I was going to wish everyone a happy new year, but writing this took so long that I'm not sure I still can do it. But just in case, happy new year everyone!
First, a quick announcement: as you can see I'm posting this under a new account. This is because I post A LOT in my other account and many of my posts are NSFW, which was creating trouble for people who wanted to search for my other drama posts, so I made this account to make things easier. Don't worry, none of the past posts are gone. I'll keep a pinned post in my profile with a neat index of all my /HobbyDrama posts.
Second, this is the kind of year that needs a disclaimer: Back then I got caught in the drama and I had (and still have) some strong opinions about what happened, so when you read this post remember that I may be biased even when I try not to.
(And of course, after proofreading the text I just had to make a typo in the title. /*facepalm)
The usual glossary for people who may not be so familiar with how things are in Eurovision:

• Eurovision: The Gay Olympics An international music contest in which most countries in Europe and some not in Europe take part.
• EBU: European Broadcasting Union, an international body made by many national broadcasters that organizes Eurovision and sets its rules.
• TVE - Radiotelevisión Española, the Spanish national broadcasters that represents Spain at Eurovision.
• Juries: Panels of alleged music experts who vote, both in Eurovision and in national finals.
• Televote: Vote by the public, usually done by phone/SMS and in some cases by internet, both in Eurovision and in national finals.
• National final: A televised show in which a national broadcaster selects their representative, usually with vote by the public.
• Internal selection: When a national broadcaster doesn't hold a national final, an instead appoints an artist to represent them.

So, let's get started. At the end of my last post, we left Spain in the mid-2010's flip-flopping between internal selections and national finals every couple years and finding that none of that seemed to work, mostly because the work after they chose the song was not really there.
Nevertheless, in 2017 Spain decided to do a national final again, starting with an online call that yielded 392 songs. To avoid another Chikilicuatre situation, the first thing they did was filter them through a panel of judges that picked 30 that would take part in an online selection process ran by a group of fans of the contest.
The most notable contestant in this stage was Brequette. Remember her? After narrowly missing the spot in 2014, she was one of Barei's backing singers in 2016 (I absolutely forgot about this until I was writing this post. Shame on me.) and now she came back with No Enemy, a song she and Barei had written together, and I have to admit it was really good and smartly playing all of her strengths. Since she also was carrying the torch of a painful and narrow defeat, the fans instantly wanted her to do well.
After ten days of voting, 55,000 votes had been received. For comparison, the online phase in 2008 had over 300,000 votes and in 2009 and 2010 it had over two million votes. Part of this was that this received very little promotion, and that (for reasons I'll explain later) the stakes here were pretty low.
The top ten songs in the internet vote qualified to the next round. Surprisingly, despite the fan love Brequette only qualified in third place. In this round, the entries were sifted again through a jury panel that chose three of them to qualify for the live final.
And here's where things start to get weird. The winner of the first round, Nito, not only didn't qualify but placed dead last with zero points from the juries. Brequette didn't qualify either (although she placed fourth). At the end the three qualifiers were Javián, Fruela and Vanesa Cortés, better known as LeKlein, a DJ that was most notable as the girlfriend of Patricia Yurena, the first ever Miss Universe contestant to come out as a lesbian (This is not relevant to the post, by the way. I just thought you might like the trivia). There was some criticism for dropping Brequette, but it came mostly from hardcore fans. The rest of the public felt that was part of the process, let's move on.
This all happened in the second half of December in 2016. In early January a live final was held with a winner decided exclusively by online vote. LeKlein got 63% of the vote, and therefore she won... a pass to the next round of the competition.
What, did you think things would be straighforward? First rule of this year: NO.
Turns out this whole trick and pony show was to pick a wildcard for the real final, which is why neither TVE nor the public cared that much about it, even if it got a lot of praise for doing a quite decent show with almost no budget. The real final would be a month later, where LeKlein would face five other artists internally chosen by TVE. Time to meet them:
First we had Mario Jefferson, a one-member boy band with a couple hits under his belt, coming with Spin my Head.
Then Paula Rojo, a country singer and probably the most notable contestant leading to the national final, with Lo que Nunca fue.
Then Maika Barberó, a rock singer and probably the least notable contestant leading to the national final, with Momento Crítico..
Usually I would link their performances in the national final, but turns out TVE didn't care enough to upload them. They were the bottom three of the final and most of them don't matter that much for this post. As long as you remember who Mario is you're fine.
Then Mirela, who was not at all a stranger to trying for Eurovision. In 2004 she had tried to participate in Junior Eurovision placing second to María Isabel who won the whole thing that year.. She tried to represent Spain in Eurovision in 2007 with La Reina de La Noche, placing second, in 2008 with Stronger, not reaching the final, and in 2009 with Nada es Comparable a Ti, placing fourth. This year she was trying with Contigo, a very tropical Spain-by-numbers song.
Then, Manel Navarro, a relative newcomer to the musical scene that had released his first singles the previous year and entered Do It For Your Lover, which was kinda... reggae influenced surfer pop, dare I say? He had released it earlier that year and it was already bubbling in the charts.
And finally, LeKlein.
You may notice Mario and Manel were singing partly in English and LeKlein had zero Spanish in her song. Maybe RAE protested like they did in previous years, I'm not sure. To be frank, with all that happened this year no one paid attention if they said anything. I recall that the radio version of Manel's song was entirely in English but he added some Spanish for the national final, though.
Mirela and Manel quickly positioned themselves as the frontrunners. Maybe Paula could have a chance to beat them because of her fame but her song was perceived to be too weak, and anything that wasn't either of them going to Eurovision would have been a big upset.
Mirela's supporters nicknamed themselves (ourselves, I was there) #TeamSenosAlAire, which means #TeamBoobsOutInTheAir. (It was because of the intentionally misheard lyrics at the start of Contigo, "Sueños al Aire/Dreams Out in The Air"). Manel's supporters, in an amazing display of creativity, nicknamed themselves #TeamManel.
There was a bit of debate before the final. Manel's fans thought Mirela's song was too stereotypical, going for Spanish clichés, and that she was maybe a bit too desperate to go to Eurovision. Mirela's fans thought Manel's song was too bland and relying on foreign clichés, and that he didn't have that much of a personality. But still, even with the tension and rivalry, the fandom was civil.
The final was planned for February 12th, and it was only a day and a half before that TVE published the rules and the juries and all hell broke loose:

• One of the juries was Javier Cárdenas, a radio host that pretty much hates Eurovision and is stuck in the El Chiki Chiki era, which along with some racist and classist opinions makes him very despised by the fandom.
• Another was Virginia Díaz, a reasonable prestigious TV and radio presenter.
• And finally, Xavi Martínez, a radio host that had been campaigning heavily in favor of Manel, had invited him to interviews in his shows and promoted his song in his programs. He worked for Los 40, a channel renowned for basing its song rankings on label deals instead of popularity and that had a promotional deal with Manel.

Also, there were a couple changes with the rules:

• In previous years, the juries voted at the same time the public did and locked their votes before the televote was revealed, so none of them could influence the other. This year, they would retire to deliberate after the televote ended and then reveal their votes. So, they would be able to adjust their votes based on the results of the televote.
• In previous years, in case of a tie for first place, the tiebreaker would be the televote (This played in 2009 and 2014, sending Soraya and Ruth. Here you can see Ruth's victory). This year, the tiebreaker would be a show of hands by the jury.

