WEBVTT - Trans Fiction, Trans Sports 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:04.800 Call Zon Media. 0:00:05.120 --> 0:00:07.080 Welcome to youap and here a podcast and I forgot 0:00:07.120 --> 0:00:09.680 to write an introduction for I'm your host, Miya Wong, 0:00:10.320 --> 0:00:13.000 and we are well, okay, we're not taking a break 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:15.520 from the horrors, because this is also still a podcast 0:00:15.560 --> 0:00:18.040 about the horrors and what you can do about it. 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:21.880 But you know, I am a transgender. One of the 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:26.720 ways that we have been like depersonified via transgender is 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:30.479 through a you know, a massive attack on trans like 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:34.400 trans women in sports, and this has led to you know, 0:00:34.520 --> 0:00:37.040 like the acceleration of like the broad scale attack on 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:40.040 all of us being able to exist as people. And 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:41.960 with me to talk about this is someone who has 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:44.320 written a book that is about this and also kind 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:46.839 of not about this in a lot of ways, and 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.080 that is Victoria Zeller, who is a writer author, writes 0:00:50.120 --> 0:00:52.839 about the Buffalo Bills for our friends over at Defector 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:55.520 sometimes and is the author of a new book What 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:57.800 are the Boys Out Today? When you're listening to this, 0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:01.920 wow crazy, While yeah it is, it has SYNCD up 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:04.200 like this completely on purpose. We were one hundred percent 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:05.240 planning this from the beginning. 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:07.319 Hello, thank you for having me. 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:10.360 Yeah, I'm excited to have you on so you would 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:12.560 think that the question that your book One of the 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:16.000 Boys asks is what if a transchool played football? But 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:18.280 the actual and more important question to ask is what 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:20.800 if a poster could write fiction? And the answer is 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:21.880 that it fucking rips? 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:22.360 Thank you? 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:26.319 Is this this book rules? I? Jenni Wily. I think 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:29.319 this is the best written group chats I've ever read 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:32.040 in a book. It rips it so good. 0:01:32.680 --> 0:01:35.760 I am very passionate about group chats, you know. I 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:39.680 mean like posting is writing Hello audience. If you don't 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:43.360 know me, my name is Victoria. I'm online. You may 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:47.440 know my Twitter or blue Sky accounts at dirtbag Queer. 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:51.520 I'm like largely posting about football when football is in season. 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:54.200 I kind of just post about random shit these days. 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:59.480 But yeah, I've allegedly written a book. The weird thing 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:01.360 about writing book is that I feel like I've just 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:04.200 totally blacked out actually writing it. And I'm like, that's crazy. 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:08.760 Who did that? Couldn't be me? But yeah, in terms 0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:11.120 of like how I would like very quickly pitch one 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:14.280 of the boys, high school senior named Grace comes back 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:17.320 to her high school football team. She quit over the 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:20.120 summer because she came out as trans because her teammates 0:02:20.200 --> 0:02:22.440 want to make a push for a state title and 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:26.280 it's like trans coming of age, Friday night Lights handshake meme. 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:30.320 But also when I was like big picture thinking about 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:32.200 what I wanted to do with this, I wanted to 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:35.240 tell kind of a like traditional high school sports story, 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:39.800 but through an outsider lens. Like if you think about 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:42.400 the average like high school football story, you think like, well, 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:44.120 what we're gonna do is we're gonna win state, we're 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:46.000 gonna get the scholarship, and we're gonna get the girl. 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:50.120 And I wanted to sort of like deconstruct those three 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:54.280 things by making the protagonist trans and making the protagonist 0:02:54.320 --> 0:02:58.160 a kicker instead of like a linebacker or a quarterback 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:01.079 or whatever. And that is who I am. 0:03:01.280 --> 0:03:03.359 Yeah, and this this book rips. That sounds like a 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:05.080 fun thing going on where it basically has like the 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:07.840 football iceberg, where like you can come into us knowing 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:09.680 zero ball and you will get stuff out of it. 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:11.880 And you can come into this where I am knowing 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:13.919 like a some ball and you will guess some out 0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:16.680 of this. And then like the unhinged people who have 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:20.160 like sixteen different pff tabs like pinned their bookmarks will 0:03:20.200 --> 0:03:22.000 be like, holy shit, the world building. 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:27.480 Yeah, yeah, that was it is. It is hard writing 0:03:28.240 --> 0:03:31.760 fiction about sports if you're writing young adult fiction, you know, 0:03:31.960 --> 0:03:34.600 which is what one of the boys is. Don't be 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:37.960 weird about that. If you're an adult, teenage girls are like, oh, 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:40.080 you don't have to hate the things they like. You 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:44.120 can like call down a little bit. Uh, But yeah, 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:48.080 writing about football for an audience of like teenagers is 0:03:48.160 --> 0:03:51.960 like fascinating because you have to assume that the audience 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:54.600 knows very little and you have to figure out how 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:56.240 much you want to give them so that they get 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:59.920 it without like overwhelming them, which is like really just 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:02.600 not at all what I wanted to do. But also yeah, 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:07.040 if you're a sicko like me, you can be like, ooh, 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:09.920 I'm really into what this offense is doing or I 0:04:09.920 --> 0:04:12.960 am really into this like on side kick play design. 0:04:13.560 --> 0:04:16.560 So I tried to like do I tried to do 0:04:16.640 --> 0:04:19.320 a little bit of both. And also, again, this is 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:23.520 a transcoming of age story, so yeah, it's also dealing 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:28.000 with you know, the horrors. So yep, ball plus horrors 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:30.240 is what we're working with here. 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:33.280 Yeah, so I think, okay, we're going to get more 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:35.560 into the politics of this in a second. But first 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:37.760 I want to ask one ball question since I have 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:40.920 now I have now introduced my audience to the fact 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:42.880 that I talk about football by managing to get a 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:45.200 rant about de Sean Watson on here for like ten minutes, 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:48.839 the Sean Watson trade. But okay, my one ball question 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:50.600 for this was how happy did it make you when 0:04:50.640 --> 0:04:52.279 you figure out a way to write a football team 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:57.840 that does not use the forward pass? Oh man, it's. 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:02.800 Without without spoiling what happens at the end of the 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:06.680 act one turn, circumstances occur so that this high school 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:10.400 football team has to move a player who is who 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:15.240 is not a quarterback two quarterback, at which point passing 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:17.800 just goes away and we are just running the ball, baby, 0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:21.000 we are. We are pounding the rock. 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:22.480 It's so sick. 