Caller 3
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 179
You know, this also gets something that I've been saying a lot on this show that I want to get your take on, which is like, you know, one of the things that you wrote about in your sort of like, I guess like recap series of your experience going through the revolutions was about like how much of this stuff is driven by like the great idiots of history.
Behind the Bastards
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And my God, do Elon Musk and Trump look to be like two of the great idiots of history? And that doesn't like guarantee that it'll happen, but like, whew.
Behind the Bastards
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That's actually something else that I wanted to ask you about in terms of, like, you see this in terms of Mabel Dor, right? Where Mabel Dor is this kind of example of, like, the sort of local, I guess, like, local colonial elite to some extent. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, and I think this is something, this is a part of the revolutionary process that I think is really, really badly understood on the left in terms of, in a lot of ways, the necessity of parts of this elite flipping.
Behind the Bastards
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And like the other example, I think most people kind of are more familiar with is Philippe Galatier, like the Duke de Orléans, like funding a bunch of these sort of revolutionary groups that eventually kind of like get out of his control. But can you talk a bit more about sort of the role of these sort of like elite defections and how they...
Behind the Bastards
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end up sort of funding and enabling these revolutionary movements?
Behind the Bastards
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Shout out to the Pistons for holding off winning a playoff game just long enough for the Pope to die such that Francis during his entire term in office never saw a Pistons playoff win. Congratulations to the Pistons. Congratulations to the city of Detroit. Congratulations for withholding that from the Pope.
Behind the Bastards
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are you are you texting me missile package information this is the thing though we've gotten great evidence from like this guy for giuliani from all of the lawyers these like random cartoon dipshits the right keeps finding that like they will just hand you a law degree like if you hand the state enough money they will just hand you a law degree and you can just like bullshit your way through the bar and you'll be fine like they give that shout out to
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, the risk is this decentralized stuff. It's decentralized acceleration for things that have already been happening. Less so than just like large scale direct data intervention.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, and the common thing here, right, is that they're just, we've seen this, I mean, there are a bunch of other cases that are like this too, where it's just like, they see someone who's not white and they're just like, fuck it, we can grab this person and then just lie about what they said.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, but it's like, the thing is, it's not even like racial profiling anymore. They're just attempting to black bag random non-white people that they're just running across. Yes. And so, of course, you're like grabbing U.S. citizens, right? Because they're just like grabbing random people.
Behind the Bastards
It Could Happen Here Weekly 179
So we got a look inside the White House this week at how the tariff, the turf tariff suspension happened. Now, remember, so there was there was the deliberation day tariffs a few weeks ago, and then they got suspended for 90 days. So we're all still on the 90 day countdown clock on those being unsuspended. But we got a view of how that happened. From the Wall Street Journal.
Behind the Bastards
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The Wall Street Journal reports that Secretary Treasurer Scott Bessett and Commerce Secretary Howard Letnick basically waited until Trump advisor Peter Navarro was out of the room. And then it was in a meeting. And then they cornered Trump and were like, you got to roll these tariffs. You got to do this pause on the tariffs.
Behind the Bastards
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This was also how the first Trump administration ran, and everyone appears to have forgotten that this is how all of this shit works.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, and, like, this made people assume that there was, like, a plan behind this. And, like, no, no, I am fucking vindicated. They really are just this fucking stupid. Like, no, there is not a grand strategy behind this sort of, like, tariff rollout, right?
Behind the Bastards
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There is a senile old man and his stupid warring advisors, and they're both fighting each other, basically, for, like, they're trying, like, they're trying to wait until the other person is out of the room so they can grab control of the fucking puppet reigns.
Behind the Bastards
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But this does actually lay bare something that's sort of important about this, which is that, like, there is a huge fight inside of the Trump administration between kind of Lutnik, who's, like, the representative of a bunch of different sort of sectors of American capital, right? Like, he's a representative of, like, your fucking, like, Walgreens dipshits, right?
Behind the Bastards
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And, like, he's also a representative of the finance people. And those people are losing their fucking minds over the tariffs because it's, again, going to destroy the economy. But Navarro is, you know, just like a hardline sort of like anti-China ideologue. And Navarro is the person who's been driving the most intense versions of these tariffs.
Behind the Bastards
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And it's a real issue for everyone else in the administration who doesn't want this to happen because Navarro is like the one guy in the administration that Trump actually likes. And so they can't directly move against him because they'll lose. Like Elon Musk tried this and like it got nowhere.
Behind the Bastards
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And so, you know, what we've been seeing is is just like, again, the tariff policy here is just being set by who's the last person in the room with him. Yeah, so we're probably still, like, about 60 days-ish out from these tariffs coming back into effect.
Behind the Bastards
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I mean, this basically means, like, they'll be hitting in the summer, which is also just, like, absolutely the worst conceivable time for these tariffs to take effect in terms of, like, if you were just, like, deliberately trying to cause a massive popular mobilization against you, this is what you would do. They're not. They're just dumb. But like, you know.
Behind the Bastards
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So, okay, let's move on to the sort of big news of this week. The press has been carrying stories about Trump backing off of the 145% China tariffs and the fact that there's going to be negotiations and it's all going to get wound down. And like, I'm pretty sure this is just kind of pure Lutnik shit. They're trying to calm the markets down.
Behind the Bastards
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The issue with this story is that there are no negotiations, right? Everyone keeps talking about how the U.S. is going to do a negotiated settlement with China. There have not been any negotiations. There are not negotiations.
Behind the Bastards
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There has not even been a process to start negotiations because, you know, the last stories we had about this was that like neither side wants to be the person to like start going to the table. Because like asking the other side for negotiations makes them look weak. Like Trump has been asking China to ask him to start negotiations. The Chinese are refusing.
