November 2026. In the weeks after Chantal's stunning victory in extemporaneous speaking at Duke, an online inter-state tournament, Gaston, one of the Venomous Agendas' Congressional players, was compelled to start organizing fundraisers in earnest. Especially since entering the Tournament of Champions, or ToC, held at the University of Kentucky, became all too real to the Venomous Agendas. Each entrant needed two bids earned by placing at inter-state tournaments.
To the surprise of many, Gaston earned a ToC bid by finishing sixth at Duke; never did the devotees of the humanities and social studies faction expect Congressional players to earn one, or even the LD players. However, Chantal finished second at Grapevine as well, and thus became the first to be fully qualified. And who could forget about the top public forum pair, going as far as quarterfinals at Duke? (The OO player was replaced by a second PF pair)
During a band rehearsal, the concertmaster approaches Anna, believing he does well, and then makes a suggestion that raises eyebrows of so many on band:
"It seems that you're very close to the debate team. I wager the concertmaster position that you won't play a single game of... what you call it?" the first chair violinist seems to be losing his words.
"Lincoln-Douglas" Anna corrects the first chair violinist.
"That you won't play a single Lincoln-Douglas game for the rest of the semester!"
Is it a good idea to bet on this? As much as I could need a little leadership for college, winning the concertmaster position on a wager could haunt me later. Nevertheless, on a musical level, the first chair violinist and I are more or less on the same level, Anna starts thinking, especially since Sadie is the quiz bowl team captain, Chantal for the debate team...
She then spends a whole weekend to familiarize herself with the basics of traditional Lincoln-Douglas, as well as doing her research for the current topic, with the other LD player.
When the debate team's fundraiser begins at the auditorium, a freshman on the second PF pair starts by giving a short speech about how the fundraiser is going to proceed.
"Since several of us on the debate team were made to feel like they receive endless requests for help with coursework, we will auction off the right to ask a particular player for help outside of existing group projects for the rest of the week. All proceeds will go towards the debate team fund for attending debate national championships"
The would-be auctioneer starts by introducing the students whose help is being auctioned off for the week. Obviously, the novice public forum pair doesn't fetch the same sums as even "lesser" Congressional or Lincoln-Douglas players, let alone those players who can realistically earn ToC bids.
Then the second item on the program begins with Daisy introducing it to an audience who paid for tickets to this show:
"For this phase of the show, we'll have a traditional Lincoln-Douglas round, or game as we refer to it internally, with Anna Tessier on the affirmative, and Gaston Malton on the negative. They will be debating the following topic..."
The topic is simply the NSDA topic for November and December. While Anna delivers a 6-minute opening statement that, after the values and value criteria are laid out, feels heavy on philosophical and analytical arguments, as usual for traditional LD, Gaston, during the 3-minute cross-examination, clearly shows that he runs much more pragmatic arguments. And he spends much more time answering Anna's arguments in the following 7 minutes than making his own case.
For months Gaston tried to make me play LD, believing that LD was what I could play best. He's smart, yes, I mean, so am I, he just doesn't think the same as I. Here I am now, playing a LD game against him, he's actually pretty easy to follow, and I can very easily see that he's very dependent on context to argue, but maybe playing Congressional debate did that to him, Anna reflects on how she viewed LD in the past few months. Then comes the second cross-examination phase:
"It appears that the examples you offered, while pointing at valid practical concerns, are specific to their contexts and therefore their validity is clearly limited. My first question is..." Anna starts asking Gaston, while her mind makes questions faster than she can ask them.
And a lot more questions than Anna can possibly ask in just 3 minutes. Anna is good for a novice, but, as far as LD is concerned, she is just that: a novice. Neither one is using the kinds of cards we usually see in higher-level games, and often LD players will cite philosophy books on cards. Post-modernist ones are common in inter-state tournaments. That said, it appears that Gaston was much closer to the truth than he would like to admit, Daisy muses while Anna starts her 4-minute rebuttal speech, with a few remarks about how reality can force someone's values and/or value criteria to change. She acknowledges secretly the 4-minute stretch pushes her brain much harder than she expected, but it's still a level of mental intensity she can handle.
Then comes a 6-minute speech during which Gaston attempts to both respond to Anna and to summarize the game for the audience, while remaining mindful of not introducing new arguments or evidence. Going into the final moments of the game, they both feel the game is divisive, with one running a more pragmatic approach and the other going more into the principles and values.
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And the game's divisiveness is reflected in the 3-minute closing statement Anna delivers. Yet so many in the crowd didn't believe they were dealing with LD novices. Gaston opened up too many issues and Anna decided to focus on the issues she feels are the most common, Daisy reflects on this game, which, to so many, was a breath of fresh air compared to what they often hear in political and media discourse. Until now, the town's residents either considered debate of this nature as being intellectually inaccessible to them or as some verbal jousting between two or four people, with the people closest to the players knowing the whole truth.