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:26.120 It is kind of sort of like loosely, what I 0:05:26.160 --> 0:05:30.440 based this on was the year that the University of 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:34.480 Kentucky football team, like all like every single quarterback got 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:37.520 hurt and they were like, Okay, Lynn Bowden, you are 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:39.560 our best wide receiver. We're just gonna put you a 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:42.920 quarterback and you know, we're just gonna see what happens 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:47.080 and that's like that was the fun of writing fictional 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:49.279 football is that I can make my fictional football team 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:51.159 do whatever I want and I don't want to ever 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:55.760 see conservative trickery that is the forward pass, get it 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:59.400 out of here. Yeah, it's is. 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:01.080 One of the things that you're writing is that you 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:04.159 are very much just like an old school like traditionalist 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:07.240 football pound of the rock, like none of this, like 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:09.840 none of none of this is like an RPO bullshit 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:12.640 person which is which is also I don't know, it's 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:15.680 just very funny that you have like you have like 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:20.040 the football personality of like an extremely cranky, like seventy 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:23.520 five year old like coach from like the seventies. Yep. 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:27.919 And I'm a trans woman, yeah rules, which like again 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:29.839 I tried down to do too much of it in 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:32.160 this book. Like part of the reason that I made 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:34.760 my main character a kicker, which we will also talk 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:37.240 about other reasons later, but part of the reason is 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:41.200 that kicking is this sort of like own separate salad 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:43.400 off thing. So I really only have to like get 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:47.040 the audience to understand kicking and what happens when Grace 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:48.680 is on the field. I don't have to get into 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:53.800 like what a football team that like never passes the ball, 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:56.640 like is doing on a technical level. We don't have 0:06:56.680 --> 0:06:59.039 to do all that. I give you just enough that 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:02.080 if you are a sick oh you're like, yeah, baby. 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:04.880 Rules, this is the sickest offense of all time. 0:07:06.160 --> 0:07:10.840 But but also yeah, but also like you know, trying 0:07:10.880 --> 0:07:15.440 to u trying to help the queer kiddos understand that 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:22.320 like running the ball is the official football position of 0:07:22.360 --> 0:07:25.800 the working class, of the politariat. 0:07:26.120 --> 0:07:32.480 You know, Okay, we're gonna get more into the class 0:07:32.520 --> 0:07:34.800 ynamics of football a second. But the place I kind 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:37.240 of want to start in terms of, like you know, 0:07:37.320 --> 0:07:39.040 talking about the parts of this at art just ball 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:41.880 is so in a lot of ways, this is a 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:45.880 book about scriptlessness, which is something that I think, I 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:48.240 don't know, like we've been seeing a sort of resurgence 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:50.120 of trends or not resurchens, but I kind of like 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:56.440 surgeons emergence. There we go, there we go, there we go. Yeah, 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:58.520 of trans literature, and I think this is a very 0:07:58.560 --> 0:08:01.080 interesting angle to take on it. And it's you know, 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:03.240 when I say scriplessness, it's about the ways in which 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:06.760 trans women in particular don't have you know, sort of 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.840 examples and paths to like follow. Right, there's not like 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:11.480 a you're supposed to go from A to B two C. 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:13.800 This is like what you're doing with your life and 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:17.120 you have to just figure it out because suddenly you're 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:19.360 you and you just you just have to you know, 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:21.480 there's no rails, there's no guide, You just have to 0:08:21.480 --> 0:08:24.040 do it. I think the Sapatista line about it is 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:27.120 that the road is made by walking. Can you talk 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:30.760 about how like having to just figure the shit out 0:08:30.840 --> 0:08:32.839 influence the way that you write Grace and the way 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:34.040 that you sort of write this book. 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:39.000 Yeah, So this is something that Grace struggles with a lot. 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:42.800 I mean, like specific to her, it's because she's a 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.360 trans woman who's playing football, something that if an openly 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:49.600 trans woman has ever openly played, like American football, there 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:51.800 is not a lot of documentation of that online. So 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:57.199 like Grace, she is like walking a path that has 0:08:57.280 --> 0:09:02.000 like never existed before. But I think, like more broadly 0:09:02.160 --> 0:09:06.400 and more like thematically, there is that like Grace is 0:09:06.400 --> 0:09:09.800 also frequently I call her stupid and I don't think 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:13.400 that she's stupid, but calm up. But Grace struggles a 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:16.440 lot to like express herself. I would say, and like, 0:09:17.320 --> 0:09:21.080 I wanted her to like challenge what a reader might 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:25.720 expect from a trans girl in young adult fiction. Specifically, 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:29.880 we're like I think she's like frequently kind of like grading, 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:32.600 or at least I find her grading. She is not 0:09:33.559 --> 0:09:36.240 traditionally feminine. I don't think she's unfeminine, but she like 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:38.680 struggles a lot with like feeling okay enough to like 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:42.160 express that about herself. Yeah, and like, I feel like 0:09:42.240 --> 0:09:47.040 a lot of stories about trans kids have this view 0:09:47.320 --> 0:09:50.760 of being a like younger transperson of like, well, it 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:55.120 was always easy for me, and I took to femininity 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:57.480 like a fish in water, and like this was like 0:09:57.559 --> 0:09:59.600 natural to me. I wanted to write a character for 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:04.360 whom it is not necessarily natural for Grace to be 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:09.840 this person, and I wanted her past and the way 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:12.840 she is now to sort of like challenge a like 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:18.840 cist reader specifically, but also in terms of scriptlousness in 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:21.640 a more like macro way. There's not a lot of 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:27.720 hya contemporary fiction about transgirl characters like at all. There 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:31.920 is now, thankfully, a good amount of trans male representation 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:36.960 in the genre, but there are a few authors who 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:40.280 are out here writing transferm contemporary but like not a 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:43.200 lot so like figuring out like where I wanted to 0:10:43.280 --> 0:10:48.360 like slot in to this like genre that is kind 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:50.960 of like struggling to be born, you know, not a 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:57.240 lot of transferm like seventeen year old protagonists who are 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:02.360 like going to like parties and beer and worrying about 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:04.600 whether or not they want to go to college, which 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:07.200 is all is all stuff I wanted to like touch here. 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:10.040 Yeah, And I think there's a bunch of levels of 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:13.480 this stuff sort of operates on and I think it's 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:19.480 very like I don't know, like a lot of being trands. 0:11:19.559 --> 0:11:21.160 And I say it, at least for me, I don't know, 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:23.480 like maybe maybe this was different other people. Was just 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:26.120 like having no idea what the fuck you're doing and 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:30.160 just you know, waking up one day and realizing like shit, wait, 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:32.800 what the fuck do you mean I'm doing this? And 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:34.400 it's like, you know, I got think about this, Like 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:36.360 doing this job was like wait, what the fuck I'm 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:42.600 a trans podcaster? Like what like I can't even do 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:45.439 my makeup? Well, Like, what the fuck are we doing here? 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:46.000 Yep? 