The anime is just getting to the amazing info dump chapters of 956-957 so I figured it’s a good time to post what I make of the information learned from these chapters as well as how they may set the stage for our final war. Also, there is an additional fringe, bold theory of mine at the end :)
Foreshadowing of the Reverie events
First, I would like to begin with what I believe was some clever foreshadowing by Oda that the Reverie would have an incident that involved Alabasta, the military, the Rev Army, (and possibly) the Red Hair Pirates.
Post-Zou we get another classic worldbuilding chapter (823) that has many of the world’s characters getting ready to depart for the Reverie. Among them is the kingdom of Alabasta which features a shit ton of death flags for Cobra as well as this bit of dialogue from Igaram.
Take note of the three oddly specific things he’s worried about: A meteorite falling on Vivi, a monstrous bird carrying her away, and a sniper with their sights on her.
Conveniently enough, these powers all made a debut in the story shortly before in Dressrosa:

• Fujitora making a meteorite fall from the sky
• Karasu producing giant birds that carry Sabo away
• Usopp awakening his Observation haki to snipe Sugar from extremely far away

Why list these three specific things to worry about? I think Oda was using it as foreshadowing of the events that were to take place at The Reverie.
As we know from the break between Act I and Act II, Blackbeard relays the newspaper report that The Revolutionaries and the Admirals clashed at The Reverie. As you see in the background, you can see two of the three aforementioned people about to clash (Fujitora and Karasu).
In between Act II and Act III, we are relayed that there is a certain incident involving Alabasta, to which Shirahoshi is immediately worried about Vivi.
What of the Sniper? While Usopp was obviously not there, a certain mysterious pirate was. Who happens to have a highly skilled sniper in his crew who just happens to be Usopp’s father. While Yasopp hasn’t been shown at The Reverie, I think there may be a chance he could be the “sniper with sights on her'' (not as an enemy though imo) in Igaram’s worries. As Usopp said in Dressrosa: He’s best as a backup. I wouldn’t be surprised if Shanks has his sniper present as backup with all those tall buildings around in Mariejois.
So I believe Igaram’s seemingly hyperbolic worry about Vivi was foreshadowing that three factions representing these powers would clash with Vivi and Alabasta caught in the middle.

• The meteorite from the sky represented by Fujitora and the Marines
• The Birds carrying her away represented by Karasu and the Rev Army
• The sniper with their sights on her represented by Yassop and the Red Hair Pirates

All factions who were present at The Reverie.
What we know of the events that occurred at The Reverie
I’d like to take a moment to review what we know of what events occurred at The Reverie:

• The Gorosei speak of Cobra’s request of them and refer to him as a traitor.
• The one known as “Imu” has chosen Vivi’s picture as an apparent “light to erase from history”
• Shanks meets with the Gorosei to discuss a pirate
• The Admirals And The Revolutionary Army clashed in their mission to retrieve Kuma, as reported by Blackbeard
• The Shichibukai system was abolished
• There was a fatality, as reported by Morgans
• There was also an “attempted murder” as reported by Morgans
• Alabasta is somehow involved with the events that transpired, as reported by Garp
• Sabo is also involved in events, as we learn from the reactions of many people that know him, including shock of his comrades and sadness from his family.
• Whatever has transpired, Blackbeard decides to mobilize to claim something before the government can get their hands on it.
• Finally, Wapol also calls Morgans to leak some additional intel

More or less, I think these events are almost all directly connected. Here is what I believe happened:
Imu and the Gorosei decided it was time to eliminate Cobra and Vivi, as Alabasta houses the Ancient Weapon Pluton, they know of their allyship to the Strawhat’s who is led by a dreaded “D”, and Cobra is asking questions about the history they seek to hide. Ultimately making them a growing threat to their power. They even refer to their family as “traitors”
Shanks meets with the Gorosei to “talk to them about a pirate”. I believe this pirate to be Blackbeard. Similar to what he tried to do with Whitebeard, he is attempting to stop the Gorosei from doing anything hasty because of the threat Blackbeard poses and he’ll take advantage of any chaos, in true Blackbeard fashion.
The Revolutionaries attack at The Reverie in order to rescue their comrade, Kuma. The Gorosei see this as the perfect opportunity to enact their plans to eliminate Cobra and Vivi in the chaos and place the blame on the Revolutionary Army.
They succeed in killing Cobra (who has been riddled with death flags), this is the fatality that Morgans was talking about reporting. However, they were unsuccessful in eliminating Vivi, I believe that she escaped with The Revolutionary Army, however Sabo stayed behind to ensure their escape and was captured (he was determined to die beforehand). The government used this to say that they abducted heshe is missing following an attempt on her life (this is the “attempted murder” Morgans spoke of).
This is why the Revolutionary Army is shocked and Sabo’s family and friends are sad. For the Revolutionary Army, we were told by Koala that the enemy was the Celestial Dragons not the World Government. An important distinction, because news of Sabo killing Cobra and hurting/harming Vivi would certainly shock his comrades as it undermines their mission. However, they haven’t been able to contact them to confirm the facts. To his family, it looks like Sabo has assassinated a world leader and is now in the government’s hands making them insanely sad.
The importance of the World Government eliminating Cobra and Vivi and being able to successfully place the blame on the Revolutionary Army allows them to move into Alabasta unimpeded, giving them the opportunity to get one of their most sought after objectives, The Ancient Weapon Pluton. If it is known the World Government was responsible for their deaths, they wouldn’t have the excuse to move into the country. But being able to place the blame on the Revolutionary Army allows them to fill that vacancy without protest from others of it being some sort of coup.
Which brings me to my next point, this is why Blackbeard is mobilizing. He said he wants to get his hands on it before the Government does. He is speaking of Pluton. He knows the Government will look to seize control of Alabasta but he’ll claim the “prize” Pluton.
At this point, you may ask why the Government was trying to apparently cover up this news and not have Morgans publish it, given it paints the Revolutionary Army in the bad light. Well, I don't think they were actually trying to cover it up. The government has a number of powerful resources at their disposal but they sent a lone nameless fodder CP agent. Why? This is “Big News” Morgans we’re talking about, the man lives for scoops!!
Seriously look at this fearless man! In fact, CP-0 KNOWS that sending a lone agent shouldn’t intimidate him, Stussy is right here with him while they’re FALLING OFF A CASTLE as she remarks he shows no fear in the face of a scoop. The government trying to “cover it up” gives the story more legitimacy for him. They know sending a single nameless fodder agent won’t stop Morgans, they also know it’ll make him publish it as the biggest scoop!
This is important for the government because their ruse depends on a single piece of information from being known to the world at large: The Strawhat Pirates are allies of Vivi and the Alabasta Kingdom. If this were to get out to the world, the plan to frame the Revolutionary Army would fall apart given Luffy’s Father is the head and his sworn brother is the second in command. This is where the call from Wapol comes in...
Finally, Wapol calls Morgans to leak some info. I believe the info that Wapol has is that the Strawhat crew is allied with Vivi, as he ran into them on the way to Drum Island. He is one of the few in the world (who is not their friend) that knows of their relationship, since the government hid the Strawhat’s involvement at Alabasta. If you recall, it was Morgans who published the info that Luffy and Sabo were sworn brothers after Whole Cake Island. If this incident at The Reverie involves both Alabasta and Sabo, then Morgans learning that they're both allies of Strawhat Luffy flips the entire dynamic of the Revolutionary Army attacking the Alabastan royalty.
That is why they sent a single nameless fodder CP agent to “bribe” Morgans, to give him belief that this story worries them enough to hush. That action has more pull than the words of Wapol, who is pretty much known for being a punk ass. So even if Morgans was to learn of the SH-Alabasta connection, he wouldn’t necessarily run with it, as Wapol’s leak is simply hearsay compared to the action of the Government trying to cover it up. This is why Dragon and company accuse Morgans of lying when they read the news as it is something they would not do, however Morgans believes it to be true.
Shanks’ and Blackbeard’s Roles
The second part of the huge info dump chapters has a big focus on the Rocks crew and the history behind them. This is where I believe our other two major players in the final war come in: Shanks and Blackbeard.

1. Shanks is the son of Rocks D. Xebec
2. Blackbeard is the one who inherited the will of Rocks D. Xebec

I will start with Shanks, below are some relevant details I’d like to highlight:

• The Rocks Crew fell 38 years ago at God Valley in an incident that has been erased from the history books. Most notable about this incident is that Garp and Roger teamed up for it and it involved protecting Celestial Dragons. Shanks is slightly older than this at 39 years of age.
• In the Oden flashback Roger remarks it has been ages since he’s held a baby, to which Rayleigh responds it reminds him of “the good ole days” implying they once had a baby involved in their adventures or on the ship.
• During the ceasefire of the Roger vs Whitebeard duel, a newly recruited Teach asks his crew about Buggy and Shanks, to which they tell him despite their young age they have been on Roger’s ship for ages.
• Prior to his death, Roger tells Garp he has a child and he needs to protect him as the son does not carry the sins of the father and he deserves his own life. Garp then takes in his rival’s child and raises him as his own.
• When Whitebeard and Shanks meet up Whitebeard remarks that seeing Shanks’ face makes the scars he got from him ache. It is said that the Rocks crew got along terribly and were often very violent to each other, with even killing occurring within the crew.

If you recall, after Roger was executed one of the first objectives of the Government was to hunt down and end his bloodline. Prior to Roger, Rocks was the government’s biggest threat. I suspect that after Rocks D. Xebec fell 38 years ago, the World Government tried doing the same thing.
Enter Shanks. I believe that Shanks, in similar fashion to Ace, was the surviving heir of a bloodline the World Government wished to eliminate. Upon discovery of his existence Garp had Roger take him and raise him as to not kill a new born child. Shanks was then raised aboard Roger’s ship, this all comes full circle years later when Roger asks the same of Garp with a sheepish grin on his face, knowing he will agree to it.
Many believe that Blackbeard is the descendant of Rocks, while I believe he 100% does have a relation to Rocks it is not familial, instead he is the one who inherited Rocks will. After all, he seemingly has a lot in common with Rocks:

• Sengoku said Rocks’ ambition was to become King of the world and that he broke the world's taboos. Shanks suggests something similar about Blackbeard when he warns Whitebeard - he won’t ever stop aiming for the top. Blackbeard has also broken the world’s taboos by consuming two Devil Fruit which was previously unheard of.
• His ship is named Saber of Xebec, seemingly after Rocks D. Xebec
• His base of operations is on Hachinosu Island, which was the same place that the Rocks pirates were formed. Also the birthplace of the Davy Back Fight.

However, in One Piece, there is a pattern that the son does not inherit the will of their father and oftentimes it's the exact opposite:

• Monkey D. Garp - His son Dragon directly looks to overthrow the organization he works for and his grandson is also one of their biggest threats and aims to become Pirate King like his rival, Roger.
• Gol D. Roger - His son, Portgas D. Ace completely rejected him and dedicated his life to making his pirate rival, Whitebeard, the Pirate King.
• Kaido - His son Yamato literally wants to be Kozuki Oden, the only person to ever scar him and someone he only shamefully defeated through trickery.
• Oden - While his son Momonosuke seeks to carry out his father’s will, by an ironic twist of fate he ate a Devil Fruit that turned him into a Dragon, the same form as the beast who killed his father. (This is a little different, but worth pointing out imo)
• Shanks (D. Xebec)? - If what I believe to be true, Shanks is the son of Rocks D. Xebec, and was raised by his father’s rival Gol D. Roger, who he respects and reveres. Shanks seeks to stop Marshall D. Teach, the man who inherited his father’s evil will.

If Blackbeard is aiming for the top of the world like Rocks, what is it that Shanks is trying to accomplish?
Since Shanks accompanied Roger on his voyages everywhere except Laugh Tale, he at least knows important info like Shyarly’s predictions. I believe he is trying his best to buy time until it is Luffy’s time to bring change to the world.
It has become clear that the story is quickly approaching the important moment in time that Roger was “too early” for.
Shanks, aware of this, made this bet on Luffy as a child seemingly after hearing him say the exact same words Roger said (got a long ass post for that too lol).
Shanks aims to maintain balance in the world until it is Luffy’s time to carry out what his captain could not. Many of his actions seem to indicate he is trying to avoid catastrophic situations that could arise until that time comes and Blackbeard, inheritor of Rocks’ will, is the biggest threat to that:

• When Shanks warns Whitebeard about Teach, he doesn’t try to prevent a quarrel altogether but says it isn't time yet.
• When he saves Koby he mentions the importance of a few seconds.
• When he asks Teach if he wants to fight he laughs it off and he too seems to recognize it is not yet time.
• Most recently Shanks has gone to the Gorosei in an attempt to talk to them, most likely about Teach, in an attempt to maintain balance.

Conclusion - Setting the stage for the Final War
I believe it’s these events that will set the stage of our final war for our participants:

• The World Government
• The Revolutionary Army
• Blackbeard Pirates
• Red-Hair Pirates
• Strawhat Crew (and Grand Fleet)

With the Alabasta royalty out of the way and a convenient scapegoat in the Revolutionary Army, the World Government will move in on Alabasta under the guise of being helpful since their leaders are gone in an attempt to gain control of Pluton.
Blackbeard, inheritor of Rock’s will, who seems to have a lot of knowledge about the secrets of the world, will make his move to try to claim the weapon before they do. “If the government is going to take it (Alabasta) then I’ll claim the prize (Pluton)!”
The Revolutionary Army, who will be blamed by the World Government (and who was also once attacked by Blackbeard) will get involved in this quarrel as well in an attempt to keep the weapon out of their enemy’s hands, and to retrieve Sabo if he is indeed captured.
I think this will be where Shanks makes a move as well (which Oda mentioned in his year end message), in an attempt to maintain order until Luffy is ready and to stop Blackbeard from becoming too powerful, as he is the only one that seemingly knows what he is truly capable of.
We also have the internal split of the WG/CP-0/Akainu “absolute justice” type and the SWORD/Garp type of the military, who seem more noble in their intentions. All of these forces will collide in our final major confrontation.
And of course the Strawhat Crew. The Grand Fleet will get involved as well. A number of them fought alongside Sabo and The Revolutionary Army in Dressrosa and were also present at The Reverie, where they learned of Vivi and the Strawhat friendship. When they read the news about Alabasta and The Revolutionary Army they will know something is afoot and will be ready to spring into action.
Thank you for reading all of this, this is the end of the main body of the post. At the beginning I mentioned I also have a bold fringe theory. I typically like to throw these in at the end as they’re a little more out there but I still believe baby!
Without further ado I present to you below the Vivi Paw Paw Theory:
I will begin with the very first piece of evidence, this intriguing observation in SBS 59 and Oda’s equally interesting answer to it:

D: Odacchi! I noticed an amazing thing!!! It is that if you show the Straw Hat Devil Fruit users in numbers, it will be the numbers from 1~10!!
Luffy→Gomu Gomu (5.6.5.6.), Chopper→Hito Hito (1.10.1.10), Robin→Hana Hana (8.7.8.7.), Brook→Yomi Yomi (4.3.4.3.)
(1.3.4.5.6.7.8.10), but there is no (2.9), so is the one who ate the Nikyu Nikyu (2.9.2.9.) no Mi, Bartholomew Kuma, gonna be a Straw Hat next? Please tell me!!! P.N. SHANKUS.LOVE
O: WHAAAAAT?! (shock) Gosh that surprised me! Why was I surprised?! NO COMMENTTTTTTT!!!!!!!! NEXT!!