Behind the Bastards
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And the second issue here, and this is the more substantive problem with a sort of negotiated back out, is that the Trump-Navarro position hinges on the line that the trade deficit inherently, like with China, is proof of Chinese market manipulation. And the thing is, there's no actual way to systematically address that, right? Like, there's nothing that, like, either China or the U.S.
Behind the Bastards
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could do that would reverse the trade deficit. So, there's no sort of, like, you know, like, yeah, like, the obvious way out here would be for, like, Trump to take some kind of weird symbolic victory and, like, China to be like, we're doing a fentanyl crackdown or some shit. But the thing is, like...
Behind the Bastards
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ideologically for someone like Navarro, and Navarro is the important figure here, like, Navarro just wants China destroyed, right? There's no actual negotiating process that he can do that will actually sort of, like, make this, like, negotiation shit happen and have it actually, like, eliminate the tariffs.
Behind the Bastards
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The only thing that can happen, basically, is a political battle inside the Trump administration where Navarro gets pushed out somehow. But again, Navarro is, like, Trump's guy. So... I just don't buy all of this, all of the fucking stories that are coming out. And this happens constantly.
Behind the Bastards
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Every single time there's one of these things, there's all these stories being like, well, they're going to get rolled back. It doesn't actually mean this. And that just happens, right? We have 145% tariffs on China. Now, the last thing I want to talk about is what the actual effect of this has been.
Behind the Bastards
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And the effect has been there's been a massive slowdown and a massive shutdown in exports from China to the U.S., like in terms of container ship traffic, right? We're talking about, I'm just going to quote from CNBC here. So they're talking about Optimizer, which is like a tracking system for ships.
Behind the Bastards
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And they said, quote, year on year, the data shows a 44% drop in vessels scheduled to arrive the week of May 4th to May 10th. Now, that's not actually necessarily a 40% drop in traffic because there'll be more shit when other boats get full. But to put this into perspective, during the worst Ford trade, the worst parts of the COVID lockdowns, the year-on-year drop was only 20%.
Behind the Bastards
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And 20% is the number that's been being spread around the media for what roughly the drop looks like. For some companies, it's larger than others. And again, the tariff, we still haven't even seen the actual shocks of the tariffs yet. And we're already seeing a decline in exports from China that is, again, around the level of the lockdowns.
Behind the Bastards
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And I think people remember the kind of unhinged shit that that caused, right? And that's something that, you know, is only going to intensify. And the other part of this, right, is that the strategies right now for how this is being dealt with is moving through Vietnam, moving through Cambodia.
Behind the Bastards
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But if you remember the rates from the original sort of like turf tariffs from Liberation Day, right, like the tariff on Vietnam was like 100% or some shit. It was like 80%. I don't remember. I don't have exactly on the top of my head, but like...
Behind the Bastards
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there's no actual viable strategy of just of ways you can route these goods through and it's been especially hitting the sort of drop shipping companies right like people like temu and anything that relies on air freight just getting fucked and so this this is all just you know just sort of rolling in the background is just this logistics crisis and it's it's it's also an echoing crisis this thing i sort of want to close this section on is that like
Behind the Bastards
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So the big issue with with these sort of empty boats, right, and these cancellations of boat orders is that in order for it to be profitable, because all of these shipping companies run on such low margins, right, they only barely survive the pandemic by taking out a series of just like unhinged sort of like weird collateral based loans.
Behind the Bastards
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And in order for these companies to be profitable, they have to continuously keep on completely filling up ships. If a ship is not full, it is not profitable for them to run it. And if that's not happening, the entire system literally grinds to a halt until there's enough orders to move things through.
Behind the Bastards
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So even the shit that there is demand for, right, can't be shipped, because these shipping companies cannot afford to unless the entire thing is full.
Behind the Bastards
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So the supply chain disruptions that we are going to see from this as this sort of escalates and as this continues, and especially in a few months, if the Liberation Day tariffs go back into effect, are catastrophic, and we really, like... It's just one of these situations. You can hear the thunder, you can see the lightning, but the storm hasn't hit yet, and it is going to. And when it does...
Behind the Bastards
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I don't know. I was trying to do a poetic thing about how we're all going to get fucking dredged, but we're fucked. It's going to be unbelievably bad. And the only process right now inside of the administration that doesn't involve some kind of mobilization is... Again, is Lutnik winning this fucking intra-administration political battle with Navarro? So...
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, one thing I want to remind everyone that is genuinely good news is that the thing about Tesla sales dropping is that it actually fucks them in two different ways, right? Because, again, most of their money is from these carbon credits that they're selling. But the thing is, in order to be able to get the carbon credits, they do need to be able to sell cars. Totally.
Behind the Bastards
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And so each like subsequent cycle of people not buying cars is also destroying their carbon credit subsidies, which is like this sort of like spiraling like cash crisis thing. So, you know, look, zero Tesla sales is possible. We can keep driving. A better world is possible. We can destroy these bastards. We can ruin this one guy specifically's life. And it's not even that difficult. So, yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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One of the things that I wanted to ask you about, sort of shifting gears a little bit, was about how you were thinking about the deportations when you were writing it and how you were thinking about the way that kind of this like generalized anti-deportation organizing like turns into that and the sort of mutual aid networks that the Society of Martians are doing like directly turns into this thing.
Behind the Bastards
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And that's also something that, I don't know, it feels very prescient in ways, even though it was written out before a lot of this stuff happened.
Behind the Bastards
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So, I mean, I think the other side of that, though, and this is, you know, part of the reason I brought up specifically, like, the resistance to it was that, like, the other aspect of the kind of individualism of American culture was that it also meant that, you know, a bunch of people went out to the desert.
