#let's hope Oct shapes up to have more interesting content before we hit the start of the climax

[muthaz-rapapa]

Just watched the episode and I also have a theory about The Witch's past + her relationship with the legendary cure (I'm gonna call her Cure Palm because of her hairstyle lol): Maybe the Witch used to be a mermaid and she and Cure Palm used to be best friends which could parallel Manatsu and Laura respectively. At some point, Cure Palm made some kind of promise to the witch that she'll become a precure as well so that they can always be together. However only the former became a precure and the witch became jealous and bitter accusing her for being a liar thus breaking up their friendship forever.

I also noticed that she wearing some kind of helmet(?) and that when she gets "angry" she lets out an agonizing scream. Maybe she's actually brainwashed and she's trying to remember something (Cure Palm) but everytime she does the helmet shocks her and obviously The Butler is the one manipulating her and the true mastermind. I hope this helps with your theory.

Oooo! 😯 I'm liking this theory! 😃 And I like calling the legendary Cure "Cure Palm" too because honestly, isn't that the first thing that comes to mind when you see that hair? 😂 Moving along, based on what we've been shown so far, I'm glad we agree that a friendship may have existed between "Palm" and the Witch at least. What with "Palm" asking, almost sadly, the current Cures to save the Witch "who turned into the Witch of Delays" (very intriguing choice of words here) and the Witch crying out for the laughing girl in her dreams while anguishing over who she could possibly be. Yea...can't be just a simple case of pity here. They've got history. And definitely, parallels are nothing new to Precure. "Palm" is obviously from the land going by her theme (palm tree, leaves, greenery) and the Land ring she gives to the Cures. That leaves the question of who will give them the Marine ring later on. My bet is on the Mermaid Queen rather than the Witch, though. I mean, she was the one who gave Laura the Tropical Pacts and it's implied the Forest Mermaid who left the Perfume Shiny Ring in that cave was her. So yea, I don't think the story's done with her yet and I'm curious to see how much she knows about the Witch herself. Ah, but I digress. Land and Sea. Absolutely there's going to be something interesting happening there because the main relationship of the season is the one between Manatsu (Land) and Laura (Sea). Perhaps to avoid making the same mistakes of the past, they'll have to find a way to overcome the crisis together while still being able to protect their friendship. I mean, it's totally predictable because it's Precure. Hell, I suspect they might even have to part ways like teams from previous seasons did. But the important thing is how well it's actually executed. It'll be sad but it needs to contain hope too. The hope that in the future, they'll be reunited again to avoid the possible tragedy of the past. Finally, that Witch's helmet (which is by far the most mysterious thing in TroPre atm, go figure) and the seahorse butler do seem to go well hand-in-hand when it comes to suspicions. It certainly won't be the first time a big bad boss got manipulated by their right-hand underling and so far, Butler is the only one who's pushing his co-workers to steal Motivational Power while they're all just "meh". 29 episodes so far. Possibly 20 more. So that's about 5 months. ...4 months if they intend to end the season in January to get back onto "regular" schedule (starting new season in Feb) so that would be 45 episodes total? I'm not sure......but the writers definitely have enough time to give us a satisfying lore and conclusion so long as they cut back on the pointless fillers.

[thoseindarkness]

DtD News Nov 2020

Thank you to anyone who came back for this nonsense. For brevity I have an announcement that I want to make up front. I didn't have room for it last month so I pushed it back, but I can't anymore. I had to make one major revision to the published story. I want people to know about it.

This is the TLDR version. I tell a more in-depth story at the end.

ANNOUNCEMENT

The summary: I had a bad outline walking into writing Mistrust Goes Both Ways. I ran into a problem mid-story. Instead of stopping and taking the time I needed, I challenged myself to creatively solve my way out of my problems. I re-started with about half of what I'd written, published Mistrust Goes Both Ways, and restarting my outline with high hopes.  I was proud of myself for rising to the challenge.

Despite my best efforts, it didn't work out. In the end, I had to scrap my outline. I was able to structure the end I was going for and spent the end of 2019 trying to link the first two stories to the ending I wanted. It wasn't working. Then TRoS. Then COVID. Here we are. In June, I started experimenting with scrapping Mistrust and restarting from Read Between.

Mistrust Goes Both Ways will not be part of the finished story when I'm done. I know some of you love it. I love it. I have no intention of taking it down. I might, for a short time, when I'm posting the final story. I'll let you know if that happens and it will go back up afterward. I don't have specifics as there's no point planning for it now.