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:49.000 I think that like an never think that I've talked 0:11:49.040 --> 0:11:50.640 about to talk about this a lot on the show. Is, 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:56.360 but it's also just like how kind of like normal 0:11:56.920 --> 0:11:59.880 the trans girls who just like suddenly something blows up 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:03.280 and they're like Internet famers or whatever the fuck are that. 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:07.880 They're just like some kid until like, yeah, you know, 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:10.720 there's just like an explosion and everyone is suddenly interested 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:12.440 in every intimate detail of your life and is trying 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:13.960 to deconstruct it in order to destroy you. 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:18.000 Yeah, Grace is. Again I don't really want to like 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:22.000 spoil act act three stuff here, but later on in 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:25.880 the story, Grace achieves some amount of like Internet notoriety 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:30.040 for what she's doing. And yeah, Grace is like an 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:35.120 extremely typical kid. She has like typical kid problems. But 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:39.480 then this like microscope gets put on her and she's 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:43.440 she is sort of like forced to like become this 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:46.720 like different thing that like if she wants to be 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:49.120 that thing someday, it's not now. 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:50.200 Yeah. 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:52.680 I think in a lot of ways, my book is 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:56.120 about how we ask teenagers to like do too much 0:12:56.200 --> 0:13:00.840 and be too much. But like, especially trans kids, when 0:13:00.840 --> 0:13:04.120 you transition at any age, you are building the plane 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:07.040 of your personality while you are flying it baby, yep, 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:10.760 And like that's so much pressure to put on anyone, 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:14.880 but like especially anyone who is a kid, is just 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:17.080 like there's a lot of pressure, and I wanted to 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:22.439 I wanted to like juxtapose the parts of Grace's experience 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:25.679 that like a like sis boy or girl could read 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:27.679 and be like, yep, I also don't know where I 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:30.160 want to go to college. But also like sort of 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:35.200 like show like well because she is like this, she 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:40.400 is facing this like unreal level of scrutiny that is 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:44.120 like not normal, deeply unnatural and like fucked up and 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:44.800 like unfair. 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:48.840 Yeah, speaking of unfair, we have to go to ads. 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:53.000 We come back. That's one of my better pivots. I'm 0:13:53.000 --> 0:13:57.599 proud of that one. We come back for you to 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:14.880 talk about masculinity. We are back. So One of the 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:19.120 Boys is weirdly the second football involved book about a 0:14:19.120 --> 0:14:21.720 trans woman that I've read in the last year, And 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:27.080 I think it's fascinating because in the like pure archetypal 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:32.080 sense from like structuralless anthropology, it is like a pure 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:35.320 structural inversion of Alison Greeves is how to Fly, because 0:14:35.360 --> 0:14:37.200 how to Fly is this is also a good book. 0:14:37.240 --> 0:14:40.080 But How to Fly is about a girl getting forced 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:42.280 femed to escape masculine violence, why they come and a 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:44.640 cheerleader and one of the boys is about a trans 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:47.760 woman going back into, like into a hypermasculine space to 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:50.800 become a football player. It's like they're just literally perfect 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:53.600 structural versions of each other. And so I wanted to 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:59.280 ask you about how are you thinking about doing this 0:14:59.360 --> 0:15:02.360 thing right, which which is going back into these these 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:05.280 hyper masculine spaces that a lot of people come out 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:09.200 of pre transition, you know, when when you were sort 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:12.000 of writing this, because this is not a thing that 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:18.280 people tended to write when they're writing about transfems. 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:23.680 Totally and sort of the like irregularity of Grace's path 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:26.040 this way is like one of the reasons why I 0:15:26.080 --> 0:15:30.400 was like drawn to like writing a sports story about 0:15:30.440 --> 0:15:34.320 like a trans girl playing football specifically, is because like 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:38.000 I probably have a like more I don't know if 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:41.400 complicated is the word, but I have like a very 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:44.440 like interesting relationship with masculinity. And as much as I'm 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:46.720 like fascinated by it, like I think it is like 0:15:46.880 --> 0:15:50.880 endlessly interesting to see the ways that like men construct 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:55.480 the like various kinds of masculinity that they live in 0:15:55.640 --> 0:16:00.960 and the like various outcomes that men can end up 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:07.200 finding via their weird distinct masculinities. For instance, for me personally, 0:16:07.680 --> 0:16:11.080 I'm still in my like old high school like boys' 0:16:12.160 --> 0:16:15.920 group chat like that we like started like a decade ago, 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:19.760 and like I have never once had a problem fitting 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:22.040 in there. When they all found out I was trans, 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:25.480 was like, oh shit, cool, whatever, we're gonna keep talking 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:32.280 about like the Knicks, you know. And like, again, Grace's 0:16:32.880 --> 0:16:35.880 journey with masculinity is different from mine, but kind of 0:16:35.920 --> 0:16:40.040 like her, I have like some amount of like difficulty 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:45.160 and like very masculine sports spaces when I was a kid. 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:48.040 But then like once you adapt and once you like 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:52.320 learn how to like perform this thing, Like I never 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:58.040 had a problem existing in these worlds. And like something 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:00.800 that Grace is really annoyed by is that people are 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:03.600 always like I just can't believe that, like you would 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:06.480 be trans, And what is hidden in there is like 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:09.160 you were kind of a dick. You were like kind 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:12.960 of a douchebag. Yeah, So, like I very much wanted 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:17.760 to write a trans protagonist who has a relationship with 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:22.399 like her past self and with her male friends that 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:24.800 was like a little more complicated, where like she has 0:17:24.960 --> 0:17:30.080 a like very good, solid group of like male friends 0:17:30.119 --> 0:17:34.280 who are not like perfect, but are still like that's 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:39.240 my friend. So like I think for my friends and 0:17:39.320 --> 0:17:43.119 for a lot of trans women's male friends, they're like, well, 0:17:43.320 --> 0:17:46.159 I was friends with you before, so like you're still 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:49.240 like you know, you're still you. I'm still gonna be 0:17:49.240 --> 0:17:50.560 cool with you. So I guess that means that I 0:17:50.640 --> 0:17:53.760 have to think about like that I have to like, okay, 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:58.040 now I have to like think about how like trans 0:17:58.040 --> 0:18:01.680 people are like treated by society more broadly. And it's 0:18:01.720 --> 0:18:06.920 like interesting seeing men in my life like suddenly become 0:18:07.000 --> 0:18:12.200 like cognizant of like transitions, and it's all like personal. 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:15.400 It's all like, well, I know this person, and therefore 0:18:15.800 --> 0:18:18.199 I'm going to show compassion to this person that I like. 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:22.560 And then you know, politics starting at the personal and 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:24.080 sort of like growing out from there. 