Behind the Bastards
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Like, our co-worker James spent a lot of time during the Biden administration, like, at these, I mean, just like the open-air prisons they built in the middle of the fucking desert.
Behind the Bastards
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like on the border and you know and like one of the stories that he covered extensively was that like probably most of these people would have died if it wasn't for like literally border volunteers like passing food and water to the bars and that's something that i was thinking about a lot looking at the mutual aid networks and looking at the kind of mutual aid networks that trans people are building up right now and like i mean i okay like there's i mean there's always been a million mutual aid networks because it's just impossible to survive if you're trans without like
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah. Something you touched on there I think is interesting about the way that being forced to live together creates this consciousness. It reminds me a lot of when I was a student, I was an anthropology student, and one of the things that we read was this sort of classic of... I guess, I guess you call it like structuralist Marxist, like anthropology from the eighties.
Behind the Bastards
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It's this book called we, the minds and the minds eat us, which is about these indigenous Bolivian tin miners.
Behind the Bastards
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And one of the things that always struck me about that was, you know, like, because they're all, they're all literally like sleeping next to each other, like in these rooms, you can literally hear like the stomach of like the child next to you, like rumbling at night because they don't have enough food. And that like turns them into like one of the most militant sort of like working class.
Behind the Bastards
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I mean, for like a hundred years, they are like, like they're syndicalists and then they're communists. And like, they're, they're one of those Milton things. And I, I, I don't know.
Behind the Bastards
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It's, it's interesting to me that, that this is like this aspect of the society that, that you've, you know, you sort of drawn out of, of these historical revolutions where a key element of it again is, is this sort of collectivity. And also there's this,
Behind the Bastards
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If you look at the trajectory of the modern American state and just the modern development of capitalism, it's been specifically trying to make that stuff not happen by kicking people into suburbs and trying to physically alienate people. I don't know. I was wondering how much you were thinking about that kind of stuff when you were writing the... cultural aspects of this. Sure.
Behind the Bastards
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I was actually about to quote literally that exact thing. But the interesting part to me about the Thatcher line is that everyone, almost everyone who quotes that line only quotes the part about there are only individuals and then leaves out the part about the family. Yes.
Behind the Bastards
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Which I think is a really important connection to what you were saying, where it's like their vision of the family is also still fundamentally this isolated group because... they still need some kind of collective because again, you literally, you can't just like leave it, leave a baby like out in the woods. It just dies. Right.
Behind the Bastards
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But like they, they, they had to like create this version to, to, to be the, like the political base of their thing. They had to create this, this one collective that would be cut off from everything else that had normally made it a collective.
Behind the Bastards
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I think that's what's optimistic, kind of, about the Martian Revolution. It's like, you know, on the one hand, there is this kind of, like, collective society. But on the other hand, you know, this is a society entirely ruled by corporations, right? And it is literally every single aspect of it is specifically designed to get to do this pitting each other, like, pitting people against each other.
Behind the Bastards
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And yet, anyway, somehow... They, you know, even if it is by accident, which is, to be fair, how a lot of revolutions start, they do it.
Behind the Bastards
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It's something I'm going to talk about more like in a different place, but like one of the things that's been driving me the most up the walls is like, so I've had to read like every single piece of terrorist coverage, tariff coverage has been written by like fucking all these analysts, all of these media people, like, and every single one of them only fucking talks about its impact on Americans.
Behind the Bastards
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And if you look at the Liberation Day turf tariff package, the single country that is the most fucked from this is Sri Lanka. And if those tariffs go back into effect in like 50 days, whatever, like 80 days, the entire country of Sri Lanka is fucked. They're doomed. They're completely fucked. And all of these countries, you know, these countries need U.S.
Behind the Bastards
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dollars in order to, like, literally to buy fucking fuel. And then suddenly, oh, wait, hold on, you can't do exports to the U.S. And, like, the entire... This is something that affects literally the entire world, right? You can look at the tariff rates on every single country... like, in the world. And everyone writing about it only writes about its effect upon the U.S.
Behind the Bastards
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because there's this just, like, there's this pure sort of Ameri-centrism thing where, like, people, and I see this on the left, too, where it's like they fundamentally don't see anyone who's not in the U.S. as human. And the people in the U.S.
Behind the Bastards
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who are seen as, like, people, who are seen as, like, humans who, you know, like, think and feel and, like, act and, like, hurt in the same ways that we do... Like, that's only a thing that happens if you're a very specific kind of American citizen.
Behind the Bastards
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And if you're not, or God help you, you were born in, like, most of the, like, the rest of the world, which is, again, a hideous supermajority of everyone on Earth, you just, you don't matter. And...
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah. One of the things that it reminds me the most of, like, from the other revolutions is I immediately went, wait, this is Tsar Nicholas?
Behind the Bastards
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Where, you know, you have less of the reform package, but, like, yeah, like, the way that all of the power gets concentrated and centralized into this one guy who's a micromanager and then can't do it? Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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because like no human could possibly have done it but they're not they're you know because because of just their their sort of affective power and the way that they think about micromagic anything they're incapable of like letting their subordinates do things yeah yeah it also scans with the loves his kids part
Behind the Bastards
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I am very passionate about group chats. You know, I mean, like posting is writing. Hello, audience. If you don't know me, my name is Victoria. I'm online. You may know my Twitter or blue sky accounts at Dirtbag Queer. I'm like largely posting about football when football is in season. I kind of just post about random shit these days. But, uh, yeah, I've allegedly written a book.