For right now, nothing is changing on my AO3 account. Feel free to read and comment to your hearts content. I promise it will stay up forever to remind me that some mistakes are worth sharing with others. I learned good lessons from this mistake. It stays.

That being said I think I owe you an actual update on the progress of this story.

WHAT THE HELL I DID THIS MONTH

After my first update I needed to re-integrate with Reylo friends. Funnily enough, that pulled me into another fic. I've been working on that between following this election. Now that it's called I can get back to writing. I tried a couple of times since I voted on Oct 30th, but I knew it wasn't what I wanted to be thinking about.

Thankfully, I've also begun doing more social/political essays lately. I'm not sure what overall form or shape those may take and I haven't published any. Still, I was creative and I did plenty of writing. Interestingly, all this political focus is good for Deceive the Deceiver. Spinning and listening to conspiracy theories is a big part of weaving a world like this one. A great deal comes from my thoughts and perceptions of the real world.

WHERE DTD IS

As of right now I am in the process of first drafting the entire story with Read Between as the starting point. That is, every one of the short stories in the series. What I'm doing is somewhere between a history, an outline and random scene writing. All of these elements are currently strung together in one long, continuous, chronological, first draft. It's everything from the history before Read Between (which starts in the 1930's), all the way to the final scene of DtD.

I'm taking all the good ideas I've created in the last couple of years and re-organizing them into a first pass. It's the skeleton and some of the meat now. I'm slowly building out now that I have a blank-er slate. It's about choosing what works and what doesn't.

I call it accordion writing. It just gets bigger and bigger. This outline will later level up into the first full story drafts for each part. I've got so much history when I finish this I might… I'm getting ahead of myself. Don't want to give too many clues away.

Another interesting thing that's happened recently is I've started pulling bits of other fic ideas that I’m just not gonna finish. A big chuck of the history I stole from a modern/academia AU where Ben and Rey are history students specializing in the ancient Jedi religion. Another was a complication between characters came from a canon story where I wanted to paint the relationship with a new layer. We'll see if I can pull that off.

I spent a lot of time prior to this year focusing on the heroes but my villains hadn't gotten much love. Filling in the history has given me a chance to flesh out the villains. All their moves and countermoves, woven through the bits I already have, are spinning a pretty tapestry. Oh, the villains are so much fun to write!

This other fic came together in the same sort of accordion fashion and it's been fun working through the kinks in the process now that I've seen some of the weak points on a scale like DtD. I think I've mentioned, but this is a writing experiment for me and I'm most invested now in improving my process and clue-threading with DtD. This other fic is helping me test it on a smaller scale.

Not that this needs to get any longer, I'm just going to throw pretense out the window and go with complete vanity. If you don't give a wet shit about my life (and I don't blame you) you have reached the end of your journey. I hope to see you next month. If not, then I leave you with this parting:

May we meet again in our next fandom, through mutes and not as rival shippers.

The following is the ridiculous story of my ups and downs with Deceive the Deceiver. I figure if I explain to you how much I'm invested in this story some of you will stop worrying that I'm going to abandon it. Trust me. I'm not.

This tale stretches from NANOWRIMO 2018 and the prompt that started it, through the ups and downs of 2019 and 2020, to the writing of last month's letter. Buckle up. I love bumpy rides.

DtD: from NANO '17 to COVID-19

This story truly starts in December 2017 when I drenched the seat beneath me during Last Jedi. I'm a TLJ shipper. I got caught on the thirst train. It hit a time when writing was becoming a really big part of my life. I've been writing since I was a kid. I stopped for a while and came back to it. It's a long story. Ultimately, I'd started writing a lot a few years earlier. A mix of fic and originals but I was running into problems so I start reading a bunch of books to get better. TLJ lit the fires. NO joke TLJ came out on the 15th. I have pages of writing from the 20th.

2018 was Reylo year! I was already on Tumblr for my previous fandom (Batman comics). I found Reylo AU week which is in August. I submitted a story for that. It was the first fic I published for Reylo. Fast-forward August to November. I'm in the Writing Den on Discord and someone throws out this spy prompt. People start running with. Throwing ideas around. One of those was the snuggie in Mistrust! I have that conversation saved and story spots for each crazy thing they threw out. Finally, I said I'd do it!

