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etakeh · 3 years

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I posted this as part of something else earlier, but I feel like it’s important enough for it’s own post.

Back in the 80′s, Al Gore’s wife & friends decided that Rock Music was The Devil. Sometimes literally. So they started up a little group called the PMRC -

Dee Snider, lead singer and songwriter for Twisted Sister, testified at a senate hearing about it.

Transcript, courtesy this internet web page, with full contents of the hearing here. I encourage you to at least look at that contents page, to see who was involved in the hearing. John Denver, Frank Zappa, and Uncle Al Gore, MTV.

Any emphasis added is my own.

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I do not know if it is morning or afternoon. I will say both. Good morning and good afternoon.

My name is Dee Snider. That is S-n-i-d-e-r. I have been asked to come here to present my views on "the subject of the content of certain sound recordings and suggestions that recording packages be labeled to provide a warning to prospective purchasers of sexually explicit or other potentially offensive content."

Before I get into that, I would like to tell the committee a little bit about myself. I am 30 years old, I am married, I have a 3-year-old son. I was born and raised a Christian and I still adhere to those principles. Believe it or not, I do not smoke, I do not drink, and I do not do drugs.

I do play in and write the songs for a rock and roll band named Twisted Sister that is classified as heavy metal, and I pride myself on writing songs that are consistent with my above-mentioned beliefs.

There are many facets to this complex issue and time does not permit me to address all of them. However, my feelings are expressed for the most part by the August 5, 1985, letter to the Parents Music Resource Center from Mr. Stanley Gortikov, president of the Recording Industry Association of America.

This letter was a formal response to the PMRC petition of the RIAA. The only part of this document I do not support is Mr. Gortikov's unnecessary and unfortunate decision to agree to a so-called generic label on some selected records. In my opinion this should be retracted.

Since I seem to be the only person addressing this committee today who has been a direct target of accusations from the presumably responsible PMRC, I would like to use this occasion to speak on a more personal note and show just how unfair the whole concept of lyrical interpretation and judgment can be and how many times this can amount to little more than character assassination.

I have taken the liberty of distributing to you material and lyrics pertaining to these accusations. There were three attacks in particular which I would like to address.

Accusation No. 1. This attack was contained in an article written by Tipper Gore, which was given the forum of a full page in my hometown newspaper on Long Island. In this article Ms. Gore claimed that one of my songs, "Under the Blade," had lyrics encouraging sadomasochism, bondage, and rape.

The lyrics she quoted have absolutely nothing to do with these topics. On the contrary, the words in question are about surgery and the fear that it instills in people. Furthermore, the reader of this article is led to believe that the three lines she quotes go together in the song when, as you can see, from reading the lyrics, the first two lines she cites are an edited phrase from the second verse and the third line is a misquote of a line from the chorus.

That the writer could misquote me is curious, since we make it a point to print all our lyrics on the inner sleeve of every album. As the creator of "Under the Blade," I can say categorically that the only sadomasochism, bondage, and rape in this song is in the mind of Ms. Gore.

Accusation No. 2. The PMRC has made public a list of 15 of what they feel are some of the most blatant songs lyrically. On this list is our song "We're Not Gonna Take It," upon which has been bestowed a "V" rating, indicating violent lyrical content.

You will note from the lyrics before you that there is absolutely no violence of any type either sung about or implied anywhere in the song. Now, it strikes me that the PMRC may have confused our video presentation for this song with the song with the lyrics, with the meaning of the lyrics.

It is no secret that the videos often depict story lines completely unrelated to the lyrics of the song they accompany. The video "We're Not Gonna Take It" was simply meant to be a cartoon with human actors playing variations on the Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote theme. Each stunt was selected from my extensive personal collection of cartoons.

You will note when you watch the entire video that after each catastrophe our villain suffers through, in the next sequence he reappears unharmed by any previous attack, no worse for the wear.

By the way, I am very pleased to note that the United Way of America has been granted a request to use portions of our "We're Not Gonna Take It" video in a program they are producing on the subject of the changing American family. They asked for it because of its "light-hearted way of talking about communicating with teenagers."

It is gratifying that an organization as respected as the United Way of America appreciates where we are coming from. I have included a copy of the United Way's request as part of my written testimony. Thank you, United Way.

Accusation No. 3. Last Tuesday a public forum regarding the lyric controversy was held in New York. Among the panelists was Ms. Gore. Trying to stem the virtual tidal wave of antiratings sentiment coming from the audience, Ms. Gore made the following statement:

I agree this is a small percentage of all music, thank goodness. But it is becoming more mainstream. You look at even the t-shirts that kids wear and you see Twisted Sister and a woman in handcuffs sort of spread-eagled.

This is an outright lie. Not only have we never sold a shirt of this type; we have always taken great pains to steer clear of sexism in our merchandise, records, stage show, and personal lives. Furthermore, we have always promoted the belief that rock and roll should not be sexist, but should cater to males and females equally.

I feel that an accusation of this type is irresponsible, damaging to our reputation, and slanderous. I defy Ms. Gore to produce such a shirt to back up her claim. I am tired of running into kids on the street who tell me that they cannot play our records any more because of the misinformation their parents are being fed by the PMRC on TV and in the newspapers.

These are the only three accusations I have come across. All three are totally unfounded. Who knows what other false and irresponsible things may have been said about me or my band.

There happens to be one area where I am in complete agreement with the PMRC, as well as the National PTA and probably most of the parents on this committee. That is, it is my job as a parent to monitor what my children see, hear, and read during their preteen years. The full responsibility for this falls on the shoulders of my wife and I, because there is no one else capable of making these judgments for us.

Parents can thank the PMRC for reminding them that there is no substitute for parental guidance. But that is where the PMRC's job ends.

The beauty of literature, poetry, and music is that they leave room for the audience to put its own imagination, experiences, and dreams into the words. The examples I cited earlier showed clear evidence of Twisted Sister's music being completely misinterpreted and unfairly judged by supposedly well-informed adults.

We cannot allow this to continue. There is no authority who has the right or the necessary insight to make these judgments, not myself, not the Federal Government, not some recording industry committee, not the PTA, not the RIAA, and certainly not the PMRC.

I would like to thank the committee for this time, and I hope my testimony will aid you in clearing up this issue.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Snider.

Mr. Snider, let us suppose that there is music which, say, glorifies incest; not yours, but suppose that there is some music that glorifies incest. Do you think parents should know about it, or do you think that it is just a matter between whoever is selling the record and whoever is buying it?

Mr. SNIDER. As I said in my testimony, I think it is very important that parents be aware that these lyrics exist.

The CHAIRMAN. How could they find out about it?

Mr. SNIDER. Well, quite simply, as a parent myself and as a rock fan, I know that when I see an album cover with a severed goat's head in the middle of a pentagram between a woman's legs, that is not the kind of album I want my son to be listening to.

If I read a title on the back of, say, Somebody's Ice Cream Castle, a title called "If the Kid Can't Make You Come," whatever it is, I realize that is a sexually explicit song. By just looking at the cover, looking at the lyrics, looking at, I should say, the titles, that should cover just about all bases.

The few albums that do not express their intentions on the cover or in the song titles, I think a parent could take it home, listen to it. And I do not think there are too many retail stores that would deny them the ability to return the album for something different.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think that most parents, or even kids for that matter, know everything that is on an album when they buy it, when the child buys the album?

Mr. SNIDER. I do not know half the things that are on half the albums I own. Some of the bands I listen to, I listen for musical reasons. Other bands I listen to for lyrical reasons.

I know that AC/DC, one of my favorite bands, sings a lot of songs glorifying hell and damnation. I am a Christian. I do not believe -- I do not want to go to hell and I do not want to be damned for all time. But I do like the feel of the songs. The lyrics have no effect on me.

Other bands who have more to say, I listen to their words and I learn from their words.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you think that now there is adequate basis for parents to know what is on the records that their kids are buying?

Mr. SNIDER. I think if they really are concerned, there is. But quite honestly, I do not think that the majority of parents are in reality as concerned as the PMRC or myself. I do not think they really want to spend the time to listen to what they might consider to be a bunch of noise. They put it on and they cannot understand a thing that is being said anyway.

And so I think most of them do not spend enough time with it.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Hollings.

Senator HOLLINGS. Yes. Mr. Snider, I think I would just take the opportunity to make an observation. You and I would differ as to what is obscene or what is shocking or what is vulgar, and persons of goodwill will differ on that particular score.

I think that somewhere in this hearing record, we should not be on the defensive and we should not create the atmosphere that we are powerless. The absolute nature of your statement that we do not have any authority -- I only want to refer everyone to the Pacifica Foundation case, where the Federal Communications Commission was questioned as to its power to regulate public radio and TV broadcasts that was indecent but not obscene.

You see, they differed between what was indecent, what was obscene, and what was shocking. They had the seven dirty words. I think everyone remembers that case on the west coast, and the Supreme Court of the United States found that the FCC positively had the authority, and the responsibility.

I am quoting from the language of the Supreme Court:

Patently offensive, indecent material presented over the airwaves confronts the citizen not only in public, but also in the privacy of the home. The individual's right to be left alone, plainly outweighs the first amendment rights of an intruder.

This is not just a forum to rally one way or the other and hope something happens. This is a forum with a definite responsibility with respect to Congress in enunciating the duties of the Federal Communications Commission, which have been constitutionally followed.

I understand your opinion. That is why we invited you up here, to hear your words and not mine. I think that the general nature of all of this testimony of noting censorship, and first amendment absolutism, does not pertain with respect to the broadcast media. That is, of course, the main media that I guess you would agree to actually sell the records, would it not be?

Mr. SNIDER. Yes. Except I would like to clarify something. I said no authority has the right or necessary insight. I did not say you were not able to. I said you do not have the right or I do not have the right or the RIAA.

Also, we are talking about the airwaves as opposed to a person going with their money to purchase an album to play in their room, in their home, on their own time. The airwaves are something different.

I think that the FCC and even MTV have done a fair job in keeping profanity and obscenity and things like that off the public airwaves. But as far as what you listen to in your own home, that is something totally different, I feel in my opinion.

Senator HOLLINGS. I think that the record ought to be elaborated to show just that.

Previously, about 5 or 6 years ago, we had the TV networks before this committee, and pursuant to that particular hearing they then came back. I remember CBS specifically. They demonstrated how they had this film, and then got together with the producer and removed certain scenes of violence and certain four-letter words, and did not offend the producer's sense of art in the production itself.

We have made some progress. The bottom line with respect to these particular records, the Supreme Court has found, is that there is that right and that responsibility.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Gore.

Senator GORE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SNIDER. Excuse me. Are you going to tell me you are a big fan of my music as well?

Senator GORE. No, I am not a fan of your music. I am aware that Frank Zappa and John Denver cover quite a spectrum, and I do enjoy them both. I am not, however, a fan of Twisted Sister and I will readily say that.

Mr. Snider, what is the name of your fan club?

Mr. SNIDER. The fan club is called the SMF Fans of Twisted Sister.

Senator GORE. And what does "SMF" stand for when it is spelled out?

Mr. SNIDER. It stands for the Sick Mother Fucking Fans of Twisted Sister.