Behind the Bastards
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Uh, the weird thing about writing a book is that I feel like I've just totally blacked out actually writing it. And I'm like, that's crazy. Who did that? Couldn't be me. But yeah, in terms of how I would very quickly pitch one of the boys, high school senior named Grace comes back to her high school football team.
Behind the Bastards
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She quit over the summer because she came out as trans because her teammates want to make a push for a state title. And it's like trans coming of age, Friday Night Lights, handshake meme. But also when I was like... big picture thinking about what I wanted to do with this. I wanted to tell kind of a like traditional high school sports story, but through an outsider lens.
Behind the Bastards
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Like if you think about the average like high school football story, you think like, well, what we're going to do is we're going to win state. We're going to get the scholarship and we're going to get the girl. And I wanted to sort of like deconstruct those three things by making the protagonist trans and making the protagonist a kicker instead of like a linebacker or a quarterback or whatever.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, that was... It is hard-writing... Fiction about sports, if you're writing young adult fiction, you know, which is what one of the boys is. Don't be weird about that if you're an adult. Teenage girls are like, you don't have to hate the things they like. You can like calm down a little bit.
Behind the Bastards
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But yeah, writing about football for an audience of like teenagers is like fascinating because you have to assume that the audience knows very little and you have to figure out how much you want to give them so that they get it without overwhelming them, which is really just not at all what I wanted to do.
Behind the Bastards
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But also, if you're a sicko like me, you can be like, ooh, I'm really into what this offense is doing, or I'm really into this onside kick play design. So I tried to do a little bit of both. And also, again, this is a trans coming-of-age story, so... It's also dealing with, you know, the horrors. So ball plus horrors is what we're working with here.
Behind the Bastards
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um without without spoiling what happens at the end of the act one turn circumstances occur so that this high school football team um has to move a player who is who is not a quarterback to quarterback at which point passing just goes away and we are just running the ball baby we are we we are pounding the rock
Behind the Bastards
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It is. Kind of, sort of like loosely what I based this on was the year that the University of Kentucky football team, like all, like every single quarterback got hurt. And they were like, okay. Lin Bowden, you are our best wide receiver. We're just going to put you a quarterback and, you know, we're just going to see what happens.
Behind the Bastards
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And that's like that was the fun of writing fictional football is that I can make my fictional football team do whatever I want. And I don't want to ever see conservative trickery. That is the forward pass. Get it out of here.
Behind the Bastards
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Yep. And I'm a trans woman. It rules. Which, like, again, I tried not to do too much of it in this book. Like, part of the reason that I made my main character a kicker, which we will also talk about other reasons later. But part of the reason is that kicking is this sort of, like, own separate siloed off thing.
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So I really only have to, like, get the audience to understand kicking and what happens when Grace is on the field. I don't have to get into, like...
Behind the Bastards
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what a football team that like never passes the ball like is doing on a technical level we don't have to do all that i give you just enough that if you are a sicko you're like yeah baby what like this rules this is the sickest offense of all time um but also yeah but also like you know trying to uh trying to help the queer kiddos understand that like
Behind the Bastards
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Running the ball is the official football position of the working class, of the proletariat, you know.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, so this is something that Grace struggles with a lot. I mean, like, Specific to her, it's because she's a trans woman who's playing football, something that if an openly trans woman has ever openly played like American football, there is not a lot of documentation of that online. So like Grace, she is like walking a path that has like never existed before.
Behind the Bastards
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But I think like more broadly and more like thematically there is that like Grace is also frequently I call her stupid and I don't think that she's stupid, but comma, but Grace throws a lot to like express herself, I would say. And like, I wanted her to challenge what a reader might expect from a trans girl in young adult fiction, specifically.
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I think she's frequently grading, or at least I find her grading. She is not...
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traditionally feminine i don't think she's unfeminine but she like struggles a lot with like feeling okay enough to like express that about herself yeah and like i feel like a lot of stories about trans kids have this view of being a like younger trans person of like well it was always easy for me and i took to femininity like a fish in water and like this was like natural to me i
Behind the Bastards
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I wanted to write a character for whom it is not necessarily natural for Grace to be this person. And I wanted her past and the way she is now to sort of challenge a cis reader, specifically. But also, in terms of scriptlessness in a more macro way, there's not a lot of YA contemporary fiction about trans girl characters, like, at all.
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There is now, thankfully, a good amount of trans male representation in the genre. But there are a few authors who are out here writing trans femme contemporary, but, like, not a lot. So, like, figuring out, like, where I wanted to, like, slot in to this, like, genre that is... kind of, like, struggling to be born.
Behind the Bastards
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You know, not a lot of trans femme, like, 17-year-old protagonists who are, like, going to, like, parties and drinking beer and worrying about whether or not they want to go to college, which is all stuff I wanted to, like, touch here.
Behind the Bastards
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yeah grace is um again i don't really want to like spoil act act three stuff here but uh later on in the story grace achieves some amount of like internet notoriety for what she's doing and yeah grace is like an extremely typical kid she has like typical kid problems but then this like microscope gets put on her and she's she is sort of like forced to like
Behind the Bastards
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Become this like different thing that like if she wants to be that thing someday. It's not now Yeah, you know I think in a lot of ways my book is about how we ask Teenagers to like do too much and be too much but like especially trans kids when you Transition at any age you are building the plane of your personality while you are flying it, baby. Yep. Yep, and like I
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that's so much pressure to put on anyone, but like, especially anyone who is a kid is just like, is a lot of pressure. And I wanted to, I wanted to like juxtapose the parts of Grace's experience that like a, like sis boy or girl could read and be like, yep.
Behind the Bastards
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I also don't know where I want to go to college, but also like sort of like show like, well, because she is like this, she is facing this like unreal level of scrutiny that is like not normal, deeply unnatural and like fucked up and like unfair.
