#Also also don’t come at me for including Weir; he’s one of the most popular sci-fi authors AND came up in the discussion that prompted this | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

shysweetthing · 7 years ago

Text

Victor Nikiforov is a financial genius: you asked for it, now get punched in the face with the new 22-point version

What do I mean by financial genius? I mean three things:

A. Victor Nikiforov is substantially better at making money than most people, and that includes the extent to which he is able to capitalize on his own success.

B. Victor Nikiforov is better at not spending money than he usually gets credit for in fandom.

C. Victor Nikiforov is able to understand disparate financial situations and help others navigate them to their success.

One brief note: I’m sure someone is going to say “I don’t see it like that!” which will be entirely not surprising, since this is a headcanon and not a canon. You don’t have to headcanon Victor as a financial genius! But this is why I do!

All of the 7,000+ words and 22 points in support of that follow after the jump. I apologize for any formatting issues but I’m doing everything on my iPad and Tumblr is apparently not well suited for outline architecture that occasionally goes four levels deep? Argh.

(Edited to add: I know this is long, but point 16.B. is my favorite and please read it because I love Victor so much.)

1. Let's start with this post from Johnny Weir on the economics of skating. I mentioned this in my original post, so I'm not going to go into too much detail here. Suffice to say that skating is an expensive sport, probably one of the most expensive sports.

You need gear. If you're skating competitively, you need good skates--and if you can't afford good skates, you're never going to skate competitively, and you're never going to be found. You need lessons, and coaching, and rink time, and choreography, and costumes. Add in--for higher level athletes--trainers and gym time and ballet lessons. Skating is a sport and an art and it charges double time for all of these things.

2. Skating is a much harder sport to monetize than most, and it pays dividends for a very short space of time. It is instructive to thumb through something like the Forbes list of world's highest paid athletes to see where people get their money from. The list is here: https://www.forbes.com/athletes/#dc1a9bd55ae5

2.A. Team sports like football, baseball, basketball, and soccer (showing my American ways, sorry) have regular games which produce steady income. They have teams, which have fanbases that can be built up over the course of decades, and which result naturally from geography. Merchandizing for those teams is purchased to show not just a like for an individual player but an allegiance to the team and a membership in a club. These sports are much, much easier for athletes (and others) to make money off of for that reason.

2.B. You don't start hitting athletes from non-team sports until #14 Sebastian Vettel (auto racing), #16 Novak Djokovic (tennis), #17 Tiger Woods (golf). (I cannot express my disgust that Serena Williams is only #51 on that list, given that she is one of the greatest athletes of our time, but this is an entirely separate discussion, goodbye.) All of those sports allow for much greater longevity in the sport than figure skating, which means more time to build a fan base, which translates into more income. Those three sports make up most of the non-team well-paid athlete lists, and they fall into two categories.

2.B.i. Golf & Tennis: These are sports that have, um, how to say it, a particular cachet as country-club sports. They are things that even people who are extremely bad at them will do, or at least purchase the accoutrements of doing it, so that they will Fit In to the Right Place. That means that popular athletes in these fields can be used to market heavily to wealthy country-club goers and those who wish to appear to be the same. (This is part of the reason why Serena Williams is not much, much higher on the list. You're smart. You can figure it out.)

2.B.ii. Automobile racing: I am not best suited to explain the appeal of automobile racing, but suffice to say the demographics and nature of appeal is quite different from figure skating, and I can’t imagine that anyone is going to fight me on this point.

2.B.iii. Figure skating is clearly more popular in the YOIverse than in our universe, although more on this in point #6 below. This means that Victor almost assuredly has a larger fanbase than, say, Yuzuru Hanyu would today.

2.B.iv. That being said, there are reasons why even a more popular figure skating sport would yield substantially less money on a yearly basis for its top billers than some of the items on that list.

2.B.iv.a Figure skating events are fewer and further apart than most other events, and while this is somewhat a function of popularity, it is also largely a function of the fact that when people see events, they want to see skaters do jumps, and jumps are really, really hard on the body. Skating more would lead to more injury.

2.B.iv.b. There isn't a "team culture" around skating--it's about an individual. It takes time to build up a fanbase, and for the vast majority of skaters, by the time your fanbase is well-known outside of the avid followers of the sport, you are on the verge of retirement.

2.B.iv.c. There is very little to sell that is unique to your sport. For some sports, you can sell jerseys, or even general gear as in "Serena Williams uses this tennis skirt!" Because skating is almost uniquely part performance, part sport, this is much more difficult to achieve. Skaters perform in individual costumes that cost thousands of dollars. This is impractical merchandise to sell.

This does not mean that there's no way to make money in skating! There is! I will go into it later! Just that the monetizing of skating is a much, much harder thing to accomplish.

3. I know what many of you are saying. "But shysweetthing, Russia is different than the US." This is true. For instance, while we here in the US leave skating to (basically) the super-wealthy, with zero support available except where you can cobble it together from gofundmes and the occasional helpful check from a kind individual, Russia (and Japan!) both have actual state support.

3.A. This is true today. Historically, though, this has not always been the case, and it's relevant to the sport. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, and for a period of maybe 10-12 years, there was very little state support for skating. Russia basically lost a generation of figure skaters because of this. Brief discussion here: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/sports/olympics/in-russia-skating-booms-again.html?_r=0 It wasn't until around 2001 that skating resources began to come back, and not until maybe 7 or 8 years later that they started scouting rinks early to identify child prodigies.

3.B. Canonically, Victor has been skating since he was a child (source: http://yoimeta.tumblr.com/post/154990523062/lookiamnotcreative-has-anyone-done-this-yet), which means he started skating in maybe 1996 or 1997. He won the Junior World championship at 15 (same source), which is around the time of the resurgence in Russian state support for skating.

That leaves a lot of uncovered skating expenses in young Victor's pre-championship life. By the time Yuri Plisetsky came around, there were skating scouts again looking for great athletes to discover. Victor did not have that benefit. While Victor probably received a modest stipend/has skating expenses covered after he became a champion, he was very likely on his own in terms of support in the crucially formative years on his way to becoming one. I'll come back to this.

3.C. Russia doesn't provide as much support as Victor's apparent wealth indicates. I cannot for the life of me find this interview although I've searched for it extensively, but apparently I'm missing the keywords. In one of Kubo's interviews, she mentioned that she happened to be on the same flight as Evgenia Medvedeva after she'd won gold at worlds, and lo and behold, Medvedeva trooped back into coach.

3.D. As an additional datapoint, Japan also provides some degree of support for its skaters, and yet see this (https://toraonice.tumblr.com/post/162732055900/sinkingorswimming-victors-flowercrown-okay-so#notes) about how Shouma Uno says he isn't making a profit on skating right now. Like, damn. Again, skating is more popular in the YoIverse, but no matter how you slice it, Shouma Uno is one of the top 5 male skaters in the world (at least) (don't argue) and he's not making a profit.

3.E. Given the history at play here, Victor Nikiforov should actually be given substantially more in-universe credit for Russian stipends and expenses (as Plushenko should in our universe). Victor would have been the face of Russian skating while there was a resurgence of the sport.

He's the one who would argue about what skaters need and yes, you should cover this fee, and yes, we need to have a resistance trainer at the rink who understands pliometrics. Victor Nikiforov wasn't given these things simply for being a figure skater, the way that Yuri Plisetsky was. Victor Nikiforov almost certainly would have been involved in the creation of the current system of support, thank you, and would not have been a simply passive recipient.

3.F. (As a total aside from this, this is a great discussion of institutional support for figure skating in the US and Canada, which I deposit here for all your fic needs: http://www.twofortheice.com/price-skating-glory-part-2-institutional-funding/ Please note that all this "Yuuri gets a scholarship in the US" thing is...so highly unlikely, simply because the scholarship funds in the US are distributed by the US Skating Federation and...are thus unlikely to be given to a foreigner.)

4. Let's talk about Victor before Victor was Winner McWinnerson. Canon leaves a pretty blank hole about Victor’s history between the ages of 17 and 22. We know, canonically, that he was the world champion in Sofia as a junior. We know he's the five-time consecutive World Champion and Grand Prix final winner, so he has five years of being Winner McWinnerson. Canon hints that he won an Olympic gold--he wears a Russian Olympic team jacket, so he's definitely gone, and one of the medals he waves in his self-introduction in Episode 10 appears to be a gold medal from the 2006 Olympics (http://itshawkeybaby.tumblr.com/post/154176904080/look-at-the-medal-that-is-donut-shaped-in-the). So...what happened in those five intervening years? Probably a lot of things.

4.A. Puberty. We see a very different body type between 16 year-old Victor and current Victor, and he almost certainly had to relearn his center of balance and how to do jumps et cetera et cetera, which meant that he probably had a period of adjustment where he wasn't doing that well.

4.B. Injury: Victor possibly suggests that he's been injured in the past.

Conclusion: before Victor was the Living Legend, Victor almost certainly has had periods of financial distress. Victor also knows that his success is ephemeral and that he has basically no damned job skills but skating. If Victor is spending all his money he is a freaking idiot. (Victor is not a freaking idiot. Getting to that.)

5. Here is a not-quite exhaustive list of Victor's potential income sources, and how they factor into his income.

5A. Prize money: We should almost certainly assume that the prize money in YOI-verse is higher than it is in the current universe. The current universe prize money is dismally low. Take this listing here: http://soyouwanttowatchfs.tumblr.com/post/153867523490/hey-i-have-always-wondered-how-much-money-figure I know, I know, $25,000 for winning the Grand Prix final sounds like a lot of money, but as a figure skater, you really only have about 7 total events where you can win real prize money per year: Two Grand Prix qualifying events, the Final, your national competition, either 4C or Euros, Worlds, and WTT (if it's available).

Add in that the cost of attending each event is significant: You need to get yourself there, have a hotel, have a place to train, eat well (which is not easy to do when you're traveling) and so forth, and provide the same for your coach. Some of these costs will be born by the RSF on Victor’s behalf, but some won't--especially if you want to get there a day early, or want to fly business/first instead of coach.

Put it this way: If Victor flies first class to Japan for Worlds, he will lose money on the event if he doesn't hit the podium. Yuuri's fourth place finish at the Rostelecom cup got him $3000.00, which probably means that he only lost about $1,000 on the event, and that's with Victor not charging him coaching fees.

Associated costs for an event will bump up some in YOI verse because the sport is more popular, of course, but there will be corresponding increases in costs--because the sport is more popular, hotels will be more expensive to compensate for larger crowds, trainers, nutritionists, and the best sports massage therapists in the area will be in greater demand because there's more at stake, and so forth.

My point with all of this is not to say that Victor is not making a crapload of money; he is. It's just to say that non-Victor people who are, maybe, just top 10, are probably not earning all that much money, and there’s probably at least an order of magnitude of earning between Victor and Chris (and don’t think that Chris is above feeling jealousy here.)

5.B. Non-skating speeches, appearances, et cetera: Some of these he will do for free (e.g., Good Morning America, because it's worth the publicity), and others he will charge for. My guess is that Victor can probably command about 30-40,000 on an appearance, assuming that he's an excellent public speaker. (This puts him about on the level of Neil Gaiman.) However, it seems unlikely to me that he'd want to schedule lots of these events given his schedule. Victor probably has a bog-standard cheesy inspirational speech that he gives to Google about Never Giving Up! and Getting Over His Injury! and Working Super Hard! You can Do It To!

5.C. Advertisements: Victor almost certainly advertises for skating gear, clothing, and other manufacturers. I'll talk about his image later, but think about the number of athletes that advertise for brands outside their sport. It's actually quite small, and only for household names. Victor has a leg up on his competition because he's hot and considered desirable, but this particular train almost certainly wasn't available to him until he was established as Winner McWinnerson.

5.D. Merchandise: Victor likely collects a royalty on licensing his name and image for T-shirts, posters, and other merchandise.

