#reading this book has actually been really helpful for understanding trump; it's way more relevant to him than the Twitter deal

[tototavros]

#context: johnson will need new directors for the board of the new company he turns rjr nabisco into #theres a committee that writes up a report endorsing the new company idea to the board #and hugel was trying to get Butler to join the committee #only johnson might have offered butler a seat on the new board. johnson says that it was in regards to the current board #but hugel doesnt really believe him. then johnson comes in with the maybe-bribe #reading this book has actually been really helpful for understanding trump; it's way more relevant to him than the Twitter deal #main similarity is: debt is annoying compared to equity because if you have some bad years as a publicly traded company the stock exchange #cant repossess your company (well. hostile takeover ig)

[arcticdementor]

Media Twitter does not hate Substack because it’s pretending to be a platform when it’s a publisher; they don’t hate it because it’s filled with anti-woke white guys; they don’t hate it because of harassment or any such thing. I don’t think they really hate it at all. Substack is a small and ultimately not-very-relevant outpost in a vastly larger industry; they may not like it but it’s not important enough for them to hate it. What do they hate? They hate where their industry is and they hate where they are within their industry. But that’s a big problem that they don’t feel like they can solve. If you feel you can’t get mad at the industry that’s impoverishing you, it’s much easier to get mad at the people who you feel are unjustly succeeding in that industry. Trying to cancel Glenn Greenwald (again) because he criticizes the media harshly? Trying to tarnish Substack’s reputation so that cool, paid-up writer types leave it and the bad types like me get kicked off? That they can maybe do. Confronting their industry’s future with open eyes? Too scary, especially for people who were raised to see success as their birthright and have suddenly found that their degrees and their witheringly dry one-liners do not help them when the rent comes due.

…

Life in the “content” industry already sucks. A small handful of people make bank while the vast majority hustle relentlessly just to hold on to the meager pay they already receive. There are staff writers at big-name publications who produce thousands of words every week and who make less than $40,000 a year for their trouble. There are permanent employees of highly prestigious newspapers and magazines who don’t receive health insurance. Venues close all the time. Mourning another huge round of layoffs is a regular bonding experience for people in the industry. Writers have to constantly job hop just to try and grind out an extra $1,500 a year, making their whole lives permanent job interviews where they can’t risk offending their potential bosses and peers. Many of them dream of selling that book to save themselves financially, not seeming to understand that book advances have fallen 40% in 10 years - median figure now $6,080 - and that the odds of actually making back even that meager advance are slim, meaning most authors are making less than minimum wage from their books when you do the math. They have to tweet constantly for the good of their careers, or so they believe, which amounts to hundreds of hours of unpaid work a year. Their publications increasingly strong arm them into churning out pathetic pop-culture ephemera like listicles about the outfits on Wandavision. They live in fear of being the one to lose out when the next layoffs come and the game of media musical chairs spins up once again. They have to pretend to like ghouls like Ezra Klein and Jonah Peretti and make believe that there’s such a thing as “the Daily Beast reputation for excellence.”

I have always felt bad for them, despite our differences, because of these conditions. And they have a right to be angry. But they don’t have much in the way of self-awareness about where their anger really lies. A newsletter company hosting Bari Weiss is why you can’t pay your student loans? You sure?

They’ll tell you about the terrible conditions in their industry themselves, when they’re feeling honest. So what are they really mad about? That I’m making a really-just-decent guaranteed wage for just one year? Or that this decent wage is the kind of money many of them dream of making despite the fact that, in their minds, they’ve done everything right and played by all the rules? Is their anger really about a half-dozen guys whose writing you have to actively seek out to see? (If you click the button and put in your email address, you’ll get these newsletters. If you don’t, you won’t. So if you’re a media type who hates my writing, consider just… not clicking that button.) Or do they need someplace to put the rage and resentment that grows inside them as they realize, no, it’s not getting better, this is all I get?

It’s true that I have, in a very limited way, achieved the new American dream: getting a little bit of VC cash. I’m sorry. But it’s much much less than one half of what Felix Salmon was making in 2017 and again, it’s only for one year.

You think the writers complaining in that piece I linked to at the top wanted to be here, at this place in their career, after all those years of hustling? You think decades into their media career, the writers who decamped to Substack said to themselves “you know, I’d really like to be in my 40s and having to hope that enough people will pitch in $5 a month so I can pay my mortgage”? No. But the industry didn’t give them what they felt they deserved either. So they displace and project. They can hate Jesse Singal, but Jesse Singal isn’t where this burning anger is coming from. Neither am I. They’re so angry because they bought into a notoriously savage industry at the nadir of its labor conditions and were surprised to find that they’re drifting into middle age without anything resembling financial security. I feel for them as I feel for all people living economically precarious lives, but getting rid of Substack or any of its writers will not do anything to fix their industry or their jobs. They wanted more and they got less and it hurts. This isn’t what they dreamed. That’s what this is really about.

…

My own deal here is not mysterious. It’s just based on a fact that the blue checks on Twitter have never wanted to accept. I got offered money to write here for the same reason I got offered to write for The New York Times and Harper’s and The Washington Post and The LA Times, the same reason I’ve gotten a half-dozen invitations to pitch since I started here a few weeks ago, the same reason a literary agent sought me out and asked me to write a book, the same reason I sold that book for a decent advance: because I pull traffic. Though I am a social outcast from professional opinion writing, I have a better freelance publishing history than many, many of my critics who are paid-up, obedient members of the media social scene. Why? Because the editors who hired me thought I was a great guy? No. Because I pull traffic. I always have. That’s why you’re reading this on Substack right now.

…

A really important lesson to learn, in life, is this: your enemies are more honest about you than your friends ever will be. I’ve been telling the blue checks for over a decade that their industry was existentially fucked, that the all-advertising model was broken, that Google and Facebook would inevitably hoover up all the profit, that there are too many affluent kids fresh out of college just looking for a foothold in New York who’ll work for next to nothing and in doing so driving down the wages of everyone else, that their mockery of early subscription programs like Times Select was creating a disastrous industry expectation that asking your readers directly for money was embarrassing. Trump is gone and the news business is cratering. Michael Tracey didn’t make that happen. None of this anger will heal what’s wrong. If you get all of the people you don’t like fired from Substack tomorrow, what will change? How will your life improve? Greenwald will spend more time with his hottie husband and his beloved kids and his 6,000 dogs in his beautiful home in Rio. Glenn will be fine. How do we do the real work of getting you job security and a decent wage?

…

But how do things get better in that way? Only through real self-criticism (which Twitter makes impossible) and by asking hard questions. Questions like one that has not been credibly confronted a single time in this entire media meltdown: why are so many people subscribing to Substacks? What is the traditional media not providing that they’re seeking elsewhere? Why have half a million people signed up as paying subscribers of various Substack newsletters, if the establishment media is providing the diversity of viewpoints that is an absolute market requirement in a country with a vast diversity of opinions? You can try to make an adult determination about that question, to better understand what media is missing, or you can read this and write some shitty joke tweet while your industry burns to the ground around you. It’s your call.

Substack might fold tomorrow, but someone would else sell independent media; there’s a market. Substack might kick me and the rest of the unclean off of their platforms tomorrow, but other critics of social justice politics would pop up here; there’s a market. Establishment media’s takeover by this strange brand of academic identity politics might grow even more powerful, if that’s even possible, but dissenters will find a place to sell alternative opinion; there’s a market. What there might not be much of a market for anymore is, well, you - college educated, urban, upwardly striving if not economically improving, woke, ironic, and selling that wokeness and that irony as your only product. Because you flooded the market. Everyone in your entire industry is selling the exact same thing, tired sarcastic jokes and bleating righteousness about injustices they don’t suffer under themselves, and it’s not good in basic economic terms if you’re selling the same thing as everyone else. You add that on to structural problems within your business model and your utter subservience to a Silicon Valley that increasingly hates you, well…. I get why you’re mad. And I get that you don’t like me. But I’m not what you’re mad about. Not really.

In the span of a decade or so, essentially all professional media not explicitly branded as conservative has been taken over by a school of politics that emerged from humanities departments at elite universities and began colonizing the college educated through social media. Those politics are obscure, they are confusing, they are socially and culturally extreme, they are expressed in a bizarre vocabulary, they are deeply alienating to many, and they are very unpopular by any definition. The vast majority of the country is not woke, including the vast majority of women and people of color. How could it possibly be healthy for the entire media industry to be captured by any single niche political movement, let alone one that nobody likes? Why does no one in media seem willing to have an honest, uncomfortable conversation about the near-total takeover of their industry by a fringe ideology?

And the bizarre assumption of almost everyone in media seems to have been that they could adopt this brand of extreme niche politics, in mass, as an industry, and treat those politics as a crusade that trumps every other journalistic value, with no professional or economic consequences. They seem to have thought that Americans were just going to swallow it; they seem to have thought they could paint most of the country as vicious bigots and that their audiences would just come along for the ride. They haven’t. In fact Republicans are making great hay of the collapse of the media into pure unapologetic advocacy journalism. Some people are turning to alternative media to find options that are neither reactionary ideologues or self-righteous woke yelling. Can you blame them? Substack didn’t create this dynamic, and neither did I. The exact same media people who are so angry about Substack did, when they abandoned any pretense to serving the entire country and decided that their only job was to advance a political cause that most ordinary people, of any gender or race, find alienating and wrong. So maybe try and look at where your problems actually come from. They’re not going away.

Now steel yourselves, media people, take a shot of something strong, look yourself in the eye in the mirror, summon you most honest self, and tell me: am I wrong?

#freddie deboer #substack #journalism

[bisexual-medal-alex]

HOMESTUCK 2: WHAT IS THE POINT

So Homestuck 2 has been out for around a quarter of a year now and despite my reluctance I have been keeping up with it and reading the main updates as they’re coming out. I’ll admit that there’s things that I like such as the new kids, Davekat and Roxy. But it’s not clicking with me the original Homestuck did and there’s a lot of in story reasons (and some meta reasons too) but there’s a big fundamental flaw of this project that everything wrong about this story revolves around, at least in my eyes. I’m having a hard time understanding what the point of Homestuck 2 is.

That is to say I’m having a hard time just grasping what’s at stake and why I should feel invested in it. On the surface I have a basic comprehension of the plot; Dirk gets so high on his own ego that he basically kidnaps and brainwashes Rose so that he can give the story a villain. And also Terezi joins him for whatever reason, a bunch of good guys and a ghost from another timeline are traveling to stop them and in an alternate timeline Jane is making a fascist takeover of their home while all of this is happening. That’s the basic summary of the story without trying to untangle all of the alternate timeline bullshit that is quite honestly harder to follow than anything in the original comic.

Don’t get me wrong Homestuck Classic is dense and hard to follow if you’re not paying attention. But I do feel like it had a point or at least a narrative structure that enhanced the story. Homestuck was ultimately a story about kids playing a game and it used adventure game tropes and conventions to not only make the world more cohesive but also to comment on said tropes and conventions. All of the kids struggled to meet the expectations thrown on them by the game, they all handled it in different ways from passively accepting their lack of agency to trying to wildly rebel against their fate and even then in some weird twist it always turned out that even their rebellion was predetermined by some higher power. I feel like the point of the original Homestuck beyond just being a silly story making fun of video games was a commentary on growing up and feeling like you have no control over anything in your life. Whether or not the ending was a satisfying way to end such a ambitious narrative like that is another debate entirely but for all of its faults the original Homestuck has a purpose.

Hell I’ll even go so far as to say I understood the point of the Epilogues and what they were trying to do. It was trying to be a commentary on the metafictional implications of continuing a story past “happily ever after” using the framework of a dark fan fiction. It makes sense to do it like this, trying to build on the themes of agency and choice that the original Homestuck started and having the characters feel lost and without purpose now that the “story” is over so while they’re still trying to settle into adulthood there’s also the existential threat of ceasing to exist without a plotline. And again like the original Homestuck they’re dealing with this existential stress in different ways either trying to live peacefully and explore their own identity or trying to be as disruptive as possible in an attempt to stay relevant. It’s supposed to be a story about how happy endings don’t exist and life still continues even after you close the book.

Putting aside for a moment whether or not the Epilogues succeeded in conveying those themes well, I think Homestuck 2, being a direct continuation of the Epilogues, is trying to build on those themes. The trouble is, again just speaking personally, I don’t understand how it’s trying to do it and it just seems pointless at best and like overly indulgent naval-gazing at worst. It comes down to A. Dirk’s role as the “bad guy” and B. How disconnected the story feels.

So in the Epilogues one version of Dirk becomes so self-absorbed after tapping into his highest potential that his god-tier powers grant him that he’s able to assume control of the narrative and as a result he decides that the best way to take advantage of this new power is to give the story a point by becoming a villain himself. I can accept all of that especially knowing that of all the human kids in the original Homestuck he was the most emotionally unstable and he always seemed to be stuck in his own ego. He always had that kind of narcissistic self-loathing where he hated himself but he also saw himself as the only person who could save the day and y’know despite fans not wanting Dirk to become a self proclaimed “bad guy” I can see why he was in a position where he would look at the possibility of ceasing to exist, see it as a problem to fix himself and think that the best way to do it would be to just embrace his most toxic personality traits and step into a new villainous role to drive the “plot” forward.

With aaaaaaaaallllllllll of that being said I do not understand his plan or why he’s doing any of the things he’s doing. I don’t understand why he needed to kidnap Rose and turn her into a hollow metal husk of her former self, I don’t understand why he roped Terezi along for the ride, I don’t understand why he’s taking a spaceship out into the middle of space, I don’t understand why he wants to play Spore and create two competing races of aliens on an uninhabited planet. I can guess and hypothesize why he’s doing these things, like maybe he took Rose and manipulated her into going along with his plans just so he’d have an intellectual equal and Terezi is in the best position to stop him so convincing her to come along is a good way to ensure she can’t help the heroes and frankly the whole alien thing coupled with the brief re-opening of the suggestion box feels like he’s trying to relive the glory days of Sburb like a middle aged dad trying to live vicariously through his son making him join the sports club even though he might not have any interest in doing so.

But I don’t understand the core drive behind any of these things and it feels like a hollow attempt to keep the story going even though it feels like everyone involved has already moved on. Maybe that is the point and I’m drastically overthinking Dirk’s role as a villain, he’s just doing all of this because he’s bored and doesn’t know how to continue the story in any meaningful way. It still makes the story feel hollow and it’s Hussie trying to be tongue-in-cheek about the fact that he wants to keep writing Homestuck but he doesn’t have any ideas on what to do with it.

Which is pretty obvious when you look at the B plot involving Jane becoming a fascist and having to deal with an uprising against her rule over Earth C. Hussie really wrote himself into a corner with the Epilogues focusing on two timelines; it might seem like an arbitrary choice to have a story where literary infinite possibilities coexist but then only focus on two of said possibilities but it did work in context of the Epilogues because it showed how profoundly your life can change just from making one choice over the other and it worked with the meta-narrative about stories and the theme of whether or not the characters have control over their lives now that they’re free from the “story”. But now the writers have to deal with the fallout of that decision and manage not only the plot with Dirk dicking around in space and a bunch of the characters coming to stop him, now they have to deal with the story of Jane holding onto her empire in TWO different timelines (well only if you’re paying for it but we’ll get to that).

I know Homestuck is famous for juggling multiple plot lines at once but the thing about that is that all of those plot lines were important for the overall story and that’s not the vibe I get here. It’s honestly not that interesting and feels like a distraction from what the story should be about. Nobody in this side of the story except maybe original flavor Vriska is aware of what’s going on in the other side of the story and the stakes are much less personal. I care more about Dave, Karkat, Roxy, Kanaya and Calliope/Jade trying to rescuer Rose and stop Dirk than I do Vriska dragging Gamzee’s corpse with a bunch of teenagers while Jane gets turned into a Donald Trump analogue.

And like honestly the fact that there’s updates hidden behind a paywall really bugs me. I understand that with the nature of crowdfunding you need some substantial incentives to get people to donate, I’m not shitting on crowdfunding as a way to fund your story and truthfully I don’t see anything wrong with having some bonus content exclusive to those who are willing to pay a little extra (trying my best not to sound like an EA or Activision executive here). But with a story like Homestuck, where the reader has been conditioned into seeing every update with every innocuous detail as something important that will later advance the story, having some updates be exclusive to backers feels wrong because you’re either saying that said updates aren’t going to impact the story so they’re just pointless fluff or you’re keeping critical story details hidden from people that can’t afford it so they’re missing out and really neither of those possibilities are a good look for your story.