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:27.000 So I want to ask a bit a bit more 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:29.639 just digging into sort of the masculinity aspect specifically, because 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:31.199 one of the things I think is I don't know 0:18:31.240 --> 0:18:35.600 that there's a part of being a transfem that isn't 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:40.000 super well understood outside of it, which is sort of 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:43.960 a lot of trends women have a phase where you 0:18:45.080 --> 0:18:47.680 really try to be a man, right, where you get 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:50.280 like really into like hypermasculinity in order to try to 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:52.879 like yeah, try to make yourself do it. Like I 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:55.960 had gamer mea phase which was a fiasco. Not even 0:18:55.960 --> 0:18:57.960 gaming me. I'm still sort of gamer, but I had, 0:18:58.000 --> 0:19:01.280 like you know, I had I had like like top 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:06.080 point two five percent heartstone player, like the ag a 0:19:06.440 --> 0:19:12.560 wreck a disasters, substantively a worst person. Yeah, and you 0:19:12.640 --> 0:19:14.800 know so and like that's the thing that has a 0:19:14.800 --> 0:19:18.959 lot of complicated social ripples. Were like this this process 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:21.240 if like like doing this, you know, sometimes it's like 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:22.879 your final them. It's just it's just what you're doing 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:24.359 to try to get by. It's like trying to force 0:19:24.400 --> 0:19:28.280 yourself to be a man and like do this masculinity 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:30.840 in a way that's like really shit because you're trying 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:34.399 to like reconcile it with yourself. Yes, So this is 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:37.880 like a thing that a lot of like transforms experience. 0:19:38.480 --> 0:19:42.040 I think it's written interestingly in this book. I was 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:44.880 always wondering. I don't know, like like the way you 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:48.080 talk about being in this in like fitting into these 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:50.040 spaces is as like okay, well I figured out how 0:19:50.040 --> 0:19:52.560 to like do the performance okay, and then it was 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:56.080 sort of fine. So I'm wondering, like this is almost 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.360 universally seen as like this is like a formal structural 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:01.479 violence enacted on you that you sort of have to 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:06.720 like do this. But there's also a kind of, I 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:11.000 don't know, a kind of complicated dynamic of like these 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:14.120 people are still like your friends and you like them, 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:15.359 and I guess I want to know sort of how 0:20:15.480 --> 0:20:17.840 how you've been thinking about like that specific angle and 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:20.320 like this sort of process of fitting in and becoming 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:22.679 it also just this is sort of unbecoming you have 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:24.160 to do to like become yourself. 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:30.760 Yeah, so my book has flashback sequences that are written 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:34.520 in second person. This is mostly a book that's written 0:20:34.560 --> 0:20:37.880 in first person. But I tried to like really lean 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:42.399 into this like phenomenon of like closeted trans women like 0:20:43.440 --> 0:20:47.840 butching up at like certain moments in their lives in 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:53.240 order to like pass and cram down this like feeling 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:56.280 that is like really fucking scary at first. Yeah, So, 0:20:56.480 --> 0:21:03.000 like I want the second person grace flashbacks to her 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:10.000 like starting fights and being a like asshole to her girlfriend. 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:12.720 I want them to feel like jarring and I want 0:21:12.760 --> 0:21:16.760 them to feel like Grace is being a bastard in 0:21:17.080 --> 0:21:21.600 a lot of these flashbacks, but like I also wanted 0:21:21.640 --> 0:21:23.960 to show like how she gets there in terms of 0:21:24.040 --> 0:21:28.240 like various moments earlier in her life where she was 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:33.040 sort of like shunted into this more like masculine path 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:37.040 in order to like pass and like not be bullied 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:42.880 or like other eyes, and like it definitely is. It's tough, 0:21:42.920 --> 0:21:45.720 and I think that I think that I personally have 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:49.840 a like complicated relationship with Like, yeah, like I hated 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:52.000 football when I played it, and I did it because 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:55.520 like I like the sport obviously because I'm a fan, 0:21:55.640 --> 0:21:57.639 and because I wrote this book about it, and because 0:21:57.640 --> 0:21:59.600 I write about football sometimes and I boast about it 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:02.280 a lot. But like playing it made me miserable, But 0:22:02.400 --> 0:22:05.920 like I also be friends with that team who I 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:09.200 still talk to. So it's like I definitely wanted to 0:22:09.240 --> 0:22:14.160 feel like violent and imposed, but also like it isn't 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:17.959 something that can be like erased. It's something that you 0:22:18.000 --> 0:22:20.639 have to deal with. It's something that like as you 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:24.600 grow up and as you continue to self actualize, you 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:29.960 have to like decide what parts of that version of 0:22:30.000 --> 0:22:33.520 yourself are worth keeping. And what parts aren't. And that's 0:22:33.600 --> 0:22:36.280 like something that I wanted to show, like Grace struggle 0:22:36.320 --> 0:22:40.359 through kind of in real time. She's like very early 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:42.520 in her transition, and she doesn't know how she wants 0:22:42.560 --> 0:22:46.399 to present, and she doesn't know how much of her 0:22:46.480 --> 0:22:49.480 old life and the people in her old life that 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:55.439 want to associate with her, or does existing on this 0:22:55.480 --> 0:22:58.320 football team dragger back towards something that she doesn't want 0:22:58.320 --> 0:23:01.159 to be anymore. It's all stuff that I wanted to 0:23:02.160 --> 0:23:05.280 play with. And it's not like overtly political, but is 0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:07.920 like subtextually political, you know. 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:11.159 Yeah, well it's it's it's political in the sense that, 0:23:11.280 --> 0:23:13.560 like you know that we were talking about sort of 0:23:13.560 --> 0:23:16.520 scriptlessness earlier, right, And I think one of the one 0:23:16.520 --> 0:23:19.040 of the sort of alienating factors about being trends is that, like, 0:23:19.960 --> 0:23:22.359 especially if you're like kind of alone and you're like, 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:24.200 you know, like you're like the only transferm that you're 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:27.320 spending time with, right, This is just true for like 0:23:27.320 --> 0:23:29.520 a lot of things, like a lot of how sort 0:23:29.560 --> 0:23:32.119 of oppression functions and a lot of how violence functions 0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:34.000 is by convincing you that this is the only you're 0:23:34.040 --> 0:23:36.520 the only person's ever gone through this m and there 0:23:36.520 --> 0:23:38.439 are always going to be unique aspects of it. But like, 0:23:39.320 --> 0:23:41.360 you know, one of the ways that alienation has maintained 0:23:41.400 --> 0:23:45.520 is by convincing you that no one else can understand 0:23:45.560 --> 0:23:47.320 the thing that's happening to you, and that because no 0:23:47.320 --> 0:23:49.479 one else has ever done it. And it turns out like, no, actually, 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:52.000 this is something that like all of us have gone through. 0:23:52.200 --> 0:23:54.920 And when you sort of start to realize this and 0:23:54.960 --> 0:23:57.080 the kind of solidarity that they could be built based 0:23:57.080 --> 0:23:59.720 on this collective well of experience we've all gone through, 0:23:59.720 --> 0:24:02.600 and how it can be you know, changed by actual 0:24:02.840 --> 0:24:06.640 actions of a bunch of people working together. It changes things. 0:24:06.640 --> 0:24:07.880 So I think I think it is in a lot 0:24:07.920 --> 0:24:10.560 of ways political in the sense that like, in order 0:24:10.600 --> 0:24:14.440 to have politics, you have to have sort of like 0:24:14.480 --> 0:24:17.879 collective assemblages of people who fucking understand each other and 0:24:17.880 --> 0:24:19.600 to understand that they're not alone, that they can do 0:24:19.680 --> 0:24:21.680 things totally. And this is part of how you get 0:24:21.680 --> 0:24:21.960 to that. 0:24:22.880 --> 0:24:27.280 Yeah, we can talk a little bit more about the 0:24:27.400 --> 0:24:31.160 like very start of something that could be seen as 0:24:31.160 --> 0:24:36.520 a political awakening that Grace has in this book, but like, yeah, 0:24:37.080 --> 0:24:38.960 part of the reason that she isn't perfect is because 0:24:38.960 --> 0:24:42.000 she doesn't know any other, Like there are no other 0:24:42.200 --> 0:24:45.040 transmitting characters in this book, And that was very deliberate. Yeah, 0:24:45.040 --> 0:24:46.840 Grace is like on our own. She is like figuring 0:24:46.880 --> 0:24:49.320 this shit out as she goes yep. And I wanted 0:24:49.320 --> 0:24:53.040 it to feel rough and like ad hoc y because 0:24:53.119 --> 0:24:54.680 like that's how it is for a lot of people. 0:24:54.760 --> 0:24:55.640 That's how it was, like. 0:24:55.600 --> 0:24:58.920 Go through it by walking. Yeah, yeah, I guess. I 0:24:58.960 --> 0:25:00.600 guess I want to kind of move into the more 0:25:00.640 --> 0:25:03.440 directly political realm. Why do I think that's interesting about 0:25:03.440 --> 0:25:06.640 this book is that like Grace and this is something 0:25:06.640 --> 0:25:09.680 that like I my brain has been so melted by 0:25:09.680 --> 0:25:13.240 having been like the politics kids since I was like fifteen, 0:25:14.119 --> 0:25:16.600 because I was like my high school was like interrupted 0:25:16.640 --> 0:25:18.080 in the middle of it by be trying to overseell 0:25:18.080 --> 0:25:21.320 the Turkish government, and so like my brain is so melted. 0:25:23.280 --> 0:25:25.199 We'll get aired one one day. We already can't go 0:25:25.320 --> 0:25:30.879 there for our coverage of Kurdish gorilla movements. Very good stuff. 