Josh Daicos (7)
Player Bio

Age: 22 (DOB: 26/11/1998)
Height: 178cm
Weight: 76kg
Position: Midfielder
Player movements: #57, 2016 National Draft, recruited from Greythorn (Vic)/Bulleen-Templestowe (Vic)/Oakleigh U18
Games played: 35
Goals scored: 17
Career Awards: 22under22 team (2020), Goal of the Year (2020), Brownlow votes (2)
Contracted until: End of 2022

General summary of form
Daicos was told at the start of 2020 that he had that year to prove himself, coming out of contract and in his fourth year on the list. He did that, and then some. Daicos had a career best year in 2020, really coming into his own and playing every game bar one thanks to an ankle complaint. He demonstrated fantastic attributes on the wing, and while he didn’t record a single elite rated stat, he showed enough in the minds of the coaches and supporters to effectively displace the running machine Tom Phillips from his spot. Daicos recorded above average stats in disposal efficiency (74%) and uncontested possessions (11.8), however an improvement for his game going forward would be to up his defensive pressure (averaging just 2.3 tackles a game). He showed that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree at times as well, sneaking forward on occasion to boot classic Daicosian goals, including the sealer against Sydney that went on to win Goal of the Year.
Comparison to previous seasons
There’s no denying that 2020 was Daicos’ best season by far. Not only did he play nearly every game, but he also won Goal of the Year and finished outright 6th in the Copeland Trophy, an impressive feat given the clear top five. Daicos’ trajectory was that of steady improvement – despite only playing half the games in 2019 that he did in 2018, on paper he rated higher. Come 2020, there was a very sharp spike in his rating, and Buckley’s comments at a presser during the year that the coaches now firmly view him as being in the best 22 was reflective of the improvement he had shown. Given the club’s lack of ability to recruit star talent from other clubs in recent years, the improvement from within that is required for Collingwood to remain genuinely in the hunt was exemplified by Josh Daicos in 2020.
Expectations of being part of the 22
Daicos, in the wake of his breakout season, has every chance to stay in the best 22. Being one of the more promising prospects of the squad alongside Quaynor and Noble, as well as counting that he maintains a good attitude and a healthy body, it will be unlikely that Josh will be uprooted from his spot in the team. His development over the past couple years has been a delight for many supporters to witness, of which hints at him being the new face of Collingwood in the upcoming rebuild post-Pendlebury. Thanks to his 2020 season, Daicos was even able to dispel the notion in my mind (at least) that he was going to be overshadowed by Nick Daicos next year, his brother that may or may not already be a cult figure.
His positional flexibility will help his cause to stay in the side, so it is difficult to name anyone specifically that would be in-line to replace him. Even though he is Daicos’ closest physical and role-based counterpart, Callum Brown is still probably considered best 22 material, so they will both be able to fit into the same side in a situation that resembles Quaynor’s and Noble’s dynamic currently. If Daicos is injured or has a rough patch of form, Tyler Brown or one of the more developed youngins like Ruscoe or Macrae may challenge his spot in the midfield/forward-line. Otherwise, it is more probable that other fringe players in that section of the field will give way before Daicos.
Pre-season news
There was a delay to his preseason with a hip surgery, but the track watchers have been all over Daicos ever since he has returned. He has continued to hit training with a vengeance, bulking up and darting around his fellow teammates like the Daicosian he is. He has otherwise been quiet, which obviously means that he’s in the good books as far as our club is concerned.
Liam McMahon (29)
Player Bio

Age: 18 (DOB: 2/5/2002)
Height: 194cm
Weight: 80kg
Position: Key forward
Player movements: #31, 2020 National Draft, recruited from Northern Knights (NAB League)
Games played: 0
Goals scored: 0
Career Awards: NIL
Contracted until: End of 2022

General summary of form
McMahon hasn’t played recently, much like others from the Victorian Metro region. This could be seen as a risky pick-up this year, but the promise that he showed in 2019 has given the club enough of a reason to take the gamble on him. Hopefully, once he has developed past his project player status, the need that he fulfills as a strong-marking key/third forward and the upside that he may bring to the table will be more than enough validation for his drafting.
Comparison to previous seasons
His 2019 season with the Northern Knights in the NAB League showed that he was more than capable of possessing the goal-kicking expertise that we so desperately need. However, the areas of his game that he needs to work on will be the obstacle that will hold him back from debuting this year. The main facets that he will need to improve upon are his strength and consistency, which although are two common themes with new recruits, would most definitely be exacerbated by the lack of game-time last year. It will be exciting to watch the progress he makes in the VFL, which is where he will most likely be stationed for at least the majority of the year (providing that the season goes ahead.)
Expectations of being part of the 22
Don’t expect McMahon to feature in the 22 any time soon. McMahon is a fair bit behind in his development thanks to the pandemic blocking his ability to play footy during 2020, and as it stands there are other key forwards the club would prefer to give games to ahead of him. He’ll likely spend the entirety of 2021 in the VFL, probably playing as a third tall option up forward until he gains mass and develops his skills more.
Pre-season news
There hasn’t been much pre-season news about McMahon, though he was the first Collingwood player in 2021 to be featured in the vox pop style interview that the club did with a bunch of players in 2020. Unfortunately, it seems like the club has scrubbed this from its social media accounts.
Discussion threads

How surprised were you by the progress Daicos showed in 2020?
Do you think the club would have stuck by a player as long as they did with Daicos had it not been for his surname?
The club has stated that McMahon wasn’t the next best player on their draft board but went for need instead. Do you think this was a good draft strategy?
What kind of signs can you reasonably expect from a junior key position player in their first year in the AFL system?

This has been a joint submission from noitsnecessary and Pragmatic_Shill.
Previous thread: Jordan Roughead and Mark Keane.
Next thread: Jack Crisp and Anton Tohill, to be posted Tuesday 16 February.
All player focus threads can be accessed here.

Source: fb dot com /joelgohch/posts/1416676251876518

Don’t Vote For the Best Candidate
by Joel Goh
Here's my cold hard logical take on #GE2020.*

(1) Don't vote for the best candidate.
You often hear people say things like, "Vote wisely. Don't vote PAP out of fear or conformity. Don't vote Opposition out of rebellion or to show displeasure. Vote for the best candidate!".
The truth is, such statements feel good because they appeal to that side of us that wants to believe we are reasonable, logical, responsible people.
But here's the reasonable, logical, and responsible fact — if you are going to vote Opposition, it really doesn't matter whether a candidate is "good" or "lousy". Your MP will not be able to direct public policy, pass laws, or make constitutional changes. And he cannot stop the PAP's policies, laws, and constitutional changes. If you get a “lousy” Opposition MP, what is the worst thing he can do in Parliament? Spray graffiti? No, the only thing he can do is give a speech. That is literally all.
On other hand, if you are going to vote PAP, it also doesn't really matter whether a candidate is "good" or "lousy". The PAP's policies will largely be formulated by the Party holistically. Your MP will vote under the party whip anyway, so the PAP's policies will be passed regardless. Again, what is the worst thing he can do in Parliament? Give a speech.
Of course, there are differences between good and bad MPs. But the differences between candidates are minuscule and trivial (e.g. relating to their capacity as an estate manager or as your mailbox to the Government) compared to the differences in the alternative consideration I want to talk about, namely, Voting For the Best Outcome.
Unlike voting for the best candidate, voting for the best outcome requires a few more brain cells to wrap your head around. But I assure you that it's worth it. Unless, of course, you're the sort who is more concerned about whether your town council clears your rubbish efficiently rather than what sort of country and political system we are developing in the long-term. If you are that sort of person and would trade the nation's best interests for crumbs, I have nothing further to say to you. You needn't read beyond this point.
Voting for the best outcome means looking beyond the myopic issue of who “represents” you to seeing what effect your choice has on Singapore as a whole. Here, I’m not even talking about each Party’s manifesto and proposed policies, such as whether to raise GST, lower the voting age, or abolish NS, because those are subjective and debatable. They deserve a separate in-depth debate which I won’t go into here.
More importantly, as I will explain in my next point below, your vote won’t actually decide which Party’s policies Singapore will have. No matter how you vote, it is only the PAP’s policies that are going to be implemented anyway. Yes, by voting Opposition, you give them a chance to at least raise their own proposed policies in Parliament, so those policies count in that very limited sense. But the main point here is that your vote won’t change which Party’s policies Singapore will implement.
What your vote can change are things even bigger than those policies. I will touch on 2 which have been brought up quite a few times this GE:

First, whether the PAP retains a supermajority in Parliament.

Second, whether Singapore retains the GRC system.

(2) The PAP will retain supermajority in Parliament.
Don't let the excitement of the election campaign mislead you. On 11 July, we will wake up to a PAP-governed Singapore once again. Most of us want that, but that's beside the point.
This outcome is assured. The PAP will continue to wield a supermajority in Parliament even if the Opposition wins in the most dramatic and extreme way possible. Taking into account the 3-cornered fights, PAP strongholds, and the candidates being fielded, we can do a rudimentary back-of-envelope calculation to see what happens if we assume the Opposition wins big. Like, really big. This assumes the extreme event that, first, everyone in the middle ground votes Opposition, and second, even many die-hard PAP voters are won over and switch to the Opposition. So let's give the Opposition the most seats it can possibly win in such an extreme scenario:
Workers’ Party (let's go extreme and assume WP wins all 21 seats it is contesting):

Aljunied (5)

East Coast (5) <— See what I mean by extreme? Can you imagine hundreds of thousands of Singaporeans kicking out Heng Swee Keat?

Marine Parade (5) <— Look how extreme we are going. Tan Chuan-Jin and Edwin Tong losing to the WP's C team?

Sengkang (4)

Hougang (1)

Punggol West (1)

Total: 21 seats

Progress Singapore Party: * West Coast (5) * Marymount (1)
Total: 6 seats
Singapore Democratic Party: * Holland-Bt Timah (4) <— Imagine Vivian Balakrishnan losing to Tan Jee Say. Now, that's what I call extreme. * Bt Batok (1) <— Singaporeans choosing Chee Soon Juan for the first time in history after decades of just saying "no"? You got it — we are going extreme here. * Total: 5 seats
People’s Voice: * Jalan Besar (4) <— Ooo, what did I say about extreme? Just imagine a world where the majority of voters choose Lim Tean over Denise Phua.
Total: 4 seats
Grand total: 36 Opposition seats. PAP retains a majority in Parliament with 57 seats (61%). (There are 93 seats in Parliament.)
In other words, the PAP retains a comfortable majority even in this ridiculously extreme situation. Let’s be clear — we are not in such an extreme situation. People are not rioting on the streets from mass discontent. There is no widespread starvation or major scandal by the incumbent. Our Prime Minister did not steal money to buy his wife a mansion of handbags.
In the last GE, the Opposition won only 1 GRC and 1 SMC — 6 seats. The PAP won even Chiam See Tong's stronghold of Potong Pasir. To expect the Opposition to win 36 seats this time is wishful thinking.
So let's step back to reality. No one can predict how voters choose. But realistically, even if the Opposition somehow manages to bewitch everyone they meet, it is simply not possible for them to deprive the PAP of its supermajority.

(3) What is the supermajority and why does it matter?
Many people, including Lee Hsien Yang (who, together with his sister Lee Wei Ling, have been accusing their brother of being dishonourable, but who ultimately chose not to contest in this GE), have talked about depriving the PAP of its supermajority (i.e. having 66.6% of seats in Parliament).
As I showed above, only a fantasist can seriously expect the PAP to lose its supermajority this GE. The PAP will retain their supermajority, and retain it comfortably even if the Opposition somehow wins a freak election and conquers a few more GRCs. Indeed, even if all the WP candidates win, the PAP will still have a comfortable supermajority.
Singapore's constitution, like all constitutions, is a special law. It is the supreme law of the land. This can be contrasted with what we may call "ordinary laws". Ordinary laws can be made or changed by Parliament if a simple majority (50%) vote to approve them. In contrast, changes to the Constitution require a supermajority (66%).
You've probably heard of the balance of powers. In most political systems, including Singapore, what we call “The Government" is really 3 branches which are supposed to be independent of each other so that they can counter each other:

First, the Executive (i.e. Ministers, who come from the governing Party).

Second, the Legislative (i.e. Parliament, made up of both the governing Party MPs and Opposition MPs).

Third, the Judiciary (i.e. Judges).

How do they balance each other? And how does the Constitution feature in this? Let me give an example in 5 acts:

Act 1: Let's say tomorrow a Minister orders the police to arrest and execute everyone with the surname “Tan”. Our Court will intervene to stop them because there is no law that allows such a thing.

Act 2: So the next day the Minister goes to Parliament and proposes a law that prescribes death for all Tans. If his governing party has a simple majority (50%) in Parliament, the law is passed. If they do not, the Opposition can vote against this law, so it will not be passed.

Act 3: So let's say the governing Party holds a simple majority and passes the law. The Minister then orders the police to execute all Tans. What happens then? The Court will stop them again. But wait — isn’t there now a law that prescribes death for all Tans? Yes. But here is where the Constitution comes into play. The Court will point to the Constitution, which (expressly or impliedly) enshrines rules such as "Laws Must be Reasonable" and "People Can't be Put to Death Arbitrarily". Once again, the Minister is foiled.

Act 4: So what can the Minister do now? Why, he can change the Constitution itself. And how? By having a supermajority (66.6%) in Parliament. With a supermajority, his Party can change the Constitution to remove the rules I mentioned above, and even insert in the Constitution the rule that all Tans must die.

Act 5: And now, the Minister once again orders the death of all Tans. Once again, they run to the Court. But the Court cannot help them, because the Court’s job is to uphold the law. "It is for Parliament to change the law", they will say. The Tans die.