Senator GORE. Is this also a Christian group?

Mr. SNIDER. I do not believe profanity has anything to do with Christianity, thank you.

Senator GORE. It is just an interesting choice. I was getting the impression from your presentation that you were a very wholesome kind of performer, and that is an interesting title for your fan club.

You say your song "Under the Blade" is about surgery. Have you ever had surgery with your hands tied and your legs strapped?

Mr. SNIDER. The song was written about my guitar player, Eddie Ojeda. He was having polyps removed from his throat and he was very fearful of this operation. And I said: Eddie, while you are in the hospital I am going to write a song for you.

I said it was about the fear of operations. I think people imagine being helpless on a table, the bright light in their face, the blade coming down on them, and being totally afraid that they may wake up, who knows, dead, handicapped. There is a certain fear of hospitals. That is what, in my imagination, what I see the hospitals like.

Senator GORE. Is there a reference to the hospital in the song?

Mr. SNIDER. No, there is not. But there is not a reference to a woman, sado-masochism, or -- well, bondage, yes.

Senator GORE. There is just a reference to someone whose hands are tied down and whose legs are strapped down, and he is going under the blade to be cut.

Mr. SNIDER. Yes, there is.

Senator GORE. So it is not really a wild leap of the imagination to jump to the conclusion that the song is about something other than surgery or hospitals, neither of which are mentioned in the song?

Mr. SNIDER. No, it is not a wild jump. And I think what I said at one part was that songs allow a person to put their own imagination, experiences, and dreams into the lyrics. People can interpret it in many ways.

Ms. Gore was looking for sado-masochism and bondage and she found it. Someone looking for surgical references would have found that as well.

Senator GORE. Why do you think there is so much sado-masochism and bondage in some of these new songs?

Mr. SNIDER. I cannot speak for the other artists. I am really only here to defend myself, and hopefully by speaking for myself as one person, songwriter in a band that I feel has been unjustly dumped on, that will just warn us of the dangers of what we are trying to do here. I really cannot speak for the other bands.

Senator GORE. Now, you made reference to a comment about T-shirts. I would simply note for the record that the word "T-shirts" was in plural, and one of them referred to Twisted Sister and the other referred to a woman in handcuffs. And it was not intended, as I understand it, to say that you appear with a woman in handcuffs.

There are a lot of different T-shirts and advertisements around today. I have noticed from some of the fan magazines particularly featuring heavy metal music that little sado-masochistic outfits are advertised, with the fingerless gloves and spikes and studs on them, and that these little S&M outfits are marketed to teens and preteens. Is that correct?

Mr. SNIDER. Well, they are marketed. Who buys them I am not sure.

I would just like to say, in reference to the comment about T-shirts, I have with me a taped cassette of the exact --

Senator GORE. No, I am reading from your transcript of it in your statement.

Mr. SNIDER. I will have to check the transcript, but when it was said there was no question she was referring to a Twisted Sister T-shirt. There was no question if I played the tape for anybody.

Senator GORE. Well, in your own transcript it is in plural, "T-shirts," and two examples are cited. But I do not want to belabor that point.

Now, you said that you can look at the titles of albums and look at the covers and tell what kind of material is inside. Does the title "Purple Rain" give you an indication that the material is about masturbation?

Mr. SNIDER. You mean the album title "Purple Rain"? No, it does not. I did not say in all cases. I believe I covered that there are occasional albums that are a bit misleading. I said I do not think a store would refuse a parent who came in and said, "I do not like what is on this record. I would like my money back."

Senator GORE. So the choice the parent has, then, is to sit down and listen to every song on the album; right?

Mr. SNIDER. Or read the lyrics if they are on the record.

Senator GORE. I think that is pretty general agreement that if the lyrics are printed that is one possible solution for this.

Let us suppose the lyrics are not printed. Then what choice does a parent have? To sit down and listen to every song on the album?

Mr. SNIDER. Well, if they are really concerned about it I think that they have to.

Senator GORE. Do you think it is reasonable to expect parents to do that?

Mr. SNIDER. Being a parent is not a reasonable thing. It is a very hard thing. I am a parent and I know. OK. I am a new parent. I only have one child, maybe. But I am learning that there is a lot to being a parent that you did not expect. It is not just always a cute baby. There is a lot of labor, a lot of time, and a lot of effort that goes into it. It is not totally pleasurable.

Senator GORE. And you will find when they get a little bit older that when they are exposed to the kinds of themes that we were presented with earlier, if you love your child you are going to be concerned about that. And if you want to protect that child from unnecessary exposure to inappropriate material, you sometimes need a little help, the kind of guidance that is presented in the movie industry.

It is totally unreasonable in my view to expect parents to sit down and listen to every single song in the albums that their children buy in order to fulfill their responsibilities as parents.

Now, the only thing in your statement that I felt at all comfortable about was when you said you shared some of the concerns of the PMRC. I would simply conclude by expressing the hope that artists and the record companies will find a way to manifest that mutual concern in some self-restraint, and show a responsibility and give parents a break.

You are right: It is tough being a parent. It is even tougher being a kid. And if both are going to be able to deal with the kind of material that is coming out in popular music, it seems to me the industry has a responsibility to give them a little help.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Rockefeller.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. Mr. Snider, do you feel that you have a responsibility as an artist to those who would hear those words that you write?

Mr. SNIDER. I feel a tremendous responsibility. And as I said, I do not put anything down on a record that I cannot stand behind 100 percent. I do not sing about drugs, sex, alcohol. I do not advocate sexism, the use of drugs and drinking, and so I do not write about those things. I only write about things I believe in.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. And that is the way you define what your responsibility is -- that is, not to write about things that you do not believe in?

Mr. SNIDER. Yes; I would say to write about things that you can stand behind. I feel myself to be a moral person and I think that I . . . have a lot of positive things to tell people about. And like I said, everything on my records I will stand behind and say, "Yes, I wrote those words and this is what it meant and this is what I was trying to say -- Yes."

Senator ROCKEFELLER. Do you think that parents, not only those who are in PMRC but other parents who are concerned here and across the country about the development of new trends in music and the lyrics that go along with that music, are naïve or somehow missing the point?

Do you think that they are unduly worried about some of these writings about sado-masochism, suicide, rape, and other things? Do you think that this is not really a serious problem for this country and our young people?

Mr. SNIDER.. That is sort of a multiple question. I do not think they are naïve and I do not think that at times they are unduly worried. But I do think sometimes they take it overly serious.

I mean, there are monster movies on all the time, they have been going on for ages, and people watch a monster movie and they get scared, and they walk away and it was just a movie. Rock and roll many times is the same thing, to try to get an effect of either laughter, sadness. A lot of the heavy metal bands are trying to scare people and just make them scared like a horror movie.

Vincent Price is not having problems because he has done all of these monster pictures. He is just an actor. I am not going to say I am just an actor, but I am entertaining people and a lot of these bands are entertaining people.

And when they were reading some of these lyrics before, I could not help but laugh. I mean, I had not heard some of them, but some of the lyrics were ridiculously ridiculous. I mean, a kid, even a kid reading that I think would go, oh my God, what is going on? It is ridiculous is the only word I can think of, some of the lyrics.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. In the vehemence with which you attacked Senator Gore's wife, I detected a defensiveness somehow on your part, a lack of assuredness on where you stand on this. Why did you feel it necessary to attribute some of the qualities to her that you did? Why was that important to your testimony?

Mr. SNIDER.. First of all, I was not attacking Senator Gore's wife. I was attacking a member of the PMRC.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. You were attacking Senator Gore's wife by name.

Mr. SNIDER.. Her name is Tipper Gore, is it not? I did not say the Senator's wife. I said Tipper Gore.

Second, defensive. I have been working very hard. I believe in the music that I play. I believe we have a very bad reputation and I have been doing a lot on my part to try and say, hey, this is not a bad thing, this is fun, this is fantasy.

Kids are coming out, they are screaming, they are yelling, they are letting out their emotions, and they are going home, they are feeling better because they let out a lot of their frustrations.

As I said, I pride myself on writing lyrics that are not offensive and that are saying something positive. Most of our songs are about personal freedom. And when somebody tells me, after all I have done to fight against sexism, that I have a shirt with a spread-eagled woman --

Senator ROCKEFELLER. All you have done to what?

Mr. SNIDER. All I have done to fight sexism. The whole Twisted Sister thing is very ambiguous: guys wearing makeup. We do not act like women; we act like men. We do not cater to the males or females in the audience. It is just one audience.

So when someone says there is a song about sado-masochism and bondage, or someone says "We're Not Gonna Take It" is violent lyrical content, which is what it has been rated for, yes, I am defensive. Yes, that gets me angry. I am trying to get adults to see that heavy metal is not totally a bad thing.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. How many months in the course of a year do you spend on the road away from home?

Mr. SNIDER. In the course of a year, it would be tough to say. Over a 2-year period, I would spend about 11 months on the road and 18 months at home recording albums, things like that, doing videos.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. Eleven months on the road in a 2-year period?

Mr. SNIDER. Yes, because you do a tour and then you go and record albums. I have been off the road now for 10 months.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. Do you take your child with you?

Mr. SNIDER. He comes sometimes.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. Nine years from now when your child is 12 and in school, will you take your child with you?

Mr. SNIDER. Absolutely.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. When your child is in school?

Mr. SNIDER. Oh, no. Thank you for clarifying. No, I would not take him out of school.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. Then how would it be possible for you to, as a responsible parent, to spend the time that you suggest listening to these records and finding out what it is that you want your son to listen to and what you do not want him to listen to?

Mr. SNIDER. To be perfectly honest, 9 years from now I am going to be well retired and I will be spending more time with my son than any other parent probably ever spends. And that is one of the beautiful things about rock and roll, is that I can retire hopefully at a very early age.

But even now, I am very lucky that I have a wife who I have been going with for 10 years now, we have been married for 4, who is the most incredible mother. And while I am gone, she fills the role, and has a very difficult job, too, of mother and father.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. Do you expect later on, then, that she will be going through these records?

Mr. SNIDER. I think both of us will be doing that.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. Do you expect me to believe that?

Mr. SNIDER. You can. I am terminally teenage. I will be listening to my son's records.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. What about families where both parents have to work, which is an increasing phenomenon in this country now, because they have to survive? And the whole notion of parents ents sitting down and listening to record after record, tape after tape -- that is what you suggested -- does that not strike you as just a little bit naive and unrealistic?

Mr. SNIDER. No, it does not, because I know the reality of the record-buying market as a record buyer. With my allowance, I was able to, if I was lucky, afford maybe one album a week at the most. Usually it was one a month. Albums cost anywhere from $6 to $10, and that is a lot of money to a teenager, or to a pre-teenager it is a ridiculous sum.

And to a teenage kid that is a considerable amount of money. And so to listen to one record a week, I do not consider that a hardship.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. Might I ask just one final question, Mr. Chairman?

The CHAIRMAN. Bearing in mind that it is 12:30 and we have a lot of witnesses left, yes.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. I will bear that in mind and will not ask the question.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Pressler.

Senator PRESSLER. Basically, I want to get down to your recommendations in terms of governmental action, either by this committee or by any Government body. You would recommend no governmental action in this area?