0:25:30.920 --> 0:25:32.600 You'll find many, many such things, as I think, But 0:25:32.680 --> 0:25:34.960 like one of the interesting persons about this is that 0:25:35.520 --> 0:25:38.159 Grace is like not political, right, and most of the 0:25:38.160 --> 0:25:41.879 people in this aren't. And there's kind of a divide 0:25:41.960 --> 0:25:46.520 between the politics knowers who are like the more uh 0:25:46.800 --> 0:25:48.600 you know, who are like okay, yeah, like we are 0:25:49.000 --> 0:25:51.040 like the queer kids. We are like the activist kids, 0:25:51.040 --> 0:25:53.919 and then like the you know, like the ballplayers, and 0:25:53.920 --> 0:25:57.439 then Grace sort of fits more into the like not 0:25:57.480 --> 0:25:59.600 even more into Grace isn't like a politics person. Grace 0:25:59.640 --> 0:26:02.000 is a like, hey, like transphobia is bad, we shouldn't 0:26:02.000 --> 0:26:04.520 do that, but also like just wants to fucking go 0:26:04.600 --> 0:26:08.560 kick a go kick a rock between two posts. So yeah, 0:26:08.560 --> 0:26:10.359 can you talk about like how you sort of decided 0:26:10.400 --> 0:26:13.680 to make her just be like kid who doesn't follow politics. 0:26:14.880 --> 0:26:18.160 Yeah, so like if that was like not any kind 0:26:18.240 --> 0:26:21.760 of like statement about how like politics is bad, you know, 0:26:22.119 --> 0:26:26.920 that was like Grace's seventeen, and most seventeen year olds, 0:26:26.920 --> 0:26:30.480 if they have politics at all, have like completely incoherent politics. 0:26:30.520 --> 0:26:32.440 Yeah, because I was like holy shit. 0:26:33.359 --> 0:26:37.639 Yeah, So like Grace has the like barest outlines of 0:26:37.720 --> 0:26:41.720 like ideology and those were like put on her by 0:26:41.800 --> 0:26:44.359 people in her life. We know that her dad is 0:26:44.400 --> 0:26:48.120 a union man, and from a small age she has 0:26:48.680 --> 0:26:52.919 internalized that unions are good. Does she know why? Probably not? 0:26:53.440 --> 0:26:57.120 But or also we know that her friend tab who 0:26:57.200 --> 0:27:00.840 is Bori, has been like educating her on like Puerto 0:27:00.920 --> 0:27:05.399 Rican independence, which was like, which was a like that 0:27:05.560 --> 0:27:11.040 was a very funny line, right because because Grace is 0:27:11.080 --> 0:27:14.200 just like dumb as shit white kid from the suburbs. 0:27:14.600 --> 0:27:18.919 But so like inasmuch as she's like piecing together the 0:27:18.960 --> 0:27:22.200 person she is bit by bit, she's also kind of 0:27:22.240 --> 0:27:26.679 like piecing what she thinks about the world together along 0:27:26.720 --> 0:27:29.719 with that in terms of like most of the straight 0:27:29.920 --> 0:27:34.120 white players on the football team like do not have 0:27:34.600 --> 0:27:38.920 like basically don't have politics. There's a scene where one 0:27:38.920 --> 0:27:41.919 of my minor characters is like, yo, I just figured 0:27:41.960 --> 0:27:47.360 out that, like trans phobia is bad, and I loved 0:27:47.520 --> 0:27:52.840 I fucking loved writing that. But like, I imagine that 0:27:52.920 --> 0:27:56.239 up until recently, Grace was exactly like this and just 0:27:56.280 --> 0:28:00.560 like just like yep, I'm a middle lower middle class 0:28:00.600 --> 0:28:05.800 white straight boy, air quotes on all of that, she 0:28:06.000 --> 0:28:09.320 never had any kind of like thought about that. That 0:28:09.760 --> 0:28:11.520 does not reflect what was going on in my life 0:28:11.520 --> 0:28:13.520 when I was a teenager, because I was a very 0:28:13.560 --> 0:28:20.000 annoying oh like me and a friend of mine, Chavon, 0:28:20.480 --> 0:28:23.320 got in trouble for putting a Bernie Sanders twenty sixteen 0:28:23.359 --> 0:28:27.800 sticker on her locker, because that's the kind of shit 0:28:27.840 --> 0:28:34.359 we were doing in high school in twenty fifteen. So like, 0:28:35.000 --> 0:28:39.560 I was like very much had sort of like vacant liberal, 0:28:39.960 --> 0:28:45.360 middle class kid politics, but like Grace Grace is. I 0:28:45.240 --> 0:28:48.880 imagine that like later in her life she kind of 0:28:49.200 --> 0:28:52.760 has more political thoughts in her head. But I also 0:28:52.960 --> 0:28:55.920 kind of imagine that her brain works like I don't 0:28:55.920 --> 0:28:59.720 know if you've played Disco Elysium, but I kind of imagine. 0:29:00.400 --> 0:29:04.040 I kind of imagine Grace has a like thought cabinet, 0:29:04.080 --> 0:29:10.280 and it's like she has like she has like two 0:29:10.360 --> 0:29:14.160 slots in it. Oh, she just like cannot hold that 0:29:14.200 --> 0:29:18.240 many ideas in her brain at once. So she's she 0:29:18.680 --> 0:29:21.760 is in all aspects of her life trying her vest 0:29:21.960 --> 0:29:25.920 and trying to get better. And yeah, I want to 0:29:25.960 --> 0:29:29.640 like I feel like a lot of contemporary YA that 0:29:29.720 --> 0:29:32.000 comes out these days, a lot of the kids have 0:29:32.160 --> 0:29:35.560 like overly coherent politics. I was like, nah, nah, I 0:29:35.600 --> 0:29:38.480 wanted to write a kid who has like good intentions 0:29:38.480 --> 0:29:39.680 but has no idea what she's doing. 0:29:39.800 --> 0:29:42.720 Yep, God, my brain's doing the Trump flying. In many 0:29:42.760 --> 0:29:46.600 cases have no idea what they're doing. Yeah. Oh, Jesus 0:29:46.640 --> 0:29:49.760 crushing braids are broken. Okay, speaking of things being broken, 0:29:50.040 --> 0:29:59.120 the products and services to support this podcast unrelated statements. 0:30:03.360 --> 0:30:07.760 We are back, Okay. So, having now gotten like many 0:30:08.200 --> 0:30:11.760 far into this interview without directly being like, here's the 0:30:11.840 --> 0:30:16.080 football politics, let's talk about the politics of football. Because 0:30:16.120 --> 0:30:18.719 one of the things I think is fascinating about, you know, 0:30:18.760 --> 0:30:20.760 the way you're sort of talking about this, and the 0:30:20.800 --> 0:30:23.360 way that Grace like runs into this, and the way 0:30:23.360 --> 0:30:25.000 that this is just like a thing that happens in 0:30:25.040 --> 0:30:28.680 the US, which is that like giant portions of the 0:30:28.800 --> 0:30:32.920 entire US economy and like like structural elements of the 0:30:33.000 --> 0:30:36.280 US like education system from like the ground up, and 0:30:36.440 --> 0:30:39.479 like all of these sort of contracting services, like massive 0:30:39.520 --> 0:30:42.200 portions of like how every single part of the education 0:30:42.280 --> 0:30:46.440 system from like fucking like middle school through college are 0:30:46.520 --> 0:30:52.960 all bent around this game, yep. And I think one 0:30:52.960 --> 0:30:54.520 of the things that happens there is that like the 0:30:54.800 --> 0:30:59.080 kind of like default ambient politics, it is very conservative, 0:30:59.120 --> 0:31:01.480 and I think in ways you know, are very easy 0:31:01.520 --> 0:31:03.400 to understand, and that when people tend to talk about this, 0:31:03.480 --> 0:31:06.000 they immediately go like, well, yeah, so, like you know, 0:31:06.160 --> 0:31:08.160 like the left is talking about football it's like you're 0:31:08.200 --> 0:31:10.320 talking about the militarism, which is like, yeah, I mean 0:31:10.320 --> 0:31:13.640 they're fucking flying jets over games like there, we're not 0:31:13.680 --> 0:31:16.840 even in wars anymore. In terms of like US ground 0:31:16.920 --> 0:31:19.520 troops deployed, Like why the fuck are their troops showing 0:31:19.600 --> 0:31:22.560 up on the field. There's like the cult of masculinity stuff. 0:31:22.600 --> 0:31:25.200 There's you know, I mean, like there's been some engagement 0:31:25.240 --> 0:31:28.400 now with the racial politics of it with Kaepernick. People 0:31:28.400 --> 0:31:30.280 realize like, holy shit, wait, there's been like stuff happening 0:31:30.320 --> 0:31:33.160 here for ages, and you know, when you get sort 0:31:33.160 --> 0:31:36.680 of the masculinity politics. But there's I think a lot 0:31:36.720 --> 0:31:40.880 of stuff here that we don't talk about on the 0:31:40.960 --> 0:31:44.160 left in terms of like the class dynamics of this 0:31:44.320 --> 0:31:48.240 and the way that football I'm just like functions in 0:31:48.240 --> 0:31:50.000 a lot of very very weird ways in terms of 0:31:50.040 --> 0:31:54.160 like sucking together this weird pool of a bunch of 0:31:54.200 --> 0:31:58.160 like non white working class kids and like, I don't know, 0:31:58.600 --> 0:32:01.200 fucking see, if I knew ball, I could I could 0:32:01.200 --> 0:32:02.719 pull an example off the top of my head of 0:32:02.760 --> 0:32:06.160 like some some quarterback prospect you'd spent these family had 0:32:06.200 --> 0:32:10.000 spent like two million dollars on like personal trainers for him. 0:32:10.360 --> 0:32:15.520 Absolutely. Yeah, I grew up sort of like middle lower 0:32:15.560 --> 0:32:20.920 middle class and like playing football specifically, and I grew 0:32:21.000 --> 0:32:24.120 up playing mostly like soccer and baseball, a little bit 0:32:24.160 --> 0:32:26.080 of basketball, but I sort of like I sort of 0:32:26.160 --> 0:32:28.720 ended up playing football when I was like a teenager 0:32:28.800 --> 0:32:31.120 because I was large, and that's how that works, yep. 0:32:31.560 --> 0:32:34.280 And like in terms of like connecting with people who 0:32:34.320 --> 0:32:38.320 weren't white and of my exact class status or higher 0:32:38.760 --> 0:32:42.120 like football, so it happened. Man, like most of my 0:32:42.480 --> 0:32:48.440 earliest friendships with black kids with Hispanic kids was like 0:32:48.640 --> 0:32:53.120 all through football, and like it is a like very 0:32:53.160 --> 0:32:59.040 interesting sort of like class and racial melting pot at 0:32:59.120 --> 0:33:02.400 least at like I went to a like pretty big 0:33:02.720 --> 0:33:07.720 suburban middle and high school, but like lots of lots 0:33:07.760 --> 0:33:10.160 of very different kinds of people ended up at my school, 0:33:10.200 --> 0:33:11.920 and lots of very different kinds of people ended up 0:33:11.920 --> 0:33:17.800 playing football, And like you're gonna get a more diverse 0:33:18.600 --> 0:33:21.360 slice of that student population on a football team than 0:33:21.360 --> 0:33:27.440 you will on the fucking yearbook committee or in like 0:33:27.920 --> 0:33:33.400 school band, class government, whatever. All of that came very 0:33:33.720 --> 0:33:36.680 naturally to me in terms of writing this book, where 0:33:36.720 --> 0:33:40.000 like I've ended up with a book that's like quite diverse. 0:33:40.120 --> 0:33:42.240 But I didn't really do that on purpose. I just 0:33:42.320 --> 0:33:44.440 kind of like, who are the kinds of kids who 0:33:44.480 --> 0:33:46.520 end up playing football? And it's like everyone you have 0:33:46.560 --> 0:33:48.840 like Poorish kids like Grace, and then you have like 0:33:49.200 --> 0:33:53.440 Ritish kids like Ahmed or Dre in my book, who 0:33:53.560 --> 0:33:57.120 like I very much wanted to like show that, like 0:33:58.120 --> 0:34:01.200 maybe one of the reasons that Grace is going to 0:34:01.320 --> 0:34:05.440 end up having a more coherent politics is because, like 0:34:06.000 --> 0:34:10.080 she has friends of different backgrounds that she might not 0:34:10.360 --> 0:34:13.000 if she had not ended up playing this this like 0:34:13.239 --> 0:34:16.919 fucked up, evil, violent game. To be clear, Yeah, I mean, 0:34:17.120 --> 0:34:20.200 I think any football fan who is honest with themselves 0:34:20.280 --> 0:34:22.879 and has his politics that are not evil has a 0:34:23.200 --> 0:34:28.040 very complicated relationship to the game for a like variety 0:34:28.080 --> 0:34:31.239 of reasons. Because it like chews up people's brains and 0:34:31.719 --> 0:34:36.719 there's that, but there's also like implied conservative politics. There's 0:34:36.719 --> 0:34:41.320 also a big factor here is that high school football, 0:34:41.480 --> 0:34:43.880 even at a public school like mine, the religion is 0:34:43.920 --> 0:34:45.920 all over it, baby, like all over it. 0:34:46.000 --> 0:34:47.719 Yeah, that's a huge part of it. 0:34:48.160 --> 0:34:52.680 Jason Kirk of The Shutdown Full Cast is working on 0:34:52.960 --> 0:34:59.400 a book about the history of Christianity and Talls Football 0:34:59.440 --> 0:35:01.960 called it Church in State. I'm very fucking excited for 0:35:02.000 --> 0:35:02.359 that book. 0:35:02.400 --> 0:35:03.800 Hell yeah, yeah, that sounds awesome. 