Behind the Bastards
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Totally. And... Sort of the, like, irregularity of Grace's path this way is, like, one of the reasons why I was, like, drawn to, like, writing a sports story about, like, a trans girl playing football, specifically, is because, like, I probably have a, like, more...
Behind the Bastards
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I don't know if complicated is the word, but I have a very interesting relationship with masculinity, and as much as I'm fascinated by it, I think it is endlessly interesting to see the ways that men construct the various kinds of masculinity that they live in, and the... various outcomes that men can end up finding via their weird, distinct masculinities.
Behind the Bastards
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For instance, for me personally, I'm still in my like old high school, like boys group chat, like that we like started like a decade ago. And like, I have never once had a problem fitting in there when they all found out I was trans. It was like, oh shit, cool, whatever. Yeah. We're gonna keep talking about, like, the Knicks, you know?
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And, like, again, Grace's journey with masculinity is different from mine, but kind of like her. I have, like, some amount of, like, difficulty in, like... very masculine sports spaces when i was a kid but then like once you adapt and once you like learn how to like perform this thing like i never had a problem existing in these worlds and like
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Something that Grace is really annoyed by is that people are always like, I just can't believe that, like, you would be trans. And what is hidden in there is, like, you were kind of a dick. You were, like, kind of a douchebag. So, like, I very much wanted to write a trans protagonist who has a relationship with, like...
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her past self and with her male friends that was like a little more complicated where like she has a like very good solid group of like male friends who are not like perfect but are still like that's my friend so like i think for my friends and for a lot of trans women's male friends they're like well i was friends with you before so like you're still like you know you're still you
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I'm still going to be cool with you, so I guess that means that I have to think about, like... I have to, like, okay, now I have to, like, think about how, like, trans people are, like, treated by society more broadly, and it's, like, interesting seeing men in my life, like, suddenly become, like, cognizant of, like, trans issues.
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And it's all, like, personal. It's all, like, well, I know this person, and therefore I'm going to show compassion to this person that I like, and then... you know, politics, starting at the personal and sort of like growing out from there.
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So my book has flashback sequences that are written in second person. This is mostly a book that's written in first person. But I tried to like really lean into this like phenomenon of like closeted trans women like Butching up at, like, certain moments in their lives in order to, like, pass and cram down this, like, feeling that is, like, really fucking scary at first. Yeah.
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So, like, I want the second person Grace flashbacks to her, like, starting fights and being a, like, asshole to her. Yeah.
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girlfriend i want them to feel like jarring and i want them to feel like grace is being a bastard in a lot of these flashbacks but like i also wanted to show like how she gets there in terms of like various moments earlier in her life where she was sort of like shunted into this more like
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masculine path in order to like pass and like not be um bullied or like other eyes and like it definitely is it's tough and i think that i i think that i personally have a like complicated relationship with like yeah like i hated football when i played it and i did it because i
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Like, I like the sport, obviously, because I'm a fan and because I wrote this book about it and because I write about football sometimes and I post about it a lot. But, like, playing it made me miserable. But, like, I also made friends with that team who I still talk to. So it's like...
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I definitely wanted to feel, like, violent and imposed, but also, like, it isn't something that can be, like, erased. It's something that you have to deal with. It's something that, like, as you grow up and as you continue to self-actualize, you have to, like, decide what parts... of that version of yourself are worth keeping and what parts aren't.
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And that's, like, something that I wanted to show, like, Grace struggle through, kind of, in...
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real time she's like very early in her transition and she doesn't know how she wants to present and she doesn't know how much of of like her old life and the people in her old life that just want to associate with her or does existing on this football team drag her back towards something that she doesn't want to be anymore um it's all stuff that i wanted to play with and is not like overtly political but is like subtextually political you know
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Yeah, we can talk a little bit more about the like very start of something that could be seen as a political awakening that Grace has in this book. But like, yeah, part of the reason that she isn't perfect is because she doesn't know any other like there are no other transhuman characters in this book. And that was very deliberate. Yeah. Grace is, like, on her own.
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She is, like, figuring this shit out as she goes. Yep. And I wanted it to feel rough and, like, ad hoc. Yeah. Because, like, that's how it is for a lot of people. That's how it was, like, build a road by walking. Yeah.
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Yeah, so, like, that was, like, not any kind of, like, statement about how, like, politics is bad, you know? That was, like, Grace is 17, and most 17-year-olds, if they have politics at all, have, like, completely incoherent politics. Yeah, mine was, like, holy shit. Yeah. Yeah.
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So, like, Grace has the, like, barest outlines of, like, ideology, and those were, like, put on her by people in her life. We know that her dad is a union man, and from a small age, she has internalized that unions are good. Does she know why? Probably not. But... Or also, we know that her friend Tab, who is Bori, has been, like, educating her on, like, Puerto Rican independence. Yeah.
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Which was, like... Which was a, like... That was a very funny line to write. Because... because grace is this like dumb as shit white kid from the suburbs.
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Uh, but so like in as much as she's like piecing together, the person she is bit by bit, she's also kind of like piecing what she thinks about the world together along with that in terms of like most of the straight white players on the football team, like do not have like basically don't have politics, uh,
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There's a scene where one of my minor characters is like, yo, I just figured out that, like, transphobia is bad. Yeah. And I loved... I fucking loved writing that scene. But, like... I imagine that up until recently, Grace was exactly like this. And just like, yep, I'm a middle, lower middle class, white, straight boy. Air quotes on all of that.
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She never had any kind of, like, thought about that. That does not reflect what was going on in my life when I was a teenager, because I was a very annoying, like... Me and a friend of mine, Siobhan, got in trouble for putting a Bernie Sanders 2016 sticker on her locker because... That's the kind of shit we were doing in high school in 2015.