Remember, this was published on a Friday, for the final that would take place in Sunday.
Most of the fans instantly called this sus. Even looking at this with the best spirits it seemed that TVE was tilting things heavily in favor of Manel, by putting a jury that was guaranteed to push him to the top and two more juries with close ties to TVE that could push its narrative, and giving the juries the final say just in case.
The conspiracy theory was that, since Manel had recently signed with Sony Music, they were interested in raising his profile and had pulled some strings to make sure he would go to Eurovision and TVE was playing along with it. I have to admit it seems more plausible than other years, although it's never been confirmed.
Manel's fans countered that juries were allowed to have their opinions about the songs and that Xavi had never openly stated that Manel was his favorite, he had only said that he liked the song, and that if anything, TVE was to blame for putting him in the jury.
Here you can see a tweet of Xavi one month before the final, in a photo with Manel, saying "It's beautiful to be part of the birth of a star. Long live talent and live music. Enjoying you from the start, Manel. You can see in the replies people right after the announcement that he was a jury, asking him "Who will get your top marks tomorrow? I still can't figure it out", asking him if he and Manel were fucking, and calling him disgusting and a sellout.
Manel's competitors complained too. Several did it anonymously, according to a leak in the press, but at least Mario Jefferson posted a tweet indirectly calling it out. TVE's response was that they had already been informed of the rules and had accepted them. (Although they found out about the juries along with everyone else)
And because one drama was not enough, the day before the final all the artists complained that the TV setup was riddled with technical problems, the lighting was bad and the sound was barely acceptable, and that the stage had been so poorly planned that they wouldn't be able to show well at the same time for the cameras and the juries.
And because two dramas were not enough, the very same day the winner of 2009, Alexander Rybak, revealed that he had received a last-minute invitation to appear as a guest in the final, with around 30 hours to travel to Spain and get ready. He obviously said thanks but no thanks, and other fans unearthed tweets of TVE trying to contact other artists, presumably with the same purpose. TVE was quite ridiculed for this, particularly because the head of delegation had stated multiple times that they had began working towards 2017 the day after the 2016 contest ended.
By the way, one thing that fans do every years is obsessively check the odds in the bets to win Eurovision and try to guess how well or bad the year will go by how the odds behave. This year, right before the national final, Spain was last. That is, no one believed that any of the songs in the national final had an actual chance at Eurovision.
Remember, all of this happened in pretty much a day and a half. (I missed most of that because I was on vacation with my family and only turned it up to watch the final and I still noticed how bad it was and how biased the juries were)
But enough setup and backstory. Let's dive into the drama.
The final was BAD. TVE only bothered to upload the performances of Manel, Mirela and Leklein but the audio was very rough and the stage looked cheap, bare, and with a nostalgic vibe reminiscent of Eurovision 1993. I wish they had kept Mario's performance because he was the only one that managed to make the stage look good...ish.
In the prior two days, when discussing Xavi's support for Manel, the fans of Manel had said that he would play fair, maybe even refrain from giving Manel top marks because it could be too blatant.
First rule of this year: NO.
He basically offered Manel a record deal in the middle of the final, gave him his highest mark, and he gave his lowest mark to Mirela. The second jury, Virginia, also put Manel in the top and Mirela in the bottom, and the third jury, Javier Cárdenas, gave his top mark to Mirela and his second top mark to Manel. Overall, Manel ranked first with the juries with 34 points, while Mirela was joint third with 22 points.
Then it came the televote. Look how happy Manel and Mirela were during the voting. Mirela won with 36 points and Manel was third with 24, so they tied for first place at 58 points and it came down to a show of hands by the juries, with Xavi and Virginia voting for Manel and Javier for Mirela, which meant Manel won... a pass to the next round of competition.
No, I'm just kidding. This was the real thing. Manel won the right to represent Spain at Eurovision.
A large part of the public began whistling, booing and shouting accusations of fraud, to which Manel responded with a bras d'honeur.. I don't know how familiar you are with this gesture, but it's only slightly more polite than flipping them off. The last time something like that happened in a Spanish national final was with John Cobra back in 2010, and Cobra was... well, Cobra.
This was probably the most chaotic and worst managed national final in Spain. With Cobra they were just taking out a troll but the public, hosts, juries and contestants were all on the same page. Here the public was split in two sides going at each other's throat while one of them was also raging against the juries and the winner.
Also, a man in the public tweeted that Xavi had been assaulted when he was trying to leave the hall.
Anyway, plot developments on the next two days:
There was a press conference to formally present Manel and no one from TVE, not even the Head of Entertainment Toñi Prieto, who had been in charge of organizing and overseeing the national final, went there. They just left Manel to deal with that alone.
In the press conference Manel apologized for his gesture, saying that he had acted on the heat of the moment.
It was revealed that Prieto's daughter worked at Sony and was part of Manel's promotion team.
A Twiter hashtag asking for Prieto to quit or be fired from her position became the #1 trending topic in Spain. At some moments there were three different hashtags against her in the top trends.
Mirela's grandpa died. (I am NOT making this up)
Manel's defenders blamed the reaction of the public saying that it was full of eurofans and fans of Mirela that were sore losers because their favorite had lost. (Eurofans is basically a stereotype of gay dudes who live for Eurovision and will fall head over heels over the first diva they find. Think me, then add a lot of glitter.)
Xavi, who was getting most of the blame for the results, penned an open letter defending his decisions, reiterating that the contestants had been informed of the rules and had accepted them, explaining that he had promoted Manel before even knowing that one would be in the final and the other would be a jury, that people should have protested when they knew the rules (Reminder: they had basically a day and a nalf *on a weekend** to do so and when the artists protested they were shut down*), challenging everyone who accused him of rigging the voting to come forward with proof and saying that he wanted nothing to do with Eurovision again.
He confirmed that a member of the public had assaulted him and he had to resort to the hall security to make it out safely. His co-judge Virginia also confirmed it.
Some fans replied with a similar challenge: If (as he said) the assault had been filmed, he should press charges. As far as I know he never did it. There was a rumor that the aggressor had been one of the songwriters for LeKlein but he denied it.
People scoured Xavi's twitter looking for every single interaction with Manel and his team to help the narrative (including a dinner with Manel several weeks before the final and getting Christmas gifts from Manel's manager). They also found a video recorded from the public in the national final showing someone that seemed to be Xavi celebrating Manel's win. At the end it was never confirmed if it was indeed Xavi, but the general consensus was that it was someone else.
A journalist that had been sitting backstage released a video with is own perspective saying that things had been even more tense than it had shown on TV and that the conflict hadn't just been that the public had been filled with eurofans or supporters of Mirela. There were supporters for all the artists and all of them had split along the vote with a majority siding with Mirela. While he didn't confirm the assault to Xavi, he described a scenario in which it was very credible. And this will sound lame after all that, but he also noted that they had been given sparklers to light during the performances, but no means to light them, just to put an extra nail in the coffin of the organizers.
Several petitions to disqualify Manel were launched, and most of them were closed the same day when their organizers received threats from other fans.
Let's introduce, because why not, yet ANOTHER player. Nicky Triphook was a singer that took part in the online phase of the competition with Daddy's Little Girl and had failed to advance past the second jury round, which somehow left him with an axe to grind towards TVE. He had already criticized Xavi's presence in the juries (you know, the kind of thing Xavi said nothing had done) and called him shameful, he had accused Manel's girlfriend of shouting insults to others in the final, and when Xavi asked for proof of the rigging, he published a purported screenshot of a conversation where, allegedly, one month before the national final someone told him that it was already decided that Manel would go to Eurovision. He didn't give any other information, he didn't speak up before, and it was the kind of thing that was pretty easy to fake, but still a lot of people took the accusations and ran with them. Some took it even further, saying that all the artists knew it but they had still done it for the exposure. At least Mario Jefferson took issue with that..
And finally, a member of the Spanish Parliament put up a motion of inquiry requesting the heads of TVE to clarify what had happened to generate that level of controversy, how had they allowed it to happen, and whether they would keep Manel as a representative. A week later Toñi Prieto was formally cited to testify before congress.
At the end this came down to a scapegoat. TVE published a communication defending their decision, saying that they had not broken any of the rules of Eurovision, and also (say it with me) that the artists had been informed of the rules two days before the final and had protested but been ignored accepted them. And Federico Llano, the Head of Delegation (that is, the one in charge of everything Eurovision-related in Spain, responding directly to Toñi Prieto) resigned after fourteen years in that position. That was enough to satisfy Congress.
Overall, even if there had been no conflicts of interest, this came up as horribly mishandling the optics. It would have been much better to accept this looked bad, say they would take measures so it wouldn't happen again, and then send Manel anyway.
There was a small part of the fans that felt the entire process of the national final had been so rotten that it was unsalvageable and it would be better to cancel the whole thing and send LeKlein (who at least had won the online phase without that kind of controversy), but again, nothing came out of it.
In a now-deleted interview, LeKlein also levelled her own accusations of vote rigging, which were denied by Manel.
During the months leading to Eurovision, Manel had to endure a level of bullying and hate that no other Spanish contestant had ever received. Threats, comments in all his social media posts calling him a thief and asking him to quit, wishes for him to place last, fans asking in social media not to vote for him, accusations of sexism because the official video for the song had several shots of a girl's ass... you name it, it happened. And to be fair to him, save for that first outburst in the night of the final, he handled it rather well.
Probably the dumbest controversy in that time was that the music video had ben shot in a cloudy day. Yup. People took issue with that. Because it was supposed to showcase the best side of Spain and they were surfing and that means SUN. And here again, Nicky Triphook came in with the hot take that the video hadn't been shot in Spain, but in the Canary Islands. Which are part of Spain. And Spaniards are very touchy about the unity of their country, for political reasons that we won't talk about, so the fans jumped to his throat until he clarified that he meant that the WEATHER in the Canary Islands was not the same as in mainland Spain. Crisis averted. 👍
The divisions of the fandom continued during all this time. In one side people attacking the results and convinced that it all had been rigged, and in the other people saying it had all been fair and Mirela's fans were sore losers that had to learn to let go, and they also blamed Mirela for not asking her fans to stop. There were also some guys who thought Mirela was so bad that they were okay with rigging things if that meant she didn't go to Eurovision (If you ask if those were amongst the ones who claimed foul and were all for fair play because of the allegations of playback in Junior Eurovision, the answer is OF COURSE).
This also sparkled a debate about the general criteria Spain uses to choose their artists. There were comments that Spain had wanted to internally select Manel but they didn't want to face criticism because he didn't have much trajectory, so a final tilted in his favor could be seen as an undercover internal selection, and there was a heated debate about how the Spanish public sometimes has too high standards for the kind of artists they want, which in turn makes credible artists not want to do anything with Eurovision and that leaves spain scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Manel went to several of the pre-contest parties (There are usually six: Amsterdam, London, Madrid, Tel Aviv, Riga and Moscow, but Riga and Moscow are smaller and usually have mostly or only artists from Eastern Europe), he striked a very nice friendship with Nathan Trent from Austria and Imri Ziv from Israel (If you like shirtless men as much as I do, by all means go to Imri's Instagram. You're welcome), and overall he arrived to Eurovision... not in the best spirits, but in some kind of spirits at least. He was working with Hans Pannecoucke, a stage designer famous for the staging of the runner up in 2014, which is one of THE mythical stagings in Eurovision, and although no one expected him to do something that good, people were expecting a reasonable quality level.
A couple days before the final TVE finally released the voting data of the national final, showing that Mirela got more than twice the votes of Manel, because somehow THAT was the perfect moment to do that.
For financial reasons, Spain automatically qualifies to the final, so Manel didn't have to deal with semifinals.
In the final, the performance was... there. Well, I think it was a performance.. The staging wasn't bad but it wasn't extraordinary either, the backing musicians were standing in front of their instruments and you could hear them in their microphones, the lights were on and sometimes they even moved and changed colors, the backing track was playing and the cameras were rolling. In summary, there were things happening on the staje, but not interesting things. Neither Pannecoucke not Manel delivered. It was a very forgettable performance, which probably the worst thing you can do in Eurovision. Being really bad or wacky at least can make people remember you.
Manel sounded a bit nervous but in general acceptable, until he didn't. Right before the last chorus, he had one of the worst voice cracks ever in the history of the contest which was probably the most memorable moment of his entire performance.
Then it came the moment of the votes. Since 2016 a new voting system was in place, in which juries and televote give their votes separately and the final score is the sum of both votes. Manel placed last with the juries with no points, and people were preparing for another zero score in the televote.
Now, if you're going to place last in Eurovision, particularly with such a controversial entry as Manel and in a country that has a hate/love relationship with the contest heavily tilted towards hate, it's better to place last HARD. Getting also a zero score from the televote would have meant that from 82 voting bodies that could have voted for Manel (41 other countries in the contest, with a jury and a televote each) he had managed to get none of them to vote for him. It would have been quite a feat.
First rule of this year: NO.
There was a country that got a zero in the televote, but it wasn't Spain. It was Austria, represented by Manel's buddy Nathan Trent. (Which was a fucking robbery, by the way.) Manel got five points all from Portugal, which still kept him in last place but without even the bragging rights of a complete zero.
Interviewed right after the contest, he said there was nothing he would self-critique, and the Spanish head of delegation also stated that they saw no need to change anything for the following years.
Even the public that had been indiferent towards Manel took a stand ridiculing him. The voice crack got a remix and multiple parody videos and social media was filled with messages mocking him.
Suddenly, that song and result became something absolutely no one wanted to touch. The yearly talk-show that airs right after Eurovision in Spanish TV to discuss the show and the results was cancelled without even an announcement. This is how much everyone wanted NOT to talk about it.
Manel himself said tried to distance himself from his own participation, saying that he had written the song when he was 15 and had tried to submit other song instead, implied that he had been forced to go with that one, and said that the whole surfer image he had since the national final had been mostly a character created for TV.
Everyone decided to scapegoat the result on the voice crack (although the juries had voted with the rehearsal of the night before without a voice crack, and still had decided that Manel deserved zero points) and more generally on Manel's performance and lack of experience.
TVE basically left him alone, publishing an editorial titled Spain places last after Manel's voice crack.
The day after the final Xavi tweeted that the performance and result were "unforgivable" and when he was reminded that he had voted for Manel he tried to discharge responsibility on all three judges plus the public vote of the national final, and a couple days later he stated that supporting Manel had been a mistake and the song was not right for Eurovision.
(At least Mario Jefferson came forward to defend Manel. That's something, I guess.)
In the following weeks there was another Congress inquiry that had the same results as the first one (spoiler: NOTHING), and multiple calls for the dimission of the heads of TVE that achieved also nothing.
And the reaction for a large part of the fandom could be sumed up in a massive "TOLD YOU SO". (I know I did. I read my old posts about this.)
There was a lot of recrimination amongst fans, still divided between blaming Manel, blaming the lack of support towards Manel, saying that Mirela would have been better, saying that it didn't matter because she was bad... the only thing all the fans agreed was saying that TVE sucked.
Besides blaming Manel, lots of people also blamed Mirela. If only she had stopped her fans from attacking Manel and making him so unsure of himself his voice had cracked... if only the controversy hadn't made this a PR disaster for TVE and Spain... nevermind that hours before the final she had tweeted in support for Manel, this was more likely a provocation to throw him off balance and a PR move to make herself look good.
A couple months later, asked about the reports that TVE had blacklisted Mirela from all their shows, Manel commented that it wasn't her fault, but it was a natural consequence of the actions of her supporters.
As something only tangentially related, while I was browsing old forum posts to unearth all this drama (and there was A LOT, I literally skimmed around 300 pages between the national final and the aftermath, plus Nicky Triphook's entire twitter timeline), I found this sketch that is probably one of the funniest eurovision-related things Spain has ever done. If you don't recognize the girls there it has Soraya, Ruth, Edurne, Rosa, Massiel, and at the end Mirela trying to get in. If you speak any Spanish, give it a try.
I have to confess, writing this was a cathartic experience for me. (This paragraph is mostly my personal perspective, if you allow me) As I said at the beginning, I got caught in the drama and still disliked Manel, but after writing this I mostly feel sorry for him. Seems he was offered a sand castle and then got discarded once he outlived his usefulness to Sony and TVE. Regarding the blame, I would say if you follow the threads you always end up at TVE. Yes, all the harassment Manel had to endure took a toll on him, but there was a whole machinery behind that could have prevented it or tried to stop it and did nothing. Yes, at 20 and with little experience, Manel was one of the greenest contestants Spain had ever sent, but TVE could and should have covered up for his lack of experience. The same year Belgium sent a seventeen year-old reject from The Voice that reached top 4 and in 2010 Germany won with a nineteen year-old with basically zero experience, because their TVs put the kind of work that TVE would never put in.
I still dislike Xavi, though.
So, to wrap things up, where are they now?
So far, TVE has complied with their promise of making no significant changes and the results have followed. 2020 was the beginning of a change but we never got to see it in action because the contest was cancelled.
Nearly all the participants in the national final have kept on with music careers, except for Maika that became a youtuber with very extreme opinions about Eurovision that basically no one agrees with.
Brequette still hasn't gone to Eurovision.
Xavi has continued working in radio and was a judge in later editions of the X Factor.
Mirela moved on to do musical theater, and said that this was a very painful experience for her and she probably won't be willing to go through that again but doesn't completely rule it out.
Manel, surprisingly after all he went through and how damaged his image was after Eurovision, still has a music career. He has released several singles per year and while none of them has been a hit, he still has more a career than, say, Barei. Which is not much but it's something. He also opened up about how bad things were during and after Eurovision.
Oh, and Nicky Triphook had a change of heart and now he loves Xavi and thinks he's an amazing person.
So, that's it for this post. Stay tuned for the next couple years, or how letting shippers pick your entry based on their ships is probably not a good idea.

Thank you to everyone who participated in this year's contest! There were a lot of great books released last year and I think all of them were nominated in our Best of 2020 contest. Here are the winners for the Best Books of 2020!
Just a quick note regarding the voting. We've locked the individual voting threads but that doesn't stop people from upvoting/downvoting so if you check them the upvotes won't necessarily match up with these winners depending on when you look. But, the results announced here do match what the results were at the time the threads were locked.

Best Debut of 2020

Place	Title	Author	Description	Nominated
Winner	My Dark Vanessa	Kate Elizabeth Russell	Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher. Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood.	warpedlucy
1st Runner-Up	Shuggie Bain	Douglas Stuart	Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction.	nursingasmallmadhope
2nd Runner-Up	Luster	Raven Leilani	Luster sees a young black woman figuring her way into life as an artist and into love in this darkly comic novel. She meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage. In this world of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics, Edie finds herself unemployed and living with Eric. She becomes hesitant friend to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie is the only black woman young Akila may know.	lentixular

Best Literary Fiction of 2020

Place	Title	Author	Description	Nominated
Winner	The Vanishing Half	Brit Bennett	The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing.	candlesandpretense
1st Runner-Up	Piranesi	Susanna Clarke	Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.	dampdrizzlynovember
2nd Runner-Up	Transcendent Kingdom	Yaa Gyasi	Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.	warpedlucy

Best Romance of 2020

Place	Title	Author	Description	Nominated
Winner	Beach Read	Emily Henry	Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast. They're polar opposites. In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block. Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She'll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he'll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.	assholeinwonderland
1st Runner-Up	Take a Hint, Dani Brown	Talia Hilbert	Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown, and an occasional roll in the hay to relieve all that career-driven tension. But romance? Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt. Romantic partners, whatever their gender, are a distraction at best and a drain at worst. So Dani asks the universe for the perfect friend-with-benefits—someone who knows the score and knows their way around the bedroom. When brooding security guard Zafir Ansari rescues Dani from a workplace fire drill gone wrong, it’s an obvious sign: PhD student Dani and ex-rugby player Zaf are destined to sleep together. But before she can explain that fact, a video of the heroic rescue goes viral. Now half the internet is shipping #DrRugbae—and Zaf is begging Dani to play along. Turns out, his sports charity for kids could really use the publicity. Lying to help children? Who on earth would refuse? Dani’s plan is simple: fake a relationship in public, seduce Zaf behind the scenes. The trouble is, grumpy Zaf’s secretly a hopeless romantic—and he’s determined to corrupt Dani’s stone-cold realism. Before long, he’s tackling her fears into the dirt. But the former sports star has issues of his own, and the walls around his heart are as thick as his... um, thighs.	Klutzy_While_3950
2nd Runnder-Up	You Had Me at Hola	Alexis Daria	After a messy public breakup, soap opera darling Jasmine Lin Rodriguez finds her face splashed across the tabloids. When she returns to her hometown of New York City to film the starring role in a bilingual romantic comedy for the number one streaming service in the country, Jasmine figures her new “Leading Lady Plan” should be easy enough to follow. After his last telenovela character was killed off, Ashton is worried his career is dead as well. Joining this new cast as a last-minute addition will give him the chance to show off his acting chops to American audiences and ping the radar of Hollywood casting agents. With their careers on the line, Jasmine and Ashton agree to rehearse in private. But rehearsal leads to kissing, and kissing leads to a behind-the-scenes romance worthy of a soap opera. While their on-screen performance improves, the media spotlight on Jasmine soon threatens to destroy her new image and expose Ashton’s most closely guarded secret.	chchchcher