And really the fact that Homestuck 2 used the Epilogues as it’s foundation is not a good idea because that’s a really rocky foundation. I know I spent a good chunk of this essay actually defending the Epilogues and their themes in a way but just because I think a story has some hidden depth like that doesn’t mean I think it’s good. It’s still needlessly grim with a lot of poorly handled character development the excuse from the creators of this being just a possible canon outcome for the series feels like a cop-out since this may as well be the main canon since nothing else for the series featuring these characters is advancing their story (unless you count Pesterquest which to be blunt feels like an extended apology for the Epilogues). Truthfully I don’t know if the Epilogues or HS2 have anything more profound to say about continuing a story past the happy ending than Into The Woods or a straight-to-DVD Disney sequel (not that I’m comparing an award-winning Broadway play to a Disney sequel in terms of quality I’m just saying I get more enjoyment and intellectual stimulation from the meta-narrative of Lion King 1 1/2 than Homestuck at this point).

Maybe I’m being too harsh to judge Homestuck 2 when it seems to have only barely just gotten started. It’s going to continue whether or not I enjoy it or not and maybe over time it will validate itself. But right now to me personally it just feels like a hollow imitation of what we used to enjoy about Homestuck.

#homestuck #homestuck 2 #homestuck 2 beyond canon #upd8 #randomguywords

[innuendostudios]

Research Masterpost

This is my research list for The Alt-Right Playbook. It is a living document - I am typically adding sources faster than I am finishing the ones already on it. Notes and links below the list. Also, please note this does not include the hundreds of articles and essays I’ve read that also inform the videos - this is books, reports, and a few documentaries.

Legend: Titles in bold -> finished Titles in italics -> partially finished *** -> livetweeted as part of #IanLivetweetsHisResearch (asterisks will be a link) The book I am currently reading will be marked as such.

Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis Alternative Influence, by Rebecca Lewis The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer*** Eclipse of Reason, by Max Horkheimer Civility in the Digital Age, by Andrea Weckerle The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt On Revolution, by Hannah Arendt Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley*** This is an Uprising, by Mark and Paul Engler Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandifer This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel The Brainwashing of my Dad, doc by Jen Senko On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin*** Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Indoctrination over Objectivity?, by Marrissa S. Ballard Ur-Fascism, by Umberto Eco Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, by Lindsay C. Gibson Anti-Semite and Jew, by Jean-Paul Sartre Alt-America, by David Neiwert*** The Dictator’s Handbook, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith Terror, Love, and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein Kaputt, by Curzio Malaparte The Anatomy of Fascism, by Robert O. Paxton Neoliberalism and the Far Right, by Neil Davidson and Richard Saull Trolls Just Want to Have Fun, by Erin E. Buckels, et al The Entrepreneurial State, by Mariana Mazzucato

Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis (free: link) A monstrously useful report from Data & Society which- coupled with Samuel R. Delany’s memoir The Motion of Light in Water - formed the backbone of the Mainstreaming video. I barely scratched the surface of how many techniques the Far Right uses to inflate their power and influence. If you feel lost in a sea of Al-Right bullshit, this will at least help you understand how things got the way they are, and maybe help you discern truth from twaddle.

The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer (free: link) (livetweets) A free book full of research from Bob Altemeyer’s decades of study into authoritarianism. Altemeyer writes conversationally, even jovially, peppering what could have been a dense and dry work with dad jokes. I wouldn’t say he’s funny (most dads aren’t), but it makes the book blessedly accessible. If you ever wanted a ton of data demonstrating that authoritarianism is deeply correlated with conservatism, this is the book. One of the most useful resources I’ve consumed so far, heavily influencing the entire series but most directly the video on White Fascism. Even has some suggestions for how to actually change the mind of a reactionary, which is kind of the Holy Grail of LeftTube.

(caveats: there is a point in the book where Altemeyer throws a little shade on George Lakoff, and I feel he slightly - though not egregiously - misrepresents Lakoff’s arguments)

Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff An extremely useful book about framing. Delves into the differences between the American Right and Left when it comes to messaging, how liberal politicians tend to have degrees in things like Political Science and Rhetoric, where conservatives far more often have degrees in Marketing. This leads to two different cultures, where liberals have Enlightenment-style beliefs that all  you need is good ideas and conservatives know an idea will only be popular if you know how to sell it. He gets into the nuts and bolts of how to keep control of a narrative, because the truth is only effective if the audience recognizes it as such. Kind of staggering how many Democrats swear by this book while blatantly taking none of its advice. Lakoff has been all over the series since the first proper video.

(caveats: several. Lakoff seemingly believes the main difference between the Right and Left is in our default frames, and that swaying conservatives amounts to little more than finding better ways to make the same arguments. he deeply underestimates the ideological divide between Parties, and some of his advice reads as tips for making debates more pleasant but no more productive. he also makes a passing comparison between conservatism and Islam that means well but is a gross and kinda racist false equivalence)

How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley (livetweets) A slog. Many useful concepts, and directly referenced in the White Fascism video. But could have said everything it needed to say in half as many pages. Stanley seems dedicated to framing everything in epistemological terms, not appealing to morality or sentiment, which means huge sections of the book are given over to “proving” democracy is a good thing using only philosophical concepts, when “democracy good” is probably something his readership already accepts. Also has a frustrating tendency to begin every paragraph with a brief summary of the previous paragraph. When he actually talks about, you know, how propaganda works, it’s very useful, and I don’t regret reading it. But I don’t entirely recommend it. Seems written for an imagined PhD review board. Might be better off reading my livetweets.

Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandier A trip. Similar to Jason Stanley, Sandifer is dedicated to “disproving” a number of Far Right ideologies - from transphobia to libertarianism to The Singularity - in purely philosophical terms. The difference is, she’s having fun with it. I won’t pretend the title essay - a 140-page mammoth - didn’t lose me several times, and someone had to remind which of its many threads was the thesis. And some stretches are dense, academic writing punctuated with vulgarity and (actually quite clever) jokes, which doesn’t always average out to the playfully heady tone she’s going for. But, still, frequently brilliant and never less than interesting. There is something genuinely cathartic about a book that begins with the premise that we all fear but won’t let ourselves meaningfully consider - that we will lose the fight with the Right and climate change is going to kill us all - and talks about what we can do in that event. I felt I didn’t even have to agree with the premise to feel strangely empowered by it. Informed the White Fascism video’s comments on transphobia as the next frontier of bigotry since failing to prevent marriage equality.

On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt Was surprised to find this isn’t properly a book, just a printed essay. Highly relevant passage that helped form my description of 4chan in The Card Says Moops: “What tends to go on in a bull session is that the participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves saying such things and in order to discover how others respond, without its being assumed that they are committed to what they say: it is understood by everyone in a bull session that the statements people make do not necessarily reveal what they really believe or how they really feel. The main point is to make possible a high level of candor and an experimental or adventuresome approach to the subjects under discussion. Therefore provision is made for enjoying a certain irresponsibility, so that people will be encouraged to convey what is on their minds without too much anxiety that they will be held to it. [paragraph break] Each of the contributors to a bull session relies, in other words, upon a general recognition that what he expresses or says is not to be understood as being what he means wholeheartedly or believes unequivocally to be true. The purpose of the conversation is not to communicate beliefs.”

The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin (livetweets) Another freakishly useful book, and the basis for Always a Bigger Fish and The Origins of Conservatism. Jumping into the history of conservative thought, going all the way back to Thomas Hobbes, to stress that conservatism is, and always has been, about preserving social hierarchies and defending the powerful. Robin dissects thinkers who heavily influenced conservatism, from Edmund Burke and Friedrich Nietzsche to Carl Menger and Ayn Rand, and finally concluding with Trump himself. There’s a lot of insight into how the conservative mind works, though precious little comment on what we can do about it, which somewhat robs the book of a conclusion. Still, the way it bounces off of Don’t Think of an Elephant and The Authoritarians really brings the Right into focus.

Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Yet another influence on the White Fascism video. Bit of a mixed bag. The opening gives a proper definition of fascism, which is extremely useful. Then the main stretch delves into the landscape of modern fascism, from Alt-Right to Alt-Lite to neofolk pagans to the Proud Boys and on and on. Sometimes feels overly comprehensive, but insights abound on the intersections of all these belief systems (Burley pointing out that the Alt-Right is, in essence, the gentrification of working-class white nationalists like neo-Nazi skinheads and the KKK was a real eye-opener). But the full title is Fascism Today: What it is and How to End it, and it feels lacking in the second part. Final stretch mostly lists a bunch of efforts to address fascism that already exist, how they’ve historically been effective, and suggestions for getting involved. Precious few new ideas there. And maybe the truth is that we already have all the tools we need to fight fascism and we simply need to employ them, and being told so is just narratively unsatisfying. Or maybe it’s a structural problem with the book, that it doesn’t reveal a core to fascism the way Altemeyer reveals a core to authoritarianism and Robin reveals a core to conservatism, so I don’t come away feeling like I get fascism well enough to fight it. But, also, Burley makes it clear that modern fascism is a rapidly evolving virus, and being told that old ways are still the best ways isn’t very satisfying. If antifascism isn’t evolving at least as rapidly, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to win.

(caveats: myriad. for one, Burley repeatedly quotes Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies, which does not inspire confidence. he also talks about “doxxing fascists” as a viable strategy without going into the differences between “linking a name to a face at a public event” and “hacking someone’s email to publicly reveal their bank information,” where the former is the strategy that fights fascism and the latter is vigilantism that is practiced widely on the Right and only by the worst actors on the Left. finally, the one section where Burley discusses an area I had already thoroughly researched was GamerGate, and he got quite a few facts wrong, which makes me question how accurate all the parts I hadn’t researched were. I don’t want to drive anyone away from the book, because it was still quite useful, but I recommend reading it only in concert with a lot of other sources so you don’t get a skewed perspective.)

Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel (Michael Kimmel, it turns out, is a scumbag. This book’s main thesis is that we need to look at violent extremism through the lens of toxic masculinity, so Kimmel’s toxic history with women is massively disappointing. Book itself is, in many ways, good, but, you know, retweets are not endorsement.)

A 4-part examination of how men get into violent extremism through the lens of the organizations that help them get out: EXIT in Germany and Sweden, Life After Hate in the US, and The Quilliam Foundation in Europe and North America. Emphasizing that entry into white nationalism - and, to an extent, jihadism - is less ideological than social. Young men enter these movements out of a need for community, purpose, and a place to put their anger. They feel displaced and mistreated by society - and often, very tangibly, are - and extremism offers a way to prove their manhood. Feelings of emasculation is a major theme. The actual politics of extremism are adopted gradually. They are, in a sense, the price of admission for the community and the sense of purpose. The most successful exit strategies are those that address these feelings of loneliness and emasculation and build social networks outside the movement, and not ones that address ideology first - the ideology tends to wither with the change in environment. The book itself can be a bit repetitive, but these observations are very enlightening.

(caveats: the final chapter on militant Islam is deeply flawed. Kimmel clearly didn’t get as much access to Qulliam as he had to EXIT and Life After Hate, so his data is based far less on direct interviews with counselors and former extremists and much more on other people’s research. despite the chapter stressing that a major source of Muslim alienation is racism, Kimmel focuses uncomfortably much on white voices - the majority of researchers he quotes are white Westerners, and the few interviews he manages are mostly with white converts to Islam rather than Arabs or South Asians. all in all, the research feels thinner, and his claims about militant Islam seem much more conjectural when they don’t read as echos of other people’s opinions.)

Terror, Love and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein A look at totalitarian governments and cults through the lens of attachment theory. While not explicitly about the Far Right, it’s interesting to see the overlap between this and Healing from Hate. Stein stresses that the control dynamics she discusses are not exclusive to cults, and are, in fact, the same ones as in abusive relationships; cults are just the most extreme version. So you can see many similar dynamics in Far Right organizations, like the Aryan Nations or the Proud Boys. It’s made me curious how many of these dynamics are in play in the distributed, less controlled environment of online extremism, and makes me want to look further into the subject before drawing conclusions.

(caveats: book is, as with How Propaganda Works, sometimes a slog and rather repetitive. I clocked a 4-page stretch in chapter 8 where Stein did not say a single thing that hadn’t been said multiple times in previous chapters. also, when talking about people coerced into highly-controlled lifestyles, she offhandedly includes “prostitutes” among them? it’s that liberal conflation of sex work and trafficking which is really not cool. this isn’t a major point, just something to notice while you read it.)

Alt-America, by David Neiwert (livetweets) A look at the actual formation of the Alt-Right, and the history that led up to it: the Militia and Patriot movements of the 90′s, the Tea Party, the rise of Alex Jones and Glenn Beck, and so on. Having been steeped in the rhetoric and tactics of the Far Right for so long, someone doing the work of sitting down and putting it all in chronological order is immensely helpful. Generally clear and well-written, too, and would be an easy read if not for how goddamn depressing the content is. Has an unfortunate final 7 pages, where Neiwert starts recommending actual policy. Falls into the usual “have empathetic conversations with genuine conservatives to turn them against the fascist wing taking over their party,” not recognizing the ways in which conservatism is continuous with fascism, nor the ways that trying to appeal to moderate conservatives alienates the people whose rights they deny. Means an extremely valuable book leaves a bad taste in the final stretch, but everything up to then is aces.

#the alt-right playbook #alt-right

[richincolor]

Group Discussion Post: Yes, No, Maybe So

With Super Tuesday just hours behind us (and I predict we won’t get full results for days) and an election with so much on the line, Aisha Saeed’s & Becky Albertalli’s “Yes, No, Maybe So,” is extremely timely. It follows two teens whose parents essentially “volunteer” them into canvassing for a local election, and through their experience become more politically aware while also falling in love at the same time. 

K. Imani: I really enjoyed this book. There were so many sweet moments, funny moments, frustrating moments, etc. It was such a timely novel and one that I truly loved. What did you all think of the book?

Jessica: I loved it! The book was sweet and inspiring and just so much fun to read all at once. It actually was the push I needed to sign up for some phone banking and community canvassing.

Crystal: I fell right into the story and loved it. There were humorous moments amid the serious times. Seeing the passion that could flare up in both Jamie and Maya around their ideals and beliefs gave me hope for the future. Young people often see things and don’t pay attention just like anyone else, but when they see an injustice that tugs at them, watch out.

Audrey: I really enjoyed it! I’ve never been involved in a political campaign, so seeing what it could be like from a teenager’s perspective was really interesting! It was a good reminder that campaigns need people of all ages and abilities to help them out.

Crystal: Audrey you reminded me of my own canvassing. I’ve been involved in several campaigns both calling and knocking on doors. I totally sympathized with Jamie because that is so incredibly uncomfortable for me. I have to be truly passionate about a candidate or a specific  election to actually be putting myself out there with strangers.

K. Imani: I really enjoyed how Maya and Jamie’s relationship developed slowly over time as they established a deep friendship first where they were able to openly share and trust each other. For example, Jamie’s misstep with buying Maya breakfast during Ramadan and after her correcting him, that he took what she said to heart and using it as an opportunity to learn. This was really sweet of him and allowed Maya to really begin to trust him. What did you all enjoy about their relationship?

Jessica: Agreed. I loved how Maya and Jamie learned from each other. I really appreciated that the book demonstrated how people can make mistakes and come to understand each other more -- and it doesn’t have to be a painful or shameful process. I also loved how Jamie was so inspired by Maya and vice versa. It’s truly the best part of a relationship -- making each other better. So heartwarming!

Audrey: Yeah, it was really nice to see these two fumble things but still come back around to apologizing and promising to do better. It was a great message--even when you’re on the same side, mistakes still happen! But it’s important to apologize and make corrections and then stop making the mistake. I loved the interplay between them and how they each inspired each other--it was a great relationship, both platonic and romantic.

Crystal: I loved that it felt so real. Their bumbles, apologies, and awkwardness all show that this isn’t some fairytale situation. It’s the everydayness that is lovely. Staying on the phone forever because they don’t want to say goodbye is super sweet, but also extremely believable. It’s not fancy romantic, but it’s romantic just the same.