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So, like, I was, like, very much had sort of, like, vacant, liberal, middle-class kid politics. But, like, Grace is... I imagine that, like...
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later in her life she kind of has more political thoughts in her head but i also kind of imagine that her brain works like um i don't know if you've played disco elysium but i kind of imagine i kind of imagine grace has a like thought cabinet and it's like she has like She has, like, two slots in it. She just, like, cannot hold that many ideas in her brain at once.
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So she is, in all aspects of her life, trying her best and trying to get better. And, yeah, I feel like a lot of contemporary YA that comes out these days, a lot of the kids have, like, overly coherent politics. I was like, nah. Nah. I wanted to write a kid who has, like, good intentions, but has no idea what she's doing.
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Absolutely, yeah. I grew up sort of, like, middle, lower middle class, and, like... playing football specifically. And I grew up playing mostly like soccer and baseball, a little bit of basketball, but I sort of like, I sort of ended up playing football when I was like a teenager because I was large and that's how that works.
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And like, in terms of like connecting with people who weren't white and of my exact class status or higher, like football is how it happened, man. Like most of my like earliest friends, Friendships with black kids, with Hispanic kids, was, like, all through football. And, like, it is a, like, very interesting sort of, like, class and racial melting pot, at least at, like...
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I went to a pretty big suburban middle and high school. But lots of very different kinds of people ended up at my school. And lots of very different kinds of people ended up playing football. And you're going to get a more diverse slice of that student population on a football team than you will... on the fucking yearbook committee or in, like, school band, class government, whatever.
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All of that came very naturally to me in terms of writing this book where, like, I've ended up with a book that's, like, quite diverse, but I didn't really do that on purpose. Mm-hmm. I just kind of like, who are the kinds of kids who end up playing football? And it's like everyone.
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You have like, poor-ish kids like Grace, and then you have like, rich-ish kids like Ahmed or Dre in my book, who like, I very much wanted to like, show that like,
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maybe one of the reasons that Grace is going to end up having a more coherent politics is because, like, she has friends of different backgrounds that she might not if she had not ended up playing this... this, like, fucked-up, evil, violent game, to be clear. Yeah.
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I mean, I think any football fan who is honest with themselves and has politics that are not evil has a very complicated relationship to the game for, like...
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variety of reasons because it like chews up people's brains and there's that but there's also like implied conservative politics there's also um a big factor here is that high school football even at a public school like mine the religion is all over it baby like all over it yeah that's a huge part of it
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jason kirk of the shutdown full cast uh is working on a book about the like history of uh christianity and college football called church and state i'm very fucking excited for that book hell yeah yeah that sounds awesome but it's this like really interesting political space because of how diverse it is and because of how like
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homogenous a lot of the, like, religion and politics of it are, I guess, if that makes sense.
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Mm-hmm. I think in the NFL, I think it's more coherent because there is a players' association, not a union, a players' association.
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yeah also like sports players unions are fascinating because these are people who are part of a union who are like at least some of them millionaires so it's yep a very interesting sort of like class dynamic happening there but like call it like the college game right now is just yeah charnel house um i mean like it is better now that players are being paid like
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unambiguous good that players can profit off of their name, image, and likeness. But again, it makes like, I remember, um, like I'm not on Twitter much anymore, but like in the, like early Elon days, you started getting Twitter ads and these were 16 and 17 year old high school football players. The post is like huddle highlights and like a, like quick, uh,
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recruiting profile of like hey class of 2027 defensive back wide receiver out of palo alto and just like blasting that onto like twitter timelines everywhere just like please god somebody see my like somebody see these fucking huddle highlights the
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feudalism stage of high school and college ball has like ended and now we are in the no regulations baby just like completely unfettered capitalism stage can we explain like just how like very briefly people who do not know any football like what name image likeness is and how this is different from like a system that would be normal which is you pay the players Yeah.
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So for like 70 years, the precedent with college football in the United States of America is that all these players are amateurs and they cannot be compensated in any way. They cannot profit off of their name, image, likeness. So that means that they can't like sell autographs. the school isn't going to sell jerseys that have their name on them.
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You are meant to make exactly $0 from your time as an amateur college athlete. And this was the ironclad system for 70 years, and then it kind of got destroyed overnight when the NCAA finally legalizes players profiting off of their name, image, and likeness. So that means that they could... signed endorsement deals.
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And when this was first made a thing in 2021, it mostly manifested in DeColdest Crawford for the Nebraska football team is filming an ad for a local air conditioning company because his name is DeColdest. And it was sort of very quaint and cute at first, but then...
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NIL collectives got going which are these I don't even know how to how to like God Describe to flood an NIL collective is these are like investment groups that operate independently of universities that pool resources and then pay players for like extremely scant public appearances so that they can say that they're just profiting off of name, image and likeness.
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But in reality, they exist as a way to pay college football players without paying them via schools. Now, there is the house settlement happening right now, which colleges will soon be able probably maybe God, who knows, will soon be able to directly pay college athletes. a certain amount of money. Lord knows where that's going. Yeah. Like, this stuff is all changing at, like... Lightning.
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At, like... Yeah. Yeah. So, like, we have just straight up gone from, like, nobody gets paid for anything to, like, we are in fucking, like, Gilded Age robber baron shit where, like... Yeah. Because none of this shit is regulated schools or NIL collectives will go back on agreements and everything's negotiated every year. They're, like... Like, it's... It's a fucking mess.
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In the college game right now. So, I mean, all that makes the, like, NFL having a kind of shitty union look a lot better.