Mr. SNIDER. Absolutely.

Senator PRESSLER. What about industry actions? Would you recommend any type of voluntary labeling?

Mr. SNIDER. I do not feel that the industry -- it has been expressed by many other people that each artist has an individual agreement. One of the big things is artistic freedom in your contract. I do not think the industry can pass a ruling on that.

Senator PRESSLER. And so your legislative recommendations, would that apply just to -- not to broadcast? You would put broadcast and things that are over the airwaves in a different category than things people buy and show in their homes?

Mr. SNIDER. Well, I think we are talking about the purchase of albums and the lyrical content on the albums. That is what I am directing it to at this time.

Senator PRESSLER. So you would disagree with any action on those albums, be they by private industry or Government, any type of labeling?

Mr. SNIDER. If somebody would ask me what my opinion was, I had said earlier that I did not think there would be a problem for a parent to return an album they had taken home and found it dissatisfactory. I would like to believe that, but some retail stores will give you a hassle if you try to return an open album.

If you want a solution, maybe they could bring back -- in the fifties, you could listen to an album in the store before you purchased the album. Most record stores play the albums in the store, and there is usually a stack of those albums opened already that, if you want to go over and take a glance at the cover, which I have done many times myself, you could go over and do that.

So if you want to take some sort of industry action, I would think it would be to force the retail stores to allow people to return product that they are not satisfied with: satisfaction guaranteed.

Senator PRESSLER. Thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Snider, thank you very much.

Mr. SNIDER. Thank you for your time.

===================

did you see what he did. he said, “Ms. Gore was looking for sado-masochism and bondage and she found it.” TO AL GORE. I love him for that.

he also said “If the kid can’t make you come” in a senate hearing, and I love him for that as well. It’s in the official senate record.

#fun fact I kept spelling his name incorrectly even though he literally spells it out in the speech #Dee Snider #rock music #rock & roll #heavy metal #pmrc #tipper gore #80's #80's music #censorship #warning labels

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analyzen · 3 years

Text

Italian Fandom Meta | Most Popular Types of Pairings on EFP vs. AO3

EFP (2001–, Fanlore) is the most popular writing archive in Italy, and it hosts both fanfic and original fiction. Under the cut you’ll find a breakdown of the most popular types of pairings on EFP in comparison to the most popular types of pairings in the Italian section of AO3.

The Italian version of this analysis can be found here.

TL;DR:

53% of all the chapters ever posted on EFP have been deleted

49% of the registered users on EFP have deleted their accounts

M/F works amount to 60% of the whole website

EFP’s three most popular fandoms (Harry Potter, One Direction, Original Fiction – Romantic) all have a majority of M/F works

On AO3, most Italian works are M/M (56%)

F/F doesn’t have much content on either site (4-5%)

Methodology

I’ve followed @olderthannetfic’s methodology from this earlier Fanfiction.net analysis. Basically, I picked a sample size of 666 chapters and organized them in four categories (M/M, M/F, F/F, Not tagged; more on this later).

Why I chose chapters instead of stories

On EFP you don’t have specific links for every single story. Instead, every chapter you post gets a unique id, which can be seen in the link itself. For example, at the time of writing this the last updated chapter on EFP was this one:

viewstory.php?sid=3974099

Which means that this was the 3'974'009th chapter ever posted on EFP.

Ids follow the usual numerical order, so if a link reads id=3, then there have to be id=1 and id=2, and the next link will have id=4.

So I’ve used a randomizer to select ~1200 unique ids to analyse.

Weren’t 666 chapters enough?

I started out with 700 chapters, but half of them weren’t working. That’s because 53% of all the chapters ever posted on EFP have been deleted from the website.

Thanks to the link of the last updated chapter, we know that almost 4 millions chapters have been posted on the EFP. But EFP's homepage shows different stats:

Registered users: 602395, 205974 of which are authors Last registered user: [blacked out] Total of stories: 517083 Total of chapters: 1869573 chapters Total of reviews: 6222695 Online users: 17 logged in and 53 visitors

While we should have almost 4 million chapters, the stats show ~2 million chapters. Why? Because the stats only show the stories, chapters and users that are still on the website, and they don’t show the stories, chapters and users that have been deleted.

(Sorry, I forgot to translate this one. It reads: Total of chapters posted on EFP between 2001 and today. Orange: deleted chapters. Blue: chapters that are still online.)

Thanks to the stats on the homepage we also have a link to the last registered user. User ids follow the same numerical order as chapter ids, so once again we know that 49% of the users ever registered on EFP have deleted their accounts. That's a lot of deleted accounts.

Categorization

After selecting 666 (accessible) chapters, I organized them into 4 categories:

M/M: contains all stories tagged as “yaoi”, shounen ai” and “slash”

M/F: contains all stories tagged as “het”

F/F: contains all stories tagged as “yuri”, “shoujo ai” and “femslash”

Not tagged: which contains a) poetry, b) stories tagged as “no pairing”, and c) untagged het stories.

As for the untagged het stories, there are two issues:

Many M/F fics simply aren’t tagged

Many gen fics include untagged M/F ships

If the description made it clear that the story included a heterosexual relationship, I added the story under the M/F tag. Otherwise I left it under not tagged.

Also, on EFP “yaoi”, “shounen ai” and “slash”, and “yuri”, “shoujo ai” and “femslash” actually mean different things.

This screenshot here is from the posting page on EFP. It reads:

Pairings * You must select at least one tag from the list, and you can choose up to three tags. Het: for heterosexual relationships Shonen-ai: for male/male relationships with anime/game characters; stories with no sex scenes Shojo-ai: for female/female relationships with anime/game characters; stories with no sex scenes Yaoi: for male/male relationships with anime/game characters; stories containing sex scenes Yuri: for female/female relationships with anime/game characters; stories containing sex scenes Slash: for male/male relationships from TV shows/movies/books FemSlash: for female/female relationships from TV shows/movies/books

The thing is. People either respect the rules and use different tags for different kinds of stories, or they use these tags interchangeably to maximise the chance to appear in other users' searches. Which means that you’ll find RPF tagged with “shoujo ai”, and Attack on Titan fics tagged as “slash”. (More info on this later.)

Findings

On EFP, the majority of the stories are M/F.

To confirm this, I checked some specific fandoms:

Some notes:

Because EFP doesn't have metatags like AO3, what I did was: 1) go to a specific fandom, 2) filter through every single tag, and 3) jot down the number of pages per search. Every page contains up to 15 stories, so for example searching for het in Original Fiction – Romantic gives you 846 pages, which amounts to around ~12690 stories.

The tag in red, “Nessuna”, means “no pairing”. It is used for gen fics but also for untagged M/F fics. This is especially true in some fandoms, ie. Original Fiction – Romantic, and Harry Potter.

EFP’s filtering system sucks. You can only filter through stories with specific relationship tags, but you can’t filter out relationships tag. So what you see in the graph is how often a tag is used... which brings us to some issues. For example, Harry Potter is the biggest fandom on EFP, so much that Harry Potter stories amount to 11% (!) of the whole website. But in the graph it looks like the One Direction fandom has more stories—wrong. Actually, One Direction has many stories tagged as both slash and het, while Harry Potter stories tend to be either one or the other.

EFP’s filtering system sucks, part 2. Because “shounen ai”, “yaoi” and “slash” are often used at the same time, you can't really smash together all three of the tags to get a total amount of stories. I'd say that around 50% of the stories tagged as shounen ai and yaoi probably overlap, but there is no easy way to find out because, again, EFP’s filtering system sucks. The same goes for “shoujo ai”, “yuri” and “femslash”.

Fandoms with a majority of M/M stories

While there are some fandoms with more M/M stories (ie. Death Note, Hetalia, Glee, Sherlock, Supernatural, Teen Wolf), these fandoms are simply extremely small in comparison to other bigger fandoms full of M/F fics. Which obviously skews the numbers in favor of M/F fics.

What about femslash?

EFP suffers from the same lack of femslash as AO3 as a whole. In the fandoms I've analysed, only two have a big enough number of F/F. The fandoms are Glee (which has more F/F stories than M/F stories) and Grey's Anatomy (which has as much F/F as M/F stories, with little M/M).

Original Fiction

I thought it might be interesting to explore the original sections too, especially because Original Fiction – Romantic is the third biggest fandom on EFP after Harry Potter and One Direction. These Big 3 all have a disproportionate amount of M/F stories.

By logic, this would mean the the majority of the userbase on EFP prefers M/F stories. But then, aren't fans always complaining about “too much slash”? If “Any Two Guys” were enough to find slash appealing, wouldn't it be easier to simply write original M/M?

I think that looking at original stories might help us understand why people might prefer slash over het in some fandoms. For example, the amount of M/F stories in Original Fiction – Romantic implies that, when authors have to chance to choose what types of stories to create from scratch, they might prefer M/F stories.

This would support the theory that many people might prefer slash because of the lack of (well written/primary) canonical female characters + how well M/M relationships, both platonic and romantic, are written in canon texts in comparison to M/F or F/F relationships.

Obviously, we have to keep in mind that not all fanfic writers write original fiction and viceversa, so I'm not trying to find a universal explanation here. Also because not every website has a majority of M/F stories.

Which brings us to...

AO3 vs. EFP

As per today 20/04/21, the Italian section of AO3 contains “only” 24777 stories, divided between many different fandoms. To make a comparison, the Italian stories on AO3 amount to 5% of all the stories available on EFP. To make another comparison, the whole Naruto fandom on EFP has 20129 stories in total.

EFP has also been active for 20 years, while the boom of Italian fics on AO3 only started around 2018. We can't really make a 1:1 comparison between the two archives, but we can still try to understand the preferences of their users.

M/M and M/F stories on EFP vs. AO3

EFP: 60% M/F, 25% M/M

AO3: 56% M/M, 23% M/F

The percentages are almost swapped.

This might be because of the archives themselves. EFP has always been the general website for any Italian fandom (and actually at first it mostly hosted M/F content), while AO3 has always had a big M/M userbase. I'm basing this statement on this AO3 analysis from 2013, in comparison to this FFN analysis from 2018 which showed a majority of M/F fanworks, and finally this AO3 vs. FFN vs. Wattpad analysis from 2019, which showed that AO3 has always been the outlier for its majority of M/M content.

Then again, M/M stories on EFP have always been subject to the “usual” type of borderline-to-direct harassment that M/M fans are used to, which is something that still happens to this day especially in certain writing groups on Facebook, where the Italian writing community is pretty active. It wouldn't be weird for slashers to move to AO3, where they know they'll find more like-minded people and less headaches. (Also, the Italian section of AO3 has a lot of M/M RPF that's banned on EFP.)

The “Multi” tag on EFP

The only thing that barely resembles a multi tag on EFP is threesome, which for some reason is often used as a synonym for love triangle. So from the tags it isn't easy to understand if a fic includes an actual threesome (as in, a sex scene), a polyamorous relationship, or a simple love triangle.

This doesn't mean that there aren't poly stories on EFP—it simply means that they're impossible to find using the search system.

And that's all, I think!