Oda’s answer is very interesting to say the least. We’ve seen him play with this (2.9.) thing with Kuma before as well:

• His bounty is 296,000,000
• His birthday is February 9th (2/9)

So the (2.9) fruit is missing from a member of the Strawhat Crew. I think this will go to Vivi, and I'll circle back to her (2.9.) connection in a bit...
“So u/africhic how the hell is Vivi gonna end up with the fruit?”
Since you just read through my long ass theory, I think the Revolutionary Army will be successful in retrieving Kuma, and that Vivi left along with them, aided by whatever sacrifice Sabo made that has been reported in the papers.
If you recall, while they’re going over their plan underground, Karasu mentions that even if they rescue Kuma he might not ever be able to return to being a human.
I believe this will be the case. They will rescue him and he’ll simply be a shell of a person. He is only programmed to take orders from the Government and the Celestial Dragons. While they may rescue him from slavery, there’s the chance he never returns to being human again.
This is where I believe the Revolutionary Army will make the decision to kill him and let him rest instead of existing as an empty husk. However, after the events of The Reverie they decide that it’s best to transfer his Devil Fruit power to someone who will make good use of it. Someone else who is also the leader of a nation that was allied with the government but is now an enemy in their eyes...Princess Vivi!!!
Just like with the Mera-Mera passing on from one sworn brother to the next, the Nikyu Nikyu will go from the leader of a WG allied nation who challenged them, Bartholomew Kuma of the Sorbet Kingdom to another leader who now faces their wrath, Princess Vivi of the Alabasta Kingdom.
While we as an audience still do not understand exactly how Devil Fruit powers transfer after death, it seems some characters have an idea:

• Most notably, Blackbeard is able to take Whitebeard’s power immediately after death. While this could be something unique to Blackbeard it has been demonstrated that they can take the fruit of others and give them to their own crew (shiryu gaining the Clear-Clear fruit)
• Caesar Clown also has shown some knowledge of this, as he seemingly left a bag of fruit on the raft rigged to fail when Smiley was to reincarnate. The fruit then transformed into a Devil Fruit, and he said he’d meet Smiley again.
• Vegapunk also seems to have an insane breadth of knowledge when it comes to Devil Fruit. However, we don’t have evidence of him knowing how they transfer.

My theory relies on someone in the Revolutionary Army having this sort of knowledge. Perhaps Dragon or someone like Lindbergh who seems to be a genius inventor.
This would complete the pattern of all the “numbered” Devil Fruit belonging to a member of the Strawhat Crew. So how does the (2.9.) fit in like I mentioned earlier?
Let us go way back to the Baroque Works Saga. The only reason why Vivi was able to: Meet up and ally with the Straw Hats to begin their journey Meet up on their way out to depart on great terms and establish a beautiful friendship
Is because of two men who chose the power of FRIENDSHIP over all:

• Mr. 2
• Mr. 9

It was because of Mr. 9 (and Ms. Monday) that Vivi was able to escape Mr. 5 and Miss Valentine. He chose their friendship and gave her an avenue to escape and reach the Strawhats.
It was because of Mr. 2 choosing his friendship with the Straw Hats that they were able to meet up with Vivi and say goodbye in this iconic scene, able to leave on beautiful terms.
What were the two numbers missing from the crew’s Devil fruit? 2 and 9.
Whose heroic actions enabled the friendship of the Strawhat Crew and Vivi to bloom? Mr. 2 and Mr. 9.
Luffy = Gomu Gomu (5,6 5,6)
Chopper = Hito Hito (1,10 1, 10)
Robin = Hana Hana (8, 7 8, 7)
Brook = Yomi Yomi (4,3 4,3)
Vivi = Nikyu Nikyu (2,9 2,9)
Thus completes my Vivi PawPaw Theory.
If you’re still here...thank you for reading all this lmfao

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Chapter 3.05

REQUESTED PERMISSION

Streets of Chicago, IL
Saturday, July 12th
[Wake up, Kyle! Zombies are going to eat you!]
Kyle awoke with a start, jumping out of the sleeping bag he had been using. Wide-eyed, the young teen looked around the roof but saw no menace in the shadows created by the faint illumination of some strange world in the sky.
[Just kidding.]
“What the fuck, Bob. You almost gave me a heart attack.”
[Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. The others asked me to do it.]
Shaking his head, Kyle rolled up the sleeping bag and secured it to the bottom of his backpack. Feeling a bit hungry, he removed one of the travel bars he found in the store and ate it.
“Man, feeling hungry in a video game is odd. The urge seems far stronger in Outbreak than Fantasy.”
[Unsure, the others say their owners have had similar experiences with feelings and senses feeling odd or wrong.]
“Interesting, maybe they are still working out the kinks with the new sensations in this game. Maybe from the time compression?”
Kyle looked around one last time before putting on the backpack. Next, he removed the cinder blocks covering the hatch and then opened it. After a quick peek up top, he hurried down the ladder. Hoping to collect whatever he missed the day before, Kyle went through the store’s shelves one more time before hearing a noise from the other side of the store. Pulling the nine iron from its makeshift spot between his back and backpack, he began to inch towards where he heard the noise.
Peeking over the rack of winter gear, Kyle spotted a head of blonde hair. Moving slowly around the shelf, he found himself looking into the eyes of a cute blond girl around his age.
“You scared the hell out of me,” Kyle said.
“Sorry, I didn’t think anyone else was here,” replied the blond.
“What group are you a part of?”
“I was a part of Terminally Chi till they were dissolved. One of the other’s sisters had been infected, and it went to hell fast. I escaped and ran away. I mean, I know I’ll die soon, and that doesn’t scare me. But Jesus, those Zombies really frightened the shit out of me,” she said as she started to giggle.
“What’s so funny?”
“Sorry. It’s just the first time in a while that I’ve been outside the hospital and walking around on my own legs. Even nearly getting scared to death, this is amazing. The doctors at the hospital had us all chipped recently, and we are now in these fancy medical capsules down in the basement. Even with Zombies roaming around, I don’t want to wake back up.”
“I-I’m sorry to hear.”
She waved her hand, dismissing his apology.
“Don’t worry about it. Name’s Kimberly. Your group go tits up too?”
Kyle laughed.
“Oh yeah, our group went tits up pretty quickly. Names Kyle.”
“So Kyle, what’s your plan for the rest of the twelve or so hours we got left tonight?”
“Was thinking of roaming around and finding more gear. You’re more than welcome to join me.”
“I think I’d like that. I haven’t talked to many people my age outside the hospital.”
Kyle helped Kimberly find a decent size backpack and fill it with whatever various goodies were remaining. Finding another sleeping bag, Kyle strapped it to the bottom of her pack as well.
“Alright, let’s get going. I want to find some type of transportation and more weapons before the day’s over,” said Kyle.
The two left the sporting goods store and headed northwest, giving the hospital a wide berth just in case the Zombies within decided to check out. As they walked down the road, Kyle would peer into each building as they passed, looking for anything to help them out. Thirteen blocks into their journey, Kimberly called out to Kyle from across the street. Running over to her, Kyle followed her into an unmarked building to find it filled with various blunt and sharp handheld weapons.
“Man, if we had found this store before, we might have been able to fight the Zombies better. Blunt weapons don’t seem to do much to them,” said Kyle.
Kyle walked along the store’s shelves till he found a section with long machetes. They even had matching holders. Taking two of them, he removed his belt to fasten a holder to each hip. Kyle then slipped the blades inside. Kyle then tossed his bent nine-iron aside.
Grabbing a large bowie knife, Kyle placed that inside his bag. Feeling better prepared, he walked around till he found Kimberly. She was in the back, twirling a long pike around herself.
“Were you some type of warrior princess before you got sick?”
Kimberly stopped twirling the pole around. A dark shade of red blush trailed from her cheek down to her neck. Kyle found himself somewhat amused at the idea that a girl carrying a six-foot pike would also be so easily embarrassed.
“I was a part of my highschool cheer squad my freshman year. I’m the one you see spinning the baton around in front of the band.”
“Hey, if you can use that, do so. It will keep you farther away from the bitie end of a fight. Come over to the other side. I found some blades you can use as well.”
Kyle showed Kimberly the machetes and helped her fasten two of them around her waist. She wasn’t wearing a belt, so they had to find one in the store. After a brief search, they came across a belt meant to hold daggers. In no time, they had her kitted out in two machetes. Kyle placed one of the large bowie knives in her bag as well.
“Alright, let’s head out.”
The two kept walking west, each of them on opposite sides of the street, looking for any buildings that had loot held within. Over the next few hours, they found various structures with supplies, food, and gear. Kyle made sure to mark everything on his map as they went.
Around midday, Kyle found a vehicle inside an open garage. Looking inside, he found no key fob to start the car. Figuring the keys may be in the house, Kyle told Kimberly to wait at the back door. He broke the glass of a first-floor window on the house’s side and then counted to one hundred. When nothing Zombie-like came running out of any of the rooms, he crawled inside. Unlocking the door for Kimberly, she was surprised to see a fully furnished home, complete with cabinets of food. It didn’t take long before Kimberly cheered, finding the keys on the table beside the front door.
“I think we should stay here till we know more about the game, Kim. We can take the car back to that last hardware store and get plywood, nails, and any other items to board up the house.”
[Hammers. You’ll need hammers,] quipped Bob.
Kyle looked at a mirror on the wall and shrugged. That was good enough to get a giggle from his AI companion.
A little over an hour later, they pulled up beside the house with a stack of plywood tied to the roof of the sedan. The two spent the rest of the day hand cutting the plywood to fit over each of the first-floor windows and then nailing them into place. Seeing they had less than an hour before the end of the first day, Kyle parked the car inside the garage and closed the door to hide it.
The two headed inside, locking the door behind them. Kyle and Kimberly went into the living room, each picking out a couch they could logout from.
“Do you play Fantasy, Kyle?” Kimberly asked as she made herself comfortable.
“Yea. It hasn’t been the best of experiences so far, but I’ve been having fun. The NPCs in the game are crazy realistic and make it worth playing, even if the gameplay has been lacking for me. Did you start yet?”
“Yep! I started earlier this week when we entered our medical capsules. I’m a spear-wielding female Elf.”
Flea laughed at her enthusiasm.
“I’m a Gnome rogue with daggers. I hope to soon be able to control a magic ninja star.”
“Where did you get a magical ninja star?”
“My AI companion, Bob, helped an old Elf, and he gifted it to me. I’m still lacking in the mana department to control it, though.”
“You can play with your AI? How? I would love to play with Ellie.”
“Got lucky again and was given a Guardian Egg. Hatching it allowed my AI, Bob, to create an avatar and transfer to it.”
“Oh, what did he make?”
“A Persian house cat.”
Kimberly laughed.
“I'd love to see that. I’m currently playing in the coldest damn place on Mea. I had to spend almost all the silver I’ve made to buy clothes to stay warm.”
[You can invite her to your MicroWorld, Kyle. She can then meet the great and wonderful, Bob.]
Kyle laughed, causing Kimberly to give him a look.
“Sorry. The Great & Wonderful Bob says I’m able to invite you to my MicroWorld to meet him.”
“Can I? I want to meet him!”
“How does that work, Bob?”
[I’ve sent her AI our MicroWorld coordinates. With them, they can create a gateway to the pavilion at our base.]
“Bob says your AI, Ellie, now has our MicroWorld’s coordinates. You can come and visit after we log out.”
“See you soon!” Kimberley squealed before slumping over on the couch.
Kyle moved her body, so it was lying correctly on the couch. He then laid on the other couch and logged out. Materializing at the center of his pavilion, Kyle walked inside the house to find Bob in the same place he left his companion. Though the wall now held three screens. One watched Kyle’s sleeping body in Outbreak, and the other Flea’s in Fantasy. Kyle saw an episode of Stargate on the middle screen had been paused.
“That’s kinda creepy,” Flea said, pointing to his Gnome’s body on the couch of Tenzin’s Lorien.
Bob shrugged.
Flea heard a chime followed by a message prompt.
​
Rabies Kitten requests permission to establish a gateway to your MicroWorld.
​
What the hell kind of name is that?
Flea mentally gave permission and immediately heard a noise coming from outside. Going through the backdoor, he found another monolith rising at the edge of the pavilion. Leaving the house, he walked towards it as it slowly rose. Kyle could see the new monolith was covered in splashes of brightly colored paint like someone had thrown dye-filled balloons at it. As the standing stone finished growing, a door materialized. The door, like the monolith, was covered in bright colors. Unlike the monolith, the door was painted with various lines of color crisscrossing it.
A moment later, a brunette Kimberly, walked through the door. She looked around, taking in the scene, then looked down at the Gnome.
“Kyle?”
“Yep, I like being the Gnome when I’m online.”
“I didn’t know you could do that! Ellie, can you change me into my Elf?”
A moment later, Kimberly grew almost two heads taller, her brunette shoulder-length hair turned snow-white and grew down to her waist as it braided itself.
“This is so damn cool. I can’t wait to show Paul.”
“Paul?”
“Oh, sorry. He’s one of the others at the hospital. I think he’s my boyfriend, but we never really put a name to it.”
“Oh, no worries, I wasn’t looking to date anyone. But now you know you can visit one another’s MicroWorlds.”
Flea could see the look on her face when she realized what he had just said. She seemed to concentrate for a moment. But before Flea could comment, he got another chime and prompt.
​
Nasty Boy requests permission to establish a gateway to your MicroWorld.
​
“Nasty Boy? Your boyfriend?”
Rabbies’ cheeks went a few shades red as she nodded.
“Don’t say that around him, please.”
“What part? Boyfriend or him being a Nasty Boy?” Flea said to the now redder teen.
Flea mentally allowed the connection, and another monolith grew from the ground next to Rabies. This monolith was bare and pale blue. The door materialized and was a flat white. When it opened, Flea watched another Gnome walk through the door. As the new Gnome made eye contact with Flea, they both jumped and pointed at one another, and then shouted to one another.
“Gnomes Rule!”
“Oh, god, not you too. Please don’t ever say that again,” the Elf said.
“Oh, we have two visitors today,” said Bob, coming out of the house.
“Oh Gawd, you’re adorable, Bob!” Rabbies yelled and ran over to him.
Bob sighed as he raised his hands into the air. The Elf ran up to him and immediately picked him up. Rabies then buried her head into the top of Bob’s head and rubbed back and forth.
“Oh man, you’re so soft. I haven’t held my cat Loki in years.”
“What’s with the Gnome sized cat?” asked Nasty.
Flea gave the other Gnome a quick rundown on how he got the egg and how that led to the creation of Bob’s body. They all went into Flea’s house, and Rabies told her secret boyfriend how they met in Outbreak, found the house with a car, and made a small base out of it.
“Bob, can you show my map on the screen?”
A moment later, the map that Kyle had been writing on showed up on the center screen.
“We got a car now, so when you spawn tomorrow and find out where you’re at, we might be able to come and pick you up.”
“That would be awesome, thank you. I was so mad when Kevin’s sister bit me. I started losing control of my body, and then I could only watch as Zombie me went on a rampage, going after everyone else. So I just logged out and went back to Fantasy.”
“Where and what are you doing in Fantasy?”
“I just left my starter Island and sailed to Denalice, the capital of the starter area’s territory. I want to be a mage but found out that you need to join one of the academies to get the required Skill Orbs. I’m going to do quests till I get the required 2 Royals to join. I got lucky by waiting to use my token for a Skill Orb at the capital. I wound up getting the [Fire] skill. The unlucky part is I need to level it to tier two before I can control it well enough. Right now, it’s basically a party trick.”
“Wait, you hit level 10 in less than five days? How?”
“Got into a group of noobs right away. We farmed non-stop and split everything fairly. No one died after the first day, so we just grinded and slept. I wanted to try and meet up with Rabies as fast as I could.”
“You figure out where she is on Mea?”
“Yea, too damn far away. She’s on Fordrum Island on the other side of the damn planet. We thought about one of us rebirthing till we got closer to one another, but our AIs said they were told players only get a hundred lives on Mea. What kind of shit is that? I hope they don’t make people buy more lives or something.”
“Oh, you told the others what Tenzin said?”
Bob looked over at Flea, hearing his silent words, he just grinned and shrugged.
“Well, it was great meeting you two, but Bob and I have a baby yellow Dengre to get back to his family. I’ll see you tomorrow when Outbreak goes live, Kimberly. Hopefully, we can find out where you’re located and pick you up, Paul.
“Baby yellow Dengre?” The Elf and Gnome asked in unison.
​
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Chapter 3.05