Best Mystery or Thriller of 2020

Place	Title	Author	Description	Nominated
Winner TIED	Mexican Gothic	Silvia Moreno-Garcia	After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region. Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness. And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.	CrazyCatLadyForLife
Winner TIED	The Guest List	Lucy Foley	On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. It’s a wedding for a magazine, or for a celebrity: the designer dress, the remote location, the luxe party favors, the boutique whiskey. The cell phone service may be spotty and the waves may be rough, but every detail has been expertly planned and will be expertly executed. But perfection is for plans, and people are all too human. As the champagne is popped and the festivities begin, resentments and petty jealousies begin to mingle with the reminiscences and well wishes. The groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast. And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? And perhaps more important, why?	book0saurus
1st Runner-Up	The Thursday Murder Club	Richard Osman	In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case. As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it’s too late?	anchgu739

Best Short Story Collection of 2020

Place	Title	Editors	Description	Nominated
Winner	The Fight of the Century	Michael Chabon and Ayelet Walden	The American Civil Liberties Union began as a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller and Jane Addams. A century after its founding, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, prize-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the ACLU’s 100-year history. In Fight of the Century, bestselling and award-winning authors present unique literary takes on historic decisions like Brown v. Board of Education, the Scopes trial, Roe v. Wade, and more. Contributors include Geraldine Brooks, Michael Cunningham, Jennifer Egan, Dave Eggers, Louise Erdrich, Neil Gaiman, Lauren Groff, Marlon James, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Morgan Parker, Ann Patchett, Salman Rushdie, George Saunders, Elizabeth Strout, Jesmyn Ward, Meg Wolitzer, and more.	sbonkers

Best Graphic Novel of 2020

Place	Title	Author	Description	Nominated
Winner	Solutions and Other Problems	Allie Brosch	Solutions and Other Problems includes humorous stories from Allie Brosh’s childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life.	lydiardbell
1st Runner-Up	The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist	Adrian Tomine	What happens when a childhood hobby turns into a lifelong career? The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist, Adrian Tomine's funniest and most revealing foray into autobiography, offers an array of unexpected answers. When a sudden medical incident lands Tomine in the emergency room, he begins to question if it was really all worthwhile: despite the accolades, awards, and opportunities of a seemingly charmed career, it's the gaffes, humiliations, slights, and insults he's experienced (or caused) within the industry that loom largest in his memory. But as those memories are delineated in excruciatingly hilarious detail, a different, parallel narrative plays out in the background. In between chaotic book tours, disastrous interviews, and difficult interactions with other artists, life happens: Tomine fumbles his way into marriage, parenthood, and an indisputably fulfilling existence. While mining his conflicted relationship with comics and comics culture, Tomine illustrates the amusing absurdities of life and how we choose to spend our time.	Groodfeets

Best YA of 2020

Place	Title	Author	Description	Nominated
Winner	A Deadly Education	Naomi Novak	There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere. El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.	book0saurus
1st Runner-Up	The House in the Cerulean Sea	TJ Klune	Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages. When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days. But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps. Their caretaker is the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, who will do anything to keep his wards safe. As Arthur and Linus grow closer, long-held secrets are exposed, and Linus must make a choice: destroy a home or watch the world burn.	DunderMifflinthisisD
2nd Runner-Up	Cemetery Boys	Aiden Thomas	When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free. However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school's resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He's determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.	wenises3

Best Sci-Fi of 2020

Place	Title	Author	Description	Nominated
Winner	Axiom's End	Lindsay Ellis	A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father. Even though Cora hasn’t spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government—and with him in hiding, that attention is on her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father’s leaks are a hoax, and wants nothing to do with him—until she learns just how deeply entrenched her family is in the cover-up, and that an extraterrestrial presence has been on Earth for decades. Realizing the extent to which both she and the public have been lied to, she sets out to gather as much information as she can, and finds that the best way for her to uncover the truth is not as a whistleblower, but as an intermediary. The alien presence has been completely uncommunicative until she convinces one of them that she can act as their interpreter, becoming the first and only human vessel of communication. Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being human—and could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined.	newenglandredshirt
1st Runner-Up	Network Effect	Martha Wells	You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot. Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century.	pennydrdful
2nd Runnder-Up	The Space Between Worlds	Michaiah Johnson	Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there’s just one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying—from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn’t outrun. Cara’s life has been cut short on 372 worlds in total. On this Earth, however, Cara has survived. Identified as an outlier and therefore a perfect candidate for multiverse travel, Cara is plucked from the dirt of the wastelands. She works—and shamelessly flirts—with her enticing yet aloof handler, Dell, as the two women collect off-world data for the Eldridge Institute. So long as she can keep her head down and avoid trouble, Cara is on a sure path to citizenship and security. But trouble finds Cara when one of her eight remaining doppelgängers dies under mysterious circumstances, plunging her into a new world with an old secret. What she discovers will connect her past and her future in ways she could have never imagined—and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her world, but the entire multiverse.	OliviaPresteign

Best Fantasy of 2020

Place	Title	Author	Description	Nominated
Winner	Rhythm of War	Brandon Sanderson	After forming a coalition of human resistance against the enemy invasion, Dalinar Kholin and his Knights Radiant have spent a year fighting a protracted, brutal war. Neither side has gained an advantage, and the threat of a betrayal by Dalinar's crafty ally Taravangian looms over every strategic move. Now, as new technological discoveries by Navani Kholin's scholars begin to change the face of the war, the enemy prepares a bold and dangerous operation. The arms race that follows will challenge the very core of the Radiant ideals, and potentially reveal the secrets of the ancient tower that was once the heart of their strength. At the same time that Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with his changing role within the Knights Radiant, his Windrunners face their own problem: As more and more deadly enemy Fused awaken to wage war, no more honorspren are willing to bond with humans to increase the number of Radiants. Adolin and Shallan must lead the coalition’s envoy to the honorspren stronghold of Lasting Integrity and either convince the spren to join the cause against the evil god Odium, or personally face the storm of failure.	Pepe_Silviaa
1st Runner-Up	Piranesi	Susanna Clarke	Piranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.	warpedlucy
2nd Runnder-Up	The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue	V. E. Schwab	France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.	OliviaPresteign

Best Nonfiction of 2020

Place	Title	Author	Description	Nominated
Winner	Promised Land	Barack Obama	In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil. A Promised Land is extraordinarily intimate and introspective—the story of one man’s bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of “hope and change,” and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama’s conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.	pineapplesf
1st Runner-Up	The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz	Erik Larson	On Winston Churchill's first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally--and willing to fight to the end. Erik Larson shows how Churchill taught the British people "the art of being fearless." It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it's also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill's prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London.	candlesandpretense
2nd Runner-Up	Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents	Isabel Wilkerson	Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.	mleftpeel

Thank you for everyone who participated in this year's contest and especially thank you for bringing so many great books to our attention so we can add them to our reading lists! If you'd like to see more of the best books of 2020 here are the links to the individual contests:

• The Best Books of 2020 Megathread
• The Best Debut of 2020
• The Best Literary Fiction of 2020
• The Best Romance of 2020
• The Best Mystery or Thriller of 2020
• The Best Short Story Collection and Graphic Novel of 2020
• The Best YA of 2020
• The Best Sci-Fi of 2020
• The Best Fantasy of 2020
• The Best Nonfiction of 2020

If you'd like to see our previous contests, you can find them in the suggested reading section of our wiki.

• Best Books of 2019
• Best Books of 2018
• Best Books of 2017
• Best Books of 2016
• Best Books of 2015
• Best Books of 2014
• Best Books of 2013
• Best Books of the Decade 2010-2019

