experiencing. “There’s lots of time not working, I wish there was less in a way!” he laughs. “I go to the pub, play football, go to gigs, watch TV (he’s just finished season three of True Detective), pretty normal things. There’s no ‘secret life’. But ultimately, I worry about finding the next job; that’s the truth. In the midst of everything, there’s always that feeling of ‘I’m never going to work again’. It’s a cliche, but you can’t just sit there waiting for the phone to ring. You have to try and take control. You’re at the mercy of the things you seek out — the directors and the connections — so I try to be on top of that as I can and read what I’m sent and be discerning. I try to pick wisely and follow up on people and leads that I’m interested in.”
Is there an end point he wants to get to, where he’ll feel like he’s made it? “Things have certainly shifted in my twenties,” he says. “Success to me now is doing things that make me happy and that make me feel fulfilled, doing what I want to do and being on the right track. Not in terms of being on a results-based track, but just doing something I love.” He pauses and smiles. “That sounds a bit sentimental, doesn’t it?”
#joe alwyn#interview#red magazine#there's one paragraph i could do without but otherwise this is great
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Nine Days. (COVID-19)
To say day-to-day life has changed since I last posted (March 9) feels like a gross understatement. Nine days feels like the gestation period of some unknown force that continues to grow.
I’m writing, but my words feel like sheets of paper in a cyclone. Nothing cohesive. Self-judgment says, does anyone really want to hear what you have to say in the midst of this barrage of COVID-19 thoughts/opinions/posts/news? Then I shut up and write, even if it’s just something, even if it’s not pristine.
Nine Days, in list form:
1. Thursday, March 12, 2020—THE OUTSIDE TURNS DOWN.
We get the news that schools are going to be shut down for many weeks, probably more. When that happens, the lighting in our house shifts. It’s as if the outside turns down, like half-drawn curtains. And those who live inside the walls of our little house—Jesse, Opal, Ruth, myself, and the pets— take on a fresh-rinsed potency, as if we know we are on the brink of something big and we are in it together.
2. Friday, March 13, 2020—TARGET
We take a trip to Target. Ruth begs to wear her tap shoes, which I reluctantly agree to. The people at Target are amiable; nobody is concerned about keeping a distance yet. We are pushing carts as two-way traffic down aisles, brushing elbows, as we would on any large-crowd shopping day. Moms exchange nods of camaraderie, like fellow Harley drivers on the highway. The overall feeling is generous and very much we-are-in-this-together. What is different, what is startling, is the very, very low inventory. Some of the shelves are completely empty, (toilet paper, cleaning agents) which, in spite of the music, crowds and fluorescent lighting, feels eerie.
The lines are 10-12 people long, cards filled to the brim, and even though I don’t hear one short-tempered word, most of the people in the lines are wrapped comfortably in the tiny glare of their smart phones. It’s amazing how deeply grownups crawl into those little screens, even in public. Ruth walks by them with her tap-tap-tap shoes, duct taped at the buckle and two sizes too big. They make a startling, gloriously sharp sound against the linoleum.
Imagine a line of adults raising their gaze with each step of her foot, like a face-only version of the wave, a beautiful cascade of heads that rise to meet the sound. Each face spreads into a smile when they see where it originates: tiny girl, impervious to her impact, shiny-star tank top and tutu, like a Disney+ version of Madonna’s Like a Virgin.
Back at home, emails flood our inboxes with some variation of ‘COVD-19 closure’ in the subject line. The library. The Rec center. Stores dropping from Main Street like birds shot from a wire. Restaurants and coffee shops are sweating hard, offering discounts on gift cards for later and curbside take-out.
We are getting wind of the fact that we need to slow the spread of this virus so as not to overwhelm the healthcare systems—to ‘flatten the curve.’ We need to stay in as much as possible. Not be in big groups. Probably not see the grandparents for a while. Wash our hands like crazy, scrubbing while singing the ABCs from start to finish.
It sure looks as if we won’t be going to Target (where Ruth who touches every surface with all ten fingers then promptly rubs her eyes and picks her lip) for a while.
3. Saturday, March 14, 2020—SHOULD WE??
Every out-of-house action feels strange and other-worldly. Even the most benign of outings suddenly beg the question, wait—should we?? Do we really need to?? Going to the kid-gym and kid-yoga just two days earlier suddenly seems outlandish. A planned gathering with friends that felt wonderful yesterday feels out of the question today.
4. Sunday, March 15, 2020—COMMUNITY.
There is an amazing video going around of a community in Italy who are quarantined, but still singing from their balconies as an etherial chorus.
A family-walk around the block feels potent and perennially safe. Our next-door neighbor joins us with her dog. We wave at another family of neighbors who are perched on their porch in the sun, their toddler wearing the hilarious mirrored sunglasses of a studly lifeguard. Then we cross and take the bike path behind the houses that are on the other side of our street. Another neighbor exits from her sliding back door, her dog lurching out from behind her. Yet another neighbor steps out into the light wearing pajamas and with his small dog under his arm. Everyone feels hungry for sunshine and familiar connection, but we all keep our distance.
When I was 13, I took a spring break vacation with friends to Arizona, where we visited the “Biosphere2.” The headlines read: “Eight explorers join together in a daring, high-profile study of sustainability and the new science of biospherics—the study of closed systems that mimic Earth’s environment.” Essentially, eight people lived in a sealed-up dome, a mini-earth, for two years to study sustainability. We could see them all through the glass. I remember waving, though I don’t know how accurate that is. I think of that right now, as I wave to my friends through their windows.
Even Opal is weighing her options. Just after lunch, she says to me, “I’m going to try and make Ruth my friend. We may be together for a long long time and I want to have fun with her.”
The girls laugh so hard at dinner tonight, we wind up calling a moratorium when they are unable to take a drink without spraying it across the table. This is very unusual.
5. Monday, March 16, 2020—RAGE
The media is rich with photos of college kids whooping it up over the weekend for St. Patrick’s Day. Seeing photos of hundreds of young bodies smashed together in a bar makes my blood curdle. I can practically see the virus spreading.
Let’s talk about neuroscience for a minute. The brain isn’t fully developed until the age of 25. Therefore, to leave hundreds of thousands of 18-24 year olds to their own devices to make good choices around self-quarantining is like requesting the same from a litter of wild animals. Is there a psychiatrist out there observing this with some sense of concern? Where are the leaders in this? I don’t just mean parents. I’m also wondering about teachers, staff, the adults who own the bars, ANYONE who has some sense of perspective and enough maturity to help float those who aren’t as evolved.
Concurrently, parents are home from work, doing their human duty of staying home/keeping kids home to slow the growth of this thing. Healthcare workers are AT WORK so we can stay home and everyone can get a handle on this thing. Grr. It really is infuriating.
6. Tuesday, March 17, 2020—WHAT IF IT WERE MY IDEA?
Today I have a random memory of having insomnia for close to a year when I first moved to Colorado fifteen years ago. It was agonizing: the mealy brain that would wake me up with an indifferent shrug and leave me unsettled and restless for hours—a fate far worse than jolting into a leap of wide-awake!—left me feeling dead-brained and disconnected for weeks at a time. The only thing that helped me to recover was to pretend it was all my idea. I have no recollection of how that notion ever came to me but there it was. I’d wake up at 3am and force myself to say, well, super! I was hoping to be up tonight! I have so much to do, after all! Filing, for example, was a big one. Before going to sleep at night, I’d actually pile things by my bed to do when I’d wake up during the night. It positively worked. In under a week, I was sleeping like a mouse.
I got to wondering if that hypothesis could be applied to this COVID reality. Perhaps, I could say to myself, now is as good a time as any to face down some mortal fears and learn about what it’s like to live in quarantine with a four and a ten-year-old. I’m not talking about Pollyanna-Sizing in the least. Just talking about broader perspectives to keep sanity in check.
7. Wednesday, March 18, 2020—A FEW GOOD THINGS
Some parts of this feel tenable, dare I say nurturing. The first few days of this have felt like a combination of a snow day and a meditation retreat. It is part family love-fest, part novel bio-spheric experiment. The weather is warm and inviting so we triple our number of family walks and clock in hours in the backyard. (Backyard, oh how I love thee.) Time feels abundant and luxurious. The slow-drip news of this international trauma infuses the ordinary moments with a sense of urgency, of faintly (or not) facing our individual mortality. Each choice is whittled away by the updated COVID rules du jour. Gratitude lists brim with things that may have previously been taken for granted: health, family, running water.
I clean the hell out of the bathtub today and enjoy every moment of it. I cannot for the life of me remember an instance when I took my time cleaning the bathtub like this, doing small circles on the tile like Mr. Miyagi. I typically rush through my cleaning with some sense of discontent, feeling that it’s taking up space that could be used for something worth relishing.
I typically feel paycheck-to-paycheck with regards to time. But now, time is one thing we have more of than we could possibly use. Usually, my brain has the feeling of being pulled down the road by pack of strong wolves. A lurching feeling. Now—not the case. I feel a shit load of feelings, but rushed and overwhelmed are not on the list.
While I clean? The girls are content reading books in their individual ways. Jesse is in the living room in the rocking chair he continues to scoff at, feet up on the rocking foot-stool, MacBook in his lap as if he’s rocking it to sleep. In that moment, there is a settled feeling inside the places where rushing and overwhelm are usually expected. This is one part I do not mind about the new norm.
8. Thursday , March 19, 2020—SNOW / CREATIVITY IS REQUIRED FOR SUSTAINABILITY
There is at least ten inches of snow on the ground—an abrupt change in weather—and I want to start drinking well before lunch. Cozy as it is, all I can think of is our lack of ability to escape into the out-of-doors.
Yesterday I felt heavy and blue, like the adrenaline was wearing off and the novelty of our situation was waning. My face felt leaden and I was short-fused with everyone, making audible sighs of exasperation that drive me bonkers when done by someone else. I miss my friends. I miss my routine and my work and Sunday morning writing-then-yoga. I know everyone does, but I do too. I want my Big child to continue to enjoy being with my Little child without constant management. I want to know HOW THIS IS ALL GOING TO UNFOLD.
Then, moments later, I am telling Opal how we need to try and be patient with each other. We can get what we need with kind words. We are a team.
I am struggling to find balance. One moment, I am a parent who remembers that Opal feels the same feelings as I do around all of this, yet with less perspective and practice on how to be with those scary inner-bits. The next moment, I am fed up with her vague grumpiness and I just want everyone to work together dammit!
The koan is how to feel spacious in a scenario where there is very little limited space.
Today I awoke feeling brighter. Opal has a Girl Scout meeting over Zoom at 2pm. Something for the schedule that did not originate from a member of Grimes Home Base! Yay! We are both as excited as eager peaches. Facetimes, Skype, Zoom calls are going to be the wiring the keeps us tethered to our relationships. Such irony, when, not long ago, the internet felt like the very thing that perpetuated our universal disconnection.
People are starting to get innovative with their use of the Web, and it’s inspiring as hell. Creativity will save us. Some of my favorite local musicians are doing “QuaranTours”—live shows on line. A famous kids’ book author is teaching the art of doodling. Late night Talk Show hosts are doing shows from their living room, with kids climbing on their shoulders and cheeks shiny without the help of a make-up crew.
9. Friday, March 20, 2020—WE NEED A BROCHURE.
Last weekend, we invited our dear next-door neighbor over to watch Frozen 2 with us. She ate our Pirate Booty, sat on our furniture. The things you do with a friend on any given, normal day. This weekend, she texted to see if we wanted to watch another movie, this time with her fiancé who had been traveling last weekend. I felt the need to explain that so much has changed since last Sunday, at least for us. Had it for them? Our tactics had been distilled down to the essence. At this point, we have decided not to let anyone else in the house right now. They totally understood.
Then I ran into them while on a walk today. They were walking towards Elvis and I on the sidewalk and I crossed the street away from them, not at all realizing who they were. I was just doing my usual COVID-cross-the-street-to-give-room move. I was also absorbed in a Podcast.
I crossed-back to see them. I was genuinely giddy with the prospect of their company. I realized I hadn’t been with any adult other than Jesse during the past week. I must've oozed with fervor! But, quickly I felt awkward because I was standing only a few feet away from them! I stepped back but that also felt wrong. Then I was aware of them being aware of me, and I thought, what is happening to us? These are my friends! But because we are not all on the same page, it can feel a bit clunky. Even still, our interaction was supremely satisfying. I wanted them to stay with me for the rest of my walk, but they had plans to go play Scrabble.
Oh how hungry I was for diverse conversation! Those few minutes on the sidewalk together were rich with talk-points and humor. Memorable. I’m still finding my way with enjoyable FaceTimes, but long-distance sidewalk chats are thus far my jam. I had a fantastic chat with a neighbor a few doors down while we were shoveling, and with another neighbor from my porch to her on the sidewalk. Both were far enough away to comfortably toss a softball. Both lasted only a few moments. Both were lavish with depth and hilarity, but concise, as if there were no time to waste.
March 20, 2020
Photos—Top: gel print by Opal. Middle: quick portrait by Ruth. Bottom: me rainbow-organizing markers (who has time for that on an average day??)