REQUESTED PERMISSION

Streets of Chicago, IL
Saturday, July 12th
[Wake up, Kyle! Zombies are going to eat you!]
Kyle awoke with a start, jumping out of the sleeping bag he had been using. Wide-eyed, the young teen looked around the roof but saw no menace in the shadows created by the faint illumination of some strange world in the sky.
[Just kidding.]
“What the fuck, Bob. You almost gave me a heart attack.”
[Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. The others asked me to do it.]
Shaking his head, Kyle rolled up the sleeping bag and secured it to the bottom of his backpack. Feeling a bit hungry, he removed one of the travel bars he found in the store and ate it.
“Man, feeling hungry in a video game is odd. The urge seems far stronger in Outbreak than Fantasy.”
[Unsure, the others say their owners have had similar experiences with feelings and senses feeling odd or wrong.]
“Interesting, maybe they are still working out the kinks with the new sensations in this game. Maybe from the time compression?”
Kyle looked around one last time before putting on the backpack. Next, he removed the cinder blocks covering the hatch and then opened it. After a quick peek up top, he hurried down the ladder. Hoping to collect whatever he missed the day before, Kyle went through the store’s shelves one more time before hearing a noise from the other side of the store. Pulling the nine iron from its makeshift spot between his back and backpack, he began to inch towards where he heard the noise.
Peeking over the rack of winter gear, Kyle spotted a head of blonde hair. Moving slowly around the shelf, he found himself looking into the eyes of a cute blond girl around his age.
“You scared the hell out of me,” Kyle said.
“Sorry, I didn’t think anyone else was here,” replied the blond.
“What group are you a part of?”
“I was a part of Terminally Chi till they were dissolved. One of the other’s sisters had been infected, and it went to hell fast. I escaped and ran away. I mean, I know I’ll die soon, and that doesn’t scare me. But Jesus, those Zombies really frightened the shit out of me,” she said as she started to giggle.
“What’s so funny?”
“Sorry. It’s just the first time in a while that I’ve been outside the hospital and walking around on my own legs. Even nearly getting scared to death, this is amazing. The doctors at the hospital had us all chipped recently, and we are now in these fancy medical capsules down in the basement. Even with Zombies roaming around, I don’t want to wake back up.”
“I-I’m sorry to hear.”
She waved her hand, dismissing his apology.
“Don’t worry about it. Name’s Kimberly. Your group go tits up too?”
Kyle laughed.
“Oh yeah, our group went tits up pretty quickly. Names Kyle.”
“So Kyle, what’s your plan for the rest of the twelve or so hours we got left tonight?”
“Was thinking of roaming around and finding more gear. You’re more than welcome to join me.”
“I think I’d like that. I haven’t talked to many people my age outside the hospital.”
Kyle helped Kimberly find a decent size backpack and fill it with whatever various goodies were remaining. Finding another sleeping bag, Kyle strapped it to the bottom of her pack as well.
“Alright, let’s get going. I want to find some type of transportation and more weapons before the day’s over,” said Kyle.
The two left the sporting goods store and headed northwest, giving the hospital a wide berth just in case the Zombies within decided to check out. As they walked down the road, Kyle would peer into each building as they passed, looking for anything to help them out. Thirteen blocks into their journey, Kimberly called out to Kyle from across the street. Running over to her, Kyle followed her into an unmarked building to find it filled with various blunt and sharp handheld weapons.
“Man, if we had found this store before, we might have been able to fight the Zombies better. Blunt weapons don’t seem to do much to them,” said Kyle.
Kyle walked along the store’s shelves till he found a section with long machetes. They even had matching holders. Taking two of them, he removed his belt to fasten a holder to each hip. Kyle then slipped the blades inside. Kyle then tossed his bent nine-iron aside.
Grabbing a large bowie knife, Kyle placed that inside his bag. Feeling better prepared, he walked around till he found Kimberly. She was in the back, twirling a long pike around herself.
“Were you some type of warrior princess before you got sick?”
Kimberly stopped twirling the pole around. A dark shade of red blush trailed from her cheek down to her neck. Kyle found himself somewhat amused at the idea that a girl carrying a six-foot pike would also be so easily embarrassed.
“I was a part of my highschool cheer squad my freshman year. I’m the one you see spinning the baton around in front of the band.”
“Hey, if you can use that, do so. It will keep you farther away from the bitie end of a fight. Come over to the other side. I found some blades you can use as well.”
Kyle showed Kimberly the machetes and helped her fasten two of them around her waist. She wasn’t wearing a belt, so they had to find one in the store. After a brief search, they came across a belt meant to hold daggers. In no time, they had her kitted out in two machetes. Kyle placed one of the large bowie knives in her bag as well.
“Alright, let’s head out.”
The two kept walking west, each of them on opposite sides of the street, looking for any buildings that had loot held within. Over the next few hours, they found various structures with supplies, food, and gear. Kyle made sure to mark everything on his map as they went.
Around midday, Kyle found a vehicle inside an open garage. Looking inside, he found no key fob to start the car. Figuring the keys may be in the house, Kyle told Kimberly to wait at the back door. He broke the glass of a first-floor window on the house’s side and then counted to one hundred. When nothing Zombie-like came running out of any of the rooms, he crawled inside. Unlocking the door for Kimberly, she was surprised to see a fully furnished home, complete with cabinets of food. It didn’t take long before Kimberly cheered, finding the keys on the table beside the front door.
“I think we should stay here till we know more about the game, Kim. We can take the car back to that last hardware store and get plywood, nails, and any other items to board up the house.”
[Hammers. You’ll need hammers,] quipped Bob.
Kyle looked at a mirror on the wall and shrugged. That was good enough to get a giggle from his AI companion.
A little over an hour later, they pulled up beside the house with a stack of plywood tied to the roof of the sedan. The two spent the rest of the day hand cutting the plywood to fit over each of the first-floor windows and then nailing them into place. Seeing they had less than an hour before the end of the first day, Kyle parked the car inside the garage and closed the door to hide it.
The two headed inside, locking the door behind them. Kyle and Kimberly went into the living room, each picking out a couch they could logout from.
“Do you play Fantasy, Kyle?” Kimberly asked as she made herself comfortable.
“Yea. It hasn’t been the best of experiences so far, but I’ve been having fun. The NPCs in the game are crazy realistic and make it worth playing, even if the gameplay has been lacking for me. Did you start yet?”
“Yep! I started earlier this week when we entered our medical capsules. I’m a spear-wielding female Elf.”
Flea laughed at her enthusiasm.
“I’m a Gnome rogue with daggers. I hope to soon be able to control a magic ninja star.”
“Where did you get a magical ninja star?”
“My AI companion, Bob, helped an old Elf, and he gifted it to me. I’m still lacking in the mana department to control it, though.”
“You can play with your AI? How? I would love to play with Ellie.”
“Got lucky again and was given a Guardian Egg. Hatching it allowed my AI, Bob, to create an avatar and transfer to it.”
“Oh, what did he make?”
“A Persian house cat.”
Kimberly laughed.
“I'd love to see that. I’m currently playing in the coldest damn place on Mea. I had to spend almost all the silver I’ve made to buy clothes to stay warm.”
[You can invite her to your MicroWorld, Kyle. She can then meet the great and wonderful, Bob.]
Kyle laughed, causing Kimberly to give him a look.
“Sorry. The Great & Wonderful Bob says I’m able to invite you to my MicroWorld to meet him.”
“Can I? I want to meet him!”
“How does that work, Bob?”
[I’ve sent her AI our MicroWorld coordinates. With them, they can create a gateway to the pavilion at our base.]
“Bob says your AI, Ellie, now has our MicroWorld’s coordinates. You can come and visit after we log out.”
“See you soon!” Kimberley squealed before slumping over on the couch.
Kyle moved her body, so it was lying correctly on the couch. He then laid on the other couch and logged out. Materializing at the center of his pavilion, Kyle walked inside the house to find Bob in the same place he left his companion. Though the wall now held three screens. One watched Kyle’s sleeping body in Outbreak, and the other Flea’s in Fantasy. Kyle saw an episode of Stargate on the middle screen had been paused.
“That’s kinda creepy,” Flea said, pointing to his Gnome’s body on the couch of Tenzin’s Lorien.
Bob shrugged.
Flea heard a chime followed by a message prompt.
​
Rabies Kitten requests permission to establish a gateway to your MicroWorld.
​
What the hell kind of name is that?
Flea mentally gave permission and immediately heard a noise coming from outside. Going through the backdoor, he found another monolith rising at the edge of the pavilion. Leaving the house, he walked towards it as it slowly rose. Kyle could see the new monolith was covered in splashes of brightly colored paint like someone had thrown dye-filled balloons at it. As the standing stone finished growing, a door materialized. The door, like the monolith, was covered in bright colors. Unlike the monolith, the door was painted with various lines of color crisscrossing it.
A moment later, a brunette Kimberly, walked through the door. She looked around, taking in the scene, then looked down at the Gnome.
“Kyle?”
“Yep, I like being the Gnome when I’m online.”
“I didn’t know you could do that! Ellie, can you change me into my Elf?”
A moment later, Kimberly grew almost two heads taller, her brunette shoulder-length hair turned snow-white and grew down to her waist as it braided itself.
“This is so damn cool. I can’t wait to show Paul.”
“Paul?”
“Oh, sorry. He’s one of the others at the hospital. I think he’s my boyfriend, but we never really put a name to it.”
“Oh, no worries, I wasn’t looking to date anyone. But now you know you can visit one another’s MicroWorlds.”
Flea could see the look on her face when she realized what he had just said. She seemed to concentrate for a moment. But before Flea could comment, he got another chime and prompt.
​
Nasty Boy requests permission to establish a gateway to your MicroWorld.
​
“Nasty Boy? Your boyfriend?”
Rabbies’ cheeks went a few shades red as she nodded.
“Don’t say that around him, please.”
“What part? Boyfriend or him being a Nasty Boy?” Flea said to the now redder teen.
Flea mentally allowed the connection, and another monolith grew from the ground next to Rabies. This monolith was bare and pale blue. The door materialized and was a flat white. When it opened, Flea watched another Gnome walk through the door. As the new Gnome made eye contact with Flea, they both jumped and pointed at one another, and then shouted to one another.
“Gnomes Rule!”
“Oh, god, not you too. Please don’t ever say that again,” the Elf said.
“Oh, we have two visitors today,” said Bob, coming out of the house.
“Oh Gawd, you’re adorable, Bob!” Rabbies yelled and ran over to him.
Bob sighed as he raised his hands into the air. The Elf ran up to him and immediately picked him up. Rabies then buried her head into the top of Bob’s head and rubbed back and forth.
“Oh man, you’re so soft. I haven’t held my cat Loki in years.”
“What’s with the Gnome sized cat?” asked Nasty.
Flea gave the other Gnome a quick rundown on how he got the egg and how that led to the creation of Bob’s body. They all went into Flea’s house, and Rabies told her secret boyfriend how they met in Outbreak, found the house with a car, and made a small base out of it.
“Bob, can you show my map on the screen?”
A moment later, the map that Kyle had been writing on showed up on the center screen.
“We got a car now, so when you spawn tomorrow and find out where you’re at, we might be able to come and pick you up.”
“That would be awesome, thank you. I was so mad when Kevin’s sister bit me. I started losing control of my body, and then I could only watch as Zombie me went on a rampage, going after everyone else. So I just logged out and went back to Fantasy.”
“Where and what are you doing in Fantasy?”
“I just left my starter Island and sailed to Denalice, the capital of the starter area’s territory. I want to be a mage but found out that you need to join one of the academies to get the required Skill Orbs. I’m going to do quests till I get the required 2 Royals to join. I got lucky by waiting to use my token for a Skill Orb at the capital. I wound up getting the [Fire] skill. The unlucky part is I need to level it to tier two before I can control it well enough. Right now, it’s basically a party trick.”
“Wait, you hit level 10 in less than five days? How?”
“Got into a group of noobs right away. We farmed non-stop and split everything fairly. No one died after the first day, so we just grinded and slept. I wanted to try and meet up with Rabies as fast as I could.”
“You figure out where she is on Mea?”
“Yea, too damn far away. She’s on Fordrum Island on the other side of the damn planet. We thought about one of us rebirthing till we got closer to one another, but our AIs said they were told players only get a hundred lives on Mea. What kind of shit is that? I hope they don’t make people buy more lives or something.”
“Oh, you told the others what Tenzin said?”
Bob looked over at Flea, hearing his silent words, he just grinned and shrugged.
“Well, it was great meeting you two, but Bob and I have a baby yellow Dengre to get back to his family. I’ll see you tomorrow when Outbreak goes live, Kimberly. Hopefully, we can find out where you’re located and pick you up, Paul.
“Baby yellow Dengre?” The Elf and Gnome asked in unison.
​
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Link to article: https://theathletic.com/2333024/2021/01/20/becky-hammon-san-antonio-spurs-nba-coach/
Full text:

There is a particular fusion of tension and chance, of anticipation and possibility, that comes with being a pioneer. Its demands constrict at times, even though it’s the dream, both in the immediate and the spectacular long view. It still continues, even now as Becky Hammon is in her seventh year on Gregg Popovich’s staff in San Antonio. Most recently, after Popovich got tossed from a game late in the second quarter against the Los Angeles Lakers on Dec. 30, he pointed to Hammon on his way out and said, “You got ’em.”
And that was that. She was the active head coach of an NBA team. In-bounds plays were hers to draw up, offensive sets were hers to call, defensive adjustments against LeBron James and Anthony Davis, already her forte with the Spurs, were going to be a mammoth task, as it is for any opposing staff. Afterward, James said as a player out on the court it was beautiful to hear Hammon patrolling the sidelines. Hammon, of course, wanted the win, saying on the postgame press conference that while it was a night to remember, it would’ve been better had the Spurs eked one out against the reigning champs.
Hammon, 43, acknowledges that she actively tries to avoid thinking of the firsts she’s been a part of and the more to come. “It can be overwhelming,” she said.
Vickie Johnson, now the head coach of the Dallas Wings, spoke with her former teammate and friend just last week. The entirety of the moment came up. Hammon told Johnson she no longer bears the monotony of that daily pressure, but that she’s just more anxious about the next step. That next step everyone in the NBA knows is inevitable — Hammon becoming an NBA head coach.
“Everything happens in God’s timing; we just have to trust and believe that,” Johnson said. “But it’s all about being prepared for that moment. I know she will be. I know she will be.”
On the NBA’s historic “You got ‘em” night, Hammon’s friends, former teammates and former players found themselves glued to the TV or tethered to their phones. Those who were going through the motions of 2020 received calls and texts from one another, telling them to find a way to turn on NBATV or get to ESPN for that night’s SportsCenter. If they couldn’t do that, they wanted to read the gamers; if possible, they wanted to watch her postgame availability. That night was just another step toward what they all believe is coming sooner rather than later: Hammon getting a head coaching job.
“I really do believe what she’s doing now? She’s been practicing for this,” said former teammate Marie Ferdinand-Harris. “She has always been the person that had to prove it to someone or had to prove it because of her height. She’s been in a training camp, pretty much the very first time she picked up a basketball. She’s been training to defeat all odds.”
Near a San Antonio strip mall, where the main attractions are the neighborhood grocery store, a Torchy’s Tacos and a frozen yogurt pitstop, is an unassuming white-brick building barely 15 minutes north of downtown. It’s there that a colorful mural shows Hammon looking out over the Alamo City, above its skyline, above the Tower of the Americas. On the side of this random building in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood, Hammon isn’t alone. The mural is flush with green grass beneath the carefully cultivated horizon, and while eyes gravitate to the depiction of the San Antonio Spurs assistant coach, there’s one more component to the piece.
It’s a young girl, a younger version of Hammon, her hair pulled up into a high blonde ponytail as Hammon did during her playing days. She’s wearing a home San Antonio Stars jersey and staring at her older self. She’s in Hammon’s number: 25. She’s wearing her jersey, which was retired by the organization in 2016. A basketball is held up against her left hip by the pressure from her left palm as she looks out on what everything could be, and what’s still to come. It’s a striking piece of symbolism considering its focal point is the person who changed professional sports forever simply by being herself every single day. Atop Hammon’s gaze out above her home base for the last 13 years, written in big blue letters, the kind of blue that matches the hue of the sky on a clear day in south-central Texas, is a directive:
“NEVER STOP”
Speaking things into existence
Delisha Milton-Jones’ favorite story to tell isn’t the one that, looking back on it now, is so strikingly prescient that she still labels it one of divinity. No, her favorite Hammon story goes back four years prior. Hammon and Milton-Jones were teammates at Ros Casares Valencia in Spain during the WNBA offseason. Valencia is located in Godella, a shade under four hours south of Barcelona, but like Barcelona, it’s on the Balearic Sea. Off days, Milton-Jones still recalls, were heaven: trips to the beach to relax in the sun, picturesque outdoor cafes, all of it. There were those days, too, where the players would just congregate at apartments and share stories.
Hammon, a renowned dancer in her inner circles, went back in time. Like, way, way back. In an apartment in Spain with her teammates crowded around her, she proved it.
“There’s never a dull moment when Becky’s around,” Milton-Jones said. “She used to break out her old videos when she was younger and she was in a talent contest where she was doing the MC Hammer dances. Oh my gosh, she loves a good time.”
Four years later, Milton-Jones signed with the Stars. Once she got settled in San Antonio, she went to Hammon’s house. This is the second-favorite story, the conversation that Old Dominion’s women’s basketball coach recollected with ease.
“We were both at this moment in our lives where we were wanting more and we were trying to figure out what was next,” Milton-Jones recalled. “It was a spiritually-based conversation, because both of us sort of spoke something into existence, now that I look back on it, because we’re talking about dreams and aspirations, and making conditions for those things in our lives to be seeded. Like, manifestations. I told her, ‘My dream is, I want to be a coach in the NBA. I would love to coach men.’”
They both left that talk feeling motivated to press on. The playing days, Milton-Jones said, were approaching their end for both of them. And Hammon, she said succinctly, was always one step ahead.
A year later, Hammon retired from basketball and was hired by Popovich.
“My jaw dropped and I said, ‘No freaking way! No freaking way’!” Milton-Jones said. “And the reason being, I was in pure awe that we had spoken about that, and it happened. I wish I could tell the world what I know. I don’t even know where to begin. I always kept that in the corner of my heart and I revisit it from time to time — or every time I see Becky on TV.”
“She always went with the Eagles”
When Hammon was traded to the San Antonio Stars in 2007 after eight years with the New York Liberty, Ferdinand-Harris remembers how swiftly Hammon became so attached to the San Antonio way. There were nights after games when Stars players wanted to go celebrate a win at a favorite restaurant. Hammon, her teammates remember, opted to keep pushing herself. She’d tell them she was going to get dinner with Tony Parker or Tim Duncan or maybe meet up with Popovich and staffers to talk about what they were doing for their next opponent.
“She always went with the eagles. Not to say the others were chickens,” Ferdinand-Harris said. “But she would always find herself with the eagles. And she soared with them. That was her company. When we’d have days off, most of us would be taking it easy, icing our knees, watching TV. She’s like, ‘I’m going to go meet up with them and watch the Spurs practice.’ Becky was just a step ahead of everyone. She always affiliated herself with the eagles, and when I see her where she is now, it all makes sense.”
South Dakota tough
There is tough, and then there is South Dakota tough. That’s how friends describe it. During Hammon’s rookie year with the Liberty in 1999, the Rapid City, S.D., native had to contend with battle-tested teammates Theresa Witherspoon, Sophia Witherspoon and Johnson. She had to figure out how to get around screens by Rebecca Lobo. Johnson, a versatile defensive-first guard, remembers lowering her shoulder into Hammon a couple of times in training camp. Just to see. Afterward, she went into the general manager’s office to ask where they found this new guard.
“I was like, ‘This kid — I don’t know her name — from South Dakota? This little kid is tough! If I go to war, I want to go to war with this kid. I don’t know who she is. She’s short, she’s a shooter, she’s tough. I know I hit her hard a couple of times and she got back up,'” said Johnson. “Ever since that day, we’ve become friends. We’re very close now. It’s like a match made in heaven, in a sense.”
Back then, coaching basketball didn’t come up all that much. Hammon was cutting her teeth amongst the WNBA elite and climbing the ladder doing so. She became a more established, well-rounded guard, going from primarily a 3-point threat to an all-around scorer. It came with effort, but also with the sort of attention to detail Johnson had never really seen in another teammate.
“When we were on the road, we would order our room service to the trainer’s room and we would set up a projector so we could watch film and we would stay there pretty much all night,” Johnson said. “That’s what it was. It wasn’t about coaching but it was about trying to find that edge. We never really spoke about coaching, it just naturally happened.”
“When you get to this point, you are a professional”
C.J. Williams felt a little awkward, a little out of position. The 6-foot-5 guard from North Carolina State was being deployed as a stretch-four under Hammon at the 2016 NBA Summer League. It was Hammon’s second year as San Antonio’s head coach of the summer league team. In her first year, the Spurs won the tournament in Las Vegas.
“They had me playing a little bit out of position, so it was a new feeling for me to be playing the power forward position,” Williams recalls. “I had asked her one time, I told her, ‘I’m setting this screen and I’m not getting open, and it’s extremely hard for me to get open and get a shot.’
“She tells me: ‘Your stance is a little too wide and you need to take a step in the opposite direction first before you go to the ball.’ I was like, ‘OK, I’m thinking that is basic fundamentals, but that’s probably not going to work.’ But she’s a coach. I’m going to do it, and I went and did it and got a wide-open shot. Unfortunately, I missed it. I always tell that story. Because it’s not a matter of whether she’s a female or male. Her overall knowledge of the game is better than a lot of people I know.”
Talk to those who know her, and the subject of her gender is raised by those who played for her or with her before it’s raised by the interviewer. And every time, there is a quashing of all those preconceived notions that run parallel to the way things have always been done. It does not matter.
“The way I look at it is: We are all professionals. Whether it’s summer league or regular season, playoffs, whatever. It doesn’t matter. When you get to this point, you’re a professional,” says Williams, now with the Brooklyn Nets G-League team. “And you know you’re going to work with other people. And all you want out of those other people is to work together for that common goal. Whether we just want to make the playoffs or play for a championship or whether we just want to improve from season to season, if you can prove to me that we both are going to be of equal or greater value to this organization, that’s all I care about. Becky was just so awesome in development. In Xs and Os. It’s not so shocking because she works with the Spurs. She learned, obviously, and was a sponge and in that form.”
For Hammon’s players, gender never defined her as a coach
It takes much more to get professionals to buy in, too, no matter your gender. Hammon knows when to strike. Former teammates say outside of the staples of tactics, discipline, style of play, coaches need to find a way to hit a chord that players can relate to and remember. Hammon, they say, has an innate ability to do that.
With Hammon, they know she can impress players by simply broaching every-day, off-the-court things. Ferdinand-Harris said that Hammon talks to her players about popular TikTok dances, Drake releases and is the sort of amicable personality who could win over anyone by something as simple as a game of H.O.R.S.E.
“She understood from the very beginning that it’s all about connecting to people. And how do you connect with people? You try to understand people,” Ferdinand-Harris said. “It didn’t matter who you were, what color you were, what gender, anything, she was able to make that connection with her personality. She could make you smile. She could make you laugh. She’s very funny. Once you get in, then you want to go to war for her. I want to bust my butt a little bit more to go win this game. I want to make her proud. I want to go all out. And I can see that transferring to the NBA. I can see her connecting with those players.”
Boris Diaw remembers Hammon’s rookie season as an assistant coach and her figuring out the rapid transition from star WNBA player to assistant coach.
“Back then she was becoming a rookie coach and she was in that early transition from playing to becoming a coach; as all the young coaches, you could tell she was looking for what to do and how to do it because it’s different from playing,” Diaw said. “There was not even a reaction (to her being a woman). It was normal. Nobody was saying, ‘We have a woman assistant.’ The question never even came up.”
The outgoing Diaw often struck up conversations with Hammon off the court about her long-term aspirations. He was traded to Utah in July 2016.
“We clearly talked about how far does she want to go in coaching and stuff, and it seemed pretty natural,” he said. “She was just a young assistant coach and starting out and learning that job. We would see that the progression would take her as far as she can. It was something always in our mind.”
Andre Miller, a point guard in the NBA for 17 seasons, played his last year in the league in San Antonio in 2016. He’d known Hammon, the star point guard, the sharp-shooting 3-point threat, the perennial All-Star, but Miller never knew Hammon the coach. No one did until they were signed by the Spurs. From the outset, Miller knew that Hammon was going to be able to direct a game from the sideline just like she did through the prism of being a point guard: obsessed with the details, not wanting to concede an inch. Miller remembers his time working with her and said she sees the game from a coaching perspective through the lens of a point guard.
“Oh she’s going to definitely be the first female NBA head coach,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time. I wouldn’t be surprised that when Pop does decide to retire that she’d be next in line. It’s a perfect situation. She knows the community, she knows management, and she’s reliable and she expects it. It’s easy to make that transition. She’s primed and ready.” (For the record, several of Popovich’s former assistants and players have gone on to be NBA coaches and two are general managers.)
“If you know the game, you know the game”
Vickie Johnson, like so many others, reverses the interview and bluntly poses the question herself.
“You tell me if I’m wrong. If she was a guy and she had all these accolades and had done all she has done in this league, she would already be a head coach,” said Johnson, who later played with Hammon in San Antonio after their years together in New York. “It’s just unfair, and I know it’s hard for us as a whole to see people equally. Male, female, whatever. White, black, brown, gold, whatever. I don’t see that. If you’re a coach, you’re a coach. If you’re a good person, you’re a good person. If you’re a bad person, you’re a bad person. I know by talking to Becky, watching her, being able to sit with her and watch film with her and the way she communicates with the players, I know she’s ready to take the next step.”
If not for San Antonio’s willingness to embrace needed change, Johnson wonders if Hammon — or any other qualified female coach for that matter — would’ve gotten her due shot on a bench elsewhere in the NBA. The burden of trailblazing used to be more of a strain than it is now. Hammon wanted to just coach. To watch basketball with the sort of genius she’s proven capable of doing. She’d soared with the eagles while teammates went out for dinner.
But with necessary firsts comes a spotlight. It’s not something she shirks, per se. She wants to do what she always has: live basketball every day.
“I think when she first got into the league and coaching, I think it did. I think it weighed on her,” Johnson said. “She had to carry this weight. Through the years, through the summer leagues, winning summer leagues, just going through the process and understanding the rules and regulations of the NBA. How you relate to (players). Do they trust you? Do you know what you’re talking about? I think the biggest thing for her, I think she had the pressure a few years ago. Now it’s about her learning all she can and being prepared when the opportunities come.”
Former WNBA star guard Jennifer Azzi faced Hammon for a few years in the WNBA before retiring in 2003. “Toughness” is what comes to mind all these years later. After Hammon took over for Popovich in that game against the Lakers, Azzi remembers seeing a congratulatory tweet from Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to Hammon among the wave of well-wishes and celebratory emojis.
“What she’s doing is she’s shining the light on the fact that women are just as good as men in everything,” Azzi said. “It’s one thing when there’s something that’s market-based. Like NBA vs. WNBA. There’s still so much room to grow. But in this instance, if you know the game, you know the game. I think it’s shining the light on everything women do everywhere. I think it’s tremendous for the growth of the sport overall. I also really believe — I think the biggest shift I have seen is women supporting women, women celebrating women. I don’t remember ever a time like this.”
As he’s had to unfortunately explain too many times over the years, Popovich once more said he didn’t hire Hammon “to make history.” She was brought on board because she’s Becky Hammon, the one player who would never stop, the coach who would never stop.
“Breaking down barriers is something that is always beautiful to see,” Williams said. “It’s just that, for me, it’s not very shocking. Having firsthand experience with her, she’s professional, and at this level, that’s all you can ask for in coach, in a player, in anything.”
Two seasons ago, Ferdinand-Harris arrived at Spurs camp earlier than usual. She wanted to try to yell at Becky during warmups. But once she walked down courtside, she saw Hammon putting Spurs guard Patty Mills through a quick shooting routine, and read the expression on her friend’s face. She knew that the goofy, life-of-the-party Becky was there. She knew that if she wanted to, she could call out a random dance move, and if she wanted to, Hammon could bust it out right there.
But she resisted because Hammon was rebounding and making Mills shuffle his feet beyond the 3-point line and Mills was breaking a sweat.
“The Spurs will continue to grow you as a person. Character is always No. 1. From Day 1, she was learning how. She didn’t have to learn all these things under pressure, under stress,” Ferdinand-Harris said. “Because you can mess up and learn. They tell you, ‘We are all in with you.’ All the mess-ups are all in. And then she was getting better and better as a coach. It’s the same format for the players. They’re grooming everyone, grooming everyone, and then, all of a sudden, it clicks. Grooming their own to become ready. They did it with Kawhi, with Tim, with Tony, with Manu. And now, look who it is. It’s Becky.”