K. Imani: The novel takes place in a Blue enclave within a Red state and really shows the stakes of what Progressives are fighting for. What stood out to you about Maya and Jamie’s experiences? For me, when they went to their State Representative’s offices to talk about the bill that would essentially ban hijabs and the gaslighting that happens in that meeting. I was so frustrated for them, but it reflected a frustration I have with our country right now and it felt like one of the realist moments in the novel.

Jessica: I definitely got the vibe that the book was set in a similar setting to Jon Ossoff’s run in Georgia several years ago, and that race was cited in the acknowledgements at the end of the book. For a lot of young people -- teens, college students, and young adults -- coming of age politically pre- and post-2016, what happens in government has direct (sometimes positive, sometimes very negative) impact on their lives, especially if they come from a marginalized background. What really stood out to me was actually how Maya and Jamie’s friends were portrayed -- how easy it is for people from privileged backgrounds to check out of current events and feel like it isn’t important. But ultimately, Maya and Jamie managed to inspire their friends to get invested and involved. It isn’t easy, but it’s possible! Love that note of hope.

Audrey: One of the things that stood out most to me was how often Maya or Jamie noted that self-described “nice” people will still cheerfully vote for people and policies that will directly harm their own family or friends or neighbors. Because, yeah--I definitely saw a lot of that. And it hurt every time they noticed it. I was relieved that they were able to get through to some of their friends, too. Especially since their focus was on getting out their base to vote rather than trying to win over moderates.

Crystal: That meeting with at the government office was extremely frustrating to behold. There were even more interactions with friends who just didn’t notice the issues or understand how something that affects one part of their community really affects them all.

K. Imani: This book is culturally relevant as it also explores White Supremacists trolls through the use of Fifi, the white poodle, as the Pepe frog, which both bothered me and intrigued me. I feel like including Fifi really captures the time period we are living in and can stand as an example of what life is in the Trump era.

Audrey: I was so happy that they came up with a way to counter Fifi! But what really stuck with me was how the vandalizer tried to downplay their actions--it’s just trolling, it’s just a joke, you shouldn’t get upset about this. We’d seen Maya and Jamie’s reactions to finding the stickers before and none of it was a joke to them.

Crystal: The Fifi does really feel current and all too familiar. This topic reminds me of Jamie’s grandma. You better watch out because when she rattles off a person’s entire name she means business. She made me smile many times and I’d love to see her Insta account. Grandparent relationships can be so awesome and it was nice to see a “grandma’s boy” in print.

K. Imani: With such an important election in front of us, what other political inspired YA are you looking forward to this year?

Jessica: Speaking of politics-related YA, I’m really, really, really looking forward to RUNNING by Natalia Sylvester. I have its release date marked on my calendar and everything.

Crystal: I’m definitely looking forward to Brandy Colbert’s The Voting Booth and This is My America by Kim Johnson. One I recently read that I’ll be putting into lots of hands is Stamped: Racism Antiracism and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi.  

Audrey: I’m looking forward to reading all of those!

And with that, our discussion comes to an end. We’d love to hear what you all thought of the book, so leave a comment below.

#group discussion #WeNeedDiverseBooks

[pjstafford]

Random Thoughts

Hello, world, friend and family

I have been doing weekly blogs. Not sure anybody reads them or anybody cares. This will be my last one of this series. I have tried to be as soul searching, in depth, the good, the bad and the ugly with these blogs as I could be in the midst of a time when we are all experiencing the same thing in slightly different ways.

Today I have nothing earth shaking to say. I only have the random thoughts which pass through my brain.

Saturday New Mexico opens up with a lot of restrictions. My world will change little as I can work mostly from home and, if you can, you should. When I go into the office or out for supplies, I will go, do and come back home. Despite no change for me in the foreseeable future, there is a sense of relief and a sense of lightness. We survived for now. No one I love have been deeply affected yet. Those caveats at the end of sentences! I started this blog series with a list of all the emotions I was experiencing. I end the same but with slightly different emotions. Grateful, relief, hesitant, determined. I am the same as I have ever been. I have changed in so many fundamental ways.

The last two months are divided up into two different time periods. The first month I had this almost paralyzing fear...not so much for me but for mankind. I thought this could be the apolcalypse. It has not been to date. The silliest of some of my thoughts make me shake my head. I still have toilet paper. I’m ok with higher prices for meat...become more plant based, friends, move on. I was so often annoyed that first month with the time wasting. So many zoom meetings designed to “check” in and, guess what, I have real work to do. I’m not sure if people became more used to working from home or I became better at putting in boundaries at what I would do, but wasting work time not working has never been my strength. I am a person who likes to be helpful. The second month seems more productive. There is worth in my work. I’ve developed a pattern where my work day hours may be longer but less compact. I can work two hours, take an hour, work two more, repeat. The ebb and flow of work becomes mostly my own except for meetings I must attend which seem more relevant now. When the subject matter I’m dealing with is depressing I take more self care moments and then am more productive because of it. Those large projects I thought were vital sit unfinished. The projects I’ve done instead seem more relevant in the moment.

I gained weight I wish I hadn’t. Drank too much for a week or two and then realized I wasn’t enjoying it. It wasn’t helping me to sleep or relaxed so I went back to my pre crisis drinking ways. I was brave enough to dye my hair and I like it. I hate the thought that the more life gets back to normal the more I will have to wear shoes. It’s worth it, but it will be an adjustment. I haven’t binged watch nearly as much as I could have over the last two months. I found myself having difficulty concentrating. When I stream I am drawn to children movies about talking animals. I am hoping that won’t last. I have done no creative writing except a couple of poems. I’m hoping that will change. I have not been able to sleep well. I am often fatigue. I hope that changes as well.

I want to keep my zoom time meetings with distant friends! Those have been great. Can we actually spend three hours talking about X-Files? Yes, yes we can. But we manage to talk about many other things as well. I hope Drive in theaters make a come back! I’m sad about concerts going away but I kind of hope couch tours will be embraced by far more bands. Dylan is doing original music again and Duchovny has a new novel coming out. Art continues; perhaps is made better.

I marvel at human resiliency. We all have to wear masks, so let’s start cottage industries and make them a fashion statement. What do I really want to do that I know will be delayed? Get a pedicure, hug someone tightly, go to an Isotopes game. What will I do soon that will feel normal and glorious? In June when restaurants are reopen I will spend an hour with a cup of coffee in the presence of company I enjoy.

I am the same from this time. I did not lose my quirkiness, my oddness, my stubbornness. I did not become a clean freak despite my disinfectant frenzy moments. Those will pass in time. I am still an introvert who enjoy my solitude. Even now.

I am different. While I have always struggle with a sense of balance I am more determined than ever to keep that balance going forward. That lesson I blogged about a few weeks back of keeping the structure of a weekend still lives within me. I am fine with giving up a weekend day and gaining a week day, but the need to decompress and hear myself think is stronger within me now. I think I can live in the moment better. I think I can be grateful for the air I breathe more.

Larger picture focus?

People are so worry about kids having education. Can surviving a pandemic offer no life education for these kids? Must all education be in a classroom or online?The kids will be alright. Let them breathe, learn, grow. And give them an old fashion book to read and some open space to run. Watch them be a better generation that we can ever believe.

Isn’t it amazing how clean the air is right now? Seriously, can we consider how we commute. Eat less meat, my friends.

Can we be kinder to our workforce? I fear we will take advantage of those desperate for jobs, but consider how many of our essential workers are low wage employees. Can we allow a parent with a sick kid to work from home without taking PTO? Can we become more humane? Unfortunately I see no evidence that this is our future despite the lessons of today.

I hate racism. I hate it. Because I hate racism I hate Trump more than ever. I hate the way he says China. I hate him with every fiber of my being. I have never hated a human soul more.

And I have so many Dylan lyrics in my head right now. There is one for every emotion and thought. Same with David Duchovny Gifs by the way. There is no single thought or emotion you cannot find or create a Duchovny GIF for, if you are so inclined...I digress. I do that a lot these days. Back to Dylan

This man is a genius and an enigma. After 8 years with no original music, in the middle of the pandemic, he drops a 17 minute song about the assassination of President Kennedy. Isn’t that bizarre? But he has given us three original songs now and a new album next month. Whoever is doing his social media now deserves a hug. He is communicating and expressing himself to fans. I don’t feel worthy.

These words from from thirty years ago keep rolling through my head

I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man

Like every sparrow falling

Like every grain of sand

Those words are always true. They are not more true now than they have ever been. It is only that we can understand their truth more fully now.

Keep on keepin on, my friends.

[thisislizheather]

The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West - A Review

I’ve been waiting for this book of essays to come out for months and it was so, so worth the the wait. I know it’s asking a lot, but can this woman please just write a book every year? Or every six months? That’d be great, thanks. Favourite parts ahead!

“This moment in history is about more than individual interactions between individual people. Those matter, too - it matters how you made your subordinate feel with that comment, and it matters quite a lot that the woman on the bus went home and sobbed after you groped her - but, as Rebecca Traister wrote in December 2017 on The Cut: “This moment isn’t just about sex. It’s about work.” It’s about who feels at home in the workplace and who feels like an outsider - which, by extension, dictates who gets to thrive and ascend, who gets to hire their replacements, who gets to set their children up for success, who gets credit and glory, and who gets forgotten. It’s about who feels safe in public spaces and who doesn’t. Which is to say, it’s about everything.”

“We gobble up cable news’ insistence that both sides of an argument are equally valid and South Park’s insistence that both sides are equally stupid, because taking a firm stance on anything opens us up to criticism.”

“We kept letting Adam Sandler make more movies after Little Nicky, because white men are allowed to fail spectacularly and keep their jobs.”

There’s literally an entire chapter on Adam Sandler movies that is perfection. You have to read it. Seriously, just pick this up at a bookstore and read that one chapter, if nothing else.

I loved all of her points about how there was endless discussion about The Ted Bundy Tapes when it came out earlier this year and how we debated whether this murdering monster was handsome or not. And how that same type of debate is somehow in the same arena as when people debate whether Elizabeth Warren is “likable” or not.

There’s a part in the Ted Bundy special where the judge sympathizes with Bundy and goes on a ridiculous tangent about how it’s “such a shame” that he turned out that way when he had so much potential, it’s truly disgusting to see a judge commiserate with a rapist and murderer, but it happened and it’s wild to see. “That anecdote is often held up as evidence of Bundy’s charisma - even the judge sentencing him to death was seduced by that smirk, that finger wave. But it is the most blatant, overwhelming evidence we have for the opposite. Men don’t need charisma to succeed. It doesn’t matter if men are likable, because men are people who do things, who don’t have to ask first, whose potential has value even after it is squandered.”

“Chasing likability has been one of women’s biggest setbacks, by design. I don’t know that rejecting likability will get us anywhere, but I know that embracing it has gotten us nowhere.”

Absolutely in love with the fact that she loves the movie Clue as much as I do.

I really liked the chapter that she discussed Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP, even if I did wish that she went in on her/the brand harder.

So in love with the chapter where she talks about South Park and its creators. I’ve always hated that show, it’s never been good, and I can’t understand who the hell would be into it. It’s never been funny, edgy, smart. Insane that it’s still on.

Maybe I’m really reading into it, but there’s a tiny part where she mentions that PETA sucks and I can’t stop all my little inside screams - it’s hard to find somewhere who dislikes all the same stuff as you.

“Men think that misogyny is a women’s issue; women’s to endure and women’s to fix. White people think that racism is a pet issue for people of color; not like the pure, economic grievances of the white working class. Rape is a rape victim’s problem: What was she wearing? Where was she walking? Had she had sex before?“

“Whenever talk turned toward solutions, the panel came back to mentorship: women lifting up other women. Assertiveness and leaning in and ironclad portfolios and marching into that interview and taking the space you deserve and changing the ratio and not letting Steve from accounting talk over you in the morning. During the closing question-and-answer period, a young woman stood up. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice electric with anger, “but all I’ve heard tonight are a bunch of things women can do to fight sexism. Why is that our job? We didn’t build the system. This audience should be full of men.”

“Sexism is a male invention. White supremacy is a white invention. Transphobia is a cisgender invention. So far, men have treated #MeToo like a bumbling dad in a detergent commercial: well intentioned by floundering, as though they are not the experts. You are the experts. Only 2.6 percent of construction workers are female. We did not install that glass ceiling, and it is not our responsibility to demolish it.”

When talking about what men can actually do to help women: ”“Do you ever stick up for me?” sounds childish, but I don’t know that gussying up the sentiment in more sophisticated language would enhance its meaning. It isn’t fun to be the one who speaks up. Our society has engineered robust consequences for squeaky wheels, a verdant pantheon from eye rolls all the way up to physical violence. One of the subtlest and most pervasive is social ostracism: coding empathy as the fun killer, consideration for others as an embarrassing weakness, and dissenting voices as out-of-touch, bleeding-heart dweebs (at best). Coolness is a fierce disciplinarian. A result is that, for the most part, the only people weathering those consequences are the ones who don’t have the luxury of staying quiet. Women, already impeded and imperiled by sexism, also have to carry the social stigma of being feminist buzzkills if they call attention to it. People of color not only have to deal with racism; they also have to deal with white people labeling them “angry” or “hostile” or “difficult” for objecting. What we could use is some loud, unequivocal backup.”

“I know there’s pressure not to be a dorky, try-hard male feminist stereotype; there’s always a looming implication that you could lose your spot in the boys’ club; if you seem too opportunistic or performative in your support, if you suck up too much oxygen and demand praise, women will yell at you for that, too. But I need you to absorb that risk. I need you to get yelled at and made fun of, a lot, and if you get kicked out of the club, I need you to be relieved, and I need you to help build a new one.”

The entire chapter about the complications with Joan Rivers is such a great one.

“You can hate someone and love them at the same time. Maybe that’s a natural side effect of searching for heroes in a world not built for you.”

Okay, so the only thing that we strongly disagree on is her previous love for Adam Carolla. Always hated that man.

““Common sense’” without growth, curiosity, or perspective eventually becomes conservatism and bitterness.”

“There are pieces of pop culture that you outgrow because you get older. Then there are pieces of pop culture that you outgrow because you get better.”

“Art has no obligation to evolve, but it has a powerful incentive to do so. Art that is static, that captures a dead moment, is nothing. It is, at best, nostalgia; at worst, it can be a blight on our sense of who we are, a shame we pack away. Artists who refuse to listen, participate, and change along with the world around them are not being silenced or punished by censorious college sophomores. They are letting obsolescence devour them, voluntarily. Political correctness is just the inexorable turn of the gear. Falling behind is preventable.”

Talking about Ricky Gervais:” “People see something they don’t like, and they expect it to stop,” he said. “The world is getting worse. Don’t get me wrong, I think I lived through the best fifty years of humanity, 1960 through 2015, the peak of civilization for everything. For tolerances, for freedoms, for communication, for medicine! And now it’s going the other way a little bit.” “Dumpster fire” has emerged as the favorite emblem of our present sociopolitical moment, but that Gervais quote feels more apt and more tragic as a metaphor: the Trump/Brexit era is a rich, famous, white, middle-aged man declaring the world to be in decline the moment he stops understanding it.”

“Adam Carolla isn’t angry because he’s being silenced; he’s angry because he’s being challenged. He’s been shown the road map to continued relevance, and it doesn’t lead back to his mansion. He’s angry because he’s being asked to do the basic work of maintaining a shared humanity or else be left behind. He’s choosing the past. Gervais and Carolla are not alone in presenting themselves as noble bulwarks against a wave of supposed leftwing censorship. (A Netflix special, for the record, is not what “silencing” looks like.)”

Talking Louis CK: “Less than a year after his vow to retreat and listen, CK made the laziest and most cowardly choice possible: to turn away from the difficult, necessary work of self-reflection, growth, and reparation, and run into the comforting arms of people who don’t think it’s that big a deal to show your penis to female subordinates. Conservatives adore a disgraced liberal who’s willing to pander to them because he’s too weak to grow. How pathetic to take them up on it.”

“Like every other feminist with a public platform, I am perpetually cast as a disapproving scold. But what’s the alternative? To approve? I do not approve.” - This is probably my most favourite line in the entire book

“Not only are women expected to weather sexual violence, intimate partner violence, workplace discrimination, institutional subordination, the expectation of free domestic labor, invisible cuts that undermine us daily, we are not even allowed to be angry about it.”