Mind you, this is November 2nd. Nano has just started and the event is about "turning off your internal editor." This prompt consumed me. I was trying to keep up with SpaceWaffleHouseTM that first year. I did, btw. We both crested 100,000. It was my first Nano. Word count is not my problem. Organizing my crazy ambitious ideas is my problem. Some of that 100k was other stories, like Custard which I wrote half of in November and the other half Jan/Feb 2019. Most of it… probably 80k of it… was DtD.

Read Between the Lies is currently 33,710. I wrote at least 20k of that during that first Nano, as well as outlines and scenes for what I thought would be the starting point. I remember wanting to write Read Between to "get into their headspace" by writing their first meeting. I didn't think it would become a whole story. I was just going with it then. Any idea that came to mind.

I took December 2019 off for a few reasons. Some personal. Some burnout. I'm one of those people that can use writing to relieve stress, but I was so exhausted from that month-long writing sprint. By the last week I was dragging to get the final four or five thousand words to hit 100k.

Also, what I had by the end (no internal editor) was a bird nest of ideas that had too many beginnings, not enough middles, and endings to go around. I knew one thing right away: I knew I had more than one story. There were so many fun ideas. I figured, what the hell. I knew another thing right away: the prompt was at the end of the story. Like, the very end. Like, the last short story. Or the second to last short story, at the earliest. That hasn't changed. Ever. That's just where it ended up.

Between January and April of 2019 I touched DtD a few times. I kept coming back to it, reading through it, trying to untangle it. I made new notes on the stories. Expanded ideas. Tried to structure it. I figured out a bunch of good notes, but no real substance. The hardest thing was figuring out where to start! Did I:

(1) Start shortly before the prompt with Ben/Rey's relationship established and fill the story with the history?

(2) Start a lot earlier and build Ben/Rey's relationship from the beginning I'd written in Read Between?

If I'm being honest, Read Between was a lot better than I thought it would be and I didn't want to get rid of it. For a while I was thinking of publishing it last as a "prequel" if people liked the series.

Funny enough, the turning point happened May fourth weekend 2019…

In the week leading up, I was struggling through another story and decided to take a break for the weekend. I'd start writing again on Sunday when I met with my writing group. I met them through Nano. We used to meet at Panera. Now they meet on Discord. They mostly sprint though and I'm not a sprinter. I miss Panera. Anyway.

May 4th was a Sunday (look it up). I gave myself a writing break for the weekend and marathoned Star fucking Wars. It was nerd weekend. I was going to nerd out. I wore exclusively SW gear all weekend. I remember it well. It was the start of something fucking magical in my life.

Have I mentioned recently I really love this story. Trust me I will fucking finish it. Oh my god the demons won't leave until I do. Get them out of my head…

I had a pretty rockstar weekend. I believe the reason I skipped the PT that weekend was because I'd watched it the month before or so. Right after finishing the Clone Wars animated series (which is awesome and I strongly recommend both it and Rebels). I skipped them and SOLO.

Starting with R1, I went through in chronological order. I stopped at RotJ. I was with my family on Saturday and they were playing RotJ in the living room during the party. We talked about my marathon. My mom came over to my apartment after. We watched RoTJ properly. Then Force Awakens. It was too late by then to watch TLJ. I know I went straight to bed after my mom left on Saturday night.

Somewhere during or right after TFA I started thinking about Deceive the Deceiver. I don't remember what sparked it. I went to bed thinking about DtD. I know this with 100% certainty because I woke up thinking about again on Sunday and I thought it was quite odd.

I dream about this story in a way I have only dreamt about a precious few. Technicolor folks. It keeps me up at night.

I went to my writing group with (a) no plan for what to write, (b) a gordian knot that I had yet to untangle, (c) a sudden urge to re-read it. I opened my notes and read DtD through all our sprints. I read most of it during that writing session. We go about three hours.

That night I had Game of Thrones at my parent's. It was the (spoiler alert) episode where Arya kills the Night King. I remember because two minutes into the episode my brother's car broken down a few blocks from our apartment and we had to go help him. Derailed the whole night (this is foreshadowing).

Side note: I live with my younger brother and he's the best roommate I've ever had in my 35 years of life. Love you, Mo!

The episode was recording so we ran out. Had to leave the car in a parking lot. Someone had already helped him push it out of a puddle but my brother was soaked to mid-calf and the engine was shot. We dropped him off at home and I rode back to my Momma's crib to watch GoT. It was only the beginning of a wild night.

I went to bed late. I had to get up a few hours early to deal with the car before work started for either of us. I guess we were both hoping to avoid taking the day off. That wasn't going to happen. I drove home but I couldn't sleep. That crazy episode and the fact that my brain was already on fire with DtD.