#italian fandom meta #efp analysis #ao3 analysis #fandom meta

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dangerouscommiesubversive · 2 years

Note

So Kamen Riders have main and secondary and another category called "lady riders" How do we categorize riders such as "Chaser", "Snipe", "Parad" and many others that aren't main, secondary, or even lady riders?

You know, anon, this is an interesting question, because I think you're mixing up two different types of category. "Main" and "Secondary" are storytelling categories--they indicate what weight that character has in the story of their show, their proportional effect on the plot. The next category past that would theoretically then be "Tertiary" Riders, but I don't tend to use that unless a show has a. only three Riders (like Agito or Drive) or b. a whole lot of Riders (like Ryuki or Saber). Both of those situations are going to have more of a clear hierarchy of plot impact, but past three that impact does tend to level out. Generally I just like the term "additional Rider."

"Lady" or "female" Rider, on the other hand, is a descriptive category--it addresses a Rider's personal characteristics, not their plot importance. Similar descriptive categories would be, for example, "Riders whose primary or most notable suit color is purple" (Ouja, Kaixa, Sasword, Calibur), "Riders who are medical professionals" (Proto-Birth/Date Akira, Snipe, arguably Another Agito if you consider him a Rider), or "Riders who are not human" (several characters in Faiz and Kabuto, Nadeshiko, Chaser, Parad-DX, Horobi).

(Please note that none of those lists are complete, they're just select examples.)

Any one Rider is going to fit into multiple descriptive categories, but only one story-telling/plot category. For example, Poppy is a female Rider and a medical professional and non-human, but in terms of the plot of the show she's in, she's pretty firmly "additional," and unfortunately can't be anything else. Ex-Aid also has another female Rider in Nico (who does count, and I will argue this point), and several others who are medical professionals (that's kind of the point of the show), but only one main and one secondary.

...I feel like I've gone off on a bit of a tangent here. Point being! The category past "main" and "secondary" would be either "tertiary" or "additional," depending on your preference or personal criteria. The category of "female/lady" is descriptive and additive, and may coexist with any number of others.

I hope this has been helpful? Or at the very least I hope it's been interesting.

#anonamouse #hi! i went to library school and have strong feelings about classification and categorization #thank you for asking this!

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raevenlywrites · 3 years

Text

The Ties That Bind 14 of ???

I sat in a stunned static as the world moved around me. Soldiers departed--some with my mother, some to meet up with Karashan and escort the serpiente guards here--a meal was prepared from the efforts of this morning’s foraging--had it only been this morning?--and the gentle atmosphere of the Lyssia house returned like a fire re-stoked in the early morning. A bowl of stew was set before me, a body sat down on either side, and still I felt detached, unreal. The silvery visions of my mother’s face, of white scales winking red in the fire light, of a voice so familiar yet not heard in centuries dominated my thoughts, pulled at me in subtle whispers, urged me to follow them down untold rabbit holes. And as the worries of my real life loomed impossibly high and higher, the temptation to yield to the memories grew ever stronger.

”--Dani won’t want any of that. Pass it over.”

Rei’s hand and voice cut through my thoughts, reaching over my bowl for the platter Zane was holding. The rich smell of roast rabbit suddenly assaulted me, making me viscerally and unpleasantly present in my own body once more.

Zane held the platter out of reach, regarding me instead of Rei.

“And does your pair bond cut your meat for you as well as select it?” he asked, that smugly amused tone clearly meant to get under Rei’s skin. I felt my cheeks flush, and the heat did nothing for my sense of my well-being.

“He’s not my alastair yet,” I choked out, breathing in shallow pants. “And I don’t eat meat. And he wouldn’t cut it for me if I did. And please get that tray away from me.”

Rei stood slightly from the bench and took the platter, which Zane was finally offering up. Adelina snickered.

“I’d wondered why they were cooked separately. Here I thought your kind just didn’t know the value of seasoning.” She raised her bowl in salute or toast to the elder Elanor, seated at the far end of the table. “I’m quite delighted to be proven wrong on that count. I’ll go rabbit hunting for you any day, Mistress Lyssia.”

“When did you have time to catch a rabbit?” someone muttered, but my attention was too focused on Zane--who’s attention was still too focused on me for my comfort--to catch who. The friendly table chattered resumed, and I snapped under my breath to Zane, “Can I help you?”

Zane stared a moment longer than was really polite by anyone’s standards, I thought, and finally murmured, “Just trying to make sense of what I’m sensing. You’re quite the tangle of emotions, Danica. And rightly so. But one worries, and would like to help, if there’s anything I can do.” He reached for his spoon and added, “That was quite a display the pair of you put on out there. I would think a good hearty meal should help replenish what was lost.”

I blinked, somehow surprised to learn that Zane had sensed it. The cobra garnet was rumored to have all sorts of magic of its own, but it seemed wrong to me somehow that the Shardae magic should be something he could sense. Then again, it seemed wrong to me that anyone could read another emotions, so what did I know. I wished I could clutch my aura tighter, like a blanket or a dressing gown. I felt naked when he talked so frankly about trying to untangle my emotions. He didn’t have any right.

“Don’t.”

His soft word came with an equally soft brush against my hand. I jerked it back out of habit, though I’d held it for strength and solidarity not but hours before. I took a deep breath to steady myself and put my hand deliberately back exactly where it had been. Zane’s lay less than an inch from mine, but I couldn’t bring myself to hold his hand at the dinner table. There was no reason to--and so many reasons not to. Including the very large, very tense one growing more and more tense on the other side of me.

“Don’t what?” I asked, more lightly than I felt. If Rei had a problem with me talking to Zane while we ate--well, on the one hand it was perfectly acceptable alastair behavior. But on the other, he knew me, and knew I had certain duties, which meant certain things he couldn’t protect me from. Forging a good relationship with the king I was trying to build a peace with was one of them.

“Don’t hide from me.”

His voice was tired, and in a weird flash of insight, I realized that was probably the real Zane. Oh, I didn’t doubt that all faces Zane presented came from a place of truth. More like, this is who and what Zane would be in exactly this moment if free from any other pressures or concerned. What an interesting notion, to be “just Zane”, or “just Danica” even. Who would we be if not the young rulers of dying courts, trying to wrest away the momentum of generations of tradition?

It was only after his brows rose in question, his face tilting ever so slightly, that I processed the meat of what he’d really said and not just how he’d said it. Don’t hide from me. Yes, I could see why my sitting silent in response to that would merit this questioning look.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

I’d uttered that phrase countless times in court, with perfect blandness and blankness that I’d practiced hard to copy from my mother. One in her quiver of ambiguous statements that I had finally mastered. Except, I didn’t say it with courtly decorum. I said it with a little smile, and a sideways glance through my lashes, and the hint of a tone I hoped came across as playful.

Zane rewarded my effort with a small smile of his own, though his was touched with a wistful sadness that I wished I could chase away. I liked the Zane that laughed and flirted outrageously and waved from hilltops giddy with excitement over a historical find. The Zane that had seen too much sadness in too few years made me want to flirt outrageously, just to make him laugh at my ridiculous effort.

“That’s a good start, though a little heavy handed.”

I straightened, dropping my playact and actually engaging in the conversation. It was a nice change from dwelling in my own thoughts.

“So you can feel the difference then, between a true emotion and one exaggerated for show?”

He made a waffling noise, mirroring it with a wave of his hand. It settled further from mine, I noticed, but it also seemed more natural now, his whole body language more at ease.

“Emotion is as subtle and varied as hues, or scents. Can you honestly say that you know your own heart, clearly and categorically, at all times?”

Certainly not. Not even at most times. I said as much. “No one can, I don’t think. A child might have emotions simple enough, but they’d lack the framework to name and define them. And the very act of naming and defining them requires a certain amount of distance, thereby changing the emotion before it’s even properly labeled.”

Zane smiled. “Very well put, philosophical Danica.” He gave me a smile to match mine from earlier, and a wink that was all his own.

“Well,” I answered in kind, “at least its a nickname based on my intellect and not my physical attributes.”

Zane chuckled. “Oh, I could happily dwell on those as well, luscious D--“

“Danica would you like some more peas?” Rei asked abruptly. The murmur of friendly table chatter fell to a sudden silence, cut only by Adelina’s deep and unfiltered laughter.

The Ties That Bind Tag list: @thehellinsideyourhead @therecouldbecolorsandlove @adventuresofacreesty @writing-with-melon @rainydaydarling @faithfire

Raev’s Gen Tag List (should I tag you guys in this? It IS a thing I wrote. I’m gonna say yes unless you guys are like “no of course not we’re sick of hearing about your stupid fic for a twenty year old book XD)

No one has complained yet so yall gonna keep getting tagged :P

List is currently: @lordkingsmith @writinglyra @drbibliophile @mperialscribe @adie-dee @adie-dee @lexiklecksi @writinginslowmotion @raenawrites @apollon-arium @anika-writes @faithfire

#raev does fic #hawksong #hawksong fanfic #the ties that bind #the keisha'ra #danica shardae #zane cobriana #andreios

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cctinsleybaxter · 3 years

Text

2020 in books

2020 was a year of changed reading habits; people reading more than ever or not at all, some changing their tastes and others turning to old comforts. While there weren’t any huge overhauls on my end, more free time did mean a total of 32 in a wider range of genres. In the past couple of years I found a lot of the things I read to be kind of middling and ranked them accordingly, but this year had some strong contenders in the mix. With college officially behind me I love nonfiction again, and I really need to stop being drawn in by novels with long titles that ‘sound interesting.’ A piece of advice to my future self: they will only make you angry.

The Good

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky I loved the BBC radio play when I first listened to it back in 2017, but didn’t know if I could stomach the idea of actually reading the 700-page book, especially since I already knew the plot (spoiler alert: this had no effect and I gasped multiple times despite knowing what was going to happen; Fyodor’s just that good at atmosphere.) The story follows Prince Lev Myshkin, a goodhearted but troubled man entering 1860s Petersburg high society and meeting all of the wretched people therein as he navigates life, laughs, love, unanswerable questions of faith, and human suffering. I care about it in the same way I think other people care about reality TV shows and soap operas. I’m so personally invested in the drama and feel so many different emotions directed at these clowns that it’s like being a fan of Invitation to Love (with an ending equally upsetting to that of the show ITL is from, Twin Peaks.)

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlanksy I adored this book. The first half reads a little like a Wikipedia article, and I was worried that it was leaning too clinical and would be disaffected with colonialism and indigenous peoples, but even that oversight is corrected for as the text goes on. It’s not going to be for everybody because it really is just the world’s longest encyclopedia entry on, well, salt, but it’s written with such excitement for the topic and is so well-researched and styled for commercial nonfiction that I think it deserves any and all praise it’s gotten. We have to talk about that time Cheshire was literally sinking into the ground, and companies who were over-pumping brine water to steal each other’s brine water said ‘no it’s okay it’s supposed to that’ so were legally dismissed as suspects.

Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy Cried. 10/10. The plot of Midnight Cowboy is very classic and actually has a lot in common with The Idiot, as 20-something Joe Buck moves from the American Southwest to NYC and meets myriad challenges as a sex worker. I’ve been obsessed with the movie for a few years now and the book made me appreciate it anew; I think it’s rare for an adaptation to take the risk of being so different from its source material while still capturing its spirit. The movie doesn’t include quieter moments like the full conversation with Towny or time spent in the X-flat, nor does it attempt to touch Joe’s internal monologue or his and Rico’s extensive backstories, but these things are essential to the book and are some of the best and most affecting writing I’ve ever read. Finally! The Great American Novel!