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THE HOUSE OF YES by Wendy MacLeod Directed by Matthew Parker The Hope Theatre 8 – 26 October 2019 Interview with Matthew Parker by Heather Jeffery Matthew Parker has had 5 Best Director Offie nominations covering productions from 2015 to 2018. He’s constantly challenging himself and coming out on top. “I don’t take anything for granted. All I do is work as hard as I can and some of them fly and some of them don’t. I never go into room thinking I’m going to smash this; I go into a room terrified.” Becoming Artistic Director of The Hope Theatre in 2015 is what got him noticed. He’d been at The Hope for less than 6 months, when LOVESONG OF THE ELECTRIC BEAR, a play about Alan Turing, won three Off West End Award nominations as well as best director. He is leaving The Hope at the end of this year which will allow him the possibility of working on larger stages. It will be a fresh challenge for him after getting so comfortable with the space at The Hope. At this point in time, Parker has just started rehearsals for THE HOUSE OF YES, but he already has ideas about staging and how to best use his beloved space at The Hope Theatre. THE HOUSE OF YES is about a family living in the shadow of the Kennedy clan but none of the Kennedy’s actually make an appearance in the play. It’s set in 1983, 20 years after the assignation of JFK. The character Jackie O in the play has an obsession with the Kennedy’s along with her whole family. Parker puts it in a nutshell. “They live opposite the Kennedy’s and they are absolutely loaded. It’s a big white house, golden toilets ridiculously rich. They’ve only ever had or will only have people say yes to them. No one has ever said no to anything.” Parker’s been looking at the politics of the time. “There’s a surge of capitalism and loss of society. The rich looking after the rich … Wall Street” he says with relish. “The world changed in the 80s … coming out of 60s 70s people could make themselves. Those 80s films like Trading places, Working Girl, getting rich quickly - that business and money happened in this country too, with Maggie Thatcher and the yuppies.” Matthew runs a course at DRAMA STUDIO LONDON on Stagecraft which explores the idea of ‘significant events’ in Western history and how they change things. So, he’s concentrated on finding the milieu of the family, a mother and her three children, two of whom are twins (male and female). The twins were children when JFK was assassinated. “It’s an obsession with lots of Americans” Matthew explains. “Everything across the world that happens in America changes things. The text gets changed; people talk about 9/11 – normally we’d say 11.9. Something like JFK creates art, creates films. It changes the world and rocks the world making people feel unsafe.” “We had two Princess Diana’s – Before she died, she was a woman vilified in the press but when she died, she became the people’s princess” says Matthew. “The newspapers completely changed text on her” says Parker “and I find that fascinating. There’s a connection between JFK’s assignation and this family in THE HOUSE OF YES because they live opposite, they feel personally affected. Americans feel it, the whole world feels it.” For Parker it’s all part of his stage craft, not just digging into the text but looking at the other things surrounding it, it isn’t just about character, it’s the world of the play. And what a world it is! It’s comedy but it’s also described as a ‘twisted play’ and it isn’t the first of such plays that Parker has chosen to direct. So, what’s in it for him? “I like things that look at the dark underbelly of society” he says, “that look at the dark side of our psyche.” He doesn’t have any personal reasons for feeling that way, but he really likes to get an audible reaction from his audiences. “I really like it, when one member of the audience finds something that’s really funny and another finds it really horrendous. I like to affect the audience’s breath, and I love to get a vocal reaction, a gasp or a laugh.” “Look at the programme THE THICK OF IT or VEEP; these are people in power who are horrendously awful to each other, but we find it tremendously funny. This is black humour, dark comedy.” For Parker there’s also the element of a challenge. In the past he’s directed musicals, farce and an absurdist play. THE HOUSE OF YES is also tricky to pull off as Parker explains. “Tonally it’s the same challenge I faced with THRILL ME; to get the tone right because some of the behaviour that these characters display is despicable. As a director with a team, we’re not shying away from it but at the same time, we’re not being exploitative.” The set is also proving a tricky proposition. “This play is very short at approximately 70minutes straight through but it moves between two rooms and it keeps moving. I’ve never done that before. It’s a mansion”, he pauses for effect. “We can’t do two ginormous mansion rooms in The Hope. It’s a big white pillars, white wedding cake house, flitting between rooms - don’t know how I’m going to do it yet, but I think the scenes will bleed into each other. As one finishes, the next scene starts around it.” He’s thinking maybe a big chaise, that can be both a sofa and a bed in the bedroom. “I love a scene change, making something out of a scene change, choreograph it with a shift of light for each different space” says Parker, the relish clear in his face. Curiously enough, this piece wasn’t Parker first choice for his final show at The Hope. He’s had a couple of shows in mind, but he didn’t get the performing rights. Two of them are so popular, running number one tours which means that the big theatre companies buy the rights in perpetuity and no one else can get them. He’s been trying for ten years for these two titles but to no avail. Then his sound designer Simon told him about this play; that he really should read because it had all the things he likes. Its female led, it has dark areas of psyche and elements of horror. “It’s a very fast, intense read” says Parker. “I’d not even finished the first scene and I went …” Parker bangs the table with the flat of his hand for emphasis “… I want to do this. It’s quite unlike anything I’ve read before. the dialogue is so distilled, nobodies trying to obfuscate, people say what they mean. No chaff, just wheat.” He hasn’t yet met the writer, but he knows that she regards the play as “Noel Coward comedy of manners meets Pinter”. It has a fascinating psyche underneath it. “It’s scalpel and knives, pointed, sharp, clean and clear” says Parker. “It will make you laugh, make you gasp, and it will make you recoil in terror”. His way into the drama is the fifth cast member, the outsider Lesly (girlfriend to the male twin). “She has no idea how horrendous they are” says Parker, “because on one ever told them no, so when normal people step in …” He lets this stand in the air. “She’s a working-class woman and she stands up to them.” With almost 1,000 applicants for the roles, Parker had a job whittling them down. He’d already cast the mum. Gill King works with Parker at Drama Studio London and he’d wanted to work with her for many years. It will be a “challenge” for both of them says Parker as they’ve never worked together as director and actor, but whenever he comes across someone he wants to work with, whether it takes 10 years, he won’t forget. “I will you get you in next time I can”, he says. There were plenty of people he’d dearly love to work with, but when he’s reading the play, he never thinks about casting. “The first time you read a play is the only time you’re going to be getting nearest to the first impression that the audience will see” he says. “I try to think what my first impression is of this story, write loads of notes, go back to it during the rehearsal process. Otherwise it’s not being able to see the wood for the trees. So many things come out in rehearsal and so many things at the first preview, when an audience first watches.” > Bart Lambert as Anthony Colette Eaton as Jackie O Gill King as Mrs Pascal Kaya Bucholc as Lesley Parker is no stranger to comedy, and he knows how it works. “In rehearsal with a comedy like THARK, which Parker directed at the Drayton Arms in 2017, we’re dealing with high farce, it’s a vocal word gag, say it in a certain way and you can get a ‘tshh’ cymbal noise at the end of it. There’s a physical laugh button and you’ve got to know where the button is. Not everybody will laugh in the same places all the time but often there is a rhythm one can tap into which means that most of the time it will elicit a laugh” Parker is attracted to audience who will react as they want to, and he has a very dark sense of humour. He also likes clowning. “There’s a danger when something funny lands in rehearsals and everyone laughs. You’ve got to keep doing that every time. After a few rehearsals the actor may think it’s no longer working because it’s no longer getting a laugh. If something works, we’ve got to remember that in three weeks time, because that did land.” “We have no way of knowing how people are going to react. We’re constantly looking at - what is the story here? Laughs have to come out of that. Even when an audience is deathly silent it doesn’t mean something hasn’t worked/” Parker is also aware that some audience are following others’ leads, so he keeps as silent as possible when watching his own shows. “No one wants to hear the Director laughing at their own work! Cringe! It’s the audience members that matter” he says. “So long as they don’t hurt anybody, they can do whatever they want. They can react to the story as they want. Some people miss that and think the most important person in the room is the director, actor or writer. Its’s not! It’s who you do it for - the audience - and it’s our collective job to give them a good time. I cannot guarantee it, but I do everything I can to try to.” Matthew Parker was interview by Heather Jeffery, Editor of London Pub Theatres Magazine Photographer credit is lhphotoshots @September 2019 London Pub Theatres Magazine All Rights Reserved THIS SHOW HAS ENDED THE HOUSE OF YES by WENDY MACLEOD Directed by MATTHEW PARKER At The Hope Theatre, Islington, N1 1RL, 8 – 26 October 2019 Box Office: 0333 666 3366 http://www.thehopetheatre.com/productions/the-house-of-yes/ Just what happens when you grow up in a house that only says “yes”? Meet the Pascals. A family living in the shadow of the Kennedy clan. Outside their Washington D.C. home a hurricane is raging. Inside, at the eye of the storm, a series of twisted and dangerous events have been set in motion that can only have one destination. It’s Thanksgiving, 1983. Jackie-O is beyond excited to have her twin brother Marty home. He’s excited too, but for different reasons. He’s bringing home his fiancée to meet the family. Younger brother Anthony is impressed, perhaps worryingly so, and mother Pascal is too zoned out on pills to be paying much attention to anything. The scene is set for an evening of twisted machinations and mind-games that will leave the players with scars that will never ever heal. The multi award winning Hope Theatre presents a rare revival of Wendy MacLeod’s deliciously dark comic drama given cult status by the 90’s film starring Parker Posey. By arrangement with Josef Weinberger Limited, London Press on THE HOUSE OF YES: “Wickedly funny, disturbing and vividly written” San Francisco Chronicle “Gripping, funny and worth its reputation” Time Out London Press on Matthew Parker’s previous shows at The Hope Theatre: ★★★★★ “Juxtaposes the absurd, the horrific and the comic” Act Drop ★★★★★ “Beautiful, unsettling, dark & gripping” London Theatre Reviews ★★★★★ “Taut, sinister and ultimately disturbing” The Review Chap ★★★★★ “Another stunner from The Hope” IThankyou Theatre ★★★★★ Dark and disturbing” London Theatre1 ★★★★★ “Uniquely brilliant” Views From The Gods Twitter: @TheHopeTheatre @TheHouseOfYesH1
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ncis/tiva liveblog...the dregs
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11x01
the real whiskey tango foxtrot is the writing on this show
at the moment, you
😖😖😖😖😖😖😖😖😖
want some company?
yes :-)
murder me???????
“this is good”
that fake typing though
you’ll always be an agent in her heart
is mcgee Abby’s Shannon
after what happened to secnav, how can I stay?
oh gut punch
clonk
I mean, someone’s gonna get a souvenir from Tony’s trip to Israel
a living, breathing, tiny human souvenir…
maybe it’s not the brightest idea, but we’re not coworkers anymore, so
Anthony!!!!!!
he was so happy
I’ll travel for good hummus
I didn’t know that “hummus” was, uh, some kind of new…slang
but all of their stuff is still there?
mid century mob hit
where’s ziva?
thank you dick
he reminds me of the terrible sweets clone bones got after sweets died
which was a terrible decision, btw
who would she trust
TONY
SHE WOULD TRUST TONY
oh tony
11x02
don’t worry tony, we will be okay
can you put the hammer down please
perhaps the him is you
baby ziva hadn’t yet been weaponized by the men in her life
gibbs absolutely knows who Captain Kirk is
why should she have the man that she loves
wow that’s really dark
and cruel
he looks good with some hair on his face
Tim does not
I can’t believe they’ve kept that goatee on him for multiple seasons
tony should have stayed in Israel
baby!!!!
“I meant to do that this morning”
HE DIDNT FORGET HE WAS JUST TOO BUSY GETTING BUSY
confession: I don’t think I’ve ever actually watched this episode
I didn’t watch s11 because at that point we (obvs) knew cote wasn’t staying
yeah dinozzo can sure feel somethin
maybe you could try saying what you’re saying
he already found her, dad
you know how hard that was
you did not have to do any of this
except???? He did????
her “old life” man fuck these writers
finally I found you here, of course
FUCK THESE WRITERS
the center of all this pain is me
I’ll kill whoever wrote that
I hate these people!!!!
this is what Eli made of her
bad adr
tony should have stayed
it’s a start
you don’t have to do this alone
ziva was a fantastic investigator, regardless of what she did for Mossad
she loved being an investigator
this doesn’t make sense
just come home
I remember after truth and consequences came out I sat down with a notebook and my iPod and whittled down a tiva playlist
it was a very intense project
I just want you to come home with me
oh tony
I can change with you
he should have just…stayed
that’s a very bad fake black eye
did he clip Tobias’ ass
you shot me in the ass!
I’m the one got shot in the ass for it
they done did it
I want to make him proud
😖😖😖😖😖 her daddy
alone
that’s horseshit
horseshit!
tony you are so…loved
I wanna be done with this
this hurts more than I remember
I am more angry about all this than I remember
then came tali
pick up the phone!!!
hey ziver
13x24
who made these terrible styling choices
why does tony look like an old man
I bet it’s the same person who thinks that goatee McGee has now was a good idea
I can’t stay here
surely she would have told gibbs
right??
he wouldn’t have told tony
maybe she wouldn’t have told him tony was the father
oh tony
ah, dinozzo
oh are you just fucking figuring that out now gibbs??????
ten years later??????
really???
I hate these writers
I need to know what happened
I’ll breathe when Trent kort is dead
are these writers fucking serious
his ziver???????
fuck
stop with the monologue
something about you running off with her father
friends don’t let friends get hit by mortar fire
you’re Mossad you know everything
like, this whole ass house was leveled to nothing but tali’s room just…survived intact
how convenient!!!!! Almost like ziva had planned this!!!!
tali girl
tali is ziva’s daughter
and your daughter, tony
what a clusterfuck
no doubts
that was not her decision to make
it wasn’t
it was, for once, in character
but it was a shitty decision nonetheless
she knew you wouldn’t be pleased/then she never knew me at all
we cannot lose sight of Anthony
daddy tony
tali’s aba
your mom always packed a go bag
because she was always one step ahead
and she would have been ahead of this
you’re a single dad now, tony
were you and ziva an item the whole time
because lbr of all of them, McGee would absolutely be the last one to figure it out
and he wouldn’t even figure it out, Abby would tell him
I loved her, Tim
ima and aba
ziva must have told her
tony must have always had that with him
I think I’ve decided against watching 16x13
I know the gist of what happens, I’ve seen the screenshots
I don’t read Hebrew, so the fantranslations are all I really need anyways
I don’t really want to watch them write gibbs badly again
how did he get his eyeball back
selective morality
she was my family
I’ve never been anybody’s everything before
abby knew
abby 100% knew
aaand I’m done
I don’t even really know how to summarize all of this. I don’t understand the thought that will-they-won’t-they is somehow more exciting and fulfilling than consummation of slowburn. Shows keep doing it over and over again, and sometimes they get it right at the last minute (see: josh and Donna, tww) but most of the time they get it wrong. Like at least with something like Olivia and Elliot (svu) there was a reason that they couldn’t be together - he was married (though I think they could have and should have handled Chris leaving better than him just vanishing).