Hey guys, this post is not intended to tell you what to do. I'm not a financial advisor. This isn't my day job. I am not even a day trader. I learned the difference between call and put options like 3 months ago. I don't trade options. I don't even know how yet, to be frank. I recently got an RH account to try to learn how and then this shit blew up. This post is viewable to the general public and is not "insider knowledge". Everything I am about to say, I have gleaned from PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE DATA. That Hedge funds and other people in the media, the government, and in the general public ALL have access to. This is MORE VISIBLE than even Facebook. Let alone a country club or private "dinner party". Just saying. I am a real person. I am not a bot. I am not trying to screw anyone over. I like the stock I am choosing to gamble my disposable income on and think it will be a good investment regardless of the action over the next few weeks. 💎🙌
I CAN earn it back if I have to. I didn't stake my entire savings. I don't advise people to gamble with money they don't have. Not for financial reasons, solely, but more for mental health reasons.
Bias disclosure: I currently have 1882 shares of AMC at an average price of 9.27$ and I occupied Wall Street for a bit after the financial crisis, mostly on reddit as I was in medical school at the time, and supported occupy the SEC. Please see my post history. It's all there in the top posts. I have nothing to hide as I know I am a valued member of our society, I pay my taxes, I treat mental illness, I follow the law, and I don't normally gamble. This is not about the money for me personally, it's about principle. It's my token of rememberance for the failed actions of our government to hold these types of people accountable for the great recession and the subprime mortgage crisis. Also, WSB just happened to stumble upon these criminal vulture firms, in the act of active company rape and decided to give them a licking. If you were interested in GME and were one of the people on the other side [IE at one of these firms] reading the discussion over at WSB should have been your job as a form of market research. If you missed the warning, it's not Reddit's fault. If you suck at your job, it's not Reddit's fault. I don't see how pinning them in that position was illegal. It wasn't planned, it wasn't private. It developed organically like a movement. It continues to grow. Silencing us will only make it louder. You need to level the playing field and regulate the markets. What they did to defend themselves was illegal. The manipulation of the market and the media was illegal. The restriction of buying was illegal. The algorithmic ladder attacks were illegal. Thus I will hold the line, as I HAVE been since Tuesday. It's been a wild ride and I'm tired of this shitshow. I want to get back to normal investing after this fiasco. It's much better for my sleep.
*So here goes my theoretical question. AGAIN, I AM NOT saying you SHOULD do this. What you do is your call. I am asking if this has been done before or if it even can be done. I'm a n00b. Educate me. I'm trying to learn how the arena works. Like how it really works.
If short ladders by algorithms are being used to artificially deflate the stock price. IE: tanking the price of AMC with low trade volumes that they simply pass amongst themselves. I think yesterday it was 5% buy and hold and 95% sell for AMC but each time with low volumes in a very predictable pattern. (Trey from the link below explained it very well several times better than me.)...
What prevents retail traders from spacing out their purchase orders to 1-10 shares at a time and holding. Wouldn't that be better than just impulse buying 100 shares because you want in and you like the stock? Would it do the same thing as short laddering but in converse? Just curious. Would like to hear your opinions.
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I've been watching this channel to learn about AMC action and markets in general and it has been super educational.
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*I am not investing in AMC to make a quick buck. I am not a day trader or a pump and dumper. I am doing this because I think AMC will not die from the pandemic, was artificially deflated by vulture hedge funds, almost to the point of bankruptcy, and will NOW be able to pivot into a better business model with fresher screens, Hollywood exclusive releases, fancier theaters, pent up demand, etc., with the new capital and public interest. People LIKE the MOVIES. I grew up in NJ and movie theaters were a HUGE part of my life and many of my most memorable moments occurred at the movies. They make me warm and fuzzy. They have a certain nostalgia for me personally and I like supporting local business when I can. [I know AMC was bought by China, but the staff are all local]. In my opinion GME has an antiquated business model bc I buy games on STEAM and online. AMC was only struggling because of COVID and I don't think that otherwise people would completely stop going to the movies. We Americans LOVE going to the movies. I love going to the movies. That's just my opinion. Don't hate on me for it. I think that the "real value" of AMC is AT LEAST about 10-20$ which is what they were at before 2020 and it wasn't even their peak value. Even if the real value is closer to 5$, according to the arguments of experts, that's just their fucking opinion. It's a different situation now and I don't agree. Is that my right to disagree with them and pick my own stocks? Or can I only bet on what Fox Business tells me to. Or Jim Cramer. As an individual investor, am I free in this country to spend my money how I want on the stock market, or am I not? Am I free to make my own choices about whether to buy a stock or not? At least I think I should be. If I am not, it will solidify my opinion [and the watching world's opinion] that "free market" capitalism is indeed a farce. It will highly depreciate the value of the American dream and my respect for our current government. Which I was Ecstatic about during Election Day. [Disclosure, Bernie/Liz Bro, who voted for Biden and abstained from voting in 2016 due to bitterness about the primaries. Damn you DWS, you know what you did.] We all know the hedge funds sure are free to buy as much stock as they want to. Apparently even to buy stock that doesn't exist. WTF is that? Glad I found out now. Even if I lost 8k by betting it will be 10$ in 2022 rather than 5$ isn't it my CHOICE when to sell? Am I not free to HOLD the damn stock if in my opinion, I'm willing to consider it a tax on sending a giant reddit shaped middle finger into space to these people that rape companies regardless of the consequences to local staff? These parasites who prefer profit to morality and decency? Who sold their souls in the search of...what?...private islands and yachts? Let THIS MOMENT be your Memento Mori, you soulless motherfuckers. If you have any of it left, now is your time to search for it. Your actions will leave behind a husk of an economy and earth if left unchecked. We the Reddit "Retards" stumbled upon our teeth. For the first time the MARKET BITES BACK AND WE ARE NOT LETTING GO. WE ARE MAKING A STAND. FUCK YOU. We all know that the American Citizens will end up footing the bill anyway in taxes when all those people start relying on the government for survival after you motherfuckers artificially drive their employer into bankrupcy. FUCK YOU. You're already taking my money and you know it. I pay 47% in taxes due to my income and living in NYC. FUCK YOU for evading them with offshore accounts you GREEDY FUCKS. I am willing to lose 8k to do that (send you a message) and to rapidly learn about what is going on to manipulate markets. It's also partially the cost of education in my calculus. I have learned more in one week riding this wave, than in 4 years of getting my Economics degree. Either way, my current buy in as at 9.27 so I will hold at least until I make my initial investment back. I am also disclosing that if the stock goes up to 30$ I will likely SELL enough shares to cover half of my position because I am not a degenerate gambler and have been holding the line since Tuesday and it has taken a toll on my sleep and my sanity. I know I might lose some money and this is a crazy roller coaster. I want to get out most of my investment ASAP and then ride the wave to then END with you all. IF it happens. I know it may not. I don't care. The message seems to have been sent. Seems like they received it. But we don't know who will be regulated and how yet. I am tired of this fight. I don't like it. I don't want to do it anymore. But I stayed in for the principle not the principal, and for the people just finding out about this now to still be able to make a choice about what to do before we release them from the HOLD. This is a constantly evolving situation. Will they censor the media from talking about stocks? Why target Reddit? Reddit is LIKE the media. It's not a private chat room. THESE WORDS CAN BE READ BY ANYONE WITH AN INTERNET CONNECTION AND WE ARE AWARE OF THIS. If it falls, and I lose my money, I don't think the government will come in and save me. I don't expect them to. I EXPECT them to let this play out and not SIDE with these assholes. It upsets me that they seem to have decided to save Vulture capitalists. Anyway, despite my fear of posting this question and the associated rant, I really want to know the answer. Has it been done before by Algorithms pushing stocks higher? Is it possible to make a crowdsourced one? Is it legal?
If this gets removed or censored in some way. You have your answer I guess.
facta non verba.
Thanks.
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****IMPORTANT ADDENDUM****: I want to add that I was quite revved up when I wrote this and have had some time to reflect. I want to stress that it is not my intention to lay blame or judge any individual person or organization for the current situation [Of stacked odds in the retail investor vs hedge fund battle]. Emotions run high in the stock market. I know this through experience now. I was angry when I wrote this post. [I am leaving it unedited for posterity and since whoever needed to see it already saw it so removing it would be pointless] This should not become a witch hunt or be personal. These guys and girls are people too. They work for a corporation. They earn a paycheck. They have friends, partners, and families too. I am a person. You, reader, are a person. Don't make this personal. They didn't invent algorithms and weren't the ones that necessarily wanted to take these short positions. The market calculus at the time, dictated that this was a good call for them, it wasn't. We accidentally stumbled upon it on WSB and shit-posted about it until it blew up and they were really in a bind. I understand their calculus to a degree, but I am a "smooth brained" "retard" when it comes to these things. I am learning fast though. I understand that certain companies are likely to fail and it is possible to make a profit off that. My moral views about it are irrelevant as the situation they're in dictates their actions, not my personal views about that. I understand that they're getting screwed at the moment and I'm sorry. I truly hope most of them do not get too damaged by this and have had time to change their positions. But I also believe in the American dream, and think that the people that were able to find a good position in the stock market [the retail investors] should be rewarded. I sincerely hope this doesn't trigger a massive systemic issue and we don't accidentally BREAK the stock market with this action on those stocks. It doesn't seem like that would happen, but again smooth brain here. WE NEED THE MARKET TO STAY ALIVE to have peace and stability in this country. Reddit crew, I beseech you, please understand that the individuals involved are also playing by the rules given to them by the market. The problem I personally have is that the rules are different for the retail investors vs. the big institutions. I don't have a problem with them as people. I don't want to destroy anything or any institutions. That was never my goal as an activist nor as an investor-activist and I can only speak about myself. I just hope they could find it in their hearts to try to understand our outrage and consider playing by the rules or at least letting us play by the same rules. We are attacking them and they don't like it. I get it. In either case, please understand that I am not vested too strongly in either outcome anymore. I am tired and want to return to my regular life and will not be on reddit for a while, nor will I be investing any more money into the stock market for a while... The whole thing has taken it's toll on me and I am going back to my regular life. This is not my war.
On the government's side, I also understand that their goal is to enforce the rules. I hope I'm not breaking any here and will remove my posts if I am. I am not trying to cause a revolution. This country has been through too much and we finally have a shot at beating COVID and have a competent administration that can guide us back on the right track. I truly believe that the people in charge now are decent people and will do good for this country. If Biden says no more diamond hands, I will listen to Biden. What I do further with my shares shall remain my business otherwise. I will no longer tell anyone what I am doing with my shares. I realize now that this is not always a good idea and should be done with tact and experience. I am not a financial advisor. But also, financial advice and being one is not a joke. I realize this now. MEMEing about stocks is like MEMEing about drinking bleach. People might listen to you and sacrifice their lives on a losing battle. Not everyone knows the stakes and not everyone knows what they're doing. Now that this is blowing up, people can get really hurt financially. Reddit, we could be putting people in danger. I see this now. So you all, too, reading this, PLEASE be careful. About investing and about what you say on social media. INVEST but INVEST RESPONSIBLY and not with money you can not bear to lose. I pledge that I will personally no longer post any inflammatory shit on Reddit. Because now I'm afraid that WE are suddenly some form of weird market makers and I don't have as many lawyers as the hedge funds. I am tapping out from posting any more about the current battle. I wish you all luck on both sides, truly. In the next round tomorrow.
Dear Government: If you want this to end, don't you have the power to delist these "Meme" companies and distribute the shares somehow? If not, the the system is truly stronger than our institutions. If you do this, please make sure people don't lose their life savings somehow. That would be nice. Then, please try to make sure this won't happen again and that the SEC actually regulates and prosecutes people so their calculus isn't that the fines are too low to justify following the rules. [Just my humble opinion as a smooth brain with limited experience of markets. Do what you think is best and I will obey the laws as an individual]. Sorry you might disagree hedge fund guys and girls, but I am entitle to my opinion in a free country. This is my platform. You can have CNN and Fox News. Sorry for saying something. I promise this is the end of it. But also, a lot of market makers on TV seem to assert that the market will self correct and I don't see how this should be a large risk for overall wealth. Who knows, none of us can predict the future. But I think if a bunch of Reddit "retards" get a couple hundred thousand bucks, it won't change the overall situation or necessarily be a net negative; and may in fact trigger a renaissance in this country. You'll still be the biggest fish, just in a more biodiverse pond. It may just create a new class of petite bourgeoise in this country. But it is not likely that if they win, it will cause something like the French Revolution. There will be losers and winners, but in the end, it will be a good story for Hollywood. [Hopefully played on an AMC screen in a post covid world] But what do I know, I'm a just another "retard" on reddit.
I hope that after this, you are all decent humans at the end and don't break any law on all sides. [Reddit, Retail investors, Government, Hedge fund investors, etc] I hope we don't break the market over this. If that is a true risk we need to make the market unbreakable or this WILL keep happening. If anyone is resentful about losing future gains on a good position so the government can fix the market, don't be a fucking greedy idiot and look at what we've achieved so far. This is already a big win for the small guy. And if our markets are vulnerable, the next winners will not be idiots on reddit. But will likely be our enemies from abroad. Not to name names. We will ALL benefit more from long term stability than short term gains. We MUST come together as a country so we can spend that money in the future for things. If we break the stock market, we will not be able to buy things with all that worthless money. But if the system isn't at risk, I don't understand what all the hullabaloo is about. There have been countless bubbles before. Why weren't those regulated as much. Maybe they were and I'm an ignorant smooth brain. In any case, I hope that we can stop fighting over carcasses for greed. This was always about making the rules of the casino fair for me, personally. It's not life or death. I'm not an extremist or an ideologue. It's not about burning down the casino. I hope that the government will intervene if they think it is going to short circuit the whole thing and that people reading this gamble responsibly.
This will be my last post about this as I have a life to live.
-Tememachine OUT.
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EDIT 2: Now they're making fun of the movement. Fuck Wall Street. I hope they get what's coming to them one day. [In terms of regulation and prison sentences] I'm still out of this war. But seriously. Fuck them.