“I’d been taught that when ordinary people try to do activism, they look stupid. Of course now I know that there is no effective activism without the passion and commitment of ordinary people and it is a basic duty of the privileged to show up and fight for issues that don’t affect us directly. But maintaining that separation has served the status quo well. It keeps good people always just shy of taking action. It’s tone policing. It’s the white moderate. But it’s changing.”

“Diet culture is a coercive, misogynist pyramid scheme that saps women’s economic and political power.”

Definitely the best thing I’ve read all year. GO BUY!

#The Witches Are Coming #Lindy West #this is liz heather #Liz Heather #book review #great book 2019 #great book fall 2019 #feminist #feminism book #feminism

[janiedean]

Ok I need to know your thoughts about this Green Book mess

... pray for me anon XD

anyway, never mind that my general thought is that I’m really sad the mule didn’t compete this round because then it’d have deserved all the awards hands down........

tldr: the fact that people are outraged is the proof that tumblr at large can’t recognize classism when it hits you in the face.

in longer words: 95% of the hot takes I’m reading are Patently False And It Shoes People Haven’t Seen That Movie.

in much longer words: counting that I haven’t seen all the nominees but I did see both blakkk/lansman (which from now will be BKKK) and blackpanther and green book (and borap but that one wasn’t gonna win best movie anyway so) and I guess that is where the crux is, so, in order.

bkkk was obviously the best movie of the lot quality speaking. in an ideal world, it would have one. except that bkkk is a movie that’s heavily political and if y’all think that the oscars would give a prize to the heavily political movie that directly criticizes the administration in power then y’all missed the part where that’s not what happens at the oscars. last time it happened it was 1978 and the deer hunter won and I still don’t know wtf was the jury’s state of grace at that point, but in 1980 they had apocalypse now in the list and kramer vs kramer won. like. guys. if you have APOCALYPSE NOW on the list and anything else wins in the major categories then you’re a joke. and tbh it surprises me that spike l/ee is still hoping he might snag a major win that’s not for screenplay with these parameters - they’re not gonna go there. hasn’t happened since ‘78. come on;

bp was not a best movie flick. like, guys: it’s not even the best mcu film around as far as I’m concerned and while it most likely deserved the technical awards..... seriously? like. if neither GB nor bkkk won then any other movie on the list had better shots than bp. I can’t even think people seriously assume it was best movie material or ON PAR WITH BKKK as in, ‘if bkkk doesn’t win then THAT ONE should have won’. like, no;

now: green book was a *safe* pick in the sense that it wasn’t as heavy-handed as bkkk when it came to be political so it was the perfect choice if they wanted to go like ‘oh hey see we gave the award to the movie about racism without giving it to the one raising the middle finger to donald trump’, but differently from moon/light (which according to me was the most political political win of the last ten years like guys sorry that movie was nowhere near as good as people said back then and I found it incredibly overrated, and before you tell me that it’s because I didn’t understand it: exactly the point. the wire is one of my fave shows ever and it tacked all the things moon/light tried to except that it did it vastly better and I actually got it for how well it was written, moon/light completely failed in that sense and I’m glad if it was a good movie for the people it was directed to but it didn’t engage beyond that target imvho but never mind that) it actually tackled very well a series of issues I never see discussed in US cinema when it comes to *racism-themed* movies and I thought it was a really well-made movie that nailed a lot of things especially when it came to how classism and racism interject themselves in the discourse and how you don’t get out of discarding one of them so easily.

specifically, with SPOILERS FROM THE MOVIE under the cut SO GO AHEAD AT WILL OR NOT:

now: all the posts ‘this is the usual movie about the white guy who gets the black friend’ already are obviously from people who haven’t seen it because they missed the basic point, as in: that the white guy is poor and uneducated and isn’t *racist* because he’s a terrible person, he is out of ignorance and not knowing any better BUT at the same time he’s not so narrow-minded that he doesn’t have fairly forward opinions on other -isms (see THAT REVEAL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MOVIE after which he goes like ‘I’ve been a bouncer in most of new york’s night clubs do you think I mind that thing’ which is a thing the audience wouldn’t have thought since italian-american men from the 50s/60s notoriously came from a fairly -PHOBIC culture in that specific sense), and that the guy being italian-american ie a *white* category that back then did not have *white privilege* put him in a lower class position than the black guy;

on the other side, it was spelled that the black guy’s issue was the contrary in the sense that he’s rich, he’s cultured, he speaks five languages, he’s not a stereotype and since people want stereotypes or expect them, he can’t seem to please either side and feels alienated from both, which I think is a discourse that should be way more relevant in a website where people talk all the time about people of color not being stereotypes and so on;

like the entire fucking point of that movie is that white guy overcomes his racism unlearning his ignorance and black guy has a few realizations about how classism works and reconnects with his heritage throughout the entire thing;

and the fact that it was the black guy explaining the white guy how to write the poetic love letters without grammar mistakes and got him to appreciate finer things in life while the white guy helped him get down to earth (which he plot-wise definitely needed - he was unhappy af before XD) *and* at the same time the movie never fucking forgot that skin color > money when it comes to systematical racism in the south (ie the scene where they get stopped by the southern policeman and white guy punches him bc he basically told him that being italian-american was being half-the-n-word and black guy tells him ‘yeah well I handled that my entire life you could deal with it once’ was FAIRLY DAMNED OBVIOUS even if it also showed that it’s Not How Things Should Go) was imvo a very good narrative choice/balancing;

also, I was really appreciating that scene where don asks tony (a guy who has no idea who orpheus is and thinks orpheus and eurydice is about orphans) to shorten his name because vallelunga is too difficult to pronounce and tony’s like ‘if the people you play for are so cultured they can learn to pronounce my name properly’ because like guys that’s a thing that happens with all non-anglophone names and seeing it come from someone who hasn’t had an education but doesn’t want to be *made better* because that doesn’t make them unworthy and then only accepts help when he wants it and doesn’t come from a position of ‘you need to look more presentable’ but from ‘I want to make your life better’ was really fucking nice excuse me, because it *did* make a point about how not being formally educated means that people are considered lesser when they shouldn’t have to fight for it, and I thought that the class-switch in there was a really great idea;

anyway nvm my specific opinions about specific scenes, the point is: green book is not heavy-handed and admittedly is a lot more sugary than BKKK and has the feel-good ending that makes it palatable for easy wins, but the content is fucking everything but sugary or devoid of discussing Serious Issues that I almost never see tackled in this kind of US movie and if people actually wanted to watch a movie that sees the subject counting that class relations exist, that some -isms are culturally learned and can be overcome, that money counts when we’re discussing how people are treated in the US, the *earned whiteness* concept (because tony is *white* but hasn’t *earned whiteness* and it’s plenty damned obvious) and that class relations are not automatically clear-cut *especially in the US* then green book is an absolutely valid choice. and like...... it wasn’t white saviorism in the sense that WHITE GUY GETS REDEEMED AND BECOMES UN-RACIST, it’s about two people growing and learning from each other and the fact that tony’s racism is tied to a) upbringing while being poor b) not literally knowing any better but that it doesn’t really take that much for him to see that his opinions are wrong when usually it’s poor black person vs rich white person, and actually that’s why I thought calling it reverse driving miss daisy was reaaaally not getting the point, so if people actually saw the damned movie before deciding it’s terrible that’d be nice;

I also think sp/ike lee was beyond rude in his, er, reactions to GB’s win, but then again... listen guys I love the man’s movies but since that time he went like ‘clint eastwood can’t make movies about charlie parker’ (??) and dismissed the italian partisans’s associations complains about what he did in miracle in st. anna (a movie I did actually really like but they were right about him villainizing the resistence when he could have not) with basically I DON’T CARE THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE ISSUES WITH HOW I, AN AMERICAN, DEPICTED A FAIRLY IMPORTANT PIECE OF ITALIAN HISTORY... like he needs to chill and to realize that there’s a thing called losing with grace and he’s not doing it.

tldr: bkkk imvo deserved to win way more and tbqh if I was spike I’d complain about bp having gotten more awards than his movie when bp really is the safest choice ever if we wanna talk about politics win, and I can agree that GB was a political choice, but it was not a bad political choice nor a racist one and actually it raised a lot of issues that I’d like to see explored more in movies because they usually aren’t. on top of that I thought mahershala ali’s performance in gb was fucking stellar and definitely was miles better than his part in moonlight (but like... bc he was in moonlight for TWENTY MINUTES, he was co-lead here) and I’m honestly baffled that when he won for moonlight there were gifsets everywhere and here there aren’t when this role was WAY better and more nuanced and with more to chew, never mind that again, he deserved it just for the speech under the rain I was discussing before. but like..... of course we’re all ignoring it??

also: I’m really laughing that tumblr as a whole is crying about GB winning when until two days ago bkkk was the worst thing ever because adam dr/iver starred in it and OMG OF COURSE HE WAS CHOSEN TO PLAY THE KKK MEMBER BECAUSE HE REALLY IS RACIST [lmao as if spike l/ee would work with a really racist person] and no one on this website gave a single fuck about it when it came out except for adam dr/iver fan blogs but now everyone is like OMG WHY DIDN’T BKKK WIN???!!!!! like guys you didn’t care about BKKK until a day ago and now I’m supposed to think you were rooting for it all along? when you all hated it because omg how dare they cast ky/lo ren in something where he’s not a bad guy? like we serious? come the fuck on, no one on here cared. and the fact that if blackpanther had won no one would say BKKK not winning = UTTERMOST CRIME just says all about how a film’s quality is judged around here. bye, I said my piece.

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #k i said i was gonna shut up but #fuck all i'm really tired of seeing people dissing gb without having seen it #bye #Anonymous #ask post

[cornelisdemooij]

Innuendo Studios Research Masterpost - With More Links

This is my research list for The Alt-Right Playbook. It is a living document - I am typically adding sources faster than I am finishing the ones already on it. Notes and links below the list. Also, please note this does not include the hundreds of articles and essays I’ve read that also inform the videos - this is books, reports, and a few documentaries. Legend: Titles in bold -> finished Titles in italics -> partially finished *** -> livetweeted as part of #IanLivetweetsHisResearch (asterisks will be a link) The book I am currently reading will be marked as such. Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis Alternative Influence, by Rebecca Lewis The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer*** Eclipse of Reason, by Max Horkheimer Civility in the Digital Age, by Andrea Weckerle The Origins of Totalitarianism, by Hannah Arendt On Revolution, by Hannah Arendt Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley*** This is an Uprising, by Mark and Paul Engler Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandifer (Patreon) This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed, by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel The Brainwashing of my Dad, documentary by Jen Senko On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin*** Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Indoctrination over Objectivity?, by Marrissa S. Ballard Ur-Fascism, by Umberto Eco Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, by Lindsay C. Gibson Anti-Semite and Jew, by Jean-Paul Sartre Alt-America, by David Neiwert The Dictator’s Handbook, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith Terror, Love, and Brainwashing, by Alexandra Stein <- (currently reading) Kaputt, by Curzio Malaparte The Motion of Light in Water, by Samuel R. Delany Media Manipulation & Disinformation Online, by Alice Marwick and Rebecca Lewis (free: link) A monstrously useful report from Data & Society which- coupled with Samuel R. Delany’s memoir The Motion of Light in Water - formed the backbone of the Mainstreaming video. I barely scratched the surface of how many techniques the Far Right uses to inflate their power and influence. If you feel lost in a sea of Alt-Right bullshit, this will at least help you understand how things got the way they are, and maybe help you discern truth from twaddle. The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer (free: link) (livetweets) A free book full of research from Bob Altemeyer’s decades of study into authoritarianism. Altemeyer writes conversationally, even jovially, peppering what could have been a dense and dry work with dad jokes. I wouldn’t say he’s funny (most dads aren’t), but it makes the book blessedly accessible. If you ever wanted a ton of data demonstrating that authoritarianism is deeply correlated with conservatism, this is the book. One of the most useful resources I’ve consumed so far, heavily influencing the entire series but most directly the video on White Fascism. Even has some suggestions for how to actually change the mind of a reactionary, which is kind of the Holy Grail of LeftTube. (caveats: there is a point in the book where Altemeyer throws a little shade on George Lakoff, and I feel he slightly - though not egregiously - misrepresents Lakoff’s arguments) Don’t Think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff An extremely useful book about framing. Delves into the differences between the American Right and Left when it comes to messaging, how liberal politicians tend to have degrees in things like Political Science and Rhetoric, where conservatives far more often have degrees in Marketing. This leads to two different cultures, where liberals have Enlightenment-style beliefs that all you need is good ideas and conservatives know an idea will only be popular if you know how to sell it. He gets into the nuts and bolts of how to keep control of a narrative, because the truth is only effective if the audience recognizes it as such. Kind of staggering how many Democrats swear by this book while blatantly taking none of its advice. Lakoff has been all over the series since the first proper video. (caveats: several. Lakoff seemingly believes the main difference between the Right and Left is in our default frames, and that swaying conservatives amounts to little more than finding better ways to make the same arguments. he deeply underestimates the ideological divide between Parties, and some of his advice reads as tips for making debates more pleasant but no more productive. he also makes a passing comparison between conservatism and Islam that means well but is a gross and kinda racist false equivalence) How Propaganda Works, by Jason Stanley (livetweets) A slog. Many useful concepts, and directly referenced in the White Fascism video. But could have said everything it needed to say in half as many pages. Stanley seems dedicated to framing everything in epistemological terms, not appealing to morality or sentiment, which means huge sections of the book are given over to “proving” democracy is a good thing using only philosophical concepts, when “democracy good” is probably something his readership already accepts. Also has a frustrating tendency to begin every paragraph with a brief summary of the previous paragraph. When he actually talks about, you know, how propaganda works, it’s very useful, and I don’t regret reading it. But I don’t entirely recommend it. Seems written for an imagined PhD review board. Might be better off reading my livetweets. Neoreaction a Basilisk, by Elizabeth Sandifer (Patreon) A trip. Similar to Jason Stanley, Sandifer is dedicated to “disproving” a number of Far Right ideologies - from transphobia to libertarianism to The Singularity - in purely philosophical terms. The difference is, she’s having fun with it. I won’t pretend the title essay - a 140-page mammoth - didn’t lose me several times, and someone had to remind which of its many threads was the thesis. And some stretches are dense, academic writing punctuated with vulgarity and (actually quite clever) jokes, which doesn’t always average out to the playfully heady tone she’s going for. But, still, frequently brilliant and never less than interesting. There is something genuinely cathartic about a book that begins with the premise that we all fear but won’t let ourselves meaningfully consider - that we will lose the fight with the Right and climate change is going to kill us all - and talks about what we can do in that event. I felt I didn’t even have to agree with the premise to feel strangely empowered by it. Informed the White Fascism video’s comments on transphobia as the next frontier of bigotry since failing to prevent marriage equality. On Bullshit, by Harry Frankfurt Was surprised to find this isn’t properly a book, just a printed essay. Highly relevant passage that helped form my description of 4chan in The Card Says Moops: “What tends to go on in a bull session is that the participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves saying such things and in order to discover how others respond, without its being assumed that they are committed to what they say: it is understood by everyone in a bull session that the statements people make do not necessarily reveal what they really believe or how they really feel. The main point is to make possible a high level of candor and an experimental or adventuresome approach to the subjects under discussion. Therefore provision is made for enjoying a certain irresponsibility, so that people will be encouraged to convey what is on their minds without too much anxiety that they will be held to it. [paragraph break] Each of the contributors to a bull session relies, in other words, upon a general recognition that what he expresses or says is not to be understood as being what he means wholeheartedly or believes unequivocally to be true. The purpose of the conversation is not to communicate beliefs.” The Reactionary Mind, by Corey Robin (livetweets) Another freakishly useful book, and the basis for Always a Bigger Fish and The Origins of Conservatism. Jumping into the history of conservative thought, going all the way back to Thomas Hobbes, to stress that conservatism is, and always has been, about preserving social hierarchies and defending the powerful. Robin dissects thinkers who heavily influenced conservatism, from Edmund Burke and Friedrich Nietzsche to Carl Menger and Ayn Rand, and finally concluding with Trump himself. There’s a lot of insight into how the conservative mind works, though precious little comment on what we can do about it, which somewhat robs the book of a conclusion. Still, the way it bounces off of Don’t Think of an Elephant and The Authoritarians really brings the Right into focus. Fascism Today, by Shane Burley Yet another influence on the White Fascism video. Bit of a mixed bag. The opening gives a proper definition of fascism, which is extremely useful. Then the main stretch delves into the landscape of modern fascism, from Alt-Right to Alt-Lite to neofolk pagans to the Proud Boys and on and on. Sometimes feels overly comprehensive, but insights abound on the intersections of all these belief systems (Burley pointing out that the Alt-Right is, in essence, the gentrification of working-class white nationalists like neo-Nazi skinheads and the KKK was a real eye-opener). But the full title is Fascism Today: What it is and How to End it, and it feels lacking in the second part. Final stretch mostly lists a bunch of efforts to address fascism that already exist, how they’ve historically been effective, and suggestions for getting involved. Precious few new ideas there. And maybe the truth is that we already have all the tools we need to fight fascism and we simply need to employ them, and being told so is just narratively unsatisfying. Or maybe it’s a structural problem with the book, that it doesn’t reveal a core to fascism the way Altemeyer reveals a core to authoritarianism and Robin reveals a core to conservatism, so I don’t come away feeling like I get fascism well enough to fight it. But, also, Burley makes it clear that modern fascism is a rapidly evolving virus, and being told that old ways are still the best ways isn’t very satisfying. If antifascism isn’t evolving at least as rapidly, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to win. (caveats: myriad. For one, Burley repeatedly quotes Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies, which does not inspire confidence. He also talks about “doxxing fascists” as a viable strategy without going into the differences between “linking a name to a face at a public event” and “hacking someone’s email to publicly reveal their bank information,” where the former is the strategy that fights fascism and the latter is vigilantism that is practiced widely on the Right and only by the worst actors on the Left. Finally, the one section where Burley discusses an area I had already thoroughly researched was GamerGate, and he got quite a few facts wrong, which makes me question how accurate all the parts I hadn’t researched were. I don’t want to drive anyone away from the book, because it was still quite useful, but I recommend reading it only in concert with a lot of other sources so you don’t get a skewed perspective.) Healing from Hate, by Michael Kimmel (Michael Kimmel, it turns out, is a scumbag. This book’s main thesis is that we need to look at violent extremism through the lens of toxic masculinity, so Kimmel’s toxic history with women is massively disappointing. Book itself is, in many ways, good, but, you know, retweets are not endorsement.) A 4-part examination of how men get into violent extremism through the lens of the organizations that help them get out: EXIT in Germany and Sweden, Life After Hate in the US, and The Quilliam Foundation in Europe and North America. Emphasizing that entry into white nationalism - and, to an extent, jihadism - is less ideological than social. Young men enter these movements out of a need for community, purpose, and a place to put their anger. They feel displaced and mistreated by society - and often, very tangibly, are - and extremism offers a way to prove their manhood. Feelings of emasculation is a major theme. The actual politics of extremism are adopted gradually. They are, in a sense, the price of admission for the community and the sense of purpose. The most successful exit strategies are those that address these feelings of loneliness and emasculation and build social networks outside the movement, and not ones that address ideology first - the ideology tends to wither with the change in environment. The book itself can be a bit repetitive, but these observations are very enlightening. (caveats: the final chapter on militant Islam is deeply flawed. Kimmel clearly didn’t get as much access to Qulliam as he had to EXIT and Life After Hate, so his data is based far less on direct interviews with counselors and former extremists and much more on other people’s research. despite the chapter stressing that a major source of Muslim alienation is racism, Kimmel focuses uncomfortably much on white voices - the majority of researchers he quotes are white Westerners, and the few interviews he manages are mostly with white converts to Islam rather than Arabs or South Asians. all in all, the research feels thinner, and his claims about militant Islam seem much more conjectural when they don’t read as echos of other people’s opinions.)