I spent the wee hours finishing my re-read through the rough draft of Read Between the Lies. It saw my starting place. I started writing. I wrote through waiting in a parking lot, for the tow truck, in my car, at 6 am, with no sleep. I did a voice recording as I drove from the parking lot to the mechanic where the driver was taking my brother's car. I thought about it the whole way back. I sat on the sofa a wrote some more when we got home. I went to bed at 11 am and I'd written 10k more words for Read Between the Lies.

Somewhere between the chaos of May 5th and the official publish date on June 5th, Read Between got written. I know it didn't take too long. I remember sending it off to beta (by my amazing beta team on 1 & 2: Em, Jen, and Sai) and immediately pivoting to my outline. I slapped that together far too hastily and kept moving. I was going on holiday in the UK (I'm American and I'm ashamed) in early August so I planned on trying to publish Part 2 when I got back. At the very least I wanted it ready for beta.

Also some to admit, around the middle of 2019 I was fatigued with the fandom. We were hitting a lull. I was psyching myself up for the end and the exit. I was trying to clean house. I wanted to push out unfinished fics. To make them work. There was a lot of that mood from me in 2019. I was trying to make everything work. It's why Read Between came out, and that was a good thing. It's also why Mistrust came out, and that was a bad thing.

With that mentality looming, tough outline in hand, I started writing Mistrust before the end of May. I hit my snag sometime during the period I was publishing Read Between because by the time it was all done I knew I wasn't going to have a finished story by the time I left for London. I would figure it out when I got back. I picked up another project to distracted me from my problems for a little while. That is going to be an original if it's anything. One day…

At some point after I got back I started focusing heavily on problem solving. I had two stories already and a number of plot threads I had to resolve. I have heavy, heavy, heavy notes from September to December of 2019. Lots of possible ways to run this story. It sucks that a lot of that stuff isn't going to make it, but I'm recycling shit every day and I learned so much about the characters/story in that four month period. It really shaped the finished product in an important way.

This period is where I started to look at the bigger structure and how I was going to solve specific plot problems in each short story to bring the whole together. That focus on the different parts is important because it was the last thing on my mind when TRoS happened.

December 20th (the release date) is my birthday. My ass drove up to one of those Reylo-only screenings and I was surrounded by amazing people as I watched a movie that ruined my 35th birthday. Thankfully, I spent it in incomparable company. Thank you to all the hosts and super special thanks to Jen. Not only was she a DtD beta on both, she invited me. Thank you love! You are the reason I still remember that trip with joy.

Side note: I no longer hate TRoS. I've made my peace with it. I'm a far happier person now.

Needless to say, the only Reyloing I did in January of this year was venting frustration. Then I took a few weeks away from the fandom. I'd done my purging into the void. I knew other people still needed the space to vent but I had to get away. Once the toxin is out I couldn't let it back in.

What occurred starting in February of 2020 was a series of situations in which, every time I logged into Twitter I was faced with the kind of vitriol in the fandom that I don't need in my life. Some of it was still TRoS stuff, even as late as May. I'm not judging, I'm just saying, with the world on fire (literally), I didn't need it.

I don't think I have to explain why I've avoided social media like the plague since early this year. I live in America. If you heard anything about our recent President I don't have to explain any further what this year has been like. That has been par for course all over the world.

So here's my secret to happiness. I don't fux with the trolls. Do not engage. Sometimes that means radio silence. I'm breaking that silence because I want you to know 2020 has not destroyed DtD. It's only leveled shit up.

I have pretty much been working on this story consistently since March of this year. I go back and forth with reading, history, documentaries. I'm learning to wield many new weapons. They take time to settle in. DtD is the de-stressor I go to in between the real shit.

Sometime in June I was screwing around with the order of the parts. I had worked out the end but I was trying to bridge the gap between the ending I was certain I needed to get to and the two beginning stories I'd already published. I couldn't bridge the gap. It had been a year since I published Read Between and it wasn't working. Then I had an epiphany.

What if I got rid of Mistrust? Read Between is a pretty blank slate. I didn't want to re-write it and I still don't. I have no intention of getting rid of Part 1. I may clean it up and add some stuff at the very last minute, but it will be right before the new stuff drops as a pre-cursor to the flood of subsequent stories. I may add a few new clues or alter a scene or two, but I have plenty of room to move with it exactly the way it is.