Happy Turkey Day everyone! I haven't done a mock in a loooooooooooooong time but since it's a special day where we all basically get the week off, eh what the hell right? No trades, 1 round, order according to Tankathon prior to the results of Thursday's games, explanations, this is what I would do if I was picking for each team, let's do this:
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1.01 New York Jets - Trevor Lawrence QB Clemson
Duh
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1.02 Jacksonville Jaguars - Justin Fields QB The Ohio State
Also duh
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1.03 Cincinnati Bengals - Penei Sewell OT Oregon
Have you seen what's happened to Joe Burrow? Duh x3
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1.04 Dallas Cowboys - Caleb Farley CB Virginia Tech
This is where the draft really begins with the draft order the way it is now. I will say that if Dallas was picking in the top 2, I would take Lawrence/Fields. However in this situation when neither is available, I'd rather address defense. I'm extremely tempted to take Micah Parson but with the help the Cowboys need at secondary I just can't ignore it. Ideally the 'Boys are a PRIME trade down candidate for a team that wants to jump up and grab Zach Wilson or Trey Lance but with no trades in this mock I obviously can't go down that route. There's plenty of potential for Trevon Diggs to keep improving and I liked Reggie Robinson in the 4th round but with Chidobe Awuzie and Jourdan Lewis hitting the FA market we just don't know yet what Dallas' plans are to improve at CB. In this case, I'm gonna start them off with my top rated CB in the class. What the Cowboys are getting in Farley is a corner that uses his length very well to disrupt routes and fight through the catch on 50/50 balls at about 6'2/6'3 and 200 lbs. Caleb also has great ball skills with a combined 6 INTs and 19 PDs in 2 seasons for the Hokies. Farley isn't the most explosive or speedy athlete, but he's got enough athleticism to hang with most receivers on the outside and with his great physical traits, I'm comfortable betting on him to be a very good CB at the NFL level.
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1.05 Washington Football Team - Zach Wilson QB BYU
Yup, my QB3 is Zach Wilson. It definitely feels like D.C. has given up on Dwayne Haskins already, so it's time to find the next starting QB in the nation's capital. No one has improved their stock this season more than the Cougars' Zach Wilson. With excellent athleticism, great arm strength, good touch, a solid sense of risk/reward when making decisions, and some improving accuracy, Zach Wilson has made himself into a top 3 QB in this class and a Heisman hopeful in college football. Zach has taken a monster leap from his first 2 years as a starter to this year, so while he does still have some ways to go in proving that his leap this year wasn't a fluke, he does have all the tools you want in a starting NFL QB. Going from a QB with fairly limited mobility like Haskins (and quite frankly the other QBs on their roster) to a dynamic runner like Wilson could also help the offense that has had issues on the OL. At the end of the day, WFT need to keep hammering the QB position until they get it right and I think that Zach Wilson gives them the best chance to do so.
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1.06 Los Angeles Chargers - Micah Parsons LB Penn State
Man would this team LOVE to have Penei Sewell. Oh well, we'll give them the next best player on the board. The Bolts aren't hopeless at the future of the LB position with the likes of Kenneth Murray, Kyzir White, and Drue Tranquill, but with Nick Vigil and Denzel Perryman hitting FA after this season there's easily room for Parsons to slot in on this defense. While Parsons hasn't played this year, he's still regarded as arguably the top defensive prospect in this entire class and for good reason. At 6'2 245 lbs, Micah has incredible range and elite athleticism for his size. His acumen as a pass rusher from an off-ball LB position only adds to his versatility. Guys with Parsons' physical and athletic profile are simply rare, so adding that to fill in for formerly entrenched veterans seems like a smart move to me. Micah will have to go through the growing pains of learning how to cover as a LB in the NFL like all rookie LBs go through, but his ceiling in that area is tremendously high. Micah projects as a do-it-all linebacker and without finding value here in regards to OL prospects, simply going BPA makes sense for the Chargers.
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1.07 New York Giants - Patrick Surtain II CB Alabama
I agonized over this pick for a while. I thought long and hard about taking Trey Lance here but as of writing, there's still enough time in the season for Daniel Jones to prove he deserves to enter 2021 as the starting QB for the Giants, especially coming off 2 strong games vs division opponents. Whether or not DJ is the guy will become much clearer as we get through the home stretch of the season, but for now I'm content adding talent to a DB room that needs it. With no LB or EDGE prospect that I feel comfortable taking here (I consider Greg Rousseau a 3-4 DE for the NYG defense), Surtain becomes the pick here. With no other reliable CB opposite James Bradberry, it's still too easy to pick on this Giants secondary. While Surtain still has some growing to do in terms of his footwork and his technical refinement, he's still been playing at a very high level for the Crimson Tide and his physical tools are exactly what you look for in an outside corner. With his speed, size, and length, there's a lot of upside for the Giants to work with on their way towards building a very respectable secondary, especially in a division where a rival has Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup, and Ceedee Lamb all on the same team.
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1.08 Atlanta Falcons - Gregory Rousseau EDGE Miami
I honestly don't think Rousseau is a top 10 prospect if you consider him an outside pass rusher. If you look at his Miami tape, his sacks from the outside weren't really quality sacks, and all his best pass rush reps came against interior offensive linemen. When rushing from a 5/6/7 tech alignment, there's some serious polish that Gregory needs to undergo in that regard. However, the upside with him is absolutely enormous with his quickness, size, and length. Seriously he's like a cut 6'6 270 lbs, he looks like he was grown in a mad scientist's lab somewhere. The Falcons need to swing big on an impact pass rusher and Rousseau gives the ATL just that potential. Dante Fowler is actually on pace to match his number of QB pressures from his 2019 season that got him his big money 3 year deal in the first place, however so far he only has 2.0 sacks in 2020. With Rousseau's ability to win vs guards, kicking him inside on passing downs next to Fowler could free up Dante to reach closer to his 2019 production. Ultimately, the Falcons are a team desperate for pass rush help, and Greg gives is the ultimate upside pick in that regard.
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1.09 Miami Dolphins via Houston Texans - Ja'Marr Chase WR LSU
Brian Flores is such a good coach man. I loved how hard he got his team to play every week last year with the roster he was given, and I'm happy that he's been able to find success in 2020 with his QBOTF and a tough defense with an identity based on physicality and man coverage. After being gifted a top 10 pick this year thanks to a Houston Texans team in disarray, I'm just simply going to give the Fins the best player left on the board in the 2019 Biletnikoff Award winner. We all know what Chase is capable off after watching his amazing sophomore campaign with Burrow and company. Pairing him with the likes of Tua and a DeVante Parker in top form should reap big rewards for the Dolphins' offense.
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1.10 Carolina Panthers - Trey Lance QB North Dakota State
I like Teddy Bridgewater man, I really do. I'm glad that he was able to get his career back on track after all the injuries he's had to battle through, but I just don't see him as the answer long term. I know it's cliché to talk about Teddy as a conservative passer that doesn't like throwing the ball downfield, but tbh whenever I watch the Panthers I always feel like he's just not aggressive enough. In comes Trey Lance, a QB with more than enough arm strength to push the ball downfield when he wants to. Lance has a lot of similar attributes to the other top QBs in this class: Mobility, arm strength, touch etc. In terms of reading the field and how quickly he sees the field, I think Trey is a little bit behind the other 3 QBs in the class. Now this isn't worrying enough to push him outside the top 10, but it does mean that he might not hit the ground running immediately like the other QBs and he'll probably need a bit more time to grow. Luckily Teddy is just good enough as a QB where you don't need to press Lance into service right out the gate. On top of that, having weapons like Christian McCaffery, DJ Moore, and Robby Anderson will help out anyone playing QB in Joe Brady's offense. I like what Matt Rhule and co. are building in the Bank of America stadium, getting their QBOTF is just icing on the cake.
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1.11 Detroit Lions - Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah LB Notre Dame
It seems like the Lions' linebacker corps has been in shambles forever now. The Jarrad Davis experiment did not work out whatsoever, and now Detroit still has a huge hole in the 2nd level of their defense. JOK give Detroit a true playmaker as a weakside LB who can make plays all over the field. With his amazing speed, acceleration, and explosiveness, JOK give the Lions a defensive chess piece who can chase down RBs as well as cover many different areas of the field against the pass with his speed. He might not have the size a typical LB has, but Jeremiah has the potential to finally be a stabilizing force at the 2nd level for a team that could really use a playmaker at LB.
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1.12 Minnesota Vikings - Mac Jones QB Alabama
I think we know why Minnesota would take a QB right? Okay, good. With that out of the way, let's get a bit into why I have Mac higher than Kyle Trask. At the end of the day for me it comes down to physical tools. I simply think that Jones has a stronger arm and better athleticism than Trask. Both of them are in pretty similar positions, clearly in the 3rd tier of QB prospects in the 2021 class with elite supporting casts that amplify their talent. Despite the fact that Kyle has the better size, Mac simply outclasses him just a little bit in the areas that I've really started to value the past couple years in QB prospects. For that reason, he gets the slight edge in going 12th to the Vikings for me.
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1.13 New England Patriots - Kyle Trask QB Florida
Hey look, another team in the teens that needs a future starting QB. Trask is the last of the QBs that I think can reasonably be taken in round 1. Cam Newton started off hot but thanks to COVID and a black hole of talent at the WR position outside of Jakobi Meyers, it unfortunately hasn't worked out for SuperCam so far in Foxboro. Also unfortunately for Cam, he's on the wrong side of 30 and on a 1 year deal, so it makes sense that the Pats should look for a more long term solution at the QB position. While I don't love Trask's arm talent and athleticism, there's still plenty to like about his touch, short-mid accuracy, and the fact that he's become this good the past 2 years after barely seeing much action as a starter at Florida or in high school. With that context, the top senior QB in the class has a higher ceiling than many might expect, and could be the answer New England is looking for as they enter life after Brady.
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1.14 San Francisco 49ers - Jaycee Horn CB South Carolina
Good lord it seems like this entire team's CB corps is hitting FA after this season. After bursting onto the national scene with a brilliant performance vs Seth Williams and Auburn, the son of New Orleans Saints great Joe Horn has ascended into 1st round status as one of the top CBs in this draft class. With his ball skills, length, and physicality, Jaycee more than makes up for his lack of elite athleticism by smothering WRs through force. If the Niners are unable to get a QB to go after Jimmy G's job, then landing one of the top 3 corners in this class is the next best scenario come April 2021.
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1.15 Denver Broncos - Shaun Wade CB The Ohio State
Garrett Bolles' career renaissance really saved me from having to choose between like 5000000 potential LTs to take here. Instead we get to address the secondary for the Broncos. With both Bolles and star FS Justin Simmons due for extensions in the offseason, CBs Bryce Callahan and/or AJ Bouye could be cap casualties according to Spotrac. With this in mind, it's easy to go ahead and take Shaun Wade here at 15. While Wade has had his early ups and downs in his first year at outside corner for the Buckeyes, the potential is enormous with his athleticism. Quick, fast, explosive, and with solid size to boot, Wade could make a solid duo with fellow Big 10 CB Michael Ojemudia in the future. This is a division that features the likes of a Derek Carr who's playing the best ball of his career, a Justin Herbert well on his way to ROY honors, and the incomparable Patrick Mahomes, you need a secondary that can compete. With what's left on the board, Wade gives Denver the best chance to do just that.
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1.16 Chicago Bears - Jalen Mayfield OT Michigan
Remember in 2018 when the Bills jumped up from about 21 or 22 in the draft up to 12, and then jumped up again on draft night to 7 in order to take Josh Allen? That's EXACTLY what the Bears need to do either before the draft or on draft night in 2021. They absolutely CANNOT come out of the first round without drafting a quarterback. Trubs and Foles are 1000000000000% not the answer and they need a fresh face under center in the worst way. Unfortunately in this mock they've won too many games so far this season to get one of the 1st round QBs, so let's get build some foundations pieces for the future of this team. I certainly fancy the Wolverines RT as a replacement for Bobby Massie in the Windy City at 15. Jalen Mayfield isn't the most polished OT prospect in this class and he could stand to add some more strength, but he does have a good base and great quickness in his lower half to mirror speed rushers. His length should check out for an NFL OT as well. Other than QB, Chicago can really stand to shore up their offensive line. While there are a lot of guys in contention for my OT2 spot at the moment, Mayfield is a strong upside pick at OT for the Bears who should grow into a nice pass protector for their QBOTF.
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1.17 Miami Dolphins - Najee Harris RB Alabama
I know I know, running backs don't matter. BUT, Miami has the luxury of having 4 picks in the top 50 in the draft as of Thanksgiving day. I know that you can find good RBs throughout the draft, but Harris is a pretty rare breed even among RBs. 6'2 230 lbs with natural, soft hands and acumen as a route runner. Najee is a true 3 down back that does everything you ask of him. His physical, downhill running style is something the Fins don't really have at his size, and his ability to get up to speed quickly makes him very hard to tackle beyond the LOS. Unlike most power backs though, Harris has a ton of value as a receiver and has made some truly fantastic catches for a WR, let alone a RB. I definitely think that Miami could do something like center here, but with their next pick only at 40, I still feel confident that a Creed Humphrey or Josh Meyers will be on the board at that pick. That gives me the flexibility to keep adding to this offense with a unique and dynamic skill player that should fit into the culture I want to build immediately.
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1.18 Baltimore Ravens - Rashod Bateman WR Minnesota
This might seem like a prime Kwity Paye spot with Matt Judon and Yannick Ngakoue are set to be FAs after this season, but there are a few reasons I didn't go that route. 1. I'm just not a Kwity Paye guy, lacks length and his 2019 was lacking for a guy with his physical tools. I know the Minnesota game was awesome but he was pretty quiet after that so far this year. 2. Baltimore will probably have enough cap space to bring back one of those pass rushers, and Jaylon Ferguson (to my utter shock) has actually been nice for Baltimore this season. 3. I think you'll be able to get some serious value in the 2nd round from this EDGE class. As to why I've gone with Bateman over a guy like Waddle or Devonta Smith, take 1 look at Bateman's 2019 to see why I'd be so excited about him. Size, hands, ability to separate at all 3 levels, fluidity in the hips, Rashod has all the main traits of a real quality NFL receiver. He won't be the fastest receiver, but despite that I think he's better with the ball in his hands than people think in terms of creating and being a playmaker that way. Baltimore has plenty of speed with Brown, Duvernay, Proche etc. in their WR corps, so getting someone with more size who can be reliable at all levels of the field should help Lamar Jackson and the Ravens find more stability in the passing game.
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1.19 Philadelphia Eagles - Jaylen Waddle WR Alabama
Ideally I'd be looking at one of the top 4 CBs or one of the top 2 LBs if you're Philly, but with all those guys off the board, WR is still an area that you can target. Travis Fulgham and Jalen Reagor are really the only solid building blocks in the WR crops and the Eagles can look to add to that with a top 10-15 player in this entire class rather than settling a little bit for a Tyson Campbell or a Dylan Moses here at 19. We all know just how good Waddle was this season before he went out for the year after an ACL injury. Reagor and Waddle would be one of the fastest WR pairings in the league, and with how good Jaylen is in the slot, you can put them on the same side of a formation while leaving Fulgham alone on an island and really stress a secondary that way (not to mention Ertz + Goedert). Hopefully after their OL gets healthy and another dynamic receiver gets added to the team, Carson Wentz can finally capture the form he had before his injury and guide Philadelphia back towards NFC contention.
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1.20 Arizona Cardinals - Travis Etienne RB Clemson
This just isn't a great value spot to take a position like CB, so the Cards can really move to BPA and I think that RB could be more of a need than people think. I like what Chase Edmonds has done in this offense this season, but I really think he's more just a complementary back than the #1 you would ask him to be if/when Kenyan Drake walks. More importantly, I think Etienne fits this offense like a glove. He'll get a ton of space to operate to quickly get to the 2nd level facing 6-man boxes in 10 personnel, which I think would favor his plant-and-go style of running. From there, we know what kind of game breaking speed Travis possesses. He's also improved in the passing game a lot over the past year. He's become a much more natural pass catcher and the improvements in his route running over the past year are apparent. I view this pick much like the CEH pick from the Chiefs last year, maybe not the position they need the most, but the fit is just too perfect to pass up when the value isn't there at other positions of need.
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1.21 Las Vegas Raiders - Kwity Paye EDGE Michigan
As of writing on the morning of 11/26/2020, Clelin Ferrell has 0.0 sacks in the 2020 NFL season for the Las Vegas Raiders. That is, to put it in the nicest way possible, NOT GOOD ENOUGH. While Kwity Paye isn't my favorite EDGE prospect, I think he fits the Raiders defense the best out of the guys left on the board. With his frame, explosiveness, and bend, there's a lot of good athletic traits to mold when projecting Paye to the NFL level. Las Vegas isn't hopeless when it comes to the pass rush thanks to Maxx Crosby, but Kwity can give them some more juice as an outside pass rusher that the Raiders are really looking for.
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1.22 Tampa Bay Buccaneers - Jackson Carman OT Clemson
With starting LT Donovan Smith becoming a likely cap casualty in 2021, Tampa Bay should be looking at addressing OT in round 1 for the 2nd straight draft. This pick might be a bit of a surprise for some initially. Chrisitan Darrisaw from Virginia Tech and Rashawn Slater from Northwestern seem to be the flavor of the month at OT, and a guy like Dillon Radunz could be seen as a much safer pick at LT. However I think Jackson Carman has a decent shout to be the 2nd LT off the board. Carman has excellent athleticism for his 6'5 240 lbs frame. His fluidity and quickness for his size just should not be physically possible. He's also got very strong hands that he uses to absolutely stonewall pass rushers if he's able to get his hands on you first. Jackson is far from a finished product, and he needs some further development in a few different technical areas of his game. Despite that, the upside is tremendous with Carman and with how quickly Tristan Wirfs adapted to life in the NFL, the Bucs may be able to do a similar development job with another incredible physical and athletic talent like Jackson Carman.
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1.23 Indianapolis Colts - Devonta Smith WR Alabama
This pick should not be a surprise to anyone. I really like Michael Pittman Jr's future prospects, but the Colts could still use another WR for the future. Devonta Smith for my money, is the next obvious top WR available at this spot and is kind of a no-brainer pick here. As part of the core 4 top WR prospects in this draft class, Smith's talent is apparent despite his wiry frame. Hands, quickness, fluidity, toughness, route running, Devonta brings a variety of skillsets to a Colts team still in need of outside weapons.
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1.24 Cleveland Browns - Joeseph Ossai EDGE/OLB Texas
Olivier Vernon is a fine player and the Browns do have the cap space to re-sign him if they wish, however he's on the wrong side of 30 and I think Ossai can give the Browns some versatility in terms of his defensive deployment. Ossai might not be a prototype 4-3 DE at only 6'3, but I think he's got some good arm length and he has a great frame to keep adding muscle from the 245 pounds he is right now. Joseph is a big of a raw pass rusher having recently moved to more of a rush backer role after playing some off-ball LB at Texas, but his burst and fluidity is fantastic and can perfectly translate to rushing the passer. With already 4.5 sacks in just 7 games this season for the Longhorns, Ossai has taken to the pass rush role nicely so far, which has helped his stock tremendously in terms of making him a potential top 20-25 pick in this years class. The 7-3 Cleveland Browns (the most 2020 statement ever) don't have a ton of needs, but they could certainly do with a high upside pass rusher.
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1.25 New York Jets via Seattle Seahawks - Rondale Moore WR Purdue
Let's keep getting weapons for TLaw man. I thought the Denzel Mims pick was excellent last year, but lord knows the Jets could use a lot more talent at WR. Specifically, after losing Robby Anderson to Carolina, the Jets could use an infusion of speed to help make up that big play hole. Enter Rondale Moore. Moore is arguably the most exciting playmaker in all of college football. This dude is electric with the ball in his hands. His incredible speed also gives him the ability to win deep against any coverage. The injury history and size will limit his stock somewhat, but considering his frame and that he looks to be about 185 lbs, I don't have as many concerns that he's only 5'8/5'9. At the end of the day I can trust that Rondale can be a nightmare for defenses with the ball in his hands.
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1.26 Green Bay Packers - Chris Olave WR The Ohio State
Oh hey look at this, another Big 10 WR goes off the board. I think Olave is one of the most underrated players so far. Olave is another receiver who can separate at all 3 levels, while providing toughness and reliable hands. Chris might not have the typical profile of a 50/50 catch winner, but his tape shows a guy that has the strength and the bounce to climb the ladder and win in contested catch situations. I also really like his ability as a route runner, as I think he shows intelligence in being able to read the leverage of CBs. I'm not quite sure what he'll run at the combine, but I am confident in his ability to separate and make catches, and I'm sure Aaron Rodgers will love those traits as well.
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1.27 Tennessee Titans - Hamilcar Rashed Jr EDGE Oregon State
Here's the EDGE prospect that no one is talking about. Rashed has a bit of a wiry frame at about 6'4 240 lbs, but his quickness, hands, and bend are all top notch for a pass rusher you take in the first round. Hamilcar and Harold Landry provide quite the athletic pass rush duo on each edge, and with the Titans' defensive woes this season, they need another potential difference maker on that end to complement the likes of Landry, Jeffery Simmons, and Kevin Byard.
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1.28 Buffalo Bills - Tyson Campbell CB Georgia
Tyson Campbell is a player whose physical traits suggest a better prospect than what he is, but he still has some serious potential as an outside corner. At about 6'2 190 with great long speed, Tyson has prototypical length and speed that you look for in a corner. The Bills obviously have a brilliant talent in Tre'Davious White, but they haven't really figured out the CB2 spot next to him yet. Campbell gives them a high upside chance to solve that, as they could become one of the deadlier CB duos with Campbell's athletic tools. I think Tyson still has some technical development to undergo, but he's faced and passed a lot of touch tests in the SEC, so he's certainly ready for the rigors of life as a starting corner in the NFL.
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1.29 Jacksonville Jaguars via Los Angeles Rams - Kyle Pitts TE Florida
Pitts is the top TE in this class bar none as far as I'm concerned. He might not have the speed of an Evan Engram or a Noah Fant, but his hands and catch radius are out of this world. Kyle is an absolute monster in the red zone and should be a reliable chain mover for Justin Fields. I also think Pitts has improved his physicality as a blocker this season at Florida. I thought about potentially going OT at this spot, but I've come to love Kyle's game this season and I think he's fairly comfortably higher than any OT available at 29. With their next pick at 2.34, the Jags can still get OL help for Fields in the 2nd round while securing him one of the best weapons in the draft.
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1.30 Kansas City Chiefs - Creed Humphrey OC Oklahoma
For a team as stacked as Kansas City, there's not really many ways to go wrong with this pick. I do see one hole that they should really be looking to plug up this offseason, and that's on the interior OL. They could probably use an upgrade at center specifically since they lost Mitch Morse a couple of offseasons ago. Creed Humphrey hasn't been as great as he's been in the past IMO, but he's still my top center in this class and a guy I'd still take in round 1. He's got a very good frame, good strength, strong hands, and solid quickness to get out in space. Creed has been a reliable part of some great Sooners OLs for the past 3 seasons, and he'll be able to carry over that experience very quickly to help protect Patrick Mahomes.
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1.31 New Orleans Saints - Eric Stokes CB Georgia
I feel like Stokes is a reach here in the first round, but corner is the only place I can see the Saints having a real pressing need. In all likelihood, I see the Saints as a trade down candidate for a team that wants to hop back in the 1st round to pick up a 5th year option. However with no trades, I'm just going to go to my next best CB on the board in Eric Stokes. Stokes isn't the most physical, as he has a very slim frame at 6'2 and maybe 180 lbs, but he's very long with really good ball skills. He competes at the catch point and has a good feel for when to get his arms up and play through the hands of a receiver. Eric also won't be the fastest CB, but he'll still add a bit of playmaking and talent to a team that doesn't really have another long term option opposite Marshon Lattimore at corner.
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1.32 Pittsburgh Steelers - Alex Leatherwood OT Alabama
I actually don't think Leatherwood is a tackle for every team in the NFL. His size, athleticism, and length would usually make for a smoother transition to tackle from guard, but I just don't think that he's played as well as he could have at LT. I understand it though, as moving from the right side of the left side of the line is hard enough, and to compound that with moving from guard to tackle is really asking a lot. With how the Steelers have been able to develop guys like Matt Feiler, Alejandro Villenueva, Zach Banner, and Chukuma Okorafor, I'm confident in their ability to grow a talent like Alex Leatherwood with Mike Munchak's understudy Shaun Sarrett as OL coach. Alex has all the length, strength, size, and quickness that you want for a tackle, but the footwork, punch timing, and balance can all use more work. With Villenueva among a number of key Steelers hitting FA in 2021, taking a OT in round 1 allows Pittsburgh to still have 3 tackles to fight for 2 starting spots.