0:35:03.920 --> 0:35:08.719 But it's just like really interesting political space because of 0:35:08.760 --> 0:35:12.280 how diverse it is and because of how like homogeneous 0:35:12.320 --> 0:35:15.440 a lot of the like religion and politics. 0:35:14.920 --> 0:35:17.520 Of it are, I guess if that makes sense. Yeah, 0:35:18.040 --> 0:35:19.920 And it's sounds so weird because like, you know, so 0:35:20.000 --> 0:35:22.320 like I don't know, I refuse to watch college football, 0:35:22.320 --> 0:35:25.040 Like I draw the line there, like I'm not doing this. 0:35:25.080 --> 0:35:27.160 I'm not doing this. They can't make me watch like 0:35:27.360 --> 0:35:31.440 fucking Colorado's State or whatever the fuck. But like one 0:35:31.440 --> 0:35:33.520 of the things that you get in the NFL too, 0:35:33.600 --> 0:35:35.440 is it's like, on the one hand, like you have 0:35:35.600 --> 0:35:38.680 all of this really really conservative shit right, like every 0:35:38.719 --> 0:35:42.440 fucking everything is God. Like every single time someone holds 0:35:42.760 --> 0:35:45.719 a thing in front of a player there there's like 0:35:46.080 --> 0:35:48.520 at least three lines of like all of this is 0:35:48.560 --> 0:35:52.799 possible because of God, and like someone's like it's like 0:35:52.800 --> 0:35:56.160 that the only place you see people regularly saying Christ 0:35:56.280 --> 0:35:58.520 is King where they're not also like holding an ar 0:35:58.640 --> 0:36:01.000 to like a non white person's head, you know. So 0:36:01.000 --> 0:36:05.200 so that there's all of this like really really conservative 0:36:05.200 --> 0:36:09.560 religious shit. But then also there's like a union, yes 0:36:09.960 --> 0:36:13.799 that everyone's in and it's like a large like I mean, 0:36:13.800 --> 0:36:17.200 it's not that powerful. And there's there's weirdness there too, 0:36:17.200 --> 0:36:20.040 because you get to see all of the really interesting 0:36:20.920 --> 0:36:24.000 dynamics of unions that you don't really get outside of 0:36:24.120 --> 0:36:25.880 kind of like I mean, like I guess like SAG 0:36:26.000 --> 0:36:29.719 kind of has this, but it's this union in this 0:36:29.880 --> 0:36:33.720 place where one the owners have like an unbelievable amount 0:36:33.719 --> 0:36:36.759 of control, like a hideous amount of power, and they 0:36:36.760 --> 0:36:39.680 can turn through people really quickly. They have you know, 0:36:39.680 --> 0:36:41.200 these are some of the richest people in the world. 0:36:41.680 --> 0:36:45.720 And then also secondly there's there's this like marketization force 0:36:45.760 --> 0:36:48.480 that's happening where you know, you get to see in 0:36:48.640 --> 0:36:53.520 miniature the way that capitalism has like moved to to 0:36:53.560 --> 0:36:56.640 sort of deal with with unions, to deal with sort 0:36:56.640 --> 0:36:58.360 of the class movements of the twentieth century, which is 0:36:58.360 --> 0:37:01.399 that like they're also trying to turn all of these 0:37:01.520 --> 0:37:03.319 kids like into entrepreneurs. 0:37:03.760 --> 0:37:07.600 M I think in the NFL, I think it's more 0:37:07.760 --> 0:37:11.400 coherent because there is a players association, not a union. 0:37:11.480 --> 0:37:15.239 A players association, although also also shout out shoutouts the 0:37:15.280 --> 0:37:18.399 PA for backing are for backing a unionization attempt here, 0:37:18.560 --> 0:37:20.799 Thanks for that. I don't know if it mattered, but 0:37:21.080 --> 0:37:21.759 that's a lot to me. 0:37:22.960 --> 0:37:28.759 Yeah. Also, like sports players, unions are fascinating because these 0:37:28.800 --> 0:37:31.359 are people who are part of a union who are 0:37:31.800 --> 0:37:34.640 like at least some of them millionaires. So it's yep, 0:37:35.040 --> 0:37:39.160 a very interesting sort of like class dynamic happening there. 0:37:39.440 --> 0:37:42.120 But like call it like the college game right now 0:37:42.200 --> 0:37:47.280 is just charn Oldhouse. I mean, like it is better 0:37:47.520 --> 0:37:51.200 now that players are being paid like unambiguous good that 0:37:51.280 --> 0:37:53.800 players can profit off of their name, image and likeness. 0:37:53.840 --> 0:37:58.440 But again it makes like I remember, like I'm not 0:37:58.800 --> 0:38:02.880 on Twitter much anymore, but like in the like early 0:38:02.920 --> 0:38:06.279 Elon days, you started getting Twitter ads and these were 0:38:06.719 --> 0:38:09.080 sixteen and seventeen year old high school football players. 0:38:09.160 --> 0:38:09.440 Yeah. 0:38:09.600 --> 0:38:13.840 The post is like huddle highlights and like a like 0:38:14.000 --> 0:38:19.120 quick recruiting profile of like hey, class of twenty twenty 0:38:19.160 --> 0:38:23.840 seven defensive back wide receiver out of Palo Alto, and 0:38:23.960 --> 0:38:27.560 just like blasting that onto like Twitter timelines everywhere, just 0:38:27.719 --> 0:38:31.359 like please God, somebody see my Like, somebody see these 0:38:31.400 --> 0:38:37.440 fucking huddle highlights. The feudalism stage of high school and 0:38:38.520 --> 0:38:41.400 college ball has like ended, and now we are in 0:38:41.440 --> 0:38:47.160 the no regulations baby, just like completely unfettered capitalism stage. 0:38:47.560 --> 0:38:50.520 Can we explain like just how like very briefly, people 0:38:50.560 --> 0:38:53.120 who do not know any football, like what name, image, likenesses, 0:38:53.120 --> 0:38:55.480 and how this is different from like a system that 0:38:55.480 --> 0:38:57.320 would be normal, which is you pay the players. 0:38:57.960 --> 0:39:03.800 Yeah, so for like seventy years, the precedent with college 0:39:03.800 --> 0:39:07.000 football in the United States of America is that all 0:39:07.000 --> 0:39:09.600 these players are amateurs and they cannot be compensated in 0:39:09.640 --> 0:39:13.120 any way. They cannot profit off of their name, image likeness, 0:39:13.160 --> 0:39:15.319 so that means that they can't like sell autographs. The 0:39:15.440 --> 0:39:17.680 school isn't going to sell jerseys that have their name 0:39:17.920 --> 0:39:21.800 on them. You are meant to make exactly zero dollars 0:39:22.000 --> 0:39:25.840 from your time as a amateur college athlete. And this 0:39:26.080 --> 0:39:29.680 was the ironclad system for like seventy years, and then 0:39:30.200 --> 0:39:34.839 it kind of got like destroyed overnight. Yeah, when the 0:39:35.080 --> 0:39:39.000 NCAA finally legalizes players profiting off of their name, image, 0:39:39.040 --> 0:39:42.480 and likeness, so that means that they could sign like 0:39:42.719 --> 0:39:46.799 endorsement deals. And when this was first made a thing 0:39:47.080 --> 0:39:51.400 in twenty twenty one, it mostly manifested in like the 0:39:51.480 --> 0:39:56.840 coldest Crawford for the Nebraska football team is filming a 0:39:56.840 --> 0:39:59.680 ad for a local air conditioning company because his name 0:39:59.719 --> 0:40:03.239 is Coldest And it was sort of like very like 0:40:03.360 --> 0:40:08.080 quaint and cute at first, but then nil collectives got going, 0:40:08.120 --> 0:40:10.160 which are these I don't even know how to how 0:40:10.160 --> 0:40:14.799 to like God described nil collective is these are like 0:40:14.920 --> 0:40:22.280 investment groups that operate independently of universities that pool resources 0:40:22.320 --> 0:40:28.480 and then pay players for like extremely scant public appearances 0:40:28.520 --> 0:40:30.440 so that they can say that they're just profiting off 0:40:30.480 --> 0:40:34.040 of name, image and likeness, but in reality they exist 0:40:34.080 --> 0:40:37.439 as a way to pay college football players without paying 0:40:37.480 --> 0:40:40.840 them via schools. Now there is the house settlement happening 0:40:40.920 --> 0:40:44.280 right now, which colleges will soon be able to probably 0:40:44.600 --> 0:40:48.840 maybe God who knows, will soon be able to directly 0:40:48.920 --> 0:40:53.160 pay college athletes a certain amount of money. Lord knows 0:40:53.160 --> 0:40:55.600 where that's going. Like this stuff is all changing at 0:40:55.640 --> 0:40:59.719 like lightnings at like yeah, so like we have just 0:41:00.160 --> 0:41:03.000 have gone from like nobody gets paid for anything to 0:41:03.160 --> 0:41:06.719 like we are in fucking like gilded age robber bear 0:41:06.800 --> 0:41:10.080 and shit where like yeah, because none of this shit 0:41:10.280 --> 0:41:14.600 is regulated, schools or an aisle collectives will go back 0:41:14.640 --> 0:41:19.239 on agreements and everything's negotiated every year. They're like like 0:41:19.480 --> 0:41:24.080 it's it's a fucking mess. Yeah in the college game 0:41:24.160 --> 0:41:26.360 right now. So I mean all of that makes the 0:41:26.600 --> 0:41:30.239 like NFL having a kind of shitty union look a 0:41:30.280 --> 0:41:30.719 lot better. 0:41:30.920 --> 0:41:33.359 Yeah, well, I just kind of thinking about the kind 0:41:33.360 --> 0:41:36.080 of like this is my way of kind of bringing 0:41:36.120 --> 0:41:38.760 it back to transgender but like one of the things 0:41:38.800 --> 0:41:42.040 that I've been thinking about a lot in terms of 0:41:43.040 --> 0:41:44.759 I mean just like what I do, right, and but 0:41:44.760 --> 0:41:46.880 also just like the way that capitalism has been moving 0:41:46.920 --> 0:41:52.760 in the lass like few decades is it's increasingly about 0:41:53.239 --> 0:41:55.359 you know because like okay, so, like capitalism's fundamental base 0:41:55.400 --> 0:41:58.439 has always been like you sell your labor, h right, 0:41:59.000 --> 0:42:01.080 but now it's it's it's been increasing shows for me 0:42:01.080 --> 0:42:04.160 into like you're selling like the image of yourself. You're 0:42:04.160 --> 0:42:07.399 selling your identity, you're selling like yeah, you know, you're 0:42:07.400 --> 0:42:09.400 selling your personality. You're selling as much of like and 0:42:09.400 --> 0:42:10.880 this is this is what name image likeness is. 0:42:10.960 --> 0:42:11.080 Right. 