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones I would firmly like to say that this is probably the best horror novel ever written. The setup is very traditional in that it’s about a group of friends facing supernatural comeuppance for a past mistake, but delivery on that premise is anything but familiar. A story about personal and cultural trauma that raises questions about what we owe to each other and what it means to be Blackfeet, with a cast that’s unbelievably real and sympathetic even at their absolute worst. Creepypasta writers trying to cash in on the cultural mythos of lumped-together tribes wish they were capable of writing something a tenth as gruesome and good as this. It could very well be a movie the visuals and writing style were so arresting, and I can’t wait to read whatever Jones writes next.

Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas This is the least accessible title on the list since it’s a college textbook for people with background in film, but it was so nice to read a woman unpacking film theory with the expertise and confidence it deserves that I have to rank it among the best. I had an absolute blast reading it and am going to have to stop myself from bringing up the horror of 1960s safety films as a cocktail icebreaker.

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson

The year’s toughest read by far, but also its most rewarding. Thompson uses mountains of documents, government-buried intel, and personal interviews to explain what happened at Attica from beginning to end, and does a fantastic job of balancing hard facts and ‘unbiased journalism’ with much-needed emotion and critical analysis. It’s more important reading in the 2020s than any kind of ‘why/how to not be racist’ book club book is going to be, and the historical context it provides is as interesting as it is invaluable. The second half drags a bit in going through lengthy trial processes with some assumed baseline knowledge of legalese (which I did not have. All that criminal minds in 2015… meaningless), but aside from that editing and prose are some of the best I’ve seen in nonfiction.

The Bad

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn A friend and I decided to read this together because I’m obsessed with how insane the author is and wanted to know if he can actually write.

He cannot.

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron Barron is an indie darling of the horror fiction scene, so I was excited to finally read one of his collections but can now attest that I hate him. If you’re going to do Lovecraft please deconstruct Lovecraft in an interesting way. I had actually written a lot about the issues I have with how he develops characters and plots, but one of the only shorthand notes I took was “he won’t stop saying ‘bole’ instead of tree trunk” and I feel like that’s the only review we need.

Bats of the Republic by Zach Dodson Look up a photo of this author because if I had bothered to glance at the jacket bio I honest-to-god wouldn’t have even tried reading this.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone I went in with high expectations since this is an epistolary novella I’d seen praised on tumblr and youtube but oh my god was there a reason I was seeing it praised on tumblr and youtube. This is bad Steven Universe fanfiction. Both authors included ‘listening to the Steven Universe soundtrack throughout’ in the acknowledgements, and to add insult to injury there’s a plug from my nemesis Madeline Miller.

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton The premise of this one plays with so many tropes I like that I should have been more suspicious. It’s a dinner party with stock characters one would expect of Clue, and rather than our protagonist being the detective he’s a man with amnesia stuck in a 24-hour time loop. Body-hopping between guests, he must gather evidence using the skillsets of each ‘host’ until he either solves Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder or the limit of eight hosts runs out. I read a lot of not-very-good books, and it’s so, so much worse when they have potential to be fun. This is how you lose the most points, and how I abandon decorum and end up writing a list of grievances: • Our protagonist can only inhabit male hosts, which I think is a stupid writing decision not because I’m ‘woke’ but because wouldn’t it make sense for him to also be working with the maids, cooks, and women close to the murder victim? • Complaining about the limitations of hosts makes some sense (e.g- there’s a section where he thinks that it’s hard to be an old man because it’s difficult to get to the places he needs to be quickly), but one of his hosts is a rapist and one of his hosts is fat. Guess which one gets complained about more. • One of the later hosts is just straight-up a cop with cop knowledge that singlehandedly solves the case. We spend some time being like ‘wow I couldn’t have done it without the info all eight hosts helped gather’ but it was 100% the detective and he solves the murder using information he got off-screen. • The mystery itself is actually well-paced and I didn’t have a lot of issues with it (e.g, there’s a twist that I guessed only shortly before the end), which makes it all the worse that the metanarrative of this book is INSANE. No spoilers but the reveal as to why our unnamed protagonist is even in this situation is stupid. I just know they’re going to make it into a movie and I’m preemptively going to aaaaaaaaa!!!

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi The fact that this was the worst book I read all year, worse even than the bad Steven Universe fanfiction, and it won multiple awards makes my blood boil. I could rant about it for hours but just know that it’s a former theater kid’s take on perception and memory, and deals with sexual abuse in a way that’s handled both very badly and with a level of fake deepness that’s laughable. Select fake-deep quotes I copied down because at one point I said ‘oh barf’ aloud: -I’m filled with melancholy that’s almost compassion. It’s sad the same way. -[On a friendship ending] We almost never know what we know until after we know it. -Because we’re none of us alone in this world. We injure each other.

There are also bad sex scenes that I can’t quite make fun of because I think (HOPE?) they’re supposed to be a melodramatic take on how teenagers view sex, but I very much wanted to die. Flowers were alluded to. Nipples were compared to diamonds.

Honorable/Dishonorable Mentions (categorized as the same thing because, well,)

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North This book was frustrating because the first third of it is fantastic. It’s set up to be a takedown of the manic pixie dream girl trope, jumping from person to person discussing their relationship with the titular Sophie, and indirectly revealing that she was just some girl and not the difficult and mysterious genius they all believed her to be. Then in the third act, BAM! She was that difficult and mysterious genius and she’s now indirectly brought all the people from her past together. I wanted to scream the plot beefed it so bad, but the good news is I really liked this octopus description.

It was the size of a three-year-old child, and it seemed awful to me that something could be so far from human and obviously want something as badly as it wanted to get out of the tank.

Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore Cool new nightmare speedrun strat is to hear a 2-second anecdote from a documentary that people used to get radium poisoning from painting watch faces, be curious enough that you buy a book to learn more, and be met with medical and legal horror beyond anything you could have imagined. This was almost one of my favorite books of the year! Almost.

Radium Girls is very lovingly crafted and incredibly well-researched; one of those things that’s hard to get through but that you want to read sections of again as soon as you’ve finished. The umbrage I take with it is that it’s very Catholic. The author and many of her subjects are Irish and their religion is important to them, but it casts a martyr-y narrative over the whole thing that I found uncomfortable. Seventeen-year-old girls taking a factory job they didn’t know was dangerous are framed as brave, working-class heroes, but there’s not a set moral lesson to be gained from this story. Sarah Maillefer didn’t make “a sacrifice” when she agreed to the first radium tests, she agreed because she was terrified. She didn’t think she was helping she was begging for help.

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Tsing Tsing is an incredibly skilled researcher and ethnographer; there are so many good ideas in this book that I’d almost consider it essential leftist text… if I could stand the way it was structured. Tsing posits that because nature is built on precariousness she will build her book the same way, allowing it to grow like a mushroom, and thus chapters don’t progress linearly and are written more like freeform poetry than a series of academic arguments. Some people are really going to love that, but I’m me and a mushroom is a mushroom and a book is a book. I don’t think in the way Tsing does, and while I tried to keep an open mind it’s hard to play along when something is this academically dense and makes so many ambitious claims. As if to prove how different our structuring methods are, I’ve made my own thoughts into a pros and cons list

Things I liked: • ‘Contamination’ as something inherent to diversity • ‘Scalability’ as a flawed way of thinking (Tsing has written whole essays about this that I find very compelling, but a main example here is that China and the US have come down on Japanese matsutake research for being too ‘site specific’ and not yielding enough empirical data) • Discussing how Americans were so invested in self-regulating systems in the 1950s we thought they could be applied to literally everything, including ecosystems • “The survivors of war remind us of the bodies they climbed over- or shot- to get to us. We don’t know whether to love or hate the survivors. Simple moral judgements don’t come to hand.” • Any and all fieldwork Tsing shares is amazing; I especially liked reading about the culture of mushroom pickers living in the Cascades and their contained market system

Things I didn’t like: • Statements that sound deep but aren’t, e.g- “help is always in the service of another.” (Yep. That’s what that means. Unless an organism is doing something to help itself which then nullifies your whole opening argument.) • A very debatable definition of utilitarianism • “Capitalism vs pre-capitalism,” which seems like an insanely black-and-white stance for a book all about finding hidden middle ground • A chapter I found really interesting about how intertwined Japanese and American economies are, but it tries to cover the entire history of US-Japan relations. Seriously, starting with Governor Perry and continuing through present day, this could have been a whole different book and it’s a good example of what I mean when I say arguments feel too scattered (the conclusion it reaches is that in the 80s the yen was finally able to hold its own against the dollar. Just explain that part.) • A chapter arguing that ‘true biological mutualism’ is rarely a focus of STEM and is a new sociological development/way of thinking which is just… flat-out not true

For all the comparisons art gets to ‘being on a drug trip’ this anthropology textbook has come the closest for me. Moments of profound human wisdom, intercut with things I had trouble understanding because I wasn’t on the same wavelength, intercut with even more things that felt false or irrelevant. I can’t put it on the nice list but I am glad I read it.

#2020 #books #long post #(in case the read more isn't working)

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cleverphilosopherbluebird · 3 years

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ALL ABOUT PINTEREST AND PINTEREST MARKETING

Did you know that Pinterest is one of the fastest-growing social networks in the last decade? According to Sprout Insights, Pinterest’s share of social media referrals soared from .68 percent to a whopping 26 percent in just one year, generating more than 400 percent more revenue per click than Twitter and 27 percent more than Facebook. Do you want to increase the likelihood of a purchase? Well, then you should know that shoppers referred by Pinterest are 10 percent more likely to follow through with a purchase than visitors from other social networking sites. Pure and simple: Pinterest can be the star of your social media sales and marketing efforts.

Pinterest is a social media network aimed at image diffusion. But unlike Instagram, Pinterest is not restricted to a mobile app. Users can share their graphic content, known as “pins” (a photo or any kind of graphics work is shared as a pin), and pins can be grouped in albums, known as “boards”. The names resemble the idea of physical photos, messages, or drawings pinned to a corkboard.

You can link Pinterest together to your Facebook account, but your Pinterest posts will not be reflected on your Facebook timeline; it will show a post with a link to your pin. Pinners can share pins from other users on their boards, so, your pins will be widely spread if they are good enough.

This social media tool can be used in marketing, to advertise the product of your brand. Pinterest offers an advantageous feature: you can pin any image directly from your web store, and a link to the store is created automatically. That’s great for advertising purposes; a smart campaign using Pinterest will amaze your customers.

Take into account that Pinterest's most pinned images are: artistic, vintage, and humorous. You can use that info in your favor to create a complete campaign, using some of these ideas. Frequently, you’ll see in Pinterest a 50’s styled photo, and find it was taken in the present century.

Below, I’ve created a quick resource and how-to guide for Pinterest success. Will start with setting up a business page for the Marketing strategy of Pinterest.