Bones kind of fumbled through it all - I don’t think that they would have put b/b together if Em hadn’t gotten pregnant. Maybe eventually, but I think they had and would have made the same mistakes the ncis writers did.
Clearly that could have been handled better, but like b/b being together was so good?? They were happy, there was still drama, but god it wasn’t a poorly written tease (well, actually, let’s not get into the quality of the writing on Bones)
Cote is such a fantastic actor, and as horrible as MW is, he is (was??) a really good match for her (was if only because bull kind of sucks and I’m not sure if it’s shitty writing or him sucking or him not wanting to be there??). There was so much emotion and intensity in all of their scenes, romantic or not, it’s absolutely astounding. I really appreciate them for all the effort that they put into tiva, because they were really the heart of it.
How often do you have couples that are written but not acted? Couples with absolutely no on-screen chemistry, and actors who can’t or won’t put the effort in to make it work. And they had that! They could have done so much with it. But the writers failed. Over and over again, they failed to deliver consistent characterization and complex plots beyond the same old.
Tony was so much more than a frat boy.
Ziva was so much more than a weapon and a perpetual victim.
I was trying to find good fanfic while I was watching (I…didn’t find much), but there was one where the author decided that Ziva, who was alive, had only put the message out that tali was Tony’s because she knew it would get his attention, and that tali was just some random guy’s. And that really pisses me off. Ziva (the writers) made some really poor choices in regards to Ziva’s impulse control, but that’s too far - Ziva wouldn’t intentionally hurt tony, and that would be the worst thing she could do.
Ugh. I’m tired.
basically how I feel about the series:
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In Depth - Character Creation
This post is still for Dungeon Masters, but I imagine players can glean a thing or two about this on how to make a character.
Now I know what a lot of people are thinking: this is too basic. The Player’s Handbook does an excellent job explaining this, and-
I’m going to stop you right there, because this isn’t just about the basics. Yes, I’m going to go over the actual steps of creating a character, but I’m also going to add insights on how a DM can help walk a new player through the character creation process, as well as how a DM themselves can get the most out of a character creation process themselves. It’s also a look at why DMs and Players should make their characters together.
Here’s the bullets on what we’ll be covering:
Rolling stats, and why we do it first.
Getting to know your player, and understanding what they want.
Picking a background before a class.
Choosing a class.
Incorporating the character into the setting.
Rolling Stats, and Why We Do It First
This is a big one. I can go on and on about the virtues of this step, but the reason we insist on doing it first is to talk about something that comes even before this step right away: how stats are handled.
There are many ways to handle stats, and it’s up to the DM to discuss with the players what they’re looking for. Here’s a few ways it’s typically handled:
A point-buy system, where all players are on even footing and can tweak their character’s stats to their liking.
Absolute chaos, the other side of the spectrum. You roll 4 D6s, add up the best 3, and pray you get a couple decent rolls to make something at least usable, and accept that the struggle is part of the fun.
A hybrid approach, whereby a player rolls 4 D6s and adds up the best three, and has the ability to turn one roll into a 16 (so long as they didn’t already get two 16+ rolls to begin with). This system basically removes the ability for a character’s stat-line to be completely screwed, while preserving the randomness that some characters will naturally be more gifted than others. Some players like the chance to be extra strong, and also like a challenge, but hate the possibility of being useless, so this can be a popular option..
My personal favorite, the ‘reroll’ approach. This one is hard to explain, but the results have always been much to my liking and never left a player in a bad spot. You roll 4 D6s like normal, add up the best 3, and keep going until you have all 6 rolls. At this point, whether or not the player rerolls is based on a few simple guidelines. Here are the rules I use: Did the player get at least 2 rolls of 16+? Keep. Did the player get at least 1 14+, 1 16+, and have no rolls below 10? Keep. If neither of these happened, the player is offered a chance to reroll. I’m a fan of this system because it allows for the possibility of character weighted heavily in one direction, giving them great strengths, but also great weaknesses. Likewise, the other option is a character that’s still pretty good, at what they do, but with no grave weaknesses. Finally, you can still end up with an incredible character, but I’ve yet to see anything obscene.
Regardless of whatever method you use, make sure you’re there for the rolling of the stats if the method requires it. Do not, under any circumstances, allow a player to roll their stats without your supervision. This is a mistake, one that can give rise to a player who fudges their rolls. A DM must always be vigilant for this kind of behavior, as once someone starts cheating, it can be very, very difficult to get them to stop, and even harder to get other players to ever trust them again once they’re caught.
Getting to Know Your Player, and Understanding What They Want
Now, while rolling/picking stats, it’s time for you to discuss with your player what they’re after. Not everyone plays D&D for the same reasons, after all. Some people are looking for a way to hang out with or make new friends, some want to escape reality into a place where they can be a great hero or villain of their own making, and yet more want a sprawling, somewhat theatrical experience for them to lose themselves in.
The biggest lie a person can tell you at this point is that getting this information out of your player will be easy. It’s not. It’s Hell. Expect that this is a process of you whittling them down, and start with a basic list of questions to find the angle that will get some answers you can work with:
What do you want to play? This is an underestimated question, but some players really are that easy. The ones who want to be powerful wizards or sorcerers (but don’t actually know the difference) should be introduced to the concepts of wizards, sorcerers, and warlocks. People looking to brawl should be shown Barbarians, Fighters, Paladins, Monks, and maybe Rangers. Players that want to be able to do a wide range of things should be shown Druids, Clerics, Paladins, and Bards. Players that want to play ambushing assassins should be shown Rogues, Rangers, and Monks. Giving them details of what each class brings to the table after narrowing things down usually results in a confident choice.
What do you want to get out of Dungeons and Dragons? This is a tough question with a low success rate. It usually hits well with players who are just there to have fun, though. When that happens, and you can’t find something the player wants to play, suggest suspending the character creation until the others have gone. Then, you can recommend a class that will be unique and useful in the group. This usually satisfies the player in this category. If it doesn’t, you’ll just have to keep working at it.
What do you want to be? This is an important question, and one that sets up the real next step of character creation. On occasion, you’ll have a player who can imagine the story of their character. They’ll see a soldier, or an acolyte to some god, or a pirate, or a thief, or an entertainer or... whatever it is they fancy. Not every thief has to be a rogue, and not every acolyte has to be a cleric, paladin, or monk. Some players are convinced what they want to do won’t work, and in those situations you need to remind them that what they want absolutely can and will work.
What’s your favorite fantasy genre? This one is a little simple, yeah, but sometimes it gets the ball rolling. Finding out that someone loves Lord of the Rings, and asking them who their favorite character can easily result in a recommendation that gets the player’s gears turning. Likewise, a big fan of kung fu, karate, or MMA might not realize that monks are martial arts masters, and not just sagely individuals who make wine in a monastery on some remote countryside.
Explain EVERYTHING. This isn’t a question, this is what you do when nothing else works. These supremely difficult players are typically joining the game for dubious reasons, mostly because they’re guarding themselves than for anything nefarious in nature. D&D, while being a game that’s classically attributed to shut-in nerds, requires a person to be surprisingly outgoing to get the most out of it. Guarded players are going to take extra time and attention, and might do odd things like wait till you’ve explained everything before making a choice, because for one reason or another they feel less embarrassed about looking excited about what’s looked down on in some circles as ‘just a board game’.
Whew that was a lot, but character creation can be incredibly taxing when dealing with newer players. The good news is that that step is now done with, and you have a much better idea of what the player might be after (unless they’re the guarded sort, in which case may the Upper Planes have mercy on your soul).
Picking a Background BEFORE a Class
It’s amazing how much you can do before actually choosing a class. Many of your players by this step will already have something concrete in mind, and that’s fine, but it’s still best to figure out a character’s background first.
The Player’s Handbook offers several of these in detail (Pg. 125/141):
Acolyte
Charlatan
Criminal/Spy
Entertainer/Gladiator
Folk Hero
Guild Artisan/Guild Merchant
Hermit
Noble/Knight
Outlander
Sage
Sailor/Pirate
Soldier
Urchin
It’s a big, BIG list, and yet somehow there’s yet more to it than just picking one and being happy about it. The biggest mistake a DM might make is seeing these and not realize that, from the very get-go, they’re just the framework of something you offer to a player. They can be mixed, matched, and tweaked in any way that fits a specific player’s backstory. Here’s a few examples to take note of:
Mercenary - All the flavor of a soldier, right down to the same possible skill proficiencies and tool proficiencies. A mercenary, however, may have slightly more or less gold (depending on the success of their group), lack an insignia, and have a completely different kind of Feature. Mercenaries who worked on the sea might have proficiency in sea vehicles instead of land ones, and share the Ship’s Passage feature with Sailor/Pirate. They could also be tough and wise to the road, giving them the Wanderer feature from Outlander, or be well known and respected, garnering them the Rustic Hospitality feature from Folk Hero. These are all ways to flavor a basic background and turn it into something that fits a player more appropriately.
Acolyte to a Dead God - Sometimes, bad things happens in a setting. A campaign can start shortly after the fall of a god, with one of your players being the stalwart champion who refuses to give up their late deity’s sacred charge. In this scenario, you often end up with an Acolyte devoid of the Shelter of the Faithful feature. Life may have been hard since the death of their god, causing them to become proficient Wanderers, or maybe beneath their first identity of Acolyte they are also a noble. My personal favorite is to mix Acolyte with Hermit, permitting the player to know a grand secret that may have a connection to their god. This can be some truth their god entrusted them with that has great implication going forward, or even an artifact of uncertain power with the potential to resuscitate their patron from death! Such an secret can be massive enough to create an underlying long-term goal for the campaign, and pit the forces that saw the god’s death against the players from square one. It might sound like a lot of responsibility to plant on a player, but for some, the idea of such a massive task to undertake is what they’ll enjoy most.
Disgraced Noble - Blood carries power, enough to bend the ear of local lords and the like. But what if that’s all a character has? A prideful urchin, refusing to stoop to nefarious acts, may be lacking in street smarts, but by virtue of their birth still has the power to invoke their bloodline to others in power. This character starts with little, possibly because what they had was taken or squandered by immediate family, but is rife with the flavors of determination and a sincere desire to return to their station. This character is well educated, and remains skilled in History and additional language, but lacks in the means to persuade as efficiently as their non-disgraced counterparts, and starts with less coin and crummy clothes. Their ability to be persuasive and throw their bloodline’s weight around may have been replaced with the skills needed to survive on the streets, like Survival itself, or perhaps with another language found where they live, or Athletics, or Religion from their need to visit local churches and pray for the strength struggle on through the shame of their fall from grace.
What I hope is understood most by these examples is that a player should be pushed to go into detail, not just so they themselves get more engrossed and invested in the events of the game, but so that the DM has more to use to that end.
Choosing a Class.
With a background selected, picking a class can now have more weight behind it. It’s the culmination of a character, not the start of it, and that too attaches yet more weight to the decision.
The flavor of a chosen class becomes more apparent now that we have a background chosen. Let’s look at how the decisions made in one of the backstories from before can affect the class outcome.
For this, we’ll use Disgraced Noble:
Barbarian - A Disgraced Noble forced to survive on the streets (Survival variant) can quickly become stripped of their more refined attributes. Their life is difficult, and it seems often like their anger alone is what gives them the strength to go on. In this way, a Disgraced Noble makes an excellent barbarian, combining the duality of their need to be proper and respectful with the ability to fly off the handle and wreak absolute havoc when pushed too far or disrespected too severely.
Fighter - A Disgraced Noble that’s especially devoted to the task of not succumbing to life on the streets acts the part of the knight even if they lack the resources to really be one. It’s a bullheaded strategy in life, one that’s forced them to toughen up (Athletics variant). Contrary to what would happen with most nobles, this seems to have emboldened the Disgraced Noble, and made him a paragon of discipline and strength that a locale can come to rally behind. In many ways, this Disgraced Noble can be more Noble than any other. They can also be cruel though, and don the mantle of a warlord looking to reclaim their birthright by force. Whatever the choice, the player and DM have a lot to work with.
Paladin - Faith can lead to salvation, something the Disgraced Noble who turns to the local church might quickly learn. The assumption by nobles that they are born to lead meshes well with the Paladin class, as they themselves are also natural leaders. This Disgraced Noble refuses to let what happened to them shape their life, and forges on for whatever cause they adopt as if becoming Disgraced never happened. Unlike the Fighter or Barbarian, this Disgraced Noble’s goals may not have to do with reclaiming their birthright, reacquiring it anyway will probably be in their future if they’re successful anyway.
In the instance of a player already knowing what class they want, you help them mold the background onto that choice in reverse. In some cases, you can have their choice of class come from a relatively recent event, such as a thief signing a pact with some patron who suckered them into a bad deal with a heavy, ironic personal cost.
Whatever the outcome, understand that your creative license (and the player’s) is endless! This is Dungeons and Dragons! You can play a Paladin Kobold Noble adopted by a well-off dwarven family who worships Moradin and supplements their paladin levels with sorcerer levels from their kobold heritage to create a spell-slot packed, divine smiting machine!
Incorporating the Character Into the Setting
Here we are, the part where it all comes full circle and you do your DM you to make a player’s character feel like a part of the world and not just tacked on.
For some characters, this is very easy. The Disgraced Noble, or the Acolyte to a Dead God carries heavy integration right into their backstory. You need only add the places and people in the world to highlight these things, and you’re all set.
For other characters, this can be more difficult. Consider pairing characters with compatible backstories to give their existence more weight and to speed up the formation of the party when you finally play. For instance, the Mercenary might remain friends with the Disgraced Noble after they can no longer be paid, and a Criminal and Pirate might bond after being forced to share a jail cell for a while. Likewise; clerics, paladins, and monks might all recognize one another of worshippers to a similar diety, or a gladiator fighter may have heard of an acolyte monk whose temple encourages dueling as a means to perfect their martial arts.
Not all character backstories are going to have grand outcomes. When you see one like this, ask the player if their character should have any special motivation behind them. What do they desire, or what grudges do they hold? What event pushes them out from their comfortable life? Did a family member die, and leave them seeking revenge? Is there something they find themselves needing to do, possibly because a dying, elder loved one wished it?