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Manchester United and a Positional Mess

Edit* I will edit the formatting to make it more readable soon
United’s transfer window has shown that the club is a mess from the recruitment standpoint for years but if you look at the team positional it’s been years of management and ineptitude since Sir Alex Ferguson and David Gill left the club in 2013.
*The transfer figures aren't correct because I listed estimates in $USD, will update later
*apologies for any spelling errors
Goalkeeper
When Ferguson left in 2013 United were in a good position in the goalkeeper department. David De Gea was 23 and the hype around was finally starting to show. In 2014, under Louis Van Gaal De Gea’s consistent performances put him in the upper echelon of goalkeepers in the world, he was United’s player of the season and nominated for the PFA Player’s Player of the Season that year. Unfortunately his contract was quietly winding down and the Spaniard made no effort in his hope to return to his native in Spain and join Real Madrid.
That January United had signed Victor Valdes on a free transfer and to many United fans Valdes was seen as an adequate short term replacement if and when De Gea were to leave for Madrid. Unfortunately Louis Van Gaal quickly fell out with Victor Valdes over a personal dispute over playing in a reserve game. Van Gaal vanished Valdes from the squad and quickly placed him on the transfer list. As it came increasingly likely that De Gea would leave for Madrid, United bought Sergio Romero on a free transfer more as backup. As 2015 loomed, Van Gaal made the decision to drop De Gea until the transfer window ended, going with Romero instead. At the end of the month Madrid finally ponied up the $35 million for De Gea and United agreed to sign Madrid goalkeeper Keylor Navas as a replacement. Hours later the deal ultimately fell through and De Gea decided to sign a four-year long contract extension at United.
For the next four years United’s goalkeeper situation was set, De Gea was arguably United’s most consistent performer over the next few seasons, even Sergio Romero was an adequate backup helping United win two trophies in 2017 with the Europa League and Carabao Cup. After the 2018 World Cup, De Gea suffered a poor run of form starting with Spain in Russia and ultimately continuing with United over the 2018-2019 season having his worst season at United. At the same time, De Gea was in another contract dispute, this time the goalkeeper was asking for a new contract which would make him the highest paid player at the club.United’s wage structure was disrupted with the Alexis Sanchez signing but in September 2019 De Gea signed another contract renewal though his poor formed continued for much of the 2019-2020.
United were dealt some luck with academy product Dean Henderson progressing on loan at Sheffield United and United ultimately signed Henderson to a new contract to push De Gea. Unfortunately this left Sergio Romero out in the cold. The Argentine was not made aware of United’s plans for him until late in the transfer window. United ultimately turned down a $2 million loan offer from Everton as they hoped to get close to an $8 million transfer for him. This led to Romero’s wife angrily calling the club out on social media and now United have four goalkeepers at the club totaling to nearly $500 k a week.
Centerbacks
In 2013 United’s Center Backs were Rio Ferdinand (34) and Nemanja Vidic (31), Jonny Evans (25), Phil Jones (21) and Chris Smalling (23). A year later Nemanja Vidic fell out with David Moyes and agreed to join Inter Milan on a free transfer, Rio Ferdinand was told before the last game of the season by Ed Woodward that he had no future at the club. New manager Louis Van Gaal decided that he needed to bring in a left sided defender Thomas Vermalen being his first choice, the deal ultimately fell through and United looked at Marcos Rojo after he impressed at the 2014 World Cup with Argentina.
The 2014-2015 season defensively was a mixture of consistent injuries and Van Gaal’s consistent formation tinkering. United used Rojo, Smalling, Jones, Evans, youngster Paddy McNair, and even Michael Carrick at center back that season. At their best Jones and Smalling formed a decent partnership but it was quite evident that enforcements were needed. The following season United did look at Mats Hummels and Sergio Ramos but did not pursue any deals instead , Jonny Evans joined West Brom and Van Gaal decided to play Daley Blind at center back and alter his defensive tactical approach. A year later new manager Jose Mourinho decided to purchase 22 year-old Eric Bailly for about 30 million from Villarreal. The following season Jose continued to revamp United’s center back position by purchasing another young center back 23 year-old Victor Lindelof from Benfica. Because of injuries and poor form United never truly established centerback partnership during these two seasons.
In 2018 Jose wished to purchase a third center back, this time going for an established center back like Toby Alderweirweld. Unfortunately the United hierarchy decided to go against Jose’s wish which led to massive frustrations between the manager and namely Ed Woodward. A year later and new manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer prioritized a center back a year later and paid a record 80 million for center back Harry Maguire. Chris Smalling joined Roma on loan and United finally looked to have a consistent center back partnership of Lindelof and Maguire. Maguire and Lindelof didn’t always compliment each other but United did have a defensively solid season.
Between 2017-2019 Phil Jones, Chris Smalling and Marcos Rojo were all given new contracts. You could argue that the players were given contracts less because of their performances on the pitch (Smalling may be exempt from this argument) and more to protect their transfer value. Now in 2020, Chris Smalling was sold to Roma for $15 million after months of negtoation with Roma for the paltry fee, Marcos Rojo was offered to Everton in 2019 but the club, allegedly Joel Glazer himself turned the deal down, Rojo was then loaned to his boyhood club Estudiantes in January basically for him to play and put himself in the transfer market. Unfortunately due to his high wages United have failed sell the Argentine for two years now as he has been left out of the squads Champions League Squad along with Phil Jones, who most bafflingly was offered a five-year contract in 2018. The injury prone defender is still on the medical table and couldn’t be shifted this summer as well. Instead of buying a new centerback, United will hope Eric Bailly can continue to stay fit and move on from last week’s awful performance, Axel Tuanzebe has been highly rated for the past few years, an unfortunate hip injury last October kept him out of the United squad for nearly a full calendar year but he is finally back fit, and lastly Tenden Mengi is a highly rated 18 year old from the academy.
Current Centerbacks:
Harry Maguire
Victor Lindelof
Eric Bailly
Axel Tuanzebe
Tenden Mengi
Marcos Rojo*
Phil Jones*
Left Back
Patrice Evra made a hilarious yet sad point during his appearance on Sky Sports last weekend. United haven’t had a good left back since he was at the club. In Moyes’ first season he tried to acquire Leighton Baines from Everton with an odd joint bid of him and Fellaini for $30 million which was swiftly rejected, United then agreed a loan deal for Fabio Coentrao for the deal to fall through at the last minute. A year later United spent big money on 18 year-old Luke Shaw, Louis Van Gaal told the former captain his services were no longer needed and he was sold to Juventus for $1.8m. Luke Shaw was touted to be the next big thing in England and United were hoping they had just locked down the left back position for the next decade.
Shaw was scouted by David Moyes but Louis Van Gaal was the manager at the time who approved of the deal. Van Gaal often played with wing backs which required Shaw to transition his game positionally. Van Gaal also purchased Marcos Rojo as a left sided centerback who could also play in the left back position and Daley Blind who was bought as a Defensive Midfielder but everyone saw he was equally comparable at the left wing back position for Van Gaal Dutch World Cup 2014 squad. A year on Daley Blind seemed to be United’s best left back. The following season Luke Shaw came into his own after struggling with fitness issues, Van Gaal reportedly built his entire attack around Shaw and also decided against purchasing another left back because he had so much confidence in Shaw. For a month we fans saw the potential spoke about with Luke Shaw, unfortunately a terrible leg break against PSV in September ended all that and put United’s leftback position in disarray. Blind was playing well at centerback, and Rojo was injured so Van Gaal often had to call play Matteo Darmian or Ashley out of position and he later called on academy Cameron Borthwick-Jackson. As Shaw recovered from his injury Jose Mourinho was now the new manager and never saw eye to eye with the young left back.
For the next two seasons Blind, Rojo, Young, Darmian, all featured at left back usually ahead of Shaw. The Portuguese manager wanted to sell the leftback but Woodward and the club refused. Shaw eventually won the leftback position back in 2018 and after a few good performances United rewarded him with a new contract. The following season under Solskjaer United’s leftback position finally seemed to at least be stable. Luke Shaw was first choice, and youngster Brandon Williams emerged after Shaw’s injuries and poor form in 2019. The club has finally decided to buy their first outright left back since purchasing Luke Shaw in 2014. Alex Telles joined the club on transfer deadline day for 15 million euros. At 27 United are hoping they are purchasing a player in their prime years to finally offer some consistency.
Current Leftbacks:
Alex Telles
Luke Shaw
Brandon WIlliams
​
Right Back
Like left back, right back has had one of the most important positional transformations in years and United were left far behind in this position as well. In 2014, Antonio Valencia transitioned from winger to right back and emerged as United’s first choice ahead of Rafael. The following season Van Gaal decided to move on from Rafael and sold the Brazilian to Lyon, United purchased Italian Matteo Darmian from Torino in what seemed like a shrewd piece of business. Darmian initially looked like a quality old school defense first fullback, but his clear weakness against the pacey winger in Premier League was quickly exploited and he never fully recovered.
2016 came when new manager Jose Mourinho got the best out of Antonio Valencia and he turned him into arguably a world class right back for that season. The following season his injuries and age lead to his regression and in 2018 the club decided to look at a new right back. There were rumors of Thomas Meunier from PSG, his contract was running down and was a self proclaimed childhood United fan. United went in a different direction purchasing 19 year old Diogo Dalot from FC Porto, a player United had mostly scouted at the U-19 level. United’s shambolic 2018/2019 was not the greatest environment for the young Portuguese right back to develop and he also dealt with injuries.
A year later Valencia left on free, Darmian was sold to Parma, and United decided to identify a new right back. United boasted about their superior scouting department by stating that they looked at nearly 400 right backs before settling on Aaron Wan-Bissaka from Crystal Palace. United spent $50 million on the young right back but he has nailed down the position and is hands down the best 1v1 defender in the league, though he is still developing in other areas. Dalot has been loaned out to AC Milan and United will play Timothy Fosu-Mensah and Brandon Williams as back up.
Current Right Backs:
Aaron Wan Bissaka
Brandon Williams
Timothy Fosu Mensah
Ethan Larid
Central Midfield
Central Midfield has been a shitshow since about 2010. Darren Fletcher unfortunately had to leave the game for nearly two seasons as he battled colitis. Anderson and Tom Cleverley were both injury prone and in 2012 United lost young academy product Paul Pogba on a free transfer to Juventus. A decision some would argue as Ferguson’s biggest mistake. Somehow though Fergie managed to win two league titles and challenge for a third with 39 year old Ryan Giggs, and 37 year old Paul Scholes who came out of retirement in 2011.
When Ferguson retired in 2013 Scholes quietly retired for a second time, Giggs became a rare player-manager and United’s priority was to reinforce the center mid. Fergie and his scouting departments had reportedly scouted Kevin Strootman, Ander Herrera, and most heavily Thiago Alcantara. United seemed ready to do a deal for Thiago who had a $20 million release clause in his contract from Barcelona. As Fergie retired he left the new manager with this same short list of players his department had scouted and done the necessary due diligence on. Instead Moyes had never seen the young Barcelona player play in person so he wasn’t sure about his abilities, he asked newly appointed assistant manager Ryan Giggs about his opinion and he famously said “he didn’t look a United player” whatever that really means.
Moyes moved on and instead was interested in another Barcelona player Cesc Fabregas. Fans and journalists questioned this move, Fabregas was an amazing player but he only just moved to Barcelona after pushing for his dream move for the last two years. Fabregas’ agent alerted Ed Woodward that the player would be interested in a move if United were to pay the $40million asking price Barcelona quoted. United spent the next few weeks lowballing Barcelona and Fabregas ultimately signed a new contract with Barcelona. United then spent the rest of the transfer window feeble attempting to enquire about players like Daniele De Rossi and Luka Modric to ultimately be rejected. United then decided to sign the Fergie scouted player Ander Herrera from Athletic Bilbao, in one of the most bizarre transfer stores in years United ultimately tried to negotiate a lower fee for the Spaniard’s buyout clause didn’t work to say the least. At the very last hour of the transfer window United offered Everton $30 million for Marouane Fellaini, oddly enough United couldn’t signed the Belgian for a discounted rate of $23 million if they acted earlier in the window. The recruitment of Fellaini and failed negotiations saw Woodward turn United into a laughing stock amongst agents and directors. A year later new manager Louis Van Gaal quickly approved the signing of Herrera this time paying his full buyout clause. Anderson, Cleverly and Fletcher moved on in 2014-2015.
Van Gaal also wanted to recruit a more defensive midfielder and United were heavily linked with Arturo Vidal, the club decided to move on after concerns about his knee (Vidal has consistently go on to play for Bayern Munich, Barcelona and now Inter). United instead looked a Van Gaal’s fellow Dutchman Daley Blind for Ajax who the fan base saw play at leftback for Van Gaal during the World Cup. While Herrera impressed it took only a few games to realize Blind did not have the pace to play as a single pivot d-mid in the premier league. At their best United’s midfield consisted of Carrick in a holding role, Herrera playing as a #8 an Fellaini in an advanced role using his running and physical presence to break up plays.
The following season Van Gaal wanted to further reinforce his midfield, Morgan Schneiderlin was purchased from Southampton and German legend Bastian Schweinsteiger joined at 31 from Bayern Munich, a move Ed Woodward said “would put shivers down the spines of opponents”. In hindsight Schweinsteiger had been injured for the past three seasons and Bayern were willing to get rid of their captain. United’s midfield was turgid and lethargic in Van Gaal’s second season and the following year United and Ed Woodward made their biggest purchase yet. For years the club had been marred by Paul Pogba’s success in Italy and allowing the young French midfielder to leave for free as he began to reach the heights of a world class generational talent. Woodward made it his priority to bring the midfielder back to United, he convinced him obviously with a massive contract and a world record transfer fee to Juventus, but also the promise of building a new quality midfield around Pogba. Manager Jose Mourinho got rid of Schenderlein in January selling him to Everton, and Schweinsteiger joined the Chicago Fire in MLS shortly after.
United began to build a midfield of Pogba, Herrera, and Fellaini in a defensive role. The following year Mourinho wanted a defensive midfielder to replace the retiring Carrick. Fabinho from Monaco was a target but Monaco did not want to sell after Mbappe, Mendy, Silva, and Bakayoko all left the club. Eric Dier was another choice which Spurs declined. United purchased Nemanja Matic from rivals Chelsea as they finished 2nd. The following season Fred was purchased for $50 million. Andreas Pereria who spent the last two seasons on loan in Spain was now back in the squad and academy product Scott Mctominay had a breakthrough season. Jose public fallout with star Pogba which started early in 2017 had fully exasperated and by December Jose was gone.
Fellaini was quickly moved on with a move to China in January, but the club failed to make a decision regarding Ander Herrera’s contract, though Solkjaer wanted to keep the Spaniard, he signed a free contract with PSG. The quality in United’s midfield was questionable, Matic was coming off a very poor season, Fred was labeled a flop in his first season by many, the debate on Pogba will go on forever and Mctominay and Pereria weren’t league challenging midfielders. United decided to not reinforce in midfield though the team was clearly lacking some creativity. During the Summer of 2019, Bruno Fernandes was heavily linked to the club though the club briefed journalists that United scouts were concerned with the amount the player lost the ball in Portugal. Six months later, United forked up the $60 million for Fernandes, the move occurred after an injury setback to Paul Pogba and a long term injury to Scott Mctominay. Fernandes was the first signing since Van Persie to truly enhance the squad and United went on their best run of form in the last season.
Andreas Pereria was loaned to Lazio and United purchased Donny Van De Beek from Ajax. This is a very exciting signing, an all around midfielder who can grow in this squad. Some have questioned the priority of the signing as the 23 year old currently isn’t in United’s strongest 11.
Current Midfield:
Bruno Fernandes
Paul Pogba
Nemanja Matic
Fred
Donny Van de Beek
Scott Mctominay
Attacking Midfielders/Wingers
Wilfried Zaha was the last player Ferguson had signed for United. The young winger electrified the Championship with Crystal Palace and looked one for the future. Unfortunately Moyes for various reasons to say the least gave up on the young player and loaned him to Cardiff City in January. Than Van Gall gave Zaha a pre season playing in LVG’s 3-5-2 system as a forward to impress, he was then loaned to former club Crystal Palace and ultimately sold on. Juan Mata was purchased in January for $40 million after he came available from Chelsea, though David Moyes played the #10 as a right midfielder for six months, but younger Adnan Januzaj was the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal season. Louis Van Gaal chopped and changed United’s attackers and wingers the following year. Nani was moved on and loaned back to his former club Sporting Lisbon. Shinji Kagawa was another player tasked to operate in an unfamiliar role as a #8 in preseason before Van Gaal discarded the Japanese player back to Borussia Dortmund.
Angel Di Maria became a target after a failed move to PSG, United spent a record $68 million for the Argentine and United fans were excited to get such a world class talent in their squad. Unfortunately Van Gaal’s formational tinkering and changing hindered Di Maria who LVG tried to continually play in different roles such as winger, attacking midfielder, wingback, and even as a forward. The player and Van Gaal fell and was gone after one season. Adnan Januzaj suffered in Van Gaal’s system and was loaned out to Borussia Dortmund and United's strongest Ashley Young played on the left and Juan Mata started on the right. United quickly reinforced the winger position with young talent Memphis Depay. United were convinced they were getting their own Eden Hazard but the Dutch player ultimately struggled. United seriously struggled for creating chances under Van Galls tactical approach the following season, but youngsters Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford flourished on the left wing and Jesse Lingard emerged as a new option on the right.
The next year under Jose, Rashford and Martial basically rotated on the left, and United purchased Bundesliga Player of the Season Henrikh Mkhitaryan to add some creativity through the middle and on the right. Memphis was moved on in January to Lyon, but United saw success with Martial, Rashford, Mata, Lingard, and Mkhitaryan. The following year Jose believed United needed another winger, an out and out winger who called cross the ball, he identified Ivan Perisic but an agreement could not be found with Inter after Woodward’s failed negotiating tactics. It became clear that United were lacking a pace and creativity on the right. Mhkitaryan failed to impress, and United were initially linked with Lucas Moura from PSG. United’s attention was quickly turned to Alexis Sanchez who United offered a massive contract and Mhkitaryan to Arsenal.
Sanchez was signed in January as marquee signing that could help narrow the gap between City and help United challenge in Europe. Sanchez from a tactical point was a questionable decision. The Chilean started his career as a right winger but has ultimately shifted to playing on the left and as a central forward at Arsenal. To fit in tactically United would either have to ask Sanchez to play in a position he hasn’t played in years, shift Rashford/Martial out of position to the right, or completely change United’s formation and use Sanchez centrally. On top of that, Sanchez’s massive wages disrupted the wage structure of United and had a lasting financial impact. Sanchez failed to deliver but United saw Martial and Rashford develop into quality players, though United’s right wing was now occupied by Lingard and Mata. In 2019, United purchased Daniel James from Swansea City. The signing was a peculiar one as the young 21 winger had only played one season as a professional but United signed him off of the recommendation of Wales manager Ryan Giggs. Sanchez was loaned to Inter Milan and United went with Rashford, James, Mata, and Lingard. James initially impressed but simply has shown that he is still developing and may not be at the level United seek. Mason Greenwood emerged playing on the right and having one of the best seasons we’ve seen from a young player since Wayne Rooney scoring 18 goals in all competitions.
Everyone could see that United could use an attacking player who could play on the right. Jose Mourinho tried to sign Gareth Bale and Willian with both moves going nowhere but in 2019 Jadon Sancho emerged at Borussia Dortmund as a generational talent. With Covid-19 impacting the financial strength of money teams United had a clear chance to sign Jadon Sancho this summer. In one of the most embarrassing and frustrating recruitments of a player by Woodward, United failed to pay the $120 million asking price by Dortmund. United ultimately missed their chance to sign Sancho and may be at the back of the line after clubs recover from Covid. United missed out on a generational talent and may rue this decision for years. Instead United recruited two young talents on deadline day deals. Facundo Pellistri was signed from Penarol in Uruguay and Amad Diallo was signed from Atalanta (joining in January 2021). Pellistri is a far cry from Sancho and United’s fast tracking of the young Uruguayan into the first team may backfire.
Wingers/Attacking Midfielders
Marcus Rashford
Juan Mata
Daniel James
Mason Greenwood
Facundo Pellistri
Forward
Fergie went out of his way to convince Robin Van Persie to join him at United and the Dutch forward delivered United’s last title in 2013. Wayne Rooney saw himself moved out of position and there were strong suggestions that Rooney would’ve left the club if Ferguson had not retired in 2013. Instead David Moyes convinced his former player that he would once again be United’s main man, frustrating Van Persie from a tactics point of view. Rooney also signed a huge five year contract making him one of the highest paid players in the premier league.
After Moyes was fired new manager Louis Van Gaal wanted to revamp United’s forward area. Javier Hernandez was loaned to Real Madrid and Danny Welbeck was sold to Arsenal. Van Gaal liked youngster James Wilson from the academy but United pulled out a major deadline day deal to sign Radamel Falcao on loan from Monaco. Falcao was one of the best number 9’s in Europe and this was seen as a massive signing. In hindsight, Falcao was coming off of his 2nd ACL injury, and the Colombian rushed himself back into fitness to be ready for the World Cup and ultimately not making it. The likes of Real Madrid, Juventus, and Manchester City turned down the chance to sign Falcao because of concern over his fitness and the massive wages he asked for, though United and Woodward were convinced to make the deal. Instead United struggled for goals, Falcao was a player returning from a bad injury and only scored 4 goals. Van Persie’s age started to show and he produced his least amount of goals as well.
The club decided against signing Falcao, and Van Gaal decided to move on from Van Persie. This left United with just Wayne Rooney who no longer could really play as a striker for a full season and youngster James Wilson who was eventually loaned out. On transfer deadline day in 2015, United paid $36 million in a deal with add-ons that could reach $50 million, the most expensive transfer fee for a teenager for the French 19 year old Anthony Martial. The signing was questioned by many at United as the forward was relatively unknown outside of France and had only played one full season of professional football. Though Martial was signed as one for the future he ended up scoring 17 goals in all competitions. United were also lucky to have seen the rise of Marcus Rashford who had a meteoric rise during the second half of the season. New manager Jose Mourinho wanted some experience with United’s attack and Zlatan Ibrahimovic came in on a free transfer at 35. Rashford and Martial were shifted out to the left but Ibrahimovic delivered at United until an untimely knee injury in April occured. With Zlatan out long term, and Jose not ready to trust Martial or Rashford, United spent $75 million on Romelu Lukaku with Wayne Rooney returning to his boyhood Everton.
Lukaku initially impressed and had an above average goal record at United with 42 goals in 96 appearances but his goal scoring droughts and style were not for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and in 2019 United sold Lukaku to Inter for $70 million. Solskjaer was ready to trust Martial and Rashford as the two young forwards had impressed enough to out and out starters. United decided to not pursue a Lukaku replacement and instead bring 17 year old talent Mason Greenwood into the squad. Injuries hindered the 2019-2020 season and with Marcus Rashford getting a long term back injury the club decided on a Janury transfer day deadline move for Odion Igahlo playing his trade in China on a short term loan deal. The deal was questioned by many, United had been linked with acquiring another forward initially over the summer the likes of Dybala and Mandzuicic were linked but never moved. During the fall, Norweigan striker Errling Braut Halland announced himself to Europe at Salzburg and Solkjsaer was adamant on bringing his former player at Molde to United. The deal eventually fell through after United failed to negotiate due to agent fees and a buyout clause and Halland (rightly) joined Borussia Dortmund.
For the next few months Martial and Greenwood truly started to emerge especially after the signing of Bruno Fernandes. Igahlo looked good in a few cup games but clearly hasn’t shown enough to be a key contributor off the bench. United then decided to pull a transfer deadline move for 33 year old Edison Cavani. A move baffling to many people as it seems like another short sighted expensive signing.
Forwards:
Anthony Martial
Edison Cavani
Odion Igahlo
Mason Greenwood
Marcus Rashford