What does that mean for Mistrust Goes Both Ways? To make a long story short, there was no good way for me to continue with what I'd published and still write the story in my head. I'm sure there are cool places to take the existing story, but that's not what I'm trying to do. In truth, I should have left 1 and not published 2 when I hit a snag. Lesson learned.

In June I basically threw Mistrust out and asked myself, "Now what?" I have months of great ideas rife for reshuffling and no restrictions on how to bridge the gap from 1 to the ending I wanted. But the end had shifted.

That brings us up to speed. The last thing I did before taking a much needed break was get through 90% of the history in my accordion outline/draft. I poured the foundation that was missing. I walked away in early October and let it set. I'm going to button up this other fic I'm working on and then go back to DtD and check the foundation I laid.

I'm very confident that not only will it hold, but that with fresh eyes and the fun side stories I've had the chance to lay to rest, I will finally be able to start building the finished products on top of it.

IN CONCLUSION

I'm still as excited as I've ever been for this story. It frustrates me all the time, but that means the medicine for my soul is working its magic. Change it painful, but pain is transformative. I've embrace changed. That ache is just a sign the muscles are getting stronger. Growing pains. As I learn to live with them in my family, my country, and my job, I find that life's lesson's often end up reflecting in every place in our life if we but open our eyes to look.

Growing pains exist in my writing process too. They are as transformative in this corner of my life as they are in every other. They have revealed as much about me as a person in my writing as they have in my politics. They have taught me how to compromise with my family as I learn to compromise with my characters. As I consider how people treat each other I am reminded that struggles in understanding our fictional counterparts may shine a light on our struggles to understand our truer selves.

Take care of yourselves. Once you've got that covered, if you can, take care of each other. Feel free to poke me and say hi. If not, until next month.

Fari.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

With under two weeks to go until Election Day, the political universe is in full horse-race obsession mode. Who’s up, who’s down? Does fundraising matter? Who’s going to turn out on Nov. 6? What popular narrative that’s snaking its way through Twitter is the right one? WHO’S GONNA WIN???

FiveThirtyEight relies on forecast models to give a sense of where a race stands, and we base those forecasts on polls and what we call fundamentals — historic factors that help us predict the way voters will act. But even with the model, elections can be difficult to get your arms around. The Classic version of our model currently gives Democrats a 1 in 6 chance of winning the Senate1, but events in the last couple of weeks of the campaign and a lack of polling in some places leave our model with a couple of blind spots.

This lack of certainty in the last few days of campaigns means that partisans work overtime to slick the highest sheen of gloss onto races. They want the Twitter and media narratives to go their way — they want their party’s spin to work magic. With that dynamic in mind, I thought I’d ask a couple partisans to give us their best spin on the Senate map. Republican Josh Holmes, former chief of staff to Sen. Mitch McConnell and who now runs his own political consulting firm, and Democrat Lauren Passalacqua, the communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, obliged.

What follows are their takes on a few key Senate races as the campaigns come down to the wire. Their remarks have been edited and condensed for clarity, and I’ve offered some fact checks and clarifications in the footnotes where appropriate.

Indiana

FiveThirtyEight projection: 2 in 3 chance the Democrat, Sen. Joe Donnelly, beats Mike Braun to win re-election

Holmes (R):

Obviously after what happened in 2016 with Evan Bayh, it’s more of a red state than it used to be, but it’s still very competitive. I think Joe Donnelly has run, up to this point, one of the better Democratic Senate campaigns, but I think he’s got his work cut out for him. I think it’s just a tight race. Who knows. In 2016, it broke very late and decisively toward Republicans.

Passalacqua (D):

There’s early voting already in Indiana. They’re already turning people out in the places we need them to be turning out in great numbers — Indianapolis, Marion County. We’re also seeing enthusiasm on college campuses. But what you’re seeing, too, is Joe Donnelly running just as a middle-of-the-road Hoosier — “I’m going to Washington to get stuff done. All that bickering back and forth, that’s not what I’m a part of, that’s not what Indiana wants to be a part of, so I’m just going to work with whoever I can to do the job that Hoosiers expect.”

Missouri

FiveThirtyEight projection: 4 in 7 chance the Democrat, Sen. Claire McCaskill, beats state Attorney General Josh Hawley to win re-election

Holmes (R):

Claire McCaskill spent the better part of 2018 with the good fortune of an in-state governor scandal that she tried to muddy the water with and tie her opponent to. But once that was in the rearview mirror, there was an awful lot that went with it. In about June, Josh Hawley sort of hit his stride in engaging with McCaskill and started playing a lot of offense. I think that race now is in a very strong position. It’s one of the two that has broken [towards Republicans] most obviously since Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings.