Dominion being my only tabletop gaming experience for years I decided on a whim in 2018 that I wanted to learn to play Magic: The Gathering. That lead to discovering I live near some very nice FLGSs and now there's a 5x5 Kallax over in the corner. You know the story.
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Late last year 2020 seemed kind of magical. I was all set up to attend Geekway to the West, start frequenting the game tables at the local stores and having seen 10x10 challenges we (my wife and I) thought it would be fun (and perhaps impossible) to complete a 20x20 challenge.
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We did it and with a few days to spare. Here's what we played with a few notes for each. In no particular order.
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• Codenames: Duet: Delightful. I've never played actual codenames but this is a really compelling two player co-op experience. It's quick and exciting but doesn't generate the "stress" that equally tense competitive games can cause.
• Spirit Island: This game opened up table top gaming to me. I had not realized a game could be genuinely thrilling. Finding that one course of action that squeaks a win past seeming overwhelming opposition is amazing. Jagged Earth came out this year which adds even more to this monster of a game. The level to which theme and gameplay are meshed is unequalled in my experience and it's the only game on this list where I actually "feel" the drama of the narrative that emerges from the game. I think we actually played this more like 30 times.
• Keyflower: Probably my favorite competitive game. People say "knife fight in a phone booth" to describe interactive games but I would say this is more like a "knife fight in a knife drawer" at two players. You're keeping them from stabbing you with the one they have while simultaneously trying to prevent them from grabbing another knife. I've played it up to 5 and it's a great experience at all player counts.
• Kingdom Run: At some point I realized we were never going to complete the challenge if we stuck to only "adult" games. And this led to the most valuable outcome of this entire exercise. We now have a nightly family game session with our five year old, right after dinner. I hope to keep this tradition going as long as we're able. Kingdom Run is a dice chucking race game which primary found it's way into our collection by being on sale and not requiring any reading. Is it a good game? Eh, but it has a quality I value very highly. A little kid can play it and do well and yet it's not mind numbing for adults.
• Mandala: Yeah, I watch SUSD and participate in the DDoS attacks they coordinate against game inventories. This is probably my favorite strictly two player game the list. One of my favorite mechanisms is being able manipulate the ending condition of a game. Having the option of "end the game when I'm winning" on top of "win the game when it ends" multiplies the decision space and allows for some really clever play. I also really enjoy how the values of the various suits are set as you play.
• Fort: It's alright. If you've played Dominion a couple zillion times it's an interesting take on take building.
• Farm Rescue: Having custom dice and plastic mini's you'd be forgiven for thinking this is the latest Kickstarter hotness but it's actually a simple coop memory game where you have a grid of 25 tiles each with a combination of five colors and five animals. You roll a color die and animal die and flip that tile face down, roll that combo again and hope you remember where that tile was. Your kids are better than you at memory games. Our little guy plays this solo sometimes
• Oceans: This feels like MtG where you're building your cards as you go. Our favorite sessions are with scenarios that up the "danger" of the game, making extinction more likely. That your engine can "crash" if it over produces is really interesting. I need to find more games with that mechanism.
• Outfoxed!: A simple deduction co-op game with a Clue kind of flavor.
• Hive: No time for chess? Intrigued by an abstract where the number of pieces in place increase over time instead of decreases? Doing a 20x20 challenge and need a game that you can finish in 15ish minutes? It's really good.
• Leo Goes to the Barber: Another co-op memory game, but more challenging than Farm Rescue. If you only have room in your collection for one animal themed co-op memory game I'd go with this one.
• Aeon's End: I feel like I should like this one more than I do. It's a good game but Spirit Island is so dominant in the "heavy" co-op space that this game gets overshadowed
• Root: So we played root 20 times and 19 of those were two player. Most people would call this inadvisable. It was fun, I'll advise it. We placed straight 1 v 1, we played with bots, we played co-op. At this point Root feels like an entire game system. My main (gaming) goal for whenever people roam the earth again is to get a regular root group going.
• King of Tokyo: Our little guy exclusively goes for energy and buys as many cards as possible. He has a reasonable win rate. This is a very versatile game. Plays up to six, simple enough for non gamers and kids yet there's something there for the hobbyist as well. About half way through we started using the "Dark" edition which is a nice upgrade. Really nice visuals and the "wickedness" track is a welcome extra layer of consideration.
• Kingdomino: Another versatile game. Simple rules but some crunchy considerations. Along with King of Tokyo and Carcassonne it should be in your "people who know I'm into board games asked me to bring a game over" kit.
• The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine: A cooperative trick taker, the only other example I can think of being Fox in the Forest Duet. This is the better option in my opinion. Also, if you count each hand as a "play" you can play it 20 times in two days. Fun fact.
• Battle Line: We have the medieval flavor. Capturing cards with pretty art is more satisfying that capturing little plastic flags. We never played with the tactics cards or battlefield effects. It feels like this game already has plenty going on.
• Downforce: We never played this by its primary rules. In the back of the book is a "simple" variant which is indeed super simple. No actions, betting or special powers, just play cards to race cars. Our little guy loves it. I really appreciated that the designers included this as an official variant. Basically "my little downforce" without selling you a different box. Is anyone aware of other games that gave this kind of thing?
• Keyforge: This is the CCG for people who can't be bothered to live the CCG lifestyle. Garfield, the mad genius, solved the occasional "oops all swamps" "non-game" issue with MtG by making the cost of playing cards an opportunity cost rather than spending a resource and having you draw up a full hand every turn. It's fast, it's exciting, the decks have personality. We buy a pair of decks every once in a while and throw down. Most recently in the 3rd Annual Stocking Stuffer Invitational.
• Shards of Infinity: Since Dominion got us into this it seems appropriate to have at least one deckbuilder on the list. Is this a good game? Twenty games later... I'm not sure. Sometimes? I think there's probably something fundamentally broken about the rotating market mechanism. We've had a few games where what was revealed in the market in the first few turns seemed to setup an inevitable outcome that you then just have to play out. Not much fun for the winner or the loser. But unlike Ascension or StaHero Realms this game does have much more potential for comebacks and there can be some exciting reversals, especially when some deck thinning is available.

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So, that didn't take nearly as long to write about as it did to do. Any thoughts about these games? Anyone else setup a challenge like this.
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A closing comment for parents. It's been amazing seeing our 5 year old develop in gaming. I encourage you to find game that your kids can play and are entertaining for you as well. I see notable improvements in his reading, math and logic skills that I would all tie directly to our game nights.