Whatever the case, look for a way to create a motivation in your player’s backstory. Why? Because some of your players absolutely will not go for this. Having content that the players feel invested in completing does a lot for their engagement in the game, and one player being energized about something is usually enough to set fire to the whole group.
With all of that said, this brings me to my last point of this post. Some players just don’t give a shit. Don’t feel bad, it’s the way of the world. They want to hang out, kill some enemies, get some cool loot, and then do it all again next week. They feed off the energy of other players, relying on them to give the campaign substance, and will oftentimes make you feel like everything you’ve done went unappreciated.
When you encounter this player, understand something very important and beneficial about them: they’re there to have fun. They keep things light, and do things unexpectedly in character as a gag that cracks the whole table up and makes the hours of play fly by. This player is a headache and a half, but every group would benefit from having one, so tolerate their nonsense when you have to.
#D&D#D&D 5e#D&D&EE#Dungeons and dragons#dungeon master#dungeon master tutorial#dungeon master guide#treasure#dm#gm#dm tutorial#characters#character creation#understanding your players#backgrounds#rolling stats#types of players#PCs#player characters
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Stand Still Stay Silent Liveblog #41
UPDATE 41: Underappreciated Mikkel
Last time Reynir had a nightmare. The ghosts that are very close to the tank aren’t friendly. I for one think it’s rather possible that nightmare is rooted in reality. Let’s continue.
First than all, worldbuilding! What is the topic this time? It’s about how contagious the rash illness is. I was wrong to assume how infectious it was, it seems. It’s a tad more complicated than I expected. In few words: common trolls and beasts can spread the illness through bites, scratches and the such. If there’s an entrance through the skin, the infectious agent can enter the system. You could rub your hands all over a troll all you want and you’d be fine as long as you don’t have open wounds on your hands, theoretically. That’s a relief! Not that it means Reynir and Tuuri should get careless, no way.
Wait, do you mean trolls usually don’t breathe? No wonder the pathogen can’t infect only by mere proximity to trolls! That was what I had thought all along, that since it was airborne, the trolls’ breath and air surrounding them would be vectors of infection. But no, I was wrong, those circumstances are rare! Alright!
And that’s how the entire world became what it is now. Lots of incubating in non-immune humans, and spreading the airborne pathogen. It seems to follow the usual traits of any common infectious disease like the flu. In this case, if Tuuri or Reynir get infected, the odds the other will get infected too are rather high. That’d spell doom for both of them. Another reason to make sure they don’t get infected.
...right. Survival note: stay away from Peru. The llama beasts can spit like their lives depend on it. Hah! Okay, bad jokes aside, hard to know what trolls can spit like that and which ones can’t. Which brings me to the rule of thumb, in my opinion as a reader:
There’s no such thing as a safe distance, because I’m sure the trolls would aim to kill you, not to infect you. Onni may have the right idea, never going out of safe areas, because everything out there is trying to kill you and if it doesn’t kill you, then you get infected and you die anyways. The only safe distance is when there’s a very thick wall between you and the troll.
That was all the worldbuilding for now. Interesting lesson! Now it’s time to start another chapter. Chapter 10! I’m blazing through the chapters – in some sense of the world.
There’s Tuuri and Reynir examining a helicopter while Mikkel supervises the. No sign of Sigrun and Emil, I suppose they may be offscreen. I’m surprised the non-immune crew members are out there, checking the ruins of civilization. I thought they’d want to keep them in the tank. What may have happened?
Several wounds with stitches isn’t enough to stop Sigrun from continuing her life as normal. She’s going back into the field; she doesn’t even plan to be careful not to undo her stitches. Mikkel offers to take Emil’s place, since his leg is kind of messed up, and Sigrun diplomatically ignores him. And by diplomatically I mean she doesn’t even let Mikkel finish the sentence before calling for Emil.
Speaking of Emil, he’s checking on Lalli, who is still snoozing away. The magic he did the other day must have exhausted him considerably, and that isn’t surprising. Tuuri isn’t worried, she says Lalli just needs to rest. This must have happened before, then.
Sigrun is going to whittle Emil down until the poor guy can’t move, apparently. What’s so wrong about taking Mikkel? Last time she told him to stay out of the building, and said it was because his size would make it difficult for him to come along, he’d block the way out. Are they going to explore another building full of narrow halls?
I suppose Sigrun wasn’t very impressed by Mikkel’s aim. She doesn’t want him to smash her kneecaps when he’s trying to kill a troll.
Inside the tank, Tuuri is doing her job, comparing notes with an object that resembles some sort of small syringe. There’s no label, there’s no mark, and were supposed to be distributed to treatment centers. Hmmm...some sort of medicine to try to counter the effects of the disease? You can infer from this that the royal residences here may have been transformed into a treatment center long ago, and that’s why there are so many skeletons here. They may have been subjected to experimental treatments, when you’re infected and likely to die and/or turn into a troll, you don’t have much choice but to try anything to get better.
Siv never heard a word about this? She was trying for many, many years to help make a cure for the rash illness, or some form of medicine against it. If a vaccine was developed somewhere, she must have heard about it. Another reason to think this was just an experimental vaccine. If it had been effective, then she’d have known such thing was developed somewhere. There’s also the fact that, well, it didn’t work, because all these people died on the beds after being abandoned by the doctors.
...I know I just said that about how the vaccine didn’t work, Reynir, but you really shouldn’t say that kind of thing with a big ol’ grin.
Excited by what seems to be a promising lead, Tuuri wants to go check by themselves. So that’s why the image for this chapter has these three investigating by themselves! They’re going to go into the royal residences and find a crashed helicopter there? It worries me because they’d be going right where the ghosts are at. That’s bound to be dangerous.
This impromptu expedition is going to happen later, though. Right now Mikkel wants to clean, and he gets Reynir’s help. There’s a lot to be done, and soon everything is sparkling clean. This must have taken a couple hours. Now that everything is clean and Mikkel had time to think, he decides it’s time to get into action.
Looks like Sigrun’s refusal to take him along stung more than I thought it would. Now he’s going to lead a smaller expedition into that building. With some luck it won’t be a disaster and Sigrun won’t feel justified in not taking Mikkel with her next time.
Well, he’s not immediately wanting to take Tuuri and Reynir with him, he wants to go alone. The non-immune crewmembers must stay behind! Well we know how that’s going to go. They sure aren’t going to stay behind.
Well done, Tuuri! Heh, she has a bit of a cunning streak. I like this. Mikkel has more experience and years in skirting around the rules and being clever, so he points out Lalli is immune and therefore they won’t be alone. So what if Lalli is currently out of commission? It counts! And so he leaves. I think I see what’s going to happen. Tuuri is going to sneak and try to follow Mikkel, isn’t she? And Reynir is going to follow her, maybe because he doesn’t want to be alone and bored in the tank. I hope Lalli doesn’t wake up while everyone is gone.
This is shaping up to be an interesting chapter. I’ll stop for now and continue next time.
Next time: next update
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Doomsday Dawn: In Pale Mountain’s Shadow Char Gen Part 2 and a Rant on Healing
So I’ve made a second pregen for my players for session 2 of the playtest. This was a specific request from a friend of mine for a Human Alchemist. It went pretty well actually, much better than the last character. I will now summarize my thoughts on character creation in general.
DnD 5e character creation is boring. Seriously. There is almost no choice in the affair. Assign some abilities, pick a race, background, class, archetype, and you’re done. Maybe we get a little crazy and introduce ability boosts, feats, or multiclassing. Now here’s the thing. P2 doesn’t expand upon this. There is no additional mechanical complexity in play, like fighters using maneuvers to pierce armor, shatter stone walls, or provide leadership to their party. The characters are about the same mechanically speaking. They have 6 ability scores, an ancestry, a background, a class, and some feats. They hit things or cast a spell, with roughly one class feature per level to mix things up. The thing is, getting there requires a lot more choices to be made. A LOT more.
To make a character’s ability scores in P2 you don’t roll or use point buy. You choose ability boosts which add a +2 or -2 to a score of 10. Feats are also divided up into categories, with general and skill feats being available to all characters and class feats being available only to specific classes. Class feats function a bit like broken up archetype paths with mix and match features.
So at 4th level you pick an ancestry, a background, and a class, getting 4 ancestry ability boosts, 2 background ability boosts, 4 general ability boosts, 1 class ability boost, 3 class feats, 1 background skill feats, 2 normal skill feats, 1 general feat, your actual class features, weapon and armor proficiencies, between 2 and 10 skill proficiencies, 1 expert skill proficiency, and some combination of familiars, animal companions, spells, powers, and crafting formulas. Plus there’s gear. You need one or several weapons with tons of distinct tags useful in different situations, armors that involve a very real tradeoff between protection and high armor check penalties, miscellaneous adventuring gear, and then fighting with the stingy encumbrance system to fit it all on your character without having them collapse under their own weight.
And then there’s magic items! You get one 3rd, two 2nd, and one 1st level items. Those are all nearly worthless, with the only standout pick being +1 armor in your 3rd level slot. There are some other items I’m overlooking, especially some consumable oils and wands, but the one that really burns me are the potions of healing. I think those actually are worthless now. Adventuring parties are experiencing massive hit point inflation because everyone gets max hit points now, for every level. My 4th level human alchemist with a 12 con has 44 HP, up from 26 last edition. Pretty close to double.
While I think it might be a good thing in that it reduces the value of your con score from “mandatory for all classes” to “nice to have”, it devalues a lot of choices. Toughness and boosting your con score now give relatively modest differences in hit points. Consider that a 4th level fighter with a 10 con might be at 50 hit points, and at 70 with an 18 con, a 40% boost. Last edition you’d be looking at 27 base hit points and 47 with that high constitution, a 75% boost. Healing, toughness, constitution, it all seems less valuable now with that big buffer of hit points added on.
You should almost never have maximum hit points either. Healing up will take tons of resources, and despite 1st level spells being buffed a la 5e DnD (y’know, the old “Magic missile shoots 3 missiles instead of 1 to make it look worthwhile compared to your cantrip which is basically a bow” thing), despite that buff, Heal (Cure Light/Moderate/etc. is just “Heal” this edition) still does a measly 1d8. They pretend to throw us a bone by letting you add your ability modifier to that, as if that makes up for losing your caster level added on to it. What was regularly regarded as the worst possible strategy to take in combat, healing, has gotten beaten with the nerf bat. And besides that, there is less of it going around. You have Resonance Points limiting the amount of magic items you can use in one day, spells healing less than they used to, fewer spells being available with the elimination of bonus spell slots, healing being proportionately weaker due to hit point inflation, and wands now only carrying 10 charges.
This is an immense and radical shift in how hit points and healing works. Out of combat healing never bothered me. Your spell casters would still run out of spells and the martials would still run out of hit points once combat started. I worry this will just encourage more 15 minute adventuring days as parties will be desperate to return to their full hit point totals. I am open to the idea of keeping on the pressure by slowly whittling down a larger hit point total with less healing available, but boy that is an uncomfortable shift.
Well. That got away from me. End rant.
I should probably actually talk about the Alchemist at some point, huh? He’s fine. Alchemical formula are neat. Tons of neat potions and effect are available. Bombs look much cooler than spells and with my 10 resonance points I have up to 20 of them per day before I spend a single copper. The use of resonance points as ammo and doubling your exchange rate by prepping potions at the beginning of the day was interesting, though I worry Remarkable Resonance is a mandatory feat for Alchemists (maybe it should be a bonus feat instead of Studied Resonance?). Class and skill feats were mostly unremarkable but felt good to choose. Skill proficiencies seem more impactful when you aren’t hampered by armor check penalties. Weapons seemed relatively worthless when you’re packing bombs, and the lack of Dex-to-damage for non-rogues made it hard to get excited by a d8 damage crossbow at this level.
To summarize, I didn’t hate making this character like I did the ranger. The Alchemist is almost a wizard lite, with tons of different abilities including damage, concealment, disguise, poison, darkvision, and more. Their skills didn’t fight with the prohibitive armor system because the alchemist wasn’t dependent on strength for damage and put those points into dexterity and light armor. And at least Alchemists gets to take advantage of the formula system without spending hundreds of silver pieces. At least the alchemy items are worth using, unlike the traps that have a half dozen hoops to jump through in order to deal a d8 damage. (Please just buff the snares or something!)
Next time, we continue prepping for In Pale Mountain’s Shadow. My wife wants to build a character, so we’ll see how someone who doesn’t focus on system mastery deals with dozens of choices in character creation. I’m hopeful that a little advice from someone with experience will make things a lot smoother for her. Wish us luck!
#Pathfinder Playtest#Pathfinder#pathfinder 2nd edition#dnd 5e#Dungeons and Dragons#trpg#character creation#game design
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Small Vegetable Garden Ideas | Gardener’s Supply
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What to grow when you have small spaces for gardening
You can grow fresh food, even in compact spaces. Just choose the right plants to maximize productivity. Self-watering Victory Gardens provide ideal growing conditions when space is limited.
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Growing a small vegetable garden is like living in a small house: It’s not as easy as it looks. One of the keys to success is making good plant choices. Choose compact, productive plants that take up less space yet still provide plenty to harvest.
I learned this when I moved from a 10-acre farm to a small city plot. I had to rethink my vegetable garden. No longer could I grow anything that piqued my interest. I had to become much more selective.
Every year, seed catalogs feature an expanding selection of vegetables, including many that are chosen specifically for their compact nature. While many gardeners value productivity and flavor, small-space gardeners also look for plants that have ornamental qualities and longevity.
It took a few years of whittling down my list to come up with the crops I grow every year in my small garden plot. I start with a foundation of tried-and-true favorites: lettuce, basil, and tomatoes. Yet I leave space to try a few new varieties each year. To supplement my harvest, I buy vegetables from a CSA or farmers market. Below are a few of my recommendations, along with those from seed companies that conduct extensive trials to deliver the best varieties.
Basil
Every gardener plants sweet basil, and for good reason. The tiny aromatic leaves awaken the senses, adding bright flavor to pesto, salad dressings and more. There are more than 80 varieties of basil, including a few “miniature” types that are perfect for small-scale gardens. A variety called Pistou is the most diminutive form of sweet basil, ideal for planters or windowboxes. The tight green mounds can be used for edging in a larger planter.