Passalacqua (D):

This is another place where we’ve seen the public polling neck and neck, which is what we expected, especially in a state that does trend more conservative. Certainly we’ve seen the attorney general back on his heels a bit with the kind of advertising he’s had to rely on, which fights back on this idea that he won’t protect pre-existing conditions, but obviously that ad is undermined by the lawsuit he’s on [challenging the Affordable Care Act].2 So what we see is a debate unfolding on the issues where Claire does have the upper hand.

North Dakota

FiveThirtyEight projection: 3 in 10 chance the Republican, U.S. Rep. Kevin Cramer, beats the incumbent, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.

Holmes (R):

I’ve said since the middle of August I thought North Dakota was done with Heidi Heitkamp. It has become a much more conservative state in recent years, and, interestingly, Trump’s economic message resonates perfectly with the kind of historical prairie populism we’ve seen in places like North Dakota. And she finds herself down double digits pretty durably now, going on a couple months.3 Of the races where Republicans are playing offense, I would say it’s the only one where it’s totally off the board.

Passalacqua (D):

I do think it’s closer than people expect. It was always going to be one of the toughest states for Democrats. That’s historically a state that’s hard to poll. I think everyone remembers that famous photo of her with the newspaper that declared her opponent the winner.4 She has an advantage in spending on advertising5 and we know Republican groups like the Senate Leadership Fund continue to spend there, so that still, in our mind, is a place where we’re monitoring it and Heidi is closing it out.

Florida

FiveThirtyEight projection: 5 in 7 chance the Democrat, Sen. Bill Nelson, beats Gov. Rick Scott to win re-election

Holmes (R):

This race is a little bit of a black box to election observers, because of the hurricane and because it’s such a large and diverse state that you have a little bit of everything in terms of political-environment factors. The governor’s race has an interesting component, we’ll have to see. Democrats will tell you they’re hopeful that demographics that were inaccessible to Bill Nelson become accessible because of gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum [Gillum is black]. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Particularly in southwest Florida, there could be a whole bunch of retirees who are just getting down there who may react to the idea of governance that’s more liberal than they’re comfortable with.

Passalacqua (D):

Florida folks were very bullish on Gov. Scott because he brings a blank check and it’s an expensive state. It’s one of those places where you’ve seen the Scott playbook before: Spend a ton of money, get elected. When you dig a little further, there are a couple problems for Scott. His previous races were in 2010 and 2014, which were really good Republican years for Florida, yet he barely won by a single point both times and he underperformed the Republican ballot. I think the thing that works to Nelson’s advantage is that he’s a workhorse. He is someone who will keep his head down.

Arizona

FiveThirtyEight projection: 5 in 8 chance the Democrat, U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, beats U.S. Rep. Martha McSally to win

Holmes (R):

Sinema has taken on an awful lot of water in the last couple of weeks. She was very successful at using a Republican primary to rebrand herself as a moderate. And I think it has taken more effort than maybe Republicans would have thought to dislodge that. She has one of the worst oppo files in the Democratic recruiting class, and I think there were an awful lot of folks who thought that it would speak for itself. [Sinema’s past has been in the news — some reports have cast doubt on her stories of childhood hardship and some have questioned remarks she made as an anti-war activist during President George W. Bush’s administration.] Now, maybe it will, but it’s still a very tight race. Republicans, to a person, feel like we have a superior candidate with better credentials and a better fit ideologically for the state.

Passalacqua (D):

This is also an exciting race because this is the first election cycle where you’re seeing a lot of resources pulled into the state. Democrats closed the registration advantage that Republicans had. I read the reporting like everyone else, and what she said is what her parents said: She grew up in tough circumstances and they have helped shape who she is and how she approaches her work.

Tennessee

FiveThirtyEight projection: 3 in 4 chance the Republican, U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, beats former Gov. Phil Bredesen to win

Holmes (R):

The electorate just isn’t the same as it used to be — it’s not in an elder-statesman mood. It’s in a change, drain-the-swamp, fight, represent-us type mood, and it’s just tough for guys like Bredesen who are in the middle of an electorate where there is no middle.

Passalacqua (D):

This is very much a pure toss-up, it’s incredibly competitive. Gov. Bredesen has run a race that’s solely focused on Tennessee. “Forget the noise, let’s talk about Tennessee.” In every one of his ads, in the events he holds, he’s applying for the job, and that’s really refreshing at a time when you’re overwhelmed by the punditry on television.