Today, we're going to be talking about maybe my favorite female competitor of all time, the Empress of Tomorrow, the most dominant force that WWE has seen since maybe Hulk Hogan, Asuka. In NXT, she was the best champion they've ever had, but since she came to the main roster, she's seen some success, but she's also been hamstrung by some of the most baffling booking decisions ever that turned a dominant force of nature into a moderately strong, but kinda dumb upper-midcarder on the main roster. That's horrible, and it needs to be fixed. So let's fix it. In today's post, I'm going to try and fix Asuka's first two-and-a-half years on the main roster. From her debut in October 2017 all the way until Wrestlemania 36 in April of 2020. That should be more than enough time to get her back on track from a, shall we say, mixed start.
But let's start all the way back at her debut in 2015 on NXT. She was given the royal treatment on her way into the company, showing up in the crowd at Takeover: Brooklyn I next to Ric Flair, getting vignettes to hype up her debut, and signing her in-ring contract about a month later, which was interrupted by Emma and Dana Brooke. One week later, they were called into William Regal's office, and were shown an Asuka training montage. We couldn't see it, but we could hear punches, kicks, and screams, and we could see the horror on Emma and Dana's faces. They immediately knew that they had just made the worst mistake of their lives. From there, Asuka beat Dana at the next Takeover, Emma at the one after that, and just continued to rack up wins. In just over two years on the NXT roster, Asuka was pinned or submitted ZERO TIMES. In fact, she only competed in five matches that she didn't outright win. Three of them were Fatal 4-Ways on house shows where she didn't eat a pin, one was a house show tag match where she lost, but didn't eat a pin, and presumably killed and ate the heart of her former partner for handing her an L, and the fifth was in a #1 contender's battle royale on NXT TV, where she was eliminated late by Eva Marie and Nia Jax, aka the worst and second worst female wrestlers of all-time, I'll let you decide who goes where. (By the way, the match was actually won by Carmella, this will be important.) And also good news, Asuka kicked both of their asses just a few weeks later.
Soon enough, Asuka won the NXT Women's Championship from Bayley at Takeover: Dallas, and it was smooth sailing from there, perfectly undefeated on TV from then on. She ended up holding the NXT Women's Title for 523 days, longer than any John Cena World Title reign, longer than CM Punk's WWE Title reign, longer than the New Day's Tag Title reign of 2015-2016, even longer than Brock Lesnar's longest reign as Universal Champion. The only title reign in WWE's modern era that lasted longer was Pete Dunne's UK Title reign, and for like half of that reign, he didn't even have a show to call his own. There is a case to be made for Asuka being WWE's greatest champion ever. On the Mt. Rushmore of great NXT performers, Asuka is like three of them. And she also had some epic matches in that time: against Bayley both at Takeover: Dallas, and an even better sequel at Takeover: Brooklyn II; against Mickie James at Takeover: Toronto (probably Mickie's best match), an awesome Last Woman Standing match with Nikki Cross on TV, and two amazing matches with Ember Moon at Takeover: Orlando and Brooklyn III, the latter of which was her NXT swansong thanks to an injured collarbone, but this would be perfect timing, as now she would be ready for a callup.
And it was immediately messed up. Once vignettes started airing for her main roster debut, a bunch of women lined up to talk about how they were going to show Asuka a thing or two about the main roster. One of them, and the one who ended up getting Asuka's first main roster match at TLC 2017 was Emma! You know, the same Emma who looked like she's watching a snuff film back in Regal’s office? Yea, she's gonna be the one to bring her down a peg or two. Obviously she didn't, Asuka wrecked shop, and went on a really great run after that. She was the sole survivor for the Raw Women's team at Survivor Series, she won the first ever Women's Royal Rumble, and even won the first Mixed Match Challenge alongside the Miz to give her a little dose of comedic charm. However, this was all building to Wrestlemania 34, with Asuka challenging Charlotte Flair for the Smackdown Women's Championship. This was the litmus test. This would tell us just how all in the Dub was on Asuka. They weren't all in. Charlotte ended the legendary undefeated streak of Asuka at 914 days. At least it was a great match, easily the best women's match in Wrestlemania history, and it showed the world, at the very least, that Asuka belonged in that upper tier of women's competitors.
And besides, if they had Charlotte end the undefeated streak of Asuka, then they must be building up Charlotte for even bigger things, right? receives note Oh wait no, she lost the title to Carmella two nights later, via Money in the Bank cash-in. ... You know what, that's fine too I guess. Time was running out on her briefcase, and they probably wanted a strong Women's Champ on Raw since Ronda Rousey was about to be there, so Carmella couldn't go there, and they probably thought Carmella beating Charlotte would do less damage than Carmella beating Asuka, so fair enough, as long as Carmella is the transitional champion between Charlotte and Asuka, that's just fine. receives note Ok, let's see here, Asuka lost to Carmella at Money in the Bank after James Ellsworth returned, dressed in Asuka's clothes and caused a distraction. Like seriously, she just stood there for what felt like a goddamn eternity, mesmerized by this dork Ellsworth. Then Asuka lost to Carmella again at Extreme Rules with Ellsworth in a shark cage, after the cage was lowered to rescue Ellsworth, and Carmella rammed Asuka's head into the cage. And just like that, her mystique was gone.
Not long after that, she was relegated to a battle royal at Evolution, which she lost. Asuka and Naomi lost to the IIconics at Super Showdown, where at least she didn't eat the pin. She was eliminated at Survivor Series by Nia Jax less than a week after Nia exploded Becky Lynch's face, and she even lost Season 2 of the Mixed Match Challenge to Carmella and R-Truth, because Carmella is somehow Asuka's biggest rival. But things finally turned around for her in late November when she won a battle royal to join Charlotte and Becky Lynch in a TLC match for the Smackdown Women's Title, which she finally won!!! She got help from Ronda Rousey who pushed over the ladder that had Becky and Charlotte on it, but WHO CARES, ASUKA IS CHAMPION AT LAST!!!! From there, she had a match with Becky Lynch at the Royal Rumble, which ruled, and a match against Mandy Rose at Fastlane, which did not. But they had to be building up to Charlotte vs. Asuka II at Mania 35, like they just had to, with Becky off fighting Ronda for the Raw Title, this had to be the match. receives note I really don't like this bit anymore...
Asuka lost the title to Charlotte two weeks before Mania, so that they could shoehorn Charlotte into the Becky/Ronda match and make it a winner take all thing, leaving Asuka totally out of the Mania main card. She ended up in the pre-show women's battle royal, which surprise surprise was won by friggin' Carmella. She then teamed with Kairi Sane to become the Kabuki Warriors, because that's what the most dominant wrestler of my lifetime needs: backup. She was off TV for a shockingly long time, like they became a team right after Mania, and only had one televised match for like ten weeks. But they did eventually win the Women's Tag Titles in October, and had a pretty unremarkable run with it. She had another great match with Becky Lynch at the Rumble, which is now a yearly tradition. And then they lost the tag titles to BlissCross Applesauce at Mania 36. Well that was another year wasted, when are they finally going to pull the trigger on Asuka and let her dominate like I know she can?
receives note Oh boy, this again. Asuka won the Money in the Bank briefcase? receives another note And inside the briefcase was the Raw Women's Championship, which Becky Lynch had to vacate because of a pregnancy? OK, this is all good, but at this point, I'm kinda just waiting for the other shoe to drop. receives third note Yep, there it is, her second reign sucked balls. Versus Nia Jax at Backlash, double countout. Versus Nia the next night on Raw, win via fast count. Versus Charlotte on Raw, win via pre-match assault on Charlotte by Nia. Versus Sasha at Extreme Rules, no contest when Bayley put on the ref uniform and awarded Sasha the win. And finally Asuka lost the title to Sasha on Raw via COUNTOUT, to save Kairi Sane from a Bayley beating, which she didn't do, because that was the last time we saw Kairi in WWE. She did regain the Raw Title from Sasha at Summerslam, but not before losing to Bayley for her Smackdown Women's Title, because it’s impossible for Asuka to have a good day in WWE. Then she retained against Mickie James via botch, and had an actually pretty good match against Zelina Vega and that's where Asuka is now.
Granted, she is a Women's Grand Slam Champion, and they don't hand her many clean losses. But it seems like they know they shouldn't give her clean losses, so the bookers find every possible loophole, so that the losses she does take aren’t necessarily clean, but they still make her look dumb in the process. So let's fix that.
We begin with the vignettes that started airing for Asuka's debut in September of 2017. Now at this point, Triple H and Stephanie are trying to decide on where to place Asuka, and who her first opponent should be, and they land on Emma. She had some good matches with Asuka, and would make a good showcase to those who've never seen her. Emma's called into their office, and she's told that they want her to fight Asuka at the next PPV, and Emma tells them "absolutely not". Haitch and Steph are a bit stunned by this, why would Emma pass up this golden opportunity? Emma responds, "Fighting Asuka is like fighting a damn Terminator. You throw everything at her, you can hit her with your best shot, and she'll turn around, smile at you, and send it right back to you. I've fought her twice in NXT, and that's more than enough for my lifetime." This may make Emma look a bit cowardly, but she's a heel and that's not a character breaker, at least for me. And having Asuka be so intimidating that seasoned veterans like Emma are refusing to fight her will definitely turn some heads, I think. They keep asking around, and are having a hard time finding people willing to get in the ring with her. They've all either fought her in NXT, or have seen the carnage she brings. But there is one person who won't back down from Asuka, who isn't afraid of what Asuka may do to her, and that someone is Bayley.
Around this time, we're about three months removed from Bayley losing a match because she was too much of a wuss to use a kendo stick on Alexa Bliss, and around this time, she had just been cleared to return from a shoulder injury. She needs a rebound for her character. She needs to prove to everyone that she's learned from the humiliation she suffered at the hands of Alexa Bliss. And stepping into the ring with Asuka when no one else seems willing seems like a good case for Bayley getting her nerve back. Bayley does decently well against Asuka and fights valiantly, but the match is never really in doubt, and Asuka wins comfortably with the Asuka Lock. By the way, for this run, hopefully we can make Asuka a total tweener, just someone who craves competition, and will square up to anyone.
Next night on Raw, Asuka is set to face some jobber. The jobber is standing in the ring waiting for her opponent, and when Asuka's music hits, she nopes right out of there. She wants no part of Asuka, she tries to run up the ramp when Triple H stops her. The jobber doesn't want to get throttled by Asuka, and says she won't even ask for any money, she just wants out. Haitch offers to double her money, but she still says no. He ups it to triple money, she thinks and still says no. Haitch looks very annoyed, and glances at the crowd who clearly wants to see an Asuka match, and says "five times what you were getting". The jobber thinks, glances at Asuka, and weakly nods. She walks down to the ring, but Asuka rolls out to meet her, and she goes berserk on the jobber. Jobber girl takes a series of kicks and strikes and Asuka puts her away with the Asuka Lock. Afterwards, it's announced that women who compete against Asuka will receive five times what they normally receive for a match, so that they can actually have people willing to compete against her. Bayley says on Twitter that she wished that rule was in effect for her match, half-jokingly.
From here until Wrestlemania, I would change virtually nothing. This was the best period of her main roster run, mostly because she never friggin' lost. The Survivor Series match is particularly great here, because oddly enough, none of the women on the Smackdown side of this match had ever fought Asuka in NXT (Becky Lynch, Naomi, Carmella, Natalya, and Tamina). The only one who was in NXT at the same time as her was Carmella, and the one match they competed in together was that battle royale that Carmella won, so they could go into that match with plenty of unwarranted confidence. That confidence is wiped away when Asuka taps out Carmella and Naomi in the first two minutes. From there on, Asuka doesn't compete that much, let the match rebalance itself, until we get to the final two of Asuka and Natalya. Nattie pulls out all of her Hart tricks, but it's not nearly enough, and Asuka is the sole survivor.
I'd also like to throw in a match for her at Clash of Champions. At the real event, Asuka wasn't on the card, but I think a match against Mickie James would be really solid here. Their match at Takeover: Toronto was really good, and they could build on it, and further legitimize her with another win here. After that, she wins the Royal Rumble, no changes there, and she refuses to shake Ronda Rousey's hand, that was good. Not even the Baddest Woman on the Planet fazes her. She beats Nia Jax at Elimination Chamber to avoid her being added to Asuka's Mania match, and then at Fastlane, she challenges Charlotte to a match at Mania.
And here is where we start making big honkin' changes to the timeline, because at Mania 34, Asuka wins the Smackdown Women's Title. If you want to convince your casual, non-NXT-viewing audience that Asuka is as good as we who saw her in NXT think she is, you need to present her similarly, and a strong four months followed by a loss at Mania ain't gonna do that. So you have her win here, and let her soak in the joy of winning the title at Mania, instead of instantly taking away from that moment by making it about John Cena's fixation on the Undertaker. So Asuka is the champion now, but Charlotte thinks she has a plan for getting the title back. Charlotte thinks that Asuka is a flash in the pan, and that she can go hard out of the gate, but will tire out after a while. So, drawing influence from the 60-minute Broadways that her father would put on in the NWA, Charlotte challenges Asuka to a 30-minute Ironwoman match at Backlash. If nothing else, she claims that even if she doesn't win the title, she'll be the first person to make the Empress tap out. Hopefully that'll make the fans worry that her "never been pinned or submitted" streak will end here, but thankfully it doesn't. Asuka wins the match two falls to zero, but Charlotte comes really close to making Asuka tap, bridging the Figure-Four into the Figure-Eight just as time expires.
The next two pay-per-views show Asuka fighting against inferior competition who have a couple of tricks up their sleeves. At Money in the Bank, she fights Carmella. In this timeline, not only does she not have the Money in the Bank briefcase (she cashed it before Mania at some point), but she also already has James Ellsworth in her corner, and he tries to get involved in their title match at Money in the Bank, but gets kicked in the jaw so hard that the swelling finally gives him a chin, and from there, Asuka cruises to a victory. Then at Extreme Rules, Asuka fights both of the IIconics in a handicap match. Peyton and Billie get some offense going thanks to a couple of cheap shots, but Asuka makes Billie tap in the Lock.
Next comes Summerslam, and this part is tricky, because this is where the attempted Becky Lynch heel turn happened that accidentally turned her into a megastar. But we can solve that with basically the same match as in real life, just replace champion Carmella with champion Asuka. Doesn't that feel better? Like in real life, Charlotte wins the match by pinning Becky, and this causes Becky to fly off the handle and attack Charlotte afterwards. A rematch takes place at Hell in a Cell where the three women compete inside the Cell. These women throw everything at each other, and Becky wins the match, this time by pinning Charlotte. So we've managed to take the title off Asuka without pinning her, and let Becky and Charlotte have a run with the Smackdown Women's Title while their story is red-hot. Asuka can miss out on the next month or so of programming, no need to have her complicate a good story here.
The next time we see Asuka is at Evolution, where she winds up in the battle royale for a future title shot, and of course she wins the darn thing, last eliminating Nia Jax. The title match won't happen at Survivor Series though, as Becky Lynch is busy with Ronda Rousey, er I mean, busy getting her brains scrambled by Nia Jax, so she's once again in the 5-on-5 women's elimination match. Now at the real show, Raw pitched a shutout so that Baron Corbin could keep his GM job, but he lost it a month later anyway, and the whole storyline kinda sucked anyway, so let's kill it here. The women's elimination match opens the show, and Asuka once again has a really good showing here. Near the end, it comes down to Asuka and Naomi for Smackdown and Nia Jax for Raw. Corbin comes out to cheer on Nia, but he gets hit by a flying Rear View from Naomi, and Asuka wraps up Nia for the tap. Smackdown wins, this dumb storyline is put to bed immediately, so we don't have to think about it for the rest of the show, and just for good measure, Asuka kicks Baron in the head to put him out of his misery.