5.E. Participation in Ice shows: Victor participates in ice shows and is paid for his participation. I suspect that the ice shows provide transportation/hotel + stipend. For someone like Victor, that stipend is probably pretty decent--$30,000-$40,000 or so--and the travel is first class. Victor probably does not do ice shows that would net him less than that. For your average skater, that check is probably more like $3,000-$6,000 and sardine class travel. Where I'm sourcing this: This discussion on the Golden Skate forum (free login required to view). http://www.goldenskate.com/forum/showthread.php?50195-How-Much-Do-Skaters-Get-Paid-For-Shows&styleid=5 Michelle Kwan was listed as getting $15,000 a show, back when skating was much more popular than it is now, so I'm bumping this up for Victor.

5.F. Since I keep mentioning that skating is more popular in the YOIverse than present reality, I need to point out that a major difference between our reality and the YOIverse is Victor Nikiforov. He is the face of skating. If the sport is prominent in YOIverse it is because the spokesperson for that sport is Victor. He's the non-doping, clean-cut, sexy-as-hell everyone-wants-him guy that everyone calls for a comment on any skating related matter. He has been utterly dominant for years, and he’s never a jerk. You cannot say that skating is more prominent in the YOIverse without recognizing that Victor Nikiforov is almost certainly substantially responsible for that prominence. This, too, must be attributed to Victor.

6. Let's talk about the distribution of gains in an area like skating. Like all income distributions in highly competitive fields, it's a power-law distribution with the top earners earning TONS of money and almost everyone else making close to nothing. At this link there's a fantastic graph of what the distribution looked like for prize money in the 2014-2015 season. If you can't tell from that graph, basically, TL;DR, a handful of people are winning all the prize money in skating.

The same is probably true--but magnified--for the non-prize-money rewards above. If you aren't winning substantial prize money, nobody wants to hear you give inspirational speeches, nobody will be convinced to bank with Bank of the Egret because of your ad, et cetera et cetera. You may get to go to ice shows, but you're essentially interchangeable and your check will be substantially smaller. This is relevant to our current discussions for two reasons:

6.A. It gives us some idea what Victor's top earning potential is (high).

6.B. It tells us that before Victor reached his current level of income, he was almost certainly making somewhere in the "barely comfortable" range. I'll come back to this later, too.

7. This concept probably has a real economic name but if it does, I have forgotten it and Google isn't loving me. (It might be net present value, but I'm not sure this is adequate.) For now, I'm going to call it "effective salary"--that is, the amount of money that you effectively have to spend, given the costs (or perks) of your job.

7.A. If your job gives you meals for free, that raises your effective salary--money that you would otherwise have spent on food is now free to do other things for you. If your job provides you housing for free, that raises your effective salary. If your job requires that you wear, say, a suit and tie all the time, that lowers your effective salary.

7.B. There are also jobs that have a lower effective salary if you properly account for the present-value of costs imposed in later years by current conduct. As an example, let's take football. People sometimes bitch about how even unknown 18 year old players in the NFL get paid ungodly amounts of money. The truth is, though, many of those unknown players, they are almost certainly operating at a loss if you account for the present value of future costs. Since almost 30% of NFL players will develop Alzheimers or dementia as a result of their playing, taking into account future lost income and years of skyrocketing health care costs, a million dollars a year for two years is probably operating at a loss for those players.

7.C. Skating is almost certainly a sport that operates--for most players--at an effective loss, even if that year's balance sheet appears to be in the black. This is because it imposes an incredibly high toll on the body. Victor is almost certainly going to be dealing with early arthritis and chronic hip/joint pain. We don't really know what the long-term toll of this will be because Victor is the first generation of skaters that skated under the new system that so heavily emphasized quads and jumps.

I'm putting this out there simply to say that any skater who isn't saving a crapload of money, is going to end up paying the costs of his skating career at a point when they no longer have the proceeds to support them. We'll talk about Victor's saving money later.

8. Whew. Now we've gone through how Victor gets money. Let's recharacterize them: Victor gets money by (a) being good at skating, and (b) monetizing his personal image, which he has developed into a platform by being good at skating. The point of much of the above is that (a) is actually not an incredibly lucrative source of income. There isn't that much money out there even in the enhanced YOI-verse to do much more than give skaters a semi-comfortable living, and to (maybe) save enough to deal with future costs of skating. (b) is where Victor makes all his money, so let's talk about Victor's image.

8.A. Victor's image is canonically calculated to a degree that no other skater manages. He thinks about what stories he is telling the audience, and micromanages the story he is telling to all degrees: commissioning his own music, choreographing it himself, and so forth.

8.B. Victor's image is canonically pervasive. Minako very firmly believes that Victor is a playboy, and that he is also (simultaneously) incredibly nice to his fans. Ditto for Nishigori. This is a tightrope to walk. Think about what this means--there is no footage out there of Victor snapping at some fan who just got on his last nerve, no pervasive rumors of him being a shithead to staff. Victor Nikiforov is just an incredibly hot, handsome, nice guy who has that tantalizing whiff of availability, and if only you were wearing this cologne... Whew.

8.C. Victor is canonically incredibly savvy about his image. At some point, he must have realized that his image had gotten away with him. "Holy shit," thinks young virginal Victor at some point, "they think I'm...uh...what?" But what does Victor do? He accepts what the audience thinks of him, and he runs with it--with his only goal being to surprise and delight them so that he doesn't lose their favor. Victor makes a point of telling Yuuri and Yurio that they don't get to choose their image, and so they need to learn to express things that aren't natural to them.

8.D. This is again an aside, but let's think about the Victor that nobody really knew? Look at even his friendship with Chris--even that is filtered through the Fake Victor image. Nobody wanted Victor for Victor until that moment on the beach with Yuuri. A moment of silence for the Victor whose personal self was pushed aside for the relentless rapacity of his public image, please. *bows head, wipes away silent tear*

Again, I see people treating Victor’s image as something that Victor simply fell headfirst into by virtue of his godlike skating, but the truth is that this is something that Victor has managed and pursued. Victor is good at monetizing himself.

9. Let's talk about those ice shows again. VICTOR RUNS HIS OWN ICE SHOWS. He does it for Onsen on Ice (by implication; it's "Victor Nikiforov presents" and Victor did not get to be where he is by ignoring the value of his own damned name) and he does it for Victor and Friends, and those are just the two that we see.

This deserves it's own bullet point since this is HIGHLY RELEVANT to Victor's genius. Running your own ice shows when your name is a draw is substantially more lucrative--see the estimate in the above link from the Golden Skate that Yuna Kim's ice show took in a profit of about a million dollars. Stop. Take a deep breath. Compare that to what Victor could command for performing in someone else's ice shows. Victor can get maybe $40,000 to perform in an ice show, and maybe $200,000 to run an ice show.

(Onsen on Ice wouldn't have generated that much profit; there wasn't the time to ramp up ticket sales, and the venue wasn’t optimal either.) This is not something that most skaters are generally able to do. Victor is an entrepreneur, dammit, and I want him to get all appropriate credit.

10. While we're talking about giving credit to Victor, let me make one thing clear. I swear in this point because this is eye-rollingly infantilizing ways that Victor gets treated.

Victor (with the help of appropriate professionals that he handpicks himself) manages his own damned finances.

Yakov does not manage Victor's finances. I've seen this one come up a bunch of times. The implication is that Victor is irresponsible and so Yakov handles things. This is ridiculous for a number of reasons.

10.A. Victor Nikiforov is a grown-ass adult of 27 years who canonically has a "zero" under his cooperation skills and never does anything that Yakov tells him to do. It is flatly unbelievable that it is in his character to just hand his finances off to Yakov and allow him to manage them.

10.B. Yakov does not have the damned time to be an accountant/babysitter. Inevitably, of course, he does have to do some things that resemble babysitting, and I'm sure he has some rules for conduct for those who skate at his rink that relate to RSF morality rules/skating health. That being said, he is a damned good skating coach. He coached Victor. He coached Georgi who is not terrible. He coaches Yurio. He coaches Mila.

Yakov is a coach for champions, and that is an incredibly specialized skillset. He does not have the time to mess around with his skater's finances, and he absolutely did not develop the necessary skillset. Maybe he hands them a list of "dos and don't"--"don't forget to save money for taxes" for instance, or "hire an accountant as soon as you're making enough"--but general financial management, or acquisition of merchandising opportunities, is not his bailiwick.

10.C. While we're at it, the coach-student relationship between a world champion and a world champion coach is nothing like a student-teacher relationship. The world champion has to bring their own thoughts to the table. The world champion can fire their coach at any minute if the relationship isn't working. There is very little disparity of power between them.

Victor and Yakov's relationship is one of respect, not one in which Yakov holds power over Victor. On a more mundane approachable level, I would say that the relationship is much more like a client-realtor relationship. A good realtor will give you excellent advice on maximizing your property's curb appeal. You can choose not to take any of it. You can walk away and use someone else as allowed under your contract. An unethical realtor can mess up a client in many ways, but a savvy client is unlikely to get played.

10.D. If Yakov actually had any control over Victor's finances in canon, don’t you think he would force Victor to stay in Russia instead of going thousands of miles for a skating video-booty call? Yes. Yes he would.

10.E. I understand that sometimes fic writers need someone to conveniently impose limits on Victor, because having a character who has a shitload of money means that there are many monetary problems you can't have in a fic. That's cool, it's fine, but let's be real, this is just a convenience of the fic, and God knows that if any of my above points are inconvenient in a fic I will magically unheadcanon them myself. That being said, it's completely and utterly irrational to imagine that Yakov plays such an actual role in Victor’s finances.

10.F. Look back at where Victor makes the majority of his money. YAKOV CANNOT DO THESE THINGS. Yakov is a skating coach. He is unlikely to have a firm understanding of what rights of personality Victor has in the global intellectual property market and what he needs to have put in a contract in Korea versus in California. He is unlikely to know what the going rate is for advertisements for top-level athletes. He is unlikely to know when he can make a client walk away from an exclusivity clause and when it's a given. He probably might give him an idea if the offered compensation for an ice show is low, but that's about it.

Yakov is a damned good skating coach but these other things require a team of people. Victor almost certainly has a booking agent, a merchandising agent, a modeling agent, an events team that helps manage the ice shows he does put on, in addition to accountants and investment bankers.

11. Victor probably receives tons of things for free. People seem to think that just because Victor has $7,000 sunglasses, or has driven a million-something dollar pink convertible, that he shelled out his own money for that. Victor is a celebrity who gets instant airtime wherever he shows up. Brands send him things. The classic car rental place in Tel Aviv where he picked up that convertible paid for him to come and drive it and Instagram himself in front of their front office. Victor does not need money to buy things.

12. In addition, many of the things that Victor spends money on that gets characterized as "extra" is spending on legitimate business expenses that contribute to his bottom line.

12.A. Yes, his costumes cost on the order of $5000. This is a business expense that is absolutely necessary to maintain his image. He's not going to be the guy that everyone wants to be--an image that nets him tons of money from 1-3 above--if he's wearing an old T-shirt over jeans as his giant romantic costume. He has an image, and he's not going to practice false economy by hurting his image.

12.B. Yes, he flies first class. Flying first class allows him to arrive in much better shape, better-rested, with less chance of cramps and blood clots. The dude is 5'10", and his body is his greatest asset. He didn't get to be one of the oldest reigning champions of his sport without learning to treat it well.

12.C. Let's talk about the times when Victor critiques what Yuuri is wearing, because I think these are mischaracterized as Victor being extra, when it’s actually Victor being savvy. There's that tie, and his suit, both of which Victor does not like. This is not just Victor being a fashionista.

Victor understands that you need to dress for the job you want, and if Yuuri is constantly dressing like a college student with a $10 tie and an ill-fitting suit, nobody's ever going to take him seriously as a business person and potential business partner. This is why he buys Yuuri a damned suit.

Notice that at no other time in the show does he ever criticize Yuuri's clothing. He only does so when it's related to business.

12.D. Ditto for having all his costumes shipped from Russia. I'm not sure how much that cost him, but it sure was cheaper than Yuuri/Yurio paying another $4000-$5000 a piece for their own costumes, and see above about dressing for the job you want.

Wearing a great costume at Onsen on Ice will make people take the event much more seriously, and since Victor is RUNNING it, this is not a selfless move. Having them wear Victor's costumes helps keep Victor in the public eye, and keeps interest in his prior career, which helps keep his income stream level.

13. Victor exhibits signs of frugality in his every day life.

13.A. As extra as we say Victor is, let's take a look at his room in Hasetsu.

What does he have in here? A sofa. A king bed, which isn't particularly expensive in the grand scheme of things, and besides, we all know Makkachin is a bed hog. Books. Lamps. A set of Russian dolls. A framed picture of himself which he probably stole from Yuuri. Aside from the statue (?! what the hell Victor), this is not a lavishly furnished room.

13.B. Victor's the one who worries about the strength of the Euro when they're shopping in Barcelona.

13.C. Victor's apartment in St. Petersburg, as nice as it is, is an apartment, and not, like, Lillia's mansion. He actually lives in a very reasonable space for a person of his income.

I mean, it’s nice! It’s very nice! But he doesn’t even have a large screen TV.

13.D. Victor has no problem staying in an unused banquet room in Hasetsu for a year even though if he were actually as spoiled as everyone imagined, he would get his own damned apartment. He never acts like he's slumming.

13.E. I know everyone talks about how freaking extra that pink convertible is, but why does nobody talk about the vehicle that Victor canonically purchased to transport himself while he was in Hasetsu?

It’s not even a three-speeder!

Look at you, Victor, spending as much as 10,000 yen.

14. Because someone will bring it up, here is a brief note about the one totally extra thing that Victor does is not a great money maximization choice: Victor's move to Hasetsu.

14.A. I’m gonna come right out and say that this was a bad economic decision, in the sense that it will cost him a lot of money, and the decision is executed in a way that maximizes that decision for many reasons, including:

14.A.i. He almost certainly loses any funding he gets from Russia.

14.A.ii. The speed of the decision almost certainly pissed off some long-time people he has worked with, who would have preferred that he try to be the World Champion for the sixth time.

14.A.iii. He ships all his stuff internationally via FedEx for god's sake has the man not heard of ground transportation? (For the record, he almost certainly shipped his luggage as a pallet through them--not as expensive as the package rate, but still, Victor, wow.)

14.B. It was nonetheless the right decision for him to make. Yes, even the FedEx thing.

14.B.i. Victor knows he needs a change and he needs it desperately.

14.B.ii. He knows that the decision is on its face so irrational to the outside world--he's moving to Japan for a guy he danced with for one night, to do something he's never done before--that he cannot give himself a way to back out or he might get cold feet.

14.B.iii. He needs to make the decision so complete and irrevocable that people--Yakov, the three agents mentioned above--will have a hard time talking him out of it.

That's why he ships all his stuff to arrive immediately. His decision is made fast so that nobody has the chance to talk him out of it. (Yurio tries.)

This is not a money maximizing choice, but it is the right choice nonetheless. Being a financial genius does not mean always putting money first. In fact, that is a particular form of financial distress. Being a financial genius means making your money work for you rather than the other way around, and this is an example of Victor doing exactly that.

15. I'm now going to circle around to some of the breadcrumbs that I've laid here. I've said before that I think it's pretty clear that Victor has not always had access to the kinds of money that he has now. Before he got RSF support, money was probably tight. Between the ages of 17 and the current onset of Winning All the Things Forever at 22, he probably didn't have access to tons of money. Victor survived.

Furthermore, I think that these periods of temporary imperfection probably made him a much, much better financial manager. You are better at budgeting for crises and future loss of income after you’ve expereinced it once. 15.A. He is less likely to spend all his money. I know that we are talking about income in the millions, and it's hard to think about spending income in the millions, but tons of celebrities manage to do just that every year.

15.B. Loss of prior fame means that Victor is more aware that what he has is temporary. His image is driven by his winningness, and he's getting close to the end of his natural career.

15.C. Knowing that this period is short means that he has dumped a lot of effort into maximizing the results--so much that he really hasn't had time to do anything else.

16. Now something completely different: Victor notices the signs of income distress in others and acts accordingly to help alleviate it. (I cannot tell you how rare this property is in people who are rich now, and have always been rich. It is so rare.)

16A. Let's talk briefly about what Victor was expecting to find in Hasetsu and what he got. Victor probably got a translation of what Yuuri said to him in Japanese--when Yuuri invited him to stay at his parent's resort--and what he was thinking to himself was, oh, Yuuri's parents own a resort.

For the reasons mentioned above, most people who are in skating are usually pretty wealthy. Yuuri was unusually blessed with non-financial resources--a skating rink that let him skate there when they were closed, a childhood ballet teacher who is a close friend of his mother's--that allowed him to develop.

I suspect what Victor imagined was something a little bit more like "his parents have desks in the office at a major seaside resort that brings in millions" and a little bit less like "Yuuri's mom personally does all the cooking."

It takes Victor a while to adjust to the reality of Yuuri's family--when he first arrives, he asks them to take his luggage up to his room because he has no freaking idea that the onsen does not have a staff. When Yuuri himself starts hauling his luggage along with another uniformed staff member, he starts to wonder. Then Yuuri introduces the other uniformed staff member, and Victor discovers it’s his sister, and oh my god, you mean to say that very nice woman who personally brought him his dinner is Yuuri’s mother, and the guy who explained how an onsen works was his dad? The only staff at the onsen is Yuuri’s family?

Yuuri is a rarety in figure skating--he’s someone who doesn’t come from money at all, whose family in fact in their entirety makes most of their living from actively working in the service industry.

But Victor very quickly figures out a score that quite frankly, I don’t think most people would get. Yuuri’s family is literally running the onsen, Yuuri’s sister never went to college, Yuuri is an outlier in the skating world, and holy shit, is this why Yuuri came back home from Detroit?

So imagine Victor gamely pitching in when he realizes there is no legion of staff to bring his luggage up to his room. While he's helping move everything, he’s recalculating his assumptions in his head. He comes to the totally reasonable conclusion that the reason Yuuri has been acting so bizarrely about his arrival, after coming on to him so strongly at the banquet and skating his program, is because he can't figure out how to afford to pay Victor.

(And honestly, this says so much about Victor--that someone at his level of income has the empathy to understand that someone else might be stressed about money.)

Victor immediately acts to try and alleviate what he thinks may be a point of distress--that is, he tries to take the issue of coaching fees out of the question between them in hopes that this will help fix everything.

(It doesn't at all because Yuuri doesn't remember the banquet, but good try, Victor.)

I almost feel badly that this point is stuck like 80% of the way through this post at 16.A. because it’s such an incredible moment that really captures how great Victor is, and I want to scream so loudly about how we don’t deserve Victor, because we don’t, we really don’t.

16.B. Let's talk about Hasetsu in general. Everyone (with the possible exception of Yuuri, who has been gone for five years and also is so wrapped up in his own head that he either avoids thinking about this or freaks out too much when he contemplates it and avoids it altogether) is aware that Hasetsu is rapidly losing people and falling apart.

All the other onsens have gone bankrupt. Minako has essentially no ballet students. Yuuri's parents have no back-up staff at the onsen, something that means that they have very, very little margin--not enough margin for either of his parents to ever travel to Yuuri's events, or to Yuuri's college graduation. The Nishigori triplets are constantly scheming about ways to bring attention to Ice Castle and their town.

When Yuuri first arrives in town, Minako basically expects him to help turn things around by spotlighting the town, and Yuuri's response is "I'm tired right now." Minako rightly thinks WTF, but lets him be Yuuri, because he has been Yuuri for a good long while and is unlikely to abruptly change into anyone else. The town is dying; Minako is barely staying afloat; the onsen is understaffed and there’s no money to pay anyone, and Yuuri needs to sit around and think about what to do next. Thanks, Yuuri.

Then Victor comes.

16.C. Victor's arrival immediately brings customers to the onsen--more customers than anyone has seen in recent years.

16.D. Victor is shown to frequently visit local businesses--Minako's bar, Nahagama Ramen.

16.E. Victor of his own free will tries to advertise Hasetsu as a tourist location during Onsen on Ice. He runs Onsen on Ice, which probably brings more money to Ice Castle in a single day than they pulled in last year.

16.F. Victor Nikiforov is the best damned thing to ever happen to Hasetsu. He is exactly what Minako hoped Yuuri would be, except he's not an anxious bean who can't imagine why anyone would like him, and so he can actually use the image and platform he has built up to make a difference.

17. Victor is not so spoiled that he is incapable of doing his own damned chores.

17.A. Victor had Makkachin as a puppy. I guarantee you that if he had not been able to pick up after himself his skates would have been chewed to bits. There is no amount of staff that will prevent puppy destruction.

17.B. Victor's room in Hasetsu is not a complete mess. Given how short-staffed the onsen is, he has to be picking up for himself to some degree. (No, there is no way that Yuuri is doing it for him, please do not suggest that, I love Yuuri but he is the WORST.) Compare to Yurio's space.

18. Let's calculate Victor's potential income!

No matter how you add up Victor's income from the above streams, he's probably bringing in maybe around 5 million a year after you deduct his agents' cut and so forth. The number of ice shows he can put on is relatively limited, since he's still training, and so forth.

To put Victor's earnings in perspective, in 2016, Beyoncé earned $54 million. No matter how you headcanon Victor's celebrity status in YOI-verse, (a) Victor does not have as monetizable an income stream as Beyoncé, as she sells the direct product of her labor, which is infinitely duplicable and (b) Victor is not as popular as Beyoncé. I love him but come on.

19. Let's figure out his net worth! I recognize that 5 million bucks a year sounds like a lot of money but many, many minor celebrities/lottery winners/sudden recipients of windfalls have absolutely no problem blowing through that and ending up with nothing. These earnings will be offset by taxation and all the costs of skating not born by the RSF: upgrades to first class, for instance, spa treatments, make up artists, legal fees because the man is signing contracts and he's not stupid enough not to hire a lawyer to look them over, another lawyer because he's probably incorporated a business or whatever the Russian equivalent is. Plus he needs to pay someone to take care of Makkachin, cover the costs of directly commissioning music for his own programs, etc.

While skating, he probably has around $400-$500 K in necessary business expenses--commissioning a piece that’s performed by singers and a full orchestra isn’t cheap--not counting expenses accrued by traveling for speeches/endorsement or the costs of running his ice shows. This leaves him with something (after taxes--I'm not super-familiar with Russian tax rates, but I'm guessing he will have to pay their personal income tax rate and their social security rate) like 2-3 million dollars net--that is, net of taxes and business expenses.

From that, deduct basic living expenses. From that, deduct anything he spends extra money on--food, clothing, cleaning expenses. And he's probably only been at the 2-3 million dollars amount for the last two years or so. It's taken time for the machinery to ramp up; for most skaters, it never ramps up.

At best, Victor has been Winner McWinnerson for five years. This gives us an upper and a (somewhat) lower bound on Victor's nest egg:

A. Upper bound: Victor's present net worth at present is something like $15,000,000.

B. Lower bound: Victor spent all the money he made and is in fact in debt. This is not the case, but honestly, if he were as stupid about money as people thought he was, he would be.

20. A moment here. Over the course of my life, I have (a) lived in a tent, and (b) worked with people who were so stinking full of money that they had no idea how anyone could function on what is even an average income, which has given me an interesting view of how rich people approach money.

For all that people say that Victor is extra, Victor has never been canonically shown to have any of the vices that typically accompany vast amounts of money being dumped in your lap. He flew first class (on Aeroflot, which is actually basically business, not first), instead of getting himself a private jet. He lives in a reasonably swanky apartment by himself; he didn't get a mansion with a personal chef and a full complement of staff. When he moved to Hasetsu, he didn't get a separate place (which he totally could have done); he stayed in a banquet room, which is (by Russian standards) small.

Victor does not live the life of the rich and famous. Victor lives a life that you could have on a lower six-figure salary.

As Yuuri's coach, when Yuuri is paying for his plane tickets, he has no problem flying coach if that's what needs to be done. Victor is vastly underspending his apparent earnings, adjusts to Yuuri's very different financial reality without standing out or making a fuss, and he never once complains about it. Can we please give this man a hand for how well he adjusts to someone else's reality?

21. Likewise, people who cannot learn to manage money quickly discover that money is like closet space: If you don't make an effort to impose order, you will run out, no matter how large the paycheck, or how gargantuan the closet.

You can figure this out by reading the deeply distressed letters written by people sobbing about how it's not fair that they're considered part of the evil 1% because they're not that rich and until you've tried living on $800,000 in New York you don't know what real poverty is. In one of my many cat-like lives, I worked with some incredibly rich, privileged people who would tell me that they were barely staying afloat as a couple making $400,000 a year in a not-super-expensive part of the country, and they could not possibly afford to drop even as much as $10,000 from their salaries without being unable to pay off their credit card debt. I've had colleagues who went into a flying panic if their monthly income went below $17,000 (this is almost a direct quote). These are people who are rich in revenue but who have never adopted spending habits that allowed them to become remotely wealthy.

Victor Nikiforov is not that person. Victor Nikiforov was able to basically quit a job that was bringing in possibly 5 million dollars a year (technically, he still has income streams that will continue through his time in Hasetsu, so it's not that cut and dry, but yeah) to go coach a man who might never be able to pay him.

Victor has never, ever freaked out about money, and if he were budgeting on a shoestring, he would have.

People simply do not do that kind of thing if they have made themselves dependent on their massive income.

22. There's a number that gets called the "safe withdrawal rate"--that is, it's the percentage of invested funds you can withdraw without risking the bulk of your principal. This number has typically been based on historical market performance and Monte Carlo simulations. That number is about 4%--if you can live on 4% of your savings, which are dynamically invested, your net worth will (on average, over time) not decrease. (Here's a good discussion of historically what this means.

A financially frugal, rational Victor, with his potential $15 million stashed in appropriately diversified asset classes as approved by his financial advisor, can safely spend $600,000 a year without really risking his principal. Victor does not appear to spend anywhere near $200,000 over the course of the show--which would be financially frugal for someone with even just $5,000,000 in the bank, discounting his earnings for that year.

Even if you assume that he paid for his clothing and that pink Cadillac all on his own, Victor is living--very comfortably--on a sum of money that he can retire on, without actually touching the principal.

TL;DR you can call Victor extra but he has not made any of the mistakes that befall most people who receive a financial windfall; he has done an incredible job of earning money that demonstrates real entrepreneurial spirit and an understanding of what he’s contributing, and he exhibits a compassion and a sensitivity with regard to the money issues that others have that suggests that he's very, very aware of what the value of money is.

VICTOR NIKIFOROV IS A FINANCIAL GENIUS.

#yoi meta #victor nikiforov #heart-mouthed financial genius #i just love him so much #please love him too

3K notes · View notes

standbyphoenix · 8 years ago

Text

River Phoenix Is Not Just The Boy Next Door By Karen Schoemer.

In "My Own Private Idaho," River Phoenix plays the boy next door, except that next door is a ghetto where street youths sleep on the sidewalk. As Mike Waters, a narcoleptic teen-age hustler, Mr. Phoenix's closest approximation to home is a ransacked, burned-out hotel; his surrogate family is a rickety support system of street friends. His knowledge of his real home consists of dim memories of his mother, a house whose color he can't remember, and a brother who lives somewhere in Idaho.

In the film, which was shown at the New York Film Festival and opens today in New York and nationally Oct. 18, Mr. Phoenix wears no makeup, and there's a even pimple or two on his cheek. His clothes are seedy, and his dirty-brown hair continually disheveled. In other words, he strips Mike of none of his grime in a performance that earned him the best-actor prize at this month's Venice Film Festival.

"He's put his lips as close to any street-gutter ooze as you can," Mr. Phoenix says of his character. "His cut-open flesh is as close to a stone brick wall as anything. He's part of the street. He's like a rat."

Mr. Phoenix's performance as Mike, along with his role as an aggressive marine in the current film "Dogfight," represents a marked departure for an actor who has epitomized the more conventional version of the boy next door.

In the 1986 film "Stand by Me" he was a tough but tender small-town teen-ager who goes on an adventure with three pals; in "The Mosquito Coast" (1986) he played the earnest son of an idealistic inventor. His portrayal of a brainy, sensitive piano student breaking free of his family in the 1989 film "Running on Empty" won him an Academy Award nomination. Even playing the young Indiana Jones in a big-budget action film like "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" that same year, Mr. Phoenix had the chance to grapple with the differences between right and wrong.

Roles like these have made the 21-year-old Mr. Phoenix one of the most respected and popular young actors in Hollywood. The list of directors he has worked with includes Sidney Lumet, Peter Weir, Rob Reiner, Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan; among his co-stars have been William Hurt, Harrison Ford, Christine Lahti, Kevin Kline and Sidney Poitier.

"River is the archetype of the young male lead," says Gus Van Sant, the director of "My Own Private Idaho." "He had a slot that he was in, and that he's actually growing out of. But at the time in Hollywood, everyone with a project that had an 18-year-old blond-haired, blue-eyed kid would always say, 'We're thinking of River Phoenix in this part.' "

In another sense, "My Own Private Idaho" is simply an extreme, desanitized version of themes that have cropped up repeatedly in Mr. Phoenix's films. "Running on Empty," "The Mosquito Coast," "Little Nikita" and even "Stand by Me" addressed the meaning of family relationships and, in particular, the attempt to create a normal family situation under abnormal circumstances. These problems are the primary motivation for Mike Waters, who eventually embarks upon a twisted, circular journey in search of his mother.

Sitting in a Japanese restaurant in the SoHo section of Manhattan recently, Mr. Phoenix at first dismisses these connections. "I don't ever think of a project in reference to what I've done in the past," he says. "It's isolated for me. I can't think of it like that, because it becomes more of a format strategy. Any script is its own little time frame."

He stops short, momentarily diverted by a conversation between a man and a woman at the table next to him. " They're talking about family," he adds, looking at the man. "He's talking about how this woman should leave the family and not be supported by her family, and get a job and not be like her older sister who's always coming back to the house for refuge. It's just a universal thing."

Mr. Phoenix grew up in a rather atypical household. He was born in Madras, Ore., in 1970; a key location in "My Own Private Idaho," a long, flat stretch of road where Mr. Phoenix begins and ends the film, is about 15 miles from his birthplace. His parents were itinerant fruit pickers who moved the family to South America when River was 2, while they worked as missionaries. By the late 1970's the family moved back to the United States, eventually winding up in Los Angeles. It was there that young Mr. Phoenix got his first exposure to movies.

"Before I came back to America, I thought features were Kellogg's commercials and cartoons," he says. "Then I saw a western, and I thought that companies paid people's families money to kill them. I just believed it."

By the time he was 9 or 10, his fascination with the mysteries of film making had inspired him to want to make them himself. "Woody Allen was the first time I really could not figure out how something could be so real," he says. "I was like, How can anything be this real yet contrived? That question is what makes you want to find out."

Mr. Phoenix made his film debut in the 1985 sci-fi adventure "Explorers," but it was "Stand by Me" and "The Mosquito Coast" the next year that brought him wider attention. With the exception of "A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon" in 1988, he has managed nicely to stay away from standard teen-age roles.

Throughout his career, Mr. Phoenix has remained close to his family. Three years ago they settled in Gainesville, Fla., on what Mr. Phoenix says is "the first property my family and I ever purchased." One brother, Leaf, who is also an actor, recently accompanied him to the Toronto Film Festival. A sister, Rainbow, performs with Mr. Phoenix in a band called Aleka's Attic, which has played in New York clubs and appears on the compilation album "Tame Yourself," made to benefit the animal-rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals.

"I have much interest in why everyone thinks there's something uncanny and special about my family," says Mr. Phoenix, "when for me it was the norm. I knew that something was terribly wrong in a general American way. In America you don't see honest bonding, you see a kind of politically correct family. But you can't learn from reading self-help books; you can't learn from reading Parenting magazine. It's taught by your parents -- unless you come from, like my parents, or my father especially, a completely abusive family.

But someone like Mike, my character in 'Idaho,' he'd probably be one of the best fathers," Mr. Phoenix adds. "Once he matures, he's going to have a family like no one's business."

— By KAREN SCHOEMER | Published: September 29, 1991

[Photo: River Phoenix - His films are about trying to create normal families. (G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times)].

#river phoenix #river #phoenix #new york times #90s #rio

355 notes · View notes

academiablogs · 7 years ago

Text

Learning to Re-Read the Novel

In Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), often considered the first English novel (as we now define the term), the book opens with the words “I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family...” and ends some two-hundred pages later without a single chapter break or exchange of dialogue. Though one of the most influential books written in English, everything about it now seems hopelessly old-fashioned and a tedious chore for the modern reader (weaned on YA lit, especially) to wade through. For this reason it appears less and less frequently on college syllabi, and not at all in the high school classroom, where it was once enjoyed a popularity similar to—and perhaps even rivaling—Harry Potter.

And yet, the story has all the hallmarks of a modern fantasy tale: a man captured and sold into slavery; a daring escape which eventually leaves him shipwrecked on a deserted island; difficult, painstaking attempts to keep himself alive without a single soul to converse with; and ultimately, the invasion of his island by neighboring Cannibals—and the blood-thirsty Spanish! Crusoe, too, is the model of an engaging narrator: he is completely unreliable as he hides details, fudges facts, and proclaims a miraculous conversion only to forget it a few pages later. I honestly believe more adventure stories, unreliable narrators, and simply great novelists sailed out of Crusoe’s island than any other locale in print.

So why do readers have such problems with Robinson Crusoe? While the older language and slower pace is partly to blame, the most obvious reason is also the most visible: it no longer looks like a novel. Without chapters, most people won’t even wade through a 200-page novel, since we don’t know where to stop to take a breath. And how do characters talk to each other without dialogue quotes and tags? With Crusoe, the entire book is in the narrator’s voice, so he sums up dialogue or else apes their voices in his own, since the story is in the past, as is the dialogue (only the speaker is with us in the present, as we read the story). Defoe takes Crusoe as literally as possible, making the reader think that Crusoe is alive and telling the story right in front of you, on the spot, in a single evening. Indeed, the first editions of the novel omitted Defoe’s name entirely from the cover, attributing it to “Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner.” How’s that for verisimilitude?

While the early novel wasn’t even a novel, but a modified romance, a story of fiction with realistic embellishments, I’m not sure Defoe would have (or should have) changed a thing. With chapters Crusoe would become too fictionally distant, a work of art rather than a crude, on-the-spot narrative that seems to have washed up in a bottle on storm-tossed seas. The rambling, discursive nature of the work makes it read like an actual document; Defoe even includes Crusoe’s diary entries and his painstaking attempts to plant corn and later on, to discover the identity of a mysterious footprint in the sand (is he imagining it? Was it his own? Is it the Devil?). Even in 1719, Defoe wanted this to look like a real work and not a work of fiction, so he cleverly disguised it to look like a contemporary travel narrative. Readers largely took the bait, finding it the most readable, captivating, and miraculous story of life on the high seas. With a little effort, we can do the same, mindful of the skill it took Defoe (with almost no literary models) to create such a living-and-breathing hero, who in the end isn’t all that heroic.

Reading Robinson Crusoe makes me question the very mechanics of the modern novel itself. Does a novel need chapters? Dialogue? Short paragraphs? Modern language? Glossy covers? A genre? Crusoe frustrates almost all of our conventions of what a novel does, and yet continues to succeed as a work of art on its own terms. Yet imagine if someone tried to write a novel without chapters today? Or if a writer queried a literary agent and admitted, “my book has no genre...it creates its own genre.” For all our talk of diversity and experimentation, today’s readers are wildly orthodox when it comes to what we read and how we do it. It should follow a very rigid formula and basically hit all the marks we’ve come to expect...then we can look for things like novelty or innovation. And yet, form always follows function, so what if a story requires a dramatic break with the past? Wouldn’t some stories benefit from a single, continuous chapter?

For example, imagine a modern Crusoe story...a space pirate who becomes marooned on a hospitable, yet remote moon in a distant solar system. As his technology falls away, he’s forced to rely on the most rudimentary means of survival, including a simple notebook for his daily reflections and fears. In the end he perishes, and all that remains is his book—discovered a thousand years later by an entirely new race of creatures colonizing this forgotten moon. “We” become that race, puzzling over this strange, claustrophobic narrative. Who was this man? What chance did he have? Did he almost make it? Does he have a lesson to teach us from beyond time and space?

Chapters would break up the terror of his existence into ordered, predictable patterns. With each one we would know we’re getting closer to the end, or to some big plot development...after all, each chapter begins and ends with something happening. A series of relentless pages, however, is simply that—the possibility rather than the inevitability of drama. We have no idea what to expect, or when, or how it stops. Andy Weir’s The Martian captured something of this flavor in his terse, hilarious entries of a modern-day Crusoe trying to make something of his existence on Mars. I found every page of it riveting and exciting, since I had no idea where (or how) it ended. In some ways, it was disappointing when he introduced chapter breaks that took us back to Earth and into other people’s perspectives—it became a much more traditional novel. And yet, this had the effect of smashing two fictional worlds together: the realistic, anti-novel of Crusoe with today’s modern genre novel. Whether or not he did this consciously, it’s a bold experiment and only works because he dipped his toe into the waters of Crusoe’s island, at least temporarily.

I would like to read more novels that challenge how we read them...perhaps not drastically, or confusingly, but in small, subtle ways. Why not make dialogue look more natural, more as part of the narrative itself rather than a play script that intrudes upon the story proper? Could chapters function less as plot points or reading breaks than as the arbitrary creation of the narrator(s)? The joy of reading is the same as the thrill of adventure: you want to get where you’re going, but not right away, and not the way you expected. A book should make you lose your bearing a few pages in, so you temporarily worry, and even fear you might never reach the end. That’s how Robinson Crusoe always feels to me, like an adventure in danger of running aground—and it very nearly does several times, thanks not to Crusoe’s incompetence, but Defoe’s artistry. After all, the novel is “novel,” something new and unexpected: the better we think the we know it, the less we should.

#amwriting #writing #blog #robinson crusoe #fiction #books #booklr

34 notes · View notes

fyeahanneboleyn · 7 years ago

Photo

Well, I finally finished it! Thoughts under the cut, and beware spoilers, such as they are:

First off, I have to say that this was the most thorough fictional portrayal of Anne I’ve yet read - as it should be, clocking in at almost 550 pages. As with most of Alison Weir’s novels it was an entertaining read that kept me engaged. And as with most of Alison Weir’s novels it also had things that annoyed the hell out of me. Disclaimer: I do have an advanced reader’s copy, so there’s a chance that some of these things will be fixed in the general publication. But i doubt it.

The Good:

1. Weir definitely did her research with this one and it shows. The novel is chock-full of anecdotes, quotes and incidents Anne fans will recognize from her life, which really adds a sense of flavor and realism to the world. (Among my personal favorites: Anne’s meeting with Leonardo da Vinci and Henry informing Anne of Purkoy’s death.)

2. The Anne portrayal, while I keep going back and forth on it, felt pretty good. It was complex and layered and I do think it was ultimately meant to be sympathetic. Young Anne is surrounded by female role models, and therefore grows up with ambitions to be a respected female ruler herself - a force for religious reform in particular, which I liked. She is hot-tempered and sometimes vindictive but fundamentally kind, becoming increasingly volatile and high-strung as her marriage unravels. I especially liked the scenes of her imprisonment, trial and eventual execution; I thought her vacillating emotional state, as well as her ultimate strength and dignity, came across very well.

3. The beginnings of her relationship with Henry are portrayed as sexual harassment. Anne is horrified at Henry’s attention, as she has no feelings for him and is actually rather fond of Catherine. It’s an interesting case of ‘Anne as uncomfortable victim’ that eventually segues into ‘Anne as ambitious re: making the best of a bad situation to advance her reformist causes’, and I didn’t dislike it.

4. Weir does include authorial notes at the end of the book, explaining (some of) what was pulled from history versus made up and naming (some of) her sources. I do still have a few issues with the content - she notes that Chapuys loathed Anne but still considers him “well-informed” because he “cites his sources” - but as I’ve said before, I respect including these notes on principle.

The Groanworthy:

1. A caveat to the generally fair portrayal of Anne as outlined above: Anne is portrayed as being unable to bond with or love Elizabeth who, as a girl, is an irrevocable disappointment. Incredibly, Weir doesn’t ignore the evidence of the real Anne’s affection for her daughter; rather she justifies it in the novel as Anne’s way of trying to soothe her own conscience. What. Just what.

2. A disappointing number of the old cliches continue to rear their heads, such as: Anne having a sixth fingernail, Anne and Mary being rivals, Anne being an utterly loathed queen, and Jane Parker as an embittered and unpleasant woman trapped in a hated marriage. It’s 2017. Come on now.

3. The writing has some issues. The dialogue can feel uneven, sometimes veering into anachronistic territory and then veering the other way whenever historical quotes are used. There are places where repetitive word choice and phrasing become painfully apparent (”Darling” oh my goddd), especially during the long rigmarole of Henry’s attempt to get an annulment. By the time he and Anne have about the sixteenth variant of the exact same conversation it feels like the book is just spinning its wheels. Speaking of whom…

4. Henry. Holy shit, was this characterization annoying. I couldn’t stand him, I couldn’t stand his dialogue, and not even for the usual reasons. There is nothing to appreciate here; he’s not charming or charismatic, he’s not proactive, he’s not especially intelligent or politically savvy. What he is is obnoxious, whiny, ineffective, dominated first by Catherine and then Anne, easily manipulated by everyone around him, and overall just a pathetic figure. He is pitifully attached to Anne, so terrified of her leaving him that he does whatever she wants. His famous temper doesn’t even make an appearance to liven things up; his only redeeming feature is his enduring “fatherly love”. /vomit

Aside from the fact that this portrayal ignores nearly everything we know about the real Henry, it also makes his “partnership” with Anne unbearably one-sided and dull. There’s no dynamic and very little exchange of ideas - it’s just Anne and her family blatantly manipulating the king on one side, and figures like Wolsey and Cromwell doing the same on the other. As a result there’s no indication that Henry knows the charges against Anne are false; the whole coup is framed as Cromwell’s doing, and given that Henry has been shown to be a malleable idiot up to this point, there’s no reason to think he questions any of it. A thought: Stop trying to make women like COA and Anne look “strong” by making the men around them laughably weak. It doesn’t help anyone’s cause.

The Perplexing:

1. I’ve praised Weir’s research in putting together this book, but it occasionally fell victim to some bizarre Critical Research Failure. Why did Anne have two extra brothers, when a basic Google search could tell you Elizabeth Howard only had three children who lived to adulthood? Why do these characters exist when they add nothing to the story, don’t affect events and are killed off fairly quickly? There’s no reason for them to be there, and it’s distracting when most of the book seems well thought-out.

2. The treatment of Mary and George Boleyn was just…strange. There’s nothing really new about Mary’s characterization, but Weir puts forth the idea that she was violently raped by both Francis and Henry. Why is this here? At best it’s meant as an early reason for Anne to distrust men, but there were plenty of other (more tasteful) ways to do that. Anne even lampshades the fact that it “beggared belief” that Mary could be raped by both kings - you don’t say!

As for George…I really don’t know what Weir’s beef with him is, or how it served the story, but George Boleyn here is effectively Satan. He sexually humiliates his wife, sleeps with everyone (and is possibly bi, the shock, the horror!), admits to raping women of all ages, and - most bizarrely - is “revealed” as having poisoned Catherine of Aragon (and implied to be the source of Fisher’s assassination attempt as well). Again: why is any of this here? All it does is make Anne look terrible by association, as she learns these things about her brother and never changes her opinion of him for more than five minutes.

3. Anne and Henry Norris are in love. That’s…interesting, I suppose, though backed up by basically nothing. Even in the novel it’s utterly underdeveloped; Anne falls in love with Norris at first sight - from afar - and for the rest of the book we’re meant to accept that they have this great unspoken passion for each other. I don’t necessarily object to the idea of Anne having feelings for someone else during her marriage to Henry, as long as the author doesn’t toe the line of “she really was an adulteress” too closely. But this felt so random and gratuitous that their “emotional” scenes together read as unintentionally funny.

4. Speaking of gratuitous! The choice to keep Anne conscious in the moments after her beheading was really weird, and frankly it pissed me off a little. Weir doesn’t totally pull this out of nowhere, granted, but once more: it didn’t need to be there. At this point the reader has spent over 500 pages watching Anne grow up, sympathizing with her and relating to her and liking her. The entire last section of the book is devoted to Anne’s mental anguish and terror over her circumstances, which is difficult enough to read. Ending the novel with a gory description of her experience post-decapitation, ending her story with nothing but more fear and physical agony, was unnecessary. It was cruel.

It was also, I might add, a marked contrast to the ending of the previous book in this series, Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen. That novel ends with Catherine dying peacefully in her bed and being welcomed into heaven. Compare that to Anne’s horrific final moments before “merciful darkness descended” and tell me it doesn’t feel like authorial bias. Which is strange because, again, I think we’re supposed to root for Anne in this novel.

So, yes, this was an interesting and entertaining read. It did shed light on episodes of Anne’s life and facets of her personality that don’t get much in the way of popular attention. There are frustrating moments and confusing narrative choices, but I’d still recommend giving it a look.

#book review #Anne Boleyn #Alison Weir #Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession #man this got long but yall were warned #i'd love to hear other people's opinions on this as well #now maybe i can actually attack my inbox......

44 notes · View notes

hotcocosharing · 7 years ago

Text

Naked Landlord Part 3@Readers’ Choice Series (SMUT)

Readers: hmmpphhh (Mina Aino) Scenario / Situations Greeting Stranger (almost) naked Fandom: KBTBB Character: Soryu Oh, Ryosuke Inui Notes: TRAIN OF SMUT, featuring Inui, Samejima and may or may not include their boss

*misleading title- he isn’t really naked, you are*

★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★★

Just as you feel you’re close, a sharp gasp has surprised you. It’s the very man who rents you this apartment, Inui- standing in disbelief with his hands on his mouth and the unmistakable bulge in his pants.

“Sorry! Ms. Aino, I didn’t mean to interrupt.” The poor guy is too shocked to move, you’ve never had an audience before and he’s awfully cute when he’s embarrassed. Shouldn’t it be the other way round?

Turning around swiftly with Soryu’s warm sheet still underneath your wet core, you sit by the edge of bed and open wide, your fingers teasingly dance around your drenched panties. Your lips curve upwards in a grin as the young fellow gulp nervously, his eyes dart between your face and fingers.

“I don’t think you can just leave the apartment with that bulge?”

His hand jump from his mouth to his pants, it’s a bit too late, isn’t it? By the time he looks back up, your panties are on the floor, your face is flushed; your breathing rapid and shallow. His eyes widen with such desire and amazement, you can’t help but wonder if Mr. Oh would react the same way.

You begin giving Inui a private show, drawing your left hand and pinch your nipple lightly through the cup of your blue lace bra with your dark brown eyes fix on his startled face; he can’t help but shiver in reaction as a moan escapes your lips.

He never would have thought this is how his morning begins but right now, he wants to see more. Somewhere in his mind it occurs to him that this maybe a dream, Soryu Oh could ring any minute to wake him from this sexy wet dream, this is why he’s feeling the most on his tip, right? It’s just a dream. It takes him a moment to step forward then kneeling awkwardly by the bed to stroke his groin and joins you.

“Not fair,” you pout, “Shouldn’t you take them off too?”

You aren’t normally this forward with people you barely know but Inui is really cute and innocent, you love making him blushes. His trembling hand begins to free his member while his other hand rests on your inner thigh. His dick twitches in his hand as he watched your index finger pushing inside your pussy. He pumps faster, licking his lower lip while you push the second and third fingers in, he watches your tight muscles stretch around them with your mouth gasp open and moan out loud. “Ahhhh, faster.”

He obeys like a good boy and picks up his pace, matching your rhythm and speeds on the feed to his own movements. Suddenly you arch your back and clench the bedsheets as wave of ecstasy hits your hard. Liquid spills out soaks Soryu’s bed and floor.

Inui bites his lip so hard, choking back a moan of completion as he spurts his seeds into his own hand. His eyes snap open at the ring from his phone, “Sorry boss!!”

You smile breathlessly as the frightened little boy apologies to Soryu for taking so long, his eyes fix on your breasts, rising up and down and you get off the bed. Walking towards him, lowering yourself in front of him. His voice cracks when his sensitive cock meets with your tongue, he clamps his hand over his mouth to suppress a moan.

“Inui!! What’s taking so long!”

You’d hear Soryu’s stern voice on the other end and to put the boy out of misery, you lick from his tip to the bottom then go back up to clean him thoroughly.

“Ahhhh!!! Sorry sir!! I’ll … I’ll be right down.”

Inui cuts Soryu off before he’d yell at him again, the innocent boy swallows and sheepishly looks at you. “Thank you, mam. That… was .. amazing.” But his eyes soon turn into horror when he looks behind to see the mess he has made.

“Don’t worry. I’ll clean up.” You tilt your head and smile satisfyingly before escorting the boy out the door.

What a blissful morning, you sigh dreamily and wonder if something similar could ever happened between you and your smoking hot landlord before you wipe off all the traces of your naughty acts and head to work.

Your day job at the cafe is pretty easy and straight forward, let’s see how your night job is. It’s a beautiful night at the club, popular, crowded but with class as the most exclusive club in Tokyo. Putting on a black lace eye mask and matching corset, you get on stage and relax yourself in the pulsating lights and throbbing beat of music. Feeling all eyes on you while you get down and pull yourself back up onto the pole before spinning around it, legs slipping up and locking around the pole as you hang upside down to blow kisses out into the cheering crowd.

As your feet hit the ground, you rub your clothed core right up against the pole, throwing your head back in ecstasy and of course exaggerating your reactions. Just then, your eyes meet with a man, he looks rather expressionless but he’s just like the rest- unable to take his eyes off you.

Getting ready for the finale, you pull away from the pole then press your back to it before sinking down, legs bend and spread with your fingers dancing along your inner thighs, pretending to drive yourself over the edge. Paying attention to the song, you wait till the exact moment to buck your hips forward, showing the audience your curve right before you jump on the pole and spin around it one last time for the big finish.

“Hey.” You hear an unfamiliar manly voice and turn to see the man who you lock eyes with.

“Back stage’s off limit, sir.” You smile and tie your hair up, “Do you mind? I need to change.”

He doesn’t move.

“I charge if you want a private show.”

Still no reply, good looking is one thing but you could never stand a boring man.

“How much?”

You burst out laughing, “You’re serious? I was just kidding!” Putting your hands on his shoulders, you begin pushing the uninvited guest out the door, “I don’t sell myself.” His brow frown, “Just because I do erotic dance doesn’t make me a sell every part of me.”

You’re a little annoyed but the young man quickly apologizes, “Sorry, it’s just .. I think.. you are really pretty and … I .. kind of want to watch more.. “

You can’t help but grin at his compliment, it’s been too long since you’ve met a customer who’s not a total creep who thinks he owns you because he’s paid his entry fee. Stepping on tip toe, you kiss his cheek which turns pink in a instant. The young man steps backwards and sits on the dressing table, making his bulge more visible to the both of you. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to. It’s my first time here…” He quickly stops as if exposing a secret that’s not for him to tell, your eyes darken and close the distance.

“Do you want some help with it then?” He looks up in surprise, eyes with anticipation though. “Free of charge.” You grin and unbuckle his belt, pulling his boxer and trousers off in one go. The good looking man whimpers softly at the touch of yours hands wrap around the bottom of his shaft and lips circling his moist tip, a sharp gasp escapes his mouth as you take him all the way in. What a nice feeling to have such young and energetic fella under your control, to feel his over sensitive cock twitches at your every move.

His hands slide through your hair, brushing it gently before sweeping it to one side. He gazes into your eyes and you wonder if he’s imagining an ex girlfriend, or some girl he admires. The thought of him thinking about someone else have you put in all the effort until his fingers pull you back slightly. His brown eyes sparkles in the dim room with the grin that tugs on his lips, he shyly says, "You're really pretty."

Your hand pump faster, ignoring the compliment and ask, "Are you about to come?"

"M-Mmhm." Another sheepish grin. "Sorry."

“Samejima!!”

Someone bursts in, leaving all three of you in shock but it’s Soryu who breaks the silence. “Ms. Aino?!” Both of you back away and Soryu hides his surprise face within second, “Get out!” You immediately stand up from his serious tone but his wrist grips yours as he eyes the disappointed young man to leave.

As soon as the door shuts, Soryu pushes you up against it and slams his fist to the door. “WHO ARE YOU!?”

“Mina Aino, your tenant!” Your heartbeat speed up as chill creeps through your entire body but meanwhile also nervous at how close he is, damn he is so good looking!!

“WHO SENT YOU?!”

Why is he asking you weired questions?! And why is he so pissed?

“No one!!! What is wrong with you?”

“Why are you after my men?”

“What?” Soryu’s grip lossen at your confusion, “They both work for you?”

Soryu backs away but his eyes are still fixed on you, waiting for a proper answer.

“I.....well...wait, Inui told you?”

Soryu rolls his eyes, “Like he’d keept a secret.”

“Well.. I didn’t plan for it to happen.. wait, what exactly did he tell you?” Luckily, it turns out Inui CAN keep a secret, at least yours safe for now. “I... I was just helping the gentlemen.” You grin, hoping to ligthen the intense mood. “Do you need any help too?” You ask, eyeing between his thighs.

“No.” A small huff of laughter comes out before he replies, “Not interested.”

NOT INTERESTED! Are his eyes open? Does he not see what you’re wearing or what’re doing on stage, mintues ago?

“As long as you are not sent by our rivals, you are free to date or ... PLAY with whoever you want but Ms. Aino.. at least do it in your OWN room.” Soryu says, an annoyed look appear on his face.

Without another word or look, your landlord leave you alone in the room feeling shocked, embarrased and challenged.

#soryu oh #kbtbb soryu #kbtbb #kbtbb fanfic #kbtbb smut #soryu smut #readers' choice #Readers Choice #reader choice #reader choice series #Readers’ choice #my fanfic #my smut #kiss by the baddest bidder

35 notes · View notes

222258-ihiwehi · 5 years ago

Text

A third of NZ university students are sexually assaulted, a study suggests

Stuff Article

The moment Tess laid eyes on Victoria University, she knew she was looking at her future.

"I was so excited," she says, now. "I'd visited with my mum for the open day, I saw the law building and thought I just wanted to study there, it just called to me. I was also terrified – my whole family dropped me off, and my mum cried the whole way home.

"I was so ready to be like an adult, and live a new life in Wellington."

Her stomach a tangle of nervous knots, Tess worried about her classes, and making friends.

She didn't envisage the incident a few months later, when a young man would attempt to rape her at her university hostel, Weir House.

She didn't consider the self-blame and doubt that would creep in whenever she thought about the sexual assault.

And, really, something like that? To be honest, she just didn't think it would happen to her.

For the thousands of high school students who pack their bags for tertiary study each year, and their parents, sexual violence is unlikely to be top of mind. But new research suggests it should be.

Preliminary results from the biggest New Zealand study into the prevalence of sexual victimisation at university suggests one in three students will be sexually assaulted while they are studying.

The perpetrator will most likely be a young male student, who will assault his victim while they are drunk, asleep, or otherwise incapacitated.

The research involved 2700 students at a New Zealand university, who were asked if they had a non-consensual sexual experience. The survey was sent to all students at the university and participants chose to be involved.

More than a third, or 36 per cent of total respondents, said they had experienced some form of sexual assault, from being groped or made to remove clothes, perform oral sex, or forced digital, anal, or vaginal penetration. Broken down by gender, 41 per cent of women reported assault, and 22 per cent of men.

When it came to assailants, 88 per cent of reported perpetrators were men and 17 per cent women. (Students sometimes reported more than one incident.) Two-thirds of participants were assaulted by students from the same university.

Otago University PhD student Kayla Stewart used the academic Sexual Experiences Survey tool to assess the students, collating the data alongside dozens of one-on-one interviews. She says the results show sexual assault is a widespread issue universities have an obligation to tackle.

The most widely-used statistics in the United States suggest one in five university women are sexually assaulted. Stewart's research suggests that in New Zealand, the chance of a woman being forced into a sex act at university is more than one in three.

Prevalence studies must be interpreted cautiously, and results can not always be generalised. But they provide valuable insights into the commonality of assault, including intoxication and the nature of perpetrators.

"There needs to be acknowledgment that this is an issue, because for too long it's been hidden or universities have failed to acknowledge it," Stewart says.

"I really want to bring attention to what perpetrators are doing, and shift the focus to their actions. The most commonly used tactic is altered consciousness, through alcohol or drugs or sleep. Perpetrators sexually assaulted one in four people this way, taking advantage when they were drunk or out of it."

The fact so many assailants also attended university showed it was a community problem. "There's such a culture of entitlement, and we have to tackle that. On the one hand it is a societal problem, but it's also a university problem."

'IT WAS JUST PAR FOR THE COURSE, I GUESS'

Tess used to tell this like a joke.

It was first year, and Tess and her friend were out at a bar. They started chatting to a guy who began to get "uncomfortably grabby," before Tess decided she wanted to leave.

The friend brought the man back to their university hostel. Both women were drunk. Tess left her friend's dorm room, but not before giving her a lifeline.

"I told her I was going to bed but I would leave the door open for her if she wanted to come and stay in my room."

Instead, the man later entered Tess's room. "I was asleep at that point and he came and got into my bed and was like, insistent. I kept on falling asleep and waking back up and trying to say no. I was trying to say 'no, you don't have a condom,' just trying to justify the no, I guess. I just didn't know what to do."

Tess eventually got the man to leave, telling him she had an early lecture.

She didn't report the attempted rape, out of fear people would find out it was her. She felt ashamed, like she might be labelled a slut. Around the same time, she said another friend did report a sexual assault to hall management and was dismissed and told to "get over it."

(Victoria University say all halls of residence staff are now trained in how to respond to disclosures of sexually harmful behaviours, taking a confidential, survivor-led approach. This includes access to counselling and support to make formal complaints.)

It also didn't seem too out of the ordinary. "It was just par for the course I guess, and that sounds horrible, but I knew other girls in halls who had very similar experiences. It seems to be something that happens in that part of girl's lives."

It was only last year, when conversations about sexual violence were brought to the forefront with Me Too movement – and locally, with the sexual misconduct exposed at the Russell McVeagh law firm – that Tess realised what happened to her was not funny.

"Now it just makes me really sad. It was so horrible. Alcohol is such a huge part of first year culture, it's how you bond. I feel like a lot of guys – and girls – aren't taught what healthy sex is meant to be like. No-one has a frame of reference.

"You're taking a bunch of kids that maybe haven't had sex or the freedom to have it as frequently and they just don't know what good sex looks like, how to communicate and how to read someone else's communication."

Tess has never told her parents. "I think for my dad in particular it would torture him to think about. I could tell my family, but you don't really want to open things up because there was nothing they could have done.

"By the time I was ready to acknowledge it and talk, I had a support network of friends."

Other young women spoken to by Stuff who were victims of sexual assault at university struggled with self-blame, and had often tried to internally dismiss or downplay the event so they could continue with their lives and studies.

One woman, who was raped while a student at an Auckland University, only felt strong enough to lay a complaint with police years later. It is currently being investigated.

Others do complain, but hit brick walls. A PhD student at a North Island university told Stuff she has reported a sexual assault by a fellow student to police. It was so violent she had to be hospitalised.

She told the university, who she says told her they can do nothing until he is charged. In the meantime, she is not attending university for fear of seeing him on campus. He still goes to class every day.

A Stuff investigation in 2018 found dozens of alleged sexual misconduct complaints recorded by staff at university halls of residence nationwide in the past two years – only a handful of which were reported to police.

And in April, Otago's Knox College faced questions about its cultureafter several sexual assault, rape and harassment claims between 2011 and 2017 were revealed in student magazine Critic.

WHAT IS BEING DONE?

There are no nationwide guidelines or legislation around sexual misconduct protocol.

Universities New Zealand, the umbrella body, says it has established a working group into sexual violence, which involves representatives from all universities and two students.

In the meantime, students are mobilising to put pressure on university management to act. New Zealand University Students' Association rape prevention campaign Thursdays in Black, mired in a sexual harassment scandal of its own in mid-2018, has been re-established and is pushing for comprehensive misconduct policies.

It conducted a nationwide survey on sexual violence in 2017, with more than half of respondents saying they had experienced some form of it.

At Otago University, Students Against Sexual Violence has been leading this drive. Co-president Niall Campbell, 23, says Stewart's research does not come as a shock. "All of our members know multiple people who have been effected by sexual violence. There's no doubt in our minds it's an issue.

"It's an unfortunate combination of students who are actually quite young, and who have been inadequately educated around sex and sexuality. Contrary to popular belief, we are not the progressive nation we'd like ourselves to be."

A 2018 Education Review Office report found sex education has not improved in a decade, with a lack of education around consent, pornography and sexual violence.

This isn't helped by a culture of chauvinism, hyper-masculity and sexual conquest, particularly in first year, Campbell says.

Stuff asked all universities if they considered sexual violence prevention a university responsibility, and to advise on initiatives. Most pointed to their student code of conduct and discipline regulations. None would provide details of how much was spent annually.

When it came to specific action, Waikato University said it has appointed a violence prevention coordinator this year and begun providing training on sexual violence and healthy relationships for hall staff and students.

Auckland University said students are given information on family violence at orientation and have access to "comprehensive online material."

Auckland University of Technology ran an online preventing bullying and harassment programme and had launched a course, Consent Matters, at the cost of $16,000.

Massey University said its hall staff members were given training on victimisation, and it had a sexual assault pastoral care team.

Victoria University was developing a standalone sexual violence prevention policy, had a Sexual Harm Prevention working group, had appointed a new sexual harm counsellor and was increasing training for staff on dealing with disclosures.

The University of Canterbury said it had set up an End Sexual Violence Now working group, and gave new students an induction that included sexual violence awareness. Complaints could be made through online anonymous tool Report It.

Otago University opened Te Whare Tāwharau, a sexual violence support centre, last year. A sexual misconduct policy has been completed and a sexual misconduct action response team set up to oversee processes and investigations.

This is promising, Campbell says, but it's easy to point to documents. His group wants outcomes.

"Until very recently, almost nothing was done about the issue. And it's still early days - whether these policies end up being substantial and actually work is the question."

And others think action needs to be nationwide, rather left to each university. In the United States, Title IX is a federal law which makes universities accountable for disciplining perpetrators and supporting victims. There is no such legal requirement in New Zealand.

Lily Kay Ross is a sexual violence researcher and workplace consultant on sexual harassment procedures, and was a consultant on Otago's policy.

She is advocating for the establishment of an independent body to conduct investigations. It should be neutral, and have staff trained in the dynamics of sexual violence. Data and outcomes should be publicly reported.

"This is how universities can achieve accountability to the public and rebuild trust," Kay Ross says. "It signals that the cases we already know are happening are being responded to appropriately."

Victoria University student president Tamatha Paul says nationwide standards – enforceable by law if necessary – would be welcome. "Yes, it's awesome universities are starting to get these policies, but what about polytechs and other training establishments? What about what goes on at halls of residence?

"There needs to be a consistent policy covering every space that a student occupies."

WALKING THE TALK

On a leafy Friday at Auckland University, students stream through the campus. It's almost the weekend, and there are parties to organise, gigs to attend.

Life goes on. And, instead of waiting for change from above, many are working to initiate it themselves.

Students Gabriella Brayne, 19, and Ollin Raynaud, 25, are co-ordinators and founders of the Consent Club, which aims to normalise consent culture.

The group train volunteers to become "consent guardians," teaching them techniques in non-confrontational bystander intervention. The guardians attend festivals and events, stepping in to diffuse situations where it looks like a "consent breach" could be occurring.

This might involve offering a drunk young woman help finding her friends, or dancing alongside someone who is being cornered on the dance floor to give them an out.

In their view, the problem isn't so much that young men don't know what consent is - it's that they think they can get away with it, Brayne says.

"In the moment they still go ahead with the assault because there's a situation that can be exploited."

Having active bystanders who will intervene reinforces the idea that you can't get away with these acts. "We're like their sober mates, who will step in.

"We just want people to feel safe."

0 notes

news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Am I the only one who's horny for podcasts?

May is National Masturbation Month, and we're celebrating with Feeling Yourself, a series exploring the finer points of self-pleasure.

He murmurs into your ear, his voice as soft as it is authoritative. Dazed, you don't quite hear what he's saying, but it sounds imploring, urgent — making your heart beat quicker, breath heavy, lips part.

This isn't a sexual encounter. It's a podcast. Dan Carlin's Hardcore History to be exact. And I'm horny for it.

It's about time we all acknowledged the unspoken eroticism of podcasts (at least, certain types of them).

For enthusiasts, podcasters whisper into our ears with honey-smooth voices on a weekly if not daily basis. (Oh, don't worry, we'll get to Michael Barbaro.) As we lay in our beds alone at night, they come with us, that soothing and familiar cadence washing over us, melting the day away until it's just us ... and that voice. Podcasters are also our constant companions, drowning out the noise and stress of daily routines, turning morning commutes into immersive journeys through sumptuous soundscapes of storytelling.

For the incurably perverted like myself, they can be a wake up call to the wondrous and under-explored world of audio porn. (Apologies to the hardworking creators who may never see their work the same way, but your content is definitely serving us in more ways than one 😉.)

Everyone trying to pretend like podcasts don't get them hot.

Image: vicky leta / mashable

The rise of the aural fixation

Those who've felt even the slightest titillation from that "aural fixation" are probably relieved to hear they're not alone. A majority of you, however, most likely feel a bit disgusted to discover that rule #34 even infects the wholesome realm of podcasting.

But inarguably, there is a unique and unmatched intimacy embedded into the medium. For more people than you imagine, that makes podcasts the perfect avenue for a more humanized and personal type of masturbation. Both in terms of everyday podcasts and those purposefully trying to get you off.

"Being able to use your imagination to fill in the blanks can be incredibly sexy when many people are used to seeing porn that looks a certain way," said Girl On The Net, a pseudonym for the sex blogger whose dulcet British tones voice some of the most popular auditory erotica on the web.

@HardcoreHistory so glad to hear your sexy voice after 2 endless months of waiting💀💉

— echo (@Alanood504) January 14, 2013

In the same way that some of us are auditory rather than visual learners, some of us are hornier for aural rather than visual porn. It's a small, but growing niche. For Girl on the Net, that's evident in how traffic to her audio porn page nearly doubled over the last year.

SEE ALSO: Podcasts were my friends when I had none

"I think people are becoming much more aware that tube sites aren’t the only place to go to get your rocks off — and I hope many are realizing tube sites aren’t the most ethical place to get your rocks off either," she said, referring to porn sites that host user generated content.

Phoebe Judge's voice is super hot. Inviting but authoritarian, a little hoarse.

— madeleine (@parietines) December 16, 2017

On subreddits alone, there are roughly 276,000 subscribers to r/gonewildaudio (for naughty recordings of yourself), 20,000 on r/GonewildAudible (for more general erotic audio needs), 25,200 on r/pillowtalkaudio (for erotic amateur recordings with consenting partners), and 68,000 on r/nsfwasmr (for sexualized ASMR, which used to be a popular tumblr, too). Similarly, there's a whole subgenre of erotic podcasts recorded with the intent of getting you off, and literotica has an entire subsection for audio.

People are even starting to monetize on the phenomenon, including a recent app called Dipsea that hosts erotic audio stories catered to millennial women. "It’s perfect for storytelling, it’s intimate, and it’s incredibly imaginative," said Dipsea cofounder and CEO, Gina Gutierrez. "Listening to Dipsea you can feel like the voyeur, or you can become the character."

Even harder core history

I don't know when I first realized certain podcasts (always a solo host or narrator, so panel podcasters are safe) did it for me. But I remember the exact moment I discovered a voice could bring me to near orgasm, despite not having the words or understanding to know what was actually happening.

I was watching the first Harry Potter movie in the theater, and Professor Severus Snape (played by the late, great Alan Rickman) was delivering his now iconic first year speech on the, "subtle science and exact art of potion-making." A mounting quiver ran down my spine when his tongue clung to each curve of every "s" sound in the phrase "ensnare the senses."

Snape later became the fictional man who guided me through my early sexual awakening, a fantasy that I could control through my imagination while losing myself to these newfound uncontrollable urges. A reoccurring scenario involved being blind-folded, leaving me in total sensory deprivation but for the sound of his silky voice, low and measured, describing everything he wanted to do to me.

Again, with sincerest apologies to Mr. Carlin, I was instantly brought back to those fantasies when I first started listening to Hardcore History.

The perfect boyfriend is the kind that stops talking when you press a button.

Image: vicky leta / mashable

It's not about what he's saying because, no, I do not get off to visceral descriptions of the greatest human atrocities ever recorded by man. Actually, for the process to work, the volume must be low enough for me to hear his impassioned teacherly intonations, but not so loud that I can't replace whatever he's talking about with what I actually want to hear instead. (In my defense, I do also go back and listen for the purpose of learning, too.)

To my relief, I found that I was't alone in having the hots for pods, but also that others are specifically attracted to the idea of a scholarly, silky voice teaching you things.

"I have a huge crush on a guy who does a politics podcast I listen to a lot," said Girl on the Net, not wishing to call out a specific name (though notably, Dan Carlin also has a political podcast). "There’s something intensely hot about listening to someone more knowledgeable than me discuss a subject I’m interested in. Why else would so many people crush on teachers? You’re definitely not alone in this!"

NPR's podcasting hosts running away from our thirst.

Image: vicky leta / mashable

That also tracks with the trend of an increasing amount of people identifying as sapiosexual (someone physically aroused by intelligence). Maybe our hankering for podcasters comes down to the fact that nerds are in. And there's no bigger concentration of nerds than in podcasts.

To be fair, those who know me know that there is little in this world I can't find a way to sexualize. To be fairer to me, though, there does seem to be an underlying sensuality — or at the very least admission to intense emotional relationships — in even the most platonic explanations of podcasting's appeal.