Once this game ends, Sadie and Chantal get up on stage for their own part in this fundraising show: duo interp. Except they aren't following the entire ruleset of duo since their script is original and their 10-minute play is about how overwhelmed they feel about juggling school, debate and whatever their secondary team is. So many in the crowd gasp at various points in their piece they are wondering why these two stress out so much.
"If you think our star players stress out, it doesn't spare us, even though the ToC or Nats are pipe dreams for some of us playing LD or Cong" Daisy comments at the end of the show.
"We Congressional players must juggle theater with debate, and both are stressful. So we are in essence having two parts to play: Congressmen in debate tournaments, and whatever we play on stage for the semester. Now, before you tell us that one is more demanding than the other, it's really just different kinds of demands" Gaston adds to what Daisy said.
"Not to mention that the theater teacher had us tutor the other actors" another Congressional player points out. "The teacher thinks we have a moral obligation to support the actors thick and thin, even outside of rehearsals"
The debate team seems to be using the fundraiser to wash its dirty linen in public, Daisy thinks while hoping that a few people in the crowd would listen to this even when they may not have listened to the arguments laid out during the LD game between Anna and Gaston. Gaston thinks we are still overshadowed enough by mathletics and quiz bowl that we can afford to risk the fallout of auctioning the rights to get academic help from us, even when finals are still some time away. That might have been true in, say, the neighboring parish, but I believe people will think of us as greedy prime donne now.
The show goes on nonetheless, with the other LD player performing what looks like POI, the other Congressional players doing humorous sketches, and everyone else doing dramatic sketches. But it makes this fundraiser feel more like a theater play than it does a debate tournament.
After this acting cacophony the debate team calls a fundraising show ends, a while later, Daisy asks both Anna and Gaston about how they feel playing LD.
"How do you feel about playing LD?" Daisy asks both players.
"It's very mentally intense; I mustn't play it too much. It's good for a while, my brain seems to like it provided I have enough energy. Which can be drained pretty quickly in a round" Anna answers Daisy. "Even more so considering all the practices and research I had before this round take some time and mental resources"
"Values can mean anything and everything, and the topics feel a little abstract to me. That's why I'm not playing LD" Gaston answers her.
Wait, why did Anna even play LD on the show even though she is not actually on the team? a thought crosses Daisy's mind.
"Anna, what made you play LD here? Just a few months ago, you had a fight with Gaston over LD that made you not want to play on the debate team" Daisy asks Anna, while flashbacks from that fight surface in her mind.
"I made a wager with the band kids" Anna answers Daisy's question.
"Speaking of band kid, I lost my wager. I wagered the first chair that you wouldn't play a Lincoln-Douglas round before the end of the semester" the first chair violinist tells Anna, sighing in her red hair's direction.
"Now I am going to perform from the first chair"
Clearly I am more than simply a smart kid to the eyes of the band kids. There are other smart kids in band, but their minds just don't work the same, Anna muses, realizing that game gave her a different meaning to that fight over the benefits of debate during karaoke night.
Now I feel like I am the one-dimensional kid. I feel like, far from easing my pressures, going there leaves me with more questions than before, but on vastly different topics, Valerie who, up to this point, kept quiet, ponders what to ask or tell Anna. She feels like both Anna and Chantal are better-rounded, both academically and intellectually than she is right now.
"Anna, because there is never any quiz bowl being played here, it's only now I realize what I'm missing on. I know, Anna, I'm not... dumb, it's just that I focused so much on math that I don't learn much about non-math subjects outside of what's covered in class. And I feel that's going to hurt me" Valerie then confides in her fellow band member.
"At the same time, you cannot know everything. Something's gotta give, and you must prioritize. However, you know how much confidence I have in your intelligence. I'm sure you can pick up the missing pieces you feel you need the summer after senior year" Anna then proceeds to tell her. "I will tell you a few starting points if you want"
The way I see it, she's about as smart as I. She reminds me a lot of myself in my novice season. Of how it took me only about half a season to go from novice to varsity LD, Daisy reflects on how Anna was playing. These reflections end when a spectator makes a comment:
"Where we come from, the debate team would never have had the opportunity to run its own show!" a parent of a debater from the neighboring parish laments to the producers of the show.
"Where do you come from? Another school in the parish or from outside?" Daisy asks.
"The neighboring parish. It's the kind of school where even being a starter in debate tournaments would brand you as a nerd, with all the consequences it carries, let alone winning ToC bids!" the rival parent continues.
"Even I can imagine your school being a place where you can get bullied because of your intellect, irrespective of what other traits you have" Gaston adds to this conversation with the neighboring parish's parent. "Am I right?"
"Yes. I can confidently say that even Anna would have been our star debater from day one. Our debaters are either unremarkable intellectually but can speak or might be smart but can't speak all that well" the rival parent adds. "Our speech standout is the class clown, and hence turned to humorous interp"
If only even Anna could transfer to us... we would finally have someone with both brains and eloquence! And help us in quiz bowl as well, apparently. I could see it from here: the state championship final in LD being Anna vs whoever plays LD best among the Venomous Agendas! One can dream, the parent starts daydreaming about Anna as a Major (i.e., a player for the neighboring parish).