That was an extreme example. No one with the surname Tan need seriously worry for his life. But in a nutshell that is how the Constitution works — it is the highest law. It is meant to overrule and check against bad ordinary laws. That is why it must take a supermajority (instead of just a simple majority) to change the Constitution. This additional step is the whole point of having a Constitution.
That is why so many Opposition candidates often talk about depriving the PAP of its supermajority. After all, they often say, why even have a Constitution if it can be changed just as easily as ordinary laws? You might as well do away with Acts 3 to 5 above. A Party with a supermajority will never need to worry about its ordinary laws being struck out by the Court because it can change the Constitution as easily as it changes ordinary laws. The Constitution becomes meaningless.
On the other hand, a Party with a supermajority can pass all laws big and small, including laws that change the supreme law of the land, very efficiently since they never have to win the votes of other parties in Parliament. This is useful when the Government wants to make many changes to a country’s laws, since they can do so without being stalled by political disagreement with other Parties. For example, in some other countries, the legislature gets stuck in stalemate and no law can be passed because no Party can get 50% of votes (or 66.6% for constitutional changes). In contrast, because the PAP had supermajority, they could efficiently introduce even major constitutional changes such as introducing the GRC system and the Reserved Presidential Elections, which I will talk more about later.
Ultimately, the question the Opposition poses is this — should we end a system where all our laws and even major constitution changes are passed without anyone apart from the PAP being able to veto them? On the other hand, since few can deny that the PAP has proven itself since Independence to be a good and competent government, is there a need to worry that the best men in the job are so fallible that we must have a safety mechanism to ensure that it is possible for bad laws and constitutional changes to be opposed?
As we have seen above, regardless of your opinion on the questions above, the reality is that it will be impossible for the PAP to lose its simple majority this GE. It will already take the most unthinkably extreme of extreme outcomes for the PAP to lose even its supermajority by a slim margin, where everyone who isn't a PAP die-hard votes for the Opposition regardless of who the Opposition is.
So it’s simply not going to happen. My take on this is that the PAP will not lose its supermajority this GE, no matter what.

(4) But how we vote will determine one thing — whether we retain the GRC system.
The other major outcome that will result from our country's voting pattern is whether Singapore retains the GRC system in the long-run.
In 1988, the PAP changed our Constitution to introduce the GRC system as a means to ensure our racial minorities get seats in Parliament. In a country where multiracialism is intrinsically important, every race should be represented in our law-making body. Singapore is the only country that has this GRC system, where citizens vote for a group of candidates rather than for a single individual in each constituency. This ensures that minorities will be represented because each group of candidates must include at least one racial minority.
Whether or not you agree with that argument, the GRC system has become a central feature in most criticisms of what the Opposition call an unfair electoral system, since you must vote for a group of people rather than a single individual in each constituency. They argue that this means there is "no real choice", since you will always be forced to vote "for" some people you don't want and vote "against" some people that you do want. Remember the point about not voting for the “best candidate”? The critic will say that you can’t even do that even if you wanted to.
The Opposition argue that the GRC system unfairly favours the PAP because it can use it to ensure voters never have a "real choice", by fielding one important Minister in every GRC. And you've heard it before. People often say, "I wish I could vote foagainst ABC, but aiyah no choice la, because that would mean also voting foagainst XYZ too”. This means that citizens will always end up voting for the PAP for the sake of the Important Minister in their GRC.
The Opposition will say that these people are falling into the "GRC Trap". Because as long as people are trapped into thinking in such myopic terms, GRCs will always succeed in deterring people from ever voting Opposition. After all, there will always be an Important Minister in every GRC that every citizen who wants to consider himself responsible and reasonable cannot imagine booting out, no matter his desire for Opposition representation.
The Opposition say that this system is unfair, undemocratic, and illogical. In GE2011, during the Battle for Aljunied, you often heard the WP saying that the GRC system is an irresponsible system because it gambles with our nation’s best interests. The PAP was effectively forcing Aljunied residents to choose between (a) kicking out our Foreign Affairs Minister and (b) having an Opposition voice in Parliament. The WP’s point is that you shouldn't strong-arm people into making such a lose-lose decision by having the GRC system.
On the other hand, the PAP’s point is that the GRC system is important to ensure racial representation. Racial representation is a very important thing in politics. That is why in 2016 the PAP also changed our Constitution to change the way we elect our President. Henceforth, the Presidentship will be “reserved” for a particular race if that race has not seen one of its members as President for the 5 most recent Presidencies. Although most people accused the PAP of making that change only in 2016 in order to do a “Tan Cheng _Block_” (to disqualify popular Dr Tan Cheng Bock who was expected to do well in the 2017 Presidential Elections which became reserved for only the Malay community because of this change), Law Minister K Shanmugam dismissed those criticisms. He said that the Government must do what is right, based on the system, rather than worry that people would accuse them of trying to knock out people they don’t like. In sum, like the race-based changes to the Presidency, the GRC system is meant to ensure our minority races are represented in Government.
Ultimately, the Opposition will put it this way — like it or not, it is a matter of choosing between biting the bullet and suffering an unpopular Opposition in Parliament for one term now, or having the GRC system forever. And with the GRC system, no one can ever realistically talk about voting “wisely” or for the “best candidate” because you always have no true choice. Do we want to continue to prize racial representation or is it more important to be able to truly choose which MPs to vote in and which ones to vote out?
On the other hand, the PAP will caution that without the GRC system, we may never see racial minorities in Parliament. It may be true that we had many racial minorities who won elections in the past, such as J B Jeyaratnam who was Indian and even David Marshall who as a Jew won Singapore’s first ever legislative elections. But Singapore society may be changing and it may become harder for racial minorities to win elections on their own without the GRC system to help them. And as a racially diverse country, we must guard against that.
Regardless of whether you agree with the GRC system, it will always remain in place to serve its purpose of ensuring racial representation. That is what some people want. The only way GRCs will ever be abolished is if the Opposition win several GRCs in a GE. Regardless of the cause for such an event, this will lead to the inevitable conclusion that the GRC system has become a liability for the country, rather than an advantage. Instead of ensuring minority representation, its most impactful effect would become the unnecessary loss of Important Ministers. Since that is too heavy a price to pay for even minority representation, the Government will have little choice but to abolish such a system. And since an Opposition victory in several GRCs is within the realm of possibility, your vote actually has an impact on this outcome.

(5) Conclusion.
Ultimately, given our current circumstances, the important question is not about whom you like or dislike. While it may feel like you are choosing a spouse, the reality is that the candidate you vote for will make a small difference to your life personally and to the country as a whole. Indeed, how you vote will have little impact on what policies we will see in the next 5 years because the PAP will surely win and pursue its policies. You may feel like you are choosing one manifesto over another, but the reality is that only one Party’s manifesto will be implemented, regardless of how you vote.
How you vote will also not change the fact that the PAP will continue to have a supermajority in Parliament and so will be able to effectively and efficiently pass all its policies for the next 5 years, whether through ordinary laws or constitutional changes. The Opposition will not break this supermajority, much less the PAP’s simple majority.
But how you vote will have a direct impact on one thing — whether Singapore continues to have the GRC system. The cold hard logical reality is that this is one thing your vote will realistically have an impact on in this GE. As I have explained above, there is merit to both sides of the GRC argument. In this analysis, I do not express any personal view on which I prefer. But you, the voter, must decide.
* [Disclaimer: In this Note I cite several arguments that have been raised across the political spectrum. As far as possible I have sought to present them in a balanced fashion. My purpose in this Note is to summarise and if possible distill those arguments, not endorse any of them. The only opinion I seek to express here is that, all politics aside, I merely observe that which has been summarised in my conclusion.]

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Hey guys. I'm developing a story with a chef for a main character. Right now I'm keeping the food elements pretty realistic because I feel cooking in real life is already so interesting, but I throw in the occasional fantasy ingredient to see how it feels. What parts/percentage of the cooking process would you personally feel comfortable just making up as opposed to researching real cooking?
Here's the first passage relating to cooking (only one ingredient mentioned is actually made up, the rest are real. Bonus points if you can spot it):
Charles was no woodsman. One honest look at his current state made that plain. He had never cooked with ingredients that were not hand-delivered. Gathering was the work of servants, and it was not without perils, he knew. If he tried to brave the open forests, there was little protecting him from beasts, men, or any other nasty surprises lying in wait. He might get lost. He might use the wrong herb by mistake and poison himself. If that happened, his odds plunged from slim to nonexistent. It might be the end of him. But if he stayed this course...sooner or later frailty would finish him. No capital. No safety. No second chances. That was as true as anything he knew. It was a man’s gamble, with life and death holding the cards.
Now was the time. He’d hoped to keep it hidden until he arrived in the city of hope, but under these conditions, there was little alternative but to bring out that.
During his nightly routine, there was one item Charles absolutely refused to remove from his stockpot out of fear that the wind, wet or mud would soil it. He’d kept this sacred symbol of his family concealed between two of the pots, each slid into the other, but now he retrieved it, for the wisdom contained within would be his best chance at salvation. It was a heavy thing. The spine—almost too large to grip with a single hand—bent just a bit. That was unimportant. A spine could be repaired. The pages were musty, and they reminded him with sadness of the old library in his manor. The text had faded with the decades, but could still be read with ease. That was important. As long as he could read these words, Charles felt he was not truly alone no matter no how far he traveled.
Recenne di Boulier. The Boulier recipe book. The sum culinary experience of his bloodline dating back to its very roots, and the only thing he’d ever possessed worth more than his knives. Was it even possible to assign price to something like this? Strictly speaking, it did not belong to him. It was the shared property of his household, both past and future generations. Only his surname permitted Charles to read it. Father had pressed the weathered book into his hands, amongst the backdrop of flames and horror, and told him to keep it close, always.
This is the life work of many. Mine, my father, his father before him. Now I entrust it to you, Charles. You will watch over it until we meet again?
Until we meet again…
This could never be allowed to fall into the hands of outsiders. It was his duty as a man, the secret task given to him in service of the Boulier name, to deliver this from harm and protect their legacy. His legacy. A new sense of determination filled him. Charles held the book aloft with an almost holy reverence, half-expecting a surge of knowledge to flow through him from the mere act of touching it.
A minute later, he sat flipping through the aged pages like a normal person, just a touch disappointed. I suppose that would be asking for a bit much.
He set about the work at hand. His task was a daunting one. New territory, certainly. How to make a proper dish using only what he could find in the woods and open plains? The limitations grew more restricting the longer he brooded on them. Charles had memorized hundreds of recipes, but none of them were much use here. Without access to the vast stores and stockpiles found in a real kitchen, they were ideas and little more. It was like boxing with both hands tied behind his back. Nearly everything he had learned about cooking was tripping over itself now, granting momentary flashes of inspiration, only for him to remember he lacked some essential component. He decided to narrow down his options by starting with what wasn’t possible.
Right away, he ruled out any recipes centered around meat. Charles was about as likely to find livestock or capture wild game as he was to fly to the capital on the seat of a dragon. That left mainly vegetables, fungi and fruits. Despite fervent searching, he had not come across any edible crops outside the farms surrounding Lutz, and any that were still in the fields were now dead. The winter chill and autumn rains would have seen to that. What about fungi? A mushroom dish, perhaps? Some called them the meat of the forest. Charles scratched his chin. Mushrooms were hearty, nutritious, and there was no shortage of wild species in this region. However...there was also no shortage of risk. Many had poisoned themselves picking mushrooms that were toxic or even lethal by accident. Bad mushrooms mimicked edible ones. Only the seasoned eye could confidently discern the two, but that was a challenge befitting a Boulier chef. It was decided.
He skipped to the section on mushroom soups. King bolete. Bearded tooth. Drake’s flame. Red Pine. The next page grabbed his attention. A golden yellow mushroom with a large, flourishing cap. Golden chanterelle soup. A staple of rural cuisine, still popular with inns and taverns. Charles brightened. He loved the taste of chanterelles, and he loved cooking with them even more. They would make an ideal center. Not many calories, though. He would need quite a few of them. The recipe called for a stock made with bone, but he could probably improvise with a rough vegetable stock. And something to offset that mild earthy aftertaste-.
The perfectionist inside him was getting off-track. He closed the book and began to pack up.
Far from the constant danger he had expected lurking behind every tree, his first expedition as a gatherer started on an almost miraculous note. Charles stared at the bubbling natural spring in front of him, equally amazed and irritated by his strange fortune. He had been foraging less than half an hour when the rushing sound drew him close. It was perfectly safe to drink, and he would need to fill his stockpot roughly a third of the way up with the crystal clear liquid to form the foundation of his broth. It was a blessing, undoubtedly, but...why did fate keep serving him water in a silver goblet while guarding everything else he needed with jealousy? Had he angered a spiteful deity? Was this some twisted form of judgement? The gods had no answer. How many men have died in these woods because they weren’t able to find this? If this was spite, Charles humbly accepted it as he filled the empty skin. He would not be dying of thirst anytime soon.
The spring lay nestled in a clearing on a high wooded hilltop. A good vantage point, he noted. It made him more comfortable knowing he would have a clear view of the surrounding countryside while he worked. Once it was full of sloshing water, the stockpot proved too cumbersome to carry far. Charles opted to craft his kitchen right where he was. He dug a small pit in the soil, removed the stockpot’s long steel handles, and set them flat over the opening so they formed what appeared to resemble a small bridge. This particular pot had a trick up its sleeve; it had been cleverly designed to sit on top of its own handles while a fire dug below cooked its contents. He took a quiet moment of joy in setting the water to simmer. When he was confident the fire would not spread past the pit, he left to hunt down the rest of his recipe.
Charles grinned at the yellow caps poking free of the soil. The tricksters are out in their numbers today. The disguise was a decent one. An amateur might fall for it, but he was no amateur. This was a cluster of false chanterelle. Almost identical to the real thing at a glance, but with a closer look the deceptions began to unravel. It was a darker yellow than what he’d seen in the book, almost orange, and the color faded from cap to stem where the true chanterelle was solid gold. The gills were all wrong, too. Golden chanterelles’ gills didn’t fork like this, and they were thicker. Charles let them be. Unlike their grim cousins, the setting sun chanterelles, these were not harmful to eat, but they were chewy and tasteless, especially compared to what he was really after. His leg was starting to complain a bit, but it was a good sign that he was able to walk like this unassisted.
Along the way, Charles took his pick of anything that would benefit the overall chemistry of his dish. Chestnuts. Thyme. Wild onions, which he struggled not to eat raw. Patience. Remember your dignity. Stalks of asparagus growing higher than his knee. Alliaria, an herb that emulated the flavor of garlic. Ginseng was too bitter for the soup he had in mind, but might come in handy another time. Charles tossed it in one of his smaller pots. A fistful of bay leaves. Cloves. Turnips and some stringy carrots (to his knowledge, neither were native, but may have been introduced by settlers over the centuries). He tossed back a spiky cucumber covered in some sort of mold. Walnuts. A dandelion, freshly bloomed. Charles broke. He snatched it and bit off the flower in one go...then paused mid-chew, realizing he probably should have checked if there were any bugs on it first. He swallowed. It was his first morsel in ages, but it only brought loud demands from his stomach for more. The floodgates were open. When he spotted a blackberry bramble, all that kept him from picking it clean was the image of his family’s disapproving faces and a particularly traumatic childhood experience. A much younger Charles had wreaked havoc on his digestive system by eating the berries without restraint. It took everything to tear himself away after only a dozen. Many more went into the pot. His composure returned.
“Any man can live hand to mouth,” he said in the voice of his father. It took sensibility to create real art from food. A capacity to think of the future over the present. That was what it took to cook like a Boulier. He walked on. The young chef was lamenting that he was unlikely to find celery or tomatoes anywhere near here—it was the wrong season for the former and the wrong region for the latter—when he saw a distinct yellow in the corner of his eye.
Solid gold. Charles paused. Then he smiled. The stockpot had reached a frothing boil when he returned, but before adding his ingredients he cleaned them in the springwater. The asparagus, turnips, carrots and onions were diced and sauteed in his frying pan. Hopefully, there was enough bacon grease clinging to it to make up for not having any olive oil. Sorry, old friend. I promise I’ll get you spiffed up as soon as we get to the capital. He sat, occasionally stirring the pieces over the flames. Searing his vegetables until the onions had fully caramelized took the better part of an hour. Boiling them down with the herbs and chestnuts until half the water had dissipated took longer still. Finally, he added his fried chanterelles to the mix. This was usually the part where Charles liked to declare his dish complete with a dramatic dash of salt. He settled for an imaginary dash, then clapped his hands. His role as chef was finished.