Original post, with commentaries on the first 9 chapters, chapters 10-24, chapters 25-36
———
CHAPTER 37
Now that Ahab has formed his death cult, he soliloquizes—and Ishmael is either eavesdropping or fabricating, but either way he means to convey the spirit of the man if not his letter. Ahab's voyage through life leaves "pale waters, paler cheeks" in his wake, sowing chaos wherever he goes yet where he goes he goes with unobstructed course and direction. His ripples are smoothed over by the billowing envy of men, but he cares not; he cares not for monuments and memorials, no, only for deeds done and the merit he acquires for himself in his own eyes. For when the sun sets, his "soul mounts up!"—his task as unceasing as the day-and-night cycle, but his soul reflecting not the light of the sun as the moon, but weighing on him with his task like the "Iron Crown of Lombardy", a small crown forged from the nail of Jesus' cross, the weight of sacrifice Ahab's to bear.
The clouds that set on his brow are no object; his Atlantean task is the crucifixion he bears, having been dismasted and reborn. He fancies himself not the son of God, but His equal in will and war, Satan made a man—set apart from the rest in charisma and intelligence, cloistering himself in his superlative ambitions whose reach leaves no room for human connection, and indeed actively forsake it through hard-hearted, eloquent guile that convinces pragmatic men to stake their lives on his goal.
Ahab must've had a perverse spiritual awakening while he lay dying, paved by his education, but instead of becoming a prophet and trying to speak God's truth, he's become the mad king whose words are iron spun like gold, who mistakes his enlightenment for alienation because he's unwilling to share it. Rather, he's content to dismiss those who disapprove of him and to brood about what he lacks: the simple pleasures of casual conversation, light-hearted humor, basking in sunlight,—"damned! most subtly and most malignantly! damned in the midst of Paradise!", his soul hibernating to incubate horrors.
Ahab reflects that leaguing his men was "not so hard a task", since he'd apparently convinced everyone—though Ishmael neglected to share how or if he was moved by the speech—to give their loyalty to him, even Starbuck who thought him mad, but Ahab, verging on self-awareness, declares:

I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself!

Where Ahab goes, there turbulence will be in his wake, so long as his grandiose task remains his ultimate goal. The men's diversity doesn't faze him:

my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they revolve.

High aloft, Ahab can view and move men as "ant-hills of powder", ignitable thanks to Ahab's own fire, that makes his seldom-used pillow into an oven-baked brick. This hellfire leads Ahab to proclaim his apotheosis:

I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That’s more than ye, ye great gods, ever were.

Where gods use fate and fortune to move men on the world as their gameboard to achieve their ends, transcendent and detached, Ahab is both player and piece, and strives to cast out fate from within and retake fortune to his own whim and will, to become a self-moved mover. Ahab's soliloquy includes a direct challenge to the gods:

come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there.

Ahab fancies himself a river, faithful to the ungraspable impermanence of life, yes, but immovable in his self-set course, the iron rails of his destiny laid out in defiance of all forms of fate other than his own:

Naught’s an obstacle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!

Ahab doesn't consider that even his actions could be part of providence, for he's excluded all other purposes than piercing the masked dark of Plato's cave as paths to fulfillment. Active commitment to misery, nothing to blunt it, as though this iron way would falter and betray its fragility otherwise.
———
CHAPTER 38
Starbuck sees Ahab's "impious end", but has been so overwhelmed that Ahab's charisma may well be a new form of fate befitting the quest for apotheosis we're seeing unfolding:

the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have no knife to cut.

Starbuck bemoans that Ahab's chief source of hypocrisy is that he would treat his superiors to democracy—though, from the last chapter, only to outwit them, the gods, on an even playing field—but everyone else to his despotism. Starbuck saw Ahab's "lurid woe", a weight that would crush him or any other man to bear, a violent and contagious atheism that Starbuck believes forced him "to obey, rebelling"—to rebel against God, by obeying the man who stands against Him. But God isn't jealous or petty, Starbuck reasons, so He may forgive Ahab and ensure that they never cross paths with the white whale. That's a pittance of hope, after seeing Ahab's determination, and Starbuck isn't ready to acknowledge that despite the leaden, locked weight of his heart evidencing plainly enough that he has no hope of Ahab's woe dissipating before his success or failure.
This really is the Dusk of Starbuck's soul; his "soul beat down and held to knowledge,—as wild, untutored things are forced to feed", he awakens to the horrors of the voyage: the "heathenish crew", the white whale as their "demigorgon"—an abyssal, creative god likely synonymous with the forbidden demiurge—, even the water itself taking on "wolfish" and "sharkish" qualities whose howl hunts Ahab, drawn along in the aft by the "gay, embattled, bantering bow"—the ship itself gradating from sunny to tenebrous while the vast deep latches onto Starbuck's newfound paranoia. Starbuck finds his hope in finding the horrors outwards, enabling him to fight the "grim, phantom futures" "with the soft feeling of the human in [him]". Starbuck might just have the guts for a mutiny at this rate, finding it in him to defy Ahab's blasphemous fate.
———
CHAPTERS 39&40
With more stageplay directives, Stubb soliloquizes about how

a laugh’s the wisest, easiest answer to all that’s queer; and come what will, one comfort’s always left—that unfailing comfort is, it’s all predestinated.

Carefree Stubb is trying to take in stride the outcomes of this voyage, outcomes that are out of his hands, no matter what they be, refracting Starbuck's newfound horror and finding the "waggish leering" that lurks in it—for now Starbuck has received the same treatment that Stubb did, and both men now share in some of the burning light that Ahab harbors, slight shares that were yet enough to send both spiraling into existential crises of reflection—on fate and death and God—higher than either would otherwise ever take interest in.
Whereas Starbuck responded by renewing his courage, Stubb reacts with forced, delirious humor, conflating it with wisdom, trying to abate his worry about not being able to return to his family, his love bubbling up—light, gay, and fleeting—like alcoholic froth to be swallowed down. The aside directive when Stubb is summoned from his nightwatch by Starbuck seems like a fourth-wall break, if that concept means anything for a non-play acting like a play—but it makes this scene feel surreal.
Uh, the whole crew of watchmen gets a musical scene, those awake filliped and those asleep deadened by the wine of Ahab's charisma—despite having no choice in their assigned roles, each man has to make peace with his newfound sense of inevitability, one sailor trying to invite the sleepers up with the pronouncement that now is "the resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to judgment." This chapter is a full-fledged song-and-dance play-script, and Ishmael didn't bother learning many sailors' names—only their ethnicities—despite knowing the mother's maiden name and backstory of many other characters. One is even named "3D Nantucket Sailor"; so glad he's not a flatlander.
Tashtego mocks the song-and-dance, and the old Manx sailor wonders whether they have any idea what they're dancing over. The "whole world's a ball" and the course is set and fixed, so let them, green and jolly, let them celebrate and drink life while it's still brimming and frothing. Some of them are already horny and lonely, commiserating over the lack of women to distract themselves from a coming storm—the first karmic storm of Ahab's death cult, perhaps. Ahab has no fear of storms; worse, his direction is to attack the squalls—"fire your ship right into it!" The storm darkens angrily, a formation in the sky like Ahab's birthmark: "lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black."
Daggoo, "quarried out of [blackness]", takes offense to this fear of the storm's dark, but grimly assents when told that his "race is the undeniable dark side of mankind", the same sailor provoking him into a fight. "Knife thee heartily! big frame, small spirit!" The crew eggs them on; the whole scene is frenzied. "A row a’low, and a row aloft—Gods and men—both brawlers!" A recreation of the arena in which "Cain struck Abel. Sweet work, right work! No? Why then, God, mad’st thou the ring?" The Manxman questions why God created the conditions for violence and then discouraged it.
The stormy climate keeps cutting off the thoughts the sailors try to express, leaving loose-ended, half-baked confusion—and the fight is interrupted by urgent orders to prepare for the oncoming squalls, their white froth every bit as ominous as the black storm overhead, yet to Pip less so than the white squalls of the maddened men seeking now the white whale. Timid Pip prays to "thou big white God" to save him from the men whose fear has been overridden by drunken courage, which is doing no good for the race relations aboard the ship. The chaos of this chapter sets up the ironic contrasts between black and white—both foreboding and hostile to many—in man and God and nature.
———
CHAPTER 41
Aha, Ishmael admits that he too was taken in by Ahab's charisma:

A wild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Ahab’s quenchless feud seemed mine.