Texas

FiveThirtyEight projection: 4 in 5 chance the Republican, Sen. Ted Cruz, beats U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke to win re-election

Holmes (R):

I think Beto is a hell of a political celebrity, and if you’re running an underdog race in 2018, he’s laid out a perfect blueprint for how to get attention, how to raise money, how to become a national superstar. But I don’t think he’s given us a blueprint to win a red state. We’re living in an age of political celebrity, and there’s no question he’s become that, but in terms of putting votes in a box, he’s got positions that are far, far outside the mainstream of Texas.

Passalacqua (D):

I don’t know if there’s anyone who’s run up as many miles on a car driving around a state the size of Texas as he has. This comes back to something that we’ve seen is so important in all these states: Who’s showing up, and who’s listening? I think something has been a little shortchanged about Beto: He is putting in the work. I think this is going to be a high-turnout election, and I think that’s good. When more people vote, that’s good.

[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

Puck Daddy Countdown: John Tortorella gets his feud on

John Totorella is running his mouth once again. (Jamie Sabau/NHLI via Getty Images)

9. Those Canucks signings

Just in case you thought that maybe the Canucks were only doing the thing of signing not-great players to big contracts because they wanted to stay competitive for the Sedins, well, July 1 refutes that pretty effectively.

The money they gave out to Jay Beagle and Antoine Roussel were so far beyond bad — four years each at $3 million AAV — as to defy explanation. For all the credit this team gets for drafting well under Jim Benning, their NHL talent evaluation is quite frankly embarrassing. Yeah young guys need veteran leadership to learn how to play in the NHL and the Canucks have a lot of young guys, but you don’t need to give Jay Beagle “CONOR SHEARY” money and four years to find veterans who can help with that.

These guys just aren’t effective NHLers and for a rebuilding team to torch a roster spot on them for a year or even two, well, you gotta pay somebody with the cap going up this much. But for four years? It doesn’t begin to make sense.

This team is now married to two guys, who are past their primes and only getting older, while they’re supposed to be rebuilding. The idea that they’ll take roster spots and important roles from guys who need to develop is hardly farfetched.

This is everything wrong with the Canucks regime in a nutshell, and there’s no way it’s getting fixed any time soon.

8. Pursuing Slava Voynov

The idea that anyone would want a player like Voynov is understandable on the surface. When last he was in the NHL, he was a high-end second-pairing guy and there are a lot of teams that would love to have someone like that. Hell, for the right price there isn’t a team in the league he wouldn’t fit on.

In theory.

In actual practice, of course, one must consider the moral implications of why Voynov is available in the first place, and what that means in a “Hockey Is For Everyone” league with a Statement of Principles that has been, from what I understand, endorsed by the pope.

If the league allows him to come back — it shouldn’t, regardless of his legal status — any team that debases itself to try to sign him, of which there will be several, should be ashamed of itself. The facts of his case are not up for dispute and the pictures are gruesome reminders of what Voynov thinks is acceptable, based on the fact that there were multiple reported incidents.

So for every guy who can’t keep a job because he likes going to museums or perhaps makes his postgame interviews a little too much about himself, let’s always remember that this guy is a convicted domestic abuser and NHL teams are sadly all too willing to take “If You Can Play, You Can Play” to its logical extreme.

Pathetic.

7. That Jack Johnson contract

I didn’t think I would have to do this but I’ve seen multiple people defending it and I have to go off now. You did this. Not me.

The idea that Johnson is in any way a fit for this team is laughable, and few would even try to force an argument on whether he was good in Columbus, especially in the past two seasons. He ended last year as a healthy scratch and for good reason.

The pro-Johnson-to-Pittsburgh argument goes something like this: Jim Rutherford drafted him and Sergei Gonchar has turned poor defensemen into good ones. Let’s take out the trash on both of them.

Who cares that Jim Rutherford drafted Johnson 15 years ago or whatever? Like honestly, what does that matter? He liked a guy who exhibited a lot of promise at the University of Michigan, traded the kid only because he wouldn’t sign in Carolina, and then got hundreds of games’ worth of data that he couldn’t be a difference-maker at the NHL level. If Rutherford’s teams had controlled Johnson’s rights the whole time and given him this contract despite all the evidence in the world that he’s not good in the NHL, well, wouldn’t we say, “What’s Rutherford thinking?”