This is the fifth and final part of me reading and sharing my thoughts on the Danganronpa Fanfic; ‘Three-Point Shot’ by RandomRex6. Here’s the last thread if you missed it, and here’s the actual story if you’re reading along. Spoilers for the canon V3 will be left unmarked, you have been warned, and it’s kind of difficult to spoiler tag the actual final case of a killing game. I’ll do my best, but I will once again implore you to go read the story yourself before reading this.
On that note, if you’re someone who’s struggled to find the time to read this story you may be able to have it read to you instead. A frequent commenter of the story on AO3, Net Neutrality, has their own Youtube Channel where they’ve spent the last couple of years working on a audiobook style video series for this fanfic. It’s not finished yet but the latest update is less than a week old at the time of me posting this, so it’s worth a look in at the very least.
Anyway, we’re kicking off with a big spoiler after the last chapter, so this really is your last chance to stop reading if you haven’t finished the story yourself, don’t start complaining at me if you ignore this and get spoiled
…Ok, that should be long enough. So we return to the cast gathered in the hidden room of the library, having just discovered that somehow, Keebo has taken control of Motherkuma.
He explains that when Kokichi sent him into the virtual world, the Supreme Leader used a flash drive (which I had completely forgotten about) he won back in chapter 2 to create a copy of Keebo’s AI. In the chapter 5 Free Time, Kokichi used a weaker EMP to disable the Nanokumas in the library whilst he placed a stronger EMP next to the door to the hidden room. The whole stand-off where both he and Maki pressed their detonators? Yeah, once of those triggered the library’s EMP, taking out the Nanokumas again and disabling the door to the hidden room (I’ve seen some comments saying this doesn’t make sense, Kokichi would still need the card key to open the door, but I think the story’s good with this one. There are electronic doors out there that actually require power to remain shut, so in the event of a power outage, they’re easy to open and nobody gets trapped inside. I can buy that this is one of those occasions.) When Kokichi fled the group using the flash bomb, he went to hidden room to plug the Keebo USB into Motherkuma, and as soon as the EMP wore off, TDR switched Motherkuma back on remotely, not knowing it was now compromised. Also, when Kokichi sent Keebo off to fight the Exisals, he snipped his antenna off. Kind of feel like that’s something that should’ve come up in the last case, but oh well.
Getting all this information at once is a bit hard for the group to digest, and a lot of them have a hard time believing that Kokichi set all this up knowing that he was going to die as part of this plan. Everyone but Kaede, that is, who seems to have an easy time believing that Kokichi was trying to atone for setting Tenko and Keebo up to die. Honestly, I feel like this shouldn’t be so hard to come to terms with. Not so much the whole, “he felt he had to atone part,” but the idea that he wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice himself when these guys literally just had a trial that ended with him allowing himself to be executed to resolve the unsolvable crime he’d set up. I mean what more proof do they need after that? He literally told them he was more interested in hitting the mastermind where it hurts than his own life. Ambiguous character or not, it’s a whole other story when they were actually alive to explain this stuff to you like he was.
Also, small nitpick, but how does this Keebo know all of this? My understanding is that this Keebo’s memories should end from when Kokichi made the copy, when OG Keebo entered the virtual world. Sure, he can scan Motherkuma’s databanks and learn some of the stuff he missed, but how can he know what happened whilst the EMP’s were active, surely Motherkuma can’t see that either?
Anyway, Keebo’s making the preparations for his Monokuma army (dubbed Kiibokumas/Keebokumas) to detonate at one point in the End Wall to blow a hole so they can escape, but Kaede vetos that idea, worried that they have nowhere to go, no rations prepared, no ID’s and would probably just be recaptured and taken somewhere else. So instead, they send a message to the ones pulling Monokuma’s strings, telling them to make their final ultimatum, or else…they’ll just go with Keebo’s plan.
Of course, the ultimatum proposed is the Danganronpa tradition; one final class trial, if they can solve all the remaining mysteries, they can go free. If they fail, Keebo goes back into his regular body and the game continues. They’re given a small bit of time to investigate, and each have some new evidence in their labs (how did the new evidence get there? Keebo has control of everything but the one Monokuma unit he’s allowing the puppet masters to speak through.) Most of the clues pertain to the canon V3 plot twists; their memories and personalities are fake, and the killing game has happened before. And after a short space of time, the group (joined by Keebo, using a modified Monokuma unit as a vessel) have their final class trial.
The Monokubs are back…again…because we all want that final scrum debate at the end, I’ll give them that. And the start of the trial plays out like you’d expect; they bring up the Gopher Project plan for the first time and swiftly dismiss it as fake news. The information they have on Rantaro suggests this isn’t the first killing game, and from there they figure out that these games exist for people’s entertainment.
They’re shown a video of Rantaro vowing the same things they’re now saying, that he won’t stand for this which…I guess means he failed, since the killing game is still going? …Yeah, the whole ‘Rantaro and Tsumugi are prior participants of the killing game’ thing they’ve been building up kind of ends on a down note. I mean, I know they couldn’t have beat TDR of the game is still going, but I at least thought the pair stayed behind so their friends could go free. But the video message Himiko finds shows Rantaro pleading with his future self to ‘save them,’ so it sounds like he didn’t even manage to accomplish that.
Kaede explains that the clue in her lab was a flashback light, the first in the entire game if you would believe it, only Kaede opted not to watch it, not trusting Monokuma’s intentions. This turns out to have been a close call, as apparently it was supposed to reprogram Kaede’s mind and make her the game’s mastermind. And finally, we meet the game’s mastermind, the mastermind I was spoiled on from the beginning; Kaori Akamatsu, Kaede’s twin sister! She was mentioned a couple of times throughout the story, so it doesn’t come out of nowhere, and Rex left an extremely subtle hint in chapter 20 of the story that I’m not surprised none of us picked up on.
And having went into this story knowing who the mastermind is, I never actually stopped to think about the merits of the decision, and ...I kind of would’ve preferred it if they just went with the teased plan of reprogramming one of the characters we already knew. I mean, the idea that TDR can literally make anyone into the game’s mastermind with their technology paints them as a truly heinous and powerful villain that must be stopped before they can ruin anymore lives…but it also strips those masterminds of their autonomy, they don’t matter. Kaori really isn’t the villain here, and honestly we really don’t know anything about her, she’s not even herself right now because they infused her with the typical mastermind/Junko personality. She’s Kaede’s sister, so we care about her by proxy, but I just feel like this would be more effective if it was a character we were invested in, one we’d really gotten to know throughout the story as opposed to a casual reference every now and then. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not bad, but she’s just sort of…Junko without the shifting personalities.
The mastermind precedes to explain what’s left; who Team Danganronpa are, Keebo’s role in the killing game, they even show some comments made by the ‘show’s’ fans (which are actually comments of the story itself on AO3, which is a nice touch.) That’s basically all the mysteries solved now, so the kids have to make their choice; continue the killing game, or leave, but have their original personalities returned to them.
Kaede doesn’t know what to do, and in a moment that was very DR2-esque ends up in a black void, talking not with her love interest or any of the deceased students, but her pre-game self. I love this idea, these kids confronting their past selves, the versions of them that saw no value in their lives, and threw them away to participate in the killing game. It’s essentially their past selves’ fault that they’ve been put through this mess, so it’s a confrontation that has a lot of potential. Kind of wish the two of them didn’t get along so well though. Past Kaede gives present Kaede some sass before helping her to make a decision.
In the end, Kaede decides they need to take the option to leave and get their old personalities back. She argues they’ve come too far to turn back now, even if this moment doesn’t won’t end Danganronpa, it will plant a seed of doubt in the hearts of those that enjoy the show (which is admittedly a more realistic approach to how TDR would have to be dealt with than the game took. One bad season probably isn’t going to cut it.)
We get the customary final challenge of the MC convincing everyone else to join them; Ryoma joins because if his past trauma is fake, he may have something more meaningful waiting for him out there. Himiko joins to honour Angie and Tenko’s memories (even though Angie didn’t really do much at all for Himiko in this story?) Keebo joins to show he’s a strong, independent robot who don’t need no creator. Maki joins both for the sake of honouring Kaito’s memory, but also to payback TDR for turning her into a weapon through her backstory (kind of the best reason of the lot, imo) and Shuichi joins because he can’t keep hiding away from the truth anymore (even though this Shuichi has already embraced the idea of being a detective as a coping mechanism for his depression)
Kaori tries to argue that once their personalities are back, they won’t want this decision anymore, but Shuichi disagrees, citing the post-trial aftermath of chapter 4, where Miu continued to call Keebo ‘Idabashi’, suggesting that they’ll maintain some of their in-game personas even with their old personalities back, and they’ll just have to take that risk (Like I said, very DR2-esque ending.)
They win the scrum debate with the Monokubs, Kaori admits defeat and takes them to the flashback light terminal to begin work on returning their original personalities. Keebo explains that he’s going to try and hack into TDR’s main servers, and upload his AI into the net, since his physical body can’t leave the academy, he may find freedom there instead. And Kaede and Shuichi kiss (I really feel like this should’ve been the first time they did that, but I forgot to mention they did this in the Free Time chapter of the last section, so whoops.) And the army of Monokumas and the five Kubs self-destruct by the end wall to let the kids re-join the outside world.
The epilogue takes place quite a long time later, 4 years in fact. The kids are now adults, Kaede and Maki are meeting for lunch and MAKI HAS A CHILD! KAITO GOT MAKI PREGGERS DURING THE LOVE HOTEL SCENE AND NOW SHE HAS A LITTLE BABY GIRL CALLED ANZU! I FUCKING LOVE IT! SHE’S ADORABLE, SHE SAYS KAITO’S CATCHPHRASE IN BABY TALK! I NEVER KNEW I NEEDED THIS SO BADLY! I’VE KNOWN THIS CHILD FOR 5 SECONDS AND I’D ALREADY SLAUGHTER EVERYONE IN TDR FOR HER SAKE!
Ahem, sorry about that. Anyway, the kids have sort of become figure heads in a protest movement against the show. Their whole gamble about regaining their old personalities paid off about as conveniently as it did for the DR2 cast. They’re pretty much exactly who they were in the game, but they just also have some fond memories of watching the show. Kaori’s seeing a shrink, since they’re struggling to get that Junko personality out of her brain (Can’t help but think this may just be an attempt to dodge having to give Kaori a personality of her own.) Ryoma’s enjoying his new freedom, travelling around the world as a tennis coach. Himiko’s on tour holding magic shows whilst trying to raise awareness of how wrong the killing games are (Kind of feel like that message is kind of diluted when you’re still making use of the talent and personality they gave her as part of the show.) Shuichi’s receiving medication for his depression and I believe is still dating Kaede. And the pair of them overhear that auditions for the next season of the show will be starting soon, but the cast size has shrunk again, since they’re struggling to find participants, and something (Keebo) is making it difficult to access the website.
I love this idea of giving us a small peak into the characters adult lives. Sometimes, you just need something a little more concrete than simply hoping that the characters had a good life once the killing game was over. I’m torn on how they dealt with TDR, I know I said it’s a more realistic approach and it is, but it’s a shame that 3/4 more groups of kids have to participate and die before the show gets shut down.
And, that’s it. My journey through Three-Point Shot is completed, and I’m now obliged to give my final thoughts on the story as a whole.
Before I talk about the story itself, I just want to acknowledge how insanely difficult the format of Danganronpa even is to write for;

16 characters, do you know how few stories out there try to have as many as 16 new, reasonably fleshed out characters with each instalment? Yeah, some characters matter more than others, but they all have a personality, background, dynamics with each other. Most stories opt for no more than 8 or 10 characters at best, so it’s no wonder how much of a struggle it is to try and pull it off with 16 of them.
Then you have to be brutal and try and parcel down all those backstories and potential character arcs you’ve come up with to the bare essentials, the cream of the crop, because you’re killing off, on average, two of these characters every chapter. You will never have enough time to flesh out all of them. So, you’ve got to pick and choose which ones matter most for the story you want to tell.
But let’s not forget, those characters that die aren’t simply being killed off, it’s a murder mystery! So you’ve got to devise clever schemes that manage to strike the right balance between not being too obvious whilst also making enough sense to create a satisfying conclusion. You have to spend more valuable time foreshadowing this stuff, without it ruining the pacing.
And then, if all that wasn’t bad enough, you have to try and wrap this all up together. You have to come up with an overarching story, a mastermind who’s motivations justify this whole charade, and build towards a satisfying final confrontation between them and the rest of the cast.