[leta-the-strange]

A far too long, fever-induced Unpopular Opinion, likely first of many, (keeping in mind that is it an opinion and not expressed at all in mean spirit): The casting/character ages in Fantastic Beasts.

Again, this is likely a wildly unpopular opinion because I’ve never come across anyone who has even touched slightly on the subject, but it is an, admittedly minor, detail that got me thinking a little. Again, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter a great deal and I’m sure I’m still going to enjoy the series either way but it’s just a personal opinion I’ve had nonetheless.

I do understand the organic nature of film and the flexibility you need to allow. Sometimes the character will be pitched or imagined as a certain age, but it doesn’t translate into film well (think LOTR or GOT, etc) or the casting directors like an actor who is obviously much younger or older so much that it trumps the desired age bracket. And most times, it is purposely done that way especially in teen-based movies and tv shows (90210, Smallville, Gossip Girl, PLL, etc, etc) which lead to wildly inaccurate expectations of what teenagers look and act like (in my high school experience anyway). Sometimes for legal and professional reasons, its more convenient to have adult actors portray younger characters. 

Often pre-imagined characters evolve and change to fit the actor that is set to portray them whether it be gender, race, age, hair colour, eye colour, relationships, characterisation, etc. Sometimes this is celebrated, goes unnoticed or is a disappointment.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I understand that it comes down to a matter of priorities.

Neville, Petunia and Dudley were all blondes in the books. Did it really matter that the actors weren’t (and didn’t dye their hair for the role?) IMO, nah not really. I know a lot of people still can’t forgive the ‘you have your mothers eyes’ issue. I can. Partially. Personally, I didn’t mind Harry’s signature “green as a fresh pickled toad” eyes being blue in the film because Daniel Radcliffe couldn’t wear the contacts. Only auditioning actors with green eyes, the rarest eye colour on the planet, would exclude a lot of talented actors and potentially perfect Harry’s. I don’t believe green eyes were essential to Harry’s character (but I can’t speak for everyone), I think there were more important qualities. Geraldine Somerville, who played the older Lily Potter, also had blue eyes. But then, after making a huge deal over Harry having his mothers’ eyes, they cast young Lily, with whom they do close up, full face scenes of, with big brown eyes. I’m not saying she didn’t do an excellent job – she did wonderfully. I suppose it was just a strange decision in the eyes (pun not intended) of a lot of fans that the casting of a two or so minute role precluded what seemed to be such an integral theme that had been woven through each book and movie so frequently. This is just an example of the questionable, dare I say for lack of a better word ‘lazy’, ‘just imagine for the sake of the plot that he/she…’ attitude that I get from HP/FB at times.

Getting back on the topic of age, one thing I did have a problem with in HP was James and Lily’s age. I don’t think I’m entirely alone in this. 21 seemed old when I was a wee one reading Harry Potter for the first time. It was only when I got older that I realised how young they were and how it added quite fundamentally to the tragedy of their short life and death. It was heartbreaking either way, don’t get me wrong, but seeing (an actual 21-year-old actor portraying) a 21-year-old young mother slain in the first flashback in Philosophers Stone would have been truly shocking. It would also add to the tragic aftermaths of Sirius and Remus too. However, I did later realise that this was probably due to having to match Alan Rickman’s casting as Snape, and later, Gary Oldman and David Thewlis (which I think were all fantastic in their roles). So, they sacrificed the canonical age of James and Lily for the casting of Snape and the Marauders (possibly). Whether this was something the fans agree or not, they prioritised what was most important, in their eyes, to the film. But then, after all of that, for some reason they keep James and Lily’s age of death as 21 on their gravestone??? Therefore, casting two barely-speaking roles to a 43 and 34-year-old who they expect the film going audience to believe are 21??? I assumed that when they did the full casting and knew that Alan Rickman, Gary Oldman and David Thewlis would look far too old for their long-deceased classmate counterparts they would just make the characters older in the films but now I think they wanted to keep film Snape, Remus and Sirius in their early to mid (and eventually late, by the end of the books) thirties and didn’t want it to look painfully obvious. I think a lot of films and tv shows do this to try and pull off the age differences. A 27-year-old actor portraying a ‘high school student’ can often pull it off until you stick them next to a real life 15-year-old. I like to believe it’s that or something other than lazy writing but I can’t know for sure. 

This brings us to my current thoughts about Fantastic Beasts which has some of the most wildly strange actor vs character casting age I’ve seen in some time. As a quick refresher (or if you don’t know…) here are the actors ages vs what their characters age is (if I’m not mistaken)...

 Eddie Redmayne - 36 / Newt Scamander – 29

Zoë Kravitz – 29 / Leta Lestrange - 29 (probably given that she was in the same year as Newt)

Ezra Miller – 26 / Credence Barebone - 18 (from an interview but still unconfirmed from filmmakers)

Katherine Waterston – 38 / Porpentina Goldstein - 25

Alison Sudol – 33 / Queenie Goldstein – early 20’s/hopefully not late teens (she’s younger than her 25-year-old sister so 24 at the absolute most but I’d say younger given the dynamic). I haven’t found a confirmed age anywhere.   

Dan Fogler – 42 / Jacob Kowalski – 26

Callum Turner – 28 / Theseus Scamander – 37

 Try and keep in mind that there is no mean spirit intended in my opinion on this. My opinion on the acting ability of each of these people isn’t necessarily relevant to this particular discussion though I do commend actors who can convincingly pull off different ages though I certainly can’t fault actors who can’t as there is only so much you can do sometimes. This is purely about what is most important – character or actor – and the relevance of it.

Eddie Redmayne, in my opinion, seems to have features that allow him quite an amount of leeway in terms of age. He starred in the mini series based off one of my favourite books, Pillars of the Earth (definitely an underrated series I heartily recommended) where he portrays his character as a teen all the way up to a man in his forties/fifties and, in my opinion, is quite believable. I think I have more trouble believing that Eddie Redmayne is 36 than I do believing Newt Scamander is 29/30 (as his birthday is in February, I’m assuming he is 30 during Crimes of Grindelwald) and even if that weren’t the case, I think a six-year difference at those ages can be neither here nor there with some people especially with the right clothes, mannerisms, etc...

Zoë Kravitz – hold on to your hats, a 29-year-old playing a 29-year-old. I haven’t done my in-depth research on the other actors not aforementioned, but I believe this may be the only occurrence of this happening in this film series.

Ezra Miller said that Credence was 18 in an interview. This is probably true, and I would’ve guessed around that age anyway. I think I double checked it on the characters wiki and it matched. As a side note, as a general rule I don’t tend to take the actors words as gospel truth until its confirmed by the writer or director. I feel like, in this film series, there are some actors that get maybe somewhat carried away and speculate rather a lot about their character and sometimes it isn’t entirely accurate. Of course, actors are usually allowed some creative control over their characters and often get little titbits about their past/future that help with their portrayal, but I have noticed some actors’ thoughts about their character don’t add up at all to what the filmmakers have also said and I know which side wins out. A lot of actors are shocked/surprised/disappointed/elated when they find out developments about their character - not even they always know what’s around the corner and sometimes what they think isn’t necessarily true. No matter how deserving, creative or insightful they are about their character, it doesn’t solely belong to them. I think a lot of fans forget this. They go on about ‘so and so said this’ and ‘so and so literally said…’ while blatantly disregarding anything J.K or the FB filmmakers say and again, I know which ones actually run the show. This has nothing to do with Ezra, to be honest, it’s just a quick observation I’ve noticed.  I’m so off topic! Anyway, Credence I would’ve put as a late teen/20-year-old at most from his character and I think Ezra has one of those faces that, like many, can float around in the weird young adolescence stage that you can can’t quite pinpoint whether they’re late teens or mid-twenties (I’m in university and pretty much anyone between 18-27ish is indistinguishable to me). Either way he’d be carded at the uni bar. I think if I met a modern-day Credence Barebone I wouldn’t think twice if he told me he was 18.

Katherine Waterston is the one I am most anxious writing about and the one I’m sure a lot of people are cocked and ready to come after me about. She’s probably also one of my two biggest irks with the age issue. Just to get this out the way, I am not the biggest Tina fan (yet). At first, it was casual indifference. I didn’t (and don’t) hate her, I just didn’t really take to her in the first film (I already have hope that the new film may sway me). It really started as simply as that. I will write a separate post on all my thoughts revolving around this because there are many. All I will say is that if you don’t love Tina or ship Newtina based on the first film, it is a very cruel and vicious fandom to be part of. At least in my experience. But that’s a different issue. Let me say firstly that I think Katherine Waterston is very beautiful and I would be happy to look like that at 38 (obviously not the same as she is very Caucasian and I’m a nut-brown Maori, but you get my point). Obviously, I don’t know how the story will unravel and how important it is but was it absolutely necessary that Tina had to be 25? I think 30 would have been passable. Or even better, she could’ve been a little (or however much) older than Newt? Normalising relationships where the woman is older than the man is something I’m here for (my sister is two years older than her boyfriend – 19 and 21 – and it’s so controversial to people??? But I know lots of relationships in the reversal). That would’ve been my ideal scenario if they had Tina originally set for 25 but discovered they really loved Katherine Waterston and decided it would be inconsequential if they wrote Tina a bit older than originally planned. However, I do think it might be the other way around. Maybe it is important that Tina is 25. This might be one of the reasons why I haven’t yet meshed with this character or either of the Goldsteins for that matter. I do admit that I forget that they are in their early and mid-twenties. I do forget that Tina is (apparently) only 25. I honestly believe that I would have liked – or at least had a lot more understanding and sympathy – for Tina’s character had it been obvious she was so young. I will explain more thoroughly in the separate post I’ll eventually write that, had FB been a book before a movie, I would likely have really enjoyed book!Tina. Please understand this particular opinion isn’t about the actor. I’m just saying that I, personally, feel like it was easy to lose sight of the fact that this character is only 25 when the actor playing her is nearly forty years old. Please don’t twist this and interpret it to being me ‘coming after’ the actor. I don’t know why age is regarded as such an insult. It’s the most beautiful, natural thing. Katherine Waterston is 38. There’s nothing wrong with that. She’s healthy and pretty and could easily pass for younger if she so desired. But again, I think sometimes why I don’t find Tina endearing at all (yet) is because I see (not in terms of the actor, the character) a 38-year-old (or round about) woman acting like a 25-year-old. This might be even harder for me to combat in the next film as she is supposed to be quite younger than newcomers Theseus and Leta (ridiculously younger than Theseus) whose actors are both twenty-somethings joining Ezra as the babies of the cast. Don’t come at me about insulting her about her age. Carmen Ejogo is 45 and she cancelled everyone in FBWTFT. A lot of people grow more and more beautiful with age. Older doesn’t mean less beautiful so let’s put that to rest immediately.

Alison Sudol looks like a fucking earth angel and she was a great Queenie. I loved Queenie’s character. Did I love Queenie as a person? No. There is a difference – again, that ties in with what I’ll eventually write about my feelings about those two. I don’t know Queenie’s age, but she is younger than Tina so at the absolute most she would be 24 but I would wager given the big-little sister dynamic they seem to be following, there’s likely more than a year’s difference. I wouldn’t have thought Queenie was so young had I not known otherwise. There are some who find her character a little more annoying than cute, but I think if she were portrayed by someone who was in fact in their early twenties, she probably wouldn’t have come across as so naïve and a little airy. A lot of development occurs in your twenties and there is a tremendous amount of personal growth by the time you hit thirty. The same issue with Tina I suppose. You can forgive a lot of Queenie’s quirks when you remember how young she is but sometimes it’s easy to forget when physically she seems older. I will have to keep in mind how young and impressionable she is still while watching her actions in Crimes of Grindelwald because again, I think I forget sometimes.

I had no idea how old Jacob was, admittedly. I guessed anywhere between 32-40 (I assumed Jacob and Queenie had a bit of an age gap either way) but I was way off. Apparently, he’s 26. My head is in my hands at this point. I know Jacob’s been through a lot (and I’m not saying Dan Fogler isn’t a cutie!) but if some guy told me he was 26 and I arranged to meet him and Jacob Kowalski (again, based on first impressions. I love Jacob) walked in, I’m calling the fucking police. There is no way he is TWENTY-SIX. I love Jacob and Newts relationship, but I never saw Jacob as being the younger one. The fact that he is younger than Newt, Leta and Theseus (again! 11 years younger than Theseus!) when he looks like he could be their fucking uncle is unreal. I don’t really know why they made Jacob so ludicrously young when there was honestly, in this case, no need. I had to track down his age because it had zero (0) relevance to the film. Only thing I can think of is maybe to make his relationship with Queenie not come across as creepy? Who knows. 