But OK, this is a reclamation project. Those work out sometimes. I don’t know why you’d want to try that reclamation project over a five-year period. Especially given that this is a guy who will be 32 years old for half of this coming season. It’s not a gamble, then. This is Rutherford signing up to pay a guy who flatly sucks $3.25 million until he’s 37 years old. If we think Johnson stinks in his age-31 year, what does he look like when he’s 35? Okay great, he has two more years on the books after that, or at least lingers for years as a buyout cap hit.

Now let’s talk about the idea that Sergei Gonchar has turned other bad defensemen into good defensemen, which has been pointed out more often than the Rutherford Connection but is somehow even dumber. Let’s look at it this way: Who are the defensemen Gonchar “made good?” Definitely you would say Justin Schultz. Maybe you would also say, like, Jamie Oleksiak.

The Penguins got both of them when they were, what, 25ish years old? Still in the primes of their careers. Schultz, I think you could argue, was even on the upswing. And more to the point, I think it’s reasonable to argue that the Penguins didn’t necessarily do anything to make Schultz better besides put him in a position to succeed. He was overwhelmed in Edmonton because the Oilers, in their infinite wisdom, thought he was a top-pairing defenseman despite all evidence to the contrary. It’s very not-weird, I think, that when the Penguins stopped putting him out there against top competition, he suddenly looked like a competent second-pair power play specialist!

Plus, y’know, do you think maybe playing behind Crosby and Malkin and now Brassard makes defensemen like Schultz and Oleksiak who previously didn’t play for the Penguins look better than playing behind guys from their other, worse teams? It’s not impossible.

The deal sucks and is going to look continually worse in March, two Novembers from now, February 2020, the fourth year of the contract, and beyond. Any rationalization to the contrary is galaxy-brain nonsense.

I’m not joking when I say the Penguins would probably be better off flushing $3.25 million down the toilet every Oct. 1 and telling the league to count it against their cap number.

6. Those Islanders transactions

How do you make up for losing your franchise center? By signing one of the Leafs’ problems away, trading for another even bigger one, adding a Flyers’ problem (they’re in the same division now), and then getting the 13th-best forward from last year’s Penguins (also in the same division).

Are we sure he’s not still on the Leafs’ payroll?

5. Not using an agent

Drew Doughty didn’t use an agent in negotiating his big contract and, in doing so, saved himself like $2.5 million in agent’s fees (3 percent of the deal’s value).

But because of the way Doughty structured the deal, he’s not only not-buyout-proof, but he gives the Kings a hell of a lot of incentive to buy him out the second he turns out to no longer be effective.

In the end, the math works out such Doughty, in an effort to save himself $2.5 million, he might end up costing himself like six times that amount.

Smart stuff.

4. Trading Karlsson

I’m really just hoping this happens sooner than later. Like, just do it already. Everyone knows it’s going to happen. Everyone knows you’re gonna get an embarrassing return for him. Let’s go already.

3. James Neal?

Had someone ask me what’s in it for James Neal to sign with Calgary and not Vegas. It’s an interesting question.

From what I can tell, the Flames only offered an extra $750,000 per year in AAV, which is more than wiped out by the provincial income tax. So the answer, I guess, is that he thinks the Flames have a better chance to be competitive in the next five years, or maybe Calgary promised him a better role (i.e. with Monahan and Gaudreau, who could probably use a legit finisher). It’s not because the Flames buyout-proofed his contract, because every cent is paid in straight salary.

I’m not sure Neal is going to like what he finds in terms of either Vegas or Calgary being in contention for anything within the next five years, but hey, it’s a bunch of money.

2. St. Louis

I wrote WWL before the Ryan O’Reilly trade, so here’s a quick take on that:

The Blues now have some very promising center depth between Schenn (who should stay the No. 1), O’Reilly, and Bozak. Like I’ve always said, if Bozak is your No. 3, you’re in good shape.

I’m not sure it puts them in the same neighborhood as Winnipeg and Nashville even in that division, but they just became a much tougher out in the postseason. Which, hey, they didn’t even make it last year. So that’s something.

1. Feuds

I love when John Tortorella starts dropping F-bombs about the Penguins. He’s gonna tell Brandon Dubinsky to use a guillotine on Sidney Crosby next season.

(Not ranked this week: Helping the Leafs.

I made a joke in WWL this week about the Leafs being able to find a buyer for Matt Martin is the most incredible thing in the world to me. As many as a dozen teams were in on him to one extent or another. Why in the world should that be true? It’s still 2018, right?)

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

(All statistics via Corsica unless otherwise noted.)