When you really break Danganronpa down into those four components, you realise how much of a miracle it is that this series is even a fraction of coherent as it actually is. Most sensible writers wouldn’t touch this idea, they’d tell you it just wouldn’t work. So no matter what I have to say about this, or any other fanfic I read in the future, they all have my upmost respect for even attempting this challenge and having the guts to put their work out there.
(Also, I don’t go over everything that happened in these threads. I say it all the time, I want you to read this stories for yourselves before reading these threads. You should never let someone else’s opinion act as a substitute for your own.)
Telling a story is a two-part process; both coming up with your ideas and then conveying those ideas to your audience. Three Point Shot’s greatest strength was the ideas it came up with. I loved the creativity behind the motives, and the cases. I thought the casino party in chapter 2 and the use of honey in case 3 were great ways to make new use of V3’s already established locations. I loved V3, but my favourite parts of this story were when Rex let their creativity go unrestricted by what the canon dictated. Kokichi blackmailing Maki, only 1 murder in chapter 3, Shuichi’s depression, Angie not knowing whether her thoughts were hers or Atua’s, Keebo wanting a surname, the split vote idea. When the story attempted something new, or injected its own take on the V3 canon, I was generally all for it.
And inversely, when the story repeated something that happened in V3 just for the sake of it, it generally wasn’t received so well by me; night time training in chapter 2, Himiko’s relationships with Tenko and Angie, the way Rantaro’s storyline just sort of ended. The problem isn’t replicating events from the canon, I had no problem with Kokichi’s antics and the student council, but it’s when the story replicates something without considering if what this story’s already changed affects it.
I loved the romances. I’m a sucker for a good romance, but I don’t turn to Danganronpa all that often to get it. Saimatsu and…(checks Google) Harukaito (Really? That’s what we call it?) just felt really genuine in this story. It felt like teenagers falling in love, being awkward about it at times because they’re only teenagers and they don’t know what they’re doing. Just very wholesome, genuine teen romance.
However, one of the issues I brought up quite often towards the end was how the story handled its supporting cast. Kaede, Shuichi, Kaito, Maki and Kokichi were all used to reasonably good effect across their lengthy screen time, but all the other characters kind of suffered for it. This isn’t exactly unexpected, I did say a while ago that it’s impossible to flesh out all 16 characters in Danganronpa, and you have to prioritise the most important ones for your story. It’s just kind of a shame that they went with the characters that already received a lot of screen time and development from the canon. The only characters that made it to this story’s chapter 5, that didn’t make it that far in the canon, were Kaede and Ryoma. I never really got the sense that anyone here was this story’s equivalent to Fuyuhiko, or canon Himiko, someone who initially didn’t seem like much, but develops in such a way where you can’t imagine them not surviving.
It’s not for a lack of trying. Each chapter had three instances when the group split up (when they’re expanding the school, the Free Time chapter, and the investigation) and it consistently tried to give each character some sort of scene in each of these sections, but they kind of gave me a Ultimate Talent Development Plan vibe; they were fun interactions but they didn’t actually build much character. I think that’s partially because the story kept trying to mix and match different people together, so instead of really developing one strong bond with another person, we got several soft bonds with several people. I can see some debate over which approach is better, but I personally prefer the former, consistent interactions with a smaller portion of the group. My favourite interactions was when Gonta showed Angie around his lab, because that was an interaction the story kept up with, but the little three-way dynamic between Himiko, Ryoma and Keebo was also pretty consistent.
I think RandomRex6 showcased that they’re more than competent as a writer. You have to bear in mind that this was just supposed a simple 1-chapter project that exploded into a full-game rewrite and from start to end, the project took just under a year to complete. They came up with some great ideas, and whilst I found faults in the execution at times, there was always some element that made me want to keep going, and Rex was their own harshest critic, never letting themselves of easy after disappointing their audience with Korekiyo at the beginning, and that fuelled them for the rest of the story. Whilst I think the fanfic peaked with chapter 3, I don’t think it ever dipped significantly after that.
And that’s about all I have to say. I’m not gonna type up my thoughts on the characters again, because honestly what I said in the last thread for each of them still stands. I suppose Kaede stepped up more as a leader in this finale.
It might be a couple of weeks before I start another fanfic series like this, and I think it’s time to move away from the V3 related ones for a while, just to give the rest of the franchise a chance.