This one really hurts me. Theseus, my poor boy. The FB team really are just gonna swing around and do THAT. Callum Turner is, in my opinion, a great Theseus from what I’ve seen so far. From interviews, it looks like he adores Zoë and he has great chemistry with Eddie. They’ve also done well to find an actor with similar physical characteristics and mannerisms as Eddie Redmayne making him a very believable casting for Newt’s brother. Though later it was revealed that Theseus is supposed to be eight years older than Newt making Theseus 37/38 which I think was completely unexpected for most people. We knew from the first film that Newt was the youngest brother and even with Callum Turner only being 28, I thought with the right clothes and such they could make him look older – or at least old enough to look like he could pass as Newt’s older brother. But nearly forty? With the kind of trauma Theseus has been through not to mention the likely constant drama of his troublesome brother and fiancée (and his brothers’ new friends and extremely messed up future brother-in-law)? Does he exfoliate with the Philosopher’s Stone? Drop that skin case routine, Theseus. Again, I don’t know what the film is going to bring. Perhaps Theseus must be significantly older than Newt for plot related reasons. Maybe for the sake of the story, he had to be old enough to not attend school with Newt, or maybe their father died early on and Theseus had to grow up quickly to fill a father figure void (that could explain the complicated nature of their relationship) or it might be for any number of reasons. My only hope is that it is specifically relevant to his character and not an inconsequential detail that could easily have been adjusted when they cast such a young actor. It can be a risk having a cast of actors in their thirties and forties playing a cast of twenty-somethings convincingly, and I’ve mentioned why, but it can be pulled off though I think it’s a strange move casting an actual twenty-something year old, one of the youngest cast members, to play a character 10+ years older than some of the oldest cast members characters. I think, like with the Goldstein’s, I will have to be constantly reminding myself when understanding the character that Theseus is that much older than Newt and Leta and even more so than Tina, Queenie and Jacob. 

Again, I’m not saying the actors haven’t done a good job with their respective roles, it’s just my 4am cough medicine powered thoughts on how they’ve made some interesting choices regarding what age they’ve kept the characters vs the actors real life ages and how it, for me at least, has affected the way I’ve interpreted the characters and would I feel any different about them had they made the characters similar ages to their actors or vice versa. I might be the only person who has thought about it and it’s not even a complaint on the cast itself (it’s a great collection of actors), it’s just an observation not at all eloquently put by a flu-riddled person. 

#the crimes of grindelwald #fantastic beasts #newt scamander #jacob kowalski #queenie goldstein #tina goldstein #theseus scamander #leta lestrange #credence barebone #gonna pass out for 12 hours and probably wake up to a lot of people telling me to fuck off #fantastic fevers and how to alienate yourself from a whole ass fandom

[virtuissimo]

Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse (Review)

Roanhorse has effectively cemented herself as a visionary in indigenous futurism with her rich world-building, her casual commentary on the powers that be, and even her dynamic and lovable characters, but I think it’s perfectly clear that this is her debut novel. She definitely gets lost in the sauce plot-wise towards the end, and there are several points where the potential for improvement is obvious. Nonetheless, she’s got me rearing for the next book already, and I will definitely be following this series.

This is the kind of book where I really think you can get the most out of it if you go in blind with very little prior knowledge of the book, and it really is a good one. I encourage yall to give it a go. If you don’t care about getting a little more detail, I’ll go into a spoiler free section.

No Spoilers

Okay, first thing I’ve gotta talk about is the setting. First off, it’s AWESOME. The setting is about 6? 7? years after an apocalypse. The explanation for it is really organic and it informs a lot of how the book proceeds.

Idk if this counts as a spoiler so it’s in its own paragraph, but basically the apocalypse was a series of natural disasters around the world plus a major flood that drowned out most of the continental U.S. except for a few walled off city states. The walls are specifically and emphatically NOT the ones that the Trump administration is gunning for—Roanhorse dismisses that quite quickly. These walls were ones that local communities decided to put up, and they are made of beautiful materials that have cultural significance for the Dine.

My favorite thing about the setting is the societal organization. Dinetah is a really interesting place because of the ubiquity of Dine people & culture, but also because Roanhorse obviously has a lot of really interesting thing to say about what apocalypse means to a people that have already had their apocalypse. They already had foreign invasion and genocide, they already had their numbers chipped away to a shadow of its former size, they already had their land destroyed beyond recognition. So what does it mean when in apocalypse destroys the society that destroyed yours? I think Roanhorse’s answer is that it did more good for the Dine than bad. They are freer and safer in an apocalypse, even DESPITE the presence of monsters everywhere.

One thing I really liked about her approach to Dinetah was the use of language. To quote a journal entry I wrote about this book: “Roanhorse makes creative use of Dine words and language. There is no glossary, and sometimes there isn’t even an in-text translation. English speakers are forced to pick up Dine words with no life preserver just as so many non-English speakers are forced to do the same in our world.” Most of the concepts, like clan powers and ghosts and monsters, have a Dine word attached to them, and you learn to recognize them as you read. She doesn’t remind you of their definition either: you either paid attention the first time it came up or you’re screwed! It was just an interesting stylistic choice, and I enjoyed the experience.

Another note about the setting that I love: I LOOOVE the references to the other citystates. I think one was New Detroit? New Denver? And there was a Mormon citystate (when I read that I screamed) and there was one called Aztlan (!!!!!) which was very exciting for me. I have complicated feelings about Aztlan because I think most people who live in this post-apocalyptic citystate would probably not be indigenous Mexicans but rather americanized mestizo Chicanos who think they have an inherent claim to the land just because they colonized it first, but I think as an indigenous author I can trust her to develop a nuanced view of Aztlan and what that means for Mexican Americans (especially consider the fact that she had several sensitivity readers mentioned in her acknowledgements). I really hope we get a chance to explore those in future books.

Oh, also: there are no white people in this book. Like, none. They reference them in vague terms, but I don’t think there was a location or scene that had a white person even in the background, and there were certainly no speaking parts for white people in this book. So basically I loved that. I do that often in my own writing but it’s so rare in mainstream fiction. There is a family that is not Dine in the book, but they are a large black family. With regards to the writing of the black characters: I noticed that her physical descriptions of them sometimes had words that I’ve seen on lists of What Not To Say About Black Characters (comparing skin color to food, particular words used to describe hair, etc.), but I flipped to the author bio and she apparently is black as well as indigenous so I guess my concerns weren’t really relevant lol. One of these characters is also gay, and I thought his characterization was a little bit weird, but it’s fine I guess.

Now I haven’t seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I’ve read a spinoff from the same universe and have heard enough about it to see the obvious inspiration that Roanhorse took from it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, of course; Buffy has a very particular energy where it’s fantastically easy to get invested. Maggie Hoskie as a hero is easy to love, and even as someone who doesn’t typically like lengthy action sequences, I found the fighting scenes thrilling. However, at the same time Roanhorse commits some of the same mistakes in writing her female protagonist that Joss Whedon so famously introduced into the mainstream, and there are a few times where it becomes difficult not to roll your eyes.

As I’ve seen other reviewers note, Maggie as a character is very reliant on the men in her life. She describes early on how her life was saved by Niezghani, an immortal godlike monster slayer, and his presence in her thoughts influences nearly every decision she makes throughout the novel. Some people have a problem with this; I personally think this is a fine set-up. The author takes great care to show how unhealthy her relationship with Niezghani is. Even when Maggie is talking about how great and powerful he is, how she should be grateful that he even gives her the time of day, we as a reader can tell something is very wrong with their relationship from the very beginning. I don’t really like the direction Roanhorse went with Niezghani (I’ll get into that in the spoilers section I guess), but I thought this relationship as a premise was fine.

I think where she slipped up a little was in putting her relationship with Kai, a mysterious and charming medicine man who helps her on her investigation/quest/whatever, as the center of the story. I guess technically we’re not certain about this since the whole series isn’t out yet, but I think it’s safe to assume this guy is endgame. The whole first half of the book is spent getting to know Kai, which I think is fine because he is a great character and truly charming. (I’m always suspicious of “”charming”” type characters because more often than not the author makes them annoying and presumptuous.) He actually seems to care about the things that are happening, he doesn’t make assumptions, he understands boundaries, and his kindness is genuine. I like Kai, okay, he’s great. BUT I think that spending so much time with him instead of ruminating with Maggie some more was a mistake.

I can understand WHY roanhorse did this: Maggie is someone who is very wrapped up in her thoughts, and 9 times out of 10 her thoughts are really fuckin depressing. I just think that a lot of time was spent characterizing Kai when it could have been done in less time and more efficiently.

The main thing about Kai is that his skills as a medicine man are very mysterious, and Maggie becomes curious very early on about the nature of his abilities. The answer to her questions, though, aren’t given until very very late in the book. In fact, we don’t understand everything about his medicine man secrets until like 10 pages from the end. I think this is way too late. First off, we don’t get to see him in action very much, and the way things go I really wish we had. Second, Roanhorse just wastes a lot of time in the beginning and crams a whole lot in the end. From a world-building perspective these sections are really cool and fascinating, but plot-wise it’s extremely inefficient that we learn about Kai in bits and pieces like this, especially since all of his secrets kind of come out one after the other all crowded at the end. I don’t know if she got the right balance in that tradeoff.

Another critique I’ve seen people have is that all of Maggie’s problems AS WELL AS the solutions to her problems revolve around the men in her life. I did think it was strange that Maggie was essentially the only major female character in the whole book. There was Rissa, but she was a minor character and didn’t have much agency in the plot. I would say that Maggie did have agency, and the way she carries herself both in conversation and in action both suggest that she is making her own decisions independent of male influence. I see where these critiques are coming from, though, and I agree that more of her story should have been herself rather than obsessing over these men.

Minor spoilers I guess: One scene that I think most socially conscious people rolled their eyes at was the decision to create a plot point where she had to get all dolled up in a sexy outfit because Reasons. And then people had that weird Oh My God So Hot moment that we are all so fond of (/s). Annoying tropes like that rear their ugly faces from time to time, but this is the only one that really irritated me.

Yea. I mean. It’s a good book. I think yall should read it. As I’ve said, the worldbuilding and setting is awesome, the characters are super cool, the action is cool and Actually let’s just get into the spoilers.

SPOILERS

Coyote was one of my favorite characters. I think Roanhorse may have wanted him to be a morally gray could-be-either-side type of character, but I really saw him as a straight up villain just because he never actually did help them in a way that didn’t backfire. I love reading him though; the sheer chaos that he brings to every scene really appealed to my gayer side. I don’t know if this is an aspect to him that is commonly seen in folktales or something, but I did think that he was a little over the top creepy about the sex stuff though. When he said that shit about Maggie jacking off to Niezghani I was just…ok he’s crossin some Lines here. Also he was constantly making Kai and Maggie uncomfortable sexually, so I don’t really get why they were always so willing to trust him. Still, he was SO interesting. Whenever he showed up I was instantly enthralled.

One thing that got on my nerves a little was that from the very beginning, it was very clear that Kai and Maggie being endgame is a given. Don’t get me wrong, Roanhorse put in the work to make them seem like a really organic and natural couple. And I guess it’s kind of respectable that she didn’t try to pretend like it wasn’t gonna happen, cuz we all knew. But I think it was a little annoying that EVERYONE, including Tah and Longarm and Grace and Coyote and Kai and EVEN MAGGIE at times were basically of the attitude that they were just biding time until they eventually hook up one day. She really didn’t have to do all that; I liked them as a couple already!

Okay but plot-wise, I have to say this, but Roanhorse REALLY got lost in the sauce there. The final battles were so complicated, and there were actually 3 different scenes that felt like they could be the final battle but then there was more (the battle where Rissa got gutted, the Niezghani versus Maggie fight, and the Black Mesa battle). I feel like she couldn’t decide on a conclusion for book one and just threw all that in there for good measure. In any case, it made the last third of the book really messy and unfocused.

I think she also had too many Reveals. Like, Niezghani revealed Kai’s identity, Kai reveals his true intentions, Coyote reveals his plan, Maggie reveals her counter-plan, and Coyote reveals the circumstances of her nali’s death. TOO MUCH. It was all so cloudy and confusing towards the end, especially with regards to Coyote’s plan. First of all, I didn’t really understand what his plan was on first read, and I ESPECIALLY didn’t understand why he took the time to explain it to her. Second off, I didn’t understand Maggie’s counterplan (I don’t think it’s explained in too many words?) and I ESPECIALLY didn’t understand how they planned to have Kai survive. (Now that I’ve had time to think about it I suppose it’s related to his fast healing situation probably, and they just decided to murk him and see if he was actually immortal or whatever the fuck.) Also Kai and Maggie had that whole conversation about their love life right in front of Niezghani………messy as fuck and also is this really the time?????

One thing I really liked about the beginning of the book was that Maggie was such an unreliable narrator when it came to Niezghani. Like, it was pretty obvious that he’s garbage from the beginning, but Maggie just idolizes this man and you have to like scream into the book WHYY??? But the only way that she’s able to idolize him that way is that he presents himself as a mentor, as an authority, and maybe not so much as a caring figure as much as someone to look up to. He is, if nothing else, RESPECTABLE. But when he finally shows up in the Maggie v Niezghani fight, he is not respectable. He is overtly cruel in a way everyone, including Maggie, can see. He is overtly manipulative. He is overtly uncaring and honestly terrible. But this portrayal of him is SO MUCH LESS NUANCED than it was at the beginning of the book. I wish Roanhorse had had the guts to make him more complicated. To make him ACT apologetic or ACT like a mentor, but to make him a hypocrite. That, to me, would have been much more interesting. I understand that trauma informed a big part of the reason Maggie trusted him in the first place, but I wanted to meet the smooth and enchanting man that Maggie fell in love with but all I saw was this horrible person who never even tries to hide how horrible he is.

Of course, as this is just the first book, we don’t really know what is to come. Since Niezghani is just chillin under the dirt, I think we can assume that he’ll be back. Nonetheless, I’m a bit disappointed that he was pacified/restrained at the end of this book. I kind of hoped that after this confrontation, Maggie would have an epiphany about all the shit he put her through, and then in following books he would be the main antagonist. They would have various run-ins, but only in the final book has she truly built up the strength to get her comeuppance. Or something like that. I just wanted Niezghani’s role to be stretched out is all. I wanted her arc of truly unpacking all of that mess to be over the course of several books, not just one novel in which she’s also distracted by her budding romance with Kai and also the monster stuff.

So yea. It’s a good book. There’s problems, as I’ve clearly stated, but honestly a lot of them come across to me as rookie errors. This is her debut novel, and I don’t think it’s that weird for her to use these tropes in ways that I as a reader don’t care for. However, I definitely think that the pieces are there for her to make excellent use of her setting and characters and pull together a really energetic and thrilling series. Looking forward to returning to the Sixth World!

#book review #trail of lightning #the sixth world #sixth world #6th world #rebecca roanhorse #trail of lightning review #indigenous futurism #scifi #indigeneity #books #my post #jub jub reads books

[pacoeltaco2018-blog]

5 Reasons why GQ is the WORST at writing listicles.

GQ has always been known for their opinionated articles. They are also known for the listicles. A listicle is an article which presents information and/or opinion in list form. In this paper, I’ll explain why the GQ listicles are one of worst in publishing. This will be based on  a few points (my own listicle),  of the most important characteristics of GQ  in making that bold statement. Some people may say GQ listicles are not the worst, but we can agree they are definitely down there with the worst. To prove why they are some of the worst at writing listicles, here, in my own listicle, are 5 reasons:

1. GQ is one of the most one sided politically liberal magazines.

GQ has multiple cases where they are one sided on their issues in politics, here are a few listicles in the GQ magazine, that give crystal clear examples on why it's so one sided: “4 Reasons Trump Is So Enamored with 'Space Force'” or “20 Books to Help You Survive the Trump Era”, these titles are clearly making it known to the reader that the conservative trump has some issues. As well by taking a simple gander at some of these articles you can definitely tell that it is one sided towards the democratic/liberal views, especially when GQ editor Jay Willis says, quote ”Given the president's total lack of military experience and his general disinterest in doing anything that resembles governing, many people have wondered how he could have become so fixated on this particular idea” you can tell he enjoys criticizing the conservative leader of the free world.

They try their hardest to be taken as a serious magazine when in all reality they fail, because they focus on so many genres that at times we get confused on who GQ’s demographic really is. It seems like they have the idea in mind, that quantity over quality makes a good listicles, when in all reality it’s the contraire. If they continue to keep going in the direction that they are they will have a rough time becoming the magazine that they aspire to be, especially in the political world.