Asuka finally gets to cash in her title shot against Becky Lynch at TLC in a TLC match. And these two go absolutely mental on one another with ladder shots and dives. In the end, like in real life, Ronda Rousey comes out at the end, and tips over Becky's ladder as she's just fingertips away from the title. Yea, this might feel a bit like a cheap win for Asuka, but Ronda and Becky have been going back and forth on Twitter for months now, and this will be the opening salvo in their eventual Wrestlemania main event feud. So after Becky is taken out by Ronda, Asuka swoops in and takes the title. For those looking for a Rousey-less version of this match, may I interest you in their match the following month at the Royal Rumble, where Becky and Asuka fight one more time in a steel cage? This match opens the show, and they go fifteen minutes without ever once thinking about leaving the cage, because they're warriors. Asuka wins the match here, but Becky comes back at the end of the night and wins the Royal Rumble.
After this, Asuka gets a couple more title defenses under her belt. Naomi has been asking for a title shot for months after winning the Survivor Series match with Asuka, as well as having a strong showing in the Women's Royal Rumble. The match is competitive and won by Asuka. At Fastlane, it's Sonya Deville's turn. Mandy Rose got the match here in real life, but Sonya has more upside, so she'll get the match here, with Mandy at ringside. Sonya's MMA background actually matches up well against Asuka's submission and striking game, so Asuka has to pull some new stuff out of her bag, like maybe some aerial moves. Asuka scores another win here.
Wrestlemania 35 has to be Asuka vs. Charlotte, they're the two biggest women on the Smackdown side to go along with Becky and Ronda on the Raw side. In the build-up, Charlotte can talk about how much of a down year it's been for her. She's had so many title opportunities, and she’s only won one of them, she didn't even get to celebrate it, and she lost it a month later. And this crummy year started with her loss to Asuka, so a win over her here would be the start of her redemption. But don't feel too inspired by Charlotte's story, it's basically just "I'm a Flair, why am I not holding a title right now?" At the Mania match, Charlotte throws everything she can at Asuka, but it does nothing. Asuka kicks out of a Big Boot at 1. She takes back-to-back Natural Selections and kicks out at two. She gets put in the Figure-Four, but Asuka reverses the pressure. Charlotte's thinking "what do I have left?". But then, she has an evil little epiphany. She "accidentally" takes down the ref with a Big Boot, and she calls for another ref. And that ref is Charles Robinson. Oh no. Byron Saxton immediately knows that something's fucky. Charlotte puts Asuka in the Figure-Four, and as soon as Robinson gets in the ring, he calls for the bell. Asuka loses the match via screwjob, ending her undefeated streak at 1,278 days. WWE loves to do this kind of finish, but here it would have some real heft to it.
In real life, Charlotte ended Asuka's undefeated streak, but didn't do much with it. She lost the title to Carmella right afterwards, and has only had a handful of short reigns since then, none of them lasting longer than a pay-per-view or a Takeover cycle. At least Brock killing the Streak turned him into a monster again, and he went on the run of his life not long after. But in this story, ending Asuka's undefeated streak by screwing her over like this would turn Charlotte into the most detestable person on the face of the Earth. For her to steal Asuka's streak like this would just be the worst, and it would galvanize people against Charlotte. Also, by doing it this way, you can actually get two rubs from Asuka's streak, this one and whoever actually beats her cleanly down the road. Just have the face commentators say that Asuka never really lost, it would still work.
After the bell rings, Robinson and Charlotte am-scray and Asuka is bewildered. She goes to the first ref and pleads her case but to no avail, it wasn't his decision. Then she sees Robinson and Charlotte halfway up the ramp and she puts two and two together. She marches up the ramp, and Charlotte wants no part in Asuka's fury, so she literally throws Robinson in front of her, and Asuka feasts on Robinson's bones. She spends the next couple of minutes absolutely decimating Robinson until the other refs try to make the save, but no dice. Robinson is a dead man walking, and Asuka beats him down to the point where we don't see him again after this. Charlotte watches this from the top of the ramp, and thinks "I won the title, but what did it cost?" And Asuka basically responds "everything".
Next Smackdown, Charlotte comes out with a mile-wide smile. She gloats about ending the undefeated streak of Asuka, and berates the fans for siding against the greatest Women's Champion of all time. She also reveals that because Asuka laid hands on a ref, she's been suspended for thirty days. Ha ha ha. But that doesn't stop Asuka from trying to get another score of revenge. She hops the barricade, but gets held back by an army of refs, while Charlotte points and laughs. Suddenly though, Asuka breaks free, gets in the ring, and unleashes a flurry of punches on Charlotte. It looks like a scene from Fist of the North Star and Charlotte is already dead. Eventually, Asuka's dragged away by the police, and Charlotte is clutching her title, almost in the fetal position.
From there, Asuka's suspension is lengthened from 30 days to 90 days. During the Superstar Shake-Up, Bayley comes over from Raw, and stands up for Asuka. She says that screwing over Asuka like that was "a coward move", and if that's what Charlotte's snuck to, then she'll be easy pickings for her. Also during this time, it might be wise for Charlotte to get someone to help her from ringside. I mean, she is a Queen, maybe she needs a Princess? Maybe one from the Staten Island part of New York? I think Charlotte and Carmella would make a nice, little pairing while Charlotte is the champ.
Bayley gets three shots at the Smackdown Women's Title. First up, Money in the Bank, standard match, Carmella brains Bayley with the Title, and holds down Bayley's feet while Charlotte covers her. Charlotte scores the win. Next up, Stomping Grounds, Carmella’s banned from ringside. Bayley's doing well here, and may be on the verge of a win, but when Bayley is down in the corner and the ref goes to check on her, a pair of brass knuckles goes flying into the ring from the crowd. Charlotte catches it, but the person who threw it isn't seen on camera. Charlotte slips them on and KO punches Bayley. Finally at Extreme Rules, these two fight in a steel cage match. Once again, Bayley is looking good, until Carmella reaches through the hole of the cage and grabs Bayley's leg. She pulls her leg into the hole, trapping Bayley in the cage wall. Charlotte looks very satisfied, and starts to climb out of the cage. As she turns to wave goodbye to Bayley, Asuka's music hits. Her suspension would be up by now, and she full-sprints down to the cage, and climbs up it, meeting Charlotte at the top. Carmella manages to grab Asuka's leg and tries to yank her back down, but Asuka is able to climb back down and gives a righteous beating to Carmella. So now Charlotte’s on a time-limit; she needs to end the match before Asuka gets done munching on Carmella, so she drops back into the ring, and just starts booting Bayley in the head over and over again. Charlotte thinks she’s got the win here, so she pulls Bayley out of the cage wall, and covers but Bayley just barely kicks out. Carmella’s been killed off by Asuka by now, and she’s starting to climb the cage, so all Charlotte can do is bolt up the opposite wall to escape the cage. Charlotte gets over just as Asuka lands in the ring, and survives the cage match, but she knows what’s coming next, and she has to stop it from happening.
On the next Smackdown, it’s announced for Summerslam, Asuka vs. Charlotte for the Smackdown Women’s Title. Charlotte and Carmella storm into Trips and Steph’s office, and demand to know why Asuka is being rewarded with a title shot. “The last memory we had of Asuka before last Sunday was of her breaking her suspension to earn an even longer suspension. She shouldn’t be getting title shots, she should be in jail.” Steph calms her down and says that for starters, Asuka’s never got her rematch from Wrestlemania. But she also says that in the contract for the match, Asuka has to play nice in the build to Summerslam. If she attacks either Charlotte or Carmella in the build-up, the match is off. But if they attack Asuka, then she’s free to defend herself. Charlotte and Carmella glance at each other and they know what they have to do: piss off Asuka. They spend the next four weeks doing whatever they can to provoke a reaction. They trash Asuka’s locker room, they crash her rental car, they beat down Bayley, who’s become something like Asuka’s friendly rival by this point. At one point, Charlotte even makes some racist comments toward Asuka. Now normally I don’t like racism to be used as a heel tactic (it feels lazy), but if the goal is to provoke a reaction, it might be just the ticket. Asuka nearly bites there, but restrains herself and walks away. Go home show to Summerslam, Charlotte and Asuka sign the contract for Summerslam, and Charlotte spends the whole time talking about how she’s going to retain the title, and hold it for the next decade, and how there’s nothing Asuka can do to stop it. Asuka simply says “For now, I can’t, but she can”, and Bayley slides in behind Charlotte and smashes her in the head. Bayley tries to fight them 2-on-1, but can only do so much. After a bit of a beatdown, Charlotte’s holding Bayley up, telling Carmella to hit Bayley with a Superkick. But as she goes for it, Asuka dives in front of the kick and takes the Superkick for Bayley. Carmella has now officially laid hands, er feet, on Asuka, meaning she’s free to defend herself, and she does so with extreme prejudice. Asuka annihilates Carmella, and when Charlotte goes to try to save her partner, she can’t, because doing so will require attacking Asuka, and that would mean they’d have to fight. So Charlotte throws up her hands and walks away, leaving Carmella to fruitlessly tap out in the Asuka Lock.
At Summerslam, Carmella’s out of the picture, and it’s just Charlotte and Asuka, and Charlotte is being humbled, she gets blown up at every opportunity by Asuka, who’s just having fun out there. After one particularly rough sequence, Charlotte’s just like “nope, I’m done here”, and peaces out, running fast as her beaten up legs will carry her. She loses by countout, but retains. Charlotte spends the next several weeks just trying to hide from Asuka basically, because she knows Asuka wants blood. For Clash of Champions, it’ll be these two again, this time Falls Count Anywhere so that Charlotte can’t try to leg it. Charlotte goes to Steph and Triple H again, but this time, instead of confidently trying to disparage Asuka, she’s nervous, paranoid, and panicky. She doesn’t want this kind of match, and legitimately begs for the stipulation to be removed. Steph tells her to get a hold of herself, and says that the match will go on as announced, and that Charlotte is the champion, hell Charlotte is the Queen, and she needs to remember that and start conducting herself as such. So Charlotte sucks it up, and straightens her posture, thanks Steph and leaves. Although, PG swearing can be heard on the other side of the door as Charlotte storms off in frustration. Right before the match happens, Asuka knows that Carmella will be assisting Charlotte in this match, so Asuka stalks Carmella backstage, and once she’s alone, Asuka pounces on her, locking her in the Asuka Lock, and once she’s worn out, she throws her in a closet, and props the door shut. Charlotte comes out first, wondering where in the world Carmella is, but an evil smile from Asuka during her entrance gives her all the information she needs. The two get to brawling and the action spills backstage pretty quickly. Charlotte knows her best bet is to find Carmella, so they can team up on Asuka. So she spends more time opening every door looking for Mella, then actually engaging with Asuka. After about ten minutes, Charlotte eventually finds the locker room and frees Carmella, but by this point, they’re both on spaghetti legs. Asuka dispatches Carmella one more time, puts Charlotte in the Lock, and Charlotte taps out. Asuka is back on top.
Hell in a Cell is next, but by this point, Charlotte is just tired. She’s been put through the Asuka meat grinder a bunch by this point, and Charlotte is about done with her. But Carmella motivates her to pick her chin back up and to keep being the Queen of WWE. And this is just enough to get Charlotte going again. Charlotte wins a #1 contender’s match, she wins a couple of big matches on Smackdown, and by the time the PPV rolls around, it’s actually Charlotte’s idea to put the match in the Cell. Asuka happily agrees, these two have met in the Cell before, two years ago alongside Becky Lynch, and now they’ll face off one more time. This is probably Asuka and Charlotte’s most competitive match, Charlotte looks particularly strong here, and pushes Asuka to her absolute limit, but after a grueling 25-minute match, Asuka just defeats Charlotte and walks away with the belt. Carmella consoles a frustrated Charlotte in the post-match, and they go on to win the Women’s Tag Titles not long after this.
Next is Survivor Series, and the match is once again a triple threat between the three women’s champions, Asuka as Smackdown Champ vs. Becky Lynch as Raw Champ vs. Shayna Baszler as NXT Champ. This match will rule, these three women are maybe the best in the business at what they do (Becky as a beloved face, Shayna as a total asshole, and Asuka as being Asuka). The three women trade the advantage back and forth, but in the end, Asuka has the Asuka Lock on Shayna, but Becky makes the save. Becky and Asuka go for a bit before Asuka puts the Lock on Becky, Becky is moments from tapping when Shayna knees Asuka in the head, locks on the Kirifuda Clutch, and taps out Becky. Shayna wins the match, and afterward, Asuka is fuming. On the next Raw, Asuka comes out, screaming in Japanese at Becky, but Becky calms her down by talking back to her in Japanese, and Asuka simply replies “you don’t deserve that title”, and storms off. Couple weeks later, Asuka wins a multi-brand battle royale for a shot at the Raw Women’s Title, much like the one that happened in real-life before Summerslam 2020. In this match, we get the final two of Asuka and Shayna Baszler, and after some intense back-and-forth, Asuka takes out Shayna. Asuka faces off with Becky Lynch at TLC, and during this match, Becky Lynch takes Asuka’s left arm to town. She plays a smart, submission-based game with Asuka, where she never relents on the arm, constantly softening it up for the Dis-Arm-Her. Near the end of the match, Asuka gets the Lock on, but her arm is having trouble keeping Becky in place, so it’s basically just a rear choke instead of the Asuka Lock, and Becky manages to free herself, slam Asuka’s face to the mat, and lock on the Dis-Arm-Her. Asuka stays in the hold for a long time, but finally after a full minute in the hold, Asuka… taps. After 1,530 days, more than four years, Asuka has cleanly tasted defeat at the hands of The Man, Becky Lynch. Becky is stunned, she was sure she could win, but even still, seeing Asuka tap is like seeing God bleed. Becky celebrates her win while keeping a wary eye on Asuka to make sure she doesn’t snap. Eventually, Asuka gets up and gets face-to-face with Becky and tells her, “you were ready for Asuka”. Asuka raises Becky’s hand and pays her respect before bowing and leaving the ring to let Becky celebrate for real. The torch has officially been passed.
From here on, we see a much more reserved and, dare I say, friendly Asuka. She could still turn you into a jigsaw puzzle, but now she can kind of relax a bit. For the Royal Rumble, Bayley earns a shot at the title, and Asuka is happy to give her friend a chance, they start getting real buddy-buddy. In the build, Asuka and Bayley actually earn a crack at Charlotte and Carmella’s Women’s Tag Titles. They lose that match, with Charlotte pinning Bayley. Charlotte runs off, celebrating like she just won the everything, finally happy in the knowledge that she technically beat Asuka. But the loss doesn’t get to Asuka like it would in days past. Asuka and Bayley fight at the Rumble, and it’s a fun back-and-forth match where Bayley ends up looking pretty good, but Asuka just gets the win. At Elimination Chamber, she faces a new target, Alexa Bliss. In this story, she still has Nikki Cross in her corner, but they’re both heel, with Nikki working as Alexa’s deranged enforcer. Alexa is absolutely ruthless in this match, absolutely taking it to Asuka, with Nikki getting in little pot-shots wherever she can. Alexa straight-up dominates a lot of the match, but Asuka snags a lucky Asuka Lock and forces Alexa to tap. Asuka survives, but something seems off.
Finally, we’re on the Road to Wrestlemania, and the Royal Rumble winner, Shayna Baszler has a decision to make. Does she get a rematch with Rhea Ripley, who just took her NXT Women’s Title? Does she face Becky Lynch, who Baszler made tap at Survivor Series? Or does she go for Asuka, who seems to be ripe for the picking? It’s announced on the first Raw after Elimination Chamber that Shayna will make her decision. All three women’s champions meet in the ring and await Shayna’s decision. When Shayna gets in the ring, she first addresses Rhea. She says that that title isn’t worth her time anymore, she wants that Wrestlemania payday, so she tells Rhea to take a hike, which she does. This leaves just Becky and Asuka, when suddenly Ronda Rousey sneaks in, and bashes Becky, while Shayna goes for Asuka. After a quick beatdown, Rousey has Becky in her Armbar, while Shayna has the Kirifuda Clutch on Asuka, and the two Mania matches take shape. Later, Shayna reveals that she picked Asuka for two reasons. One: Becky and Ronda have some unfinished business, so Shayna basically let Ronda take Becky. And two: Asuka has gone soft, “she’s no empress, she’s a clown who tries and fails to be a badass”. And she confidently boasts that there’s nothing Asuka can do that she isn’t ready for. On the first night of Wrestlemania 36, Ronda defeats Becky to reclaim the Raw Women’s Title with the help of the other Horsewomen. Jessamyn Duke and Marina Shafir win a Four-Way Tag Match against the champs Charlotte and Carmella, Bayley and Sasha, and the IIconics, and then on Night Two, it’s Shayna vs. Asuka, and Asuka gets bodied. Shayna just comes out of the gates swinging, and never relents, never gives Asuka a moment of reprieve, and just batters her, winning convincingly with the Kirifuda Clutch. From there, all four MMA Horsewomen hold the main roster gold, and Asuka may need a couple of months to regroup and come back stronger, but that I think is enough for now. I’m nearly at the character limit, so thanks guys and I’ll see y’all later.