Less than eleven seconds earlier, when the Argentinian player receives the pass from a teammate, the clock in Mexico marks thirteen hours, twelve minutes and twenty seconds. In the opening scene there are also two Brits and a slightly older man of Tunisian origin. Football isn't very popular in Tunisia. That's why the African seems to be the only one who is not in an athletic mental alertness
The Tunisian is called Ali Bin Nasser and, while others run, he walks slowly. He is forty-two years old and ashamed: he knows that he will never be called again to referee an official match between nations. He also knows that if twelve years earlier, when he was injured in the Tunisian league, he had been told that he would be in a World Cup, he would not have believed it. Nor would he have believed it the afternoon he became a referee. After all, in Tunisia you only need to have the same number of legs as lungs to get the job.
But when he officiated his first match, he discovered that he would be a proper referee. And it was more than that: he managed to become the first football referee to be recognised on the streets of his city. He was called up for the 1984 African qualifiers and his judgment proved to be so good that a year later he was called up to command in a World Cup.
In Mexico he was asked for autographs, had pictures taken with him and slept in the most luxurious hotel. He had successfully refereed the Poland-Portugal match in the group stage, and watched the left half in a Denmark-Spain match where the Danes played the whole second half with a high-line; he didn't make a single mistake when he raised his flag.
When the organisers informed him that he would be directing a quarterfinal - no Tunisian judge had ever come this far - Ali called home from the hotel, with reverse charge, told it to his father and both cried.
That night he slept through hot flashes and had two dreams of ridicule. In the first dream he twisted his ankle and had to be replaced by the fourth referee; in the dream, the fourth referee was his mother. In the second dream a fan jumped onto the field, pulled down his pants and he was left with his genitals hanging out in front of the world's televisions.
From each dream he woke up with his heart beating. But he never dreamed, during the eve, of validating a goal scored with a hand. He did not dream that, in Tunisian street slang, his name would become an humorous metaphor for blindness. That's why he's now refereeing the second half of that match with a desire to see it end soon.
Now the Argentinian player touches the ball with his left foot and moves it half a metre out of the shadows. The heat is over 30 degrees and that spider-shaped shade is the only one in many meters around.
Around the field, one hundred and fifteen thousand people follow the player's movements but only two, those closest to the scene, can prevent his advance.
Their names are Peter: Raid one, Beardsley the other. Both were born in the north of England, one in the riverbed and the other at the mouth of the River Tyne; they both had, a few years earlier, a son whom they named Peter; they both divorced their first wife before travelling to Mexico; and they are both convinced, at the thirteen hours, twelve minutes and twenty-one seconds, that it will be easy to take the ball away from the Argentinian player because he received it with his weak foot and there are two of them: one at his front and the other at his back.
They don't know that, a decade later, Peter Raid Jr. and Peter Beardsley Jr. will be friends, they will be fifteen and sixteen years old and they will be dancing at a London rave.
A Scotsman named O'Connor - who will later become a screenwriter for comedian Sacha Baron Cohen - will recognize them and, in the middle of the dance, will dodge them with a feint and a dribble. He will do it once, twice, three times, imitating the dance move that now, ten years before, the Argentine player practices on his parents.
Raid Jr. and Beardsley Jr. will not get the joke, so other rave participants will join O'Connor's mockery and a loop of dancers will form, in the form of a human train, dodging the boys in two stages. Peter Raid Jr. will be the first to understand the taunt, and will tell his friend, "It's because of our parents' video, the one from Mexico 86".
Peter Beardsley Jr. will make a gesture of humiliation and the two friends will escape from the party, chased by dozens of boys who will shout, in chorus, the name of the player who ten years ago, right now, is running away from his parents with a move of his waist.
Soon Raid Sr. and Beardsley Sr. will stop chasing the player: it will be the job of other teammates to try to stop him. They now remain frozen in the middle of a tape that time turns, in slow motion, from VHS to Youtube.
Now their children are five and six years old and will not remember seeing the player's dribble directly, but in their early teens they will see it a thousand times on video and will no longer have any respect for their parents.
Peter Raid and Peter Beardsley, still in midfield, don't know what exactly has happened in their lives to make it all fall apart.
Quickly and with short steps, the Argentinian player moves the scene to the opposite side of the pitch. He has only touched the ball three times in his own field: once to receive it and outwit the first Peter, the second to step on it gently and outflank the second Peter, and a third to push the ball away towards the dividing line.
When the ball crosses the chalk line, the player has covered ten of the fifty-two meters he will walk and has taken eleven of the forty-four steps he will have to take.
At thirteen hours, twelve minutes and twenty-three seconds of midday shouts of astonishment come down from the stands and the asses of the radio announcers come off the seats in the transmission cabins: the free space that the player has just found on the right side, after the double dribble and his stride, makes everybody understand the danger.
Everybody except Kenny Sansom, who appears behind the two Peter's and chases the player with a parsimony that seems to be from another sport. Sansom accompanies the Argentinian player without despair, as if he was taking a young son for his first bike ride.
"You looked like if you were playing in training, for fucks sake," manager Bobby Robson tells him two hours later in the dressing room. "That wasn't you," his half-brother Allan will tell him a year later, both drunk, in a pub in Dublin.
Kenny Sansom will rewind the video a thousand times in the future. He'll see his lazy step, almost a trot, as the player slips away.
He will start, in November of that year, to have problems with gambling and alcohol. In the tabloids he will be nicknamed "White" Sansom because of his fondness for white wine.
His only friend from the golden age will be Terry Butcher, perhaps because both will share the same traumatic experience.
Butcher is the one who now, when the radio reporters and spectators in the stands are still standing, throws a failed tackle at the player advancing on his sideline. Butcher will chase the player madly and throw a second kick, this time with a murderous intent, in the apex of the small box.
Terry Butcher will also never overcome the ghost of those ten seconds at the Mexican midday. "He only dribbled the rest of my teammates once, but he dribbled me twice, the little bastard," he will tell the press many years later, with his eyes glazed over.
Kenny Sansom and Terry Butcher will never return to Mexico, not even to the tourist beaches far from Mexico City. In the future, without children or stable partners, they will have as a hobby (at almost sixty years old each) to get together to drink whisky on Thursday nights and invent new insults against the Argentinian player who now, unmarked, enters the big box with the ball stuck to his feet.
Before the start of the play, a man gives a bad pass. With that mistake, the story begins. He could have played backwards or to his right, but he decides to send the ball to the player who is less free. That man is called Hector Enrique and he stays motionless after the pass, with his hands on his waist. After that game he will never be able to separate from the player, as if an invisible string from that vertical pass was transformed, over time, into a magnetic field.
Enrique doesn't know it yet, but he will take part in a World Cup again, 24 years later and on African soil. He will be part of the coaching staff of a manager who, fatter and older, will have the same face as the young man who now runs in a zigzag. And he will end his career even further, in the United Arab Emirates, back on the right side of the player who, two seconds ago, was given a pass to the wrong foot.
For many nights in the future, in a strange country where women have to sit in the back seat of cars, Enrique will wonder what would have happened if, instead of that bad delivery, he had given the ball to Jorge Burruchaga, his second choice.
Burruchaga is the one who now runs parallel to the player through the midfield. It's the thirteen hours, twelve minutes and twenty-four seconds and he's convinced that the player will give him the pass before entering the box, that he's just taking the defenders away to leave him alone in front of the three posts.
Burruchaga runs and looks at the player; with a body gesture he tells him "I'm free in the middle" and while he waits for the pass in vain he doesn't know that one day, some years later, he will accept a bribe in the French league and will be punished by the International Federation. Another misplaced delivery. But he, frozen in the present, still runs and waits for the pass that never comes.
Days later he will score the decisive goal of the final, but the world will only have eyes and memory for another goal. Year after year, tribute after tribute, his will not be the one most admired.
One night, Burruchaga will call to Saudi Arabia to talk with his friend Hector Enrique, and he will lament, a little jokingly, a little seriously, that goal scored by someone else that overshadowed the decisive goal of the final. Then Enrique will see a sandstorm out the window and, without intending to, will make him smile. "That goal wasn't so great," he'll say, "I gave him the pass, if he didn't scored it, it was to kill him".
Inside the pitch the wind is blowing at 12 kilometers per hour. If it had been blowing at 60 kilometers per hour, as it did in Mexico City six days later, the play might have not ended well.
The advance seems fast by an optical illusion, but the player regulates the rhythm, slows down and deceives. There is a secret geometry to the precision of that zigzag, a rigour that would have been broken by a change in the wind or the reflection of a wristwatch from the stands.
Terry Fenwick thinks about the variables of randomness as he showers crestfallen after defeat. Especially in one, the least far-fetched.
Before the game, Fenwick advised his manager Bobby Robson that it would be best to give the opposing player a man-to-man marking. Bobby responded that the marking would be zonal, as in previous games.
What would have happened if Robson had listened to him? asks himself Terry Fenwick, naked in the solitude of the dressing room, with water hitting his temples.
Right now, at thirteen hours, twelve minutes and twenty-six seconds of midday, he sees the player arrive with the ball dominated; he thinks he's going to pass it into the centre of the box. Fenwick thinks the same as Burruchaga, he leans his whole body on his right leg to avoid the pass and leaves the left flank unlocked. The player, with a small jump, enters then through the free space, steps on the box and finds the three posts.
"Fuck", Terry Fenwick told the press in 1989, "he ruined my career in four seconds". Two years after the outburst, in 1991, Fenwick will spend four months in prison for drunk driving. He will say, by the middle of the next decade, that he would not shake hands with the Argentinian player if he saw him again.
At the same period, one of his daughters will turn eighteen. During the party, Terry Fenwick will find her kissing an Argentinian on a beach in Trinidad. He will recognize the boy's identity because of a blue and white jersey with the number ten on the back. Fenwick does not know it yet, but in his old age he will be coaching an unknown team called "San Juan Jabloteh" in Trinidad and Tobago, a country that played only one World Cup, but has beaches.
Fenwick will get drunk every day on the sand of those beaches. On the afternoon of his daughter's meeting with the Argentinian, he'll want to get close to the boy and beat him. The Argentinian will make a gesture to go out to the left and then escape to the right. Fenwick, again, will eat the feint.
Eight steps, out of forty-four, will give the player inside the box, and they will be enough to understand that the scenario is not auspicious.
There is one opponent breathing at his neck on his right, Terry Butcher; another on his left, Glenn Hoddle, prevents him from giving the ball to Burruchaga; Fenwick has recovered from the feint and now covers the possible pass backwards, and at the front, goalkeeper Peter Shilton closes into him from the near post.
The north, south and east are closed to any manoeuvres. It is now thirteen hours, twelve minutes and twenty-seven seconds. Three more hours in Buenos Aires. Six more hours in London.
In any city in the world, at any time of the day or night, trying to get a shot on goal in the middle of that mess of legs is impossible, and the one who knows it best is Jorge Valdano, who arrives alone, very alone, on the left.
No one notices Valdano's existence, neither now in the box nor during primary school, in Santa Fe's town of Las Parejas.
Jorge Valdano sat reading novels by Emilio Salgari while his classmates played football during breaks, swirling around behind the ball. Football seemed like a basic game to him at the age of nine, but something happened to him at eleven: he understood the rules and knew, without surprise, that the other kids didn't practice it with intelligence.
He began to play with them and, while the rest chased the ball without strategy, he moved around the sidelines looking for the geometry of the sport.
And he was good. He played for two clubs in the town and was soon called from Rosario to play for Newell's youth teams; he made his debut in the Argentinian first division before he was eighteen. At twenty he was a world-youth champion in Toulon. At twenty-two he had already played for the senior national team.
But in those dizzying years he never loved the sport above all. If he was given a choice between a game among friends or a good novel, he always chose the book.
Until that moment in his thirties, Valdano was not sure he had chosen his true vocation. That's why now, as he waits for the pass, he finally feels that this could be his destiny, that perhaps he has come into the world to touch that ball and place it in the net.
He knows that the player's only option is to pass to the left. He has no other choice. As he steps into the box he thinks: "If he doesn't give it to me, I'll leave everything and become a writer."
But the player enters the box without looking at him. Neither Butcher, Fenwick, Hoddle nor Shilton are aware of him. Not even the cameraman, who follows the play with zoom, can pick him out in time. In the video, Valdano is a ghost who only shows his full body when the ball is in the apex of the small box. Jorge Valdano does not know it yet, but at the end of that tournament he will start writing short stories.
There is no greater enemy for an striker than the goalkeeper. The rest of the rivals can use the sneaky tackle or the knees for the thigh blow. It doesn't matter, they are legal weapons in a man's sport and the attacked can return the action on the next play.
But the goalkeeper, the guardian, the goalie, the keeper (like Lucifer's, their names are endless) can touch the ball with his hands.
The goalkeeper is an anomaly, an exception capable of undoing with his hands the best acrobatics that other men do with their feet. And until that day no outfield player had ever managed to repay that affront at a World Cup.
So now, when the player steps into the box and looks into the eyes of goalkeeper Peter Shilton (grey shirt, white gloves) he understands the hate in the Englishman's eyes.
Half an hour earlier, the Argentinian had avenged every attacker in the history of football: he had scored a goal with his hand. The strikers's palm had arrived before the goalkeeper's fist. In the rules of football this action is forbidden, but in the rules of another game, more inhumane than football, justice had been done.
That is why, at this crucial moment in history, at thirteen hours, twelve minutes and twenty-nine seconds, Peter Shilton knows he can get revenge. He knows full well that it is in his hands to disrupt the greatest goal of all times. He needs to do it, moreover, to return to his country as a hero.
Shilton was born in Leicester, 36 years before that Mexican midday. Already a living legend, he didn't need to make it to his first and last World Cup to prove it.
He doesn't know it yet, but he'll be playing professionally until he's forty-eight. In the future, he will play the leading role in many unforgettable saves which, added to those of the past, will make him the greatest English goalkeeper.
However (and he doesn't know this either) in the future there will be an encyclopedia, more famous than the Britannica, that will say about him: "Shilton, Peter: English goalkeeper who received, on the same day, the goals known as 'the hand of God' and 'of the century'.
That will be his karma and it's better that he doesn't know it, because he's still looking into the eyes of the approaching Argentinian player and he's covering his left post like his teachers taught him. He believes Terry Butcher can make it in time with the final tackle. "Maybe this will end in a corner," he thinks. "Maybe I can reach the ball with my fingertips."
Nor does he know that two years later a video game with his name will be released in Great Britain, entitled "Peter Shilton's Handball", or that his children will play it, in secret, during the 1992 holiday season.
It is better that he does not know the future now, because he must decide, right now, what the next move of the player will be. And he decides: Shilton plays to the left, throws himself to the ground and waits for the left-footed shot across. The Argentinian, who does know the future, chooses to play to the right.
Before touching the ball with his left foot for the last time, at the thirteen hours, twelve minutes and thirty seconds of the Mexican midday, the Argentinian player sees that he has left Peter Shilton behind; sees that Jorge Valdano is dragging Terry Fenwick; sees that Peter Raid, Peter Beardsley and Glenn Hoddle have been left on the road; sees Terry Butcher who throws himself at his feet with his boots spiked; sees Jorge Burruchaga who slows down his career with resignation; sees Hector Enrique, still stuck in the middle of the field, who makes a fist with his right hand; He sees his manager jumping off the bench as if he'd been sent off by a rocket and the other manager, the rival, looking down so as not to see the end of his advance; he sees a redheaded man with a smoking pipe on the first row of the stands; He sees the line of chalk on the opponent's goal and remembers the face of the worker who, during half-time, went over it with a roller; he clearly sees his brother the Turk who, aged seven, throws in his face a mistake he made at Wembley in a similar move; he sees his brother's lips full of caramel when he says:
"Next time, don't shoot it across, you little fool, you'd better do feint to the goalie and go right."
He sees his brother's face with the light of the kitchen where the scene took place, he sees the mischief with which he was looking at him; he sees, behind the goal, a sign that says Seiko in white letters on a blue background; he sees the green painted nails of his first girlfriend, the day he met her, and he sees that same girl, now a woman, breastfeeding a child; he sees a deflated ball and he sees himself, at the age of nine, trying to dominate it; he sees his mother and father dragging, with effort, a huge kerosene can along a dirt road where it has rained; he sees a box in a locker room in La Paternal, which bears his name and surname in bright letters, he sees his adolescent pride when he first reads his name and surname at his locker; he sees a stadium, its wooden boards, and he also sees that one day the whole stadium, and not just the locker, will bear his name.
The Argentinian player has controlled the air in his lungs for nine seconds, and now he is about to release all the air in one breath.
Unlike all the opponents and teammates he has left behind, he can breathe with his left leg, and can also sense the future as he moves forward with the ball at his feet.
He sees, ahead of time, that Shilton will throw himself to the right; he sees Terry Butcher's murderous intention behind him, he sees himself, many years later, with a grandson in his arms, visiting the entrance of the Azteca Stadium where a bronze statue with no name stands: just a young player with a proud chest, a ball at his feet and a date engraved on the base: June 22, 1986; he sees a rave in London where two fifteen-year-old boys escape from a mocking crowd; he sees a shady apartment where there is only one table, two friends and a mirror on the table; he sees a girl on a tropical beach who lets herself be kissed by a boy wearing an Argentina shirt; He sees a swarm of journalists and photographers outside every airport, every terminal, every stadium and every shopping mall in the world; he sees a boy playing a video game in the city of Leicester while his brother watches through the window to make sure his father doesn't show up; he sees the body of an old man who died in Switzerland eight days before that midday, a man who also saw all the things in the world in a single moment.
He sees Fiorito at day; he sees Napoli at afternoon; he sees Barcelona at night.
He sees Boca's stadium about to burst and he's in the middle of the pitch but he doesn't have a ball on his feet but a microphone in his hand; he sees an old man at Carthage's airport, waiting for his son on the last flight from Mexico, to hug and comfort him; he sees a swollen ankle; he sees a Red Cross nurse, chubby and smiling; he sees all the goals he's scored and the ones he'll score; he sees all the goals he's shouted and the ones he'll shout; he sees himself, at fifty-three years old, watching from a balcony the world's final at the Maracaná; he sees the day when he will see his mother for the last time; he sees the night when he will see his father for the last time; he sees all his children's children grow up; he sees the pains of a woman who is about to give birth to a left-footed child in Rosario, one year and two days later than that Mexican midday; he sees a minimal, impossible, unreachable space between the right post and Terry Butcher's boot.
He closes his eyes. He lets himself fall forward, with his body bowed, and the whole world becomes silent.
The player knows that he has taken forty-four steps and twelve touches, all with his left foot. He knows the move will take ten seconds and six decimals. Then he thinks it is time to explain to everyone who he is, who he has been and who he will be until the end of time.

10,6 seconds by Hernan Casciari in "Messi is a dog & other football stories" (2016).

a.k.a "What the Hell are we goin' to Phoenix, Arizona for? I wanna go to New Zealand!"
The Amazing Race 8 is an anomaly for the series. In all of the US shows history, and I’m pretty sure across all the international versions of the show as well, the setup never deviates from ‘teams of 2’. Ever. Well, here, producers kept hearing about how the audience would love to see a ‘family edition’ of the show, and what they came up with was heavily criticized for its plain-jane route, somewhat stale back half, with a race course that feels like it goes on for too long, and it's too large cast of characters.
I’m gonna keep it real - on the outside this season seems really lame. To appreciate The Amazing Race 8 for what it is, you need to accept two things.
One: The route is just a North American road trip. In some ways TAR 8 is a celebration of the United States, and it comes off in all the strange roadside attractions and places teams end up. They aren’t always as grand as things that show up on a normal season because the show is working in a different mindset, a single country mindset - there’s a lot of time spent on highways, ranches, rest stops, Waffle Houses, etc,. Conversely, one of the things that sticking with this season gets you is the payoff of beautiful western scenery. The stretch of legs across that part of the country are very visually pleasing, and to know that they all reside in one country, as an American, gives me a vaguely...patriotic feeling.
Two: You need to be able to watch this show for the uncomfortable-but-probably-familiar family drama. This season has only ten teams and five non-elimination points which gives us 13 pit stops. You’re going to get to know quite a few families and explore their unique dynamics - how they interact with each other, how they treat each other, how they deal with stress, and so on. There will be many arguments in the confines of an SUV. Getting to know each family on their journey is the only place where TAR 8 really manages to excel.
Route
It’s kinda weak. It presents itself as North American by making a trip to the Caribbean and spending a little time in Canada, but the string of legs that takes place in the west admittedly gets kind of flat. What they should’ve done is just stayed in the U.S. and kept the road trip vibe going most of the way - maybe break for one leg somewhere tropical toward the end - shit man, we got Hawaii! Guam? Puerto Rico?? Whatever, it’s too late now.
Cast
A bit of a unique situation, but I think they did a good job with it. There is a fair amount of different family dynamics - Siblings, nuclear families, single parents, a father and his sons-in-law, and so on. The problem, however, is this - there are 40 contestants. That’s too much to get to know everyone! The way the show deals with this is by (non-elim spoilers I guess) backloading the route with non-eliminations. This means that, reminiscent of the first two seasons, we get to know our final five teams really well.
Challenges
All over the place. Sometimes they’re good (take control of a plane, the detour at the battlefield, a good portion of the Central American legs), sometimes they’re really bad (everything on Leg 4). A lot of the tasks were likely designed with small children in mind, which two teams had. This means there are far less exciting things for teams to do than normal. They might visit some really cool places, but as far as physically demanding or adrenaline pumping stuff...there isn’t too much. In fact, it feels like most of the placement mixups don’t come from the tasks, but the actual travel, which we spend a lot of time seeing. It flat out makes for a boring race, which is the biggest problem the season has.
Format Changes
Because of four-person teams, there are a few roadblocks that require two people to do them. Pretty neat. Also because of four person teams and teams with little kids, there's no roadblock rule for this season.

!!! Major Spoilers Below !!!