Basil is easy to grow from seed, and available from most seed catalogs. Learn how to grow basil.
Pistou basil. Photo: Urban Farmer
Chard
“Cut-and-come-again” is a welcome quality in any garden plant. Harvesting leaves actually encourages more growth. With an upright growth habit and brightly colored stems, rainbow chard works well in tight spaces.
Because chard is in the beet family, it is easy to grow from seed, but note that the seedlings will need to be thinned to ensure proper spacing. For small containers, it is easier to start with transplants instead of seeds — no thinning required. Learn how to grow Swiss chard.
Brightly colored chard shares a planter with scallions.
Eggplant
Oriental eggplants are known for their compact habit, making them a good choice for pots and planters. Choosing a favorite among the dozens of varieties is difficult. Gwenael Engelskirchen, trials manager at High Mowing Organic Seeds, says Ping Tung Long eggplant earns a spot at the top of her list. “Slender purple eggplants hang from compact plants of this lovely heirloom variety, ” she says. “The plant stays small but has the potential of producing a lot of eggplants.” Because the 10″-long fruit is narrow, it’s ideal for slicing and cubing; skin is tender and the flavor is mild.
Ping Tung Long eggplant. Photo: High Mowing Organic Seeds
Read more: Butterfly Garden Flowers
Sow seeds indoors and transplant to pots and planters when warm weather arrives. Tip: When starting seed for eggplants and peppers, use bottom heat for better germination. Place seedling trays on a germinating mat set at 85 degrees F., or on top of the refrigerator, where the heat from the appliance will provide warmth. Learn how to grow eggplant.
Hot Peppers
Hot peppers are the ultimate ornamental edible for window boxes and compact gardens. The plants are ornamental and the fruit is long-lasting. “It’s hard to pick a favorite,” says Nina Burokas of Sustainable Seed Company, who admits that she is crazy about all hot peppers. “Black Hungarian pepper is so colorful that it not only belongs in the garden, but on the patio in pots as well.” Purple flowers highlight the emerald-green foliage. During the season, the fruit turns green, then black and finally red. The plants can grow to about 30-36″, which makes them a little big for a window box, but fine for larger containers. For smaller plants, try their Patio Fire pepper seeds. The narrow fruit grows upward, resembling flames. Color goes from yellow to orange and matures red.
Black Hungarian pepper. Photo: Sustainable Seed Company
Sow seeds indoors and transplant to pots and planters when warm weather arrives. Learn how to grow hot peppers.
Tomatoes
Fast-growing and prolific, cherry tomatoes can overwhelm a trellis in short order. However, growers have introduced compact varieties that are tame enough for smaller spaces. Start from seed or find plants in a local nursery. Learn how to grow cherry tomatoes.
For instance, Cherry Cascade grows happily in a hanging basket and produces hundreds of tomatoes. The variety is recommended by Susan Romanoff of Gardener’s Supply Company, who grows them in an elevated raised bed in her northern Vermont garden. “Perfect scale! Slightly draping but not so long or heavy that they reach low to the ground,” she says. Fruit ranges from the size of a marble up to a golf ball. It has good tomato flavor — not candy-sweet like some cherry tomatoes. Plants are relatively tolerant of drought and the fruit is less prone to the cracking and blossom-end rot, which frequently afflicts the full-sized tomato varieties.
A Cherry Cascade tomato, thriving in a grow bag.
Mesclun Mixes
The word mesclun means miscellaneous greens, attributed to wild weeds once foraged by peasants in Europe to supplement their limited diets. Many of the mixtures found today are made up of quick-growing arugula and mustards, and are not ideal for containers. However, you can create your own container-friendly mesclun. Consider Italian endives and escaroles, which can be harvested leaf by leaf. Or, try purslane, which has unusual, succulent leaves that are high in omega 3 fatty acids. Seed companies offer mixes that are suited to the season, so you can start with a spring mix. After harvest, replant with a blend that can withstand summer heat, followed by a third planting of fall greens, such as cold-tolerant kale and collards.
Mesclun growing in our display garden
Seed for mesclun is widely available, including mixes such as Wrinkled Crinkled Crumpled Cress and Purple Rapa Pop Mix. By the way, Purple Rapa is a cold-season salad mix selected for solid purple leaves, cold hardiness, and disease resistance. Best color will manifest between the fall and spring equinoxes. Learn how to grow mesclun.
Lettuce
Lettuce comes in all shapes, sizes and colors, and the key to a great-looking container garden is to mix it up. Plant different types of lettuce, starting with Little Gem, a mini romaine that forms a sweet, dense heart. Add some Merlot, a striking red butterhead, and Lolla Rossa, a loose-leaf type with frilly leaves.
Lettuce typically grows from seed to salad in 45 days. Plan to harvest leaf-by-leaf to stretch out season, or have a successive crop ready to fill in the gap. Learn how to grow lettuce.
Lolla Rossa lettuce. Photo: High Mowing Organic Seeds
Edible Flowers
A natural choice for containers and small-space gardens, edible flowers add unmistakable charm. My favorites include nasturtiums, violas, and calendula, which can be planted early in the season and will continue blooming all summer long if kept picked. The signet marigold, Lemon Gem, is a mainstay in my garden because of the aromatic ferny foliage that releases a lemon scent.
If you don’t find transplants, most edible flowers are easy to grow from seed. Just push the seeds into the soil where they are to grow. Learn how to grow calendula.
Calendula
Pole Beans
Another way to make use of space: grow vertical. Choose a vine, such as pole beans, which will happily climb a trellis. My favorite is the Italian heirloom Trionfo Violetto. This ornamental and edible plant has lush green foliage with purple undersides. By midsummer, a multitude of lavender flowers appear, followed by thin, purple-podded beans.
Pole beans are easy to start from seed, planted right where they are to grow. Learn how to grow beans.
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The trillion-dollar woman
A conversation with the economist Stephanie Kelton about the "deficit myth," Modern Monetary Theory for dummies, and why the age of capital may finally be ending
Anand Giridharadas
Mar 30
Joe Biden is president of the United States, but he lives in Stephanie Kelton’s world.
An economist and champion of so-called Modern Monetary Theory, Kelton has long agitated against what she calls “the deficit myth,” which is also the title of her bestselling book on the subject.
At the most basic level, Kelton believes the United States government is capable of investing far more than it ordinarily does, or than most people think it should, in making people’s lives better. And she argues that much of the resistance to doing so is grounded in outdated, gold-standard thinking that has no place in reality today.
Whatever you think of her ideas, which have a rapidly growing number of adherents, and which tend to make Larry Summers cry, there is no question that they are carrying the day in the American public debate. Indeed, it is hard to understand the comfort the new Biden administration has had with significant government spending — contrary to Biden’s own past nature — without understanding how much the terms of the debate have shifted, and how much Kelton herself has to do with that shift.
So I’m excited to bring you this interview with her today.
But first: I will be doing my regular live chat/webinar thing today at 1 p.m. New York time, 10 a.m. Pacific time, and 6 p.m. London time. If you’re new to The Ink, they’re fun and engaging. If you haven’t yet, subscribe today to join us. Subscribers will receive login details beforehand.
Subscribing to The Ink is the best way to keep it free and open to all, and to support independent media that hopefully makes you think and enlivens your conversations. I appreciate your support for this undertaking. Every subscriber makes a difference.
“We’re closer than we’ve been in a long time”: a conversation with Stephanie Kelton
ANAND: In the wake of the passage of the American Rescue Plan, we’ve heard every manner of reaction. Joe Biden is a dangerous socialist. Joe Biden is putting lipstick on the pig of austerity politics. Joe Biden is the second coming of FDR. Or maybe LBJ. How would you assess what happened and what it tells us about where this presidency is headed?
STEPHANIE: I served as one of eight members on the Biden-Sanders “unity task force” on the economy. Some of the other members are now in the administration. I’m not sure exactly what I expected to see from Biden in his first 100 days, but the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act went beyond anything I would have anticipated.
And they’re not done. Later this week, we’ll get the details of a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure package. It will almost certainly be too small, given the enormous challenges we face, and it isn’t clear how much of the proposed spending they will try to “pay for” with higher taxes. If they insist on raising a slew of taxes to offset all (or mostly all) of the spending, it could make it more difficult to hold all 50 Senate Democrats together. Any slippage risks paring back the price tag and, thus, delivering an even smaller package.
But it’s encouraging to see the president recognize that temporary relief wasn’t enough. I think he knows that he can’t afford to preside over the kind of “recovery” we experienced after the Great Recession of 2007-2009. That’s what the “Build Back Better” agenda is about.
Biden is no socialist, but he does seem to understand that his presidency will be judged, in large part, on the degree to which his policies deliver material improvements in people’s lives.
It’s way too early for comparisons to FDR and LBJ. I think Harvey Kaye, who has written several books on FDR, has this right. He tweeted that Biden will be less like FDR or LBJ and more like Dwight Eisenhower if Dems succeed in passing an infrastructure bill but can’t bust the filibuster and pass the PRO Act and the For the People Act.
ANAND: The dog that didn’t bark during the rescue plan debate was deficit anxiety. You’ve devoted years of life to training that dog to stop barking. Can you explain what you observed in this debate regarding deficit angst fading from the culture, and why that matters?
STEPHANIE: Back in March 2020, I said, “It took a virus to kill the deficit myth.” It’s not dead, but you’re right. It’s been dormant for the last year. Angst over the deficit faded as soon as Covid became a national emergency. Congress spun out multiple packages without so-called “pay-fors.” The biggest — the CARES Act — was a $2.2 trillion spending bill. We got another one ($900 billion) in December and one more ($1.9 trillion) about a month ago. All of it added to the deficit.
Occasionally, the deficit still came up. Remember, the bipartisan group that worked out the $900 billion package in December openly worried about the “price tag” and whittled the survival checks down to $600. But Biden defended the $1.9 trillion by invoking the founding fathers, who he explained had given the federal government the ability to do what state and local governments can’t do — deficit-spend! He publicly embraced the deficit in a way I haven’t seen any president do in my lifetime.
What I’m watching for now is where the administration goes next. The Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, raised concerns about debt and deficits in her confirmation hearings, and she has a long history of worrying about a phantom debt crisis. She has talked about the need to “pay for” the parts of the Build Back Better agenda that are permanent, “to not raise long-term deficits.” The Obama administration’s pivot to deficit reduction remains an open wound in my heart. I hope the Biden team will turn a blind eye to the deficit and stay focused on healing the real economy.
ANAND: You are a leading champion of what’s called Modern Monetary Theory. It’s a domain with a devoted fan base and many people who don’t understand a thing about it. Give me the explanation you’d give to a 10-year-old about what the old thinking was and what MMT seeks to replace it with.
STEPHANIE: The first chapter in my book is called “Don’t Think of a Household.” I open with a Sesame Street reference, so this is an explanation that most 5-year-olds can grasp. For those who grew up watching the show, a frequent segment was aimed at helping kids distinguish things that are alike from things that have some fundamentally different characteristics.
“One of these things is not like the other,” the song went. So think about these four things: A household, a business, state and local governments, and the federal government. The first three share something important in common: none of them can issue the U.S. dollar. In order to spend, they must first come up with the money.
The federal government is completely different. It has the sole legal authority to issue the currency. Biden was right! Article 1, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution enshrined that power. Unlike the rest of us, the federal government can spend money it doesn’t have. New dollars are created every time the federal government spends.
Take the Covid relief package. Congress didn’t go out and “find” $1.9 trillion before passing that legislation. It didn’t have to, because it has something the rest of us don’t — the power of the purse. The bill effectively ordered up $1.9 trillion new dollars from a bank called the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve carries out payments on behalf of Treasury, using nothing more than a computer keyboard to change the appropriate bank account numbers.
If you received one of those $1,400 stimulus checks, that money was keystroked into existence to help your family. If you’re unemployed, and you’re getting an extra $300 a week in unemployment benefits, you’re also receiving newly created dollars, courtesy of the federal government.
If households, businesses, governors, and mayors had this power, they would plug any holes in their budgets on their own. But they can’t. They are financially constrained. The federal government isn’t.
MMT is about providing an accurate description of the monetary system that exists today and government finance mechanics. In other words, MMT describes how things work. We’re not on a gold standard anymore, but we haven’t come to terms with what that means.
We still have this idea that the federal government needs our money in order to pay its bills. That is wrong. Could Congress spend too much? Absolutely! But the punishment for overspending is inflation, not insolvency, contrary to what Ron Paul, Ted Cruz, and Lindsey Graham would have us believe.
At its core, MMT is about replacing the (flawed) concept of a government budget constraint with a natural resource (inflation) constraint. It’s not that there aren’t any limits. There are! But they’re not on the financing side (as we have been trained to believe). Our government cannot run “out of money,” as President Obama once falsely claimed. We cannot end up like Greece, and, contra these economists, we were never facing a fiscal crisis.
MMT teaches us to ask not, “How will you pay for it?” but “How will you resource it?” The politics are hard, but coming up with the money for Medicare for All, tuition-free college, or a huge infrastructure package is the easy part. Managing the use of our productive resources, and respecting our ecological constraints, is the defining challenge of our time.
ANAND: How significant is the new child benefit, and do you think it creates the rudiments of a basic income in American life?
STEPHANIE: It’s significant. Anytime you can cut child poverty in half with a stroke of the pen, it is, as Biden says, “a big f-ing deal.” It is life-changing and significant for millions of families. It shows that poverty is and always has been a policy choice. But it’s also, potentially, a temporary improvement in their economic station.
It’s also the case that the aid is targeted to a particular group of people based on specific identified needs (i.e., child-related expenses), so in that respect, it is not like a universal basic income. It does get us closer to a point where every person has a guaranteed minimum income. However, it is also being considered in concert with an expansion of pre-K and a buildout of other care-related infrastructure, so it’s not just “give them cash and let the market sort it out.”
ANAND: What do you think about many of these most significant — even philosophically significant — elements of the American Rescue Plan being temporary and requiring renewal before long? Is this a dangerous way of going about things, or perhaps a clever way of whetting the public appetite for change and then pushing it through when that appetite has grown?