But Ishmael had a sympathy, whether unrelated or pretextual, before even meeting Ahab; this is halfway to what he wanted, a noble part in a great tragedy. After immersing himself in the death cult, Ishmael gathered all the information he could about the white whale, how it "haunted those uncivilized seas mostly frequented by the Sperm Whale fishermen", how it evaded capture in both body and idea because of the scattered, prolonged, uncoordinated trajectories of the whaling vessels, and how "as of late" attacks by sperm whales "of great ferocity, cunning, and malice" were frequent.
Instead of possibilities like sperm whales who survived whalers becoming hostile toward shy, or the ocean itself starting to reject its guests, Ishmael jumps to the conclusion that every such report must have been an encounter with the whale. Since sperm whales are terrifying enough, few thought anything special about Ahab's tale, sharing Starbuck's stance about it being a "dumb brute", despite bouts with this whale leading to calamitous bad luck that ensured it always slipped away with minimal damage.
Sailors' proneness to superstition allowed rumors of Moby Dick to circulate and metastasize "as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi"—whalers in particular, being likeliest of all to be "brought into contact with whatever is appallingly astonishing in the sea", exactly what is needed to stimulate the imagination and birth a modern myth, an urban legend spanning most of the watery part of the globe that eventually made otherwise daring hunters outright refuse to give chase to that whale, perhaps the greatest portend of bad luck any seaman could come across, hinting as it did of "supernatural agencies" and "morbid hints" beyond the scope of a normal sperm whale's destructive aggression.
Ishmael accuses of "professional inexperience, or incompetency, or timidity" anyone who would avoid hunting a sperm whale while willingly pursuing other large whales, as though the tests of mettle such whales pose are relatively unremarkable—perhaps as a rite of passage, for being able to challenge and usurp the monarchs of the sea. Non-American whalers—thus those less ambitious in their ambits—had seldom encountered sperm whales except in fairytales, but those who did demystified their stories only to trade them for confrontations with the sublime, "pre-eminent tremendousness" of the real deal, sperm whales in this setting reported as being unanimously anxiogenic and malicious to everything else in the sea—despite sperm whales having been elusive, hence the bowhead whales popularly regarded as the monarchs of the sea. That slipperiness and shyness has given way now that Americans dare to graze the whole ocean surface to exploit its oily, blubbery resources.
While "the general experiences in the fishery" amended some of the overblown rumors, such as that sperm whales were so scary that their mere presence caused other fish to kill themselves, the worst sperm whales had to offer ever renewed the superstitions that condensed into the myth of Moby Dick, which nevertheless many men were hardy (or foolhardy) enough to push themselves through for monetary gain were they to "chase and point lance at such an apparition". Claims of encounters with a monstrous whale at the same time at faraway places created the fancy that the white whale was ubiquitous or, perhaps courtesy of a hollow Earth with expedient currents, unfathomably fast; and that it was immortal, or possessed of such great durability and regeneration that it might as well be. One of Moby Dick's distinct features is a "pyramidical white hump", like the unkickable pyramid Stubb's dream used to symbolize Ahab, or even the ancient pyramids used for astronomical panoramas, encompassing in one view the starry sky.
Whereas the jarring storm in the last chapter was fearsome for its blackness, this whale's whiteness is the storm's complement: black storm descending from the heavens of the white God, white whale ascending from the hells of the black abyss; dark, Satanic Ahab with his white wake there to meet both head-on at their point of convergence, the limen of the surface. While the whale's magnitude and hue were unsettling enough, it was its "intelligent malignity", displaying abstract reasoning enough to deceive and escape all whalers theretofore, that reached through the wall of the mythos to strike fear into the hearts of listeners.
What kind of whale acts routed to lure whaleboats after it, only to suddenly spring on them and stove or repel them? And in marked contrast with the "serene, exasperating sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal"—as shipwreck and lost limbs lay strewn about. Moby Dick is not just a killer; it might be an artist with a keen sense of irony. It lured Ahab in such a way, and "swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them"—malice "to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds".
To Ahab, vengeance has not just the appeal of piercing the fatal wall of Plato's cave, but of purging the world of an idea of evil, as if will and fury could localize such a subtle and vast sweep into one body.

He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.

Where Ahab errs most, apart from misunderstanding that the symbolism of literary monsters doesn't work like that—that would be some fine magic if it did—, is that he even sets himself against "all truth with malice in it", refusing to accept the essential reality of evil and in part thereby partaking in evil with his sacrificial machinations.
In Ishmael's mind, Ahab heaped on the whale all of the rage and hate felt in human history—not just toward whales, thus not just against the morale of Jonah's fable, but all sense of injustice, man the measure and maker of moral means and meanings. Ahab's wrath toward the whale began as any other man's, festering in his anguish on the passage home, strapped in a straitjacket because of his lunatic outbursts, to turn him into who he is now:

then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one another; and so interfusing, made him mad.

His bronze, hollow body is the result of optimal decoction to blur the mind-body—and also idea-object—gap, enabling the grandiosity of his plans, himself the cult leader to execute them, his agency turned to instrumentality as he locked himself into the cogwheel of the fate he set for himself, his version of freedom, here—if I am interpreted "living instrument" right—a form of servitude baser and weaker than that of heeding God's plan. And with the bindings of his charisma, those he entrains into his orbit are heretics who lose all of the merit of faith and gain what? Gain the glory, fleeting and perhaps phantasmic, of following a great man? Lose themselves in the constitution of the mythos pseudo-prophetic Ishmael weaves them and himself into?
Ishmael withholds a straight description of Ahab's role, declaring it "vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound." Ahab's "whole awful essence" resides deep underground, a captive king with a broken throne, mocked by the gods he equals himself to, a pillar holding up history and the upper earth with his frozen brow—frozen by the Cocytus, perhaps, the lamentational river commemorating the doom wrought by knowing betrayal. Ahab caught glimpse of his state:

all my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.

—yet he lacked the power to alter truth, only to deceiving men about his sanity—or, as Peleg, happily overlooking his moodiness for the whales it would butcher.
This chapter is called "Moby Dick", but there is no Moby Dick without Ahab, nor Ahab, however superlative and unsaintly, without Moby Dick. And there would be no mad Ahab if any aboard the Pequod had seen through his ruses, nor if any of the mates were more than "morally enfeebled"—Starbuck with his "unaided virtue" (and lying about having no-one on his ship who doesn't fear whales, when literally the other three officers don't fear whales), Stubb's "indifference and recklessness" (from being a druggie with little respect for life or thought of death), and Flask's "pervading mediocrity" (from treating the whaling enterprise as a sadistic comedy show).
None of them were a match for Ahab's bewitching "evil magic" that struck in their impious chests the fear of God—but no god other than Ahab himself, whose forcible contagion of his vendetta may well have been telepathy. Ishmael doesn't even try to explain how this all fits together, nor does he show guilt or shame about having been taken in in like manner himself, only admitting that he gave himself "to the abandonment of the time and the place"—to a feud that Ahab's madness made timeless, spanning the history of mankind, against a monster coeval and co-evil with mankind, who could be at once many places on the globe.
One part of Ahab knows well what he's doing is futile and atrocious; another part thinks that he's tallying the debt of the original sin with the premium fetched by butchering the whale incarnating all sources and targets of human wrath, those perhaps being God's wrath—such an infinite task that the sacrifice of a handful of men seems a fair price, if not a pittance, for its accomplishment.

The subterranean miner that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by the ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick?

Ishmael is unequipped to analyze the unconscious, inward, homuncular workings of fate—but his instincts told him to learn about Ahab before boarding, and he didn't listen.
———
CHAPTER 42
Ishmael moves on to explaining what the white whale was to him, on top of being his primary motive for sailing. "It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me." Leaning fully into the mystical monster motif, Ishmael shudders to articulate the whale's horror in comprehensible terms, and starts by outlining the broadest contours of it with his symbolic associations to whiteness: beauty, royalty—Ahab's sultanism is conveniently unmentioned—, the white man's "ideal mastership over every dusky tribe", joy and gladness, innocence, "the benignity of age"—in stark contrast with Ahab's iron grey iron way—, honor, "the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge", "divine spotlessness and power", and even redemption—all of these, more or less relevant to the whale, pale in comparison to the terror that raw whiteness untamed by any of these contexts, thus marring them with its irony and dissonance, produces, such as from polar bears—"invested in the fleece of celestial innocence and love"—or great-white sharks, their silent lethality earning them in French a name connoting (with no etymological basis) requiems, or angelic albatrosses, "whence come those clouds of spiritual wonderment and pale dread".
For Ishmael, the albatross, thanks to its vast range, is a reminder of "the miserable warping memories" of civilization, compounded by his witnessing of one being captured and forced to send a letter, a holy messenger demoted to a mailman. Most of Ishmael's associations with whiteness have been to things integral to modern civilization, their meaning and primacy challenged by the great animals that have borne white and its terrible significance since the dawn of Adam. He even calls the white steed an "apparition of that unfallen, western world"—whiteness becomes a reminder of the immaculate debt, not one blotch made in it by the whole monumental passion of humanity's lineage, accrued from the original sin.
The religious whiteness attests to this: that becoming like God means donning white clothes, which admits to being far from God, constituting such practices as pretensions. Whiteness is the unattainable moral purity that people think they strive for, yet ever fall short of, unable to find grace or glory from within and trying to recreate and master it with their trinkets, their incapacity to do so forced upon them in the encounter with a white apex predator. The white symbols of dominance take this further: under the guise of bringing moral purity, restricted to their faction under their flag, people's conquests abstract them ever-more from whiteness of soul, often while blaming their victims' blackness of skin for everyone's blackness of sin—spiritual death.
Ishmael even regards albino people as more abhorrent than disabled or black people, but segues back into the whiteness of death: white squalls that strike abruptly to wreck ships, the "marble pallor" of corpses, ghostly fog, death as the "king of terrors". White is uncanny, its portend of things being out-of-place a subtle resonance with what is unhomely in ourselves, what our bodies and souls can't home that we would like them to—enduring physical and moral vitality. Ahab aims to use his overwhelming physical vitality to remove moral vitality from the equation of human flourishing.
Ishmael invokes "hooded" and "phantom" several times each here, hearkening back to his reference in the first chapter to the white whale as a "grand hooded phantom, like a snow-hill in the air"—Ishmael makes little use of snow in his associations, but the eerie quiet and concealment it provides is implicated in each case.
The subtle and sublime terror of whiteness is complementary to that of a raging storm, and can manifest even to the uneducated in a mention of the White Suntide of the descent of the Holy Spirit to prognosticate the tidings of the end times, blurring the life-and-death boundary with karmic, salvific promises.
The phantasmic quality of whiteness may also point to all of this religious talk as being smoke and fog, empty distractions from the possibility that what follows death is nothing but eternal paralytic silence, no grand unity, no pearly gates at the end of a successful redemption arc—Ishmael's rambling is so unfocused that it comes across as him deliberately avoiding drawing connections like these, as though the powers of whiteness he's evoking are seeping into his own words to his own eyes. And that's a funny thing: he's writing on white paper, his creative act blemishing it with black ink—which is a lousy substitute for the black blood of the white whale—, but that interplay, the creativity and communication indissociable from the whiteness of paper, is not brought up.
Ishmael contents himself with claiming that certain white entities have significant effects on people, but not why unless the explanation is palatable—the ironic dissonance of the white predators can transfer over to these religious and other symbols, but their analogous implications would be far more calamitous to Ishmael's already-infirm faith, faith that has consistently been sublated by, and thus subordinated to, whaling—all of these symbolic resonances comprise a collage of the panoramic white whale, of its mere surface, already vast and haunting enough, and which Ishmael is suspiciously reluctant to try to penetrate despite having the intelligence and experience to.
This surficial contouring takes the shape of avoidance, which can only be achieved by his subterranean miner knowing the position of what lurks in the volcanic depths of his unconscious. Ishmael often relates whiteness to gripping or stimulating the imagination, such as an artist would appreciate, but he showed in chapter one that he understands the import of context in artistry—water unique in its motion being tranquil—, context lacking here through nondifferentiation, a polyphony whose sheer pluripotential is cacophonous.
In the disaster-stricken city of Lima, white's purity "keeps her ruins for ever new; admits not the cheerful greenness of complete decay"—there is the irony of Lima connoting lime-green, and perhaps of death's horse being chlorine-green. Where green signals change, the freshening of death-and-rebirth cycles, white is timeless, locks its pallid corpses in marble tombs to be forever silent.
White is also impotent by itself, but exacerbates the terrible effects of entities it manifests in; white is ungraspable, no less than any other color, because it can only be apprehended through a white thing with a white context given to it that excludes other possible resonances, doubly so for the unimaginative mind—would a sailor near shore feel trepid at white water because of its whiteness or because of the stoving rocks it may conceal? What about the "boundless churchyard" of Antarctic seas, a desolation in which it would be too easy to lose oneself? Ishmael defends himself from the hypothetical accusation of this chapter being "a white flag hung out from a craven soul" by citing instinctual knowledge "of the demonism of the world", which implies that anyone who doesn't share his fear is both unimaginative and ignorant—unknown unknowing, unlike his known unknowing.

Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.

Whiteness is a harpooneer of the void, piercing the soul with "the thought of annihilation", "a dumb blankness, full of meaning", "a colorless, all-colour of atheism", the truth behind the meretricious veil of coloration—the "mystical cosmetic" of light is white, its mediums birthing color. White is the splendor of God and the pallor of His absence, the lack of an in-between, the profound, profane indistinction between the two, and the metaphysic impli(cat)ed thereby. Ishmael has well-earned his mic drop: "And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?"
———
CHAPTERS 43&44
During a night-watch, a sailor circulates gossip about stowaways, with a hint that Ahab knows of them, and that the mates know he knows of them. This seems to refer back to the ghosts Ishmael and Elijah saw running to the Pequod very early—and since the ship was locked-up tight, if these were fleshy people, someone had to let them in, someone privy to the schedules of the final preparations. And someone else earlier pointed out how Ahab regularly slinks off for clandestine meetings, which would imply that Ahab boarded those hidden people, and convinced them one way or another to devote three years of their lives to him.
I assume these would be consultants or hunters, men to help with Ahab's quest and whom he can trust where he doesn't trust Starbuck or anyone else on the crew, who think him mad or lack ability. They could also be ghosts, especially after the recent monologue about spectral whiteness.
Ahab also spends a lot of his time with his chart, trying to map out the currents of the globe as precisely as he can, in relation to all the documented positions of sperm whales he could acquire. The lamp, suspended in chains overhead, is emblematic of his conscience—as we've been conditioned to associate lamplight with moral compasses—, shackled to light on his sole purpose.
Ahab knows of the migratory clockwork of sperm whales, the exactness of their instincts' directions—or "secret intelligence from the Deity"—far surpassing that of any navigational instrument, and tried to lay out the best spots to sail throughout the year for the best chances of crossing paths with a vein of sperm whales containing the white whale—Ahab the prospector of the pale mask concealing the gears of the gods of the world. Even with all the information at his disposal, this needle-in-a-haystack would seem hopeless to anyone with less than absolute faith in their resourcefulness and the worthiness of their cause.
Ahab's determination turns impossible odds into probabilities, "every probability the next thing to a certainty", a miracle in the making. While the sightings of Moby Dick gave no guarantee that it would reappear in those places the same time of year, an area called the Season-on-the-Line had seen the whale at regular times for several years straight: "there the waves were storied with his deeds; there also was that tragic spot where the monomaniac old man had found the awful motive to his vengeance."
The Pequod missed the interval for the SotL this year, so she will have to spend the next almost-year "in a miscellaneous hunt" with non-zero but unflattering odds of a fateful encounter with the white whale along the way. Moby Dick is utterly singular, so the matter of recognizing it was no issue—even the harpooneers know well what it looks like.
Ahab routinely works himself into torments of faintness dwelling on the whale, and his time spent on the deck in open air is just a recovery period between being able to brood and chart and maybe consort with his ghost passengers. It was common for Ahab's nightmares to jolt him awake:

these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up from its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked flames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap down among them

—incubating this inward hell is the source and secret of Ahab's monstrous power, but these outbursts stemmed from his soul, dissociated in sleep from the iron leash of his mind to flee from his purpose, which had gained "self-assumed, independent being of its own", that malign purpose incarnating both Prometheus and his vultures gnawing away his spirit's organs, leaving it "without an object to colour, and therefore a blankness in itself." Ahab is the very monster he's promised to destroy, bending not just fate but chance and spirit to his will, and so gripped by trauma that his freedom of will—or its exercise here—is dubious at best.
———
After chapter 42, The Whiteness of the Whale, it felt like everything had fallen into place, all of the physical and philosophical set-up accomplished. I was so moved by chapter 42 that I am only halfway joking when I want to label Moby Dick a horror story. Melville understands how literary monsters work on a profound level that, conceptually, no one I'm aware of even comes close to. All of Ishmael's loose threads collaging the immeasurable surface of the monster, and then how they were abruptly and marvelously tied together near the end with the nucleus of a legitimate metaphysic—I was floored. One thing that often elevates epics above other works is their usage of metaphysics rounding out their cosmology and permeating their entire world with the story's thematic values. (My sample size is admittedly small, but Dante and Milton do this as well.) In this case, whiteness is the indissoluble, all-or-nothing tension between God and no God, and the existential dread people hide from or expose themselves to with their positive and negative symbols of whiteness.
I had these commentaries written up a few days ago and read ahead, and I totally lost steam for coming up with new, enriching things to say. This will be my last post on Moby Dick for a while, I think. If I strain myself to squeeze meaning that just isn't flowing fairly organically to me, I'm worried that I'll not only stop enjoying the ride but also that my pacing will grind to a halt. And I've already spent just about a month reading this. It's certainly worth three months if this level of quality is consistent throughout, but forcing myself to commentate on it daily is just needless stress. And like I said, the end of chapter 42 felt like a tipping point.
That said, Ahab has shot up into my top-5 favorite characters. Everything he says is pure gold, and his borderline-supernatural powers are written in such a compelling and reasonable way that he edges out Milton's Satan, another top-5er for me, in some respects because of how grounded he is and how direct his influence and its consequences are. This is what people probably imagine cult leaders are like, and the fact that cult leaders do exist makes Ahab's abilities plausible even if I've never met anyone who came close to being able to do what he does. The fact that his purpose became a self-sufficient thoughtform in the same area as his mind and soul, and not just that but led his soul to try to break free from his body, is chilling—and his self-awareness craftily maneuvers so as to never lead him to a genuine epiphany, totally detached from the implications of the words Ishmael puts in his mouth he thinks he believes. Here is a man at war with himself, with his fellow men, with the world, with God, and with the possibility of the absence of God. His situation reminds me of one of the times (73-78) Satan almost comes off his warpath:

Me miserable! which way shall I flieInfinite wrauth, and infinite despaire?Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell;And in the lowest deep a lower deepStill threatning to devour me opens wide,To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n.

He's staked his identity so deeply in his retribution against God and fate that if he gave that up he would have a very, very long road to redemption. Despite his capacity, he is hollow; from the start, he was prepared to abandon his family, sacrifice his crew, and do absolutely anything necessary to strike into the depths of the heart of the world. At the same time, his moral failures are why Ishmael is here writing this story. There's enough foreshadowing to conclude that the Pequod is going to sink because of Moby Dick and Ahab's brazen tyranny, which means that Ishmael survived to tell the story. Is there a reason for that, somewhere in the tangled white knot of various concepts of fate that have been threaded together and in which free will, foreknowledge, and chance have snaked their ways? A project as large as this novel implies that he found his will to live, if he's sitting down and committing to it; and it's not a project that would be feasible to work on at sea, with how hard sailors seem to be worked. Moreover, someone would need a compelling reason to undertake such a story. Whatever happened to Ishmael on the voyage must've been something profound.
The paradoxical, inexhaustible, and ambiguous nature of the whale itself hearkens all the way back to the image of the ungraspable phantom of life in which Narcissus drowned in the first chapter, the transient self-image that obsesses and beckons us, that compels us to understand while tantalizing us with how it is nothing but a reflection on a surface—no depth, not even the solidity of being a surface. If these depths are accessible, they are so in a form that frustrates any efforts to capture them in definitive, plain language. I mean, if Ishmael had a straightforward message for us he would've been an essayist or preacher and not a doorstopper novelist.
Taking us on this massive journey, charged with his embellishments and astute digressions, seems to be his way of leading us to glimpse the mystical, mythical experience that inspired his writing this. He attributed to Bulkington the transcendence participated in through a violent death at sea, through being consumed by the intolerable truth of that ungraspability, that abjuration of all solid ground, which, taken for truth, is treacherous, a lure that ensures doom while assuring lee—lee that can mean either shelter or dregs (the body being the lees of Ishmael's better being), and the lee shore turning the lee into something to avoid at all costs. Ishmael's obsession has often felt like him being bitter that he's wasted the rest of his life trying to glimpse that transcendence, and that level of obsession, particularly with its outright disregard for knowledge and reasoning he undoubtedly had access to, would only be sparked by a direct encounter with it, and marinated only by having the temperament and mindset to reflect on it—exactly what occurred to Ahab and twisted him into a human Satan. That also implies that a lot of the digressions are Ishmael trying to catch us up to his mindset to be able to receive his prophetic message in a meaningful form.
So yeah, I fully intend to finish this novel, but play-by-plays are off the table now for at least a while. I've also been feeling terrible, like, pretty much since late November, and the last week (basically right after I finished chapter 42) or so I've been spiraling, with very little mental energy and clarity to spare. I want to try to do a more comprehensive commentary of the moral, existential, and religious landscape once I have more energy and have made more progress. Well, we'll see how that goes. I appreciate this community for giving me a supportive space in which to share my thoughts, as long-winded and amateurish as they are.

​
Games I'm considering: Survival Games, Sky Battle, Battle Box (not Rocket Spleef because of unique mechanics).
This is just my own thoughts, not an attempt at some objective analysis. I've paid the most attention to Sky Battle from of making a Top 20 Sky Battle Players by Coins (MCC9-11) spreadsheet, but tried to take into account all that I know about each player and team.
Summary:

• 1)Red
• 2) Green
• 3) Blue
• 4) Pink
• 5) Purple
• 6) Lime
• 7) Yellow
• 8) Cyan
• 9) Orange
• 10) Aqua

1. Red Rabbits (TommyInnit, Tubbo, Wisp, Quackity)

• TommyInnit: Is good at 1.9 pvp, especially in general "game sense" (impressive plays in Sky Battle and kill stealing at the end of MCC9 Survival Games), and his pvp game scores have helped him to top 5 finishes before. Good at movement and using blocks, etc.
• Tubbo: Is also very good at 1.9 and also plays pvp minigames on servers. He did very well in MCC9 pvp (apart from being killed by Grian in SG) and is good at strategy.
• Wisp: Is very good at 1.8 pvp and I'm sure will practice before MCC. General movement, quick thinking and comfort with pvp translates from 1.8 pvp games to 1.9, and I think this will benefit him a lot. (I didn't place him higher because this is his first MCC so it's hard to judge).
• Quackity: Was good at callouts in MCC11 and knows 1.9 mechanics from playing on a 1.16 SMP. He was serious about MCC11 and practiced the parkour in order to "not let his team down," if I remember correctly, so he's in it for his team.
• Overall: I think this team will have very good teamwork. Tommy can be a good leader when he tries. They have three very strong pvp players. I think he'll have a good duo with Tubbo because they know and trust each other, and Wisp will be very good on his own and willing to follow to the two who have been in several past MCCs.

2. Green Guardians (TapL, GeorgeNotFound, Philza, WilburSoot)

• TapL: Is very good at 1.8 pvp, especially multiplayer gamemodes like UHC and Skywars. Those skills translate to other pvp games and he's experienced with MCC pvp and practices 1.9 pvp on Legacy and 1.9 Skywars. He's one of the best at Battle Box and Sky Battle, and could do very well in SG.
• GeorgeNotFound: Is generally good at 1.9 pvp from playing with friends and is good with a crossbow/bow. He's usually pretty aggressive but sometimes makes careless mistakes. One of the most consistent in Sky Battle coins over the past three events. Has always been on a good pvp team.
• Philza: Is one of the best Battlebox players but inconsistent (although this is true for almost every player in every pvp gamemode). He hasn't done well in past Sky Battles and I'm not sure about SG, but he's a good team player and knows 1.9 combat well.
• WilburSoot: Did very well in MCC10 Sky Battle and can do really well in pvp in general. Has been in every MCC and knows the gamemodes very well. He's generally a good strategist and team player.
• Overall: this team doesn't have the same prior "chemistry" and experience with each other as Red Rabbits, but they're this high because all of them are both experienced with MCC and above average at pvp. I'm not sure if they'll have a standout duo, because I don't think their two arguably strongest pvpers (TapL and George-- neither Phil nor Wilbur ever focus on pvp) will work as the best duo, but I think all four of them are chill enough to not have issues and they're all strong enough to do well alone and together.

3. Blue Bats (Punz, Illumina, Cara, Kara)

• Punz: Has been practicing a lot of 1.9 pvp recently and is generally pretty good at the game and determined to do well. He's also been studying past MCCs.
• Illumina: Is very good at 1.8 pvp and very comfortable with 1.9 mechanics from speedrunning 1.9+ versions. I think his skills from pve and 1.8 pvp games will transfer well, plus he's been practicing 1.9 pvp.
• Cara: Is a good pvper in 1.8 and has been practicing a lot in 1.9. I think she sometimes has problems doing as well during the event as practices, but she's generally really good and has a ton of MCC experience.
• Kara: While she isn't known for pvp in MCC, she's also been practicing before the past three MCCs and is a good team player and strategist.
• Overall: This team may be better than Green Guardians, but I put them lower because two of them are new and I'm not sure how well the Illumina+Punz duo will be. It could be the strongest "duo" in the event. Kara+Cara duo have been together for a while. I think there's less of a learning curve in MCC pvp as opposed to some other gamemodes, although there are many quirks of the game, etc. that more experienced players know better.

4. Pink Parrots (Dream, CaptainSparklez, Spifey, MichaelMcchill)

• Dream: outside of MCC he's very good at 1.9 pvp (melee and ranged) but mostly in duels and in the Manhunt format. His skill with team pvp games seems less practiced, but he's still very good. He does best with a strong duo, though (as most do), so I'm not sure what to expect in MCC12.
• CaptainSparklez: He wasn't very good at the transition from Skyblocke to Sky Battle but is good at the mechanics of pvp. He's also experienced in MCC pvp.
• Spifey: Says he'll be practicing and seems good at the game in general.
• Michaelmicchill: Been in many MCCs but isn't the best at pvp generally.
• Overall: This is an unusual team that's hard to place for me. I think it depends on how well Dream does with CaptainSpaklez. Dream has done his best when paired with a strong duo (Mefs in MCC6, Technoblade in MCC8, Sapnap in MCC11) and I'm not sure he'll trust CaptainSparklez as much. I may be wrong, though. He's very good going solo in pvp but I'm not sure how well teamwork will go on this team.

5. Purple Pandas (Sapnap, Smajor1995, ShubbleYT, DanTDM)

• Sapnap: one of the best at 1.9 pvp in the event and usually very aggressive in the way that's awarded a lot in MCC. Did best with a strong duo (Krtzyy in MCC8 and 9 and Dream in MCC11).
• Smajor1995: also very good at pvp in general and has been improving in recent MCCs, as far as I'm aware.
• ShubbleYT: not known for pvp but has done very well in multiple Survival Games and is good under pressure and with a bow/crossbow. I haven't seen much of her in Battle Box or Sky Battle
• DanTDM: I also haven't seen any of him doing pvp so can't comment. As far as I've read on this subreddit and elsewhere, he's decent.
• Overall: I think how well this team does in pvp depends on how well Sapnap and Smajor can work together, as well as which games are played. If they work like Quig and Smajor did in MCC10, they'll do really well in my opinion. They have three players who I think could work well together in Survival Games, but I'm not sure about other game modes. Sapnap is also more reserved on a team without people he already knows, it seems, and didn't do as well in MCC10 with the Cyan Creepers.

6. Lime Llamas (Fruitberries, Smallishbeans, Pearlescentmoon, Cubfan135)

• Fruitberries: Led his team to one of it not the strongest Survival Games victories in MCC9. Is also good at Skybattle and Battlebox when he isn't targeted. Very experienced with pvp game modes and a good team leader
• Smallishbeans: Decent at pvp and knows 1.9. A smart player. I think he's better at pvp than people give him credit for, if that makes sense. Hope that doesn't sound odd.
• Pearlescentmoon: Has practiced pvp before the past few MCCs and did very well in MCC9 skybattle.
• Cubfan135: I don't know much but know he did very well in MCC10 overall.
• Overall: this team only has one player who "mains" pvp but Fruitberries is a good leader and all members seem chill and competent. Fruitberries, like Quig, seems used to working alone (no strong duo) with the support of all his teammates and I don't think he's ever had a bad dynamic in pvp with his team. I am aware that some people probably think I am underrating this team in pvp. (I think they'll do really well in serveral team and movement games)

7. Yellow Yaks (Quig, SB737, Ryguyrocky, GizzyGazza)

• Quig: Arguably one of the best pvp players in MCC. Is used to doing very well on his own without as much team support, but this doesn't lead his team to first unless he has another strong player in pvp.
• SB737: I don't know much about his pvp abilities but know he's a generally hard worker and has been practicing.
• Ryguyrocky: Seems very chill but decent and experienced.
• GizzyGazza: Doesn't main the "competitive" or pvp/pve-focused part of MCC but did well in past MCCs and is a good team player.
• Overall: seems similar to the Lime Llamas in format to me. Quig and Fruitberries are both all-around very good players and very strong on their own, but like everyone else usually do their best in pvp with a strong duo that I can't see in this team. If SB737 is better than I think he is, this could change, though.

8. Cyan Creepers (PeteZahHutt, Seapeekay, SolidarityGaming, LaurenZSide)

• PeteZahHutt: Is one of the best MCC players but not generally known for his pvp ability. He's above average and used to play pvp games like Bedwars, and has done really well in some pvp game modes before. It's impossible to get a very high score without doing well in pvp, and he's one of the best team leaders in all games.
• Seapeekay: has been practicing pvp lately on Legacy and doing 1.9 Skywars. He's gotten better, but still seems to be behind players who have spent a lot more time doing pvp game modes and sometimes seems unconfident.
• SolidarityGaming: all around decent player. I don't know what else to say about his pvp. Nothing stands out to me (in a neutral way).
• LaurenZSide: doesn't main Minecraft but has played on many SMPs in the past. Her only other MCC was MCC5 where her team placed 8th, so I don't know what to say.
• Overall: his team will probably have very good teamwork, but I placed them this low because they don't have any players particularly known for pvp. Seapeekay could do really well now that he's teamed with Pete, and I could see them doing really well in Battle Box, but I'm not sure any of them are risky enough to get a lot of points in the other pvp game modes.

9. Orange Ocelots (Fundy, HBomb94, Eret, Karl Jacobs)

• Fundy: is generally good at all of the game. Also an inconsistent player, which extends to MCC pvp. Seems like the best pvper on the team, alongside HBomb.
• HBomb94: practices pvp but has never done amazing in MCC pvp. A lot better then "average" but I don't think he's ever led his team in pvp, and excels most at non pvp team games.
• Eret: pvp games are his favorite in MCC, as far as I know, because his dyspraxia makes movement hard at times. he's done very well in sky battle in the past and his favorite MCC game is battle box.
• KarlJacobs: a fast learner but didn't do very well in MCC11 in pvp.
• Overall: This team has no player who is known for being amazing at pvp. HBomb's leadership helps more in team games like Bingo, Build Mart and Sands of Time, and he doesn't seem very focused on team pvp all the time. They would do really well if they had a great strategy they all stuck to, or just had a really good day, but that's my reasoning for putting them low.

10. Aqua Axolotls (Falsesymmetry, fWhip, Grian, Rendog)

• Falsesymmetry: has a lot of great pvp skills from doing UHCs, etc. in the past and is good with a bow. She's said that she's out of practice with some stuff and sometimes less confident because of it. Doesn't consistently play pvp anymore, but has all that experience.
• fWhip: I don't know much about his gameplay. Please tell me about his pvp ability.
• Grian: Sr. Grian Dre-slayer might strike again. He's determined, but I really can't see him consistently doing something like a repeat of MCC9 Survival Games every time. It would be epic, though.
• Rendog: Was a really important part of his team in MCC9, especially with being a great support player, but there's no outstanding pvp player to support this time.
• Overall: I think this team just wants to have fun playing MCC. MCCs gotten very "sweaty" recently, and all of these players have done really well in past MCCs, but because of team balancing, I can't see them winning any pvp events. They may also be targeted for being "just the builders", but that could backfire on people who target them because they have been getting better and better as individuals with each MCC.