Team Write-ups:

[Karate Chop Noise] - Black Family (Parents and Sons) - 10th
The one African-American team on the show and they choose the one with the surname Black. They seemed so nice and kind, but they clearly weren’t used to traveling. I really don’t have much to say here, other than that they were the Black Family and they were black and their opening shot having a sound effect + that picture of them with the “Black Family” banner is funny for some reason. I could talk about how their kids were considerably worse at racing than the Gaghans but we really don’t have that much to go on. Ah well, someone’s gotta get the short end of the stick.
The Face Of The Race - Gaghan Family (Parents and children)- 6th
The family with the two young kids that did pretty good, all things considered. The Gaghans are kind of the unofficial mascots of this season because of their two kids who are both cute as a button. These parents have trained these kids for this race - they know that it won’t be easy, but they are going to make sure they have the best kids around. Carissa is the secret speed demon, code-named Wheels. Billy and Carissa have cute little kid back-and-forth banter. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff that actually needs doing is often left up to Tammy and Bill and I think that’s the reason they flamed out kind of early. For example, when they were cutting logs in one detour Carissa and Billy weren’t really able to do so (also, Billy absolutely bonks Carissa on the head with the handle of a saw. Thankfully she was wearing a big face guard. That was funny). They were able to avoid elimination for a while, but they just couldn’t cut it in Costa Rica.
How Have They Not Killed Each Other Yet - Paolo Family (Parents and sons) - 5th
Aside from the Weavers, my favorite family to watch on this race is the Paolos. They have an interesting run. The first four or so episodes, the spats between DJ and Marion are highlighted. He always talks back to his mother and she is tired of dealing with it. These spats almost always happen while they’re driving, making for a lot of uncomfortable claustrophobic scenes. But as the Weavers start to take more heat from the other teams, they’re shown in a slightly more positive light. I think the turning point is when DJ and Marion do the bungee jump together. DJ starts to have more respect for his mother - the snide comments come a little less, and Marion just brushes them off. I love how textbook Italian they are with the accents, the family dynamic, the parents singing Italian songs in one leg…
The Paolos are great TV to watch because although they argue you never really feel any serious animosity, other than between DJ and Marion - but their relationship is explored in a way that shows us the whole picture, and moves past it. I would’ve loved to see them go further, but they make it to a respectable fifth place.
[All Talking At Once] - Godlewski Family (Sisters) - 4th
If you're watching with subtitles, there’s a sound effect that pops up a lot in this season when multiple people are talking over each other. It’s [All Talking At Once] and 90% of the time you see it it’s because of the Godlewski sisters. Christine specifically is noted in their final few episodes for being a motor-mouth and her shrill voice doesn’t do her any favors. I’ll be real honest, I don’t remember too much about the other three. But they each play roles - one is bossy, one is annoying, one is the peacemaker, etc,. Though you should put an asterisk next to their accomplishments, I think it should be noted that the Godlewskis are actually the first female team to win more than one leg! They added a lot to the race - unfortunately, a lot of which was watching women scream at each other in closed spaces - but their interactions with other teams made for passable television.
Florida Man is Survived by his wife and three kids - Weaver Family (Mother and children) - 3rd
The Weavers are the reason you watch this show. They are combative. They are aggressive. They might be a little insane in the membrane. But although the edit shows them in a really negative light, I can’t help but feel sympathetic for them! First of all, they don’t ever really fight with each other - they’re clearly a close family. The backstory of the Weaver father dying over a year ago and them still dealing with the grief actually has a pretty satisfactory ending as they reach the finish line, and it’s reiterated that they can work together as a family and achieve whatever they want.
They still came off rude as Hell. Linda prays for every little thing (it’s gotta be a coping mechanism), and the kids come off as insensitive and poke fun at other teams - and states( “Utah is the Mormon state.” “No wonder it’s so ugly.” ) - a lot. Rolly absolutely tries to trip up one of the Linz siblings in an airport dash. At times they seem like they’re just checked out of the race, comically so, and it just makes it even more fun to watch. The Weavers being yielded while they were all eating McDonalds is probably the best example of this. They just do not give a shit because they have Mcdonalds and that's more enticing to them than anything else.
If you applied Survivor Edgic to this season The Weavers would be CPN 80% of the time and CPM the other twenty. They deal with a lot of shit from the past, they deal with a lot of shit that they bring on themselves, and they deal with teams that seem to despise them. And they make it to the end! If you really think that they’re the nastiest people around, I’d like to briefly link to an old TARflies post by Rebecca Weaver. TAR is a heavily edited show, arguably more than Survivor in terms of determining tone, and they managed to make the team that had a very real and interesting story line into the punching bags by way of how other teams treated them. Family Edition is barely worth watching, but without the Weavers this season is a flat out skip.
Daddy’s Girls - Bransen Family (Father and daughters) - 2nd
Another team where I remember one person (Wally) and I forget about everyone else (daughters). The whole schtick going on with the Bransens is that the daughters were usually leading the charge and their old dad was always straggling behind. There are so many shots of the three of them racing ahead with Mr. Bransen behind them at a leisurely jog - seriously, it has to happen once every episode. Whats great about the Bransens is that there is like, no or very little friction between any of them. They hardly ever argue, and when they do it’s always over in a moment. They also don’t have a lot of friction with other teams. They’re shown allied with the Linzes but they don’t every directly confront the Weavers. I’ll also just mention it here - they were really, really closing to winning - it looked like it was by a minute at most.
The Brady Bunch - Linz Family (Siblings) 1st
Oh wow, the team of 4 young 20-somethings end up winning! What a surprise! The Linzes biggest storyline is Meg trying to prove that she can keep up with the boys, and considering they won then I guess that she proved it! The Linz girl is relatable and fun to watch, but some of the Linz boys are like, hyper-focused on boobs to an annoying degree. There’s one of them that’s particularly obnoxious (but surprise, I don’t remember which). I'll admit that they bring the competitiveness to this season, and they throw out some pretty good one liners (episode title "I don't roll with the punches...I punch." How badass is that?) They along with the Godlewskis and Bransens (to an extent) were in a sort of Anti-Weaver alliance, which successfully yields them twice.

Notable Storylines

The Weavers Facing Their Triggers
OK. So, the Weavers. This whole review is kinda centered around them, just so you know, and thats because almost every other team is shown to be ‘anti-Weaver’, and...because of this.
Three times. Three times on this race do The Weavers come face to face with triggers related to the death of their father. I can’t help but be a little disgusted at casting, having them on the show knowing there would be a challenge at an actual speedway. What this gives us all is an uncomfortably real picture of a family grieving.
First, the Weaver children straight up run their mother over in a buggy, which I cover below. Then, a few legs later they are forced to enter the Talladega speedway and complete a lap of the course (albeit on party bikes, which adds a funny dissonance to the whole thing). The emotional windup that happens here makes for pretty good TV, as they all have to face the task head on and as a team to boot. Am I saying its right that they were made to do that? No. Is it good tv?....Yeah.
This story line ends with Linda doing 50 laps on a go-kart course. Emotionally the stakes feel a lot lower here, but the kids get a good moment to reflect on everything they had been through and they appreciate that Mom was the one to do the roadblock.
No One Likes The Weavers
Well, according to the edit. A lot of teams seemed to have an issue with the way Linda presented herself (how she talked to others and acted, pretty much). We see this right from the start in NYC, where teams mention how rowdy and unprofessional they are. I’m not denying this - they do knock over a fixture in an REI. When teams get to the airport for the first time in a later leg, we see everyone basically side-eye the family for talking to a receptionist because they’ve never flown before and want to know the ins and outs a little more.
The whole family must have done something to piss off other teams, because it’s agreed upon by multiple teams that they need to be yielded. The Paolos take the shot first (and it leads to a really funny scene where all four family members corner DJ and interrogate him about why they yielded him. Later on it’s the Linz family who deliver the second blow. Thankfully the Weavers stopped at a McDonalds, which keeps spirits up ( “I would cry if I wasn’t holding my Big Mac”). During the final four, the Linzes and Godlewskis express a lot of disdain for the team, and the Bransens do as well, passively.
It seems like the Weavers weren’t really committed to allying themselves with any of the teams, which led to them being outcast pretty quick. It doesn’t help that Linda comes off as really, really sanctimonious and that seems to rub off on her daughters (Rolly, meanwhile, is particularly mature for being the youngest).

Moments

Linda Weaver gets run over by her own children (Leg 1)
After hearing about how the Weavers were still dealing with the aftermath of their fathers death on a race track earlier in the leg, we get to a detour in Amish country that finds two team members moving an old-fashioned buggy with the other two inside. While going downhill, Linda finds herself in the front with Rolly in the back, and the two daughters inside. She begs them to put the brake on, but they can’t get the buggy to slow down or stop! We see and hear from behind that she goes down, the Weaver daughters frantic inside.
We see the buggy thankfully pass over her, and she immediately calls out to her kids - “I’m alright!” But how terrifying did that have to be for her kids?? Like, it wasn’t too long ago that they had lost their dad in a car accident! Now they have to watch their mother get run over too??
One of the daughters start off a confessional - “If I got outta that buggy and saw her laying there, I don’t think...I could go on.” Linda: “But I’m not, and we’re fine.” And to the Weavers credit, they pick themselves right back up, switch detours, build a dang house, and end up leaving the area in first. And this would just be the beginning.
The Weavers lose it at a Waffle House (Leg 3)
On a mystery bus ride to an unknown destination the Weavers lament all the things they had gone through earlier in the day, really just piling it on the other teams in the bus. But the point is that the Weaver ladies, particularly the daughters, are stressed. And that fully manifests itself while the bus is stopped at a Waffle House.
One of the daughters - Rebecca - completely breaks down - she feels like she’s about to lose it because of the lack of sleep. How is she supposed to act in front of teams? Well, Linda searches deep inside herself for advice. And what comes out? “Lie, we’re gonna be completely fake.”
While this is probably not the best way to handle the situation it is definitely an entertaining one. Watching the Weavers skip and twirl from the Waffle House to their bus is, excuse my language, fucking hilarious. “Happy! Happy!!”, they proclaim, though not quite convincingly. Other teams - specifically the Paolos - show genuine concern toward the mental health of the Weavers. It’s all capped off with a reminder that they have “been through a lot more in this year-and-a-half than a bad bus ride”, and they push onwards.
DJ and Marion have a Moment (Leg 5)
The Paolos love to scream at each other. Specifically, DJ loves to scream at his mother which gets her to scream right back. It’s concerning and frankly kind of annoying, and I would honestly argue that DJ Paolo is the most annoying person in this race (seriously, in retrospect that kid was a lot worse than any of the Weavers).
So it’s nice that 1) editing starts to cut down on showing them screaming at each other around this episode and 2) they choose to do a fast forward that involves all 4 of them bungee jumping in pairs, and DJ goes with Marion. It’s presented as a moment where Marion garners respect from DJ, and we’re reminded that for all the yelling and back-talk, DJ does love his mother. Savor that, cause the only other time it really comes up is when they’re eliminated.

GOAT Legs

[Yes, I know the central American legs were pretty decent but they weren’t that good - they were like average normal Race legs. I also want to shout out the Arizona legs for being really good advertisements for Arizona. There are a lot of beautiful shots, and the second leg that spends time there has some really cool tasks.]
Leg 4
Think Like An Office Chair
This is simultaneously the best and worst episode of the season, and you don’t have to agree with this pick at all but at least let me explain.
Three quarters of this leg is spent doing the most mundane things possible. The opening challenge is to find the worlds largest...office chair. This is followed by the roadblock being to...climb the office chair. It’s not that complicated. There’s a ladder. After this, teams must find their way to the Talladega Super Speedway to complete a lap around the track...on party bikes. Not only does this look ridiculous, The Weavers lost their father in a horrific speedway accident. They collectively experience some PTSD and pedal on the verge of tears, trying to push themselves forward literally and metaphorically as Linda tells them how their daddy would enjoy a place like this and encourage them to push onwards.
Then they have to go find a mobile home dealer which is so odd that at first Mark Schroeder didn’t believe it was what they were supposed to do. Stassi needs to convince him otherwise. The teams must then scour the unfurnished mobile homes for departing times. Here, we get a bunch of teams picking the first time they see without thinking in multiple displays of genius (Stassi has to convince her family members that there's an earlier time than the one they almost pick up - the Godlewskis just told them. They end up taking the later time anyways). The teams then spend the night in the unfurnished mobile homes, a prospect I find cursed (and Carissa agrees with me - “I don’t like these trailers, they’re evil.”)
Upon waking up teams go from unfinished mobile homes to a random BP gas station to find some dude named Les - that’s it, that’s the task. The next task is the only one that doesn’t feel mundane - drive to a state park for the detours, which are either sawing logs or playing blackjack. This state park happens to be one that the Schroeders live pretty close too...But Mark mucks up getting there, to Stassi’s dismay. At the detour the Gaghans figure that small children sawing is a bad idea so they go for blackjack (because children gambling is much better! /s ), only to encounter a really bad streak of luck. When the Weavers arrive and get 2 of their 3 wins in just minutes, the Gaghans go to saw logs. Producers were prepared, and Billy and Carissa get big face masks - like a baseball pitcher would wear. One of the first things those kids do, of course, is accidentally whack each other in the face trying to saw the log, so this detour would be up to the parents.
Somewhere along the way we see the beginnings of Christine being the ‘emotional’ one, when she just starts crying out of frustration - crying is a release for her. We see this a few more times in later legs.
Stassi’s storyline of not being listened to over Mark reaches its conclusion on the way to the detour and they fall into last place. They arrive at the pit-stop (a pretty cool one - Preservation Hall, an old jazz club in New Orleans) last, with Stassi still frustrated - she really had the drive to go all the way, I think.
This legs tasks suck so bad that they’re good. I didn’t think I’d ever find something like that on the race but here we are. The leg design itself isn’t terrible, and like most of the season it relies on teams driving to other places, and the detour is decent enough. It’s just all those early tasks, up to finding a gas station attendant at a BP were so dull and drab it cycles over to comedic. Yeah, welcome to the Amazing Race Carissa, go climb that giant office chair. Go to a raceway and do a lap on a silly looking bicycle. Go sleep in an empty mobile home. At the same time we get the end of the Schroeder’s story in a satisfying way, and the Weavers get a really emotional moment on the raceway. I’m calling this a GOAT leg for the offensively drab tasks melding with two teams story beats that make this episode seem like it’s from an alternate reality.