STEPHANIE: Remember that Democrats passed the latest rescue package through a process known as budget reconciliation. And remember that the Senate is currently bound by the Byrd Rule, which, among other things, prevents lawmakers from using reconciliation to pass legislation that increases the deficit outside the 10-year budget window.
So it’s a bit like when Republicans passed their tax cuts in December 2017. They used reconciliation as well, and they had to sunset specific provisions to comply with Byrd. Specifically, they made the corporate tax cuts permanent, but the individual income tax cuts temporary.
There was just no way for Democrats to get a package through a standalone bill with the filibuster in place. To have the kind of freedom to do bold, FDR-like stuff, they need to get rid of a whole suite of self-imposed budget rules and constraints. I think you’re right, though. The public’s appetite has been whetted. Unlike the GOP tax cuts, Biden’s rescue package was enormously popular, and that should make it easier for lawmakers to turn some of the temporary measures into longer-term commitments.
ANAND: I wanted to ask you about the minimum wage. The increase to $15 was famously removed from this rescue plan. But the same legislators like Senator Joe Manchin, who didn’t like that provision, didn’t have a problem with $1.9 trillion of government spending.
If I’m generous, it makes me wonder if the concern is the pain on small businesses. Is there any way to raise the minimum wage but spare small businesses the burden — via some public support that would, in essence, make the society pay that increase, not individual firms? Is that a terrible idea?
STEPHANIE: I think there is a way, but it’s not really about making society pay. Lawmakers could negotiate a tax cut for small businesses to get the votes needed to raise the minimum wage. It’s basically how Congress did it the last time the minimum wage was increased.
In 2007, Congress amended the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to gradually raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour. How did it happen? The bill was introduced in the House on January 5, 2007, and passed on January 10. All 233 House Democrats voted “aye.” Eighty-two Republicans joined them in voting “aye.”
A cloture motion — to stop debate and move to a vote — in the Senate failed after President George W. Bush said he wanted tax cuts for small business owners who might be adversely impacted. The Senate included the tax cuts, and the amended bill sailed through with a vote of 94-3. I don’t see why we couldn’t do something like that again.
ANAND: So here’s confusion I hear a lot. Modern Monetary Theory proposes that we should stop thinking about what programs we can do in terms of what taxes we can raise.
Yet there are these important calls for raising taxes on the ultra-rich — and whether it’s Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, they justify them in large part because of what can be paid for with the revenues. Is this a problematic way to pitch it?
Should we do a wealth tax? And if not for paying for things, then why?
STEPHANIE: First, the economics behind the conventional way of thinking about taxes is simply flawed. As the New York Federal Reserve's former head observed way back in 1946, “Taxes for Revenue are Obsolete.” The conventional wisdom derives from outmoded, gold-standard thinking, and we should stop debating tax policy as if we have a monetary system that is no longer with us. State and local governments need tax revenue to operate. The federal government does not. To have a fruitful discussion about federal tax policy, the word “revenue” should never come up.
In addition to getting the economics wrong, I believe it is politically harmful to pretend that we cannot afford to fix our crumbling infrastructure, or care for our people, unless and until we successfully wrest part of Jeff Bezos’ fortune away from him.
I mean, come on. Congress just did something that will halve child poverty, and it didn’t raise a single tax to do it. So, of course, we don’t need to tax the rich in order to be able to spend trillions on programs that benefit the majority of the population. As I argued here, we’ve had that power all along.
Here’s how I put it in “The Deficit Myth”:
We can, and must, tax the rich. But not because we can’t afford to do anything without them. We should tax billionaires to rebalance the distribution of wealth and income and to protect the health of our democracy.
But we don’t need to crack open their piggy banks to eradicate poverty or to have the federal job guarantee with a living wage that Coretta Scott King fought for. We already have the tools we need. Feigning dependence on those with incredible wealth sends the wrong message, making them appear more vital to our cause than they are.
I think every MMT scholar strongly favors substantial tax increases on the wealthiest people in our society — not so much because they’re not paying their fair share but — because they have been taking more than their fair share for too long, something you’ve written about yourself. We have dangerous levels of income and wealth inequality, and that is all the justification I need to support many of the tax increases Senators Warren and Sanders have proposed.
But we must go further. Senator Warren admits that the uber-wealthy will barely feel the pinch of her 2 percent wealth tax (escalating by another 1 percent on fortunes over $1 billion). Why? Because, she admits, their wealth tends to grow at an annual clip that far exceeds 2 or 3 percent, meaning it doesn’t get us to a place where we’re dealing with extreme concentrations of wealth.
Ironically, I think this has to do with the fact that the wealth tax is being touted primarily as a way to “pay for” parts of the progressive agenda. It’s almost as if the goal is to peel off just enough to claim that it will “pay for” universal pre-K, some student debt cancellation, etc., rather than to aggressively deal with the concentrations of wealth that have been undermining our democracy.
That may be changing. I noticed last week that Senator Sanders seems to be inching closer to the MMT view. As Niv Elis wrote in the Hill, “Sanders also made it clear that he sees the issue not so much as a matter of paying for favored policies, but in creating a more equitable society.”
ANAND: Given the historical residue of the Cold War and the lingering American fear of big government and communism around the corner, how can those who want what you want in terms of economic policy do a better job of pitching their ideas to those millions of members of the public who are skeptical, if not hostile?
STEPHANIE: I think Biden is a pretty terrific messenger. He sold the population on the need for a nearly $2 trillion rescue package, and he’s on the verge of barnstorming the country to build support for another $3 to $4 trillion for his Build Back Better agenda. He could go even bigger, and I think he could do it without giving the other side any rope to hang him with.
It’s not communism or socialism but a kind of protectionism that he could successfully lean into to build support for a more progressive suite of economic policies.
Donald Trump successfully pushed a protectionist narrative. A typically racist and ugly kind of protectionism, but protectionism nonetheless. Much of it was purely racist. It was about protecting “us” from “them.” But he also spoke of the economic system's failures and the way he intended to protect workers from raw trade deals and the like.
“Help is on the way,” he bloviated, pretending to understand the pain of working-class voters who had seen their towns and communities become shadows of their former selves, hollowed out by decades of neoliberal trade, labor, and environmental policies.
Biden wouldn’t be selling communism or socialism, but he could sell America on a different kind of protectionism.
And now we come full circle. FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights was a protectionist document. It enumerated a set of essential protections that should be afforded to every person in this country. The right to a job and a decent wage, the right to operate a business free of unfair competition and monopolies, the right to an education, to housing and health care, and to a secure retirement.
We all want the sense of security that comes from knowing that whatever the vagaries of capitalism may throw our way, there are certain safeguards in place to protect all of us from poverty and deprivation.
Biden could even one-up FDR, presenting us with a 21st-century version of an Economic Bill of Rights. Something along these lines.
ANAND: For years, my plea has been that we have to end the age of capital — this neoliberal era — and launch an age of reform. Where do you think we are at this moment in time on that long arc?
STEPHANIE: I’d say we’re closer than we’ve been in a long time, but it could well get much worse before it gets better. I hope I’m wrong, but climate change is going to confront us with some very bad circumstances. If we can’t rebuild basic levels of empathy and communitarian commitment, those bad circumstances are going to make us meaner, more scared, more selfish, and ultimately more violent than we already are.
Stephanie Kelton is an economist, professor, and former advisor to Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign. You can order her latest book, “The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy,” here. This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.
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How To Make It Through The Dip
As the old song goes, “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em.” While this may be a reference to playing poker, it’s also pretty good advice on how to get by in the business world or with any personal project – you have to know when to keep going and when to cut your losses.
No matter your calling in life, there’s a good chance you’ll hit a rough patch where things aren’t going as planned and progress is at a frustrating standstill. Many of us have watched as colleagues get promoted ahead of us, sales figures plateau, relationships grow cold or felt like our work is getting worse rather than better. This difficult time is known as the Dip, and it can be found in just about every facet of life.
But don’t despair! Even though the Dip is virtually unavoidable, there is often light at the end of the tunnel. Those who show patience and determination will be rewarded when growing pains come to an end and promotions, customers and relationships take a turn for the better. The Dip is just a natural progression for any endeavor and by being prepared for it, you’ll be better suited to succeed.
Whatever your aim, you will experience a Dip, or a period of struggle.
Let’s say you want to master figure skating. Learning how to gracefully glide across the ice, and even skate backward, can happen pretty quickly. But learning how to land a perfect quadruple jump will take a great deal of time and strenuous effort before you can perfect it. This is the time when you’re struggling – deep in the Dip.
The same experience can happen when you’re bringing a new business to life. At first it’ll be smooth sailing as you fall in love with your exciting and innovative ideas. But then there’s the inevitable mountains of paperwork to overcome and figuring out how to solve the many problems that will arise during the early stages. Chances are, it’ll be years before the Dip is over and you’re comfortably running a successful business.
Sometimes the Dip can be purposefully built-in to a process as a way of finding out who the most dedicated and hardworking people are.
Imagine you’re a student in the US, thinking of going to medical school. One of your mandatory classes in the first year will be Organic Chemistry – a fiendishly difficult subject that will eat up a great deal of your study time. While Organic Chemistry isn’t the most important class in the curriculum, it creates a Dip that causes many students to throw in the towel early on.
A lot of people entertain the idea of becoming a doctor, so creating a Dip early on is an easy way for universities to reduce the class size to only the most dedicated students.
A similar strategy is used in the hiring processes of companies around the world. In order to whittle down the applicant pool to only the best talents, many job applications require an excessive amount of documentation and include multiple rounds of stressful interviews.
The good news is, by recognizing these Dips for what they are, you can find comfort in the knowledge that they’re supposed to be difficult and that it will get easier if you just stick with it.
Being the best comes with big rewards, as well as some less obvious perks.
When you were growing up, there’s a very good chance you were taught to have modest, realistic goals rather than bold, grand ambitions.
The truth is that if you aim for being the best at what you do, the rewards can be phenomenal. Take ice-cream flavors, for example: coming in at number one is vanilla, which accounts for 30 percent of all ice cream sales in the US. Meanwhile, chocolate comes in at second, but only accounts for 10 percent of the sales.
That’s a huge difference between the best and second-best – and this phenomenon applies to more than just snack foods. According to Zipf’s law, a significant gap between first and second place can be found everywhere, from record sales to the top colleges.
Naturally, Zipf’s law also means that being number one comes with huge profits, but there are also less obvious perks to being the very best at what you do.
One such advantage is the word-of-mouth boost known as the snowball effect. Imagine being in a foreign city and wanting to find a decent place to eat. If you ask a local, you’ll likely get pointed toward whatever restaurant is the number one local favorite. So, if you’re the owner of that establishment, you’re all but guaranteed to have those hungry travelers regularly showing up thanks to all that free word-of-mouth promotion.
Another perk is related to how much you can charge. Since being the best is such a rarefied thing that sets you far apart from anyone else, you’re free to charge more for your premium product or service. This applies to just about everything, whether it’s about popular actors, musicians, hotels, restaurants, food brands or manufacturers – it pays to be the best.
In order to succeed, it is important to specialize and learn how to quit strategically.
The average grade school experience is about getting an all-around general education, with rewards tending to go to the students who get good marks in every subject.
But in the post-school world, being good at everything isn’t as important as being at the top of your class in one important subject. In other words, success is about specializing in something.
Specificity has many advantages. For starters, some people aren’t sure about what career to pursue. But if you’re lucky enough to already have a specific skill that you excel at, this can make career decisions much easier.
Even if you’ve already begun a career, you should know that customers aren’t interested in average – they want exceptional, and providing world-class service is just another form of specialization.
If you’re an accountant, your customers aren’t going to care if you’re an amazing golfer or a virtuoso at playing the guitar. The only thing that matters is that you’re the best accountant they can get.
An important part of specializing is learning how to strategically quit the things that get in the way of you being the best at what you do. However, most people have been taught that quitting is wrong, and that they should stick with any project they’ve started and never give up.
Unfortunately, people can’t be truly exceptional and the best at a wide range of things. Instead, people need to make distinct choices, which means quitting intensive pursuits that aren’t related to your central focus.
For example, let’s say you have a passion to produce the world’s first flying car, but you also want to play trumpet in an innovative jazz band and start a non-profit that promotes the use of eco-friendly green energy.
All of your interests may be worthwhile, but it just isn’t feasible to do it all and be the best at everything. The better strategy is to make the clear choice of focusing on the one project that you’ve got the skills for and feel most passionate about.
You will face a Dip in any business or personal endeavor.
As the saying goes, “knowing is half the battle.” And knowing that a Dip is on the way is an important insight that gives you time to plan ahead and to familiarize yourself with what your particular Dip will look like.
Since every type of business has its own Dip, let’s take a look at some of the most common ones, starting with manufacturing.
If you have a passion for manufacturing, you may have already enjoyed the thrill of building something in your garage. But if you’re hoping to take things to the next level, it’s going to require substantial investments in technology and tools. You may also need to invest in learning new skills, like how to create an integrated electric circuit.
So, in this case, the Dip is going to be the amount of time, effort and money it takes to transition from the garage to a professional production operation. It will involve the lengthy and unpleasant business of raising funds, finding partners, creating a production line and securing your first clients. And during each step of this slow and frustrating process, it will be tempting to call it quits, so it’s important to remember that the Dip will end as long as you persevere.
If your business is in sales, you’ll find that coming up with a good idea and getting investors on board might be the easy part. The Dip happens afterward, when you’re trying to expand your business and build an effective sales force. This is when the dreary business of recruiting and onboarding new employees begins, since it requires the tedious work of setting up everyday operational structures and ensuring legal compliance.
It’s also worth knowing when the Dip arrives in personal projects too. Let’s say you want to learn Chinese. At first you’ll be intrigued by the unusual characters and their meanings and fascinated by the new sounds as they take on new meanings for you.
But it won’t take long before these initial pleasures give way to the Dip, which will take months or years of hard work to overcome and get to the point where you’re speaking the language fluently.
And then there’s the dreaded relationship Dip. It follows the honeymoon period, and is characterized by the new couple engaging in everyday squabbles as they try to cement their relationship and commitment while fighting off boredom.