2. GQ(a men's magazine) practices favoritism towards men.

Considering that GQ has 99% of their magazine covers feature men, we can safely say that GQ is first a men's magazine. Men think differently than women, just like everybody else in this world, everybody thinks differently, yet there is a marked difference between the thought process of men versus that of women. While the first ten to be more concise and direct, in general women elaborate explanations with unnecessary detail . In the case of GQ, GQ has the thought in mind “how do I make the most money now” they have this idea which forces them to focus on the demographic that they originally started out with…  “MEN”. They are not going to lose money over putting ideas and thoughts that will make them attract women readers. That’s why GQ listicles will never be at the top of the charts with writing listicles because they exclude the gender that runs half of the world.

As they continue to write listicles that are targeting or address only men, GQ will have trouble keeping things non sexist, to elaborate, they will always have the thoughts in mind “ how can we please the male reader?” doing this will cause them to go into territory where they have to please the modern man which will cause them to make listicles that favor the male gender rather than talking about both genders equally.

3. GQ does not have a sense of what really matters to its readers.

The majority of the time GQ does not write listicles on topics that really matter. They over dramatize everything, so they can grab the attention of people. I can give two prime examples. Example one is this GQ article by Jack Moore: “9 Reasons Kyrie Irving Is the Most Millennial Presented as a Vastly Oversimplified Listicle” this does not matter at all, too many of GQ’s readership, and most likely the article is not true. Jack Moore Proves this with the quote from that same article “Anyone who has spent time with millennials in New York will know that worries about bed bugs are a huge part of the city-dwelling millennial experience.” He is literally assuming that this is just a millennial problem when in all reality bed bugs affect everyone and anyone. Example two is this additional article “The 40 Most Iconic SNL Moments” first of all this is about a show which treats issues in a very shallow manner, and it is the opinion of the writer who most likely is not an expert of comedy.

GQ claims to be a magazine of influence, but all it does is influence the world to focus on the things that are not important, if GQ wants to become more influential on the right things, they should help people, become better people on the inside rather than the outside. They have the idea that it is better to be appealing to the crowd that is more wealthy and less in numbers, rather than the less wealthy and more in numbers. GQ has its ideas skewed and they are making their ideas known to others in a wrong way.

4. GQ makes something out of nothing.

GQ is notorious for making a story out of nothing. They feed news and stories to us, as if we are supposed to appreciate it,  when it has no current real relevance. They should understand what real news are, and stop adding their own little libertarian flair to things that only benefit one demographic of people. They should learn how to make their listicles focus on news that actually matters, a good example could be top “10  ways to be happy”, in this case it would be perfect.

When they make something out of nothing, it is a burden on society, all GQ does with this is fill the world with useless facts and information. It essentially causes people to waste time by reading pointless literature, rather than doing something that is actually productive. The GQ magazine is making things that are pointless and do not benefit society, seem like they are relevant, tricking people to read there materials.

5. GQ does not do research.

Half of the GQ listicles are not factual, they are merely based off of opinions not proven by statistics, or claims saying one thing has happened rather than the actual truth. We know by many of their claims that they are very biased on their political, religious, and even fashion ideas. If you read one or two of their argument on trying to persuade you to not support trump, you can see that they have the same credibility as Donald trump which is 0 to none. These are not just random claims made up they are deep inside the GQ magazine. Other renowned fashion magazines such as vogue and vanity fair in almost all of there listicles can back up their  evidence with proof or statistics.

GQ listicles are ruined when they write a bunch of things that have no factual evidence behind them. GQ will not be known as even remotely good at writing listicles. They will have that struggle and the struggle will even extend to their articles that are supposed to be serious. Because if one GQ writer is not serious with the things that they write, who's to say that all of them are not.

Jack Moore. “9 Reasons Kyrie Irving Is the Most Millennial Presented as a Vastly Oversimplified Listicle” on February 25, 2016. https://www.gq.com/story/kyrie-irving-millennial-listicle

Jay Willis. “4 Reasons Trump Is So Enamored with 'Space Force'”  on August 10, 2018. https://www.gq.com/story/trump-space-force

Linda West. “The 40 Most Iconic SNL Moments” on February 13, 2015. https://www.gq.com/story/the-40-most-iconic-snl-moments

The Editors of GQ. “20 Books to Help You Survive the Trump Era” By the Editors of GQ on July 27, 2017. https://www.gq.com/story/20-books-for-the-donald-trump-era

https://www.gq.com/story/kyrie-irving-millennial-listicle

[laurelkrugerr]

Consider This Before Self-Publishing Your Book

August 6, 2020 9 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Making the decision to write and publish a book focused on your business — and recognizing the wealth of benefits and advantages to come from doing so — is truly admirable, and already sets you apart from a huge proportion of your competitors. But if you choose to self-publish this incredible marketing agency tool, there are a number of considerations to make.

For entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, mompreneurs, coaches, mentors, thought leaders, speakers — any professional, in fact —the self-publishing route is almost a given; it’s said to be cost-free, provides you (the author) with complete control and negates the need to query traditional publishing houses and secure the ever-elusive traditional book deal. Nonetheless, self-publishing requires a great deal more than some well-meaning sources would have you believe, and actually goes hand-in-hand with a number of drawbacks to balance out the plus points — all of which need to be taken into account prior to taking the plunge. As such, before setting yourself on the self-publishing path, let’s discuss four of the most fundamental must-haves when it comes to your lead-generating non-fiction book.

Related: Planning to Self-Publish Your First Book? Avoid These 6 Rookie Mistakes at All Costs

1. Professional Design (Both Cover and Interior)

“Just publish through Amazon. You can even design your own cover on there.”

It’s said with the very best of intentions, but the view that Amazon is the go-to platform for book-publication is lacking any real substance or validity; if the entire publishing process was as simple as some basic data entry, followed by a few simple clicks here and there, successful traditional and hybrid publishing houses wouldn’t dedicate entire departments and huge budgets to cover design, among other things.

With the odd exception, a cover designed through Amazon (or by someone on Fiverr for all the investment of a cup of coffee) screams “self-published,” and in the entrepreneurial world — where the way you do one thing is the way you do everything —this is never a good thing. If you want your ideal client to pick up your book, to get to know, like and trust you, and be directed into your funnels and onto your programs, a self-published cover simply won’t do. And with Amazon lacking any formula or even basic guidance for what works for a particular genre or calls to a specific audience, you’re left to fend for yourself and hope for the best.

This same principle applies when it comes to the book’s interior, or more specifically, the typesetting. Again, the basics are there, but are the basics enough when it comes to your lead-generating non-fiction, which is, in essence, your larger-than-life business card?

With the above in mind, the seven fundamentals of professional design include:

Color schemes and aesthetics that appeal to your ideal client/audience, and which are on-brand.

Clear title, subtitle and author name on the front cover (Note: Never use ‘By’ [Author Name].)

A well-written (and well-positioned) blurb on the back cover.  

Author image and short bio on the back cover.

Book title, author name and publisher monogram (where relevant) on the spine.

Professional typesetting throughout.

Contents and index-creation where necessary.

All of the above components are absolutely critical when it comes to creating your publication that calls to your ideal client. The key advantage to be garnered by incorporating each of these elements is that they help to position you as an expert while enhancing your overall authority and status in your niche, which is ultimately at the very core of a lead-generating non-fiction.

2. Copy Editing (and Lead-Generation)

Writing a book is only part of the process; copy editing and subtle lead-generation are absolutely imperative if you are to create the very best, most professional impression among your readers (who are your ideal client). Of course, the content  — what you are teaching and the journey you are taking your readers on — is of utmost importance, but if your manuscript is riddled with errors, inconsistencies and/or looks scattered and unattractive, this will reflect on you as an entrepreneur and on your business as a whole.

Should you choose to self-publish without the guidance and professional skillset of a trained and experienced editor, not only is there the risk that you could actually discourage your ideal client from getting to know you beyond the pages of your book (and ultimately from investing in you and your services), but, errors aside, you might also neglect to utilize golden opportunities to turn your readers into leads — notably through subtle lead-generation woven into your book’s content.

The seven most important copy-editing checks focus on:

Line-by-line edits.

Grammar, punctuation and flow.

The reader’s A–Z journey.

Voice consistency.

Subtle lead-generation.

Proofreading.

Presenting your book as a funnel.

3. Publication and Distribution

It is essential that, before deciding on the publishing route you want to take, you understand how publication and distribution will work, as these stages in the process can mean the difference between gaining huge momentum in your business (by generating thousands of leads) or, conversely, a lack of exposure and the dreaded book flop. Publication is about far more than just “getting your book out there” as quickly as you can, but rather is all about telling the world who you are, what you do, who you help, how you help them and how you can help your reader, too. Professional publication and distribution will help your business do this in the most effective and efficient ways, without compromising on quality (as self-publishing can often mean).

The business-savvy entrepreneur with high professional standards and a genuine desire to help their clients through the voicing of their message and provision of their services will recognize, as above, that how you do one thing is how you do everything (and your clients will know this, too). This means, when it comes to your book, quality is everything, and trumps everything. Your book should be reflective of you and your services in all ways.

When it comes to publication and distribution, a number of key areas should hold the spotlight, including the standards of publication you set to achieve, the distribution channels your book will fall into, whether your distribution will allow you to launch a book funnel and how you can attract as many leads as possible.

To help direct you at this junction, the following three questions can help:

Would self-publishing or hybrid publishing provide the highest quality of publication/production?

Which publishing model would position me to achieve the widest distribution (both online and in stores)?

Do I feel confident that self-publishing would enable me to produce the very best version of my book?

It might feel like a spanner has been thrown in the works if you end up deciding that cover design/creation, copy editing, lead-gen incorporation, proofreading, typesetting, publication, distribution and marketing agency are not activities you feel comfortable completing yourself. This is where it’s paramount to focus on the bigger picture and be clear on your objectives.

4. Your Publication Goals

Besides launching an award-winning hybrid publishing house and creating highly reviewed book-writing programs, I have also travelled the road of self-publishing and, during the last 15 years, thrown myself deep into all aspects of publishing. A good approach to publication is one that offers the best of all worlds with the presence of as few drawbacks as possible, allowing you to achieve what you want without finding yourself embarrassed as the result of a failed or poorly produced book.

Decades ago, publishing required querying traditional publishers and ultimately signing off on your rights and huge percentages of your royalties, and although self-publishing then made itself known and took the publishing industry in a whole new direction — allowing authors to benefit from complete rights to their work and higher-than-ever royalties — it remains that this approach exhibits a lack of regard for (or knowledge of) publication norms and standards, which has since become commonplace.

Nowadays, with self-publishing available to everyone (and with the acknowledgement that every business needs a book as one of its marketing agency approaches), entrepreneurs and business owners are rushing to write and publish their book. They’re feeling intimidated and pressured by their online connections doing the same, “getting ahead of the game” and achieving “Bestselling Author” status, therefore leaving them in the dust. The perceived necessity to maintain pace and not fall behind competitors has meant a fall in the quality of output, with the need for speed prioritized over the need to put out a high-quality book to attract in ideal clients.

When deciding to publish, there is an overriding need to ask whether self-publishing ticks all the boxes, and whether or not a three-step process taking 10 minutes is sufficient when seeking to achieve your book-related business goals.

Of course, self-publishing might appear to be the quickest, easiest and most affordable approach to publication, but it also goes hand-in-hand with the risk of  embarrassment in years to come if it isn’t the very best version of itself and doesn’t stand as testament to your standards in business.

Related: 7 Common Questions About Self-Publishing on Amazon

The final word is this: A lead-generating non-fiction book can really help to elevate your success, achieve greater recognition for you and your business and allow you to make contact with your ideal client. Accordingly, the need for it to be absolutely spot-on in all regards warrants the most professional process positioned to help your business to thrive.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/consider-this-before-self-publishing-your-book/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/08/consider-this-before-self-publishing.html

[riichardwilson]

Consider This Before Self-Publishing Your Book

August 6, 2020 9 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Making the decision to write and publish a book focused on your business — and recognizing the wealth of benefits and advantages to come from doing so — is truly admirable, and already sets you apart from a huge proportion of your competitors. But if you choose to self-publish this incredible marketing agency tool, there are a number of considerations to make.

For entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, mompreneurs, coaches, mentors, thought leaders, speakers — any professional, in fact —the self-publishing route is almost a given; it’s said to be cost-free, provides you (the author) with complete control and negates the need to query traditional publishing houses and secure the ever-elusive traditional book deal. Nonetheless, self-publishing requires a great deal more than some well-meaning sources would have you believe, and actually goes hand-in-hand with a number of drawbacks to balance out the plus points — all of which need to be taken into account prior to taking the plunge. As such, before setting yourself on the self-publishing path, let’s discuss four of the most fundamental must-haves when it comes to your lead-generating non-fiction book.

Related: Planning to Self-Publish Your First Book? Avoid These 6 Rookie Mistakes at All Costs

1. Professional Design (Both Cover and Interior)

“Just publish through Amazon. You can even design your own cover on there.”

It’s said with the very best of intentions, but the view that Amazon is the go-to platform for book-publication is lacking any real substance or validity; if the entire publishing process was as simple as some basic data entry, followed by a few simple clicks here and there, successful traditional and hybrid publishing houses wouldn’t dedicate entire departments and huge budgets to cover design, among other things.

With the odd exception, a cover designed through Amazon (or by someone on Fiverr for all the investment of a cup of coffee) screams “self-published,” and in the entrepreneurial world — where the way you do one thing is the way you do everything —this is never a good thing. If you want your ideal client to pick up your book, to get to know, like and trust you, and be directed into your funnels and onto your programs, a self-published cover simply won’t do. And with Amazon lacking any formula or even basic guidance for what works for a particular genre or calls to a specific audience, you’re left to fend for yourself and hope for the best.

This same principle applies when it comes to the book’s interior, or more specifically, the typesetting. Again, the basics are there, but are the basics enough when it comes to your lead-generating non-fiction, which is, in essence, your larger-than-life business card?

With the above in mind, the seven fundamentals of professional design include:

Color schemes and aesthetics that appeal to your ideal client/audience, and which are on-brand.

Clear title, subtitle and author name on the front cover (Note: Never use ‘By’ [Author Name].)

A well-written (and well-positioned) blurb on the back cover.  

Author image and short bio on the back cover.

Book title, author name and publisher monogram (where relevant) on the spine.

Professional typesetting throughout.

Contents and index-creation where necessary.

All of the above components are absolutely critical when it comes to creating your publication that calls to your ideal client. The key advantage to be garnered by incorporating each of these elements is that they help to position you as an expert while enhancing your overall authority and status in your niche, which is ultimately at the very core of a lead-generating non-fiction.

2. Copy Editing (and Lead-Generation)

Writing a book is only part of the process; copy editing and subtle lead-generation are absolutely imperative if you are to create the very best, most professional impression among your readers (who are your ideal client). Of course, the content  — what you are teaching and the journey you are taking your readers on — is of utmost importance, but if your manuscript is riddled with errors, inconsistencies and/or looks scattered and unattractive, this will reflect on you as an entrepreneur and on your business as a whole.

Should you choose to self-publish without the guidance and professional skillset of a trained and experienced editor, not only is there the risk that you could actually discourage your ideal client from getting to know you beyond the pages of your book (and ultimately from investing in you and your services), but, errors aside, you might also neglect to utilize golden opportunities to turn your readers into leads — notably through subtle lead-generation woven into your book’s content.

The seven most important copy-editing checks focus on:

Line-by-line edits.

Grammar, punctuation and flow.

The reader’s A–Z journey.

Voice consistency.

Subtle lead-generation.

Proofreading.

Presenting your book as a funnel.

3. Publication and Distribution

It is essential that, before deciding on the publishing route you want to take, you understand how publication and distribution will work, as these stages in the process can mean the difference between gaining huge momentum in your business (by generating thousands of leads) or, conversely, a lack of exposure and the dreaded book flop. Publication is about far more than just “getting your book out there” as quickly as you can, but rather is all about telling the world who you are, what you do, who you help, how you help them and how you can help your reader, too. Professional publication and distribution will help your business do this in the most effective and efficient ways, without compromising on quality (as self-publishing can often mean).