Season Rankings

Excellent

Great
4) U.S. 3
Good
5) U.S. 1
One and Done
6) U.S. 6
7) U.S. 8
8) U.S. 4

Google Docs for An Analysis of Explorer: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L50q9WMsK1AKqICQ64jNR6swtnSCPGVOhPnjHJ_sI1c/edit?usp=sharing
Reddit link to An Analysis of Explorer Kurt Frank: Paranoid schizophrenia, Kurt Schneider, Alice in the Wonderland Syndrome, Macropsia: https://www.reddit.com/IdentityV/comments/i5qmtp/an_analysis_of_explorer_kurt_frank_paranoid/
Translated with permission from lore analyser Ma Yi Jia (马一甲): https://meici674.lofter.com/post/1ea10181_12d02cff5
* Overall impression: Kurt is a really poor thing. Caring for children begins from caring for their mental health.
* The accuracy of deductions is not guaranteed. This is just for viewing purposes. Please consider the official developers for accurate lore information.
* Explorer’s deductions is probably the most abstract of all the characters. Even the chronological order in his stories are jumbled up (malicious intent from developers.jpg)
TL;DR:
One of the inspirations for Explorer is Swiss-born adventure novelist Georges Arthur Surdez. He was the first person to use the term "Russian Roulette" in books.
Deduction story analysis: Kurt’s deduction story does not follow a chronological order, but is randomized. The actual chronological order should be 1/12-5-4-6-2-(456)-7-8-9-10-3-12. The brackets signify parts that will be mentioned.
Plot summary: Kurt accompanied his parents in their travels all over the world, moving from place to place, so he hardly spent a lot of time staying in a specific school. His parents may have argued often, which led to the development of a sensitive, introverted, and avoidant personality. During his childhood, with the rise of the printing industry and the popularity of adventure novels, he consumed a lot of related books, and indulged in fantasies.
At a very young age, he joined the barracks (I’m leaning towards the boy scouts). He remained as a recruit for a very long time, and gained a sense of social identity through sharing with others the stories he had read. When he completed his service, and had explored outside for some time, his parents believed he should receive an education. Kurt followed their wishes. However, his experience at school was vastly different from the barracks. People mocked his experiences in the barracks, and believed that he fabricated his (actually true) stories. During this period, Kurt’s avoidant personality developed further, eventually progressing from a neurosis to a disorder. After he saw illusions, he chose to quit school, and wanted to earn money as an adventurer (he may have even attempted writing novels during this time). However, he unfortunately got addicted to gambling, and owed debts.
He had no place to go. On one hand, he indulged within his own fantasies; on the other, he faced pressures from reality. When he heard about the manor, he brought along his favourite adventure novel and travelled to the manor, hoping he could clear his debt and become a true explorer.
This textual analysis will begin with an introduction of Kurt (translations amended from Gamepedia):
The adventurer Kurt Frank was born in Yorkshire, England. After his birth, he moved with his parents and immigrated. He went from England to Italy, then to France, and back to England, constantly passing by all sorts of adult travelers. This unique period of experience made Kurt feel like a migratory bird, forming a typical case of avoidant personality. He found it difficult to concentrate, and was fascinated with reading novels everyday about ancient artifacts and expeditions, such as the classic Gulliver’s Travels. He kept surmising that he was a great adventurer.
As an experienced adventurer, Kurt is passionate about exploring the limits of mankind. He did not hesitate to sail across the English Channel, to ride a hot air balloon across old-growth forests, completing seemingly impossible travels. After receiving a mysterious invitation letter, Kurt is about to join this game of life-and-death. There is no question that he is already a renowned master of survival, but he hopes to become the ultimate winner.
(Headache)
Cleary, this section contained a large amount of information. After considering the clear symptoms of hallucination within the deduction stories, Kurt’s experiences include both real and imaginary experiences. We are not sure how much of his story can be considered as actually having taken place.
Despite that, if we can’t find anything relevant, this textual analysis does not even need to be written. While searching for information relevant to Kurt, we can discover 2 important points of breakthrough.
Firstly: Avoidant personality disorder
Secondly: Russian Roulette
Avoidant personality disorder is first recorded in ICD-6. The reference I used was from ICD-10, and the information on Wikipedia is based on the latest DSM.
https://preview.redd.it/my285iya6qh51.png?width=347&format=png&auto=webp&s=5cab7342a295ec8cdae49e33f9e8c8a793bd1b7a
From ICD-10
https://preview.redd.it/0os1m79e6qh51.png?width=748&format=png&auto=webp&s=cfc4853d96f998cb3185d275526a40d98826120e
You may skip over the section from here until the part on psychoanalysis.
You may be asking, what’s the ICD? What’s the DSM?

The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is a health care classification system that provides diagnostic codes for nuanced classifications of a wide variety of signs, symptoms, abnormal findings, complaints, social circumstances, and external causes of injury or disease. The ICD is maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO). All health conditions are mapped onto corresponding generic categories together with specific variations, and are assigned with a designated code up to 6 characters long.

In layman terms, it is a systematic classification of human diseases. The earliest proponent of a standardized and consistent disease classification was Nightingale (yes, the lady with the lamp). She had advocated the idea in the 1860 International Statistical Congress. It was widely received, and the first version of the ICD was finally established in 1893. However, no manual was provided before the 6th edition. In other words, the complete set only appeared in ICD-6.
Another term, DSM:

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a taxonomic and diagnostic tool published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). In the United States, the DSM serves as the principal authority for psychiatric diagnoses.

Although the ICD resolved many problems, it lumped both biological illness and mental disorders together. When World War 2 began, the doctors found the ICD inconvenient and unsystematic while checking for illnesses. In response to Legionnaires’ disease, the first DSM (DSM-1) was adapted from the ICD-6 and published in 1952. It can be seen that the study of psychiatric illnesses was highly related to historical wars. Many of the 60 different mental illnesses within the DSM were associated with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Why are we discussing medical terminologies? Because this is relevant to the era Kurt lived in - human beings are inseparable from their sociocultural context. We need to use the manner in which mental disorders were studied in Kurt’s era to discuss how he developed an avoidant personality.
The first 2 editions of DSM were largely influenced by psychodynamics, so psychoanalytic terminologies often appeared. That’s right, those are Freud’s. Of course, we are not going to follow his crooked path in discussions about sexual drives. The current psychological community also no longer recognizes psychoanalytic theories. Thus, my analysis is coming as an outsider. Please do not take this as an actual academic analysis.
Next, psychoanalysis would be utilized to understand Kurt’s past and current mental state. You may skip over this section to read the deductions.
Firstly, psychoanalytic theory has a few basic tenets:

A person's development is determined by often forgotten events in early childhood, rather than by inherited traits alone.
Human behaviour and cognition are largely determined by instinctual drives that are rooted in the unconscious.
Attempts to bring such drives into awareness triggers resistance in the form of defense mechanisms. Conflicts between conscious and unconscious material can result in mental disturbances, such as neurosis, neurotic traits, anxiety, and depression.

So clearly, Kurt’s psychological issue is an avoidant personality with delusional characteristics: Through fabricating and exaggerating his personal experiences, he makes others believe he is an amazing explorer. To understand the purpose of this, we need to analyse from 3 perspectives: Why the need to fabricate? Why did he choose to be an explorer? What is the purpose of fabricating? (I will touch on this very briefly, otherwise it would be too lengthy)
Why the need to fabricate?
Through self-enhancement and inflation of his self-esteem, he protected himself from harm coming from the outside world. We know that he started fabricating stories in the barracks. As an immigrant or foreigner to a new land, Kurt felt anxious and worried. Through self-glorification, he was able to make others aware of his existence and reduce his anxiety.
At the same time however, this influenced Kurt’s entire life, and eventually worsened his mental state. An individual’s personality is usually shaped in his youths. I deduce that he joined the barracks at a very young age, perhaps 15 or 16 years old, or even younger.
Why did he choose to be an explorer?
As colonies were developed, adventure stories were welcomed by many. Many of the classic science fiction works and horror stories first appeared within and after that period of time. There were also many fantasy novelists in that era (e.g., our dearest Mr. Lovecraft). An adventurer was the symbol of bravery and manliness, accompanied with the characteristic of leading a wandering but smooth-sailing life, an explorer is someone that younger Kurt would aspire to be.
What is the purpose of fabricating?
To show others the tenacious side of him, to earn others’ support, trust, and love.
From Kurt’s introduction: “From England to Italy, then to France, and back to England, constantly passing by all sorts of adult travelers.” As a child, Kurt did not gain a regular sense of emotional security from his family. His language barrier made it difficult for him to communicate with others, naturally leading to the development of an introverted personality. Most importantly: adult travellers. A child can hardly distinguish his existence and capability in front of a group of adults (especially in front of male adults). Thus, he craved for an existence that is either equal to, or superior to others.
The role of an explorer happened to satisfy this fantasy, so he accepted this identity. This defense mechanism is considered as identification, whereby the individual “assimilates an aspect, property, or attribute of the other and is transformed wholly or partially by the model that other provides.”
We can find that, Kurt later did not fear travelling, and instead amplified this behaviour to explorations. In other words, his defense mechanism is inclusionary rather than exclusionary. This is a part of his personality, which we will further discuss later on.
Kurt may previously have a neurotic disorder, also known as neurosis. The term was used for more common psychological problems with no symptoms of abnormal brain functioning, irrational thinking, delusions, or hallucinations. Individuals do not violate social standards, but experience chronic distress, are self-defeating, or lack the ability to adapt to their environment.
However from deduction 8, after entering university, his illness worsened. There is a possibility that it had developed into psychosis. This condition is distinguished from neurosis in terms of property (psychosis as a disorder of the mind, neurosis as a disorder of the nervous system) and severity. Individuals with a psychotic illness often behave in ways that markedly deviate from social norms, and often experience difficulties determining what is real and what is not. In other words, a loss of touch with reality. This matches the part where Kurt sees a dragon; it had begun to affect his everyday life.
Before we talk about the original inspiration for Kurt, we first talk about the deduction story. Kurt’s deductions are very interesting. I will be putting them in the order I have analysed (i.e., 1/12-5-4-6-2-[456]-7-8-9-10-11-3-1/12).
https://preview.redd.it/euuy9vrq6qh51.png?width=763&format=png&auto=webp&s=ad012b90b8c18773b65ab9c6d3207875caac13cc
Here we connect two sections together as the introduction of the deduction analysis, to highlight how important adventure stories were in Kurt’s childhood, and that he already had confused his own personal experiences with the story plot (the way in which children play).
We have previously analysed that he spent much of his childhood drifting about. Introversion and language barriers (switching from English to Italian to French definitely involved a process) led Kurt to not have many friends. The nature of children is to play, so while he read, he naturally immersed himself with his imaginary friends. Such a characteristic is an expression of creativity. However, if it extends to adulthood, it becomes an unfortunate beginning for his life.
As for why 12 is here: It is because this is a recollection of his childhood memories when he became an adult. We will talk about this point later.
https://preview.redd.it/6t9668nu6qh51.png?width=354&format=png&auto=webp&s=56344805dbf99c7481efdeeb4c73038c7c5cee8a
There may not necessarily be a chronological order to deduction 4 and 5, but I believe 5 can be placed in front in order to highlight the importance of adventure stories in Kurt’s life. We can see clearly from this section that Kurt had attempted to share stories to others and gained a sense of social identity. This suggests that he had entered a place where he could gain recognition: The barracks.
https://preview.redd.it/uydcho3w6qh51.png?width=366&format=png&auto=webp&s=2cd555ff31ae5bcad8bb3a334f99da09c035b3e8
The title indicates the beginning of a lie. Yet, I do not believe Kurt had embellished himself with adventure story plots during his time in the barracks. He may have lied to himself sometimes, but they did not have serious consequences. He misses his time in the barracks because the people there treated him seriously. This beautiful memory made him believe that he could achieve something. So when did he start lying? After entering university.
As for the details within the barrack, we will talk about it after the following image.
https://preview.redd.it/5iwex0yy6qh51.png?width=351&format=png&auto=webp&s=d0c3c47829c4b9d1365a0452c55c6bfae6f646ea
Regarding the external traits of Explorer and Mercenary, we find that other than Kurt possessing exploration skills (“Explore”), the other traits were not really associated with the military. The description of his exploration skills were “superior survival skills”, and not for marching or others.
So my opinion is different from analysing Naib. I do not believe he joined a very professional military. In contrast, I believed that he had joined a temporary scout camp for boys or teens.
Time to supplement with historical knowledge: Scouting
https://preview.redd.it/eurnxr027qh51.png?width=286&format=png&auto=webp&s=b9445c4954fa1b3323381edd51da8cd38ec75e6e
This movement originated from the Brownsea Island Scouts during the Second Boer War. The government believed that they should inculcate military ideologies to children, in case of times of need. (Of course, the nature of these movements are completely different today.)
Why do I believe that Kurt was involved in scouting? Because for the barracks to be seen as a place with beautiful memories, especially for an introverted, thin, and weak individual, it suggests that Kurt did not experience any traumatizing events there. In other words, he never actually went to war, he never killed anyone. Instead, he only received some survival skills training and had the rare experience to get along happily with people around his age (might be around 15 or 16 years old).
For a person that drifts about, having friends is such a joyous thing. He told them stories he had read, and learnt to make eloquent, persuasive public speeches. His friends may have even believed that some of his stories were from his own personal experiences. No wonder why Kurt misses them after entering university.
https://preview.redd.it/t8ypz0d47qh51.png?width=605&format=png&auto=webp&s=c304e7e23368fa5aaf4bb2586dddb660187bc8e3
However, good times never last. After Kurt left the barracks (and may even have moved houses a few more times), they finally settled down in England and led a relatively stable life. As a result, his father requested him to attend university… it may not be a university, but a high school. Anyway, we can see from here that Kurt may have attended the military camp at an age beginning with “1x”. For a child that did not undergo training and moved from place to place, it is a bit too early, so I believe he may have been very young.
A brief mention of the relationship between Kurt and his father: it is only a guess, but their frequent migrations may be influenced by his father’s work. Kurt has never mentioned his mother, so we cannot infer that their parents divorced. However, it is clear that the person that demanded him was his father, and the words used were very uncompromising.
An introverted child follows his family over the long-term in moving from place to place. His father treats him rather inflexibly. When he’s alone, he spends it reading books. Kurt’s personality is clearly not accompanied with feminine traits of weakness and docility, suggesting he was not as influenced by his mother. It can be imagined that his parents are not very caring about the child (at least, emotionally), and their relationships may be strained. It is no wonder that Kurt never talked to his parents after experiencing problems at school; instead, immersing himself further within his imaginations.
https://preview.redd.it/tdhrllt67qh51.png?width=740&format=png&auto=webp&s=e7ca79aa963f1831274894c7e5ad4950827edfe6
In the first half of the deduction, the team members were probably the imaginary characters in Kurt’s stories, or the friends in his barracks. In the second half of the deduction, the “people” must be his school classmates. Kurt’s life experience was not a topic that students would be interested about, so it is also not surprising for them to reject and question his stories. Except, this clearly created a blow in Kurt’s self-esteem and triggered his avoidant personality.
https://preview.redd.it/vcgd9jm97qh51.png?width=346&format=png&auto=webp&s=5d6cc438da4538b3b849102b7d349def7c52fad3
The failures in his life made him turn inwards mentally, where he began to deceive himself. This was where his delusions became more serious, and he began to lie. The current explorer Kurt was created from here on onwards. The persuasion skills he learnt in the barracks became effective (at first for himself, and then for others). He started thinking and believing he was the great explorer.
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Western dragons are not a good omen and are considered an existence of evil. It is often the villain in many adventure stories. Kurt had begun to hallucinate; the people that he believed to be dragons may have been his classmates. The conclusion also suggests that he noticed his confusion between what was real and what was not.
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After realizing issues within his mental state, Kurt decided to leave this heartbreaking place. He dropped out of school, and may have argued with his family members. This worsened his psychological issues, which eventually developed into a disorder that affected his actual life. (Sentence issues had started surfacing within his diaries, almost giving the impression of disorganized speech)
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Probably after having a fall-out with his family, Kurt went his own way and made speeches by assuming the identity of an explorer. In his introduction, it was mentioned that he sailed across the English Channel, rode a hot air balloon across old-growth forests, and completed seemingly impossible travels… These stories probably circulated around this time.
Based on his title, Kurt probably really did make certain adventures, but there were other stories that he had fabricated to trick others. Furthermore, because of his mental illness, he probably did not lie intentionally, but his brain believed that he had really experienced those adventures. He may even have written a basic autobiography to boast about his own adventure stories (just like within the deductions), but they were not entirely true.
At this point in time, he probably disguised his introverted personality into a complete extroverted personality. His survival skills and exploration skills were also accumulated within this period. Of course, this leaves us with many other questions. For example, most explorers rely on sponsors for patronage and make money by delivering results. But Kurt… clearly does not have a specific sponsor.
https://preview.redd.it/6se8loej7qh51.png?width=442&format=png&auto=webp&s=cbf51168607a510583ff9fc992ef9e24e6003388
As mentioned previously, without money, Kurt began to have an outstanding balance and may have gambled. He eventually owed a huge amount of debt and needed to find a way to pay them. The manor’s invitation was his lifesaver; he clutched at straws and went to the manor, along with his dreams and expectations of clearing his debts.
And then
And then! A breakthrough!!! The Russian roulette!!!! (The sudden agitation of a mental patient)