Success comes from embracing the challenge of the Dip and pushing yourself to your limits.
If it wasn’t for the unpredictable nature of the wind, windsurfing would probably be pretty easy. In fact, many people are drawn to windsurfing and experience an initial thrill, but then end up cursing the wind and giving up what at first seems like a fun hobby.
But despite the difficulties it may occasionally bring, you obviously can’t windsurf without wind! In fact, the wind is the best part, which brings us to the key in withstanding the Dip: embracing the challenge.
Ultimately, whatever your project is, the sensible thing to do is to welcome the challenges it presents and be thankful for them rather than trying to resist them.
Indeed, finding ways to overcome challenges is what makes an activity stimulating and rewarding. Think about it: if windsurfing was so easy that anyone could do it, it would probably be boring.
The point of taking on any job is to meet and overcome challenges. For example, if you were to work at a retail store and only ring up the items being purchased, there would be little challenge and you would be easily replaceable. But if you also help the customers, especially the really difficult ones, and take care of their needs, you will show that you’ve got skills that are less easy to replace. Taking on challenges is the very essence of growth and development.
So if you really push yourself to your limits, you will not only survive, but thrive in the Dip. Take exercise, for instance. If you wish to have a good physique, it will take entering the Dip purposefully and pushing yourself to the limits. However, many people will stop too early; they’ll reach a certain comfort level and not press any further.
If you hope to truly develop muscle, you’ll have to push to the point of exhaustion. Only those who push beyond their limits each and every time will be able to achieve a bodybuilder’s physique. The same is true of any endeavor, whether it’s mental or physical.
Competitors will use the Dip to their advantage, while surviving the Dip will make you rise above mediocrity.
Competition is rarely a pleasant business. Dealings with competitors can be full of treachery and resentment. Often, one of the primary motivations of a competitor is to lengthen your time in the Dip. Specifically, an established competitor will create a marketplace that makes it very hard for you to gain a foothold.
The tech giant Microsoft, for example, turned programs like Word and Excel into industry standards. As a result, the market for word processing and spreadsheet software has been virtually impregnable. Given how extremely hard it is for a rival to catch up, they’ve effectively put any potential competitor into a prolonged Dip.
Nevertheless, it isn’t impossible. A company called Intuit released the accounting software Quicken and since it was an innovative product comparable to Microsoft’s, they were able to persevere, highlighting the quality and security their program offered.
Competitors have also succeeded in changing the platform on which the services are offered. In order to successfully compete with Microsoft, Google has focused on web-based word processing and spreadsheet services that are built-in to a customer’s Google account.
Another benefit of sticking with it and challenging yourself to get through the Dip is that it will keep you from settling for mediocrity.
While there’s nothing wrong with settling for a job as a cashier in a quaint suburban shop, there’s a good chance this won’t help you to reach your full potential. On the other hand, persevering through the Dip can bring out the best in you and even make you more talented than when you started.
For example, if your new online photography blog doesn’t catch on right away, you can use this Dip time to sharpen your writing, photography and web design skills and make your online destination more attractive. This way, even if your blog never catches on as you’d hoped, you’ll have gained valuable skills that can be put to use on your next online project.
To withstand the Dip, you need to develop grit and patience.
If you’ve ever been stuck in a long line at the supermarket, you know how tempting it can be to switch to another checkout lane in the hopes of getting out a little bit quicker. But there’s always a chance that once you switch to the other line, that first one will start to speed up and you’ll end up waiting longer than you would have in the first place!
This supermarket scenario can be applied to careers and personal projects too. If something seems to be slowing down or stalled, you may be tempted to move everything over to a new endeavor – but what’s really needed is patience and grit, otherwise known as determination.
This is certainly true for sales: In one influential study, researchers found that if a salesperson can’t convince a customer to buy after five sales pitches, they’ll give up on them. However, the study also showed that 80 percent of customers were more likely to make a purchase after hearing seven sales pitches. Therefore, most of the salespeople were calling it quits too early. If they’d just shown a bit more grit and patience they might have sealed the deal.
Patience and determination is also needed for surviving the Dip time before your product catches on. You may think that we’re living in a time where people are quick to buy whatever the latest innovative product is, but that’s not always the case. Even if you have a clever idea or a game-changing product, the general public always wait for new things to be regarded as high quality, reliable or prestigious before they even consider parting with their hard-earned money.
As a result, even ingenious ideas can spend a long time in the Dip before they become popular. A good example is the shoemaker Jimmy Choo. Born in 1948, Choo had been making quality shoes since he was 11 years old. But his career didn’t take off until he was in his late thirties, a couple of years after he moved from Malaysia to London and opened his first American shoe store in 1986. While he was always a talented craftsman, it was his grit and perseverance through the Dip that really allowed him to become an iconic international fashion brand.
When times are tough, don’t abandon the experience you’ve gained and make sure you explore all options.
While it’s undoubtedly beneficial to have grit, it’s nevertheless wise to know when to cut your losses and quit a project that’s clearly falling apart. But there’s also a smart way to both quit and simultaneously stick with your chosen field.
When something is clearly not working, there’s no sense in letting it continue to drain your time, energy and resources. But that doesn’t mean you should quit the market that you’ve grown familiar with and gained experience within. Doing so would just be yet another waste of your time, energy and resources.
Let’s say you’ve decided to shut down a magazine that was no longer financially feasible. You may be so heartbroken over the magazine’s demise that you want to abandon the publishing world altogether and start a restaurant. But the smart plan would be to stay in the media market and use the experience you’ve gained to become an editor for someone else’s magazine or newspaper, or perhaps start an online publication.
The next time you feel like quitting, make sure you consider all your options before throwing in the towel. It’s best to take the time to think creatively – beyond all the obvious choices.
David was so unhappy at work he felt like quitting. The problem was that his boss was so incompetent that he was making it impossible for David to produce good work and feel satisfied about his job.
David’s frustrations finally reached the point where he wanted to hand in his resignation. But instead of overreacting, he wisely took the time to consider all the other options at his disposal. In the end, he had productive conversations with his boss as well as his boss’s superior.
David was candid in explaining the reasons why he felt unable to contribute his best work under the current circumstances. As a result, David was transferred to another department where he was given a new boss and a promotion! Certainly, this was a better outcome than being unemployed.
So remember, when you find yourself in the Dip, don’t doubt yourself and your commitment or abilities. Instead, lean into it and think of it as your friend, not your enemy. In the end, you’ll find yourself stronger and in a better position for having risen to the occasion.
In life, you should strive to be the best at what you do. And to make this happen, it’s important to focus your time and energy on the one thing that you’re skilled and passionate about, and to let go of projects that are competing for your interests. Once you get going with a project, you will eventually face a Dip – a period of struggle, effort and little reward. To make it through this period, you must use grit and patience. Once you make it through the Dip, you’ll find that your skills have improved and that you are now in a better position than many of your competitors. Therefore, the Dip is the path to success.
Action plan : Keep going, especially when it hurts. We’re most inclined to give up during the moments when we feel hurt and discouraged. For example, in 1988 the Democrat Joe Biden was a promising candidate for the U.S. presidency. But then a scandal erupted around a trivial accident involving a quote in one of Biden’s speeches that had been mistakenly attributed to the wrong person. Biden was so discouraged by the overblown reaction that he withdrew his candidacy. However, if he’d persevered and allowed the minor scandal to blow over, he could very well have won.
So think twice about retreating when you’re feeling wounded and vulnerable. It’s probably best to take a moment to lick your wounds and then forge ahead.
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New Post has been published on Irene North
New Post has been published on http://www.irenenorth.com/writings/2018/01/how-did-you-choose-that-photo/
How did you choose that photo?
Kyle Van Newkirk taps around the dance floor showing off his skills at the Soroptimist’s “Dancing with the Stars” event at the Gering Civic Center. Of all the dancing, this is my favorite photograph from the night.
Whenever there is a big event happening and you work for a media company, you want to be the first one to have the story. So, when the Soroptimist International of Scotts Bluff County host their “Dancing with the Stars” event, you know ahead of time it’s going to be a long night.
I arrived at the Gering Civic Center just before the event began and took some crowd shots. Most of them turned out to be garbage. I got an interview from Betsy Vidlak, who helped organize the event, and wrote up my story quickly before emailing it back to our Lead Copy Editor Candice Pederson. Candice needed to have an idea of how long the story would be so she could place it on the page as she was building the paper. I didn’t proofread it. In this case, it’s okay. Candice has my back.
I left a spot for quotes from dancers. I promised Candice I would keep it to 100 words. We all know this is a difficult task for me, but I did it. I also wrote the end with the winners, with “XXX” holding the place for their names. Both tasks would be accomplished after all the dancers had performed.
Candice texted me a few minutes later.
“Aren’t there supposed to be 10 dancers?”
“One of the couples is sick and dropped out.”
“And does Van Newkirck have that extra c in his last name?”
“No c. I’m dumb.”
“Oh ok. Just checking.”
I’m still not sure if she was checking to see if I was dumb or not. Again, Candice had my back.
I texted her a few more times over the next two hours to ask if I had put this or that into the story. She’s good at dealing with my panicking. Everything I asked was already there.
I readily admit that taking photographs at the Gering Civic Center is a pain in the ass. The lighting always throws me off and when there are people dancing in a dimly lit room during a contest, you don’t have time to ask them to do it again. You’ve got to get it right the first time.
My editor, Brad Staman, was one of several Star-Herald employees who planned to attend the event. He offered to take his camera and grab a few shots just in case mine didn’t turn out. In the end, we had more than 1,500 photographs to sort through. Once I figured out the lighting, I settled in, moving around the room to get the best angle and the best photo. Sometimes, the lighting messed with a good shot and sometimes it enhanced it.
An okay picture, but not the greatest. The lighting works well enough, but you can’t see much of the lady’s face.
Brad and I looked for each other after one couple competed. We didn’t get what we thought would be the great shot and worried that no pictures of that couple were good. Fortunately, we had a few that worked.
This is not a good picture.
Once the dancers, including two who came for entertainment only, had performed, I sat down on the floor of the Civic Center and quickly typed up my notes. I emailed them to Candice. The winners still hadn’t been announced. I needed to get back to the Star-Herald and start sorting my and Brad’s photographs. But I needed to know who won. And there would be time for dancing and pictures of the community who came out to support the event. But I needed to get back to the paper.
I ripped out a sheet of paper from my reporter’s notebook and grabbed a pen. I put both in front of Brad and asked, kind of ordered, him to get the information for me. He said he would and he’d text me when he knew.
I grabbed my coat and my gear and headed out the door.
At the paper, I got to work on sorting the photographs. Candice told me the shape and size of photos she was looking for to fit into the paper.
Publisher Greg Awtry laughed when I told him that I took 1,407 photos and didn’t know how many Brad took because I hadn’t looked at them yet. He watched me sorting for a while before leaving me alone once he noticed I get freaked out when people watch me over my shoulder.
Brad texted me the information and I gave Candice my cell phone to type it into the story. I got back to work, whittling down the photos to just the best ones. I was nearly finished with the photos when Brad got back to the office.
While I had methodically gone through my photographs, I quickly jumped to the winners on Brad’s compact flash card so we could pull out his best photos and compare them to mine. Candice and Brad stood behind me as we looked at the choices.
There was room in the paper for three photographs. Brad and Candice quickly picked a photo of Julianne and Sam Bradley that I had taken. I didn’t think it was the best one I took of the couple, but whatever. I’m outvoted 2-1 and I was too tired to argue.
Then came the hard part. Mike and Julie Schaff won the Judge’s Choice and Betsy Vidlak and Marv Richard won the People’s Choice. I had a great photo of Mike and Julie, but there wasn’t enough of Julie’s face showing. That photo is in the Star-Herald’s photo gallery and below. Brad got the better photo of the couple. He had two that were good, but there were flaws all three of us saw in the photos.
Julie and Mike Schaff won the Judge’s Choice award at “Dancing with the Stars.” Although this is a good photograph, you can’t see Julie’s face and was ultimately rejected as the photo for the front page of the Star-Herald.
We discussed back and forth which one we should use. After everyone sighed enough, I switched over to the photos of Betsy and Marv. We had three choices. One of Brad’s photos was quickly discarded. He really didn’t like it. We had one taken by me and one taken by Brad left. We flipped back and forth, then back and forth between the two, picking out flaws, how to crop the photo, sighing that we should have gotten something better.
Brad hesitated a bit on Mike and Julie’s photo. I was being honest that he got the better shot of the couple. He didn’t want to overshadow all the other great photos I took. He wasn’t. Sometimes, it’s a crap shoot. There are nine couples competing. Brad will have great photos of some. I will have great photos of some. He just happened to get the best photos of the two winners.
Ten minutes later, Candice, Brad and I had the three photos for the paper picked. I wrote the file numbers down and a yellow post-it and ran back to the “morgue” to crop them, put our bylines in and write cutlines. Candice was only a few minutes away from her deadline. We ended up being late, but it was worth it.
As I finished up the photographs, I looked at the text Brad had sent me. Something was wrong between it and what Candice wrote. I quickly ran over to her desk.
“Did you write that Betsy and Marv raised $5,888 or that the entire evening was that much?” I asked.
“Uhm, let me look,” Candice replied as she opened the file. Yep, it was wrong, but now the computer program wasn’t letting her edit the file. We both cursed at the “fucking stupid machine.” It finally worked and was corrected.
I went back to my desk and attached the photos to the story file so Candice could lay them out on the page. Then, I quickly finished adding Brad’s photos to the folder for the photo gallery. There were 90 photos.
I heard Candice yell at me across the room, “You cropped this one in too much.” I gave her the post-it note with the original file numbers so she could grab the originals and crop them as she needed.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
I like the photo, but, ultimately, the purple from the dance lights sent this photo to the photo gallery instead of into the newspaper.
But I still wasn’t finished. Copy Editor Jeff Van Patten let me use his computer to sort, resize, and batch edit the gallery photos with Adobe Bridge. It’s not a hard task, but I’ve only done it twice and I had to keep asking him what to do next. The hardest part is that you usually only have to do one thing to have your name marked as the photographer on all the photos. This folder was mixed, so I carefully went through and highlighted all the ones Brad took and got his name on them. Then, I had to figure out where the setting was to invert the selection and put my name on the rest. Once that was finished, Jeff uploaded the gallery to the website.