0:42:11.120 --> 0:42:13.920 It's like, we're not gonna pay you for like your labor, 0:42:14.120 --> 0:42:17.440 which is like you playing football. We're gonna pay you 0:42:17.520 --> 0:42:20.319 for like this nebulous image of yourself. So you get 0:42:20.360 --> 0:42:22.480 all these people who like are are you know, you're 0:42:22.480 --> 0:42:26.440 forced to turn all of yourself into an object for consumption, 0:42:26.600 --> 0:42:28.840 and like I think that's the thing with like fucking 0:42:28.840 --> 0:42:30.440 I don't know, That's what I'm doing on this show 0:42:30.800 --> 0:42:32.719 right to a large extent, like I am like the 0:42:32.800 --> 0:42:35.279 Asian transgender and like, yeah, obviously, like all of this 0:42:35.320 --> 0:42:37.200 is like research, but it's also you know, this is 0:42:37.200 --> 0:42:39.799 what like brand and identity is, and this has had 0:42:39.840 --> 0:42:43.560 these like seismic impacts on the entire global economy. Like 0:42:43.640 --> 0:42:45.439 I talked about this in an episode on when I talked 0:42:45.440 --> 0:42:47.719 about Temu, but like Tamu is literally the product of 0:42:47.760 --> 0:42:51.520 this happening with Chinese farmers. We're like Chinese farmers were 0:42:51.560 --> 0:42:53.440 doing this like farm social media thing, and so almost 0:42:53.440 --> 0:42:55.920 like holy shit, what if we like become these things 0:42:55.920 --> 0:42:57.439 where they were selling food but they're also just selling 0:42:57.480 --> 0:43:00.400 that like the identity brand of like themselves as farmers, 0:43:00.840 --> 0:43:02.799 and Timbu was like, well a PDD, which is the 0:43:02.880 --> 0:43:04.520 Chinese company, was like, what if we just brought all 0:43:04.520 --> 0:43:06.359 of these things together in one spot so you could 0:43:06.400 --> 0:43:09.120 just do directed like consumer sales through it. And now 0:43:09.160 --> 0:43:13.200 that's like the entire fucking economy is just this morass 0:43:13.400 --> 0:43:17.040 of like selling every single part of yourself and I 0:43:17.080 --> 0:43:20.160 don't know, like I'm wondering how much of yourself did 0:43:20.200 --> 0:43:21.880 you have to do you have to like leave in 0:43:21.920 --> 0:43:23.480 a book like this, and how much of it can 0:43:23.520 --> 0:43:27.000 you like kind of like keep away from the market. 0:43:28.360 --> 0:43:30.479 Oh boy, so. 0:43:32.920 --> 0:43:33.839 You're good. 0:43:34.520 --> 0:43:41.920 Yeah, Oh gosh, everything is uh, everything is personal brands. 0:43:42.200 --> 0:43:42.399 Now. 0:43:42.440 --> 0:43:46.560 You know, there's a lot of pressure as an author 0:43:47.080 --> 0:43:50.440 to to use all your social media is in a 0:43:50.520 --> 0:43:55.120 very particular way. You're supposed to You're you're supposed to 0:43:55.239 --> 0:43:58.919 make your cute little canva graphics, uh, and like talking 0:43:58.920 --> 0:44:05.080 about your character and engage with like prompt posts on 0:44:05.120 --> 0:44:11.640 Instagram and you know whatever social media du jore And like, 0:44:13.080 --> 0:44:16.879 my personal experience is a little irregular because I do 0:44:17.080 --> 0:44:24.240 have some amount of like sports, Twitter, niche micro celebrity posting, 0:44:25.000 --> 0:44:30.319 so like I'm not out here making promotional tiktoks for 0:44:30.360 --> 0:44:33.399 one of the boys. That was like something that was 0:44:33.520 --> 0:44:36.759 very important to me. Was like, oh, I'm not going 0:44:36.840 --> 0:44:42.520 to be doing that, thank god. Fuck that shit. Yeah. 0:44:41.480 --> 0:44:45.520 And the way that authors have to promote themselves and 0:44:45.640 --> 0:44:47.839 turn themselves into brands is like a whole other can 0:44:47.880 --> 0:44:48.600 of worms. 0:44:48.280 --> 0:44:49.200 That like sucks. 0:44:49.719 --> 0:44:53.680 So like, Thankfully, I think I've managed to avoid the 0:44:53.719 --> 0:45:01.000 most alienating like forms of that. But I did have 0:45:01.120 --> 0:45:04.279 a few not too long ago, very confidently state that 0:45:04.480 --> 0:45:07.480 this book was loosely based on my life story, which 0:45:07.600 --> 0:45:12.520 was news to me. I was, like, word, I didn't 0:45:12.560 --> 0:45:18.320 know that. So, like, I think, especially if you write 0:45:18.440 --> 0:45:22.160 fiction as a person of any marginalized identity, if you're 0:45:23.120 --> 0:45:26.200 if you're black, if you're gay, if you're trans, whatever, 0:45:26.560 --> 0:45:30.040 people are going to assume that you're writing like auto fiction. 0:45:30.239 --> 0:45:33.480 Because I think a lot of people react to women's 0:45:33.480 --> 0:45:35.280 fiction this way, because I think a lot of people 0:45:35.840 --> 0:45:40.000 subconsciously have a hard time believing that like women have 0:45:40.120 --> 0:45:45.200 interior lives and can like imagine things, you know, Like, 0:45:45.760 --> 0:45:48.120 I think a lot of people assume that authors are 0:45:48.160 --> 0:45:51.480 always writing about themselves and writing about the people in 0:45:51.480 --> 0:45:56.640 their lives, and uh, I mean, I'm writing about experiences 0:45:57.000 --> 0:46:00.600 that I have had similar ones too, but like naw dog, 0:46:01.000 --> 0:46:02.120 that is not how this works. 0:46:03.440 --> 0:46:07.600 There's a really great I say about this by a 0:46:07.600 --> 0:46:11.160 friend of mine named Rosemary Hoe, who's absolutely brilliant writer, 0:46:11.480 --> 0:46:16.160 who wrote about the she's's writing about Zady Smith, and 0:46:16.160 --> 0:46:17.759 one of the things that she talks about is like 0:46:17.880 --> 0:46:20.239 the way that people just assume that Zadi that like 0:46:20.400 --> 0:46:22.520 Zadie Smith's politics are just like didactically coming out of 0:46:22.560 --> 0:46:24.319 the mouth of a character, and like, well, no, that's 0:46:24.320 --> 0:46:27.839 not how this shit works, Like yeah it is. 0:46:27.960 --> 0:46:31.840 Uh it's frustrating, and I think like a lot of 0:46:31.880 --> 0:46:36.520 authors have their own experiences with this, so uh yeah, yeah, 0:46:36.560 --> 0:46:40.000 I mean I like, you have to turn yourself into 0:46:40.080 --> 0:46:43.680 some kind of brand. That's why I'm going on podcasts, 0:46:44.080 --> 0:46:48.160 you know. So that's all, uh, you know, that's fun, 0:46:48.160 --> 0:46:52.040 but uh, I'm trying not to like, you know, completely 0:46:52.280 --> 0:46:57.680 give myself over to the fucking torment nexus, you know. 0:46:58.640 --> 0:47:00.359 And there's like, I don't know, the this is also 0:47:00.440 --> 0:47:01.840 just like this is a way you can just completely 0:47:01.840 --> 0:47:04.240 lose your mind. I don't know if I've ever actually 0:47:04.280 --> 0:47:06.480 talked about this on the show. Weirdly, one of the 0:47:06.480 --> 0:47:08.840 people whose career trajectory is the most similar to Minus 0:47:08.880 --> 0:47:12.080 is Asian American writer named Lesley Yang, who was like 0:47:12.160 --> 0:47:14.960 this guy who got brought in to write about like 0:47:15.080 --> 0:47:17.600 I think it was Columbine. It's like some mass shooting 0:47:17.680 --> 0:47:19.920 that was like a Korean kid did and his friends 0:47:19.920 --> 0:47:22.600 were like, hey, you're Asian right about this, Oh God, 0:47:23.640 --> 0:47:25.319 and he you know, for a bit he was like 0:47:25.360 --> 0:47:27.560 he was like duh, Like he was like he was 0:47:27.600 --> 0:47:29.719 like the guy who was like the big like Asian American, 0:47:29.920 --> 0:47:32.120 like this is like the literary thinker. He was like 0:47:32.160 --> 0:47:35.200 interviewing Aaron Schwartz. He was doing like profiles of a 0:47:35.200 --> 0:47:37.000 bunch of like interesting people, and then he just became 0:47:37.040 --> 0:47:42.719 this like incredibly boring, bog standard reactionary and he became 0:47:42.760 --> 0:47:45.160 one of these A very common kind of person who 0:47:45.239 --> 0:47:48.400 you experience on the right is like someone who's experienced 0:47:48.600 --> 0:47:52.920 who's like understanding of race comes from like watching sports 0:47:53.520 --> 0:47:56.440 where they're like there are black players in basketball and 0:47:56.480 --> 0:47:58.640 there's a bunch of them, and because of that, this 0:47:58.760 --> 0:48:01.839 means that like actually black people like overrepresented and like 0:48:01.960 --> 0:48:03.879 as a class, they're like privilege or whatever the fuck 0:48:03.920 --> 0:48:06.120 because there's just like a bunch of black basketball players 0:48:07.239 --> 0:48:08.480 and I don't know, I think it's like there's like 0:48:08.480 --> 0:48:10.360 a really interesting intersection here of like the way that 0:48:10.400 --> 0:48:16.440 people understand politics as just like politics are just like 0:48:16.520 --> 0:48:18.879 the thing that I see on my screen when I'm 0:48:18.920 --> 0:48:22.400 watching football, and how we have to sort of like 0:48:23.400 --> 0:48:25.600 just deal with that shit and deal with the sort 0:48:25.600 --> 0:48:28.800 of micro identity formation that is real but also isn't 0:48:28.840 --> 0:48:31.200 like a depiction of what the world is. 0:48:32.480 --> 0:48:32.840 M m. 0:48:34.040 --> 0:48:44.320 Yeah. 0:48:44.800 --> 0:48:46.400 So one of the interesting things in this book is 0:48:46.440 --> 0:48:50.440 that like the right wing media, like right wing football media, 0:48:50.600 --> 0:48:54.560 kind of isn't in it that much really, which I 0:48:54.560 --> 0:48:56.680 think is fascinating And I wonder part of how much 0:48:56.680 --> 0:48:58.440 of this is just that, like this was kind of 0:48:59.120 --> 0:49:01.560 a book that was a real action being written before, 0:49:02.120 --> 0:49:04.600 like Aaron Rodgers was going up Pat McAfee show in 0:49:04.680 --> 0:49:06.680 front of like half a million people every single day 0:49:06.680 --> 0:49:08.160 and like screaming about trans people. 0:49:08.840 --> 0:49:14.000 M hm. So this book has excerpts of like articles 0:49:14.000 --> 0:49:17.400 and outside media and like social media, et cetera. Originally 0:49:17.480 --> 0:49:19.640 it had like a lot more. I had to cut 0:49:19.680 --> 0:49:23.160 a lot in order to make this book like legible 0:49:23.200 --> 0:49:26.880 as a book. This book is already like pushing the 0:49:27.000 --> 0:49:30.520 edges of what you could really communicate in ya in 0:49:30.600 --> 0:49:32.319 terms of like I have a lot of characters, I 0:49:32.320 --> 0:49:34.680 have a lot of shit going on, So like part 0:49:34.680 --> 0:49:36.759 of it is just that, like I had to like 0:49:37.080 --> 0:49:40.319 you know, trim et cetera. But like, originally it had 0:49:40.360 --> 0:49:42.680 a lot more of that stuff, and there were like 0:49:43.400 --> 0:49:49.680 interstitial snippets from a fictional sort of like football podcaster 0:49:49.920 --> 0:49:53.880 guy who is like Pat McAfee and all of the 0:49:54.000 --> 0:49:59.759 like barstool former athlete podcasters, Yeah, in a blender, and 0:50:00.160 --> 0:50:04.520 he like he was this like really pathetic former like 0:50:04.760 --> 0:50:10.160 special team or linebacker who just like keeps reliving the 0:50:10.200 --> 0:50:13.719 fucking glory days. Yeah. Eventually I just had to like 0:50:14.400 --> 0:50:18.960 refocus and like, yeah, yeah, bring that conflict closer to 0:50:19.000 --> 0:50:24.239 home with like school administration's kind of shitty, and like 0:50:24.640 --> 0:50:27.080 there are plenty of dudes on the football team who 0:50:27.840 --> 0:50:31.040 also suck. So I kind of like left it in 0:50:31.160 --> 0:50:36.040 via some like shitty tweets that you see, or you 0:50:36.080 --> 0:50:39.560 get a lot of it, like indirectly you can imagine 0:50:39.640 --> 0:50:42.160 what is happening on the fucking Pat McAfee show. 0:50:42.239 --> 0:50:43.200 Oh my fucking god. 0:50:43.360 --> 0:50:47.400 Yeah, But like also part of it is what you 0:50:47.440 --> 0:50:49.719 said that the weird timeline of publishing means that I 0:50:49.719 --> 0:50:52.760 started writing this book in February twenty twenty one, wrote 0:50:52.760 --> 0:50:55.960 the majority in twenty twenty two, and edit it in 0:50:56.040 --> 0:50:59.359 twenty three and twenty four, and like kind of this 0:50:59.480 --> 0:51:04.680 like very very organized anti trans reaction was not as 0:51:04.840 --> 0:51:08.000 prevalent in twenty twenty one at all like I kind 0:51:08.000 --> 0:51:10.640 of had to like track it as it started to 0:51:10.719 --> 0:51:13.719 like really like form up a drill time. This is 0:51:13.760 --> 0:51:15.399 not the world that I thought I was gonna write 0:51:15.400 --> 0:51:19.200 my stupid little football book. Yeah, and like have it 0:51:20.000 --> 0:51:23.920 emerge into a lot of people are say that this 0:51:23.960 --> 0:51:26.360 book is very timely, and I'm like, dog, this is 0:51:26.360 --> 0:51:28.359 a Biden administration sept for him through. 