Time to analyse (one of) the original inspirations for Kurt

A question: Where did the term “Russian Roulette” come from?
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In the story The Fatalist of 1840 by Russian poet Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov, a character had gambled with his life by pulling the trigger of a flintlock pistol placed on his head. However, flintlock pistols do not have a spinning chamber, and the story did not utilize the term Russian roulette. Thus, the first person that used the term “Russian roulette” was Georges Surdez. It was mentioned in his 1937 short story Russian Roulette, and the term later became popularized through books.
Georges Surdez is the inspiration for Explorer Kurt Frank: Born in Bienne, Switzerland, of French descent, he later became a writer of adventure stories.
https://preview.redd.it/y1oe7o2p7qh51.png?width=366&format=png&auto=webp&s=c3670abc4531758a6b9193ff7a37f199028063a3
How is Georges similar to Kurt?
A childhood marked by moving from place to place, an overbearing father, an intense hatred towards school experience, a passion towards exploration, and a love towards life in the barracks.
Next there will be a simple biographical introduction for Georges Surdez. It is not difficult to realize the multiple similarities he shares with Explorer.
Georges was born to a middle-class family in Bienne, Switzerland. His father Eugene was a watchmaker. The family life was outwardly perfect. In the middle of the 19th century, the arrival of the railway turned Bienne from a rural backcountry into a bustling city. Changes also occurred within people’s lives.
Georges had elder brothers and sisters who were much older than him. He did not have much of an impression on them because they had moved to America while he was still very young. They would send letters and gifts home during Christmas. However, his father was envious of his children’s happy life in America. He was embittered and became dissatisfied with everything around him. As a young man, Georges’ father Eugene lived in New York for four years and remained awed by his memories of the city. Eugene eventually came to Bienne as a watchmaker. After a long time, he was no longer satisfied with his unchanging life. While Georges was still a few years old, Eugene decided to give up on everything he had currently. He brought along his whole family to settle down in a far away country, where he intended to search for a new job.
However, one thing led to another. Triggered by Eugene’s pursuit of a new mistress or a drunken brawl that attracted the attention of the police, the family eventually moved across the border to a series of French towns. Georges’ childhood was spent with temporary friends in rented rooms.
Different from Kurt… this original was much more disobedient. While he was 3 years old, he secretly climbed onto a huge truck. He toured the town for a few laps before finally being delivered back to his worried parents. At that time, he really enjoyed a series of adventure stories to pass the time. These novels were pocket-sized adventure stories full of heroes, villains, and gunfights. Surdez’s books cushioned him from the unhappiness of his parent’s marriage, but not from his two siblings’ tragic death before he was 6. His elder brother Gilbert died falling from a tree, and sister Blanche died in a sleigh accident.
In 1907, a younger brother was born, bringing his parents back together for a while. However, Surdez’s father could not stop chasing other women for long. Two of his adult sisters intended to emigrate to America. Perhaps believing the break up of the family would be the final straw for their marriage, Surdez’s mother Marie suggested that they all start a new life in America.
Yet after heading to America, he was mocked by his classmates due to language barriers. He mentioned in a letter: “I [sank] from a fine scholar to a semi-moron, tongue-tied and awkward, the target for jokes and laughter, pushed down to the bottom of the human scale as a peculiar, rather nervous importation from a quaint land.”
There were many destitute soldiers on American streets, so Georges befriended them. From them as well as from the pocket-sized books, he learnt about even more adventure stories. Pulp magazines were also especially popular in America, allowing him to consume a large amount of stories in a short period of time. He started craving for an adventure.
Pulp magazines were invented in 1896 by Frank Andrew Munsey. This person’s name may be the origin of Explorer’s surname.
The term pulp derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which various fantasy magazines were printed. Many of the famous science fiction authors had made their first publications in these magazines (e.g., E. E. Smith, the father of space opera).
He dropped out of school at the age of 16, with his mind full of pulp adventure. Although he had raised his English proficiency to a native standard, his classmates continued to ostracise him, calling him a “dirty Swiss”, “square-head”, “froggy.” His French language proficiency allowed him to join the military. At that time, World War 1 had just started raging. He was considered too young to be dispatched to the frontlines; instead, he worked as a clerk and watched the war from the sidelines. After the war ended, he joined an American timber firm. As a result of work, he sailed for the French colony, and got away from his quarreling family. He even considered joining the Legion, but after experiencing it first hand, realised he was not cut out for it. Due to tax issues, he lost his job, and was forced to return to New York.
After returning to New York, Georges attempted to earn a living by retelling his various experiences in the colony and by churning out adventure stories to submit for magazine publications. Due to his documentary style, he successfully became a professional writer of adventure stories. During his work, he continued to travel to various colonial settlements and got in touch with the legionnaires to gather more inspiration for his adventure stories. Even after he became a naturalized American citizen, he and his wife went to the French colonies in Africa and the Far East for a year, gathering more stories from the legionnaires. (He wasn’t exactly a serious writer. His writings contained some adult content, you may search for them if interested.)
Unfortunately, their return was met with the financial crisis from the collapse of the New York stock exchange… Under this situation, Georges bravely continued to be an adventurer, submitted publications to the magazines, and boasted himself as being “very famous in foreign countries” to attract readers. On 30 January 1937 a 1,600-word piece of fiction by Georges called “Russian Roulette” appeared in the magazine; it tells of adventure, gambling, and death amongst foreign Legionnaires in an isolated North African outpost… He may not have ever thought that this fictional game would kill more than a thousand Americans.
10 years later, Georges’ marriage collapsed. His wife moved out to live with another man. Due to his age, he was not enlisted in World War 2, and could not obtain regular military wages to pay for various debts. The stories he had written were widely imitated, leaving his stories no longer valuable. Six years before he died, he published an autobiographical novel of his childhood, but sales were low. Georges went back to the surviving pulps and managed to keep a roof above his head. He eventually died at 49 years old from poverty and illness. Something worth mentioning is that Georges appeared to be a supporter of human equality. He had corresponded with black civil rights activists. However, because his letters are now missing, his actual attitude cannot be inferred. Regardless, the only thing that people remember him by is the Russian roulette; on the night of his death, 22 others who lost the game accompanied him in death.
Greek mythology skin - Icarus
Translated from Ma Yi Jia: https://meici674.lofter.com/post/1ea10181_12e9aa110
(This is not an actual analysis on Explorer, but just extra information on his Greek mythology skin)
![img](jug5cnxv7qh51 " ")

Flying bravely towards the sky, but melted by the sun
If one falls weakly, he will be engulfed by the sea
Adventure is like flying without an exit
Icarus was, before his birth, and remains after his death,
The image of man’s disquiet, of the impulse to discovery, the soaring flight of poetry

Mythological allusions:
In Greek mythology, Icarus is the son of the master craftsman Daedalus. Icarus and his father attempted to escape from Crete by means of wings constructed by feathers and wax. Icarus' father asks that he fly neither too low nor too high, so the sea's dampness would not clog his wings nor the sun's heat melt them. Icarus ignored his father's instructions not to fly too close to the sun; when the wax in his wings melted, he tumbled out of the sky, fell into the sea, and drowned. To remember Icarus, the island on which his body was buried was named as Icaria.
https://preview.redd.it/91uxb4mz7qh51.png?width=353&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b16d15e7f4bbc159fdbfbde6632914e7040a09c
Details on the skin:
Firstly is the colour choice. The main colour scheme of Icarus is not red, but blue. Blue and green are seen as second class colours in Ancient Greece, and are not as valued as red, black, and white, which are considered to be the highest class colours.
Icarus is indeed the only skin within the Greek mythology series (Great Hero, Cerynitis’ Bane, Apollo) that is not linked with any god, and only with humans. It may be because of this that the colour scheme is different.
https://preview.redd.it/mnc7rcmk8qh51.png?width=803&format=png&auto=webp&s=693b9c3566ee9a6388320d574c4f61e473cce4da
Ancient Greek sandals featured a multitude of straps securely fastened to the foot. The soles were made of cattle skin, or of even better quality, and made up of several layers. Ancient Greeks went barefoot indoors, wearing sandals only when walking outside. Slaves and women often went outdoors barefooted.
https://preview.redd.it/ejl8w9sc8qh51.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=9058780ac2600116ade03a8ba3081eab40d4cb44
Apollo’s shoes are the ones in the middle. The others (Great Hero, Cerynitis’ Bane, Icarus) have the first type of shoes and are accompanied with armors.
A brief discussion about the association of mechanical puppets and Ancient Greece: Even though it may sound unbelievable, “robots” already existed in Ancient Greece.
In 400 BC, Plato’s friend Archytas, the founder of mathematical mechanics, had designed the first self-propelled flying device, a pigeon-shaped machine. In the 2nd century BC, Ancient Greeks invented the first automaton, a movable statue powered by water, air, and steam.
Records of mechanics in Western civilization can be traced to Homer’s poem Iliad (In Eastern civilization, the Gujinzhu). In it, the god of fire Hephaestus utilized gold to create a set of automated assistants. Thus, the combination of ancient Greek designs and puppets is not weird, but highly fitting.
(Ancient technology is a lot more brilliant than we believe it to be)
This textual analysis will end here. Again, please consider the official developers for accurate lore information. Thank you for reading so far.

Surname Database: Crockford Last Name Origin

where did the surname gambling come from

where did the surname gambling come from - win

Player Focus Thread #12: Josh Daicos and Liam McMahon

"Don’t Vote For the Best Candidate"

Don’t Vote For the Best Candidate

(1) Don't vote for the best candidate.

(2) The PAP will retain supermajority in Parliament.

(3) What is the supermajority and why does it matter?

(4) But how we vote will determine one thing — whether we retain the GRC system.

(5) Conclusion.

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