The business-savvy entrepreneur with high professional standards and a genuine desire to help their clients through the voicing of their message and provision of their services will recognize, as above, that how you do one thing is how you do everything (and your clients will know this, too). This means, when it comes to your book, quality is everything, and trumps everything. Your book should be reflective of you and your services in all ways.

When it comes to publication and distribution, a number of key areas should hold the spotlight, including the standards of publication you set to achieve, the distribution channels your book will fall into, whether your distribution will allow you to launch a book funnel and how you can attract as many leads as possible.

To help direct you at this junction, the following three questions can help:

Would self-publishing or hybrid publishing provide the highest quality of publication/production?

Which publishing model would position me to achieve the widest distribution (both online and in stores)?

Do I feel confident that self-publishing would enable me to produce the very best version of my book?

It might feel like a spanner has been thrown in the works if you end up deciding that cover design/creation, copy editing, lead-gen incorporation, proofreading, typesetting, publication, distribution and marketing agency are not activities you feel comfortable completing yourself. This is where it’s paramount to focus on the bigger picture and be clear on your objectives.

4. Your Publication Goals

Besides launching an award-winning hybrid publishing house and creating highly reviewed book-writing programs, I have also travelled the road of self-publishing and, during the last 15 years, thrown myself deep into all aspects of publishing. A good approach to publication is one that offers the best of all worlds with the presence of as few drawbacks as possible, allowing you to achieve what you want without finding yourself embarrassed as the result of a failed or poorly produced book.

Decades ago, publishing required querying traditional publishers and ultimately signing off on your rights and huge percentages of your royalties, and although self-publishing then made itself known and took the publishing industry in a whole new direction — allowing authors to benefit from complete rights to their work and higher-than-ever royalties — it remains that this approach exhibits a lack of regard for (or knowledge of) publication norms and standards, which has since become commonplace.

Nowadays, with self-publishing available to everyone (and with the acknowledgement that every business needs a book as one of its marketing agency approaches), entrepreneurs and business owners are rushing to write and publish their book. They’re feeling intimidated and pressured by their online connections doing the same, “getting ahead of the game” and achieving “Bestselling Author” status, therefore leaving them in the dust. The perceived necessity to maintain pace and not fall behind competitors has meant a fall in the quality of output, with the need for speed prioritized over the need to put out a high-quality book to attract in ideal clients.

When deciding to publish, there is an overriding need to ask whether self-publishing ticks all the boxes, and whether or not a three-step process taking 10 minutes is sufficient when seeking to achieve your book-related business goals.

Of course, self-publishing might appear to be the quickest, easiest and most affordable approach to publication, but it also goes hand-in-hand with the risk of  embarrassment in years to come if it isn’t the very best version of itself and doesn’t stand as testament to your standards in business.

Related: 7 Common Questions About Self-Publishing on Amazon

The final word is this: A lead-generating non-fiction book can really help to elevate your success, achieve greater recognition for you and your business and allow you to make contact with your ideal client. Accordingly, the need for it to be absolutely spot-on in all regards warrants the most professional process positioned to help your business to thrive.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/consider-this-before-self-publishing-your-book/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/625770282248978432

[scpie]

Consider This Before Self-Publishing Your Book

August 6, 2020 9 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Making the decision to write and publish a book focused on your business — and recognizing the wealth of benefits and advantages to come from doing so — is truly admirable, and already sets you apart from a huge proportion of your competitors. But if you choose to self-publish this incredible marketing agency tool, there are a number of considerations to make.

For entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, mompreneurs, coaches, mentors, thought leaders, speakers — any professional, in fact —the self-publishing route is almost a given; it’s said to be cost-free, provides you (the author) with complete control and negates the need to query traditional publishing houses and secure the ever-elusive traditional book deal. Nonetheless, self-publishing requires a great deal more than some well-meaning sources would have you believe, and actually goes hand-in-hand with a number of drawbacks to balance out the plus points — all of which need to be taken into account prior to taking the plunge. As such, before setting yourself on the self-publishing path, let’s discuss four of the most fundamental must-haves when it comes to your lead-generating non-fiction book.

Related: Planning to Self-Publish Your First Book? Avoid These 6 Rookie Mistakes at All Costs

1. Professional Design (Both Cover and Interior)

“Just publish through Amazon. You can even design your own cover on there.”

It’s said with the very best of intentions, but the view that Amazon is the go-to platform for book-publication is lacking any real substance or validity; if the entire publishing process was as simple as some basic data entry, followed by a few simple clicks here and there, successful traditional and hybrid publishing houses wouldn’t dedicate entire departments and huge budgets to cover design, among other things.

With the odd exception, a cover designed through Amazon (or by someone on Fiverr for all the investment of a cup of coffee) screams “self-published,” and in the entrepreneurial world — where the way you do one thing is the way you do everything —this is never a good thing. If you want your ideal client to pick up your book, to get to know, like and trust you, and be directed into your funnels and onto your programs, a self-published cover simply won’t do. And with Amazon lacking any formula or even basic guidance for what works for a particular genre or calls to a specific audience, you’re left to fend for yourself and hope for the best.

This same principle applies when it comes to the book’s interior, or more specifically, the typesetting. Again, the basics are there, but are the basics enough when it comes to your lead-generating non-fiction, which is, in essence, your larger-than-life business card?

With the above in mind, the seven fundamentals of professional design include:

Color schemes and aesthetics that appeal to your ideal client/audience, and which are on-brand.

Clear title, subtitle and author name on the front cover (Note: Never use ‘By’ [Author Name].)

A well-written (and well-positioned) blurb on the back cover.  

Author image and short bio on the back cover.

Book title, author name and publisher monogram (where relevant) on the spine.

Professional typesetting throughout.

Contents and index-creation where necessary.

All of the above components are absolutely critical when it comes to creating your publication that calls to your ideal client. The key advantage to be garnered by incorporating each of these elements is that they help to position you as an expert while enhancing your overall authority and status in your niche, which is ultimately at the very core of a lead-generating non-fiction.

2. Copy Editing (and Lead-Generation)

Writing a book is only part of the process; copy editing and subtle lead-generation are absolutely imperative if you are to create the very best, most professional impression among your readers (who are your ideal client). Of course, the content  — what you are teaching and the journey you are taking your readers on — is of utmost importance, but if your manuscript is riddled with errors, inconsistencies and/or looks scattered and unattractive, this will reflect on you as an entrepreneur and on your business as a whole.

Should you choose to self-publish without the guidance and professional skillset of a trained and experienced editor, not only is there the risk that you could actually discourage your ideal client from getting to know you beyond the pages of your book (and ultimately from investing in you and your services), but, errors aside, you might also neglect to utilize golden opportunities to turn your readers into leads — notably through subtle lead-generation woven into your book’s content.

The seven most important copy-editing checks focus on:

Line-by-line edits.

Grammar, punctuation and flow.

The reader’s A–Z journey.

Voice consistency.

Subtle lead-generation.

Proofreading.

Presenting your book as a funnel.

3. Publication and Distribution

It is essential that, before deciding on the publishing route you want to take, you understand how publication and distribution will work, as these stages in the process can mean the difference between gaining huge momentum in your business (by generating thousands of leads) or, conversely, a lack of exposure and the dreaded book flop. Publication is about far more than just “getting your book out there” as quickly as you can, but rather is all about telling the world who you are, what you do, who you help, how you help them and how you can help your reader, too. Professional publication and distribution will help your business do this in the most effective and efficient ways, without compromising on quality (as self-publishing can often mean).

The business-savvy entrepreneur with high professional standards and a genuine desire to help their clients through the voicing of their message and provision of their services will recognize, as above, that how you do one thing is how you do everything (and your clients will know this, too). This means, when it comes to your book, quality is everything, and trumps everything. Your book should be reflective of you and your services in all ways.

When it comes to publication and distribution, a number of key areas should hold the spotlight, including the standards of publication you set to achieve, the distribution channels your book will fall into, whether your distribution will allow you to launch a book funnel and how you can attract as many leads as possible.

To help direct you at this junction, the following three questions can help:

Would self-publishing or hybrid publishing provide the highest quality of publication/production?

Which publishing model would position me to achieve the widest distribution (both online and in stores)?

Do I feel confident that self-publishing would enable me to produce the very best version of my book?

It might feel like a spanner has been thrown in the works if you end up deciding that cover design/creation, copy editing, lead-gen incorporation, proofreading, typesetting, publication, distribution and marketing agency are not activities you feel comfortable completing yourself. This is where it’s paramount to focus on the bigger picture and be clear on your objectives.

4. Your Publication Goals

Besides launching an award-winning hybrid publishing house and creating highly reviewed book-writing programs, I have also travelled the road of self-publishing and, during the last 15 years, thrown myself deep into all aspects of publishing. A good approach to publication is one that offers the best of all worlds with the presence of as few drawbacks as possible, allowing you to achieve what you want without finding yourself embarrassed as the result of a failed or poorly produced book.

Decades ago, publishing required querying traditional publishers and ultimately signing off on your rights and huge percentages of your royalties, and although self-publishing then made itself known and took the publishing industry in a whole new direction — allowing authors to benefit from complete rights to their work and higher-than-ever royalties — it remains that this approach exhibits a lack of regard for (or knowledge of) publication norms and standards, which has since become commonplace.

Nowadays, with self-publishing available to everyone (and with the acknowledgement that every business needs a book as one of its marketing agency approaches), entrepreneurs and business owners are rushing to write and publish their book. They’re feeling intimidated and pressured by their online connections doing the same, “getting ahead of the game” and achieving “Bestselling Author” status, therefore leaving them in the dust. The perceived necessity to maintain pace and not fall behind competitors has meant a fall in the quality of output, with the need for speed prioritized over the need to put out a high-quality book to attract in ideal clients.

When deciding to publish, there is an overriding need to ask whether self-publishing ticks all the boxes, and whether or not a three-step process taking 10 minutes is sufficient when seeking to achieve your book-related business goals.

Of course, self-publishing might appear to be the quickest, easiest and most affordable approach to publication, but it also goes hand-in-hand with the risk of  embarrassment in years to come if it isn’t the very best version of itself and doesn’t stand as testament to your standards in business.

Related: 7 Common Questions About Self-Publishing on Amazon

The final word is this: A lead-generating non-fiction book can really help to elevate your success, achieve greater recognition for you and your business and allow you to make contact with your ideal client. Accordingly, the need for it to be absolutely spot-on in all regards warrants the most professional process positioned to help your business to thrive.

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/consider-this-before-self-publishing-your-book/

[missmyloko]

A Stunning Realization

No, I’m not ending my blog, so you can all calm down. However, I did come to a realization today that finally put me past the edge on something: My respect for Liza Dalby has effectively ceased to exist. Let me explain. I’d say that things started dawning on me over half a year ago after reading “The Story of The Geisha Girl” in that it was a book written by someone who had some experience in the karyukai by observing it for quite a while. What I really focused on is that it was written for the time in which it was produced; by today’s standards it would be considered too sexist or racist to be quoted in scholarly articles, but 1917 was a very different world from 2017. That’s when I began to realize that Dr. Dalby’s work was also a production of its time. It has almost been 40 years since she did her fieldwork, and the Pontocho of the late 1970s is a completely different world compared to the Pontocho of the late 2010s, even though the geographical area has remained the same. Pontocho took up the same amount of space in 1917 as it does in 2017, but culture is not static. What furthered my questioning was by reading The Asian Mystique by Sheridan Prasso not long after reading Women of The Pleasure Quarters by Leslie Downer. The two books looked at very similar topics, yet how they got their information could not have been more different. Downer styles herself to be an expert after living in Kyoto and making a fool of herself for a mere 3 months. In that time she slowly learned proper etiquette and came to be somewhat accepted by the people around her. In contrast, Prasso’s work was already well known in the Kyoto area, and one of her contacts had put her in touch with Mineko Iwasaki. As a person who grew up in Gion Kobu and became one of its biggest stars, she was beyond skeptical of speaking to another outsider after the disastrous mess that Arthur Golden made with her stories. However, Sheridan explains in detail how Mineko came to appreciate the work that she did in that she let Mineko speak for her profession instead of trying to interpret it. Mineko had obviously read the texts put out by both Dalby and Downer (I made an entire post about that section here) so speaking to another person seemed like an impossibility, but it happened and we have Sheridan’s fantastic book to prove it (which I still need to write a review for). That leads to today. Working on my giant backlog of books I was trying to get through Geisha: Beyond The Painted Smile that was published by the Essex Peabody Museum in conjunction with an exhibit that they did back in 2002. Some of the featured essayists were Arthur Golden, Leslie Downer, and Liza Dalby. It wasn’t until I had finished all three essays that I realized why the karyukai is still such a misunderstood place. To look at these people from a professional standpoint, their experience is: Arthur Golden: Talked to a few geisha. Leslie Downer: Spent 3 months in Kyoto. Liza Dalby: Spent 1 year in Kyoto. Now, this is when I have to ask, is that enough experience to render someone an “expert”? I’ve been running my blog for longer than all of their experience combined, and I did it because the people who this directly affects in Japan wanted an English voice that could tell their story in the ways that they want it told. I respect their wishes because I respect what they do, and in turn they tell me what’s good and what should be improved. As an anthropologist and a native English speaker it is my duty to share the workings of a world in a language that can be understood by other English speakers. Like all languages there are terms that just don’t translate between them, but I ask in detail how these people want them represented. I don’t assume anything and I can’t if I want to educate. But anyway, back to the entire point that brought me here. Reading Dr. Dalby’s essay was like pulling teeth as her essay focused on how “exotic” geisha are, both inside and outside of Japan. Geisha really don’t like being called “exotic” and I felt like this essay was a step backwards in educated a Western audience. However, it’s what she said at the end in her notes section that left me floored: “Golden’s novel is, of course, fictional, and the story of his fictional heroine Sayuri is dramatic, but by no means impossible. In my view, the accusation brought by ex-geisha Mineko Iwasaki that he based his story on her experience is not plausible.” If you’re like me, then you had to read those two sentences more than once to actually process what was being said. A woman who played geisha for a year is putting her weight behind a terrible work of fiction written by a Caucasian man who misconstrued the stories given to him by a real geisha rather than that of a woman who grew up in the karyukai and was one of the greatest geisha of all time. Yes, Golden took many of Mineko’s stories and used them in his book, so much so that she won her lawsuit against him for the similarities. But beyond that, it absolutely floors me that an anthropologist would forget what anthropology is about; it is the study of human beings, and it is our job to help humans understand one another as we define and shape ourselves by the myriad of cultures that dot this planet. To say that the experience of an outsider trumps that of an insider is a grievous sin, and all you’d need to do is to read Golden and Iwasaki’s books to see just how similar they are.   What it really reminded me of though is one of my favorite sayings: culture is not static. While I appreciate the work that Dr. Dalby did in the late 1970s it is not something that she can still be seen as an “expert” in today’s age as she did not continue her study on geisha through the present day. Yes, she can be considered an “expert” on the karyukai of the 1970s, but she can no longer speak for them in 2017. In contrast, Mineko Iwasaki does not speak for the geisha of today and does not even attempt to say that she does in public settings; rather, she explains what the karyukai was like when she was active, and shows off her precious treasures from a different time and place. Mineko keeps her past in the past while Dalby keeps trying to bring the past into the future in what feels like a move to stay relevant. The line from the book reminded me that Dr. Dalby was one of the primary “sources” for the Memoirs of a Geisha movie, a walking disaster, and it dawned on me that she could have made changes to what was portrayed. In the DVD extras she talks about her time in Kyoto and all of the “wonderful” ways that kimono and dance are displayed in the movie, yet this could not be further from the truth. She apparently coached the actresses in how to walk and act in kimono, so she did have influence. My question is: why didn’t she use that influence for good? How did she think that the movie in question would be a positive representation of the karyukai?  I’m still coming to grips with all of this, but I’d like to know what you all think. Usually I don’t write rants like this, but I felt at though I had to get my thoughts out so that they don’t just blow up inside me. This is something that has made me question some of my sources, but I feel as though this may have been more positive than negative. I feel like having so many sources to draw upon allows me to see what’s good and what isn’t, but I remain steadfast in my belief that the people from inside of a culture get to decide what people outside of a culture think of them. Also, for anyone about to complain that I have no right to say any of this as I am also Caucasian, please note that I’m talking about culture, not race. You are born into a race, but you are accepted into a culture. Race is something you cannot control while culture is shaped by the people who created and maintain it.