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Oh, boy. I'm so sorry. You're good. Yeah. Oh, gosh. Everything is... everything is personal brands now, you know, there's a lot of pressure as an author to, to use all your social medias in a very particular way.
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You're supposed to, you're, you're supposed to make your cute little Canva graphics, uh, and like talk about your characters and engage with like prompt posts on Instagram and, uh, you know, whatever, uh, Social media du jour. And, like, my personal experience is a little irregular because I do have some amount of, like, sports Twitter niche micro-celebrity from posting. So, like...
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I'm not out here making promotional Tik Toks for one of the boys. Yeah. That was like something that was very important to me was like, Oh, I'm not going to be doing that. Thank God. Fuck that shit. Yeah. Um, the way that authors have to promote themselves and turn themselves into brands is like a whole other can of worms that like sucks.
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So like, thankfully I think I've managed to avoid the most alienating, uh, like forms of that but i did have a review not too long ago very confidently state that this book was loosely based on my life story which was news to me i was like word i didn't know that
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Um, so, like, I think especially if you write fiction as a person of any marginalized identity, if you're, if you're Black, if you're gay, if you're trans, whatever, people are going to assume that you're writing, like, autofiction because...
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I think a lot of people react to women's fiction this way because I think a lot of people subconsciously have a hard time believing that, like, women have interior lives and can, like, imagine things, you know? Like, I think a lot of people assume that authors are always writing about themselves and writing about the people in their lives. And, I mean, I'm...
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writing about experiences that I have had similar ones to, but, like, nah, dog. That is not how this works. Yeah.
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It's frustrating, and I think a lot of authors have their own experiences with this. You have to turn yourself into some kind of... brand that's why i'm going on podcasts you know um so that's all uh you know that's fun but uh i'm trying not to like you know completely give myself over to the fucking torment nexus yeah you know
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So, this book has excerpts of, like, articles and outside media and, like, social media, etc. Originally, it had, like, a lot more. I had to cut a lot in order to make this book, like, legible as a book. This book is already, like... pushing the edges of what you can really communicate in YA in terms of, like, I have a lot of characters, I have a lot of shit going on.
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So, like, part of it is just that, like, I had to, like, you know, trim, etc. But, like... Yeah, that makes sense. Originally, it had a lot more of that stuff, and there were, like...
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interstitial snippets from a fictional sort of like football podcaster guy who is like um pat mcafee and all of the like barstool former athlete podcasters yeah yeah in a blender and he like he was this like really pathetic former like special team or linebacker who just like keeps
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reliving the fucking glory days yeah eventually i just had to like refocus and like yeah yeah bring that conflict closer to home with like school administration's kind of shitty um and like there are plenty of dudes on the football team who also suck So I kind of like left it in via some like shitty tweets that you see or you get a lot of it like indirectly.
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You can imagine what is happening on the fucking Pat McAfee show.
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But like also part of it is what you said that the weird timeline of publishing means that I started writing this book in February 2021. wrote the majority in 2022 and edited in 23 and 24 and like kind of this like very organized anti-trans reaction was not as prevalent in 2021 at all. Like I kind of had to like track it as it started to like really like form up in real time.
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This is not the world that I thought I was going to write my stupid little football book and like have it emerge into a lot of people are say that this book is very timely and I'm like, dog, this is a Biden administration book through and through.
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Can I attempt to give you a small amount of Seattle Seahawks optimism?
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So, I really like some of what the Seahawks did. They drafted a lot of players that I really like. It's true. They finally took an interior offensive line player in the first round. Congratulations. Yay! Gray Zabel is a good player. He's also MAGA as shit, which is what you want on your offensive line. Oh, God! No, that's what you want on your offensive line.
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So, you got Gray Zabel, you got Jalen Milrow, who... Jalen Milrow isn't good at football right now, but a sports media friend named Derek Klassen put it that he's the kind of player you want to bet on and then be wrong about, just because he's fun, because he's a, like... Legit actual like special athlete special with the ball in his hand. He's cool.
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I really like Jalen Milrow, but you also drafted later on. You took Tori Horton and Ricky White, who are two of my favorite sort of like small school players. wide receivers in the draft. You took Damian Martinez, who is a running back who I think could end up being a lot better than someone who's drafted in the seventh round would indicate. And also, you took a fullback. You took Robbie Oates.
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That's great. His name's Robbie Oates. Great name, great name. All name, all name. he is a, he's like the squarest football player I've ever seen. Love, love Robbie Oates. However, the Sam Darnold situation is tough. It's tough. I, uh, I have a hard time seeing it happen.
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Yeah. And, like, it's a bit better this year because you have Praise Abel, but you still have Abe Lucas, you know? You still have Abe Lucas.
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And also, like... God damn it. Sam Darnold was in, like, the perfect spot for him.
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And now he's going to be throwing the ball to... I mean, you know, you got Cooper Cup. You got, you know... For four weeks. You got JSN. But you also have Marquez Valdez-Scantling. Is he going to... Is he going to get load-bearing snaps? Like, is that really... Is that really what you want?
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Yeah. It's tough out here. Yeah. I don't expect Sam Darnold to work here. Just like straight up. Like I, I have been a Sam Darnold truther for years, but it is the classic thing of like, I think Sam Darnold's better than most people think. And then a lot of people are like $130 million, Sam Darnold. And it's like, what? Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I didn't think he was that good.
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Not Amazon. That's like really all I have to say about that. Um, yeah. One of the boys, my name is Victoria Zeller and you just buy that from bookshop, buy it from your local indie. Uh, you can buy it from Barnes and Noble cause we don't hate them as much as we hate Amazon. Uh huh. But, like, I would say buy it from your local indie bookstore is, like, ideal for me.