It was well after 11 p.m. I worried about whether I got all the photos labeled right. I wanted to reread my story one more time because I was sure it was crap and I must have messed up something. Candice told me it was fine and not to worry about it. She also gave me that look that says, “Irene stop freaking out about your story.” So I let it go and headed back to my desk.
I opened the program we use to fill out our time cards and put my time in. I was about to finish an 11.5 hour day. The clock on the computer read 11:27 p.m. I saved my time. It’s the end of the two-week time period. I told Brad he could sign off on my time sheet.
Paul texted me asking if I wanted tea. It was waiting for me when I got home. Then, I realized I put my Saturday time in on Friday’s slot and forgot to fill in Friday’s time. I texted Brad. He was already on his way home. We’d sort it out on Monday.
And I don’t remember a thing I wrote for the “Dances with the Stars” story. And I’m not sure if it’s any good.
I finally got to bed 20 hours after I got up.
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Can Shaquil Barrett really keep kicking this much ass for the Bucs?
Shaquill Barrett recorded four sacks and two forced fumbles against the Giants.
Shaquil Barrett is a back-to-back Hoss of the Week because his four-sack performance against the Giants simply can’t be ignored.
I don’t necessarily love to name the same player as Hoss of the Week two weeks in a row. For one, I feel weird repeating all the same things I just wrote. For two, I also like to spread the love around when possible, especially with so many different guys turning in good-to-great defensive line performances on a weekly basis. If two players have exceptional games that are similar in impact by my totally arbitrary gut feeling after watching them on tape, I will usually try to pick the one that I had never written about before.
But sometimes a guy will follow up a great performance with one where he goes berserk, and there’s simply no way to ignore it. And why would I, when my goal is to pick the most deserving defensive lineman every week?
I swear at one point while watching the game live that Buccaneers edge rusher, and reigning Hoss recipient, Shaquil Barrett’s uniform was going to start glowing like an old-school NBA Jam character because that dude was on fire!
Well, actually, that dude has been on fire ever since the regular season first started. He did, however, damn near reach inferno status against the Giants in Week 3. In the second half of that game, he went to another level as a pass rusher.
Barrett turned in one of the best performances a Buccaneers DL has ever had
I am sorry to report is that after reviewing the film, one thing evident to me is that the Giants don’t read my Hoss column every week (but maybe they should start!). I say that because they came into the game woefully unprepared to deal with Barrett’s pass-rush ability, even though we all know I wrote about him embarrassing the Panthers’ left tackle in my Hoss column just last week.
So, instead of sending extra attention Barrett’s way to try to slow him down on passing downs, the Giants’ coaching staff decided it would be a much better idea to leave their left tackle, Nate Solder, out there on an island one-on-one with Barrett for most the game. An interesting choice to be sure, and one that damn near cost them the game.
Just picture Barrett as a hot knife and Solder as room temperature butter and you will have a pretty good visual representation of how that matchup went all game long.
In the end, the Giants were pull out a one-point road victory over the Bucs, despite Barrett’s best efforts. However, without the big plays he made, it’s very likely the game wouldn’t have even been close in the fourth quarter to begin with. The guy had one of the best pass rushing games from any edge rusher I’ve seen in quite a while.
Not only did Barrett get to Giants rookie first-round quarterback Daniel Jones early and often, he was also able to force a couple of turnovers with his pressure as well. That the Bucs squandered his epic performance is certainly par for the course for that team over the last decade or so. That still doesn’t diminish his individual production.
I’m going to break down three of Barrett’s outstanding plays from Sunday, and once I’m done I think you will agree.
Let’s start off with Barrett’s first sack of the day.
Play No. 1: Barrett barreled through two guys to force Jones to fumble
The Bucs were up 18-10 with 2:22 left in the first half. The Giants had the ball and Jones had just completed a 15-yard pass to Darius Slayton from their own 30-yard line. Now they had a first-and-10.
Jones was lined up in the shotgun, with running back Wayne Gallman to his right. Barrett was lined up on the defensive right edge in a standup six-technique, head up on Giants tight end Evan Engram. When the ball was snapped, Engram didn’t waste any time and went up the field immediately into his route. He did absolutely nothing to try to impede Barrett’s route to the quarterback, not even a stutter step to try to freeze him. In fact, Engram quickly took an inside track to try to avoid Barrett.
With Engram taking off right away, it fell to Solder to try to block Barrett one-on-one on a true dropback pass. Just like the week before, Barrett made the Giants pay for that lack of respect. He shot up the field a little wide, forcing Solder to try to get width so that he didn’t get beaten immediately around the edge. Getting that kind of width so fast played right into Barrett’s hands, however.
As he approached the widening Solder, Barrett chopped his feet to get Solder to stop his. Solder braced to shoot his punch, but Barrett quickly swatted Solder’s inside (right) hand with his inside (left) hand, and simultaneously crossed his feet over to get inside of Solder. He followed through with a nice rip move with his outside (right) arm through Solder’s inside half.
While all this was going on, Bucs defensive tackle Vita Vea, who started off lined up in a three-technique outside of Giants left guard Will Hernandez, was executing an inside move of his own and trying to get push in the A gap between Hernandez and the Giants center Jon Halapio. This is important, because Hernandez initially following Vea inside is what helped to create the opening inside of Solder that allowed Barrett to slide through. Hernandez was helping out Halapio with Vea, but when he peeped Barrett heading toward his quarterback, Hernandez tried to slide back outside to help.
It was too late.
Barrett was able to see Hernandez coming. He reacted quickly by ripping with his inside (left) arm through Hernandez’s outside (left) arm. Yes, that does mean Barrett ended up ripping through Solder and Hernandez at the same time just to get to Jones. Now that’s what I call determination.
He was already close to the quarterback by that time, so Barrett swung his left arm through to try to separate the ball out of Jones hands.
Barrett was successful in his endeavor and his teammate Carl Nassib was able to recover the fumble to give the Bucs the ball on the Giants’ 41-yard line.
The Bucs would end up going right down the field and scoring a touchdown to go up 25-10 before halftime. Yeah, I would definitely call that a big play.
Next, I want to take a look at one of the pressures Barrett had later on in the game.
Play No. 2: Barrett hit Solder with a cold-ass spin move
By the middle of the third quarter, the Bucs’ lead had been whittled down to a measly three points, 28-25. The Giants were still fighting, but they found themselves facing a second-and-15 from their own 34-yard line. The Giants were again in shotgun with Gallman offset to Jones’ right, but this time Engram was lined up on the defense’s left edge.
I see the look on your face. Yes, that does mean they left Solder completely on an island with Barrett this time.
Fucking mistake!*
*in case you have forgotten this great quote from one of my favorite pass rushers Pernell McPhee
After the ball was snapped, Barrett took two good hard steps upfield just to get Solder to kickstep back, then Barrett’s spin move had Solder looking like he was sporting cement shoes. When I say that was a textbook spin move, it just doesn’t get any better than what Barrett’s pulled off here.
He threw his inside (left) arm out to bait Solder into throwing his punch, then Barrett used his inside hand to half chop/half shove Solder’s fully extended inside (right) while planting his outside foot to push him back inside in a pirouette motion. Barrett showed off great foot work, gaining ground with what had been his inside foot as he completed his spin.
The best part, for me at least, is that Barrett was on the details throughout the move and finished it off by using his outside (right) arm to follow through and bar Solder from recovering and getting his inside hand back on Barrett.
Because of that little detail Barrett was able to come scot-free without Solder being able to grab him from behind. Barrett maximized the opportunity by finishing the quarterback and delivering a jarring blow to Jones from behind.
The force of the blow made the ball come out of Jones’ hand funny as he tried to deliver a pass downfield, so the officials initially ruled it to be another fumble. However, on replay the call was overturned and ruled an incompletion.
That still goes down as a pressure for Barrett in my book. And, maybe more importantly, it was another good hit on a young quarterback that might have, in theory, helped to rattle him and get him more worried about the pass rush than reading the coverages.
I will note that on the very next play, Jones was a little indecisive and ended up getting sacked by Nassib, leading to a punt. I will also note that it appears Jones was trying to throw the ball to Bennie Fowler, who was open on a 10-yard curl.
Finally, let’s take a look at Barrett’s fourth and final sack of the game as another instance of him serving up Solder an old-fashioned ass-kicking.
Play No. 3: Barrett gave Solder the ol’ okee doke to force another fumble
The Buccaneers were still clinging to that three-point lead with 10:36 left to go in the game. The Giants had just intercepted a Jameis Winston pass intended for Mike Evans, who was having himself a day in his own right. New York had a second-and-9 from its own 40-yard line when Barrett decided to make another statement.
Jones was lined up in the gun, but this time Gallman was offset to his left and Engram was lined up on the left as well. Barrett was back in a standup nine-technique right on the outside edge of Engram and ready to pounce.
I feel like I should mention that at this point in the game Barrett already had three sacks. And, as a reminder, that’s after he notched three sacks the week prior against the Panthers. You would think even if his production hadn’t caught the Giants’ attention prior to that point, surely now they would send some more help Solder’s way.
Yeah, you might think that. But it turns out the Giants were committed to being hard-headed all game, and for that, Solder and Jones paid the price.
Once again, Engram went right out into his route without so much as a quick glance in Barrett’s direction. Gallman was lined up on Barrett’s side before the snap, so he was in great position to chip him should anyone have asked him to. Evidently nobody asked him to because instead, Gallman checked inside for blitz first, then actually went around Barrett to try to avoid him so Gallman could sneak out on a route.
Now you might be wondering by what circumstances would Gallman have had to avoid Barrett in the first place. Well, I’m glad you asked.
See, this time, Barrett got Solder with what Webster’s defines as the “okee doke.”
On the snap, Barrett got off the ball and made everything look almost exactly like it was when he won with the inside move I discussed earlier. He got wide to bait Solder into coming out to get him, then Barrett once again chopped his feet and used his inside (left) hand to swat Solder’s inside (right) hand as Barrett stepped inside.
Solder was determined not to get beat inside again, so he immediately flipped his feet to try to recover and ride Barrett all the way inside and past the quarterback. Unfortunately for Solder, Barrett was never actually planning on finishing that inside move in the first place.
Instead, when Solder tried to step down hard inside, Barrett planted his inside foot and calmly side-stepped him back outside. They were like two ships passing in the night and Solder had so much momentum going inside that he had no shot of recovering. To finish off the move, Barrett clubbed Solder’s outside (left) shoulder with his outside (right) arm to make sure Solder continued on inside and couldn’t step back outside to try to catch up to Barrett.
Solder ended up so out of whack that he had to try to butt block Barrett to try to keep him off of Jones. It was a futile effort. Just as Jones tried to cock back and throw, Barrett dipped, turned the corner tight, then laid out and swiped at the ball with his right hand to force another fumble.
The ball came loose on the Bucs’ side of the line of scrimmage, where it took one big bounce before it was recovered by Barrett’s teammate, defensive tackle Rakeem Nunez-Roches.
The recovery gave the Bucs the ball at the Giants’ 47-yard line. They would go on to kick a field goal on the ensuing drive to expand the lead up to six points, 31-25. The lead didn’t last, but that doesn’t change the fact that Barrett was partially responsible for that lead existing in the first place.
Barrett won’t set records every week, but he can absolutely keep wrecking fools
Losing the way the Bucs did on Sunday, on a missed last-second, chip shot field goal had to be soul crushing for the whole team. (They could’ve not taken a dumbass penalty, then insulted every one’s intelligence after the game with the horseshit excuse that they “meant to do that,” and instead taken at least one shot to the end zone with 13 seconds left and a timeout in their back pocket, rather than putting all the hopes for victory on a rookie kicker. But I digress.)
That’s especially the case for Barrett. He had a career day only to see it ruined in a way that I’m sure made it hard for him to even celebrate his own accomplishments.
While losing does suck, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to pretend the Barrett didn’t show out on Sunday.
Let’s run the list. In that loss, Barrett tied the Buccaneers team record for sacks in a game with four and he also tied the record for forced fumbles in a game with two. Right now, he is leading the league in sacks with eight for the year. In the history of the NFL only one other player has notched eight sacks in his first three games of the season, and that guy just so happened to go on to set what was then the NFL sack record for a season with 22.
(It was Mark Gastineau if you aren’t familiar.)
(But, seriously, Google is right there.)
I know that sacks tend to come in bunches, so I’m not going to be “on pace” guy, but it’s safe to say Barrett has placed himself firmly in rarefied air with his play so far this year.
And if you are trying to hate and say “he hasn’t played anybody,” I just want to you to think real hard and try to name the dominant offensive tackles in the league right now. There aren’t that many of them and even fewer that show up on the Bucs’ schedule the rest of the season. Barrett also pass rushes well from either edge, so those teams are going to need excellent left and right tackles to try to hold him back and that still might not be enough. Seriously, at least chip the guy for your quarterback’s sake.
I tried to tell y’all last week that the guy isn’t a fluke. He isn’t getting all these sacks because of Todd Bowles’ scheming, or pass protection breakdowns as you can see from my columns. Barrett is going out there and beating people’s ass to get them. But don’t even worry about it because from what I’ve seen, if teams continue being stupid enough to single-block him, Barrett will keep making a believer out of all y’all on a weekly basis.
The crazy thing is, last Friday morning I was almost positive that I would be writing about Calais Campbell this week. The All-Pro defensive lineman had a monster game for Jacksonville in a win over Tennessee on Thursday Night Football. It was hard for me to even imagine anyone would have a more dominant pass-rushing performance than Campbell over the weekend, but Shaquil Barrett sure made a damn liar out of me.
With his four sacks, two caused fumbles, four other tackles including a tackle for a loss, two other pressures, and two other hits on the quarterback, Barrett had the kind of game against the Giants most defensive linemen can only dream about. For his efforts, I am happy to name him Hoss of the Week for the second week in a row.
If he can stay healthy, we might all just have to get used to writing and reading about this guy on a regular basis for the rest of this season, at the very least.
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