Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. Learn more at mercatus.org. For a full transcript of every conversation, enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com. Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I'm here with Rebecca Kwong, who is a New York Times number one best-selling author with her earlier book, Bobble. Her latest work is Yellow Face, which I loved. Stephen King described it as the following, quote, This is a great read, crime, satire, horror, paranoia, questions of cultural appropriation, plenty of nasty social media pylons too, but basically just a great story. Hard to put down, harder to forget. My friend, Henry Oliver, described it as, quote, immorally entertaining. She also has a fantasy trilogy, The Poppy War, which is not quite a young adults novel, but maybe not not a young adults novel also. And she has master's degrees in Chinese and contemporary Chinese studies from Oxford and Cambridge, and is now getting a PhD in East Asian languages and literature from Yale. Rebecca, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to chat. If you had to describe in general terms how you think Chinese science fiction is different from Western science fiction, how would you explain that to an educated Western reading audience? I really resist these broad generalizations of national literatures because you always find a lot more diversity within a genre, within a national literature than you do differences between two national literatures, I think. So it's really hard to talk about significant ways in which Chinese science fiction is different from American science fiction because there's no broad quality that you could subscribe to American science fiction either. And there's also a lot more trans-Pacific movement than people realize. There's so much translation going back and forth and authors are mutually influenced by one another. It's well documented that Miltoshima is heavily influenced by the golden age of Anglophone science fiction like Arthur C. Clark. My fiance is reading 2001 A Space Odyssey right now and it's sequels. And he was a big fan of Miltoshima's The Three Body Problem trilogy. And he's telling me he can see where the Clark influence comes from. So as somebody who really likes to get into the nitty gritty right of how literary movements come to be and those specific trans-Pacific multicultural influences, I hate making claims like, oh, all Chinese fiction is this way when clearly it's not and so many writers within those movements occupy very different social positions, have very different prose styles and have different concerns with what they're trying to accomplish in their fiction. Why is folding Beijing an important short story? I liked it. I thought it was smart. It was critically acclaimed. What is our standard for important? People remember it, the idea that there's three layers of Beijing that correspond to socio-economic status but have a physical instantiation. There's nothing I know of like that in Western science fiction. Oh, really? When I read Folding Beijing, I was amazed. I thought, this is incredible. I need to read more Chinese science fiction was my immediate response. If I had to send a person to one place to learn Chinese science fiction, assuming they're not going to read three volumes or three body problem, I'd send them to Folding Beijing. But where would you send them? Someone wants to start. What do you tell them? I mean, Folding Beijing is a fine place to start. I do really like that story, so I'm not registered in shock that you call it important. I will say there's also an interesting way in which what is canonical or what is deserving of critical acclaim or what gets the Anglophone audience really relies on the role of the translator and the venue and the literary economics of it all, right? So when we talk about Liu Zixin and Hao Jingfeng and their work, we can't leave out of a picture. Liu is both a critically acclaimed writer of science fiction and fantasy in English and a critically acclaimed translator. And there's a lot of inks filled on this already, so I'll just direct readers to go look up his work. But I think a lot of this Chinese language science fiction comes to us mediated by what Ken has decided is interesting and it occupies that platform and gains an audience rightfully deserved because Ken has decided to introduce it to the audience. So I'm thinking a lot about the economics of how techs travel and what gets platformed and what doesn't. So without arguing that, I don't think that these works are interesting or important or innovative. I think we also have to consider why is it these authors that have been put in front of us. And why do you think that is? Well, their work might just be good and Ken might have found it interesting and worthy of our attention. What's the most surprising thing you've learned about Chinese fantasy literature? It's not one of my objects of study, so I couldn't say. What is it that you think from Western fantasy? In recent times people will still read 50 or 100 years from now. So clearly Tolkien will last, right? What else will last? Tolkien will last. Tolkien will be around forever. I really hope that Susanna Clark lasts. I'm a big fan of her work. I hope Piranesi becomes one of those immortal works of fiction. I loved Piranesi, but very few of my friends have read it. I'm surprised by that. It's also short, as you know. Do you think that Piranesi was a lot less accessible than Jonathan Strange was? I think it's much more accessible. But there's something about long books that attracts a certain kind of person that's quite an extreme minority but can give something a durable reputation. And Piranesi somehow doesn't attract that person. That's true. I love Piranesi. I like it more than Jonathan Strange. I was very surprised to see that it has gotten such a mixed reception, though. I think Jonathan Strange is more palatable on a genre front. You go in knowing what it's going to read like, you go in expecting a certain kind of story, but Piranesi challenges you and either you're along for the ride or you don't. But to get back to your original question, I really hope that stories like that last. And Jonathan Strange is historical in a somewhat expected way, right? That's not what's original about it. Yeah, that's true. And Piranesi doesn't follow an exact template and if you go in thinking that it's going to be like Jonathan Strange and map precisely onto some historical metaphor or even have that much of a linear plot then you may be disappointed. But if you read to be transported, I think into a different frame of mind then you come away delighted and enchanted. Which other authors do you feel use footnotes well other than yourself? Mark Danieluski. You mean House of Leaves? That's right. I actually haven't finished House of Leaves. My fiance loves it. He thinks it's one of the scariest bookies he's ever read, but that's part of why I can't finish it. I always get a third of the way through and then become too frightened and my mind's not in a good place. So I put it down, but it's such a massive book that if you put it down, you'll have to start from the beginning to tackle all over again. I felt I was reading a great book, but never felt that I wanted to keep on reading and I was not sure if that meant there's something wrong with me or something wrong with the book. Maybe a little bit of both has to be the right book at the right time. How about Pale Fire? I love Pale Fire. For my birthday this year, one of my friends, Rodrigo, got me this special edition that has the cantos printed on index cards so you can go through the index cards as you're reading the narrative proper or, you know, the notes on the poem. And once I have a bit of spare time, I'm going to sit down and read Pale Fire the way that perhaps the book of intended with the index cards in hand. There's a very good guide to it by Brian Boyd, which if you don't already know, I would recommend. Okay. I don't like footnotes in David Foster Wallace. Do you agree or disagree? I still haven't read any of his novels. I read the essay about cruises and enjoyed that greatly, but I don't have a position on his fiction. Now a lot of your latest book, Yellow Face, deals with the book trade being a best-selling author. What concretely would you change about publishing in the book trade? You put you in charge of it. The change has to be broadly sustainable, so it can't be utopian like every author gets a million-dollar advance, but what would you do? You know, nobody has asked me this question in part because it seems so utopian. I think I would increase entry-level wages to make publishing jobs livable in cities like New York and London, and I say this because based on conversations with friends who are either part of the HarperCollins Union or folks who are trying to enter the publishing industry and become one of those gatekeepers, one of those people who can decide which manuscripts are valuable, worthy of getting a platform worthy of being put in front of readers. Everyone circles back to the same problem that it's nearly an impossible industry to enter unless you have previous connections or, more importantly, inherited wealth, family wealth, some situation that lets you live in London or New York without worrying too much about your income because entry-level wages are really so atrocious, and this trickles up, right? When we think about the editors, specifically the acquiring editors who are deciding which new talent is worthy of getting a book deal worthy of being put on bookshelves, it's unfortunate that the makeup of that room has largely seemed unchanged year after year, and there are many reports on industry statistics that back this up. It's a very homogenous group of people who are deciding which books to buy, and we want that to change. We want different editors selecting stories, pruning them and cultivating them for readers, then it has to be a livable industry to enter in the first place. So there would be both higher wages and more people looking through the manuscripts, so like higher P and higher Q. So what authors are less? Well, maybe some authors can earn less, but this is a related conversation. It's not just that the amount of the advance is not livable, and I say this for the average book deal, right? Obviously, I'm in a very lucky position now where my advances are sizable, but if you look at the average advance that's paid out and you subtract the agent fee and you subtract taxes, if you're writing a book a year, you probably aren't making enough to live on. And then you think about the schedule according to which an advance is paid out, so you don't get your entire advance up front. Currently, the advances are divided into, I think they're paid out in fifths now, which means that you get a fifth, say you get $100,000 advance, you might get $20,000 paid immediately when you sign the contract, which by the way can take months, sometimes over a year to negotiate. I've had contracts take over a year, so you don't get the money right away, and then you get another fifth upon delivery and acceptance of the manuscript, and that comes at the end of the editorial process, and you get another fifth when the book actually comes out on publication date, then you get another fifth 12 months and then 18 months after the fact, and this whole process can stretch out over two to three years, so it might seem at the start that $100,000 is quite a lot of money, but if you're realistically making about $30,000 a year, then you can't just write and make a living, you have to be doing something else at the same time. What do you enjoy most about going on book tour? I just turned in an essay to British Vogue about all the things I hate about going on a book tour, which is the indignities of travel and worrying about making my flights and worrying about showering and composing myself before I come downstairs and say hi to booksellers, but I think the thing that makes it all worth it is interactions with readers. I wonder if you feel this way when you do public events, you can be exhausted, your face can be strained from smiling, you can wish you were in bed, but then somebody comes up to you and has a conversation and you remember why you went on the road in the first place. Oh, it's great fun for me. I have relatively few complaints about it, but I also am in a different position than you are and have another income I can fall back upon and I think whether you do it as a man or do it as a woman, you're also treated differently, especially by your readers. That's probably true. People have been very kind to me on tour though, so really don't have too much to complain about. What makes for a good writing instructor? I should probably have a quick answer to this, given that I really enjoy teaching and I hope to teach writing.  I am, yes, I've given lectures on craft, but I think that's a bit different. You can be good at lecturing about craft and you can deliver talks to an audience, but I'm thinking about writing instructors who work with you over the same period of time and read and critique your work. And I've only worked with one of these, Jean Cabellas, who runs the Odyssey Writing Workshop, which used to be a six-week sci-fi fantasy writing workshop in New Hampshire, but now has become a year-long, more accessible model and I think she was absolutely fantastic. So I'm just trying to figure out exactly what it was about her approach that I found so effective and I think one thing is that she recognized that she was very good at isolating the problem but it gave you space to generate the solution. People say this about editors as well when editors point out flaws in a manuscript. They're almost right about the problem. They're a point of data that says the sentence, this plot twist, this piece of character development is not sticking, not resonating, but the solutions they offer aren't necessarily the right ones and Jean was very good at explaining to you where structurally things had fallen apart and then stepping back and letting you figure out how to fix it because you can't fix it in the voice of somebody who thinks they know their story better than you. You have to find an organic solution that helps you express what you are trying to say all along. So I think that would make for a good writing instructor, someone who's not too overbearing basically. There's a lot of history in your novels. Early on in Yellow Face, you mentioned I think the Treaty of Versailles. Was China treated fairly in the Treaty of Versailles? Well, the Chinese certainly didn't think so and it kicked off a whole lot of domestic protests that led to a lot of people would argue some sense of national awakening, the development of national consciousness, rallying around the flag motivating effect, but certainly the Chinese did not get what they were hoping for from the Treaty of Versailles. And was Woodrow Wilson at fault? Was it the internally corrupt Chinese warlords who were willing to sign off on all kinds of things and hand rights to the Japanese?  Oh, you'd have to ask a historian that I only know the effect. I thought you were a historian. No, I actually did history as an undergrad once I realized. Well, I started off doing international economics and then I came back and realized I only wanted to do history, but then as I did my master's degrees, I realized that in studying history, I was drawn towards narratives and the stories people told about historical events and literary history, much more than I was interested in things like military history. There was a time when I thought I would become a military historian and obviously I'm not. So now I do literature. I came back and applied to study modern Chinese literature, specifically the modern sign-of-all literature. There's a distinction between sign-of-all and Chinese which really has to do with, are we talking about writers who are writing in Chinese but not necessarily for or from the mainland? And so now I look at the history of literary movements and how historical events are represented in fiction, but I could not tell you much more about the Treaty of Versailles. Do you know what your dissertation will be on? I don't, and I think it's good that I don't because I am in one of my last years of absolute freedom and exploration, which is the year that I study for my qualifying exams, which means that I have about 50 texts that I have to read for three subfields, which is 150 to 180 texts total. And this is spread across modern sign-of-all literature, Asian-American literature and Asian-American history. And the hope is that at the end of all of this intensive reading and thinking and drawing connections, I will have solidified the questions that I will write my dissertation on, but right now I'm still mucking around and having fun and casting about for new ideas. I did just finish Hua Su's A Floating China Men, which is a text that thinks very much about the trans-Pacific imagination, who has the authority to talk about China, who do we consider a Chinese expert or an expert on China, and how do those imaginations of foreign countries change over time? And I think those are some of the questions that I gravitate towards and might end up dissertating about. China, as you know, has a large population, quite a high rate of literacy, some of the world's best and most amazing bookstores, but there aren't many Chinese novels known outside of China. And why do you think that is? Is it a translation problem? Is it cultural differences are large? Or what's your account of that? Like not many people have read Soul Mountain or Mo Yan or just not that much, right? The way they might have read Rushdie or Mahfuz or other not Western writers, but nonetheless from different countries. Well, do you think the dominance of English as a language of literary prestige has anything to do with it? I don't because plenty of people say Read Marquez or Vargas Llosa or many other Latin American authors, Borges, most well-read educated, say Americans would have read them or people in England. But again, you get into Chinese fiction or if you look at a classic work Dream of Red Chamber, other than people with some kind of background in China or Chinese studies, I know very few people who've read Dream of Red Chamber. Some would say that's the greatest Chinese novel or even the greatest novel of all time. Is it that the modes of storytelling are different or we're too closed or what do you think? I've actually never thought about this comparison. It wouldn't have been my instinct to argue that more educated or literate Anglophone readers would have read Marquez or Borges than they would have the Chinese Nobel laureates. But I don't know, we don't have the data on that or maybe somebody does, I don't have it at hand right now. My instinct though is to make an argument about translation and global literary prestige and linguistic inequality. And there's a whole host of theory and literature about this, so none of this is really original argument and it gets back to a paradigm called world literature, which means a lot of different things, but broadly when we think about literatures produced in different languages and the movements within those and we compare them on a global stage and look at what's getting a readership, what isn't, what is moving through translation, what isn't and in which languages we associate with literary prestige. It's clearly influenced by history, geopolitical movements and doesn't just boil down to, oh, are good works being produced, but what roots have been created for those works to travel and what kind of reception have they been anticipated to receive before they've even had the opportunity to travel. So the kind of theories of literary economy and world literature I'm thinking of really start with Pascal Casanovas, the world republic of letters and she makes some good points about the Latin American authors here and how they have traveled in translation and she also brings up the fact that you see a lot of writers from formerly colonized territories becoming her term self-translated men, right? Men who deliberately choose to move into English in order to get closer to the literary center of the Anglophone and Casanova doesn't talk specifically about the Chinese case, but a lot of people employing her framework later do, so you may also be interested in Julia LaValle's work on China's quest for the Nobel Prize. Why, in fact, did it take so long for any Chinese writer to win a Nobel Prize in literature? And I've quoted a lot of existing literature here, but the point basically is it's not that good works are not being produced in Chinese or that they're being produced in narrative frames or writing styles that are indecipherable or unattractive to Anglophone audiences. I think that kind of cultural determinism is a little bit silly. I do think that there just aren't enough roots of translation and roots through the market so that the average Anglophone reader either hears about these works or has access to them from a publisher that's poured a significant amount of marketing money into them. I do think that most of the readers I know who are curious about reading outside of English have heard of Moyan and have heard of Galaxinxian and the dream of the Red Chamber, but maybe my circle of acquaintances is much more China-focused than the average circle. No, I think people have heard of them but actually read them compared to, say, Pamuk. It seems to me, obviously, many fewer readers when it comes to the Chinese works. And Pamuk is from Turkey, Islamic background. It's not obviously something that would take off in the United States, but I would think the ratio of people who've read Pamuk to any Chinese writer would be at least five to one. It's the people I've known. Why do you think the three-body problem took off the way it did? Well, it is very good, right? But I think the hardness of the science fiction in volumes two and three is immediately recognizable, even to people who are not science fiction fans but have seen a lot of cinema. I am surprised volume one did so well. It's my favorite of the three volumes, but it's maybe the most Chinese. The narrative is not to an American eye, extremely linear, it can be confusing, and that people ever got. Can I ask you to be specific on what you mean when you say the narrative is the most Chinese? I'm just curious. It could be the translation, right? So I'm ready to get in English, but volume maybe two in particular, but both two and three, there's something very Arthur C. Clarke about them, as you mentioned. And volume one is the kind of uncovering of a lot of different strands of the story and a lot of mysteries at the beginning, and it becomes clear by the end, but you can start the book, read the first half, and then feel the need to reread the first half again to understand what's going on. Not true of volumes two and three, would be my sense. Now, if it were somehow only volumes two and three, I would obviously expect it to be popular, but I'm surprised volume one was not more of an obstacle. I had only read volume one for a while, and then I read volumes two and three later on after it became more of a global phenomena, and I really loved volume one. I think- It's my favorite, yeah. The alien's plot twist was spoiled for me very early on, so I went in knowing who the tricelerons were and what everything was gearing up towards, so I wasn't confused for the first 100 pages, but I've heard from other people that you're actually not supposed to know that they're aliens, and it's supposed to be a great shock when you find out. Are you reading these in Chinese or in English? Both, and I was gonna ask you which of the translations was your favorite. I didn't know there was more than one, so I'm pretty sure I read just the one you see in all the bookstores. There isn't a single official translation for each one of them, but there are different translators for the novel. Oh, yeah. Without revealing who translated what, which translation did you like the best? Obviously I can't compare to the originals. Two strikes me as oversimplified, but the original might be as well, so I prefer one. It seemed closer to the original, but that's quite subjective from a great distance point of view. What do you think? So one and three are by Ken Liu and two is by Joel Martenson, who's since done several of Lucician's other works, and I like all of them. I think I have a slight preference for Ken's literary style, and it might be because he's also quite an accomplished writer of his original fiction. I do not like the prose in Chinese, or I guess I wouldn't say I actively dislike it. I just find it incredibly utilitarian. He's clearly more interested in the ideas than he is in writing very beautiful, elegant descriptive sentences. I think this comes through especially in his character work. I mean, you must have had this. Oh, well, let me ask you, what do you make of the non-Chinese characters and how they're represented? Well, I get a kick out of it, so I enjoy it, but I think I enjoy it because it's not entirely accurate. It's a Chinese view of how Western establishment people ought to be running around and talking to each other. So for me, that's fantastic. I thought it was entertaining as well. I guess the point I was going to make is that he uses shorthand and cardboard caricatures of characters much more than he's really interested in the interiority of much of his secondary cast, and I think this is related to his prose being very simple and unadorned and really just interested in the science ideas. And I think Ken's done a very good job with this simple prose and rendering it elegant without significantly distorting the voice or adding a kind of lyricism that wasn't there to begin with. Have you seen the Chinese series? I think it was for television. I have not. Have you? No, people have told me it's boring. It is now on YouTube with subtitles, which is not how I would prefer to watch it. There's a Netflix Americanized version of it coming, which I fear for and probably won't watch, but I'll look out for the reviews. What is it you do to follow what's new and coming out in China that's interesting to you? This is actually something I need to figure out because I am scaling back significantly from all social media and following people whose opinions I respect and seeing what's trending used to be my way of following not just what's coming out in China, but what's going on all over the world. And I no longer find Twitter a very interesting place to be. I've recently read a lot of literature about how it would help us if we slowed down. I don't know, there's this term slow news that I really can't define for you, but boils down to being much more careful about the ideas that we're ingesting and turning them over and reading thorough comprehensive coverage than quick takes, but I have yet to figure out exactly what those sources should be. I'll take recommendations if you have them. No, I have zero.  Maybe you tweet something or it's in one of your talks, one of your interviews, but I have no sources anymore and I don't go to China anymore. I'm afraid to, frankly. Well, you see my great advantage is that I have Chinese family members and I also have Chinese classmates and colleagues, a department that focuses specifically on these topics. So I can just wander into a department talk or ask people what they're researching, but I would like to find some new sources and newsletters and podcasts that aren't just the hottest underdeveloped new take on Twitter, but that's the work in progress for me. What surprised you most about your recent Taiwan trip? This is a great question because a lot of things were delightful and new and interesting, but I'm trying to sort through preconceptions about what life would be like and if any of those has proven false in a really significant way. This is hard because I'd previously been to Taiwan in 2017, I want to say, so I knew a bit about what I was gonna get into. It surprises me each time how retro it feels. That's what I would say. So the first time I went there, I think it was 1988 or 89, and if I go more recently, of course, it's different, but it's not nearly as different as I would expect. It's not different in the way that either, say, South Korea or even Thailand would be different. It looks to me early 1990s, somehow, and that it hasn't, it has changed an enormous amount, but in terms of the externals, I'm always surprised how little it's changed. Well, I can't compare with the 80s and 90s, so I couldn't say. I will say one thing that comes up with in conversations with all my friends in Boston who are asking, oh, well, what's Taipei like? Is that the public transportation is just so vastly superior to most public transportation in the US. I mean, the jarring system comes regularly, frequently. There's a little sign that tells you at five-second intervals how long until the next train, people line up, they queue to get on the train.  People don't eat or drink. Actually, okay, here's my answer for what surprised me the most. I knew there were rules about no eating or drinking on the subway, but I thought this was just things that could have an odor, right, or could possibly make a mess. So we were on the red line headed to Veto and the old lady across from me, so I take a sip of water and she says, you can't do that. And I'm stunned, first of all, that she's talking to me, but also that you can't even drink water on the subway, but apparently this is a rule. And supposedly most people are lax about it and not everybody will get up all in your grill like that old lady did, but that rule did surprise me. I'm not sure what the reasoning is. It surprises me how Japanese, a lot of Taiwanese infrastructure feels, including the subway, the way the electric lines are laid out, the way many of the streets or corners or intersections look and feel. It's more Japanese in origin than I would have ever thought until I went. Would you prefer the food in Taipei or Beijing if you had to choose? I haven't lived in Beijing since 2015, so I couldn't say. I do think the food in Taipei was incredible and I miss it every day. I very much like Western Chinese food and Sichuan and Yunnan, and those to me are better represented in Beijing. May have changed since I've been there, but I don't think it has. If anything, there's probably more of it, so I would vote for Beijing. It's the one place in China where you can get food from almost all other parts of China. Maybe. I do remember eating very well when I was in Beijing, but I was especially delighted with the soybean pudding in Taipei because that's a little difficult to get here in the States. I recall that even at the local dim sum restaurant, you could only get it on Sundays at specific hours and in Taipei, it's everywhere and it's so inexpensive and there were weeks where I had it for breakfast every single day and it was marvelous. Going back to the distant past, what is it about the 1830s in Victorian England that you find so interesting? Everyone has such a preference for the late 19th century when we think about the Victorian era and contemporary film and novels that are set in the Victorian era. They're all post the Industrial Revolution. They're post-Dickens. They're post the inventions of all sorts of technologies that linger in our imagination as the steampunk Victorian era aesthetic. So when I was drafting Babel and doing some research into what technologies existed, what my character's lives would have been like, I was at first disappointed to find that I couldn't rely on shows like Penny Dreadful or things set in the late 19th century because a lot of that stuff had not been invented yet and the reason why is because the Industrial Revolution was really kicking off in the early half of the 20th century and as I sat with that for a while, I realized I should not be so disappointed to be on the early end of the Victorians, but rather that this too is an era of incredible change and also the start of incredible social inequality and this is when the movements that later, Disraeli and Gateskill and Dickens were describing, this is the seed of all that tremendous social change. Why do you think that British imperialism worked so much better in Singapore and Hong Kong than most of the rest of the world? What do you mean by work so much better? Well, Singapore today per capita, it's a richer nation than the United States.  It was far from perfect along the way, but it worked out very well for us. People in Sierra Leone would not say the same thing, right? Hong Kong did much better under Britain than it had done under China and now that it's back in the hands of China, it seems to be doing worse again. So it seems Hong Kong was better off under imperialism. It's true that there is a lot of contemporary nostalgia for the colonial era and that would take hours and hours to unpack. I guess I would say two things. The first is that I am very hesitant to make arguments about historical counterfactual such as, oh, if it were not for the British empire, would Singapore have the economy it does today or would Hong Kong have the culture it does today? Because we don't really know, but also I think these broad comparisons of colonial history are very hard to do as well because the methods of extraction and the pervasiveness and techniques of colonial rule were also different from place to place. So it feels like a kind of useless comparison to say, oh, why has Hong Kong prospered under British rule while India hasn't, et cetera. But it seems if anywhere we know it's Hong Kong, you can look at Guangzhou, it's a fairly close comparator. Until very recently, Hong Kong was much, much richer than Guangzhou and without the British, it would be reasonable to assume living standards in Hong Kong would have been about those of the rest of Southern China, right? It would be weird to think it would be some extreme outlier, none others of those happened in the rest of China. Isn't that close to a natural experiment? Not a controlled experiment, but a pretty clear comparison. Maybe, again, I'm not a historian, so I don't have a lot to say about this. I just think it's pretty tricky to argue that places prosper solely due to British presence when without the British, there are lots of alternate ways things could have gone and we just don't know. Your book, Yellow Face, quite a bit of the plot revolves around what one might call a co-authored novel. Why are there not more co-authored novels? There's plenty of co-authored works in scholarship, right? Often to the benefit of the work. Certainly movies, television, by their nature, are co-authored. A lot of great music, most great music is done in groups, right? Rather than, oh, just Bob Dylan, though he's wonderful. What is it about fiction that makes co-authorships so difficult? Perhaps just that writers are impossible to work with and will become possessive and act like divas about their creative territory, but, well, I don't play in a band, so I don't know if writing music as part of a group is different in that everyone has their designated roles, like the vocalist focuses on the vocals, the guitarist focuses on the guitar, et cetera. Maybe watching that Beatles documentary would help with this, actually, but the problem with co-writing a book is that it's really hard to designate who's in charge of what when all the pieces are constantly in flux, and at least my writing process means that anything can change at any given moment, a sentence that I really like in act three might mean that I go back and change any number of things about act one, and first of all, logistically, that just makes it a nightmare for the other person to keep announcing that you've changed your mind about the direction of the book, but unless you're writing a book such as, for instance, this is how you lose the time war, which is told in an epistolary format where the two co-authors just wrote the two different perspectives of the two main characters. Aside from cases where the narrative chunks are very clearly delineated, I think it becomes almost impossible to merge your voices into an organic whole while taking into account the multiple changes and creative differences that are going to crop up along the way. I mean, I'm so territorial and persnickety about my work that I refuse to show early drafts to anybody until there's a fairly clean initial version that we can then hack apart and make edits to, but if somebody asks me to co-write a novel with somebody else, I mean, only one of us would be alive at the end of the process. But you could appoint a dictator, right? If someone in charge have that settled by contract, one of you pays the other some share of the royalties and you could have the final word. So I've co-authored plenty of things, never fiction, not deliberately fiction at least, and they've all worked out great, in fact. I'm sure that it's much easier to do with nonfiction and I also can only speak for my own relationship to writing. I'm sure there are lots of other authors who would happily work with co-authors, but it is such an intimate process that involves a deep understanding of every character and also a deep understanding of yourself. I think that I become a different person with each novel I write and everything is a bit like therapy in a sense. Not that I'm exactly chronically my emotional journeys, but they have to do with what's troubling me at the time and what questions are acutely bothering me and to split this psychological burden across two people would mean that not only do we have to clarify our relationships to the text, but we'd also have to clarify our relationships to each other. So yeah, we would end up killing each other or getting married, I think. And I'm already getting married, so that's not interesting to me. Another theme in Yellow Face. Why is it that the internet brings out the mean side of people so much? Why do you think this is the case? I've thought about it a long time. I don't feel I understand it very well, but it could be that we're naturally somewhat mean and judgmental and there's something softening about face-to-face contact, but it's the absence of the face-to-face contact that matters, not because it's the internet. That's the closest I've come to an answer that our internet selves are not so far from our real selves and the other is an adjustment that we're used to making to live in civilized society. I think that's right. There is the protection of anonymity.  I think another complicating factor is that the internet is so distracting and it doesn't encourage us to think in nuance or to slow down or consider multiple sides of a problem. It is an immense amount of stimulation all at once and it rewards quick, easy, reductive judgments. I mean, this is how many tweets go viral, right? They're very funny, but they also use a shorthand to capture some kind of emotion or quick judgment statement about a problem. And usually it's problems that resist and are very vulnerable to these quick judgment statements. And when you look at everything in binary, reductive terms, then of course tribalism becomes a threat and it's easy to devolve into the easiest, cruelest judgments about others rather than considering that even people you disagree deeply with might have a point. From one of your short stories, Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, why don't imperial walkers have a lower center of gravity? I don't know. You have to ask their engineers. I understand almost nothing about the manufacturer of spaceships. They have these long spindly legs, right? And they fire these very weak charges and presumably they're shooting at things on the ground, right? So they don't need to be up that high. If anything, that makes the charges weaker. I don't know. I just think it looks really fun on screen. I think there is something to be said for spaceships or alien craft that resemble animals to us because it's an easy pattern that we can fit them to in terms of how they move and how we assess them as threats. And also importantly, it gives an easy solution for low tech rebels to attack. Some questions about your own history. How do you feel it influenced you to grow up in Dallas? Well, for a long time, I had a bit of a Southern twang in my English and my parents were very tickled by this. Well, first I had a pretty obvious Chinese accent and then as I spent more time in American public schools, I lost that and developed quite a Texan accent. And they thought it was the funniest thing in the world. So sometimes they would have dinner parties and invite their Chinese American friends and they would ask my sister and I to come downstairs and recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the most exaggerated Texan accent we could and everyone thought it was great fun. So there's some deeper point here about identity and accents and linguistic play, but that's just the first thing that comes to mind. How is it you think that doing so much debate influenced your writing? I am still friends with a lot of debate coaches, a lot of the folks who I competed against or was on a debate team with, they still work in debate education and they coach debate. So we actually have a lot of conversations about how we think it benefits high schoolers, how it trains us to think what debate is good for and also what debate is not good for. I think there are two main benefits I took from debate. The first is that I've never been afraid of public speaking, at least not since ninth grade and this is a tremendous advantage, especially if you're being sent out on a book tour. It is really good not to get stagefribe before you step out in front of hundreds of people and the second thing I took away from debate is this kind of electric sense of knowing when you've connected with an audience because especially in the final speeches, right, when you have to tie everything together and you only have three minutes to make all your most important points and especially later on in a tournament where the rooms might be packed with spectators, you have this spidey sense of when a sentence you've just uttered resonates with the crowd. You can feel the crowd's energy. You know exactly what to say that will get people on your side. You know how to phrase things in the most concise and affectively compelling way which is not to say I'm always very good at this but I always knew when I had done it successfully and I think that translates into writing compelling fiction because you know when you're boring the audience. You know when you've gone on too long about a tangent that nobody really cares about. You have that ticking clock in the back of your head and you know you've got to come around and get right to the point, the core, the center, the electric sentence that the reader is really there for and I don't strike that chord all the time but I know when I have and I think debate has been very valuable in inculcating that instinct but there are, well you didn't ask this but I think there are lots of things that debate is not good for. What is it not good for? Well you simply can't affirm or negate most of the resolutions that high school debaters are asked to talk about and I think debate encourages thinking about these statements in terms of the truth and in terms of who's right or wrong rather than what are all the sides of the statement and how can we sift through all the voices and conversations going on to arrive at a compromise that benefits the most people and since the point of debate is to win, right? You are naturally not thinking about well what are the things my point is right about? This is not a good instinct to take into college. It will make you the asshole in discussion seminars if you are only concerned with being right and getting the crowd on your side rather than seeking the truth and it's especially not good for public office I think it's devastating actually when we have public figures who are more interested in putting each other down and proving that they've done more research, they're more clever, they have quittier terms of phrase rather than pursuing some kind of collaborative search for the truth. You once said that your writing is inspired by place and a sense of place, what does that mean? Oh, that's really simple. I just end up writing stories about where I am, what I'm eating, what I'm looking at or I'm walking, what language I'm living in, what stories I'm hearing and I think all writers are inspired by where they are so when I was writing the popular trilogy or at least when I started, I was living in Beijing then when I started writing Babel, I was at Oxford. When I wrote Yellow Face, this was during mid-2021 so we were all at home and largely existing on the internet which was the worst place to be and now I'm writing a book that is not only set in hell but psychologically set in a PhD program. Rates of depression amongst graduate students they measure as being very high today in the United States and also I think in England. Why use that? It feels like it should be this wonderful time in one's life you get to work with ideas. There's some chance you're not pressured to earn money, not true for everyone but for many people and yet rates of serious depression can be 25% or higher. I mean you're in graduate school now, how do you think about what's going on there? Do you work with graduate students now? All the time, absolutely. And I don't feel it's true of the ones I have contact with but when I meet others I hear about it plenty in other institutions. To me my own institution feels very high morale for whatever reasons. Do you have a guess about why your students might be different? I think they have somehow a greater sense of purpose of using economics to improve the world and less a sense of well I need to write this 90 page paper and make it perfect or no one will give me a job. And missing out on some of that latter form of social anxiety is in some ways bad for them but it keeps them happier and actually fairly productive. So I think sense of mission is the difference. That's interesting. I am tempted to agree with you that grad school should be the happiest time of your life and that really grad students don't have all that much to complain about because when you think about the setup you're being paid to just read and talk and research about the questions that are the most interesting questions to you in the world. That's why you would have entered the fields and there are very few obligations other than teaching and again teaching should be a great pleasure because you get to enter the classroom and talk about that which is most interesting to you. That being said, there are a lot of reasons why grad students I know today are deeply depressed and pessimistic about their future prospects and the first is that the job market is awful. I mostly know humanities students, right? People who study English literature or comparative literature or philosophy or American studies, et cetera. And I'm curious if you disagree this might be one difference between the grad students I know and economists, which is that if they don't get a job in which they're able to teach and research those subjects then there aren't a lot of other all academia prospects where they can put those skills to good use. I mean, I can think of vanishingly few tenure-track jobs in English and even fewer industry jobs that value the ability to critically read, I don't know, Jane Austen, right? So maybe that's part of it, knowing that they are spending their 20s in a field that will not reward them and means that they probably will have to start completely over in a different career once they've graduated. I agree that's a difference. Let's say one thinks about you and writing. So I've never counted the number of pages you've written but it's a pretty high number, right? And I know plenty of other graduate students, they have trouble writing anything at all. That's not you. So what's the thing in you that makes you so extreme and different from a lot of other people who have trouble writing? Well, for me, it's a compulsion. So if I'm not writing, then I don't feel right. I feel extremely unsatisfied. I am the kind of person who's really bad at being on holiday and if I go on holiday then it must be a productive holiday, the kind where I am up and walking and roaming the city from sunrise to sunset and absolutely exhausting myself because I do very badly at sitting around and twiddling my thumbs. And I think there is a great pleasure in creation and playing around with words and figuring out how not just to express myself but to summarize strains of history or retell myths or anecdotes that I've heard in the past and this is just such an ongoing compulsion that if I stop then that doesn't feel like rest or a default to normal. The normal state is writing and I think I'm just built like this and it's not a productivity hack. Some people really want to write and other people have other hobbies and passions and things that are pleasurable to them. I tell people who want to write, they should try to write every single day without exception. They don't all like hearing that and obviously it's not how every writer works but it's a good initial test to see whether you really want to be a writer. Your writing side, which has been very successful, your scholarly study side, how do those two asymptote together into something that you will keep on doing? Do you have a take on that? This is an ongoing problem for me because... Is it a problem though? Sorry to interrupt. It's something that I'm trying to figure out. There doesn't seem to be a lot of value in having published five, six novels on the job market in the fields that I would like to get hired in. So there seems to be a significant trade-off between focusing on my fiction career and doing well in my studies. I'm also at a period in my studies where it's sink or swim. Either I commit now or I don't because you can kind of muddle through an undergraduate degree while having your soul focused elsewhere. And I think this is even true for master's degrees in the first few years of a PhD program but reading for your qualifying exams and writing a dissertation, I think involves the all-encompassing focus that I'm used to bringing to my manuscripts and the demand that I'm thinking about those problems every second of every day. At the same time, I'm on contract for at least three new books at the moment. So this makes scheduling very difficult and the only way I've been able to strike some kind of balances in between is to become a devotee of Cal Newport. I don't know if you've had Cal Newport on the podcast. No, but I know him and I know his work. I recently read Digital Minimalism because I was fed up with social media. I found it very compelling and then I read Deep Work too and I know lots of people have strong feelings good or bad about all those books. I think I'm the kind of person who that advice is very helpful for the kind of extremist approach to Deep Work and this is just what I do now. I have gotten pretty strict about whose emails I answer, when I answer emails, who I make time for and who I don't so that I'm able to spend the most productive and focused hours of my day which is from nine to 12 in the morning writing fiction and then as the hours trickle on after that and my brain becomes more and more tired.  Yes, thank you. Sounds good in my inbox. We have the same most productive hours to the moment also. Do you at all worry if your writing is inspired by a sense of place and you stop moving around a lot which might happen in your life that you'll asymptote into a single style of writing or that's something you would welcome because all your books are in quite different styles, genres, some of them you couldn't easily categorize, right? Will you asymptote or does it become a big thing moving outwards in all directions at once? This is not a worry for me because I never intend to settle in one place. I like the sense of adventure too much and even if I'm based for nine months of the year at some academic institution that still leaves the summer to explore and learn and think in new languages, I very much make it a priority to have the flexibility to pick up everything and move to a different city at any stage in my life and this is what I've structured a lot of my life around having that ability to learn and become a new person and shed my skin every few years so this is not a worry to me because it is the thing that I've made all my decisions to allow me to do. Last two questions and they're related. First, if you could be a tourist of sorts going back into the past, you spend six months in a time and place of your choosing. You automatically know the language, you have whatever immunological protections you might need. Where do you spend that six months? I am fascinated by the Cold War psyche and this might be because we're reading Watchmen right now which is a comic book that I'd slept on for many years and I hadn't realized what a Cold War work of fiction it was but I was born in 96, right? So all I know from that period is mediated through film and from novels and it's just such an extraordinary mindset to think that any moment now the whole world might go extinct to be told at school that if you duck under your desk you might survive a nuclear blast and I would really like to just walk around and talk to people to understand how people felt and how people were living. Some of that you can still pick up by talking to older people now, of course. You can't live in it but it's not completely gone. Yeah, that's true. And last question, you get to spend six months in the future somewhere now, imagine you're relieved from your, you finished up at Yale, done whatever and you can pick six months and live there somewhere you haven't lived yet. Where do you pick and why? The next place, so to speak. Unconstrained. Well, I'd like to go somewhere where they speak Chinese because I don't spend enough time living in Chinese and when I was in Taipei this past summer and living in it for most hours during the day I felt that pathways were being unlocked in my brain and my ability to read and interpret texts was improving by huge margins but I've already lived in Taipei so I can't say that. I might just go on a backpacking trip for six months across all of the cities and villages in Taiwan that I haven't been to and I have only been to Taipei. I haven't been to Tainan or Galsheng or any of the other major regions so it's a bit of a cheaty answer but these are very new places for me so that's what I would want to do and also something that is a realistic journey for me in the near future. The rest of the country is very different from Taipei I think at least the parts I've been to. Anyway, Rebecca, thank you very much. Her new book loved it Yellow Face out this year and she tells us over time there will be at least three more books coming I'm sure many more. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app. If you like this podcast please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review. This helps other listeners find the show. On Twitter I'm at Tyler Cowan and the show is at Cowan Convos. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.


What's up everybody, Jason here for JaspysCaseBrace.com. Jaspys two box high end football mixer, random divisions number four just sold out and this includes a box of hip braid VIP chairman, which is probably the most expensive repack box that hip braid makes. So, as you can see, these are some of the sell sheet hits here. Mahomes raider rookie red, a little Tom Brady autograph, Mahomes rookie again, Justin Herbert rookie, Josh Allen and then a little triple autograph there. Don't know which ones have been hit but hopefully we pulled one of those. And again, this is a eight spot break, remember everybody has a random division at NFL. This mixer includes that one box of 2022 hip braid football VIP chairman edition, which is a series one and of course includes one box of gold standard 2022 football. So here's the dice roller, here's the customer names, Michael L and Mark got those spots there straight up and then Travis down to Travis won those in a little mosaic cello pack filler. And then here's the divisions of course. So again, random division in the NFL. Good luck. Roll it. Got ourselves two and a six, eight times. Eight times. Good luck. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Eight times. Michael at the top, down to Travis at the bottom, eight times here. One, two, three, four, five, six, and what was it again, eight times, seven, eight. AFC East, down to the NFC East, all right, so eight times, eight times, eight times. Michael, you have the AFC East, Mickey with the NFC South, Travis with the AFC North, Mark with the NFC West, as well as the AFC West. Travis with the NFC North, Mark with the AFC South, and then Travis with the NFC East. I don't know if anybody wants to make any trades. I'll keep the trade window open, but if not, we'll close right now in about a minute. All right, then TWC guys, trade window closed. So just grab the random box of gold standard, but of course just kind of make it fair for the VIP chairman. There's three boxes left. Remember, they had a number to 300, 294 on number one there, 185 out of 300 there, and then 60 out of 300. So we're just going to go top, middle, bottom. If I roll a one, two, we're going to go with the top, three, four, the middle, five, six, bottom. Nice, Paul. Congrats. That was the last day we were doing break credit for the month. All right, so let's switch scenes. And again, dice roll here. Let's see which one we choose here. Roll. It is a four. So one, two, three, four, we're going to go with 195. So these two here will be for the next mixer. That would be pretty cool, actually, Mike, to see at least for the last spot, maybe not for all the playoffs spots, but maybe the last spot. I'll be tomorrow because all it really takes is just you just got to come in hot at the right time in any playoffs, and then you just take over. I mean, as an example for my king, then being the first eight seed to win a Stanley Cup, four out of 10, Miles Garrett, they came in hot in 2012, come into the eight seed, and they won every series, of course, and started off every series three and zero. So it's like, as long as you come in hot, it don't matter what your record was, right? As long as you make it and you're in, that's all that matters. All right, so Cleveland, that's going to go to the AFC North and then NFC South for it's the Alvin Kamara. Then we got Justin Jefferson, 45 out of 299. I would probably do something like that, and then maybe add like a minimum, you have to have a minimum of these many wins to potentially get into, you know, because it was like, whatever you're like a team that lost like every game in the first half, and then you're a team that won every game in the second half, obviously impossible, but in that kind of sense, Michael Pittman Jr. That's 186 out of 299, and that is Indianapolis Colts, that's AFC South, going to Mark, and then we got a Jonathan Taylor, another one for the AFC South, 85 out of 299. We got an Alvin Bethea to 49, that's Houston Oilers going to the Tennessee Titans, and that of course is also under the AFC South, all right, like those Titans, right, it's Titans, Colts, Jaguars, and Houston, right? And then we got Pierre Strong Jr. for the Patriots, that's AFC East, going to Michael Al. Well, good thing Paul is they still have another half to turn it all around, it's the beauty of football, and most sports, you know, you have a half-timer intermission to kind of change things up and do better in the next one. All right, so here we go, guys, VIP Chairman, this is everybody wants something out of this one here, so good luck guys, if you hit something in here, you're most likely making all your money back or double-triple your money back, honestly, especially if you bought a full spot, so good luck, all right, it looks like it's a raw card, I think it's touched from the top of the tree, there we go, Panini Uno, it's 4 of 10, and that's Zach Wilson, he's back this weekend too, 4 of 10 from Panini 1 Football, that's going to the AFC East and Michael, so there we go, so there you go Michael. AFC East, Zach Wilson, 4-color or quad patch and autograph from Panini 1 Football, there you go, just like that guys, there it is right there, so again this was the high-end mixer right there with the box of gold standard and the Chairman VIP, another one's in the store guys, jaspyscasebreaks.com guys, thanks.


In number 13 then, special looking liner, takes up now, way we go, what a start from Buley, but it's Madsen who gets there, Bartosz Marzlik cutting back to the inside, what a first corner from Marzlik, but Leon Madsen has responded superbly well, fires himself to the front, and Madsen all of a sudden really coming on strong here. The opportunist move really, but a couple of important points for him. Neither there's Buley coming on strong here, trying to get up the inside of Buley's come through in a third place, a handy point for him, but for Leon Madsen, back to back race wins.


Hey coach, welcome back to the channel. If you haven't yet, make sure you subscribe, stay up to date with all the latest content. And if you want my help with growing and scaling your business, then there's a number of ways you can do that. You can reach out to me by the description below this video is a number of ways you can get in contact with me to get help with your sports coaching business. Now today, I want to make a very short video to talk about how you can close clients quicker into your sports coaching program. Now, a big problem that a lot of sports coaches have when they're looking to close new customers into their business is they long out the sales process to the point where parents don't want to do it anymore. And that over the course of a month, you could be losing anywhere between free to 10 K depending on how much traffic your business has going into the into the business, right? So what I want to do is I want to share with you a quicker way on how you can close customers quicker. And what are the best steps to take in order to make this happen? So I break this down in very simple, simple form. Mrs. Jones has reached out to you through your website, your social media page via email. And what you're looking to do now is you're looking to get on a call with Mrs. Jones, right? A lot of coaches don't want to do this because they don't want to speak to clients. They prefer text message. But in order to build your trust with the client, you have to get on a phone call with them and express, you know, your interest in working with them. So once you've scheduled the time of Mrs. Jones, the next step is to get on the call with them. And what you want to do on the call is you want to ask specific questions related to Mrs. Jones's daughter or son, right? And what this does is this creates a client profile and it gives you more information about who you're going to be working with, right? Also, this shows professionalism. It shows that you're organized and it shows that you actually care. So what you want to do is you want to have a sales script in place that when you get on the call with Mrs. Jones, you can ask specific questions about their child, right? That's the second step. The next step is you want to invite Mrs. Jones to an evaluation session. Now, some coaches do this for free. Other coaches charge a minimum fee. But you want to invite her to an evaluation session so that you can see Mrs. Jones's daughter or son in person. Now, once they attend the session, they've had the trial session, the evaluation session, you've provided Mrs. Jones with feedback. The next step is to get on a call with Mrs. Jones and now we're looking to close her into becoming a new customer. So how do we do that? We schedule another very quick five to 10 minute call with Mrs. Jones. We talk about certain points where her child or son is at and now we talk about the next steps. So we talk about the commitment level. We talk about what is included in the program and we talk about the terms and conditions. So what you want to do now is you want to send Mrs. Jones all the information via email. You want to send her the terms and conditions so she can fill it out, send it back to you and then you want to forward the registration page where she can sign up online into your program. So this is a very simple, straightforward process where you can close clients quicker and the more you start doing it, the easier it will become. But also it's important that you're filtering out certain clients that you then don't want to work with long term. You need more help with this. Reach out to me. I'll be happy to jump on a call with you. See where you're at with your business and show you some actionable steps to take this week to grow and scale. Thank you for watching and make sure you subscribe to our channel.


Hey everyone, welcome to figure fantasy. So we're here with Milam discussing, we're going to discuss her strategy and build guide, how to maximize her and I was very happy to get her early of course to showcase this to you guys. And let's start off with her skill. So basic attack is going to be Demon Lord's Blazing Strike range is 9 slots, attacks and enemy starts from the first enemy in the same line, the usual attack speed is going to be fast, which is kind of decent already.  Upgrade effect is going to be from level one, a 25% basic attack boost and at level three, another 25% attack boost for basic attack. So moving on to her ultimate, so Dragoo Buster, initial energy is 60, attacks a target and adjacent enemies and after the enemy's damage, there is a 50% chance to attack one more time. So twice or double, double the fun, double the damage and again, can be up to a maximum of two times. The damage decreases by 40%, which with each subsequent attack. So enemies with honeypot or under control effects will always be hit with the maximum number of attacks. So this is going to be, this is going to hurt a bit for Mob. So if you pair her with Rimuru, they're going to clean up a lot of mobs for you. So it's all about building teams around the both of them. So energy regeneration for her ultimate is 6 per second. Upgrade effect at level two. Each time the ultimate deals damage, there is a 20% chance of reflecting poison for 8 seconds. So this is going to be a good add on for damage and utility as well and the ultimate deals 30% more damage to poison enemies. Take note of that. Level three is going to be better if the ultimate fails to kill the target and leashes Dragoo Buster again. So these mobs are not going to live long because of the triggers of her ultimate and each Dragoo Buster again. But the second attack will not trigger an additional attack. So it's just an additional single attack from Dragoo Buster or Dragoo Buster. So next is going to be Demon Lord's Pillage in Flick Honeypot on a target at the start of the battle which reduces the target's basic attack power to 20% or sorry by 20%. So damage reduction which is going to be good because if she's at the back of a defender this is going to be damage reduction for that defender by the way. And every four basic attack that Milim performs on target, Pillage is triggered once if the basic attack target does not carry a honeypot then Milim will inflict honeypot on a target again. So what is Pillage guys? Pillage is attack the basic attack target and deal 40% splash damage to adjacent targets and stun the units for one second. So this plays more on how frequent your basic attack is again the faster the attack speed this will trigger often as well. So upgrade effect for the passive is going to be level two steal nine energy from the target when pillaging and when the target carrying the honeypot dies the honeypot will spread to the surrounding target. So very good level two at level three when a new unit receives a honeypot Milim gains immunity and 25% bonus attack for five seconds. So again additional gains control immunity and additional bonus attack for five seconds. So that's gonna be it and her special is going to be boost damage by 15% Milim eye when there is no surrounding enemies, boost attack by 5% and create by 10, boost damage by 25% when there is no surrounding enemies. Okay so moving forward before we discuss the parts or gears of Milim there are two types of builds for Milim.  Okay moving on to parts. So for parts definitely you have again as I've said focus focusing on ultimate focusing on passive. So for me I am focusing on her ultimate ultimate set here and I have here crit set The other option also for instead of ultimate set obviously is going to be your attack speed. It's gonna show you guys quick attack, quick attack set. So this is going to also be critical if you choose to you know choose to take advantage over passive so quick attack or ultimate for the 4p set and for the 2p set here either crit or if you want additional survivability for her you could go with HP. So HP is the way to go so again 4p set would be ultimate then sorry 4p set would be ultimate or attack speed then 2p set would be either crit hit or HP. Okay moving on to her badge. The first option is this one your end time ultimate badge. This is geared towards more damage for her ultimate that is why I am putting it here. This is easier to put up to level 12 or level 14 I think I forgot. The other badge that you can consider is the Thunder Summoner or Eternal Nightmare badge. So this is going to be more for your passive because boosts attack speed by 10 and basic attacks at 21% chance to bounce lightning off 4 times each dealing equal to 80% of attack so this is more geared for boosting of attack speed. So for adornment let me just go to the store and let me see what we have here. Adornment she's going to be military so this definitely is one of the options that you have for adornment exclusive for melee boost attack speed so definitely leaning towards the passive but for this one this is easier to get rather than the exclusive one and increases the amount of energy restored by extra 2. The activates for 8 seconds when attack so this is going to be good because she's going to be a militarist. Let's go over to the two gears that you have to buy but let's do preview them because they're available now just in case you want them. This one this adornment this is geared towards her passive because it's obviously enhanced the passive but again even the mechanics is really meant for her to take advantage of her passive. The other one which I'm inclined to get which is this one which I'm still thinking about is going to be this one so figurine exclusive each basic attack performed on a hit carrying a hanipat will grant the wear one energy so it you know kind of gives her an edge on generating energy for ultimate and after the wears ultimate is over there is a 40% chance to trigger drago buster again so drago buster this is going to trigger her ultimate again so if I'm gonna be getting either of these two not both of them I'm gonna get this one definitely definitely for for her this is going to be her badge so the adornment I'd rather get the one that is not exclusive this is going to be expensive so that is it okay as far as team composition is concerned definitely remoru if you're deal if you if you are creating a team to control mobs or cryo control definitely remoru will be with millen both of them have a good synergy to take advantage of the other one that I'm suggesting with her is an energy team so that she could more or less spam her her ultimate as quick as possible definitely zephyr will be one of them that will really help her in terms of generating energy so I don't think she'll have a problem joining other teams you can really splash her with any team as of now even without even without remoru she's going to be good as a standalone okay so for as for content is concerned final battle especially for code v and as a zeal would be good I cannot showcase this now because I forgot to reserve this for this video and already I was able to sweep this earlier so code v and as a zeal she would be good there PVP let's do a demo for PVP while we're while we're here I've tried to take her in PVP so defense power so this let's look for a good match up to this one so for PVP she's going to she's going to crush the opponent at this point um I think um she's gonna stay here or sorry not disseminate desi desi desi desipate or anyway what I forgot what the word is but it's desi something for anyway so as you can see here um ultimate really really really hits hard took out two then again I don't care if Miko is there she's not gonna make much of a dent especially if you have zephyr but as you can see if both remoru and million tag teams the damage they do is really really really really absurd so there you go so remoru so I still have five right five on the board remoru and the opponent is one that's left plus Miko dancing upstairs so far it's gonna be good so far for PVP I like this lineup and um there you go so for PVP that lineup is I think very interesting so for nightmare already prepared this stage here so we have here this if you can see here if you have um really big bosses in front um and if you have AOE damage definitely you're gonna be going through um the first boss in front so restores let's do something random here okay so as long as you have uh Zuki Liang at the back I don't think any enemy is a any enemy would be a threat to you as you can see there double ultimate so Zuki Liang will be your you know your safety net here so as you can see we're about to breach the front two ultimates again she uh she does wonders actually for you know in clearing stages clearing mobs that's it so remoru and million tried to as much as possible um you know combine both of them although Milam is gone but definitely this is going to be a clear and Milam was really really instrumental in clearing bosses and doing her ultimate okay so final thoughts for Milam great AOE ultimate twice if you take advantage of her ultimate she's gonna shred opponents to pieces especially um mobs again in pvp as well um she's gonna be really really good in pvp passive crowd control with her you know either passive and her um basic attack damage will also give you a different perspective on how she can control um for example enemies or the board on your enemy side so again she has two builds one taking you know taking advantage over ultimate and the one taking advantage over passive but definitely i'm recommending you build her towards her ultimate so anyway guys that is it and hopefully this uh guide and strategy helped you in you know building Milam if you have her and probably have some inspiration if you're still trying to get her on how she is good and how she's going to be worth it once you have her so anyway guys for those who have stuck this far please do consider subscribing because this helps my channel a lot thank you stay safe take care this is the warden and i'm out here


of the final week of the 2018 NCAA Summer Spectacular we just had the limited open derby final taken out by Justin Chalmers congratulations to you Justin. Thank you very much. You're really owning this event you won the same time last year how does that feel? Oh it feels great to get another one. Yeah what does it mean to have two in the bag already? Oh it's just I don't know just feels good I guess any winning this building is a good win. Now you got a two 20 and a half. What was your strategy coming into this final because you've got quite a few rides on this horse? Just be clean and smooth and not getting any wrecks you know just getting shot. Okay take us through your run and describe those three cows. So we had about three black cows that we really liked and first two of them we cut first one kind of drugs around a little bit but give us a shot off second one was they're both pretty good cows and then the third cow was just a field card so we just we knew it was fresh into the top so that's what we went with. Okay now you had I think the second highest score that's going into the semi-finals that making you feel pretty confident must have made you feel confident coming to the event tonight. Oh yes I'm really confident that horse has been outstanding all horseshow long so didn't have any worries about him just didn't want to get him in a wreck. Race style and smooth how long you had this horse? I broke him as a two-year-old when I went to work for Eddie and Bob and so I've had him all along. So describe him as he'd been like to train? He's been a very intelligent horse he moves real good smart on a cow and you know just been pretty fun horse to train. So what's your strategy gonna be for the semis? Just advanced on the clean smooth run.  No it gets to me. Try to keep it under wraps if I can. Now interestingly you also had your dad in the final tonight? Yep no he was first horse out.  Well I grew up underneath my dad for the longest time then went to work for Tommy Dvorak and Robert Rust and Sean Flynn and then went out on the hunt. Okay well it's going to be exciting to watch you look like you've got a great future ahead. Thanks for joining us.


Hi everyone, Joe for jasmiescasewrakes.com with our filler for Chronicles football pick your team one and two So all we're doing is just randomizing your names and matching up with a team either in break one or break two So it's only a 17 spotter Actually, I need to take care of something here first We got to give away that free spot. I forgot about that So there's a free spot that we're giving away if you bought a spot outright So let's gather up those names So there'll be two dice rolls one for this part and then two for matching up with the team So name on top Right. I got all the full spots. So it's a one and nine chance at a free spot. It's pretty good odds So name on top after three and a three heart six one two three four five and six After six congrats Adam Buy one get one for you. So we'll keep that rooftop next to your name and now It's a one spot actually gets you to so let's double you up. Oh double up. Oh, oh So there's all the doubled up names right there now. We can match you up with a team Second dice roll. Let's roll and randomize it three times. Just your names not the teams. Good luck one two and three We got Ron Rick Rick Grant Dean Of the handful of names on top good news is everyone's guaranteed something But the top names of course are the are the more expensive teams and of course We'll put a rooftop next to your name so you know you won that in this filler So Ron with the bears in one Rick with Jetson one Rick with Jetson bears in two grant with Jetson two Dean with Steelers one Adam with Steelers in two Josh with Texans in one Ron with Bucks in one Ron with the Texans in two On hell with the Bucks in two Barry with the Dolphins in one Ron with the Eagles in one Dean with the Dolphins in two Travis with the Eagles in two Ron with the Broncos in one Adam with the Broncos in two Josh with the Falcons in two on hell with the Bills in two Adam with the Ravens in one Simon with the Ravens in two Adam with the Lions in two Aaron with the Chiefs in two Travis with the Rams in one Adam with the Packers in two on Hell with the Rams in two. Grant, Cardinals in one, on Hell, Cardinals two, Simon, Seahawks one, Aaron, Giants two, Adam, Seahawks two, Barry, Raiders one, Adam Browns two, Adam, my Raiders two, Ron, Commanders in two. There you go gang, I'm Joe for jaspyscasewrakes.com, I'll see you in the next video, two separate videos for Pick Your Team one and Pick Your Team two, check it out jaspyscasewrakes.com.


From Hollywood, it's time now for Johnny dollar Ralph Dean Johnny mono guarantee. Oh, hi you Ralph. How are things rough? My wife could kill me Johnny for the insurance.  I couldn't buy her a mouth. Isn't the insurance game? Oh sure. I know Ralph.  I lose 80 mink coats silver blue worth a hundred thousand dollars gone snatch disappeared Where house robbery check badly furriers out in Los Angeles my wife's about to blow her stack She says if I can't afford one fur coat for her then how come I can pay for 80 of them that I haven't even got How do you reason with a woman Johnny? I never try usually. I just sent flowers. I've already done that She ran him through the garbage disposer. So now what do I do buy some more flowers? Tonight and every weekday night Bob Bailey in the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator does truly Johnny dollar From special investigator Johnny dollar to the home office mono guarantee insurance company forty three twelve spring Street Hartford, Connecticut The following is an accounting of expended jurors during my investigation of the silver blue matter Item one a hundred and fifty two dollars and forty cents telephone and incidentals and transportation to Los Angeles I call the mono guarantee agent out there before I left and got a brief rundown on the case Among other things I learned that a man I'd known and worked with before detective lieutenant for him on Garcia had been put in charge And with Garcia on hand I knew I could count on cooperation by the police, but I still wasn't expecting quite as much as I got I knocked over the fur joint myself Johnny see it the only way we get to see have you been over work underpaid Prostrated disillusioned unappreciated in other words fine got your luggage yet. It's coming right there good We ought to get moving. I've got a squad car outside. What's all the rush? We've got a guy downtown in the hospital. I figured you'd want to talk to well He'll wait one he he'd probably like to if he had any choice. He's dying kind of looks that way He's one of the two-night watchman the gang slug when they broke into the warehouse, and he's our big one Johnny He's all we've got as he's been able to talk a couple of sentences during the night He's got to talk. What do you mean? He's the only one who got a look at what he did talk. What did he say jibberish mostly? He did say one thing though. They were kids just a gang of kids. Oh, that's gonna make it a rougher. Yeah in a lot of ways What do you mean? You'll find out later Johnny. Come on. Let's go We took the freeway into town with the accelerator floor boarded in the siren screaming Racing against time and against dying weaving in and out through the four-wheel madness that Los Angeles calls traffic and Then the other side of the coin The solemn quiet of hospital corridors the calm voices of the nurses and the blank hardness of sterile white walls We sat there beside a bed and waited for a man to talk or to die But the slow minutes passed and he still didn't either So we waited Guess that shot the doctor gave him is not going to have any effect Apparently not. It's a crazy world Johnny No Just the people and I mean yesterday. We'd never even heard of this guy I still don't know his name and 24 hours later. Here. We are a couple of strangers sitting around watching him dance Here on his chart at the head of the bed Albert Christmas strangers not even family or friends. He didn't have any family or friends He lived alone in a furnished room worked alone too except for one partner So a gang of punks jump him and bust his head open I'm a bad cop Johnny. I get sentimental about things like this. How'd they work at Garcia? It's a warehouse district the streets are practically deserted at night A police prowl car checks the street once about every 40 minutes and they hit at 1 10 a.m Three minutes after the police had passed sounds professional. No just a smart bunch of kids The only further he seemed to know was mink. They passed up a dozen or so chinchillas were twice as much How'd they get in I don't know Christmas hasn't been able to tell us. I must have tricked him into opening the door What about Christmas partner? He was making his rounds. They slipped up behind him slugged him. He didn't see them He didn't know what hit him and nobody outside and the street saw anything saw them leave with the furs or nope All right, they did they're not saying anything. Oh, it's a rough one Johnny. We haven't got a thing to go on Except Christmas here the shape he's in that's only a straw if he recognized any of them if he lives long enough to identify At least the poor devil can groan. I don't know. I think he's closer to being conscious right now than he's been in the last hour Maybe all right Christmas He wants a drink Then enough you want some more Who are you this is Johnny dollar insurance investigator from Hartford, I'm lieutenant Garcia LA police warehouse The kids all right now. You're in the hospital now. It's gonna be all right Do you feel like answering a few questions mr. Crispin? It won't take long those kids. How did they get in? Telegram They showed me telegram through the window When I Open the door One of them hit me. I did you get a look at the boy who showed you the telegram? Yeah, I Saw yeah 18 19 what do you look like? five nine 10 Dark skin Black hair. How was he dressed? dark jacket Hard to think any scars anything unusual about him No Are you sure? Would you recognize him if you saw him again? Yes any of the others? No only one There was a mark On his arm what kind of a mark What kind of a mark on his arm That's that yeah, he's passed out again Well, we got a description only one thing wrong with it right in that area. There are about 50,000 kids who fit it I talked with mr. Vanley owner of the furs then Garcia and I went down to the warehouse It's still in the fringe of the river bottom section fronting the railroad yards and backed up by block after block of weather beaten slum shacks We look through the warehouse for the racks where the furs had hung Watchman's office where the gang had ended But knew how we did it that we were only going through the motions The police technicians had already been over the place inch by inch and they'd found exactly nothing Finally we stepped out the door into the street a drab gray street cluttered with things cast off and discarded Dusty and how?  You grew up down here. Didn't you Garcia? Yeah, I grew up down here. That's why they gave me this case I know this section inside out and that's why I told you this one was going to be tough I think I get the general idea those kids came from that slum there to the east one gets you nine on that The people who live there aren't on our side Johnny If they do know anything they won't talk is that it they wouldn't tell a cop the time of day I don't mean they're criminals most of them aren't It's just that they always put themselves on the other side. What about juvenile gangs? Do they operate around here a lot dozens of them and there's another thing A few of these gangs are pretty rough and people who might talk don't because they're scared to Oh, it's a great setup Johnny a fine place to look for a hundred grand in first You know I've been thinking about the fact that they knew exactly the time to hit They must have staked out here somewhere sure and probably right in the place you're thinking Hey that lunchroom across the street or they had to be inside or the prowl car would have seen them That's the only place open at night. Did you shake it down like I told you Johnny. They won't give us the time of day What about me having a go at it? Maybe they wouldn't smell cop on you quite so strong The owner's name is red wellers. He was on that night. See what you can get out of him if you want I think I will By the way Johnny, I know you insurance guys make deals sometimes no questions asked just to get the loot back Sometimes, yeah But before you make any deal on this one, you better remember one thing Christmas may die What do you say, Mac?  No, I'll pick it black I'll sink it with it. Oh, thanks. Are you red wellers? So that's it What do you mean? You're in a fur case, ain't you Maybe I thought you was the same one, but I couldn't be sure I seen you across the street You come up with that cop guy see a while ago didn't you? That's right. I'm an insurance investigator Well, you're coming the wrong address, mister. I don't know nothing about nothing Who was in the lunch room here just before the robbery? I don't remember any young kids here No, it was all old men with long beards I see 10 cents for the coffee Yeah, they got you real scared, haven't they? Haven't they? I don't know any days. All right. Look You know christman the watchman over at the warehouse. He comes in. He didn't know any days either. What about it? Nothing Except he's dying I'm at the ruckens hotel. If you change your mind room 312 johnny dollar Sorry, I don't see no use of me dying too. Follow me mac Now here's our star to tell you about tomorrow's intriguing episode of this week's story tomorrow Fear stalks the streets closing the mouths of a sullen and suspicious people terrifying a lonely girl And bringing death in a dusty alley Join us.  It is produced and directed by jack john stone Be sure to join us tomorrow night same time and station for the next exciting episode of yours truly johnny dollar roi roan speaking


The club can be a valued asset when it comes down to the game. Yeah, I got 30,000, one night out of the club. Nickerson Dallas will tell you, in your hometown. What? We on boss talk one on one, one on one. Here we gonna talk.  They was on a business net and I built them for both of the bras. Older player, you know what I'm saying?  You know what I'm saying? They said they need, they want the clothes. He said, nah, man, I ain't giving them the clothes I pay for them. I said, what you gonna do?  He said, nah, I ain't gonna get the work, man. I said, man, bring them clothes over here. Then the bra said, you got an ID too, you know what I mean? So it depends on who it is. This was a veteran dude, his son was pimping, you know? So I treat different niggas, what I was, I treat different niggas way.   You know, like some niggas, I just, it was one nigga, I ain't gonna say his name, but he knew what I'm talking about. I just to follow him all over the country. Well, yeah, man, I'm in DC. They gotta be there at 24 hours, nigga. Yeah, nigga, had them hoes down. You know what I'm saying, nigga? I said, I'm gonna have some hoes to set. Let them know I'm coming to get it. Yeah, so, I had rivals like that, you know? And that's a lot of rivals in the game where, you know. So you tell them you'll let them know I'm coming, nigga. That's what it is, nigga. Because it was, it's a new kind. They're very courteous. It was a no-contact sport. So like if I wanted Martina, right?  I would call Kenny Red, I said, where you at, nigga? He said, nigga, I'm in Oakland. Nigga, I'd be in Oakland in the morning. And I would follow her around the track and swear to her all day.   He hollering me while I'm around the track.  You know what I'm saying? It'd be niggas like that. Wow. But, you know, then it's niggas like, you know. And y'all wouldn't throw down one fight. No, because it's no-contact sport. They real.  I respected them niggas. You know what I'm saying? Certain niggas that I respected. You know, and I respect Kenny Red, that was just an example. That was just an example, that never happened. So, you know, we had respect for each other. You know what I'm saying? We wouldn't swear to each other, bro. You know what I'm saying?  You didn't watch all of this in the movies. When you see movies, it seemed like they were going scratching, shooting somebody. Just on a woman, the book on a woman gonna do ain't been written yet.   We have a different relationship, you know what I mean?  I'm an up grader. But you know what I'm saying? It'll say somebody ain't got no game. You know what I'm saying? She is no out of Mackley.  And she see them on some sucker. She might tell him niggas. Niggas, you know what I'm saying? Like you told it, one niggas.  You know what I'm just saying? Your mama or something, something you're saying? Oh yeah, square. Like if I was with a square, you know, I'd rather be with some ism. You know, like even if we're transitioning, cause that's what this is about our show. Transitioning from the streets. But if I was with a square and I couldn't be with one, because the first time he called me a hoe, I'm gonna roast him and be like, your grandma, that's why you had about a hundred uncles. Your grandma, if she got a dollar for every man she free, she'll be a billionaire. And I've even heard his feelings. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? But this ism is gonna respect me. She never talked to me like that. You know what I'm saying? We never talked to the ism, we're gonna respect his all. You know what I'm saying?  They gonna love you because they know what you do and what you can do and what you've been through. You know what I'm saying? And they respect hoes. We are queens. You know? It's a thing where like when they say, somebody just become in the game trying to understand how to be a hoe. Cause a lot of times the strip club, a lot of times was a different, that's something different. That's totally different. But still, you know, you would see girls that would sometimes go in there and then still be trying to straddle the fit. So how do y'all look at that and gauge that? Is that, how do you look down upon that? Taking business away from you? No, it's not some money out here. There's enough tricks out here for everybody. So that's not the case. I like the strip club and I like the track, right? Because you know, the track is where, you know, where you get famous at. You know what I mean? I used to go to the track and you just see so many people from all over the country and so many, you know, so many players, you know, and niggas in the game. You know, it's like, it was like a family reunion. You know what I'm saying? Like she'd be from Oakland. You know, she'd be from Detroit. She'd be from Chicago. Everybody'd be from all over and everybody had their best cars, their best Jews on and we'd be up at four or five o'clock in the morning every night, you know, but in the strip club, you know, like if you're in a city like Atlanta, you know what I'm saying? Where the police might be a little bit more hard on Stewart Avenue on P Street. You know what I'm saying? You know, if you got the gang seat, when I took my girl to the strip club, they didn't go to the dance. Like if the DJ called my girl to the dance, she gonna give them $50.  But she used the strip club as a whole house. You know what I'm saying? She really, you know, she tried to be in the Champagne room. So when they go in the Champagne room, I gave them gang, you know what I'm saying?   Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jack it off. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? She telling him one thing that we gonna do this, we gonna do that, but she knows she can't do that because it's a candy car right there. But you know, he can put his hand in his pants but while she doing that, she said, can I order soda? So she ordered soda, you know, on every slip is a gratuity. So she'll write a gratuity for 1,000, 2,000. We never write the same one cause they can do a charge about it. So she might leave out there one room and before that trick even know it, you know what I'm saying? He didn't get played for about three, four thousand. You know what I'm saying?  You know what I'm saying?    That's still, that's still a trap. You know what I'm saying?  And then if that didn't work, I have her take them to the casino and then all casino let you get money off of your credit card, you know, with a 15% surcharge. So she'll give them about 10, 15,000 out of the thing.  So a lot of bras, you know what I'm saying?   Or if, you know, they trying to, like if Tina, you know, was with me and say this girl named with Sheryl and Sheryl was just a square, but she had a trick that was live. She would pay the DJ to call her up so she could leave the trick and then she would pull the trick and take them back in the VIP room, break them for three, four thousand. So it's just, it depends on the level of gang. Yeah, yeah. So the strip club can be a valued asset when it comes down to the gang. Yeah, I got 30,000 in one night out of the club. Niggas in Dallas will tell you, in your hometown, they'll tell you, yeah, Acts Valentino, I broke the record. You broke the record? I broke the record in Dallas. 30,000 in one night. 30,000 in one night. Yeah, just straight gang.  Straight gang. Football nigga, you know what I'm saying? NFL. You know what I'm saying?    You know what I'm saying? But you know, this is not to promote pimping. So for all for disclosure, I'm no longer pimping. You know what I mean? Straight gang. But I just want to just, I tell people these stories and I talk about them in my books, not to glorify the gang. It's to show people that, you know, it's different levels to everything. You know what I'm saying? I could, you know, just like I'm doing books now. You know what I'm saying? We're doing documentaries. Documentaries. We're doing podcasts, you know. It's different levels. Yeah, we on boss talk, one on one. One on one. Yeah, we gon' talk.