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I make the same amount of money wherever you buy it, so it doesn't matter. But if you want a signed copy, you can also order it from my home bookstore. So there's that.
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But, yeah, my website is victoria.monster, and all my links are there.
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This is so mean. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna be real with you right now, guys. Do what's best for you.
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Fight if you have it in you to fight. But, like, you gotta be a kid, first and foremost. And, like, trans kids, queer kids, deserve the chance to be fucking kids. They deserve the chance to make mistakes and... listen to music too loudly in their friend's shitty car. And they deserve to play sports if that's what they want to do.
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I think in a lot of ways, my book is about how we ask teenagers to be braver than they should be. And I think that's bullshit. So I'm not going to put it on you. Have as much fun as you can. Like, ball if you can. Mm-hmm. But do what makes you happy and what feels safe to you. It's, like, really all I've got. Like, just have fun while you're able to as a child. It's, like, yeah.
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Let them hit dingers. Let them ball. Hell yeah. My people need rings. My people need titles. They need trophies. They need championships. Yeah.
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I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment.
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I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment.
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I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment.
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I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment.
Giggly Squad
Bonus Giggly Gloss Hotline
Working out every day. Are we washing our hair after every workout? Because I am a sweaty girl and my hair does get very sweaty. So am I supposed to be washing it every day? That seems a lot. Am I not supposed to wash it? And then what am I doing with it? Because it's wet. So do I blow dry it? Do I dry shampoo? What are your suggestions, thoughts, opinions? Thanks. Bye. This is girlhood. This is.
The Matt Walsh Show
Ep. 1527 - Why The Plane Crash Was Entirely Foreseeable And Preventable
I understand that. That's why I'm trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.
The Oprah Podcast
Daniel Pink
I my husband was diagnosed with glioblastoma in February of 2020. And I think my biggest regret was it took something like that to realize how is not really present most of my life. I I did have the good fortune of spending the last he actually lasted 23 months And which is unheard of a glioblastoma.
The Oprah Podcast
Daniel Pink
But I felt like all the time before that, raising my two wonderful children, one's a teacher in the Bronx, one's an aspiring actress in L.A., that I just was going through checking lists, like trying to even like outrun myself with accomplishing things. And it took time. My husband, who was coming home saying, I have a headache, and I'm like, take Tylenol. I got something to do.
The Oprah Podcast
Daniel Pink
You know, it took something like getting the diagnosis February 20th of 2020 of glioblastoma to say, like, stop. Just stop. And I feel like I want to forgive myself. My kids are wonderful. We had a wonderful relationship. But I go back and I think to myself, I wish I would have just... Really just savored the moments, the unbelievable moments. Sorry. Take your time.
The Oprah Podcast
Daniel Pink
And you know what? I try to recover. Like we took everyone. Joe was the most wonderful, kind person. Like I was so lucky to have him in my life and wonderful father. But I think to myself, well, part of me doing this is because he deserves to continue to live, if you will. And I think he deserves his legacy deserves not to disappear. But I just I go back and I say, why did I not just stop?
The Oprah Podcast
Daniel Pink
I don't know what it is. Is it a woman thing that like you're trying to just outdo yourself? You have a million things going on. You're working full time. You're raising kids. And like, I just wish it didn't take something like a devastating diagnosis and subsequent loss. Oh, Kathy. To make me stop.
The Oprah Podcast
Daniel Pink
Yeah. You're doing the best you can. Exactly. And that's – you know what? I feel like I don't – I really – I know I focused when it was important. And ours was a love story to be told. And it's just like I think about when he used to go food shopping and I – it didn't really appreciate it. I hate food shopping.
The Oprah Podcast
Daniel Pink
And every time I'm going down and finding people for a loaf of bread, I'm like, Oh my God, Joe, like, why didn't I just like really appreciate you doing this or painting the house? I made him paint this house like 55 times. And, um, and you know what he, we were good and we said what we had to say to each other and there was nothing left unsaid. But, um,
The Oprah Podcast
Daniel Pink
Yeah, I just hope I can share with other people that like all this stuff we run around and do is just so not important.
The Oprah Podcast
Daniel Pink
Well, he's a gift that keeps on giving. As Andrew Garfield says about his mom, Joe is the best of us.
The Oprah Podcast
Daniel Pink
Getting the diagnosis, I wish I would have just really just savored the moments, the unbelievable moments. Sorry.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#572 - Pickle Chili
Yo, I'm a girl and I like girls. I had a girlfriend for a while and recently I found out that... Okay, so you're a girl, you like girls and okay, carry on. And recently I found out that my mom's gay too. So now I don't know if I'm gay anymore.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#581 - Big Guy
Hey, Theo. I'm replying to the gentleman that had recently lost a girlfriend. I had lost my girlfriend back in 2018. So it's going on seven years now. It's tough. And it sounds like he was looking for answers when, you know, the only thing that I could say is like, it sounds like he's on the right track. And if I was him, I would just choose to live through the memories that they shared together.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#581 - Big Guy
I remember my girlfriend always telling me that she thought I was a good teacher. And so now I'm in a field where I'm able to teach people things. And I just feel like every time I do, I just, it reminds me of her. And there's just like, it's no longer a sadness anymore. There's a happiness in it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
#581 - Big Guy
I remember my girlfriend always telling me that, you know, she thought I was a good teacher. And so now I'm in a field where I'm able to teach people things.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E546 Sand Hands
Ich wollte nur sagen, ich habe mich über Turkey und Ham überlegt. Okay, Bruder. I see you there. I see you having a lot of feelings about it. Yeah, turkey or ham. Hmm. Well, ham, ham. Ham is ham.