0:51:29.280 --> 0:51:32.160 So one final ball question on behalf of my beloved 0:51:32.200 --> 0:51:36.400 and a curse Seattle Seahawks. Okay, so think about Sam Darnold, 0:51:36.400 --> 0:51:39.239 who's now our quarterback after they traded my beloved Gito 0:51:39.320 --> 0:51:41.040 Smith for a fucking third round pick. 0:51:41.160 --> 0:51:41.399 Brother. 0:51:42.000 --> 0:51:44.840 Okay, so, like, is the thing that's going to happen 0:51:44.880 --> 0:51:48.359 this season not just by week five? Ave Lucas goes 0:51:48.360 --> 0:51:50.439 down for the twelve million time whatever child they drag 0:51:50.480 --> 0:51:52.200 out of a kindergarten to try to block the deal, 0:51:52.200 --> 0:51:54.319 one hundred gets liquified in ten milli seconds to Sam 0:51:54.360 --> 0:51:56.839 Darnold just like start seeing the ghosts of men who 0:51:56.880 --> 0:51:58.840 haven't been born yet, Like, isn't this exactly? 0:51:58.880 --> 0:51:58.920 Is? 0:51:58.960 --> 0:52:01.080 It's just what's gonna fuck happen? Why did they build 0:52:01.120 --> 0:52:01.839 this team like this? 0:52:03.680 --> 0:52:08.200 Can I attempt to give you a small amount of 0:52:08.520 --> 0:52:11.240 Seattle Seahawks optimism. I thought they were gonna. 0:52:11.040 --> 0:52:13.279 Would have lived in games last season. They should have, 0:52:13.800 --> 0:52:15.680 so we lost to the Flat Giants. 0:52:17.520 --> 0:52:22.960 So I really like some of what the Seahawks did. 0:52:23.600 --> 0:52:26.319 They drafted a lot of players that I really like. 0:52:26.400 --> 0:52:31.279 It's true they they finally took a interior offensive line 0:52:31.320 --> 0:52:37.480 player in the first round. Congratulations, Uh yay. Gray's Abel 0:52:37.760 --> 0:52:40.040 is a good player. He's also a maga as shit, 0:52:40.120 --> 0:52:43.279 which is what you want on your offensive line. No, 0:52:43.480 --> 0:52:45.600 that's what you want on your offense. It's true, it's true. 0:52:45.680 --> 0:52:49.680 But also like, god fucking damn it. So you got 0:52:50.120 --> 0:52:55.239 Gray's Abel. You got Jalen Milroe, who Jalen Milroe isn't 0:52:55.239 --> 0:52:58.919 good at football right now, but a sports media friend 0:52:59.000 --> 0:53:02.480 named Derek klass And put it that he's He's the 0:53:02.719 --> 0:53:04.759 kind of player you want to bet on and then 0:53:04.800 --> 0:53:08.560 be wrong about, just just because he's fun, because he's 0:53:08.600 --> 0:53:13.719 a like legit, actual like special athlete, special with the 0:53:13.880 --> 0:53:17.640 ball in his hand. He's cool. I really like Jaylen Milroe. 0:53:17.680 --> 0:53:21.440 But you also drafted later on. You took Tory Horden 0:53:21.600 --> 0:53:25.520 and Ricky White, who are two of my favorite sort 0:53:25.520 --> 0:53:28.960 of like small school wide receivers in the draft. You 0:53:29.000 --> 0:53:32.440 took Damien Martinez, who is a running back who I 0:53:32.480 --> 0:53:34.399 think could end up being a lot better than someone 0:53:34.440 --> 0:53:37.200 who's drafted in the seventh round would indicate. And also 0:53:37.320 --> 0:53:39.640 you took a full back. You took Robbie Oates. That's great. 0:53:39.640 --> 0:53:40.120 His name is a. 0:53:40.160 --> 0:53:42.960 Robbie Oates a great name, great name, old name, old 0:53:43.000 --> 0:53:45.400 name team. 0:53:45.719 --> 0:53:49.359 He is a He's like the squarest football player I've 0:53:49.360 --> 0:53:56.760 ever seen. Love love Robbie Oates. However, the Sam Darnold 0:53:56.880 --> 0:54:04.640 situation is tough. It's tough. I have a hard time 0:54:05.520 --> 0:54:06.280 seeing it happen. 0:54:06.680 --> 0:54:09.879 Like he would literally if you had put it behind 0:54:09.960 --> 0:54:12.560 last year Seahawks offensive line, he literally would have died 0:54:12.560 --> 0:54:14.520 by about week eight, like you just like straight up 0:54:14.520 --> 0:54:16.680 would have died on the field. Oh god. 0:54:17.280 --> 0:54:20.360 Yeah, And like it's a bit better this year because 0:54:20.360 --> 0:54:22.799 you have friends able, but you still have Abe Lucas. 0:54:22.840 --> 0:54:25.280 You know, you still have a We'll. 0:54:24.840 --> 0:54:27.200 Have Abe Lucas for three weeks and then we won't 0:54:27.200 --> 0:54:31.799 have Abe Lucas and then yeah. 0:54:30.719 --> 0:54:34.680 And also like Sam Darnold is in like the perfect 0:54:34.680 --> 0:54:37.280 spot for him, and now he's going to be throwing 0:54:37.320 --> 0:54:39.600 the ball too. I mean, you know, you got Cooper Cup, 0:54:39.640 --> 0:54:42.759 you got you know, for four weeks, got JSN, but 0:54:42.880 --> 0:54:46.880 you also have Marcus valdezk is he gonna is he 0:54:46.880 --> 0:54:48.320 gonna get load bearing snaps? 0:54:48.360 --> 0:54:48.440 Like? 0:54:48.719 --> 0:54:50.919 Is that really? Is that really what you want? 0:54:51.120 --> 0:54:54.680 My cope last year was that was that JSN Metcalf 0:54:54.840 --> 0:54:58.120 and Lockett was the most underrated receiver trio in the league. Yep. 0:54:58.840 --> 0:55:02.440 And this year it's like, all right, we get six games, 0:55:02.440 --> 0:55:05.759 a Cooper Cup and then we get fifth rounders. 0:55:07.120 --> 0:55:12.399 Yeah. God, it's it's tough out here. Yeah. I don't 0:55:12.480 --> 0:55:15.080 expect Sam Darnold to work here, just like straight up, 0:55:15.160 --> 0:55:18.920 Like I have been a Sam Donald truther for years. 0:55:19.280 --> 0:55:23.680 But it is the classic thing of like I think 0:55:23.719 --> 0:55:27.000 Sam Donald's better than most people think, and then a 0:55:27.040 --> 0:55:29.560 lot of people are like one hundred thirty million dollars 0:55:29.600 --> 0:55:32.480 Sam Donald, and it's like what hold on, hold on, 0:55:32.560 --> 0:55:35.239 hold on, hold on, hold on. I didn't think he 0:55:35.320 --> 0:55:38.240 was that good. I didn't think he was traded Gino 0:55:38.320 --> 0:55:42.200 Smith good. No, oh god, So that's unfortunate. 0:55:43.040 --> 0:55:45.320 Yeah, so this this that this has been the football 0:55:45.560 --> 0:55:49.880 section of this of this podcast. Yeah, so Victoria, do 0:55:49.920 --> 0:55:51.760 you have anything else that you want to say before 0:55:51.760 --> 0:55:53.759 we head out, and where should people buy your book from? 0:55:54.160 --> 0:55:56.439 Non Amazon? That's like really all I have to say 0:55:56.480 --> 0:55:59.640 about that. Yeah, one of the boys, my name is 0:55:59.760 --> 0:56:03.680 Victor Coria Zeller, and you just buy that from bookshop, 0:56:03.920 --> 0:56:06.960 buy it from your local indie. You can buy it 0:56:06.960 --> 0:56:09.319 from Barnes and Noble, because we don't hate them as 0:56:09.400 --> 0:56:12.239 much as we hate Amazon. But like I would say, 0:56:12.239 --> 0:56:15.280 buy it from your local indie bookstore is like ideal 0:56:15.360 --> 0:56:18.440 for me. I make the same amount of money wherever 0:56:18.480 --> 0:56:21.080 you buy it, so it doesn't matter. But if you 0:56:21.120 --> 0:56:23.000 want to sign copy, you can also order it from 0:56:23.200 --> 0:56:28.000 my home bookstore, So there's that. Hell. Yeah, but yeah, 0:56:28.040 --> 0:56:31.319 my website is a Victoria dot monster and all my 0:56:31.400 --> 0:56:32.080 links are there. 0:56:32.280 --> 0:56:34.799 Yeah. Okay, I realized I had an actual final question 0:56:34.840 --> 0:56:36.279 that I wanted to ask it I forgot to do 0:56:36.360 --> 0:56:39.359 before this the fucking we started the intro, so I apologize. 0:56:40.120 --> 0:56:43.359 So the odds here are much much higher than they 0:56:43.360 --> 0:56:46.360 are in most places that there's going to be some 0:56:46.440 --> 0:56:49.279 queer kids who fucking play ball to some extent listening 0:56:49.320 --> 0:56:51.920 to it, and I wanted to I'm throwing something from 0:56:51.960 --> 0:56:54.759 your book at you, which is, I know, what would 0:56:54.760 --> 0:56:55.800 you say to the what did you say it to 0:56:55.840 --> 0:56:57.680 the kiddos who are going through it? 0:56:58.200 --> 0:57:05.399 This is so mean. Okay, Okay, I'm gonna be real 0:57:05.440 --> 0:57:08.120 with you right now. Guys, do what's best for you. Yeah, 0:57:08.320 --> 0:57:10.960 fight if you have it in you to fight, But like, 0:57:11.640 --> 0:57:14.840 you got to be a kid first and foremost, and 0:57:14.960 --> 0:57:20.240 like trans kids, queer kids deserve the chance to be 0:57:21.480 --> 0:57:27.960 fucking kids. They deserve the chance to make mistakes and 0:57:28.240 --> 0:57:33.800 listen to music too loudly in their friends' shitty car, 0:57:34.080 --> 0:57:37.800 and they deserve to play sports if that's what they 0:57:37.800 --> 0:57:40.000 want to do. I think in a lot of ways, 0:57:40.320 --> 0:57:43.000 my book is about how we ask teenagers to be 0:57:43.520 --> 0:57:46.440 braver than they should be, and I think that's bullshit. 0:57:46.720 --> 0:57:49.320 So I'm not gonna put it on. You have as 0:57:49.400 --> 0:57:52.520 much fun as you can, like ball if you can, 0:57:53.360 --> 0:57:58.680 but do what makes you happy and what feels safe 0:57:58.720 --> 0:58:01.720 to you. Is like really, all I've got, Like, you know, 0:58:02.040 --> 0:58:05.320 just have fun while you're able to as a child 0:58:05.560 --> 0:58:07.320 is like yeah. 0:58:06.920 --> 0:58:09.280 No, And it's like, yeah, it's not if you are 0:58:09.400 --> 0:58:12.560 like a little ass kid. A I'm so sorry for 0:58:12.600 --> 0:58:15.240 how much I swear on the show. Be like, it 0:58:15.320 --> 0:58:17.360 is not up to you right now to save the world. 0:58:17.440 --> 0:58:20.000 That is the job of fucking everyone else who listens 0:58:20.040 --> 0:58:21.880 to the show like you. If you want there to 0:58:21.880 --> 0:58:24.160 be more queer athletes, if you want trans kids be 0:58:24.200 --> 0:58:26.560 able to be kids, that shit's on you. Yeah, all 0:58:26.640 --> 0:58:28.120 of the rest of you who listen to the show, 0:58:28.320 --> 0:58:30.520 If you are also like the fucking one bazillion trans 0:58:30.600 --> 0:58:32.000 people listen to the show, this is like a bit 0:58:32.080 --> 0:58:33.840 less on you than it is on fucking everyone else. 0:58:33.880 --> 0:58:36.960 But yeah, but the best time do I started organizing 0:58:37.160 --> 0:58:39.200 was like five years ago. The second best time is 0:58:39.280 --> 0:58:41.440 right now, and the best time after that is tomorrow. 0:58:41.760 --> 0:58:45.480 So go fucking build a world where trans kids can 0:58:45.520 --> 0:58:47.160 be kids and fall out. 0:58:47.920 --> 0:58:52.000 Let kids like me hoop, let them hoop, let them 0:58:52.080 --> 0:58:58.080 hit dingers, let them ball. Oh yeah, my people need rings. 0:58:58.560 --> 0:59:02.440 My people need titles, They need trophies, they need championships. 0:59:06.720 --> 0:59:09.200 It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. 0:59:09.440 --> 0:59:12.480 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 0:59:12.560 --> 0:59:16.120 Coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, 0:59:16.200 --> 0:59:18.280 Apple Podcasts, or wherever. 0:59:17.920 --> 0:59:19.200 You listen to podcasts. 0:59:19.520 --> 0:59:21.440 You can now find sources for It could Happen here 0:59:21.480 --> 0:59:24.480 listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening,