A man discovers he's a werewolf after getting burned touching a silver cake server, a woman struggles in silver shackles in the back of a van during the night of a full moon, someone being sedated with ketamine needs a dose of silver to suppress their natural drug immunity; a few vignettes (from Cursed (2005), The Last Werewolf (2011), and Moon Called (2006)) of how the 21st century werewolf has the expectation of some creative relationship with silver. And some will ask: why silver?
The Beast of Gévaudan, some will answer^[1] - a large, lupine beast slain in 1767 France with a silver bullet, having slaughtered dozens of peasants and fuelling harried whispers of a loup-garou - a werewolf.
No, some will say; that detail was invented in 1946. Blame Hollywood; blame The Wolf Man, released in 1941, for wholesale inventing what many now consider "folklore" - not just silver, but full moons, wolfsbane, and more.^[2]
No, still others will say; we have records before then, in the depths of European mythology, where silver was renowned for its anti-magical properties; a pure, holy, lunar metal, fit for slaying unholy vermin of the night.^[3]
Yet, somehow, all three are wrong - although the last group are the warmest.
I originally intended this to be a simple post, focusing on the examples of pre-Hollywood werewolves stopped with silver, but I sorta descended into madness trying to untangle all the claims and all I'm saying is that you should not scroll down to see how long this stupid post ended up being.
Welcome back. We'll start with 18th century France, specifically a historical region of the rural south: Gévaudan.
While animal attacks were far from unheard of at the time, la Bête du Gévaudan created a media firestorm eclipsing the nation's borders: a death toll said to reach the triple figures, heavy involvement of the state amassing an army of hunters, the drama of the King's hunter eventually presenting the stuffed corpse of "Le Loup de Chazes" after a year of strife - only for the killings to continue for two more years. However, the most important factor for why La Bête fuelled contemporary periodicals and fuels Youtube essays is its status being, as those Youtube essays are wont to say, a cryptid - an animal that ought to be a wolf, but is too large, too powerful, with numerous confused reports (or public hysteria) as to its exotic unwolfy appearance - a lion, or a hyena, escaped from a menagerie? Something unearthly, like un loup-garou?^[4]
Modern retellings have no problem connecting the events to werewolf superstitions, and also have no problem breathlessly retelling how it took a plucky local, not one of the King's men; and that Jean Chastel used a silver bullet, maybe one from melted holy silver. With this being the earliest use of a silver bullet to slay something lupine, and its legendary status, so it goes, this is what inspired the connection between werewolves and silver.
As many others are quick to point out, contemporary accounts imply he used, to quote Overly Sarcastic Productions:

perfectly normal bullets and a perfectly normal gun^[5]

The source of this misconception is always placed at the feet of writer Henri Pourrat, specifically his 1946 historical novel Histoire fidèle de la bête en Gévaudan; so it goes, unwitting readers took the "faithful story" part of the title literally, and Pourrat's creative detail - of Chastel using a silver bullet made from a blessed silver medal of the Virgin Mary he wore on his hat - become unerring fact, and that any connection to werewolves is a post-hoc connection made to give authenticity to a Hollywood invention.
Problem is, while Chastel did not use silver bullets, and Pourrat did indeed include his silver bullet detail, he is not the source of this error; it takes shape at the time of La Bête, with at least one contemporaneous account of attempts to shoot the beast with bullets of iron, lead, and silver - but to no avail.^[6] Élie Berthet's historical novel from 1867 has the beast being blooded after being shot with a silver coin, Andrew Lang's 1896 effort does similar with a silver bullet, and by 1921 the connection has already been made that a silver shot was the one that killed.^[7] The religious connection to blessings appears in Pierre Pourcher's 1889 non-fictional account - although the telling is somewhat exaggerated, with the Abbot's religious conviction melting off the page, considering the beast a divine punishment; as well as his personal connection, almost deifying Chastel in writing about his memories of talking to Chastel as a child.^[8] So, the novel inclusion of Chastel blessing his bullets, and La Bête letting him calmly finish the litanies of the Holy Virgin before closing his book and shooting are...suspect, if I am permitted to guess. Not suspect enough for Abel Chevalley, who included them almost word-for-word in his own historical novel published in 1936. It's at this point it's clear how popular the legend is - these are far, far from the only histories or historical novels, though they are some of the most popular.
Contemporaneous connections were also made to werewolves,^[9] with details of what was considered a peasant superstition making their way into historical novels. It is possible that these separate ideas, of blessed silver bullets and werewolves, at least partially inspired a scene in Guy Endore's 1933 bestselling novel The Werewolf of Paris, where the local warden (garde champêtre) is at his wit's end after a spate of wolf attacks on the local's livestock, putting the finishing touches on a bullet:

“Try and escape this,” Bramond smirked. “A silver bullet, blessed by the archbishop, melted down from a holy crucifix. Beelzebub himself would fall before this.”

By the time Henri Pourrat would publish his Histoire fidèle in 1946, the connection between La Bête, holy silver, and werewolves, was hardly new, and it certainly predated The Wolf Man's 1941 release date.
"But," you might say, "I saw Lon Chaney Jr. get beaten to death with a silver-tipped cane in 1941, not shot with a bullet!". And so it goes, Curt Siodmak didn't just write silver into the script of The Wolf Man, he wrote everything - moons, wolfsbane, infectious bites, all we think is werewolf folklore came from Siodmak's pen! Sure, maybe he wasn't the first person in history to come up with the idea - but an evolving fiction about one detail of one single event hundreds of years ago, one that primarily enraptured France and not the American west of Hollywood, can hardly be said to be the source of Siodmak's concept. True - well, not the single-handedly inventing werewolf folklore thing, he simply canonised that which already existed; but we can't use La Bête as a singular origin. Maybe we can say the French got it first, but the Siodmak got it popular?
Brian J. Frost's wonderfully nerdy Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature exhaustively covers, among other things, the pulp fiction of early 20th century magazines like Weird Tales, where silver was commonplace. Blood Flower has Jules de Grandin already mocking the idea of silver bullets in 1927:

“And wasn’t there some old legend to the effect that a werewolf could only be killed with a silver bullet?” “Ah bah,” he replied with a laugh. “What did those old legend-mongers know of the power of modem firearms? Parbleu, had the good St. George possessed a military rifle of today, he might have slain the dragon without approaching nearer than a mile!"^[10]

An interesting - but unrelated - detail is how the werewolf's body is treated, with:

a stake of ash through his heart to hold him to the earth.

Anyway, there's several more times where silver turns up: Jeremy Ellis's Silver Bullets (1930), Alfred H. Bill’s novel Wolf in the Garden (1931), Paul Selonke's Beast of the Island (1940) has someone doing...this:

and all at once I found myself believing in werewolves. In sudden terror, I knew that lead could not end this beast’s existence. It had to be a silver bullet through its vile heart!
[...]In desperation, she had ripped the tiny cross from her neck, raising it in front of her.
A silver crucifix! I snatched the tiny cross from her trembling fingers and rammed it down the barrel of my revolver, swinging the gun up again as the beast launched its shaggy bulk straight at my throat.
I saw the unholy leer of those hellish eyes. White, dripping fangs gleamed against the blood-red of the brute’s huge jaws, I aimed for the heart this time, and the beast was almost upon me when I fired. The discharge stopped the brute in mid-air. It twisted backward, thumping heavily to the ground.^[11]

While these are all silver bullets/things-that-came-out-of-a-gun, Ralph Allen Lang's The Silver Knife (1932), after using lead bullets to no effect, has the lycanthropic medicine man stabbed with a silver spoon. Or it would if Lang wasn't a coward. A detail - that sometimes gets left out - is that Siodmak only includes silver bullets in one of The Wolf Man's many sequels, House of Frankenstein (1944); this gives us time to include Jane Rice's The Refugee (1943), where...oh, for goodness' sake:

“Do you like that?” Milli whispered. For a reply, Lupus opened his mouth and yawned. And into it Milli dropped a chocolate, while at the same instant she jabbed him savagely with a hairpin. The boy sucked in his breath with a pained howl, and a full eight minutes before the sun went down, Lupus had neatly choked to death on a chocolate whose liqueur-filled insides contained a silver bullet
[...]It was marvelous that she’d happened to pick up “The Werewolf of Paris” yesterday—had given her an insight, so to speak^[12]

She eats his dead body after this (gotta get the chocolate back), for what it's worth - which makes this a delightful reference to The Werewolf of Paris.
Speaking of The Werewolf of Paris, it's hard to say that Siodmak wasn't basing his mythology on previous elements, when this book - unrelated in any direct way to The Beast of Gévaudan, published in English by an American to wild acclaim - was kicking around. It's even harder to say that Siodmak individually came up with the idea when you learn that Guy Endore, the author, published it in 1933, and was hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to - like Siodmak - write scripts for horror films. Universal Pictures responded in 1935 by quickly releasing The Werewolf of London, a title which does, in hindsight, seem awfully suspicious. Underperforming at the box office, Universal would try the werewolf thing again in 1941 and hit gold with The Wolf Man; The Werewolf of Paris would only get a film adaption in 1961, with Hammer Film Productions' The Curse of the Werewolf, which sets the story in Spain (purely because they had an unused Spanish-themed movie set!). Also in 1933 was the first airing of The Lone Ranger - an American radio play (and eventually successful television show) which prominently features silver bullets; while this has nothing to do with werewolves, the point is that the concept was swirling throughout America by the time Siodmak used it.
Despite this, so far Team Wolf Man is winning if we shift some of the pieces around; The Beast of Gévaudan wasn't, after all, killed with a holy silver bullet, and surely we can just say that the concept bubbled up organically in the 20th century until it exploded into the mainstream with The Wolf Man? Because, as the main thrust of the argument goes, it's a Hollywood invention - as it does not appear in folklore. At all.
To be blunt, this is a truly, truly bizarre claim to make.
The two most popular works on werewolves, Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Were-Wolves (1865) and Montague Summers' The Werewolf (1933), make reference to silver buttons and coins being used to shoot at shapeshifting witches, but no mention of their use against werewolves, no other usage of silver, and no explicit mention of silver bullets. For your typical content creator, this is definitive proof that silver and werewolves do not mix in folklore.
This is an issue I could write a passionate and very long post about (for reference the current post is merely "long-ish", in British Imperial units), but to be brief, I'll paraphrase the philosophers: werewolf history consists of a series of footnotes to Baring-Gould. His seminal work was the first English-language book on the topic, and did a good enough job covering as much as possible that he essentially cemented how people approach werewolves - he defines what people talk about, but also what they don't. What's of significance to us, is that in 1865, the fledging field of folklore studies had only generated so much, and crucially - Baring-Gould's native Britain doesn't have any werewolf folklore. What had been written on werewolves wasn't written in English, or easily accessible in Victorian Britain. Montague Summers makes a valiant attempt to pull together a wider array of sources from a wider array of languages, but he is infamously messy and unfocused, caring more about his belief in the devil (and his belief that werewolves and vampires are real) plus mythology than scraps of folklore.
When people write about werewolves, they write about what Baring-Gould wrote about, with a smattering of Summers if they're feeling particularly studious; when people read about werewolves, they read what those people wrote. When people learn about werewolves, by and large, they learn a history that is almost completely devoid of the extensive work folklorists have done over the past two hundred years - but this absence is invisible, so the vast majority of people producing content on werewolves believe that what they read and write is representative of oral werewolf legends. We get people making bold, sweeping claims; not just on silver bullets, but everything related to werewolves. That's not to say modern texts are easily accessible; the language barrier persists, offline archives or paywalls are the norm, and you're reliant on researchers publishing for your niche, giving us an almost random representation of regional legends - the existence of a book dedicated to werewolves can say as much about a person's random desire to collect werewolf legends as much as it says about the frequency of said legends in their locale; ditto for a lack of records.
Let's talk silver!
Predating the folklore enthusiasm of the 19th century are three poems; in 1775 we have Johann Heinrich Voß' first poem, Der Wehrwolf,^[13] a short dialogue between two people: the first is scared of the werewolf, and the second reassures them and says the werewolf is merely a nerd who "scribbles book reviews" (der Bücherurtheil sudelt), and can be "de-wolfed" (entwolft) with a silver bullet. The double-barrelled-double-barrelled Friedrich Leopold zu Stolberg-Stolberg's Der Wehrwolf from 1783^[14] includes many concepts that reoccur: inherited silver, marked with a cross; the wounded werewolf (in this case an old women wrapped in a wolf skin) escaping to her home, and her condition being betrayed by her wounds. Interestingly, the ammunition here is an arrow! Voß' second poem, Junker Kord from 1793^[15] is a rather sarcastic piece about a wealthy hunter and his son, Junker Kord; the hunter boasting of his exploits, like killing a fox not with a gun but with a thundercrack of his whip, and shooting a bullet of inherited silver into a werewolf - that in the next line is a bleeding old woman in rags.
The earliest recorded folklore I can find is from 1830, from a travelogue by Christian Hieronymos Justus von Schlegel,^[16] recording an Estonian story where fearless man-eating wolves are confronted by a hunter with, after the failure of ordinary bullets, silver:

claiming that the latter could be used to shoot the Devil himself.

The death of a "wolf with two black spots on its breast" leads to it being skinned, revealing:

a dead woman who had transformed herself into a wolf with the help of witchcraft (durch Teufelkünste).

Several more relevant legends are recorded the same century; probably the most well known is The Werewolves in Greifswald, having been published online and translated into English alongside three other German records,^[17] making it easily accessible for the lore-hungry werewolf enthusiast:

Two hundred years ago for a time there was a frightfully large number of werewolves in the city of Greifswald. They were especially prevelant in Rokover Street. From there they attacked anyone who appeared outside of their houses after eight o'clock in the evening. At that time there were a lot of venturesome students in Greifswald. They banded together and one night set forth against the monsters. At first they were powerless against them, until finally the students brought together all of the silver buttons that they had inherited, and with these they killed the werewolves.

Originally published in 1840, we see here again inherited silver - and also silver buttons. We'll be seeing a lot of these. The three others are The Werewolf of Klein-Krams (1879; inherited silver, a wounded werewolf escape, and discovery - from a tail sticking out from under the bed's covers!), The Werewolf of Jarnitz (1903, inherited silver), and The Werewolf of Hüsby, attributed to 1921 but attested to 1845 by Wilhelm Hertz,^[18] where after being shot with a silver bullet:

From that time to the end of her life the woman had an open wound that no doctor could heal.

A Danish story from 1844^[19] has - after a tale of a man turning into a bear to attack his wife because he felt like it - a marauding "bear" turning out to be a werewolf after skinning, revealing a belt underneath; most of the already mentioned tales have the werewolf transform by putting on a belt and the importance of the werewolf's skin, showing the consistency of motifs in the region explored so far - the Northern edge of Germany, and the southern edges of Scandinavia. In contrast, another Estonian tale, courtesy of Wilhelm Hertz writing in 1862,^[20] displays a motif very common in the Eastern fringes of Europe: a wedding party being transformed into wolves as a punishment, and here with fur that can only be pierced by bullets with silver crosses (nut Kugeln mit silbernen Kreuzen konnten ihren Pelz durchbohren). To round things out, we have an 1894 French-language telling^[21] about a village in Luxembourg that mushes together 3 separate episodes; a boy steals a book that lets him become a werewolf; he tells a maid to throw her apron over the head of any werewolves she meets, then gets caught with the apron in his mouth at the dinner table so his mom confiscates the book and he remains a werewolf (the apron/thread in teeth motif is another very common one!); and finally, a baron sees him in a tree, doesn't exactly think to ask what a wolf is doing up a tree, fires blessed silver bullet after a regular one fails, finds a man falling instead of a monster, is apparently surprised that there was not in fact a large wolf sitting in a tree.
Aside from pointing excitedly at the appearance of blessed silver many decades before Henri Pourrat's much-maligned novel did the same, we can point out something else these stories have in common: the werewolf often survives! Instead, the silver bullet injures them, where the important point is revealing the hapless lycanthrope. Pēteris Šmits' Latviešu tautas ticējumi (Latvian folk beliefs) (1941)^[22], aside from giving us a silver bullet reference from 1832, quotes a newspaper from 1871 saying that werewolves (vilkaci) cannot be killed - but can be knocked down by bullets of silver and, in a rare appearance, gold; the werewolf can be forced human by simply lifting up the clothes the werewolf discarded. Gold bullets are also referenced in Alexander Dumas' (yes, The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers Alexander Dumas) Le Meneur de loups (The Wolf Leader) from 1857^[23], where a combination of cross marks and gold or silver are needed for your bullet to take down a lycanthropic devil.
In contrast, Pēteris Šmits' Latviešu pasakas un teikas (Latvian fairy tales and fables) (1937)^[24] includes a tale of a wolf giving a human scream after being shot with silver, and finding out the neighbour's landlord had died; and firing a bullet from melted silver brooches only to find they'd shot the neighbour's wife. I did not find one of the neighbour being shot.
This is all before The Wolf Man appears on the silver screen; finishing our survey by including Ella Odstedt's Varulven i svensk folktradition (The werewolf in Swedish folklore),^[25] an entire book on werewolves brimming with silver bullets (silverkulor) published just 2 years after The Wolf Man, and vaguely gesturing at ISEBEL,^[26] an online search engine of folk tales from Netherlands, Denmark and North-East Germany, we can see a pattern emerging: the silver bullet motif appears in Germanic lands centred around the northern coasts of Germany; add in a single reference of silver coins used on the devil in wolf's form from Lithuania^[27], and a typical human-under-wolf-skin telling from Finland,^[28] we get a smattering all across the Baltics as well. I think it's fair to say that silver bullets do, in fact, appear in the folklore of werewolves.
For those who remember the yesteryear times of the start of this post, you'll remember I mentioned three positions: the Gévaudan enjoyers, the Wolf Man fans, and the Mythology lovers. The last lot seem pretty dang vindicated at this point; silver bullets and werewolves were clearly in folklore before the first two, so why did I say they were wrong?
Because, unfortunately, the position isn't simply that silver bullets come from folklore. No. No, that'd be too easy. Much like how the first two needed some semblance of an argument to push their position, it's often not enough to simply say "folklore, yeah?", especially when, as I complained about, most people don't have any examples of relevant folklore. Instead, they do what causes anyone in the humanities to sigh: they rationalise it. They explain it using common sense - making up a conclusion that "sounds right" or "makes sense" based on their (usually incorrect) beliefs on the subject, rather than drawing conclusions from data.
And so, you get many answers to the question of "why silver?": the moon, divine power, untarnished purity, anti-microbial activity. And sure, I could try to attack those points, but those are secondary; the common explanation is that these are the reasons why silver was believed to have magical properties. There's something subtle there: it's not "what was the role of silver in folk belief", it's "why does silver have this role",^[29] because, as we all know, that's what silver be; it's a common ailment for all your supernatural needs in modern fiction, silver charms heal, it's the holy metal, it relates to the power of the moon - the moon - and is a Big Deal in alchemy. Silver Has Mystic Powers, as TVTropes says.^[30] A significant enough Symbolic Role to earn a dedicated section of that name on the silver Wikipedia page. "Silver had a magic significance in folk tradition";^[31] so sayeth Katharine Mary Briggs, President of the Folklore Society - one of the oldest and largest of its kind - for three years, with one of the society's two awards named after her, who also literally wrote the book on Fairies. Because as everyone knows, silver is magical, right?
Right?
In case you were wondering, it was when these gears started turning that I started going somewhat insane.
First of all, here's a random observation. Take the full context of the above Briggs quote, from 1959:

Silver had a magic significance in folk tradition. Silver bullets and silver knives are efficacious against witches, who are in that respect different from fairies, whose traffic is in silver. Perhaps the silver with which a fortune-teller's hand must be crossed is meant to show that she gets her foresight from the fairies not from the devil.

Here's a quote from The Wolf Man, 1941:

A werewolf can be killed only with a silver bullet, or a silver knife or a stick with a silver handle. (spoken by a fortune teller)

The only other reference to silver knives being used as a magic weapon I can find (including plundering folklore) is the not-a-silver-spoon story I mentioned in the pulp fiction section.
Anyway, let's look at the role silver has in folklore. Silver bullets for werewolves, obviously. What else?
There's several involving coins; gifting a silver coin to a new-born^[32] - sometimes literally:

when given as money, would magically ensure wealth in the future. The coin must be put into the child's own hand, and if possible he must be made to close his fingers over it^[33]

Turning a silver coin in your pocket upon first seeing the new moon for luck and wealth,^[34] a bride putting a silver coin in one of her shoes,^[35] often following the rules of a rhyme:

"Something old, something new, Something borrowed, something blue, And a bit of silver in the heel of her shoe.^[36]

Maybe no matter how much you churn, you aren't creating any butter; witchcraft, obviously. Thrown a coin in!^[37] Many things get buried under the foundations of a house for good luck, silver coins among them. Sick animal? In Scotland, put a coin in a bowl of water, throw the water onto the animal, and ideally the coin sticks to the bottom of the bowl, for good luck.^[38] And "wealth", if you're the one called out to help:

I can personally testify that when silver is put into a bowl of water to work a spell, the wise woman keeps the silver.^[39]

None of these are massively widespread; not some Europe-wide common tradition. Not old, either - silver for babies is apparently a relatively new addition to the older gifts of...salt; a silver coin seems to be a somewhat newer addition also to the bridal rhyme.
And, of course: silver bullets. The difference however is stark - while for the previous uses you can certainly find examples - some more than others - silver bullets seem to have a far more robust tradition. The earliest reference I can find is from 1678,^[40] mentioned during testimony as part of Titus Oates' "Popish Plot", where he claimed a whole bunch of bollocks that got several people killed; think witch trials, but for Catholics. One of Oates' claims was that the King was planned to be assassinated - with silver bullets, held in the mouth of the assassin, supposedly because biting the bullets to roughen them up makes curing the wound harder. In 1683 a military manual^[41] makes reference to the belief that silver is good against those who are impervious due to "some black art or other"; the belief that silver bullets were good against magic-users is clearly rather old. In general, their stated use is against witches^[42] and other nefarious sorcerers,^[43] legendary accounts of historical figures like Charles XII of Sweden^[44] or Scotland's General Mackay,^[45] as far east as against the Cossack charakternik;^[46] it's most common to see it used for witches that have the shape of hares,^[47] and sometimes other animals like geese,^[48] otters,^[49] and this one time an enchanted whale swallows a guy's wife so he shoots it with a silver bullet.^[50] Legends of shapeshifting witches see some similarities to those of werewolves, like inherited silver, catching the injured witch after they run off as a hare, and in general appear more widespread - which makes sense (pardon my French) given the rarity of sighting wolves vs hares and mischievous waterfowl.
Generally, these silver bullets are mangled silver coins or torn off coat buttons - actually melting silver down to create a proper bullet is rare, or indeed is any mention that silver itself has magical powers. As a certain P. W. F. Brown puts it in a letter from 1961:

Dr Gardiner's interesting query in the September 1960 issue of Folklore concerning the use of silver bullets to destroy witches raises a question other than the age of the practice — whether, indeed, silver as a metal has magical powers in the same way as iron.
Of some forty references to silver and magic of sorts published in the Folk-Lore Society's periodicals since 1878, only one (Folklore, Vol. 68 1957, pp. 413-14) suggests that silver as a metal has any magical powers. All the other references make it clear that by the word 'silver' a silver coin is meant. The 'bullets' used against witches, for instance, are made from pieces of a silver coin cut up and substituted for lead pellets, though the use of a silver button with a cross marked on it is occasionally mentioned.^[51]

Perhaps appearing pedantic on the surface, it's an important point about all the silver so far: it's almost always coins. The use of coins as a draw for wealth is obvious, and for luck is but a step away; bullets against magical beings is the only consistent example of anything other than coins - usually buttons, but as we've seen, things like brooches or whatever you have on hand will do in a pinch. Brown continues:

It may be said that coins were used for charms because they were until recently the easiest form of silver available. I am not convinced by this argument because there seems to be no parallel superstition about silver, as there is about iron. Common objects made of iron, such as horseshoes, pokers, or flat-irons, have magical attributes, but it is clear from the many recorded iron-superstitions that it is the metal itself that is magical rather than the objects made from it.

While I believe Brown errs here (we've seen our share of buttons!), the sentiment is broadly correct: when something is magical in folklore, it is made abundantly clear! The iron example is a good one; as everyone knows, iron is a powerful charm against magic. Right?
Right?
Just kidding, the accounts for this are so overwhelming as to make the lack of associations for silver embarrassing in comparison. A variety of iron objects can be used to ward off evil; an iron nail in the pocket,^[52] horseshoes and iron plates nailed to doors,^[53] or iron left under the mat,^[54] or hell an iron anchor buried underneath the foundation.^[55] "Cold Iron" as a phrase wards against bad utterances, alongside physically touching the nearest piece of iron much the way we "touch wood".^[56] An iron poker is a must have, and iron tongs ward a baby from fairies and potential changelings;^[57] to stop a person's death from entering food, a small piece of iron must be stuck in them (the food).^[58] While silver was reserved to coins, iron's counter-spell for your churn comes in a variety of objects, poker, wedge, horseshoe - as long as it's iron.^[59] Any of these will have examples with a variety of objects, with the one thing in common being their material; even scrap iron would do!^[60]
Compare to actual magical objects made of silver: sure, it's easy to find silver rings for healing,^[61] silver brooches^[62] and silver amulets^[63] as talismans, but there's little to suggest the silver itself is of primary relevance - how the silver is used is more important; in shape, holding an inscription, being a mere mount for some efficacious item like amber, horn or gem; or even just the fact of being jewellery and the cultural context such items exist in. We can look at charms against the evil eye as an example: yes, silver gets used, but so do beads, thread, indigo;^[64] the idea being to catch someone's eye to dispel the magic before they look at you. Focusing on the usage of silver would ignore the explicit relevance of cornicello - horns; cattle horns are set in silver, or silver is shaped into horns, or even just the hand gesture of horns.^[65] Here, the significance of horn symbolism is made clear in a way that I cannot find for silver in any usage.
We can also compare silver bullets - which have no claim to being magical - to the German freikugeln (free bullets) of the Freischütz (free shooter); the creation reminiscent of black magic - taking place on a holy day, using materials stolen from a church, perhaps at a crossroads or deep in the forest, selling your soul to the devil in return for the bullets that always hit their target - no matter where you're aiming; sometimes the last one is in the devil's hands, turning back on the shooter.^[66] Hey presto, those bullets are definitely magic!
To round things out, we can have a cursory look at mentions of silver in Stith Thompson's index of motifs in folklore; plenty of instances where silver is used because of its brilliance and association with other precious substances (e.g. F821.3 Dress with gold, silver, and diamond bells), or the fantastical imagery of something being made of silver (e.g. F811.1.2 Silver tree), but the only instances where the silver itself presumes any magical relevancy is as silver bullets; it's easy to see why A Dictionary of English Folklore states:

It is not clear how much intrinsic power ascribed to the metal itself—some, no doubt [...] However, silver objects were not regularly thought powerful in the way that domestic iron objects were.

Well, fine. It's not silver bullets because silver is magical; it's silver bullets because silver bullets. Why?
The claims given for why silver is supposedly magical could easily be transferred directly to bullets - but fortunately for us, at this point, it requires very little effort to show why they're invalid.
Some claim it's because silver was seen as holy, pure, and relate it to a rationalisation of silver's antimicrobial properties. I already made a post on why those claims are nonsense. In short: silver wasn't holy, it got favoured for holy uses because shiny wealth, much the same way an inscribed ring is magical because of the inscription, and not the material. And there was no folk wisdom as to its antimicrobial preservative properties.
Some claim connection to the moon; maybe alchemical, mythical, or otherwise. But as we've seen, there's no connection made in folklore between silver and the moon - the one example was turning coins in your pocket at the new moon; for wealth, because they're coins, not because they're silver. The moon obviously has lots of beliefs surrounding it - cyclic fertility legends, the effects of moonlight, the man on the moon - but no silver. Werewolves also have little consistent relevance to the moon in folklore, with the only notable mentions being Slavic consumption of the moon (and sun!), and southern Italian relations to both the new and full moon;^[67] unfortunately, the isolated lupo mannaro is more psychological demonic possession than lupine shapeshifting.
Others still will make a rather funny connection to vampires, often relating this to the silver backing of mirrors and vampires' frosty relationship with their reflection. Not only was the lack of reflection a Bram Stoker invention; likely based off of the belief that upon a person's death, reflective surfaces - mirrors and standing water - must be covered to avoid a reflection of the soul;^[68] but any vampiric connection to silver only appears in 20th century pop culture - so you get people inventing folklore (mirrors) and then inventing reasons for its existence (silver). It is the vampires that get silver from werewolves, not the other way around.
So then, we haven't actually answered the question: why silver bullets?
To be fair, the answer's already been given, recorded many times by folklorists and mentioned several times already: it's not that silver is magical, it's that magical beings are impervious to bullets - regular bullets, of lead and iron. Metals have a hierarchy, gold at the top, silver below it, iron below silver. If someone is able to stop iron, you move up a rung. This is made clear with several mentions of people trying lead, iron, then silver, to no avail; with silver acting as a regular bullet instead of some monster-exploding pill; with the general focus on people being immune to lead and iron, and no equal focus on people being weak specifically to silver. If you're using a silver bullet, it may even be because they were born with a caul,^[69] or maybe wearing an amulet, both making them immune to lead and iron.^[70] But not because you hold onto a silver bullet in your witch-hunting kit, instead you're desperately ripping off your buttons or searching through your coins to find something bullet-sized not made of lead or iron.
Silver shiny.
The metallic hierarchy makes silver the glittering, poetic choice, and thanks to the proliferation of silver coins (and some buttons) - while still being precious enough to make for a special story - it's easily relatable; you can imagine that needing to cast silver bullets would make any potential tales more clunky and less spontaneous.
I do have a vague suspicion about where this "silver is used for werewolves because it's pure/holy/lunar" hypothesis came from: before the late 20th century I can't find any relevant hint of this connection - including non-alchemical interest in silver being a "lunar metal", save a single 1915 mention;^[71] but it is curiously similar to Wiccan/neo-pagan beliefs, which consider silver inherently magical and lunar, as well as feminine.^[72]
Finally, I'll leave with three unrelated thoughts.
Firstly, I am a moron with internet access; it is entirely likely what I could scrounge together and cram through google translate isn't remotely representative of European folk beliefs surrounding silver. I can only offer what I found, not what I missed.
Secondly, the slapdash nature of folklore records, and the beginning of their study only two hundred years ago, should be understood as being vaguely indicative of the oral legends they're attempting to catalogue, rather than an authoritative census of all we believe.
Thirdly, you know how protagonists in modern werewolf media often find themselves melting down gran's fancy cutlery to cast silver bullets? Turns out, metallurgy and ballistics are a pain in the arse, and creating silver bullets worth a damn is tricky business. There's a classic series of posts by Patricia Briggs - author of the Mercy Thompson series - trying her hand to prove that it wasn't unrealistic for her protagonist to whip up some werewolf chow:

Since it's nice to have the books make sense, I figured I'd just go build some silver bullets and silence the critics -- after all, how hard can it be? The Lone Ranger did it, right?

Give it a read!
https://www.patriciabriggs.com/articles/silvesilverbullets.shtml

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 68%. (I'm a bot)

"This is not a normal situation," former President Donald Trump accurately proclaimed as he stood apron-clad beside a McDonald's drive-thru window in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
"I've now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala," Trump said, mispronouncing the Vice President's name.
Trump's "Work" at the closed McDonald's included at least one pass at moving fries from the fryer to the warmer, adding salt, and then filling a few fry containers.
Trump discovered, for example, that the French fries are not shoved into the carton by hand, a fact he revealed he'd realized only after preparing a few orders himself.
The owner of the McDonald's franchise, Derek Giacomantonio, said in a statement that the event was held to allow the former President to "Observe the transformative working experience that 1 in 8 Americans have had: a job at McDonald's."
The campaign stop wasn't just about serving up fast food, Trump also used it as an opportunity to conduct an impromptu and truly surreal press conference from the McDonald's drive-thru window, in which he made clear, yet again, that he'll only accept the results of the 2024 election if he thinks that it's "Fair."

Summary Source FAQ Feedback Top keywords: Trump^#1 McDonald's^#2 President^#3 Work^#4 job^#5
Post found in /politics.
NOTICE: This thread is for discussing the submission topic. Please do not discuss the concept of the autotldr bot here.

1. The Stew Crew was booked and busy this week and spread so thin that for the first time in forever they couldn’t release a vlog telling us how exciting and awesome everything was. Carlin had canned content ready to role when Katie went into labor. We saw more of Layla at dance class and a family hug where Carlin turned into stretch Armstrong to film herself crying tears of joy, right there in the dance studio waiting room. Of course Carlin was with Katie as she checked in to labor and delivery. The nurses stopped her from changing into a hospital gown and made her stand beside the bed, although she really wanted to be in it. Evan tagged along to sit in the waiting room bc he certainly couldn’t be expected to stay home with his children. Kelly Joe praised Carlin for being such an amazing sister to drop everything and stay by Katie’s side…. Until all of the vlog was filmed and the Duggars hit town. Layla had to give up her room for Joy and Austin Forsyth, and Jessa and Ben Seewald also stayed with the Stewarts. It’s a shame the only person in that house who works had to give up their bed. Ten kids and 6 adults all packed in for a Duggar wedding that this time, Carlin had no problem talking about. Carlin took the Dugs late night shopping for a birthday basket for Katie. She captured and shared a picture that included Lauren Duggar, which according to DuggarSnark is like photographing Bigfoot. Carlin told Travis to get the tripod set up and push record bc she was dropping by at exactly midnight to wish her sister Happy Birthday. Finally it was time for the Duggar wedding, where Carlin wore clear plastic heels and Evan wore a white TShirt with a blazer. We get to see the Forsyths in the hot tub, all the kids swimming and there seems to be a flirtation between Jeremy Voulo and Evan as they tag each other and send lots of emojis back and forth on IG. Jessa and her passel of kids join The Stewarts at the Knoxville Zoo and then Carlin and Evan head to another wedding. This time it’s for a boutique employee. In exchange for room and board, Jessa offers up the services of Jana and her new husband Steven, and Carlin happily accepts. She puts them to work doing the one home improvement project we all thought Evan could handle… installing a light fixture. That’s right… the dude will not so much as screw in a light bulb.
   
2. Harvey Clark is here and made his social media debut at less than 24 hours old. Katie and Travis were able to churn out tons of social media and a full part one birth vlog, even though the baby was transferred to the Children’s Hospital and was struggling to breathe. Proving that they do not believe in germs we see Zach and Whitney, Kelly Joe, Carlin and Evan and Michael and Brandon all holding and kissing the newborn. Ellie was in charge of Hailey and Kelly Joe, Carlin and Whitney were all in the room as Katie labored. Evan sat in the waiting room and went to the airport to retrieve Travis’ parents. At least 46 times one of the women say how exciting this is and Kelly is practically coming out of her skin. The woman is just really into pregnancy and birth. Travis is wearing a huge sweatshirt and meanders around like a giddy high school kid rubbing his hands together. Katie cries and thanks everyone and the labor progresses quickly. Katie has the same delivery doctor as Josie and the same nurse as well. Travis is upset that his necklace push present for Katie has the wrong birthstone. After 6 days in the hospital Harvey comes home. Katie turns 24 as a mother of 2. Kelly Joe gushes over their movie nights and secret telling and it sounds like they are 7th grade BFFs. Talk about arrested development. Travis says it is the 6th birthday he has spent with her. He decorates the empty apartment and has cake and pizza, but he can’t top Carlin, and frankly seems too exhausted to even try.
   
3. Josie really got back to her fundamentalist roots this week on a work trip to Orlando for Kelton’s plumbing business. Bobby had to attend, which meant Tori and the kids could come. Erin was close enough to show up for a playdate and a free meal, and Jackson and Emy came by also. Michael was also there… maybe as the babysitter, bc I never spotted Brandon. Josie seemed natural and happy surrounded by the most conservative family members and Kelton cooked for everyone. Josie didn’t wear her pool noodle once the entire week and humbled herself enough to make a Goodwill trip with Tori and Erin. After flying home from Florida, Josie tells us she has been craving wings, so Kelton made her some wings… she shows us the wings and they are, in fact, frozen chicken tenders coated with Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. Does this chick think that Buffalo Hot Sauce makes chicken a wing?? I am scared of the answer. Josie is home just long enough to shill her usual links, repack their bags, wash off the culty stench and hit the road again. This time the Balka’s landed in New York to celebrate their 6th wedding anniversary. They rented a car and drove straight to Emma Langdon’s home in Connecticut. We see lots of dreamy snaps of the New England Autumn, including Josie with her eyes closed in bliss… on a hay ride. Next stop is Vermont for more dizzying excitement.
   
4. With SO many Bates sisters in Orlando this week, surely they all saw Alyssa, right? At least some of them saw Alyssa, right? Nope. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Alyssa has met none of her new nephews and many of her siblings have not met Rhett. If she wants to get her numbers and engagement up… she should start spilling the tea. Instead we get a lukewarm return to IG where she tells us how busy their September was bc of church, karate, and John’s softball. They did go on the yearly beach trip with the Taliban Dan crowd and she says the girls were beside themselves with excitement. I can’t imagine why. She shares a late night Costco run where all 5 children and John tagalong and it’s still light outside. Michael sent the girls cute little handmade aprons and Alyssa pushes links for body oil but not for Michael’s store. We haven’t heard a peep about the sad hat since Alyssa last promoted it in mid September, but while she was at the beach she threw it on the sand and filmed it sitting there. That helped her sell exactly zero hats. During the week, Alyssa tries out lots of different influencing tricks… we see coffee, an unboxing of $68 PJs that got tons of backlash in the comments, cooking that featured some shoe leather beef slices in a pan, one of the girls feeding Rhett an apple and finally she shared a code for the super expensive sheets everyone else has been selling. She mentions that Carlin told her about the sheets. What I really think Carlin told her was to ditch the sad hat and focus on pushing links. This week’s vlog was the family beach trip except Alyssa can’t really show John’s family. Rhett whines and cries the entire time and Alyssa has to work taking everyone’s pictures. Allie skips into frame at one point and tries to add to the commentary but Alyssa pushes her back and ends up having to apologize for being a tad too aggressive. The beach trip sounds about as much fun as karate or watching school on a dvd player… or listening to John Webster prattle on about anything.
   
5. Whitney Bates really thought she was a top level influencer this week when she dropped a brand new reel linking both Huffy electric bikes AND WalMart while also giving marriage advice. Her caption told all about how their recent trip to Hawaii reminded them they needed to spend time alone, just the 2 of them and lazy days of long romantic bike rides. Is that what most couples with 5 kids and a mortgage do? Anyway, they ate her up in the comments, calling her materialistic, a sellout, and tone deaf to post such a thing while so many nearby were suffering with nothing after the hurricane. She went quiet for a few days and Zach agreed to appear in a reel for Medicorps and help them beg for money. They barely had to twist his arm. He must have been big mad about the comments bc he didn’t even take to the Bates Kitchen this week to slop around some mayonnaise and boxed cake mix. Whitney did shill her earbuds and shared pictures from the BSB employee’s wedding and the Duggar I do’s. We see little Lillie Joe toddling around at the wedding in a velour bubble with knee socks and hopefully a cute baby will calm down all of the negative comments so Momma can get back to hawking her links.
   
6. Trace and Lydia dropped Ryker with her parents and hopped a plane to Hawaii. Ryker should have gotten to go on the trip since he paid for it. This was their 2nd anniversary celebration and we see them on the island in a convertible. They are gone for a week but Trace is able to phone in for the Medicorps fundraising video. Kelly Joe says she is overjoyed they are married and they are her best friends.
   
7. Erin and Chad happily packed up their six kids and went to squat at the Balka’s Orlando vacation rental. Tempers flared when Kelton explained to Chad that they only rented the house for a week and the Paine’s could not move in permanently. Seriously though, Erin was tickled to see her soul sister Tori and posted a pic of all of the children together. The cousins seemed happy.
   
8. Lawson Bates is in absolute heaven. He finally got to leave his extended paternity leave and go cosplay rescue hero. He didn’t have to be in Nathan’s shadow bc Nate had to sit this one out while waiting on the birth of his new son. Lawson was boots on the ground doing the hard and dangerous job of… filming, providing commentary, delivering pizza and sticking a microphone in traumatized people’s faces. The back of his head made it into a picture with Ivanka Trump who showed up as window dressing and for the rest of the week he mentioned “EYE-vanck-UH”. Lawson interviewed a man who had just been rescued by local firemen. The man mentioned the volunteer firefighters and Lawson interrupted him to say “WE ARE HELPING TOO. WE ARE VOLUNTEERS TOO.” Kelly shares every Medicorp post she can. They use interesting wording like “facilitate” and “assist” and “on sight”. They film lots of destruction and meetings but they aren’t heading anything up, and Lawson is not a medic. Or a cop. Or a police officer. No matter how much he pretends. He is a volunteer(fan). We do see him riding on the helicopter as someone rescues a 94 year old lady. Anyway, back at home, Tiffy is beside herself with happiness getting to hold and cuddle her baby as much as she wants and however she wants.
   
9. Michael posts with Baby Harvey and Brandon and then takes JebJud with her to Florida to spend time with the sisters and his cousins. I think Kelly and Gil have turned him completely over to her at this point. She attends the Duggar wedding possibly without Brandon. His new job must be taking up lots of time. He didn’t even have time to film himself coloring this week.
   
10. Bits and Bytes… Alyssa reported that Janie and Bill’s farm was still without power midweek… Josie and Grace worked a wedding together…Kelly Joe and Gil appeared in the Medicorp fundraising video… Kelly is now tucking her shirts into her denim skirt.
    

Have a great week friends! As a Carolina girl, I ask you to keep the Carolinas in your heart and help if you can. It’s a long road to recovery.

1. The Stew Crew was booked and busy this week and spread so thin that for the first time in forever they couldn’t release a vlog telling us how exciting and awesome everything was. Carlin had canned content ready to role when Katie went into labor. We saw more of Layla at dance class and a family hug where Carlin turned into stretch Armstrong to film herself crying tears of joy, right there in the dance studio waiting room. Of course Carlin was with Katie as she checked in to labor and delivery. The nurses stopped her from changing into a hospital gown and made her stand beside the bed, although she really wanted to be in it. Evan tagged along to sit in the waiting room bc he certainly couldn’t be expected to stay home with his children. Kelly Joe praised Carlin for being such an amazing sister to drop everything and stay by Katie’s side…. Until all of the vlog was filmed and the Duggars hit town. Layla had to give up her room for Joy and Austin Forsyth, and Jessa and Ben Seewald also stayed with the Stewarts. It’s a shame the only person in that house who works had to give up their bed. Ten kids and 6 adults all packed in for a Duggar wedding that this time, Carlin had no problem talking about. Carlin took the Dugs late night shopping for a birthday basket for Katie. She captured and shared a picture that included Lauren Duggar, which according to DuggarSnark is like photographing Bigfoot. Carlin told Travis to get the tripod set up and push record bc she was dropping by at exactly midnight to wish her sister Happy Birthday. Finally it was time for the Duggar wedding, where Carlin wore clear plastic heels and Evan wore a white TShirt with a blazer. We get to see the Forsyths in the hot tub, all the kids swimming and there seems to be a flirtation between Jeremy Voulo and Evan as they tag each other and send lots of emojis back and forth on IG. Jessa and her passel of kids join The Stewarts at the Knoxville Zoo and then Carlin and Evan head to another wedding. This time it’s for a boutique employee. In exchange for room and board, Jessa offers up the services of Jana and her new husband Steven, and Carlin happily accepts. She puts them to work doing the one home improvement project we all thought Evan could handle… installing a light fixture. That’s right… the dude will not so much as screw in a light bulb.
   
2. Harvey Clark is here and made his social media debut at less than 24 hours old. Katie and Travis were able to churn out tons of social media and a full part one birth vlog, even though the baby was transferred to the Children’s Hospital and was struggling to breathe. Proving that they do not believe in germs we see Zach and Whitney, Kelly Joe, Carlin and Evan and Michael and Brandon all holding and kissing the newborn. Ellie was in charge of Hailey and Kelly Joe, Carlin and Whitney were all in the room as Katie labored. Evan sat in the waiting room and went to the airport to retrieve Travis’ parents. At least 46 times one of the women say how exciting this is and Kelly is practically coming out of her skin. The woman is just really into pregnancy and birth. Travis is wearing a huge sweatshirt and meanders around like a giddy high school kid rubbing his hands together. Katie cries and thanks everyone and the labor progresses quickly. Katie has the same delivery doctor as Josie and the same nurse as well. Travis is upset that his necklace push present for Katie has the wrong birthstone. After 6 days in the hospital Harvey comes home. Katie turns 24 as a mother of 2. Kelly Joe gushes over their movie nights and secret telling and it sounds like they are 7th grade BFFs. Talk about arrested development. Travis says it is the 6th birthday he has spent with her. He decorates the empty apartment and has cake and pizza, but he can’t top Carlin, and frankly seems too exhausted to even try.
   
3. Josie really got back to her fundamentalist roots this week on a work trip to Orlando for Kelton’s plumbing business. Bobby had to attend, which meant Tori and the kids could come. Erin was close enough to show up for a playdate and a free meal, and Jackson and Emy came by also. Michael was also there… maybe as the babysitter, bc I never spotted Brandon. Josie seemed natural and happy surrounded by the most conservative family members and Kelton cooked for everyone. Josie didn’t wear her pool noodle once the entire week and humbled herself enough to make a Goodwill trip with Tori and Erin. After flying home from Florida, Josie tells us she has been craving wings, so Kelton made her some wings… she shows us the wings and they are, in fact, frozen chicken tenders coated with Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. Does this chick think that Buffalo Hot Sauce makes chicken a wing?? I am scared of the answer. Josie is home just long enough to shill her usual links, repack their bags, wash off the culty stench and hit the road again. This time the Balka’s landed in New York to celebrate their 6th wedding anniversary. They rented a car and drove straight to Emma Langdon’s home in Connecticut. We see lots of dreamy snaps of the New England Autumn, including Josie with her eyes closed in bliss… on a hay ride. Next stop is Vermont for more dizzying excitement.
   
4. With SO many Bates sisters in Orlando this week, surely they all saw Alyssa, right? At least some of them saw Alyssa, right? Nope. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Alyssa has met none of her new nephews and many of her siblings have not met Rhett. If she wants to get her numbers and engagement up… she should start spilling the tea. Instead we get a lukewarm return to IG where she tells us how busy their September was bc of church, karate, and John’s softball. They did go on the yearly beach trip with the Taliban Dan crowd and she says the girls were beside themselves with excitement. I can’t imagine why. She shares a late night Costco run where all 5 children and John tagalong and it’s still light outside. Michael sent the girls cute little handmade aprons and Alyssa pushes links for body oil but not for Michael’s store. We haven’t heard a peep about the sad hat since Alyssa last promoted it in mid September, but while she was at the beach she threw it on the sand and filmed it sitting there. That helped her sell exactly zero hats. During the week, Alyssa tries out lots of different influencing tricks… we see coffee, an unboxing of $68 PJs that got tons of backlash in the comments, cooking that featured some shoe leather beef slices in a pan, one of the girls feeding Rhett an apple and finally she shared a code for the super expensive sheets everyone else has been selling. She mentions that Carlin told her about the sheets. What I really think Carlin told her was to ditch the sad hat and focus on pushing links. This week’s vlog was the family beach trip except Alyssa can’t really show John’s family. Rhett whines and cries the entire time and Alyssa has to work taking everyone’s pictures. Allie skips into frame at one point and tries to add to the commentary but Alyssa pushes her back and ends up having to apologize for being a tad too aggressive. The beach trip sounds about as much fun as karate or watching school on a dvd player… or listening to John Webster prattle on about anything.
   
5. Whitney Bates really thought she was a top level influencer this week when she dropped a brand new reel linking both Huffy electric bikes AND WalMart while also giving marriage advice. Her caption told all about how their recent trip to Hawaii reminded them they needed to spend time alone, just the 2 of them and lazy days of long romantic bike rides. Is that what most couples with 5 kids and a mortgage do? Anyway, they ate her up in the comments, calling her materialistic, a sellout, and tone deaf to post such a thing while so many nearby were suffering with nothing after the hurricane. She went quiet for a few days and Zach agreed to appear in a reel for Medicorps and help them beg for money. They barely had to twist his arm. He must have been big mad about the comments bc he didn’t even take to the Bates Kitchen this week to slop around some mayonnaise and boxed cake mix. Whitney did shill her earbuds and shared pictures from the BSB employee’s wedding and the Duggar I do’s. We see little Lillie Joe toddling around at the wedding in a velour bubble with knee socks and hopefully a cute baby will calm down all of the negative comments so Momma can get back to hawking her links.
   
6. Trace and Lydia dropped Ryker with her parents and hopped a plane to Hawaii. Ryker should have gotten to go on the trip since he paid for it. This was their 2nd anniversary celebration and we see them on the island in a convertible. They are gone for a week but Trace is able to phone in for the Medicorps fundraising video. Kelly Joe says she is overjoyed they are married and they are her best friends.
   
7. Erin and Chad happily packed up their six kids and went to squat at the Balka’s Orlando vacation rental. Tempers flared when Kelton explained to Chad that they only rented the house for a week and the Paine’s could not move in permanently. Seriously though, Erin was tickled to see her soul sister Tori and posted a pic of all of the children together. The cousins seemed happy.
   
8. Lawson Bates is in absolute heaven. He finally got to leave his extended paternity leave and go cosplay rescue hero. He didn’t have to be in Nathan’s shadow bc Nate had to sit this one out while waiting on the birth of his new son. Lawson was boots on the ground doing the hard and dangerous job of… filming, providing commentary, delivering pizza and sticking a microphone in traumatized people’s faces. The back of his head made it into a picture with Ivanka Trump who showed up as window dressing and for the rest of the week he mentioned “EYE-vanck-UH”. Lawson interviewed a man who had just been rescued by local firemen. The man mentioned the volunteer firefighters and Lawson interrupted him to say “WE ARE HELPING TOO. WE ARE VOLUNTEERS TOO.” Kelly shares every Medicorp post she can. They use interesting wording like “facilitate” and “assist” and “on sight”. They film lots of destruction and meetings but they aren’t heading anything up, and Lawson is not a medic. Or a cop. Or a police officer. No matter how much he pretends. He is a volunteer(fan). We do see him riding on the helicopter as someone rescues a 94 year old lady. Anyway, back at home, Tiffy is beside herself with happiness getting to hold and cuddle her baby as much as she wants and however she wants.
   
9. Michael posts with Baby Harvey and Brandon and then takes JebJud with her to Florida to spend time with the sisters and his cousins. I think Kelly and Gil have turned him completely over to her at this point. She attends the Duggar wedding possibly without Brandon. His new job must be taking up lots of time. He didn’t even have time to film himself coloring this week.
   
10. Bits and Bytes… Alyssa reported that Janie and Bill’s farm was still without power midweek… Josie and Grace worked a wedding together…Kelly Joe and Gil appeared in the Medicorp fundraising video… Kelly is now tucking her shirts into her denim skirt.
    

Have a great week friends! As a Carolina girl, I ask you to keep the Carolinas in your heart and help if you can. It’s a long road to recovery.

Leading up to the new CBA, and since it has come out, the three main bogeymen that the second apron and related rules have been held up against are Lacob's Warriors, Ballmer's Clippers, and Joe Tsai's Nets (i.e., these teams' behavior under the old CBA). I can understand the impulse to legislate against the example of the latter two franchises, since each basically leveraged their presence in a destination market to assemble a contender from nothing overnight—a team-building strategy that is more-or-less unavailable to most franchises. I can also understand how harsher penalties on spending could be seen as a way to hamstring such teams, since their rosters are practically guaranteed to be expensive from Day 1. But why do the Warriors get lumped in with the Clippers and Nets?
On a post-Finals Bill Simmons pod he was talking about the negative impact that the new CBA will likely have on the Celtics' current championship window, saying:
"I think this initially started with trying to penalize the [Warriors'] situation ... where [they were] just like 'We'll spend whatever it takes; we don't care about payroll, and we don't care about tax; we're just gonna do whatever'. I get it; you wanna protect [against] that."
...and that seems to be a common sentiment, but does it really line up with how and why the Warriors were successful?
Here's the Warriors' recent tax history, with my commentary:

• '14-15: UNDER THE TAX LINE

'Dynasty' begins and they're not even paying anything yet. No basis for any complaints of financial unfairness.

• '15-16: $14.82M (3rd highest out of 7 tax teams; #1 is CLE $54.01M, #2 is LAC $19.88M)

With hopes of repeating, GSW goes into the tax, but only by a moderate amount. CLE's tax bill dwarfs anything the Warriors will pay until '20-21. Still no real basis for complaining about GSW's spending.

• '16-17: UNDER THE TAX LINE

GSW assembles arguably the GOAT team while also getting under the tax. The Warriors are going to the Finals for the third year in a row and still there is zero basis for complaining about GSW outspending everyone. Blame is instead directed (correctly) at the league-wide cap spike. GSW is also simply lucky that two-time MVP Curry was still grossly underpaid at this point due to ankle-injury concerns earlier in his career. Greatest bargain contract in NBA history.

• '17-18: $32.26M (2nd highest out of 4 tax teams; #1 is CLE $50.75M)

In the hopes of repeating, the team goes back into the tax. CLE outspends them, but loses.

• '18-19: $51.49M (2nd highest out of 5 tax teams; #1 is OKC $61.62M)

In the hopes of threepeating, the team goes into the tax again. Note that even this tax bill—for the team's fifth straight Finals appearance—is less than what CLE paid in '15-16. GSW has still not had the highest tax bill in the league, nor have they paid the tax more than two years in a row, unlike CLE, which paid luxury taxes for four years in a row (2014-18). So here we are at peak Warriors fatigue and the conclusion of GSW's supposedly league-ruining dominance, and GSW's spending is still totally pedestrian by contender standards.

• '19-20: UNDER THE TAX LINE

The team stinks; everyone declares the 'dynasty' dead. GSW does two things that will cause their payroll to balloon in the coming years: (1) pay post-ACL Klay the max and (2) S&T for DLo. No one is immediately outraged by either of these decisions, because they are not perceived as providing any sort of real advantage to the Warriors. The max for Klay was clearly not his market value after that injury, and it was as obvious then as it is now that it was more about doing right by a franchise legend than it was about retaining an actual max-level player. The reaction to the DLo S&T was a mix of respect (for making the necessary moves to keep as much roster flexibility as possible) and skepticism / mockery (for keeping the KD salary slot on the books instead of facing the reality that the Warriors wouldn't be winning a title again anytime soon). The Wiggins trade didn't change these perceptions much; though some like Zach Lowe praised the trade, Wiggins was perceived at the time as a joke of a player on a radioactive contract. He was a negative asset who was easily available to any team who wanted him.

• '20-21: $68.94M (highest in the league)

It's only at this point, when GSW is no longer perceived as a serious contender, that the Warriors for the first time have the largest tax bill in the NBA. Though the team is spending big now, a major $35M chunk of their payroll is basically a Klay Warriors-Legend Vibes tax that provides literally no sort of advantage on the court at all, since Klay wasn't expected to (and wouldn't) step foot on it all season. The team's taxable payroll of players who would actually play is only $126M, equivalent to a bottom-10-in-the-league payroll. (If you want to count half of Oubre's contract, since he would be dumped mid-season, that'd put their on-court payroll at around $133M, which is then-league average.) Owners around the league rejoice at Lacob foolishly writing them luxury-tax checks for a team that didn't have an ice cube's chance in hell of winning again.

• '21-22: $170.33M (highest in the league)

GSW's tax bill balloons due to the repeater tax (first time they ever had to pay it). Lacob is willing to go there since the team seemed to be finding their groove at the end of the previous season, despite losing in the Play-In. Could he have softened the financial blow by offloading Klay, who was almost certainly not going to be worth more than a small fraction of his contract (not to mention the resulting tax) in terms of actual on-court production? Sure, but he was willing to pay for vibes, essentially, and indeed Klay provided maybe like half-an-MLE's worth of on-court value for the season, but the team won and suddenly the story is that the Warriors are unfairly buying championships.

• '22-23: $163.71M (highest in the league)
• '23-24: $176.88M (highest in the league)

GSW does what any team does when they win a championship and runs it back for a year or two, but the old CBA does its thing and—via the repeater tax and limitations on roster building—harshly penalizes these repeated efforts to spend big. Consequently, the wheels start to fall off and GSW is knocked down from its perch. The old rules, in other words, worked exactly as intended.
So what exactly was the problem that needed fixing here? What within this sequence of events is something that a new CBA should want to "protect against", in Bill Simmons's words? Future cap spikes, maybe? Sure, but you don't need all the second-apron business for that. From 2014 to 2019—the period of greatest fans-of-other-teams' frustration with the Warriors' dominance—GSW was not some financial juggernaut outspending everyone. They were in the tax for the 2016, 2018, and 2019 Finals runs. That's it, and they weren't even the biggest tax-payers those years. Their only significant period of tax-paying was after all of that, from 2020 to '24, and despite winning in 2022, they were dominant in none of those years.
For comparison, since the NBA introduced the luxury tax in 2002-03, here are all of the 4-or-more-year streaks of teams paying the luxury tax:

• Lakers: 7 years (2007-14), 4 years (2020-24)
• Mavericks: 7 years (2005-12) — Note that the Mavs were also a tax team in '02-03 and '03-04, which means they paid the tax for damn near the entire 2002-12 decade, only coming up for air once ('04-05).
• Celtics: 6 years (2007-13)
• Knicks: 5 years (2005-10)
• Clippers: 4 years, twice (2013-17, 2020-24)
• Cavaliers: 4 years (2014-18)
• Bucks: 4 years (2020-24)
• Warriors: 4 years (2020-24)

Why aren't Dirk's Mavs held up as the kind of team we don't ever want to see again, something we need to "protect against"? Is it because they only won once and weren't annoying fans of other teams by making it to the Finals every year? The 2020-24 Warriors also only won once and have otherwise been bad to mediocre. Sure, the 2014-19 Warriors annoyed tons of opposing fans, but that version of the team was never a top spender.
TL;DR: Why is there a perception that the second apron and related rules are meant to "protect against" a team like the Warriors, when the only time the Warriors spent an inordinate amount of money was when they were relatively non-threatening?

For context I work at a pizzeria currently and alot of flour just tends to get on my apron. Which makes its way to my phone.
I've heard its ip65 but I also saw that Jerry rig tore it down and saw all the proper seals for ip 68.....
I want to keep the charger port clear from junk because I feel like a dirty port leads to a phone that will have trouble charging eventually.
My oneplus 8 succumbed to this :p

I would love to hear your experiences, and how it went for you overall. I’m considering it at 68: not to get a “bikini” body haha, but more for health & reduce discomfort. The apron is getting heavy & uncomfortable, especially when I’m active. The rest of me isn’t so bad, but the fat tends just accumulate in my trunk area. Just wondering if it’s worth it, any feedback from elders would be helpful.

Hi all,
So long story short we have to replace our old cast iron bathtub (o7 served us well for many years), and we wanted to replace it with a more soaking style tub that still fits the 60x30 dimensions. Our plumber recommended the Kohler Underscore https://www.kohler.com/en/products/bathtubs/shop-bathtubs/underscore-60-x-30-alcove-bath-with-integral-apron-integral-flange-and-left-hand-drain-1956-la?skuId=1956-LA-0 as it is the deepest option he is aware of with it being 15.5" water depth and 68 gallons total. I don't love that it's acrylic and wanted to see if anyone was aware of other tub options of similar depth that are steel/americast/cast iron.

OKC is off to a decent start fleecing Chicago and getting Caruso for Giddy. Chicago should be investigated for this trade that resulted in no picks, but who are we to talk.
To follow the blueprint of the Celtics you first need to be able to find 5+ two way players able to score efficiently and play high level defense.
I think it's natural to assume you should start with Tatum and Brown, but the real answer is you have to start with Porzingis and Horford.
"Bigs" that can stretch the floor and allow you to play 5 out and "largely" switch 1 through 5 on defense.
If you look at the best 3 point shooting bigs in the league, only a handful shot 35% or better. The total was 15 and Minnesota, Boston, and Utah all had 3 each. Not all of these 15 players are going to be able to play defense effectively AND post up effectively and this includes some players like 6'8 Julius Randle.
So next you have to try to get not one but two all-defensive type guards to slow down the best scoring guards in the game and you need two wings who can play defense as well, on not just other wings, but guards, and bigs as well.
tl;dr I don't think teams will have success in replicating what we've done in the 2nd apron era of the NBA. From a personnel standpoint Denver and Minnesota are probably the closest teams to being able to replicate what we've done, but they're fully built in their own style. The more 3s you have jokic taking, probably the better for the opposing team. Gordon is not a 3 point shooter either. They also don't have the 3pt shooters coming off the bench that we do.
Minnesota can't replicate what we have as long as Gobert is in the lineup. McDaniels and Edwards aren't good enough 3 point shooters today to replicate this either.
The league is better off finding a different formula for success but the value on stocking up on perimeter defenders is about to skyrocket.

Hello this is your friend malstroem. You might remember me from the draft day guide I made last year. I enjoy following the draft process every year a lot. Since the draft is happening next week, I have decided to make a Nuggets draft day guide for people who might not follow the draft process as much (but if you do follow the draft process a lot you are still welcome to read!). THE DRAFT IS NEXT WEEK ON WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY GUYS. So I guess here it is lol

What needs do the Denver Nuggets have coming into the draft?

Well this year is easier than last time. The Denver Nuggets have a big need for a backup point guard and a backup center to start. Reggie Jackson has a player option to return next year, which he is likely to exercise. Regardless of this, backup point guard is still a priority as he was not able to contribute much during the playoffs, only being able to play for 3-4 minute stretches at a time providing well below average play. The other point guard currently on the roster is 2023 second round pick Jalen Pickett. Collin Gillespie is set to be a restricted free agent this offseason. Pickett was only able to play 122 minutes total over 27 games this season and looked a bit out of his league. Gillespie was on a two way contract, and he managed to play almost twice as many minutes, with 225 minutes total over 24 games. He looked serviceable at times, but he is still quite unproven at the NBA level, not to mention it's unlikely he gets a full roster spot with Jackson and Pickett set to be on the roster for next year.
At the backup center position, Denver has Zeke Nnaji on contract for next year, who signed a 4 year 32 million dollar extension just this season. After 4 years of disappointments on the Nuggets roster, I think it is safe to say Zeke Nnaji is not the answer at backup center and the team should be looking to move him on the trade market, especially considering he has a relatively large salary to be able to match for potential incoming players. DeAndre Jordan is also set to become an unrestricted free agent, and even if Denver were to bring him back for his leadership role, it is pretty clear at his soon to be 36 years of age he is not able to provide a consistent 10-15 minute option for the team.
There is also the KCP question. He has a player option to return for next season, which he is likely to decline as he searches for a higher value, longer term deal. The Denver Nuggets have his bird rights, which means they can offer him any amount of money and match any contract offer he might receive from other teams around the league, so it doesn't mean he is gone for sure, but it does have big implications regarding the 2nd salary apron of the new CBA. I am not an expert on the financial shit, but to put it in a simple way, if the Nuggets bring KCP back they will 100% be above the 2nd apron which means they can't sign players for more than the veteran minimum, they don't get a mid level exception during the offseason and they can't aggregate different players for a trade, among other things. If the KCP does not come back, the Nuggets could try to make other moves to get under the 2nd apron and try to gain access to these perks mentioned previously. KCP's deadline to opt in or out of his contract for next year is on June 29th, so Denver is unlikely to know with 100% certainty what the roster situation is regarding that before the draft starts, but they should have an idea of what's going on. If KCP walks away, wing could be a need for the Nuggets, though still less of a need considering they can slot Christian Braun into the starting lineup while still having 2023 first round pick Julian Strawther and 2022 first round pick Peyton Watson as bench wing options. They could also very likely target someone in the trade market who could come here and replace KCP as the 2 guard in the starting lineup, or at the very least someone who is able to play 6th man minutes.
Other than that, from a pure roster perspective, most of the team seems to be locked for next year. 4 starters are coming back for sure, and the only way a big roster scramble would happen is if the team decided to deal Michael Porter Jr in the trade market, which I think would be extremely unlikely as of now.
From a more basketball perspective, after these past playoffs, I think it is sure to say the Nuggets need better offensive players, guys who are able to create for themselves and for others, as only Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon (the latter mostly as part time) were able to do so during the playoffs, and probably more guys who are able to shoot the ball at above average rates. There's also the eternal backup big question, ideally the Nuggets would want someone whom with they can replicate at least a bit of the offense they play with Nikola Jokic on the floor, which means someone who reads the floor well and is able to pass at a decent level, especially out of DHO actions, but they have targeted plenty of players outside of this particular archetype in the past.

What assets do the Nuggets have coming into the draft?

The Denver Nuggets currently own the 28th pick in the 2024 NBA draft, and the 56th pick in the 2024 NBA draft.

Is there any chance the Nuggets make a deal to move up, or down, or out of the draft?

The Denver Nuggets are considered a 2nd apron team as of now, so like I said they are quite limited in terms of moves they could possibly make. I would not expect to see a deal to try to move up in the 1st round at all, but I think it is quite likely they try to move up in the 2nd round from 56th overall. Usually moving up in the 2nd round tends to be quite easy and cheap and it is something the Nuggets have been willing to do in recent years, making deals to move up from their original 2nd round spots in both of the drafts Calvin Booth has been in charge of. Possible trade partners would include Indiana at 36th, 49th and 50th, Portland at 34th and 40th, Charlotte at 42nd, Washington at 51st, among others. It's hard to predict anything cause the 2nd round starts getting crazy with all the moves that usually happen, and probably more so this year as the draft has been extended to a 2 day event. I'd personally expect the Nuggets to pick at 28th, and probably to pick somewhere in the 2nd round, consistent with Calvin Booth's "build through the draft" philosophy so far.

That's cool but I don't really care about all of this. I just wanna know who the hell are we considering and potentially picking. GIMME THE DAMN NAMES OF THE PLAYERS!

Yes. I will be dividing prospects by draft range based on what we know and what we have know (late first round, mid second round and later) and by position. I will provide a brief scouting report, and availability rating based on how likely I think it is for a certain prospect to be available at that range, and I'll try to explain why I think a prospect might be a good fit or a bad fit with the Nuggets. I will also provide a big board ranking, which won't be my own to try keep it as unbiased as possible, but based on Tankathon's big board and ESPN's Jonathan Givony and Jeremy Woo's big board. Let's get started!

Guards in the late first round range

Tyler Kolek, Marquette, 6'2, 197 lbs, 23 years old, 24th on Tankathon, 26th on ESPN

If you like old school, hard-nosed point guards, you probably like Tyler Kolek a lot. A 4 year college player, he is one of the best playmakers in this draft class. He excels at making others shine, can play both in a PNR based offense but also on a motion based offense. Amazing feel for the game and floor reading ability, while also being able to limit turnovers. He shoots the ball from deep well, averaged 40% and 39% from 3 in his last two seasons at college, though at a bit lower volume on 3.1 and 3.0 attempts per game respectively. Has a good floater game and was able to finish at the rim well at the college level, but probably won't be his calling card at the NBA. One of those guys who plays at 110% energy every time he steps on the court. Not a good athlete, though not a horrible one either. Has good defensive fundamentals and feel, and is able to play the passing lanes well, but doesn't project as an above average NBA defender. Will get into trouble with non small guards but will probably be able to survive due to effort and fundamentals.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: I would say good but there are some drawbacks. First of course he doesn't have the size/length or the athleticism that the Nuggets have looked for and prioritized during the Calvin Booth administration. I would also say he is better as a PNR guard (Nuggets play among the least amount of PNR possessions in the league) but he is also competent in a motion based offense. Marquette ran a lot of DHO concepts that are familiar to what you see with the Nuggets. But aside from that he is as ready to contribute as you're gonna get this year. He reminds me somewhat to Monte Morris, but Kolek is probably a bit more dynamic. Not much upside to him, but you can trust him to play 15-20 minutes right off the bat.
Availability Rating: Low. There's a lot of noise about Phoenix liking him a lot at 22. If you ask me there's a decent chance he goes higher than that, as high as 15th to Miami. Other potential landing spots could be Milwaukee at 23, New York at 24/25 and Minnesota at 27th. I do not think it's likely he's available at 28th, but it wouldn't be that crazy either.

Carlton "Bub" Carrington, Pittsburgh, 6'5, 195 lbs, 18 years old, 31st on Tankathon, 20th on ESPN

A top 3 name in the draft and one of the youngest players in the draft, Bub Carrington is a big sized guard with good feel for the game who has shown great flashes of self creation scoring and shooting. Didn't have a good statistical season, but he was on a not great team where he had a bigger role than he should've. Very creative scorer but because of his age and inexperience he does struggle with consistency and shot selection. He can get tunnel vision a bit too often, but I wouldn't call him a selfish player as he still did a good job playmaking for his team while still being a bit more of a combo than a natural point guard. Has 3 level scoring potential, shot isn't quite there yet but he does have very good looking shooting mechanics. Would probably call him a slightly above average athlete, also needs to add strength and weight. Struggles with physicality on both ends because of it. At the moment not a good defender but has good size and length (6'8 wingspan) so he could improve.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: He's a bit of a longer term play and more of a combo guard than a true point guard like I mentioned earlier. He does have some stuff like his on ball creation that the Nuggets would appreciate and I think Malone would work wonders with him, but needs a bit of cooking and I don't think he's ready to contribute for a contending team as of now. Malone's leash would probably be a bit too tight for what he needs to develop.
Availability Rating: Also low. I think he's probably too talented to make it to the end of the 1st. That being said I could see a world where guards who aren't ready to play minutes this season aren't in big demand and he ends up slipping a bit. But I would say it's less likely for him to make it to our spot compared to Kolek.

Isaiah Collier, USC, 6'3, 205 lbs, 19 years old, 15th on Tankathon, 22nd on ESPN

Bowling ball style point guard who relies on getting downhill. Was billed as one of the top talents coming into the season, but struggled a lot at the college level. Most of his game relies on him getting into the paint and either finishing through contact or dishing it to the open big man or outside to the open shooters. Has good, but not great speed. Relies more on strength than athleticism to finish in the paint, but is quite decent at it. Below average shooter who struggled mightily from the 3 point line early during the season, but bounced back to a somewhat acceptable 34% on 3 attempts per game. Doesn't have an in between scoring game. Struggled at playmaking out of half court sets, can be very careless with the ball at 3.3 turnovers per game on 30 mpg and overdribbled the ball very often. Great at reading the floor and finding the open man when he does get downhill though. Was billed as a great athlete but looked closer to average during the season, though he did struggle with lower leg nagging injuries. Bad defender and rebounder at the moment but has a good frame/strength combo. Struggled with screen navigation especially.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: Not good in my opinion. He isn't ready to contribute and needs plenty of time in the G League probably. Also has a very different skillset to what we're looking for. Personally I am also not big on these bowling ball style guards who can't shoot the 3. Fits much better on a fast pace transition based team which we are not. Good upside play though, but not really the direction we're likely to go.
Availability Rating: It's hard to say. I haven't heard much buzz about him and he was a consistent faller as the season went on. He is still one of these blue chip high school talents who NBA teams can value regardless of performance, but guards like him have fallen pretty far in recent years (Nick Smith, Jaden Hardy, Tyty Washington, Brandon Boston) so I think there's a decent chance he falls to the end of the 1st. Could see him go anywhere in the 15-30 range tbh.

Baylor Scheierman, Creighton, 6'7, 202 lbs, 23 years old, 33rd on Tankathon, 25th on ESPN

Modern dribble/pass/shoot combo guard. A 5 year college player (3 for South Dakota State, 2 for Creighton) he is as experienced and NBA ready as you're gonna see on this least. Great 3 point shooter with with picture perfect mechanics who is able to shoot off movement, off the dribble and off the catch (career 39% on 5.6 3pa per game) but is more than just a shooter. Has great size for someone who will probably play the 2 on offense, good feel for the game and connective passing ability and good handles. Is able to initiate half court sets. Some people view him more as an off ball player but I think in a motion based offense he can definitely perform some secondary ball handling and playmaking. Probably a below average athlete but not bad. He was good at finishing at the rim at the college level but will struggle a bit against NBA size/athleticism. Not gonna blow by people so will definitely need help coming off screens to set him up. Should be good to attack closeouts. On ball defense is okay as long as he is able to stay in front of his man. Someone you probably need to hide a bit though, and his help defense is quite below average. Great defensive rebounder for his position.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: Offensively he's a great fit, most dribble/pass/shoot combo guards with connective passing skills are gonna be a great fit with the Nuggets. Wouldn't expect him to be a great self creator off the dribble, but as long as he's playing off screens he should be able to provide secondary ball handling and playmaking, in addition to being a great spacer. Defensively he's not good but with two great perimeter defenders in Braun and Watson you should be able to hide him decent enough to the point he's not an issue. He's not a point guard so you'd need someone who is able to perform primary ball handling duties in order to get the best from him though. But overall one of my favorite stylistic fits.
Availability Rating: For most of the season he was seen as a fringe second round prospect but since the season ended he's risen up towards the early-mid second round range. As the draft order currently stands up I would say it's very likely he's available at 28. However I do think he could be a target for contending teams trying to move up into the 20s looking for an NBA ready rotation player.

Jaylon Tyson, California, 6'7, 218 lbs, 21 years old, 28th on Tankathon, 30th on ESPN

Similar dribble/pass/shoot wing style player like Scheierman. I do think he is more of a wing than a combo guard but for all intent purposes of this guide he will be considered a guard just because I'm not talking wings and I think he does deserve a mention here. Well rounded perimeter player who is able to handle the ball and score, create for himself and shoot at a high level. Good driver and finisher, but more of a crafty one than an athleticism based one. Still an above average athlete though. Very good footwork. Great at creating space off the dribble. Good midrange/in between game. Good 3 point shooter, projects more as an off the catch guy but shows significant off the dribble and off movement promise. Good feel for the game and a willing passer, but hasn't shown he can make advanced reads yet, at least at a consistent level. Needs to improve as a technical passer too. Does turn the ball over more than you'd like. Has not been a good defender so far but should improve as time goes with a reduced offensive role and he does have good size/length/athleticism to become a passable defender.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: He's a pretty good scorer who can create for himself and could be that offensive spark coming off the bench. Like I said, I think he's more of a wing than a combo guard so I think it's a bit harder to fit him into the rotation as the roster is currently constructed. So not a high priority option for me but for sure a guy I would be happy having on the roster nonetheless.
Availability Rating: I expect him to go in the 20-30 range. I think there's an okay chance he's there at 28 but teams do like this style of wing players so I think he could be a target for a lot of teams and I wouldn't be surprised to see him go in the early 20s.

Ajay Mitchell, UC Santa Barbara, 6'4, 197 lbs, 21 years old, 37th on Tankathon, 44th on ESPN

Great combo of skill, size and feel for the game. One of the best passers/playmakers in the class, with amazing feel for the game and processing speed. Has a great patience/skill based inside the arc scoring game, his mid range/floater game is the highlight of it. Can finish at the rim very well but mostly using body control and angles/touch more than athleticism or speed. Was able to draw a high amount of free throws (6.3 FTA per game). The shot is a bit of a question as he doesn't take many of them (2.9 3pa per game) and most of them are catch and shoot. Seems to shoot better off movement than off the dribble or off the catch. Has great touch and his free throw percentage (86% on high volume) is amazing so I'd expect him to be an above average shooter. Played on a bad team at the mid major level so there are questions about level of competition and how much will his game translate to the NBA level. He was however a standout during the combine scrimmages, having his best game while matched up against Jamal Shead (probably the best defensive guard at the college level). His defensive tape looks bad when you consider the competition level, but he also looked much better during the combine. Not a great athlete, but not a bad one either, not much explosiveness but mobile and agile enough to be functional at the NBA level. Has okay lateral quickness but will struggle against bigger, better explosive athletes at the NBA level. Great size for a guard though.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: He is my personal favorite choice for the Nuggets. Smart player who reads the floor very well, is able to create both for himself and for others and has positional size and versatility. I think he would be able to play right away as the backup point guard and provide good offensive value. Defensively not the best option and he'd probably struggle early on as he adapts to NBA speed but he's a big body which makes it easier to hide him. I think he ticks all of the boxes when it comes to what the Nuggets usually value and look out for and I think he'd be a fantastic fit on our motion offense. Has also worked out for the Nuggets according to HoopsHype.
Availability Rating: He's consistently mocked in the early-mid second round range and there hasn't been any buzz about him being a riser. Some talk about him right after the combine but didn't end up in much. I think he's a very solid bet to be available at 28. Could even end up being a mid 2nd round play but if they like him they should just take him at 28 and not risk it.

KJ Simpson, Colorado, 6'1, 187 lbs, 21 years old, 45th on Tankathon, 52nd on ESPN

The name everyone was expecting to see in here at some point. Classic undersized scoring college combo guard. Really good shooter who will be able to space the floor at the NBA level, can shoot both off the catch and off the dribble. Crafty inside the arc scorer, good floater and in between game, will probably rely a lot on it at the NBA level. He is able to find the open man off drives pretty well and is a very good technical passer. Struggles with shot selection, will probably be exacerbated at the NBA level where he will struggle against bigger and better athletes. One of the smallest players in the draft, measured as the 2nd shortest player at the combine. Projects as a bad NBA defender, mostly due to size and discipline issues. Does play the passing lanes decently, though he can sometimes gamble too much. Shows consistent effort and energy on both sides of the court.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: Just skillset wise he is a good fit on a vacuum. But taking size into account it's really hard to make an argument for him. Don't think he'll be able to get into the paint consistently at the NBA level so he probably ends up as one of these undersized jump shooting reliant guards who aren't really point guards and have a lot of problems at the defensive end. It's a shame cause I think he has the skill and he'd be a great story, but don't think you can justify taking a player this small right now.
Availability Rating: 100% he will be available at 28. I don't know if he will last into the latter half of the 2nd round, could see a team really like him and taking a gamble on him at the 30-45 range. 28 is too early for him in my opinion, if there's any scenario where the Nuggets really want him I think they should trade down a couple of spots.

Bigs in the late first round range:

Daron Holmes II, Dayton, 6'10, 236 lbs, 21 years old, 25th on Tankathon, 39th on ESPN

Every year there's a Nuggets online fanbase favorite and this year is no exception with Daron Holmes. A 4/5 hybrid who was dominant at the mid major college level and shows a bit of everything but doesn't have a signature NBA skill. Good driver for a 6'10 guy, decent post up game, worked best as a mismatch scorer type player. Showed above average playmaking and passing skill, mostly coming off his driving and post up game, think at the NBA level he projects much more as a short roll passer. Good finisher with good touch, doesn't rely on dunks entirely. Added a catch and shoot 3 point shot this season and shot it decent but on low volume. Good but not great athlete. Defensively he is at his best as a weakside shot blocker. Don't think he projects as a true defensive anchor, but should be able to switch decently against perimeter based 3s and 4s. Does struggle in some aspects of help defense and with closeouts. He is a bit small for a pure 5 so he will likely struggle against the bigger and stronger interior players of the NBA. Good motor and energy all around.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: I can understand why Nuggets fans like him so much, but I am quite lower on his fit than most. I see people talk about his passing and playmaking a lot and I agree he shows some good things, but I think it's mostly a result of how much attention he commanded at the college level. He is able to pass and find the open man when he gets doubled in the post and when he draws the help defender when driving. I don't think he will ever command the same attention at the NBA level as I don't think his handle is good enough to be a self creator and I don't think he has the skill or the size to be a post up player. I think he will be good at passing in the short roll where he just has to find the open man when the defense collapses on him, but I don't think he can be a DHO hub style passing big. I don't think he will be a non shooter, but I think he will be limited at wide open catch and shoot attempts and I don't think he will be an above average shooter at them. He's a good athlete and a good finisher, but not as good of an athlete or a finisher as you'd want for a rim running big. His shot blocking is good, but I do think he is a true tweener on defense who teams will struggle to find a role for. In the end I just feel he lacks a signature, bread and butter skill at the NBA level and think there's a decent chance he ends up as one of this effort rebounding bigs that aren't above average at anything else and therefore struggle a lot at impacting the game.
Availability Rating: I think it's very unlikely he makes it to 28. I know he's a very popular Nuggets pick on mock drafts, and there's a lot of talk that he has received a promise and that we're the team who promised him, but I just think he has too much buzz to make it all the way to 28. Seen rumors about teams picking quite high like Oklahoma and Sacramento liking him a lot, think a lot of teams in the mid 1st round have the need for a backup big as well. I think it's more likely he ends up going in the lottery than he is to fall down to the end of the first. Sorry Nuggets fans.

Kyle Filipowski, Duke, 7'0, 230 lbs, 20 years old, 19th on Tankathon, 21st on ESPN

Modern, versatile swiss army knife style offensive big man. Excellent handles and playmaking/passing for a big man. Like Holmes he is able to pass out of drives and post ups really well, but can also function as a DHO hub and is able to playmake out of the perimeter very well. Mismatch scorer type player who is able to create shots for himself inside the arc, was at his best when driving to the rim but also shows competence in posting up especially against smaller players. Billed as a "stretch 5" or just as a shooting big, but the 3 point shot remains as a bit of a question, as he has been quite inconsistent and streaky. Shot 35% from 3 on 3.1 attempts per game which is encouraging, but also shot just 67% on free throws which is less encouraging. He's not a good defender, but he is not as bad as some people make him out to be. Definitely not a defensive anchor and probably won't be a good shot blocker (negative wingspan at 6'10 doesn't help) but has decent recognition and awareness. Can stay out on the perimeter much better than you'd expect even though he doesn't have particularly good lateral quickness. Some motoattitude concerns, seemed to drift out of games more often than what you'd like. Dealt with a hip injury midseason which apparently some people have some concerns about.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: Offensively I think he's as good as you could possibly ask if you're one of those people who have been wanting someone who can run a more Jokic style offense while he sits. I think he can run many of the DHO sets we run from day 1. I wish the shot was a bit more proven, but I believe he can become at least someone who you can run pick and pops for. The shot creation is something we could really use as well, and I think Malone could get quite creative with some of the offense we could run with him and the bench unit. Defensively he's a tougher sell, don't expect him to be a good defender, but I think he'd do better in our switch and scramble scheme compared to most teams where he'd be expected to perform a more traditional defensive big role. Overall I have to say he is my favorite choice if we want to go big.
Availability Rating: It's hard to say. I would say he's been somewhat of a faller past couple of weeks but nothing too extreme and I haven't heard much buzz about it either. I mentioned the hip injury, which as far as I know it's nothing serious or severe, but I have heard some people mention it recently. I have seen him mocked in the end of the first quite often so it's probably not unlikely, but I personally would not expect him to be available at 28.

Yves Missi, Baylor, 7'0, 229 lbs, 20 years old, 22nd on Tankathon, 23rd on ESPN

Great twitchy and explosive athlete who mostly projects as a rim running center. Vertical threat on both sides of the ball, will work best on a PNR heavy team where his finishing and his athleticism can be utilized the best. Very simple offensive game, gets 99% of his shots inside the paint. Poor, but not awful free throw shooter at 62% on 4.1 attempts per game. Doesn't show potential as a post up player or really as an outside the paint player in general. Almost non existent passing ability or feel for the game. Will probably struggle passing the ball even in simpler short roll schemes. Good offensive rebounder. Good shot blocker, but his blocking metrics are not as good as most great defensive center prospects. Defensive rebounding has been below average compared to what you'd expect from a rim running big with such athletic tools so far. His best tool on defense is definitely his lateral quickness and agility, shows great promise as a switching big. Needs a lot of development in general, has only been playing basketball for a few years.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: I guess you could make the argument that a player of his style could be a nice change of pace compared to Nikola Jokic. But he's gonna be a PNR big entirely and like I've mentioned earlier, the Nuggets run some of the fewest PNR possessions per game in the entire league. I think it would be extremely unlikely for him to be able to play from day 1 or just to get any minutes in his first year. He is definitely a longer term play, but even in the long term I don't think a rim running big would ever be particularly useful on this team.
Availability Rating: I think he will probably be picked in the 20s. There's some center needy teams in that range (Toronto at 19, New Orleans at 21, Milwaukee at 23, New York at 24/25) but most of them need more NBA ready guys so I could totally see them passing up on such a raw prospect. I would say there's a decent chance he's there at 28.

Kel'el Ware, Indiana, 7'1, 230 lbs, 20 years old, 20th on Tankathon, 24th on ESPN

Another rim running style center, but unlike Missi he shows slight promise as a shooter. Excellent size and length (7'4.5 wingspan) and very good vertical athlete. Great rim finisher, both off the roll and on putback attempts, though mostly on dunks. Shot 43% from the 3 point line this season, but on very low volume at 1.3 attempts per game. Shot 63% from the free throw line (4.5 attempts per game) which of course puts a big question on his shooting numbers. Very inconsistent shooting mechanics. Not someone I would expect to ever become an NBA shooter, but not something you can discard entirely. Below average passer and playmaker, struggles with decision making and reading the floor in general. Decent shot blocker, but despite that he does have some pretty poor defensive metrics. Like in the other side of the ball, he struggles with decision making and reading the floor on the defensive side as well. Quite stiff lateral movement, I'd expect him to struggle at making rotations/recovering in general and more so at switching on the perimeter. Good defensive rebounder. Big motoeffort concerns dating back to his high school years.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: A lot of what I wrote about Missi applies here as well. I think he's more ready to play NBA minutes, but I don't think those minutes are gonna be positive. Personally speaking, he reminds me a lot of the Hasan Whiteside/Christian Wood type players, where yeah they can get stats and highlight plays, but they don't really contribute to winning basketball. Again, PNR big, we don't really play PNR. The defense is also not good, so it's a hard pass for me.
Availability Rating: A bit of a similar range to Missi, but expected to go a bit earlier. Usually teams don't pass for very long on this type of size/length/athleticism combo, and you add in the slight jump shooting potential, I think it's quite likely someone will take a shot on him in the 15-25 range. I would not expect him to be available at 28, but it wouldn't be the craziest thing either.

Jonathan Mogbo, San Francisco, 6'8, 217 lbs, 22 years old, 39th on Tankathon, 40th on ESPN

Unorthodox big who does most of his work as a ball handler and distributor. Probably the best ball handling big in the draft this year, can handle from the perimeter without set up and without any issues at all. Excellent at playing at a high pace and at pushing the pace, especially in transition and as a grab and go player when he gets defensive rebounds. Grew up playing as a guard until a late grow spurt when he started to play as a big. Because of this he is also an excellent passer and playmaker for the position who displays great feel for the game on the offensive side. 3.6 to 1.8 turnover ratio this season which is elite for a big prospect. Excellent driver and finisher as well, very good explosive athlete, passes very well mostly out of drives but displays great connective passing and can initiate offense in the perimeter as well. Complete non shooter, took a total of 2 3 point attempts in 2 years at San Francisco, not a good free throw shooter at 58% (2.9 attempts per game) in those two years too. Doesn't have a mid range game either. Projects mostly as a small ball center, he's not a good rim protector or defensive anchor and will struggle inside against the bigger and stronger NBA centers. His role will be more as a switching big, he is decent at defending on the perimeter, but not as proven or as consistent as you'd want him to be. Good lateral quickness and can read the floor well so something he could improve a lot in the future. Great rebounder on both sides of the court.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: He is a very unorthodox player who I have a bit of a hard time seeing what his role on an NBA court is. The fact that he is a complete non spacer makes it hard for me to envision him having a role on a team that is likely to play Christian Braun and Peyton Watson heavy minutes, and I think there's a good chance his driving/playmaking ability gets impacted by not being able to shoot. However there are definitely a lot of things to like about him, and things that the Nuggets value quite high. I'd say he's a fit further down the totem pole for me, but definitely someone I would not be mad about getting.
Availability Rating: He's more of a late riser, wasn't really in draft conversation for most of the season, but don't think he's risen enough to be picked in the first round, I think he's far more of an early 2nd round guy. I would say there's a high chance he's available at 28, but at the same time it wouldn't surprise me if someone was to move up into the 25-30 range to take him.

Osasere "Oso" Ighodaro, Marquette, 6'11, 235 lbs, 21 years old, 40th on Tankathon, 55th on ESPN

Small ball center with great playmaking abilities. Averaged 3.1 assists per game over the last two seasons with Marquette who play a motion based offense with a lot of DHO actions. Reads the floor on the half court extremely well, is able to pass people open very comfortably, excellent decision maker who will take what the defense gives him, does not turn the ball over often. Has a pretty good and functional handle, was able to create shots for himself a bit mostly as a driver. Good athlete, but much not an above the rim player, relied more on his unorthodox, but effective push shot and has a bit of a floater game. Don't expect him to be a big lob threat and doesn't have the size/strength to be a very efficient inside player. Not an outside shooter, only took 2 total 3 point attempts in 4 years in college. Career 61% (on 3.6 attempts per game) free throw shooter so nothing to project there either. Doesn't project to be a good interior defender or shot blocker, again not very good size, strength or length (only a 6'11 wingspan) for the position. However he is very good at guarding down and switching onto the perimeter, probably one of the best switch bigs in this draft and that should be his calling card at the NBA level defensively. Below average rebounder on both sides of the court.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: In my opinion he is a fantastic fit with the Denver Nuggets. Just because of how well he passes the ball and how smart of a player he is. I think he can come in and play 15 minutes per game right off the bat without any issue and be that bench DHO hub that the Nuggets have desperately needed for years. Defensively there are some concerns for sure, but I think he is also a really good fit on the Nuggets' switch and recover scheme. One of my personal favorite options for this draft.
Availability Rating: Generally seen as a mid 2nd round, sometimes even as a late 2nd round guy, but don't let that fool you, he will be higher on the board for teams who play with playmaking centers. I do think it's very likely he will be there at 28 and you could even gamble and try getting him in the mid 2nd round, but I would be perfectly happy taking him at 28 and I would not want to risk it.

Ulrich Chomche, NBA Academy Africa, 6'11, 232 lbs, 18 years old, 55th on Tankathon, 41st on ESPN

The youngest player eligible for this draft, will only turn 19 midway through the season on December 30th. Not a player I've personally scouted, at least in a real sense, since I don't have access to NBA Academy tape and only played very few minutes at the Basketball Africa League. Really the big wildcard of the draft, seen as one of the best upside plays this year. Highly athletic center who shows flashes on many skills, like 3 point shooting, ball handling and playmaking. Had interest from some big name colleges like Arizona, USC, Texas, among others for the upcoming season, as well as from the G League Ignite before it was disbanded, but decided to enter the draft. He did play in the combine scrimmages, and the one thing that I can say is that I was impressed by his body, I wasn't expecting him to look as developed as he did. Don't think his body is quite NBA ready yet but does seem far better than many people expected. Basketball wise though, he will definitely need a lot of development before he can play at the NBA level. Like, A LOT of development.
How does he fit with the Nuggets?: "Two years away from being two years away" type of guy, so a hard pass from me. Look I wouldn't hate him as an upside play if we had a more finished roster without big needs, but that is just not the case for this year.
Availability Rating: Who knows honestly. He doesn't really have any buzz, but that's just cause there's really nothing to go off. Don't really see any talk of him going in the 1st, but all it takes is one good workout/scrimmage for some team to take a gamble on him earlier than expected. Could see someone like Toronto or Washington just saying "fuck it let's just take him we got nothing to play for this year" or something like that. Highly likely he makes it to 28, but probably not far into the 2nd round, as NBA teams tend to love these sort of stash upside players who you can just put in your G League team for a year and not think much about it.
Continuing with the second round prospects and targets in the comments, as reddit is a really stupid website with a really stupid character limit which I am very close to reaching.

Hello all, back in November I saw this video where a Youtuber named Leather Apron Club was making the argument that Romans, far from being a culture where men sleeping with men was seen as normal, actively despised homosexuality in all its forms. Tops, bottoms, switches, all were condemned by the great empire.
Now, if you want a much fuller response, I made a whole video that's almost 3 hours long going through every claim he made and source he cited while providing my own examples form historical works as well. But that won't fit in a Reddit post so I’m going to do highlights with timestamps below. He cited a few scholars who I also end up disagreeing with, but I'll leave that part in the video, there's context unrelated to his overall claim there.
Also I originally had links to every source hyperlinked to the text as I mentioned it, but it got caught by Reddit’s spam filters. So in addition to my bibliography in the comments, you can check out my companion doc on my video if you want direct links to everything I talk about here.
TIME PERIOD 5:14
His first claim is that scholars only focus on the period from 200BC - 200AD, that everything outside of that time period is considered deeply anti-gay even by the ‘pro-gay’ scholars. For the end date, he mentions Emperor Philip the Arab banning male prostitution (recorded here, around 245 AD), and Emperor Theodosian passing a law condemning, as he puts it, “known homosexuals” to death by flame. (recorded here, around 390 AD)
However, even the author who recorded Philip the Arab’s ban mentioned himself that

Nevertheless, it still continues to this day.

And that’s about 100 years after the ban would have taken place. For the later law, ignoring that it only targeted male prostitutes, not all homosexual men, we also have a record of a tax called the Chrysargyrum, from several historians, but I’m going to stick with Evagrius here.
In his 3rd book on Roman history, chapter 39, he mentions a tax that affected everyone, including

and also upon women who made a sale of their charms, and surrendered themselves in brothels to promiscuous fornication in the obscure parts of the city; and besides, upon those who were devoted to a prostitution which outraged not only nature but the common weal

Keep in mind Evagrius was a christian priest writing under the Byzantine empire. He claimed that tax was kept in place until emperor Anastasius did away with it, in 491 AD.
We also have records from The Digest, a law book codified under Justinian of the Byzantine empire (around 500 AD), where homosexual men were specifically allowed to appear in court to defend themselves (or prosecute someone else) (3.1.6). They were, notably, banned from being lawyers, but the fact they were allowed and mentioned makes it clear they had a place.
For his earlier bookmark of 200 BC, Leather really just cites a few stories where boys are getting sexually assaulted, all of which is recorded by Valerius Maxmimus, and people are against it.
Not only are those situations clearly non-consensual, one (1.9) involving a boy continually refusing and being beaten, another involving a boy resolutely testifying against his rapist in court, but there is evidence of consensual homosexual relationships being approved of around that time.
First let’s look at Plautus, a playwright from around 200 BC (254-184 BC).
In many of his plays he features prominent male-male loves, usually between a slave and their master, though much of Plautus’ humor came from the slaves obtaining power over their masters in some capacity.
In Curculio, he even makes a point of a character saying

No one forbids any person from going along the public road, so long as he doesn't make a path through the field that's fenced around; so long as you keep yourself away from the wife, the widow, the maiden, youthful age, and free-born children, love what you please.

Even earlier than that we have Etruscan art, from around 500 BC (keep in mind the last several kings of Rome were Etruscan, and it’s said they invented gladiator games, as well as introduced the three big gods into Rome, Jupiter, Minerva, and Juno), showing two men actively naked and together.
So, a lot of gay stuff before and after those dates. He also makes an odd claim that people outside the city of Rome were opposed to homosexuality, but check the video if you want to see my thoughts on that, and the first time I disagree with a scholar, Ramsay MacMullen (who is incredibly full of shit).
Leather also poses a challenge, try to find any depictions of male-male relationships between adults being depicted in media from the time period. I reference the poems of Catullus, where he lusts after not only his adult friend, but a boy of at least the age of 17 who, though he spurned Catullus, was in relationships with other adult men. Catullus was widely respected in his time, even dining with Julius Caesar on a famous occasion.
I also mention depictions of men having sex we can see in frescoes on the baths at Pompeii, and Spintria (coins used for either gambling or brothels), two men of military age featured in the Aeneid, and the eunuch Earinus (8.11, 9.36), lover of emperor Domitian, who had poetry commissioned and published to immortalize their love. Check the video if you want to see any of those.
Leather now moves on to masculinity but this post already is going to be long and that’s not DIRECTLY about being gay so I’ll be very brief here, but it’s in my video if you want.
MASCULINITY (VIRTUS) 26:42
Leather talks about how masculinity was important to Romans, making the claim that sexual conservatism was an important part of that, going on to claim homosexuality, as it doesn’t produce children, was anathema to that. He uses one quote from Cato, a Roman senator active in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, and Cicero, a senator active in the 1st century BC.
Cato’s quote is about him censuring a man for embracing his wife outside the senate house, as displays of affection were seen as ‘unmanly’. However, he literally goes on to joke he only embraced his wife “when it thundered” (aka in the bedroom) and was a happy man when it “thundered loudly”.
For Cicero’s quote, he is saying excessive lust for women is a disease, but, again, this is way out of context. It’s from Cicero’s Tuscan Disputations, in which he is examining various states of the soul, to see if any can be called truly ‘good’ or ‘evil’. If you want the full deep dive it’s in the video, but the short version is Cicero is including things like greed and lust for power in his ‘diseases’, but points out that all of these drives are good in and of themselves. The key is moderation, and not letting yourself become consumed by these desires.
I go on to use quotes by the exact same men to show they were not very sexually conservative, including Cato having a mistress (17, 24), and Cicero attending a dinner party where a married man also has a mistress, and Cicero citing an old greek philosopher as to why he didn’t have a problem with it (Fam 9.26), though he does state he was never interested in having a mistress himself. None of this is really about being gay though.
So let’s move on to:
PASSIVE MEN (PATHICS) 30:38
As a brief note, Romans thought of sex more in terms of roles, if you played the ‘active’ or ‘top’ role, that was seen as masculine, and if you played the ‘passive’ or ‘bottom’ role, that was seen as feminine. They had many terms for men who bottomed, but one of the most common is ‘pathic’ and I like the word so that’s what I’m gonna use.
Leather claims pathic men were despised throughout all of Roman history. When I first watched his video, I wasn’t really uncritical of this, because that’s what I had thought myself. But, as I looked more into both his sources, and things I came across myself, I ended up completely changing my view on this.
His first source to back up his claim is a story of a son, who was a pathic, was banished by his father, some time in the late republic. This comes from Valerius Maximus, with further evidence from a historian named Orosius (5.16.8) that the father actually had his son killed by two of his slaves.
Now, that does sound pretty bad, until you read literally one line later where Orosius says

Upon the accusation of Censor Pompeius, he was tried and found guilty

With Cicero, in a speech in defense of one of his friends, stating the punishment was this father was banished from Rome. Capital punishment was pretty rare for Roman Citizens, so banishment (which included surrendering all your property) was one of the harshest punishments you could get. Though the father clearly had a problem with his son, Roman society, via the legal system, clearly thought the father was in the wrong here, in a way taking the side of the pathic son.
In addition to showing two more of his sources were wrong, and providing even more examples of pathics being seen as okay (including the above-mentioned love poetry commissioned by an emperor for his eunuch, and more about Sporus, the husband of an emperor being politically important after the death of said emperor), I also do a deep dive on Tacitus, another Roman Historian, talking about German culture around 100 AD, and showing the Germans were likely a lil gay themselves.
THE THEATER 40:56
Leather’s claim is the theater was heavily looked down as a place for commoners, with a reputation for attracting drunkards, pimps, and prostitutes. Therefore, whatever was in the theater would be more indicative of what the lower classes thought.
My rebuttal is pretty simple: under Emperor Augustus, there was a law passed that actually reserved front row seats at theaters for senators. There also was a very long history of plays being performed as part of roman religious ceremonies, many funded directly by the senate.
Cicero himself, in a speech to the senate even mentions that ‘everyone’ loves the theater. There’s more stuff about actors and if certain emperors banned plays and whatnot but that’s again sort of tangential to the gay stuff.
Leather then claims there was a very popular play by Juvenal, his second satire, which ruthlessly berated homosexual men.
So, a few things here.

1. Juvenal was NOT a playwright. He was a poet. And, at the time, poetry was seen as an ‘epidemic’ in Rome, with everyone writing poetry and boring people to death by forcing them to listen to it. Juvenal even addressed this in his first satire, starting with ‘what, am I to be a listener only all my days?’
2. Due to that, Juvenal was likely writing for the upper classes. There is actually some interesting debate over whether he was writing for a more conservative audience or was doing a Colbert Report thing and actually mocking conservatives for a more liberal audience, but from everything I tend to think it was more conservative
3. At the same time as Juvenal, there was an EXTREMELY popular book called the Satyricon, which features an all-male love-triangle involving the main character (chs 9-11 are pretty good examples of this).

But back into the second satire. Juvenal does have several lines which can be seen as disapproving of same-sex relations, such as a woman attacking her husband for being pathic, and even going so far as to say pathics should castrate themselves.
The latter scene is taken out of context, it isn’t about homosexuals per-say. It’s from a section called “To Those in the Closet” and is about men pretending to be women, especially participating in religious rituals that traditionally could only be done by women (notably sacrificing to Cybele). While it could be seen as gay, if anything it’s more anti-trans.
But even then, calling that passage anti-gay is tough to square when Juvenal has such lines as

More open and honest than they; who admits his affliction

In his looks and his walk, all of which I attribute to fate.
The vulnerability of such is pitiful, and their passion itself
Deserves our forgiveness
Which seems to hold up the pathic, while denigrating the active partner. This is not to mention his 6th Satire, against marriage, where Juvenal suggests his friend should not marry, but if he had to, pick a boy over a woman, as the boy would nag him less and be more down for sex. His 9th, as well, is him talking to a male prostitute, and isn’t really mocking him even though he mostly talks about his male clients. Again, way more detail in the video, I’m leaving out quite a bit here.
So let’s get back into it by examining:
LEGAL CONDEMNATION OF HOMOSEXUALITY 51:42
There’s one thing I need to lay out for this next section. Most of this centers around a concept in the Roman legal system called ‘infamia’. Infamia was a term of legal and cultural censure that was applied to certain classes of people. This label came with the loss of many privileges normally given to Roman citizens, including voting, running for office, serving in the army, being able to be a lawyer, or bear witness (either in court or for wills).
This, while not great, wasn’t the biggest impact on the lower classes. And some professions in the lower classes guaranteed this.
Gladiators, beast fighters, prostitutes, and potentially SOME types of actors were labeled infamia just for their profession. Most of this seems to revolve around accepting money for your performance, as we have examples from Cicero (with the actor Roscius) and Livy (talking about Atellan Farce actors) where this was not the case.
Your actions could also earn you the label infamia. If a woman committed adultery, she would be labeled infamia. If you welched on a business deal, infamia. Marry multiple women, infamia. Etc etc.
So the claim Leather makes here is that homosexuals were considered infamia during this time period, and he claims the Lex Scantinia was the name of the specific law they were breaking.
This is gonna get a bit long so just skip to the next section if your eyes start to glaze over.
There is a point in history where homosexuals, or at least pathics, did become infamia, but, importantly, we don’t know exactly when that was. We know in the Digest (Byzantine) that pathics (one who has used their body in women’s fashion) were “labeled with infamy”. The problem is, we don’t know exactly when that started.
The Digest was actually a compilation of legal writings from around the empire, and as such many of the contributors were long dead by the time it was published. One quote from the Institutes, a separate legal work packaged with the Digest in the Corpus Juris Civilis, claims

The Lex Julia… punishes with death not only defilers of the marriage-bed, but also those who indulge in criminal intercourse with those of their own sex

(18.4)
But I’m making Leather’s argument for him here. And again, this is from after the fall of Rome, which is the arbitrary end date for our focus here. His argument is there was a law, the Lex Scantinia, which outlawed homosexuality, and that this law was what applied the label of infamia to homosexual men.
However, for some reason he conflates the Lex Scantinia with the qualifications for ‘infamia’ laid out in the digest. That is not true, we actually do not have any surviving text from the Lex Scantinia, we only can guess at it from the references others make to it.
And the references we have include Cicero, being the first to mention it(8.12, 8.14) saying a man tried to use the law to convict one of his friends, but that friend put his accuser on trial and had him convicted.
We also have, again Cicero, saying a man he is defending took a ‘man out into the countryside to satisfy his lusts’ but goes on to say ‘but this is not a crime’ (non crimen est).
We obviously have later emperors engaging in public relationships with men, least of all Trajan (who Dio said was ‘addicted to boys and wine’) and Hadrian.
Leather’s best case is in Juvenal’s second satire, when the wife accuses her cheating husband of breaking the ‘Scantinian’ law.
However, there is a lot of interesting evidence that this law likely banned at least assault on freeborn boys, and possibly sex with them altogether (though we have plenty of evidence of those relationships happening, notably Mark Antony being the youth in a relationship with an older man).
This idea mostly comes from the fact that Scantinia was the name of a politician in the mid republic who famously forced himself on a boy and was punished for it, and a note from another lawyerhetorician named Qunitilian who talked about it using the word ‘puer’ or boy under the age of 17, though in a fictional scenario, and the outcome was the man simply had to pay a fine.
Again, this gets fairly nuanced and I go into a lot more detail in my video, but basically homosexuals were labeled infamia by the time of Justinian, and pathics possibly as early as Theodosian, and we don’t know what the Lex Scantinia was but it probably had to do with protecting young boys, not banning all forms of homosexuality.
So let’s move on to
THE ACTIVE PARTNER 1:05:54
This section is actually, imo, the most boring. If anyone has even just browsed the comments of a meme about Roman sexuality, you’ve likely come across the idea that “it was okay as long as you were the top.” At this point I don’t super believe that anymore, but regardless pretty much everyone will disagree with the take that the active partner was despised or looked down on.
For this section I’m mostly just showing that Leather is either lying, or lacks reading comprehension.
Leather’s first claim is Pompey, a famous senator from the late Republic, was attacked for ‘seeking for another man’. He was, but it’s clear he’s being called pathic in this instance, as he is also attacked for ‘scratching his head with one finger’ which, to the Romans, you’d only do if you were worried about messing up your hair, and caring about your hair is gay pathic.
His second claim is Seneca tells the story of a man who is ‘impure with both sexes’, and that clearly his active role with men brought on part of his censure. Yet, in the actual text, it’s very clear he’s bottoming for the men. Both, arranging mirrors so his dick looks bigger, and ‘taking them in with his mouth’. So again, not active
His third claim is Catullus, the gay poet I mentioned earlier, attacked a man for getting a blowjob from a guy. Ignoring the fact that Catullus never specifies who is giving the man the blowjob, or that the point of that poem is that guy is a good guy and Catullus is kind of the fool in that poem, or that Catullus would go on a poem later to threaten two members of the senate that he’d make them suck him off, Catullus himself wrote openly about wanting to be with other boys, and a woman he was off-and-on-again with for a bit. So it’d be strange for him to condemn active male partners, then to turn around and try to be an active male partner.
His fourth is about a case where an officer very clearly tries to force himself on one of the soldiers serving under him. It’s gay and it’s active, but it’s clearly not consensual, which makes the gay part feel kinda tangential.
His fifth is a quote from the stoic philosopher Epictetus, and I will just ask you to please watch the video for that part (1:14:19). I did a ton of work for this section, using greek dictionaries and comparing passages and comparing instances of certain words appearing in the original greek manuscript and I really am just proud of the work I did there.
But TL;DW the quote is ‘what does the man who makes the pathic what he is lose? Many things, and he also becomes less of a man’ but my argument is Epictetus has other quotes seeming to accept at least same-sex attraction, and the original greek could be read as something more like ‘what does the one who arranges for the pathic’ and there’s a later line where Epictetus says you could make money off it and so my argument is it’s about pimping.
Leather’s last quote he just is confused again. It’s about Suilius Caesonius, a pathic who lived under Emperor Claudius. Emperor Claudius’ wife, Messalina, slept around so much she tried to coup him. When Claudius came back to Rome and put all the members of the conspiracy to death, Suilius was let off the hook, explicitly because he was pathic. Leather asks if that means active gay men were condemned, otherwise why say this man was pathic, but it’s because he never actually slept with the emperor’s wife, as he was a bottom through and through.
Anyway, we’re halfway through.
SLAVES (1:22:19)
The main argument from Leather here is pro-gay scholars will argue homosexual sex with slaves happened, but Leather argues this was usually condemned and spoken out against.
So Leather’s first point, he just completely made up. It’s not 100% his fault, because one of the scholars he got a lot of these mined quotes from, notably Ramsay MacMullen, was the one to make this quote up, and Leather just copied it without bothering to do any research, but still.
If you want a deep dive check out my video again, but I feel like a broken record. Point is he added words to a quote to change the meaning.
The original quote is “But how you rich remodel your marriages. Remodel? Other pleasures carry you off. Those slaves of yours, those boys imitating women.”
Leather puts it as “You rich… don’t marry, you only have those toys of yours, those boys imitating women.”
So those ellipses skip a ton, and he then goes on to simply add words. And the guy saying the quote is envious of the rich guy if anything, so not only is this not putting down sex with slaves, it’s sort of displaying it as a privilege of the rich.
He goes over a few more quotes and even scenes from plays just showing that men could have sex with their slaves, which I agree with, but he gets his framing for a lot of them wrong, as he’s building towards the argument that this practice was frowned upon and occasionally openly criticized. But, on the face of his argument, I don’t disagree with the premise.
Then he gets into quotes talking about how sex with slaves was condemned. His first is from the stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus, where he says

if one is to behave temperately, one would not dare to have relationship with a prostitute; nor with a free woman outside of marriage; nor even, by Zeus, with one’s own slave woman

But what Leather leaves out here, is that Rufus was incredibly radical, not just for his time but even by today’s standards. He further advocated that you should NEVER have sex unless it’s explicitly for procreation. Wife gets pregnant? No more sex until the baby comes. Want to try anal? Literally why. So you or wifey is sterile? Congrats, you’re also celibate now too.
Does this condemn sex with slaves? Yes, but it did not fit in with any of the other ideas at the time. Keep in mind Rufus wrote this during the reign of Nero.
Next is another Cato moment Leather again gets wrong. He claims it’s Cato arguing for censure of a man for sleeping with his slave boy. But the story at the quoted section is about this man murdering an asylum seeker in cold blood to impress his young lover, the lover is not condemned, and their relationship itself was not called into question. Remember earlier, when Cato had a mistress? That mistress was one of his slave girls.
And lastly is another Cato story, where supposedly a man was punished for buying boy slaves, but these were public slaves meant to work on public works projects, and so Cato was upset about this guy basically stealing from the Roman people, not the fact he was buying slave boys.
There is a little bit in the next section about adultery but honestly I’m getting tired just writing this so I’ll stick to the main topic of
PEDERASTY 1:40:26
Leather’s main argument here is pro-gay scholars would argue pederasty was seen as okay within the roman world, and this contributed to them being known as a gay society. However, leather claims that while it did occur, it was universally condemned by all at all times.
I go into a bit more poetry, namely Virgil and Horace, where they talk about either their, or their characters’ love of boys, and one moment from Herodian’s History where Emperor Commodus was said to share a bed with a young boy he kept around the palace naked. Going on to say keeping young boys like this was fashionable among the upper classes. All of these depctions were both widely read, and positive.
Leather’s first real quote is talking about Mark Antony, and how he was a young boy in a pederastic relationship. This is being relayed to us by Cicero in a speech attacking Mark Antony.
However, what Leather leaves out is Mark Antony was the one pursuing the relationship with the older boy, going so far as to break into the older boy’s father’s estate when that father tried to separate the two. The older boy even begged Cicero to talk to his father, which Cicero did, evidently allowing their relationship to continue unimpeded. Again, this relationship is not shown as negative, it’s Mark Antony’s excessive desire that is being mocked, in a larger speech about how he is not a good man and is not in control of himself or his emotions.
Brief note here, I’m not personally trying to celebrate or say these types of relationships are good, or that young boys have the freedom to choose to date older people, I’m merely saying that’s how ancient Rome, where the marrying age for women was 10, saw things.
Then two more Cicero quotes, one where he says of a witness about to come up in a court case “I know his habits, his licentious ways.” But he continues that he will not state what he is about to argue, because he knows if he reveals his hand now the witness will change his testimony, the ‘licentious ways’ is a tendency to lie, not a tendency to be gay.
The next is another court case which again Leather is wrongly interpreting.
We’ll skip the next section about Stoicism because we’ve covered most of the stoics he mentions, and when he randomly starts talking about Plato it really has nothing to do with Romans or stoics so we’ll move right into
GAY EMPERORS BABY LET’S GOOOOO 1:58:54
So I’m going to leave most of this in my video, as Leather’s arguments are basically good emperors weren’t gay, and all the gay emperors were bad.
He claims Caesar wasn’t gay, which, maybe, but there’s more evidence he leaves out. He claims Augustus wasn’t gay, even though we have multiple historians writing about how he hung out with young boys a little too much, Suetonius even telling us he ‘collected’ them.
When it comes to Tiberius, he claims he never was gay on the Isle of Capri, even though again, Tacitus, Dio, and Suetonius all tell us he was, and all of them mentioning he was with men even outside of that island.
Nero I have a huge fight with him about, I’m actually doing another video on this topic right now, but short version is it seems like a bunch of people really liked Nero, and his husband Sporus had relationships with the guy who never officially took the throne but made a play for it, and another guy who did take the throne, namely Otho.
There’s a bunch more I’m leaving out, but I want to get to some letters between Marcus Aurelius and his tutor Fronto.
But first here’s a rundown of the first 14 emperors and if any historians wrote about them being with men.

1. Augustus, see above, Suet Aug 69
2. Tiberius, see above, Tacitcus Annals 6.1
3. Caligula, Suet Calig 36, had an ongoing sexual relationship with a male dancer
4. Claudius, Suetonius Claudius 33
5. Nero, he’s gay
6. Galba, see above, Suet Galba 22
7. Otho, see above, Dio 63.8
8. Vitellius Dio 63.4.2
9. Vespasian, no claims of homosexual relations
10. Titus, Suetonius Titus 7 kept a ‘troop of catamites’ around him
11. Domitian, see above, Martial Epigrams 9.11, 9.36 Earinus
12. Trajan, spoiler alert, but Dio 68.7.4
13. Hadrian, keep reading, or watching, but VERY gay.
14. Nerva is the only maybe, one accusation, but clearly to malign Domitian, Suet Dom 1.1 Further reading here

Anyway. I also take a look at some letters between Marcus Aurelius and his tutor Fronto, which contain very charged passaged. Marcus writes things like

Farewell, breath of my life. Should I not burn with love of you, who have written to me as you have! What shall I do? I cannot cease.
For I am in love and this, if nothing else, ought, I think, verily to be allowed to lovers, that they should have greater joy in the triumph of their loved ones. Ours, then, is the triumph, ours, I say.

And Fronto responding with things like

Whenever “with soft slumber’s chains around me,” as the poet says, I see you in my dreams, there is never a time but I embrace and kiss you: then, according to the tenor of each dream, I either weep copiously or am transported with some great joy and pleasure. This is one proof of my love, taken from the Annals,! a poetical and certainly a dreamy one.
Wherefore, even if there is any adequate reason for your love for me, I beseech you, Caesar, let us take diligent pains to conceal and ignore it. Let men doubt, discuss, dispute, guess, puzzle over the origin of our love as over the fountains of the Nile.

And I do way more in the video. Now, I’m not claiming this is a smoking gun that Marcus Aurelius was gay, even in my video and companion doc I cite one piece that I think is somewhat neutral and one that specifically disagrees with my take, but the evidence being there I find relevant to the question of the acceptance of homosexuality.
There is also a massive examination of Hadrian and his lover Antinious, as Leather claims there’s no evidence they were ever gay together, and I look at poetry, the tondos you can still see today in the Arch of Constantine, and dive again into ancient greek to show Dio describes their love using the word ‘erota’, so pretty sexually charged.
Well, I’m almost out of space, but we really only have one section left. There’s technically one more about one specific story, the Cult of Bacchus, but I’ll be honest with you it’s Leather misinterpreting again and it’s kind of boring. But you know what isn’t boring?
GRAFFITI 2:39:40
Thanks for reading this far, I’ll keep it short and sweet. Leather tries to argue that most of the complete sentences we have in graffiti is non-sexual, which is almost right, most is names or ‘so and so was here’, most of Rome wasn’t literate after all, but outside of that, most of the sentences had to do with sex or love.
Leather then talks about 3 graffiti found in Pompeii often used to show how gay they were back then. “Amplicatius, I know that Icarus is fucking you. Salvius wrote this.” He claims this could very well be a joke on these three men, written by a fourth party, which, honestly is not the worst explanation, so I’ll give him that one.
His next is “I have fucked men”. Leather claims this was scrawled on a guy’s house and was likely a prank. Which, like, it was inside a house, first off, the House of Orpheus to be exact, and was surrounded by a bunch of other graffiti. It’d be kind of a weird prank to put that on the inside of someone’s house, next to a bunch of other graffiti, and expect people reading it to be like “oh haha, he got you Orpheus! Now we all think you fuck men.”
His last is one of my favorites “Weep you girls, my penis has give you up, now it penetrates mens’ behinds. Goodbye wondrous femininity.” Leather acknowledges this is gay, but then says so much graffiti is joking that this likely is too. Which… obviously I disagree, but it’s such a nebulous claim it’s kind of hard to argue against. So, in my video, I just give a ton more graffiti which are unambiguously gay. Including one description of an apparently gorgeous mule driver.
And, that’s basically it. Leather ends the video by saying he’s ‘just pushing back’ and signs off.
So to briefly sum it all up: Romans were gay. Almost all of their first 16 or so emperors were gay, they regularly had plays and books where men got together, and poets often wrote erotic poetry aimed at other men. I didn’t have time to get into it, but even very prominent politicians were openly gay and not only not censured for it, but wielded quite a bit of political power. Later, as the empire Christianized, the law of Moses did seem to sway people away from it, with Justinian eventually begging gay men to repent so God would improve their harvests. But it took a long time to get there, and it’s pretty safe to say Rome was gay for at least 1000 years.
Feel free to ask me any questions or anything, I honestly just got really pissed off and wasted 6 months of my life becoming an expert on ancient gay sex in Rome. Hope you enjoyed it!

I'll go first. They would be based off dragons.
Selene (セレーネ Serēne), also known as The Moon Dragon God
In Human form, Selene takes on the appearance of a buxom and a curvaceous woman with her long blonde hair extending to her hips. For attire, Selene dons a loose kimono with fur lining on the top while also having flower designs all over it as well as zigzag lines on its edges. The back of her kimono has another layer of cloth with no intricate designs. Her head is covered by a hood adorned with an upward crescent moon with a gem on top as well as a pair of wings on each side. She also has a pair of socks while wearing wooden sandals.[2]
In Dragon form, Selene has a long elongated body, most of it covered in scales with white fur on her long neck and black fur from the joints of her limbs and black markings on her shoulders. She also has several white furry tail-like wings with black tips. Her head is shaped with a snout, having a small beard, black markings around the eyes, pointy ears and large crescent shaped horns protruding back with black tips.[3]
Moon Dragon Slayer Magic (月の滅竜魔法 Tsuki no Metsuryū Mahō): Selene can utilize elemental Dragon Slayer Magic like all the other Five Dragon Gods, the element, in this case, is the stars[16]and the moon.[17] Selene uses this Magic to make her surroundings appear to be at nighttime with her own artificial moon and uses it to create an explosion that transports her targets into a different world, as well as offensive purposes such as pinpoint laser beam attacks.[18
Aldoron
Aldoron (アルドロン Arudoron), also known as The Wood Dragon God
Aldoron is the largest Dragon God in the world, his body in encompassed by all tree bark, with tree and other wood-like features adorning him. His face is mainly a large plank with small slits as his eyes and mouth, with a pair of wooden horns protruding from his head.[1] Originally, Aldoron is not as big as he is currently but his body was still large enough to bear a single town.[2] Currently, his shoulders, both hands, and back all have cities of Drasil upon them.[3] When awake
Wood Dragon Slayer Magic (木の滅竜魔法 Ki no Metsuryū Mahō): Aldoron can utilize elemental Dragon Slayer Magic like all the other Five Dragon Gods, the element in case is wood. Aldoron can also use this Magic to grow multiple large trees from the ground and attack his airborne targets.[8
Ignia (イグニア Igunia), also known as The Fire Dragon God
Ignia heavily resembles his father, having inherited Igneel’s dark-red scales, beige underside, and horn-tipped nose. Being a dragon, he is large in size with bat-like wings, and sports canine teeth and sharp claws. Ignia bears several caudal spines around his face, with a large crystal-like horn protruding from the top of his head. Two fire-like tattoos can be seen on his chest, and flames radiate off various parts of his body.[3]
In human form, Ignia takes on the appearance of a toned, muscular man. His dark orange hair is styled upwards, with the tips somewhat tinged and two strands framing the sides of his head. He has several red tattoos on his upper body, including flame-like ones on his face, a red sun that covers much of his left pectoral, and a tribal design that runs down his left arm. For attire, Ignia dons loose pants with a fur lining in the middle: the top is dark-colored while the bottom is light. He wears a wrap around his waist, with an apron-like cloth over his pants, bearing diamond shapes and an X-design. Bandages cover his right forearm, and his accessories include three triangular dangling earrings on each ear, and a large gold chain with a cross-shaped pendant around his neck.[4]
Fire Dragon Slayer Magic (炎の滅竜魔法 Honō no Metsuryū Mahō): Ignia can utilize Fire Dragon Slayer Magic similar to his father, but to an even higher degree, such as creating multiple pillars of fire that falls from the sky.[12
Mercphobia (メルクフォビア Merukufobia), also known as The Water Dragon God
Mercphobia's appearance is similar to that of a Sea Serpent, with a scaly underside, large wings, razor-sharp teeth, two massive tusks protruding from his upper jaw, and a long, pointed nose. He bears a tribal-like design on his face while maintaining his two horns. Mercphobia is enormous even for a dragon; being stated to be larger in size than the fire dragon, Igneel[2] and being shown to dwarf the aforementioned dragon's son Ignia.[3]
In his human form, Mercphobia appears as a young man with shoulder-length hair, two long horns, and a facial tattoo over his right eye. He dons a dark coat over a long shirt, accompanied by loose pants tucked into pirate boots. His accessories include a necklace with three circular ornaments and black gloves that only partially cover his palm.[4]
Water Dragon Slayer Magic (水の滅竜魔法 Mizu no Metsuryū Mahō): Mercphobia can utilize Water Dragon Slayer Magic to a high degree, such as splitting the ocean, creating a barrier,[29] even moving the sea into the sky, creating pillars of water, converting ice to water in an instant and creating a giant deadly whirlpool.[30] He is also able to cover his body with water giving him immunity against Natsu Dragneel's Crimson Lotus: Exploding Flame Blade.[31]
Viernes (ビエルネス Bierunesu), also known as The Gold Dragon God (金
Viernes is a large metallic Dragon with gold scales, having the body shape of a sphinx with feathered wings. He has two backwards protruding horns, his head resembles that of a pharaoh’s headdress; Nemes along with a beard, with two halo-like rings over his head
Gold Dragon Slayer Magic (金の滅竜魔法 Kin no Metsuryū Mahō): Viernes can utilize elemental Dragon Slayer Magic like all the other Five Dragon Gods, the element in case is gold.[4
Irene The Sage Dragon (賢竜 Kenryū)
Irene is a tall, voluptuous woman with thickly braided, bow-adorned, scarlet hair. Her two front braids have two golden ornaments near the upper sections; she also wears two U-shaped earrings (one on each ear), and wears red lipstick.
For clothing, Irene dons a risqué version of the typical witch's garb. Her black top has a diamond-shaped opening, exposing a portion of her breasts, and a heart-shaped pattern around the borders. It extends down to the naval of her stomach where it meets a large angular scar, is draped over by a dark-colored cape with a light-colored inside and two medallion gold-like ornaments, and is held together by a golden chain. Not left bare, too, her neck is decorated by other small cloth-based accessories, including a wide bow. Additionally, Irene wears an elongated black loincloth with the symbol of the Alvarez Empire emblazoned on its front, having white borders on its edges and being connected to another cloth piece with the very same heart-shaped design. She also wears black thigh-high boots with heels that have a white-colored border near the top and gloves of the same color and design, only having claw-like extensions. Her black witch's hat is much larger than her head and possesses dreadlock designs with white bandaging near its ends. It also has a fur lining near its edges.
As a Dragon, Irene is many times larger than the average human, with light-colored scales running all over her body. She has a dark-colored fiery-man running down her back and arms, which appear to be connected to her feathery wings. While having three pairs of extensions from her jaw, Irene has a dark-colored wing-like design over her eyes that's complemented by two oval designs right above it, the bigger one on the bottom and the smaller one on top. She also has them on her paws, four extending from the forearm and three on each finger. There's a noticeable border abover her nostrils that divides her mouth from her face, extending near the back of her head. Finally, Irene has a pair of jagged horns extending from the base of her skull and feather-like scales extending from the back of her knees.
Enchant Magic (付加術 Fukajutsu): Irene has shown extremely high proficiency in the art of enchantment; so much that she's classified as a High Enchanter (高位付加術士ハイエンチャンター Hai Enchantā), evidenced by her ability to change and alter landscapes, climates, and the terra firma of the world, as well as manipulate the atmosphere, objects, people,[35][66][67][68] even able to turn inanimate objects into fully functioning people or humans into animals
Quetzalcoatl
In her human form, Quetzalcoatl is a tall, fair-skinned and hour-glass figure woman with enormously large breasts. She has long, wavy blonde hair, in the anime her hair takes on a turquoise and green color at the ends. She has heterochromia, where one iris has a different coloration from the other. Her left eye is navy blue on the outside and yellow on the inside, with a green, slit pupil. Her right eye is green on the outside with designs and black on the inside with a yellow, slit pupil. Although she tends to keep her eyes closed most of the time. Like Tohru, Quetzalcoatl keeps her horns but does not retain her tail, or decides to keep it hidden. When she first arrives at Kobayashi's home, she dons a pink cap, a choker, and necklace (only in the manga), a black tank top that exposes her cleavage and stomach (covers her stomach in the anime), jean booty-shorts that reveal a generous portion of her buttocks (in anime), thigh-high black stockings, and pink shoes. She does not wear a bra, which allows her voluminous breasts to jiggle and bounce without much restraint with every movement she makes, creating a distracting environment to those around her, especially males. However, this seemed to be advantageous as it helped a young boy named Shouta Magatsuchi win a relay race as many of the other male runners were distracted by her breasts bouncing. Kobayashi even comments that her outfit "does not leave much to the imagination."
Her dragon form takes the appearance of a large "amphithere" dragon with broad feathered wings and a mask-like skull. At one point she refers to herself as a "Feathered Serpent." She is by far one of the largest dragons.
Her height is 185cm while in human form and incalculable as a dragon and her measurements are B120/W70/H85.
Quetzalcoatl possesses the conventional powers of the Mexican Gods. He has superhuman strength (Class 50 perhaps) and endurance plus mystical abilities enabling him to fly and command ambient elemental energies, such as having control over the air and wind. He can also teleport under certain conditions.
Tiamat
In her normal dragon form, Tiamat has the appearance of a pale blue Western Dragon with celestial blue scales.
In her human form, she has the appearance of a beautiful woman with straight and long beautiful pale blue hair, dark blue eyes, and a cold atmosphere that radiates from her beauty. She possesses an extremely powerful dragon aura within her body. She also wears a navy blue skirt, and her entire body is doused with the color of deep blue.
Powers: Has power over light/storms
Ddraig
Ddraig is a dragon with the appearance of a large red Western Dragon, with a long neck and green eyes (described as red in Volume 2). He also has red and golden spikes throughout his body.
Doubling and Transference (倍増と譲渡, Baizō to Jōto): One of the powers he developed during his rivalry with Albion. Ddraig is known for his ability to multiply his own powers and transfer that multiplied power into another being or object.

24/25 cap sheet for returning players:
Curry: 55.76
Wiggins: 26.27
Green: 24.1
GP2: 9.13
Looney: 8.00
Kuminga: 7.63
Moody: 5.8
Podz: 3.51
TJD: 1.89
Gui: 1.89
10 players for total for 24/25: $142.09 Mil
If we want the ability to use the bi-annual exception ($4.68 mil) and the NTPMLE ($12.86 mil) we would have to hard cap ourselves at the first apron
First apron limit: $178.65 mil
NTPLME: $12.86 mil
BAE: $4.68 mil
Money left for resigning own players $19.02 mil (roughly)
This obviously changes if we restructure GP2’s contract or waive looney who has a 3mil dead cap hit.
I believe I got the info right but correct me if anything seems wrong!
Personally believe getting these two exceptions can help us out greatly in shoring up our current roster but will really depend on the hometown discount klay is willing to take