To help you build a strategy for your brand on this channel, I have selected 5 tips below that we use for our customers on this social network:

Create a company page on Pinterest;

Create boards that are related to your business. Fashion e-commerce, for example, can create panels like: looks to work, summer fashion 2015, long skirts, silk shirts, etc ...

Use good images. Be creative and remember that these images can inspire people to buy your products or services. If you have a hotel, how about putting pictures of nearby tourist spots? Or details of the rooms or the restaurant? If you have a restaurant, you can upload photos of the dishes, your beautiful cuisine, recipes, etc.

Don't just talk about your company and products. Create inspirational panels, wishes, advice, ideas, tips, based on what your company believes and your positioning. How about showing your company's culture, with behind-the-scenes photos of your company, your team, work desks, and the company's mascot?

To increase engagement with your brand, follow other people's panels so they can see that you exist and follow you too. Despite being simple, many brands do not do this.

Now let's discuss the recommendations for using Pinterest for marketing, or to advertise your products:

Recommendations for Pinterest Marketing.

Complete your profile information. This is a common recommendation when signing up for any social media. If people like your pins, surely they will want to know more about you. Hence, be prepared to make all the info you can available. Think of that as your business card.

Organize your boards. Boards offer an excellent method to categorize your products. Customers will find more easily those similar products if all of them are grouped under the same board. In addition, if any of your pins gain the favor of the audience, it will lead people to a lot of products or services in the same style.

Use description captions wisely. Pins can show a caption, but if it is too long, it will be cropped in the thumbnail. This allows you to use a punch-line caption, or instead, write a long caption that leaves the readers in suspense, motivating them to click on the image.

Select provocative images. Pinterest’s main feed shows a huge collection of images, all of them competing for your attention. To catch your customers’ attention, you must show creative, neither boring nor repetitive pins. Evocative, vintage pictures are very appreciated, but you also can show innovative, modern, and breathtaking photos.

Keep your boards up to date. You must have a wide availability of images, showing your products, your services, general info, or news. In that way, you will assure presence in customers’ minds. Pinterest will help you to merchandise your brand, and to raise your sales.

This is all about Pinterest Strategies and Marketing Methods. But Inorder to achieve success just strategies and marketing methods are important. We need to know the possibility of increasing the followers and also need to know the difference between Instagram and Pinterest as both of them work only on Images.

Let's discuss in detail Pinterest Followers and The Magic Of Pinterest City!

Pinterest is a magical discovery and I am not the one saying it, but the millions of Pinterest followers all over the world. This has become one of the most famous social networks that are slowly starting to catch more and more ground over the oldies of the business (Facebook, Twitter). The working concept that lies behind Pinterest is the sharing and exploring of human life and beauty through pinning images and videos on boards. Same as with Instagram, the emphasis is placed on beautiful pictures that can take your breath away and raise awareness on whatever your heart desires.

The difference between Pinterest and Instagram is that on Pinterest you can work with images (and videos) created by others, while on Instagram you’re the one taking the photo. Pinterest is for curators.

Pinterest users can do all these things with the help of pinboards which are boards that host pictures or videos known as pins. It is pretty simple once you have uploaded your first pin. The rest is history. You will simply adore pinning and it will not become an obligation like in many other different cases.

For example, if you own a business and you need to get people interested in what you sell, Pinterest is perfect for this. But first, like on any other social media network you have to add as many Pinterest followers as possible.

But what is the best way to reach maximum potential when it comes to Pinterest followers? Below you will find a list of tricks and tips that might come in handy when you are looking to make your profile visible and loved by all the Pinterest followers in the world.

Pinterest followers. Tips and tricks:

1. Create interesting boards. Since Pinterest is more about pictures than actual content, use these boards to attract people to a specific topic. For example, if you own a gym or if you are a sports instructor and you want to highlight certain aspects of your teaching create a board destined for stretching, one for fitness, one for aerobics, and so on. This way those interested in fitness will go directly to the board specifically created for this purpose, pleasing his or her needs faster.

2. Follow other pinners. Since the entire idea of the Pinterest followers is to be attracted in some way or another, remember the mutuality theory. You follow a profile and that person will reciprocate. But you should know common sense only goes that far. If someone is not interested or doesn’t approve of what you do, you will not receive that vote of confidence that you expected so long. And this way we reach point 3.

3. Tutorials. Pinterest followers will only come if your information is worth following. Give them something interesting and they will follow you immediately. The best way to do this is to teach something. Bring to the attention tutorials that will make them learn something useful related to the topic of your business. Tutorials are the best way to accumulate new information because they combine pictures with instructions and they don’t require a difficult process of thinking. Do this and you will get a large number of Pinterest followers quickly!

4. Pinterest features. Who wouldn’t want to become Pinterest followers when the buttons that lead them to the page are right there. Incorporate the Pinterest button on blog posts, Facebook profiles, pages, Twitter profiles, etc. Make people see what they are missing out on. And remember that now Pinterest comes with “Pinterest for business”, a special page where you can enter the community, share your story and make your business count.

5. Value your Pinterest followers. Offer good products and pictures that have a high definition quality. Try to keep your pinning process daily so that you can maintain people updated. And last but not least, appreciate the advice received and try to transform bad criticism into positive and flourishing results.

Have you started experimenting with Pinterest for marketing? Are you still in dilemma to excute the pinterest Marketing, then take the help of BUYFORONE Social Media Experts and they provide wide range of pinterest management services.

#pinterest #pins #pinterest traffic #pinterest marketing #pinterest board #pinterest manager

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scrutineyeze · 4 years

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i’m seeing a lot of ppl tossing around ideas about the nature of Fear & the Fourteen Fears (& some about the Extinction & its place in that), so i thought i’d try my hand at it too, lol. these thoughts have been kicking around my head for a while, & i’d be really interested in hearing what others think about this !

gonna put a warning here just about descriptions of fear/s & stuff. also a heads up: this contains spoilers for all of the magnus archives up to date [6/29/2020] and also i have A Lot of thoughts & can Not shut up, so this got. long. (2.7k) & ,,, increasingly weirdly worded bc uhh that’s kinda How I Write

without further ado: my thoughts on Fear, its facets, & how Old these might be. possibly also featuring mentions of the sublime & various things i’ve read. (i’ll work to paraphrase and/or quote these things as succinctly as possible.)

01. introduction 02. Fear: that it is not distinct Fears 03. Fear: a continuation, that it is in Facets 04. on the separation & age of such Facets 05. on, indeed, why such facets cannot be seen are Separate 06. some closing thoughts

01. thesis: robert smirke is Wrong about Fear. robert smirke believes that Fear is distinguishable into Fourteen Separate Fears; this has been shown to be, of a sort, already incorrect, as jonah magnus figured out & demonstrated with the only successful ritual, which entailed bringing in all the “fears” at once. however, to think of them as distinct Fears as in plural is a misunderstanding.

02. the following are selections from the meno, a dialogue written by plato & this translation is from Cathal Woods. beginning at 71d.

Socrates: … But you yourself, divine Meno, what do you say virtue is? … Meno: M: But it's not hard to say, Socrates. To begin with, if you want the virtue of a man, it's easy. A man's virtue is this: to attend to the affairs of the city effectively and in the process to benefit his friends and harm his enemies and make sure that he suffers nothing similar himself. If you're looking for the virtue of a woman, it's not hard to express. It's to manage her home well, preserving her possessions and being obedient to her husband. And there's a different virtue for children, both male and female, and for an old man, and, if you want, for a free man and, if you so desire, for a slave. And there are so many other virtues that there's no problem saying what virtue is, since there's a virtue for each occupation and stage of life with respect to each function of each person. And I take the same to hold for vice, Socrates. Socrates: It seems I've had some great good fortune, Meno, if, when looking for a single virtue, I have discovered in your possession some kind of swarm of virtues.

socrates then goes on to ask about bees & if meno thinks that they differ from each other insofar as “their being bees” or if they only differ through other means, such as beauty, size, colour, etc. meno says that they differ by other means, not through their being bees, & socrates presses then that virtue must be the same: there must be something which makes each of the attributes which meno listed virtues, and that connecting thread must be Virtue.

imagine, then, that we are talking about fear. (not so hard to do, when we are talking about fear lol.) so it might follow thus:

Socrates: meno, what is fear? Meno: Well, it is of corruption, and of violence, and of death, and of …

and so on—except that meno could, of course, differentiate further than simply the fourteen which smirke spoke of. as said in 111 “Family Business:”

I always think it helps to imagine them like colours. The edges bleed together, and you can talk about little differences: “oh, that’s indigo, that’s more lilac”, but they’re both purple. I mean, I guess there are technically infinite colours, but you group them together into a few big ones. A lot of it’s kind of arbitrary. I mean, why are navy blue and sky blue both called blue, when pink’s an entirely different colour from red?

and, of course, he goes on to say:

I mean, you could see them all as just one thing, I guess, but it would be pretty much meaningless, y’know, like… like trying to describe a… shirt by talking about the concept of colour.

but i would (will) argue that it isn’t meaningless to try to describe Fear as it is, which is as a single Entity. because it is the differences by other means (beauty, size, shape) which distinguish the facets of Fear, and not that it is distinct from itself by its Being Fear. that which makes us afraid—and us here, and likely everywhere, will be in reference to living things which feel fear in general, tho i will try to make myself clear at any time i speak less or more generally—makes us afraid through its Shared Connection to Fear, not through its connection to any other thing or other attributes. if something has the capacity to induce fear, then it must contain within itself the connection to Fear, or its being scary—the way that a bee, regardless of its other features, will always share with other bees their Being Bees, and the way that virtues must all contain within themselves that which Makes Them Virtuous in order to be listed as virtues at all. “that which Makes Them Virtuous,” socrates says, must be Virtue, & he spends the whole dialogue trying to get meno to help him answer that question (plus an interesting part about memory & reincarnation, but that’s unrelated).

(i’m going to say here that you Really Don’t Have To Read the meno. i uh personally dislike plato, esp when he’s not talking about love—but this is neither here nor there.)

03. so this brings us to, well, if Fear isn’t separate, then what are the Fourteen in relation to Fear? i’d say that they’re Facets of Fear, the way that honeybees and bumblebees are both bees, and aren’t different insofar as “their being bees,” but they are different in terms of other things, such as size and shape, so you might call them Facets (or different manifestations) of Bee-ness.

this does, also, allow for the looseness of seeing Fear like Colour. you can stick to the basics—blue, red, yellow, green, etc.—or get into specifics—ochre, cerulean, lilac—but you’re still discussing Colour. at the same time, Fear works similarly; you can speak of Fear of change (which would include fears such as uninjured to injured, healthy to sick, alive to dead), of depths (which is my reasoning against the point in 111 that “[s]ome really clash, and you just can’t put them together” … “I doubt The Buried would be bringing through The Vast,” because the fear of both seems to me as significantly more similar than dissimilar: the fear is often categorized as not being able to breathe, due to a too-much or not-enough, and also as the fear of being insignificant in comparison to the size, the fear of a deepness you will Never comprehend that Will Swallow you—a video i would Highly Recommend is “Fear of Depths,” made by Jacob Geller; he talks mostly about caves, the darkness you can’t see into, the call of the void. he talks some of the creatures at the bottom of the ocean, a lot about various video games, including a platformer which causes you to lose the floor. it’s a game about going deeper, ever deeper, and yet … you’re plunged into a massive, empty space. it’s a very, very good video. cw for talking about someone dying stuck in a cave.)—and you can speak of Fear in specifics, even more into detail than the Fourteen do. the Fourteen seems, to me, as a relatively easy nomenclature for these things, especially as understanding these things involve “paradoxes that most adults couldn’t handle” (111)

04. and i’m not arguing, necessarily, against using such nomenclature. to talk about Fear is difficult—i believe, much like socrates believes in Virtue, that there must be something that we can speak to which will succinctly categorize all that we find Scary, but, just like socrates and his search for Virtue rather than the naming of virtues, i find myself at a loss. i have my own thoughts on its connection to the sublime, & how terror and awe meet—how i find it impossible to separate the two, and other thoughts on how perhaps calling what i’m speaking of Fear is a reduction of what it Is—but i think putting those thoughts in another meta is a better organization of my thoughts.

so to talk about Fear in a much more manageable way, to talk about it in its particulars, in its Facets, allows us to better speak to it, just as, when trying to speak of Bravery, one does not need to speak of all things Virtuous.

however, i do believe it important to bear in mind the distinction between something being a Facet of Fear, and something being A Separate Fear. this is when we come to the “age” of various “fears,” or facets. this is another point at which i believe that robert smirke is wrong. he believes that the flesh is the youngest entity, that the end is old & so is the dark—and i’ve seen further speculation from there, about the eye being young—which, in light of how the eye (or, at least, jonah magnus, which i think is more likely, as it does seem Fear is malleable based on belief—as it should be, if it is to reflect our Fear) feels about children’s fears (cf. “Night Night,” ep. 173), i’ve seen quite a bit about

in order for fear to exist, the Fear must have been there since the first time fear was felt—or must have been created simultaneously with it, or some such thing. if Fear is indeed how i’ve described it, and smirke took the easy way out by calling it by its Facets as meno did Virtue, then i would argue against the saying that one facet of Fear is older than another—especially because the difference seems only to be in how close one pays attention.

consider the hunt and the eye, for a moment. at first glance—indeed, likely from smirke’s point of view—the hunt would be an older fear than the eye. we understand the hunt to be the fear of being chased, the fear of being made prey, the fear of predators lurking or stalking or hunting. and we understand the eye to be the fear of being watched, seen, known, of having our secrets brought into the light—the eye, as i’ve seen algie @equalseleventhirds say (along with a great deal of other things that i find highly interesting! they have had a lot to say about the connection between fears—fear soup is the nomenclature there—& also about jonah’s effect on the apocalypse & the distinction of Fear that we’ve seen in season five; all of this i highly recommend checking out) is younger than others, and from how these facets are understood now, it seems possible

after all, animals have been afraid of being prey since there were first hunters.

except to be hunted, you must first be Seen. how many animals protect themselves through camouflage? how long have animals used camouflage to protect themselves? how many animals Must fear being Seen just as much as being Hunted because, to them, those facets are inextricable?

05. which brings us to the facets being incapable of being made separate. we—and once more, this is all living things which can feel fear—don’t ever fear only One Thing At A Time.

from a piece of my writing (which is still very much in the works):

“Fear … isn’t that separate. The cabin fed on your fear of loss, yes, but also of being alone—of being left alone. Of being the sole survivor. Of watching us slip away—of losing us to an unfathomable violence that hid[es] … you’re not only afraid of one thing, Tim. It all blurs together.”

in this instance, i’m talking about desolation—kind of. 111 describes it as the “[f]ear of pain, fear of loss, fear of unthinking or cruel destruction.” but where does the fear of pain stop connecting to the fear of being prey, of being the victim of some unexpected violence? from “the Eye Opens,” ep. 160:

You see, the thing about the Fears is that they can never be truly separated from each other. When does the fear of sudden violence transition into the fear of hunted prey? When does the mask of the Stranger become the deception of the Spiral?

where does the fear of loss stop being the fear of being alone? if you’re afraid of losing those you love, you’re also afraid of being made separate from them, of being alone, aren’t you?

even the flesh, which smirke thinks began with the industrial revolution, must have existed since there were first bodies. even if included within other facets, there are so many things which force us to recall our own physicality in the worst way. in the disease & decomposition of bodies—in things like gangrene, in the bacteria that consume flesh—in the witnessing of flesh (sometimes yours) in the mouths of predators—hyenas and lions don’t always kill their prey being beginning to consume it—

humanity’s stories are full of reminders, too. we have cannibalism in our fairytales (hansel & gretel) & we have it in our propaganda: horror stories ranging from during the famine in Jerusalem during Titus’ siege—Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, “There were scattered reports of Jews who succumbed to eating the dead.” and i think i’ve read of similar rumors spread about early christians eating children, tho can’t currently find any sources—and also in significantly more recent times we also tell stories of various people participating in cannibalism, or of monsters which only consume human flesh, or people driven to starvation (cf. ep. 58, “Trail Rations”)—these stories aren’t new. living things have probably feared our own bodies since we had the knowledge that they age and deteriorate and die—that we must eventually end because of them.

this is also why i don’t believe the extinction is any more than another facet of Fear, just like any other; (from “Rotten Core,” ep. 157) “[p]erhaps it is an existential fear that flows through the others like a vein of ore.” it overlaps with and through and into the other facets just as each other in turn folds into the rest. i mean ,,, how many apocalypse-setting shows/books/movies/podcasts exist now? how big was the “2012 as the end of the world” thought? (they made a movie about it: 2012.) us, our end, & the life that comes after … i’m put in mind of a post i recall going around:

“but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

and they told us to tell you hello.”

06. this has all been a rather long-winded (and somewhat meandering) proposition on how Fear might work—i’m Very interested in how other people think about Fear/the Fears/the Fourteen (& if anyone wants to talk to me about the Sublime & where that meets Fear, i’d ! be Very interested in talking about that, i might make another post about that too). i see each facet of Fear as inextricable—when talking and/or writing about them, i find it hard to keep any of them separate at all, especially when it comes to fears i specifically have myself. what do other ppl think ? how separate do you see the various fears/facets ?

#tma #the magnus archives #magnuspod #meta #season 5 spoilers #ig idk i kinda only referenced night night & an au version of cozy cabin #but anyway yeah ! i have a lot of thoughts on how fear works ! im very curious to see how other ppl think it works !#pls come talk to me about the nature of fear lmao !

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maryellencarter · 4 years

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So for about ten days now I've been playing around with the budgeting app Mint (along with a Google Sheets yearly budget template and a lot of manual work with a calculator, a calendar, and a succession of blank Google Docs because that's just the kind of person I am), and so obviously I have some Thoughts.

* I picked Mint because it's the budgeting app all the financial reviewers talk about, because it's run by Intuit who also own TurboTax so I knew their security and interface would be good, and because it does not come with built-in shaming over any of your ~unnecessary~ purchases.

* Mint is a free app which makes its money by offering you sponsored ads for financial products it thinks you might like, and getting paid by the advertisers when you accept one of the ads. The most intrusive location for these ads is on your dashboard, feed, whatever you want to call it, where the ad tile is required to be the third tile down and cannot be shuffled to the bottom or turned off.

* (There is also a desktop browser version, Mint.com. I have poked it very slightly but couldn't get it to do anything useful. More on that later. I don't remember noticing how the ads are arranged there.)

* The app's general design is very sleek and intuitive, what I'd expect from the parent company of QuickBooks and TurboTax. Other than the intrusive ad tile, it lets you rearrange everything however you want.

* Mint is designed around importing transactions from your bank account for you to do budgetary stuff at, so obviously security is really important, which gives Intuit an edge up on the competition because I'm already used to trusting them with my tax returns. It only seems to sync new transactions during banking hours, which for someone like me who does most of their shopping on Sunday is kind of frustrating. It also won't let you edit or recategorize a transaction till it's finished "processing" a day or two down the line. I don't know if these pitfalls are common to all budget apps but it would probably make sense if they are.

* One thing Mint does that's incredibly handy for me is it lets you put all your recurring bills in one place and even sync them with your phone calendar. I actually had to turn off the phone calendar sync because it was alerting me constantly on the day before payday when I couldn't do anything about the bill that was due on payday, but if you can find the setting to change the alert frequency it might be useful. And having a nice chronological list of what the fuck is due when, is extremely helpful to my brain, because previously I was trying to remember everything in my head and I kept losing bills.

* Going down my tiles as I have them sorted in the app, I don't have much to say about that list of transactions itself, except that you can recategorize them and split them into different categories -- which is handy if the rent included $105 late fees which you don't want befuckening your future averages, or if you bought groceries and also a barbecue lighter at Walmart, to take two recent examples.

* You cannot, unfortunately, rename or edit categories. On desktop only, you can supposedly add categories, but you cannot then use those categories in any of Mint's other functions, which really defeats the purpose. And their ideas of what categories you might need are pretty... idiosyncratic, not to say WASPy, so e.g. I'm currently categorizing Patreon income under "Reimbursement" because the other options were things like "Investment Income" and "Returned Purchase". And transfers to my savings account can either be "Credit Card Payment" or "Transfer for Cash Spending".

* (I suppose I could put my savings under "Investment: Deposit" or something similarly grandiose, but that seems like... a lot for the 31 cents rounded up from getting a pizza at Little Caesars.)

* Anyways. So then, after the obligatory ad tile, comes a nice colorful pie chart of my spending for the month, which I can open up and tab through to look at all the categories. I saw one finance blogger saying you should use the Miscellaneous category for some things rather than getting too granular, but I like seeing the little individual entries for my haircut and my cloth mask and my pharmacy copay. (That last one's going to be a more substantial pie slice now that I can actually afford to start taking most of my meds again. Turns out my prescription for diabetic test strips expired, though, so I have to get ahold of my doctor and get a new one sent over, and I'm looking skeptically at the copays. :P I've been ignoring my diabetes since January, it can wait a little longer till I'm financially caught up from COVID.)

* I can see list-style breakdowns by category and merchant, too. This is one of the few places in the mobile app that my income shows up, other than the actual paycheck transactions. The desktop version has some more places to budget projected income, but the handling is clunky as hell.

* Next up is the tile where I've been spending a lot of my time, Budgets. This is your basic "envelope method" where you create, say, a budget for haircuts and another one for groceries. Each budget has to be for one of Mint's pre-created categories, and when you have a spending transaction in that category, it puts the expense against that Budget. The desktop version has you also creating a line item for expected income in Budgets, and then becoming stroppy when you attempt to adjust parts in the wrong order, so I prefer the app which simply tells you e.g. that you have spent $900 of an allocated $1000 with an airy unconcern for whether the $1000 has arrived in your bank account yet.

* My single biggest frustration with Mint is that you cannot create Budgets based on user-created categories, nor can you delete, rename, or even collapse categories in the list. So if I go to create a new Budget for, say, "Housewares" to account for the $1 barbecue lighter I finally bought (I have large hands and a tall jar candle that has burned down farther than I can reach, okay, it was a necessity), then I'm stuck scrolling all the way up and down past "Investment: Capital Gains" and "Kids: Child Support" before finally settling on "Home Supplies" because it doesn't really seem like a "Home Furnishings".

* After Budgets comes Accounts, which just shows me my current net worth across all my accounts. I actually unlinked my savings account because it was confusing the hell out of me to see a 31-cent transfer out of checking paired with the same 31-cent transfer into savings, so this doesn't show me anything I can't get through my bank app, but if I had current credit card debt or non-retirement investment accounts it might be more useful.

* (I have not linked my 401(k) to Mint. I haven't even figured out how to get into my 401(k), either before or after it transferred to a different handler a couple months back. I feel like those are problems for a later time than "okay how much groceries can I buy and still pay the rent".)

* On the desktop version of Mint, you can also put things like your car in under your net worth as Property. I tried that, found that I both did not believe their Kelly Blue Book valuation at all (it didn't have any option to take into account "was totaled two years ago and looks it but still mostly runs") and that I find it extremely stressful to have non-liquid property listed as part of my net worth. Interesting to know. You learn all sorts of shit about yourself when you try to manage money.

* Next there's a tile that attempts to break down my "cash flow" by month. It doesn't seem to have noticed the Paypal transfers on which I was largely subsisting for the three months it was able to pull from my bank account, even though they show up fine in Transactions, so it's deeply confused about whether my cash flow is Healthy or Unhealthy. For now, with my acquisition of a second paycheck for August, it seems to have settled on Healthy. I might turn that tile off though. It doesn't really... offer much, I guess?

* I have turned off the tile that shows me my free credit score. That's a problem for a much later me. Right now I have more urgent problems, like catching up on my deferred car insurance and my deferred cell phone bill and my deferred healthcare deductions.

* You also can't turn off the tile for the Mint "Life Blog" or the one asking you to rate the app, but at least they sit at the bottom of the app as you scroll down.

* The desktop version also has an entire segment not found in the app, for "Goals", where you can supposedly put in your outstanding debts and figure out payment schedules for them. It sounds really good in principle, but I found that section of the site unworkably glitchy, on both laptop and iPad; I couldn't even get past the screen where you try to first enter one of your debts, as it required me to choose answers from two dropdowns neither of which would actually do anything. I was able to get an estimate from the "saving for a rainy day" goal, anyway, by putting in the amount of a debt and telling it I'd like to save up that much money in a year, but that's nothing I couldn't have done with a calculator and a bit of mental effort.

* Jumping back up to the top of the app, one other thing that does intermittently drive me bananas about the app is, when you put in a bill you get a dropdown where you select how often it should recur, but then it... doesn't recur. You have to manually put in the next occurrence. It's still a handy list of upcoming bills, but I actually had to resort to my phone calendar (which properly handles recurring events) to get a good visual on future months' bills.

* And because there is nowhere to put in your projected income and get a nice projection of "On X date you will have $XX in your bank account", or even better a daily graph of your expected cash flow so that you can see "yeah don't put that $300 in savings you'll need it for rent in two weeks", I've been reduced to, as mentioned above, manual daily projections through the end of the year using my phone calculator, phone calendar, Google Docs, and eventually my damn iPad drawing app (came with a Bluetooth stylus I never got working) because I couldn't find any physical graph paper.

* So. Um. Summary. I guess it's a good app? It's very sleek, it has nice charts and graphs and a good interface. But it thinks you can do a lot more with it than you can actually do. Its main uses for me are probably going to boil down to "stop forgetting bills" (the rolling list format works a lot better for my brain than the phone calendar format, even if I do have to re-enter data every time I mark a bill paid) and "finally figure out how much I spend on food really".

#budget #mint app #app reviews

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royalflushstories · 4 years

Text

Survey Results

Buckle up! This is going to be a long post.

So you know the survey we sent out a little bit ago? Well, it’s closed now, and here are the results. It’s a fair amount of raw data, but we’ve done our best to make it easy to follow. (For some reason, tumblr isn’t letting us enter charts? But we’ve broken the numbers up into easy chunks.)

Thank you to the 23 of you who responded. We’re glad you participated. :D

Your Favorites

The first part of the survey covered who your favorite characters were. Some of those answers weren’t very surprising, but some of them are definitely interesting.

Keep in mind, not all the answers in any given category will add up to 23, since there was the option to choose nobody. Also, sometimes people are in more than one category, so while they might not be the overall favorite in one category they do have another chance.

The Freddy’s Crew:

Mark was the favorite, with 15 votes. Amy and Ethan both had 2, and Tyler had one. Nobody else was voted for.

The Law Enforcement:

MatPat was the overall favorite, also with 15 votes. Gar came in second with 4, and Nate had 2. Nobody else had any votes.

The Mafia:

We have a three-way tie here for first place, interestingly enough. PJ, Jordan, and Luna all got 6 votes each. (At least we know Luna is safe from the death later on.) Wiggles (Ohm) had 3, and Sophie had 2.

The Faceless:

The tie for favorite Faceless goes to Terroriser and Thomas Sanders with 4 votes each, immediately followed by a three-way tie with Jack, Gar, and Crimson* with 3 votes each. Ohm (Wiggles) and Gab both had 2 votes, and Vanoss and Robin (Kostya) had 1 each.

(*Reminder: Crimson is the OC replacement for Cry.)

The Mob:

The favorite in this category is one of those extremely unsurprising ones. Jack had 18 votes. Sam had 1, and Rhett had 1.

The Fancy Folk:

Felix came in as the overall favorite, with 11 votes, but Marzia’s 6 is more than most other people got at all, so that’s not at all shabby. Crimson had 4, and Thomas Fischbach had 2.

The Orchids:

Molly was, by far, the favorite here, with 14 votes. Minx had 4, Wade had 3, and JP had one.

The “Hard-to-Categorize”:

Technically, Dan had 8 votes and Phil had 7. However, one of you mentioned that Phil was tied with Dan for you in that category, which I’m going to count as an extra vote for Phil. So, once again, we have a tie for overall favorite, with Dan and Phil having 8 votes. Stephanie* had 2, and Jason had 1.

(*She wasn’t included in any of the categories, technically, but people wrote her in.)

The Mafiya (ish):

Thomas Sanders came in at a solid 8 votes, and Kostya (Robin) was close behind at 8. Rosanna had 5 (and to those who chose her as their favorite, my condolences). Buttons came in at 2, and, a bit surprisingly, Mir had 1 vote. I don’t know who you are, but I applaud your courage to put that on the survey the authors looked over.

Your Expected Deaths

Now, this second part was a bit harder to track, as you were allowed to choose as many people as you wanted from each category to say you were expecting them to die by the end of the series, but only one cause of death. Because of that, sometimes it’s difficult to pin down what cause of death people think is most likely to go to each character, but if there’s a clear trend it’ll be included in a note.

The Freddy’s Crew:

By far, you expect Mark to die--12 votes were cast towards that, with Tyler having 4 and Amy and Ethan both having 3.

As for the expected cause of death, 13 of you chose “protecting someone,” 2 chose “murdered,” 2 couldn’t explain the expectation*, and 1 chose “killed in a fight”.

By far, most of the “protecting someone” deaths belonged to Mark, but there was at least one person who assigned that to Tyler.

The Law Enforcement:

Most interestingly, the character most expected to die by the end of the series is Nate, with 11 votes. He’s followed closely by MatPat (7 votes), Gar (6 votes), and Patrck (5 votes). Whittaker has 2 votes, and Bob, Dlive, and Entoan all have 1 each.

The most popular expected cause of death is “protecting someone” with 7 votes, followed by “killed in a fight” with 6. “Murdered” has 5, “had it coming” had 3, and “seeking revenge” had 2.

Only 1 person thought we won’t kill any of these people, and most of you selected multiple people to die.

The Mafia:

A great deal many of you seem to be expecting Jordan to die (9 votes). The same goes for Wiggles (Ohm) with 8. PJ has 5, and Sophie has 2.

“Protecting someone” and “killed and a fight” have close numbers (8 and 7), but it’s moments like these I’ll ask you to consider that those to categories can and do sometimes overlap. “Murdered” had 2 votes, “seeking revenge” had 1, and “had it coming” had 1.

The Faceless:

It seems a lot of you are expecting Robin (Kostya) to die. 9 of you, in fact. Just like 5 of you think Gar is going to die. Ohm (Wiggles) and Crimson both have 4 votes towards their expected demise, and Vanoss and Thomas Sanders both have 2. Moo and Terroriser both have 1.

As for the causes of death, “killed in a fight” has a whopping 9 votes. “Protecting someone” has 3, as does “murdered.” “Had it coming” has 2.

The Mob:

Only 8 of you thought someone would die in this category, which means 15 of you figured we wouldn’t kill someone. It’ll be interesting to see how that ultimately plays out, but you do all have a pretty good read on us now, so you may just be right.

6 of you think we’re going to off Rhett, and 2 of you think we’re going to kill Jack.

“Killed in a fight” has 4 votes. “Protecting someone,” “murdered,” and “seeking revenge” all have 1 vote each.

The Fancy Folk:

11 of you expect Crimson to die by the end of the series. Thomas Fischbach has 6 votes. Ken and Felix both have 2, and Marzia has 1.

“Protecting someone” is the most popular reason of death, at 7 votes. “Murdered” has 4, “seeking revenge” has 3, and “killed in a fight” has 2. This is the other time I wonder where categories overlap.

The Orchids:

Wade is the character most expected to die, at 5 votes. Krism has 4 votes, Minx has 2, and Molly and JP both have 1.

“Killed in a fight” has 6 votes, and “protecting someone” and “murdered” both have 2 votes. “Seeking revenge” has 1, though it’s unclear who is seeking revenge and why.

The “Hard-to-Categorize”:

0 votes were cast here. None of you think we’re going to kill any of these people. That’s oddly trusting.

The Mafiya (ish):

Mir has 17 votes for his death. I don’t know if this means the other 6 people figured that expecting him to die was too hopeful or if they want to see him alive. Poopyhead McGee has 4 votes, Kostya (Robin) has 3, and Buttons has 2.

The reason of death “had it coming” had 17 votes, but only 16 were directed at Mir. “Murdered” had 2 votes, and “killed in a fight” and “seeking revenge” both had 1, and were both clearly attached to Kostya.

Additional Comments:

These are things that were added as causes of death that weren’t on the list. (These are not all the additional causes and comments.) If a particular quote was submitted with a name, the name has been removed for the sake of privacy.

I can’t help but think PJ is going overexert himself in this fight and he’s going to get sick again and actually die this time... which is exactly the kind of very mean thing I’d expect you to do after finally reuniting him as Sophie. And let’s be honest, if anyone in the Freddy’s crew is going to die, it’s going to be Mark because you WOULD make us go through his death twice

and

Robin will probably be out between a rock and a hard place in regards to his infiltration. Either he’ll try to protect someone and the Russian Mafia will kill him, or he’ll try to keep his cover and someone else will kill him - like other Mafia or the Police.

and

Honestly I really have no real idea on whose going to die. I just have a slight feeling that either Jack or PJ are going to die & it's going to be protecting the other, kind of poetic in a way.

and my personal favorite

Everybody gets to kill Mir 😈

#mobster au #all of the characters #just #all of them

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