A very unsexy (but fascinating) New Yorker article called it a "peculiarly intimate medium," further noting that, "for a digital medium, podcasts are unusual in their commitment to a slow build, and to a sensual atmosphere." NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcaster Glen Weldon even admitted to his own discomfort and revery for the one-way intimacy in our relationships to podcasters, equating binge-listening to nothing short of falling in love.

Perhaps nobody embodies the intense emotional connection podcasting can inspire more than the New York Times' Michael Barbaro. In a way, he feels like everybody's dream boyfriend: reliable, smart, useful, engaging, able to fit in your pocket — and you can turn him off whenever you've had enough of him.

The indisputable soft-spoken King of Podcasting, a New Yorker profile positively dripping with erotic subtext wrote that, "It’s hard to resist the empathetic vocables with which Barbaro punctuates his interviewees’ words," later describing this as a, "quasi-therapeutic aural hovering."

[INT. BAR — NIGHT] HER: so do you have a name ME: from The New York Times I'm Michael Barbaro

— Liam Weir (@liamrweir) July 31, 2017

What they're talking about is his tendency to interject emphatic, often prolonged hmms during interviews, to vocalize his engagement with what his guest is saying. It's such an endearing and recognizable quirk that it now have its own Twitter fan page, which Barbaro actually follows.

Generally, he seems to be a man who accepts that this vocal tick touches on a particular nerve that people either love or hate. As another Twitter user begged, "Please please please do not stop the hmmmm!"

Not only seen, but heard

Despite its seeming perversion, though, the sexual attraction to podcasts and auditory erotica comes from a pretty wholesome place.

I'm listening to the do not disturb podcast with @itsarifitz and I'm realizing, women with SEXY ASS VOICES ARE MY FUCKING TYPE. Help. Me. -L

— LauRapsody (@LauRapsody) May 8, 2017

In large part, it's about feeling like you know the person whispering into your ear like a lover. If the eyes are a window into the soul, then maybe the voice is like a sonic radar for the soul. There are so many human imperfections in your speech pattern, your personality embedded into every lilt, unspoken emotions communicated through each prolonged pause or sudden exclamation.

The best way to describe the vastly different experience between masturbating to visual rather than auditory porn is the difference between anonymous sex versus sex with a significant other.

Audio porn is also a more non-threatening outlet for masturbation, since the visual porn on tube sites often feels intimidatingly aggressive and catered only to heteronormative male desires.

The visual medium in itself limits you to a more external masturbatory experience, as you shut off your brain and consume other people as sex objects. But as a medium closer to literary erotica (or often an aural version of it), audio invites you to imagine rather than tell you what to like.

"Of all the audio I’ve made so far, the stuff that seems to get the strongest reaction is when it's framed as 'you.' Instead of 'I did this, he did that' it’s 'you did this to me,'” said Girl on the Net, pointing to this specific example. "Again, it’s focusing on the intimacy — making people feel like they’re a part of something. As if it’s happening to them in the moment."

SEE ALSO: Why notification sounds send you emotionally reeling into the past

Also, she said, "most of my sex stories are true, which I think gives them an immediacy and intimacy off the bat."

In essence, audio porn relies on a more direct relationship between you and what's bringing you to climax.

"All sorts of complicated questions go through your mind when you’re watching visual porn," said Gutierrez, the Dipsea cofounder. "Is she actually feeling pleasure? Is this ethically created? What creepy Airbnb is this happening in? You’re also removed from the action, and are distracted by the things that you don’t relate to — like other people’s (often unrealistic) bodies."

Press play with me

The aural has an innately human power over us all. Before there was video, before there was picture, before there was written word, we knew each other by sound. As a collective, we told our first stories through the oral tradition. As individuals, we were first introduced to other human beings by hearing our mother's voice from inside her belly.

Whisk us off to sleep, Podcasting Daddies.

Image: bob al greenE / mashable

The common adage that the brain is the largest sexual organ is unmistakably at play in aural erotica. Yet unlike purely text-based erotica, the humanizing addition of another person's voice is one of the only ways to make masturbation feel less solitary.

Aural erotica is the best of all worlds when it comes to spank bank material: more personal, inclusive, approachable, ethical, and exploratory than visual porn — yet also more sensorily engaging than just textual porn.

Maybe you still think we're just a minority of weirdos. But in my humble opinion, I think maybe I'm just one of a few willing to admit in plain speak that we're all a little horny for Michael Barbaro's voice.

WATCH: Consent-oriented condom packaging says four hands are needed to open it, but then again – maybe not

#_author:Jess Joho #_uuid:2a507e1e-438d-393e-a9a4-c91807e635cc #_category:yct:001000002 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_revsp:news.mashable

0 notes

evilradmedieval · 8 years ago

Text

Logic - “Everybody” Review

It’s 2017, and we’ve entered an era of hip-hop where a lot of popular artists are opting to choose two different routes: drugged-out turn up music or socially conscious heady music. Logic is a rapper that happens to be caught between both of those paths. Hailing from Gaithersburg, Maryland, Logic grew up living in poverty with parents who suffered from alcoholism and drug addiction. As a half-black and half-white young teen, he had trouble really connecting with anyone and coming to terms with his identity at a young age, a trait which would become a major topic of his albums, including Everybody. He then became enamored with hip-hop, which then led to the release of several acclaimed mixtapes in Young, Broke and Infamous and Young Sinatra. With those projects, he showcased his very technical skill in rapping, having a flow that was distinctly his and being able to rap with great intensity. As his popularity great, he was subsequently featured on the XXL Freshmen cover in 2013, around which this was an era in his life where he starts wearing his contemporaries’ styles like a glove. Opting for less jazzy, 1990′s Jay-Z-esque instrumentation, he starts utilizing more trap-flavored, accessible beats. He also starts using similar flows to other artists, in which people have even compared it to rappers Kendrick Lamar and Big Sean. This was a slight problem with his debut album Under Pressure, in which his attempt to appeal to a wider audience was the ultimate flaw of the project. At times he would attempt the Drake route with a sung-rap performance, and other times he would emulate the same flow as Kendrick Lamar on the next track. Despite this, there was a noticeable improvement on his sophomore album, which was a conceptual project featuring characters in search of a new planet to inhabit due to the uninhabitable environment of the earth in the future. He improved on all fronts production-wise, lyrically and topically, despite the silly claim that said album is to be deemed “a classic”. Regardless, I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite it’s flaws. However with this album Everybody, Logic continues that conceptual theme, however this time with the narrative of a man named Atom who dies and encounters God (played by the one and only Neil Degrasse Tyson) and comes to find that his existence is due to constant reincarnation and that he is the only living person on the planet, meant to live as every human being ever and move onto the afterlife. Although heady in its concept, the musical aspects have little to do with the actual narrative and instead addresses topics of being both black and white and seeing life through two sides.

The intro in “Hallelujah” is a triumphant start to the album, with an upbeat house-y vibe throughout, which then breaks down into a subtle trap-flavored banger. Logic has no problem lyrically going into the track, giving his take on the world and ultimately reflecting on where he sees himself as a person in the world. We then follow his verse with a pretty reflective take on his view of everybody in the world, how everyone is equal when it comes down to it, which then transitions into a sung verse by Logic himself, setting up for the scene in which Atom dies in the car crash and meets God. Musically, the track is grandiose with its choir backing vocals and lush violin sections. I don’t think he says anything that’s incredibly mindblowing, but is still a decent track.

“Everybody” happens to be the title track of the album, as well as the lead single. With it, Logic comes through again with sheer technical ability and bar after bar regarding race relations between blacks and whites. He also delves into what it’s like being half and half, as he struggles with dealing with acceptance of his privilege and vice versa. There are no struggle bars to be found here, and I especially love the R&B-esque vocal sample looming in the background.

The title track is then followed up by “Confess”, which was a letdown to me given the Killer Mike feature. Instead of giving a hard-hitting verse, he gives us this spoken word section, which was fine, but I felt that it could have been more impactful if it were actually rapped. But maybe it will grow on me, as he does deliver a profound message. The track again plays with more hip-house as it builds up, then drops into a trap-flavored boom bap-hybrid of an instrumental. The instrumentation here too is lavished with guitars, piano keys and soulful vocal samples, giving it a really clean and crisp sound. Logic again comes through with a hard-hitting verse, however comes through with some struggle bars when talking about being an imperfect human being (which may actually not be intentional) yet can be easily overlooked.

Logic then comments on the heavy use of technology and misuse of social media in this day and age on the track “Killing Spree”. The insight he gives makes sense, as he delivers this with some hard hitting bars with his trademark flow. Unfortunately, the quality of the song goes downhill with the random inclusion of that actor from The Fault in Our Stars to sing this unnecessary sung verse on the latter half of the album. Out of everyone else, Logic opted for a half-assed sung verse which contributed little to the track. Not one of my favorites, but I get what he was attempting to say with this track.

“Take It Back” is a recollection of Logic’s childhood and growing up, being subjected to racism and growing up in a negative environment. Most of those negative connotations come from being mistaken for white and/or black and always being let down. The flow is great until he starts randomly talking in this weird spoken word flow, trying to emulate people that talked down on him, which really ruins the momentum of the track. He then would change back to his rapping, which really left me in a daze. To me, it felt like he had no way of creatively incorporating this entire message into a rapped verse and therefore had to just straight up say it with a regular voice. The instrumental is trap-flavored and is a lowkey banger, but is ultimately ruined with his unnecessary change-up in flow.

The next track “America” is an absolute posse cut banger, which also happens to be Logic’s first straight up political tracks. With big name features like Public Enemy’s Chuck D and The Roots’ Black Thought, there’s bound to be some heady bars after bars on this track. Additionally, Logic definitely holds his own on this track, going in and openly criticizing the current state of America amidst a Donald Trump presidency. The inclusion of longtime collaborator Big Lenbo was unnecessary, yet still puts up a decent verse. Definitely one of my favorite tracks on the album despite the random appearance from Big Lenbo and No I.D. at the end with a short verse.

Juicy J makes an appearance on the next track “Ink Blot”, who was brought in the contribute his own perspective on materialistic rappers. The song starts off with a passionately sung verse by Logic himself, which is surprising in the sense that he actually does a good job harmonizing towards the middle section of the track. I wouldn’t necessarily want Logic to sing on a track necessarily, but he still holds his own and actually sings better than most rappers who attempt to (I’m looking at you Big Sean and J. Cole). Anyways, Juicy J actually doesn’t contribute too much to the track, but makes his presence known with his adlibs throughout, as well as an outro that tells your bitch to “slob on his knob”. Kinda over the top, yet still a totally Juicy J thing to do.

“Mos Definitely” is a more upbeat track that parallel’s the tempo of Madcon’s “Beggin’”. Logic holds his own, flawlessly flowing all over this track and commenting on how everyone has the power to fight for what’s right. Deemed an ode to the great Mos Def, Logic makes various other references the struggle and societal expectations. The song sounds like a mere filler track however, in which he commented on such topics already earlier on the tracklisting.

The next track happens to be an interlude, which continues the narrative of Atom meeting God and being explained the concept of reincarnation and how he’s everyone else, a concept that was illustrated by Andy Weir in the work The Egg. Definitely an interesting exchange, however it doesn’t completely tie into the musical aspects of the album. Neil Degrasse Tyson and 90′s radio personality Bigvon put on convincing performances as their respective characters, however. The inclusion of a heady narrative really ties into Logic’s interest in movies, which was also prevalent on his previous album.

The next track, which happens to be the National Suicide Prevention Hotline means well, however I thought was a lousy attempt at making a crossover radio hit. You have rappers Chuck D and Black Thought on the same album where you have pop singers Alessia Cara and Khalid, which cohesively doesn’t fit in well within the tracklisting. Despite this message of anti-suicide, the track reads to me as out of place and desperately tries to tug at those heart strings.

The next track “Anziety” comments on... well anxiety. Logic comes through with a pretty reflective take on anxiety and how it affects him and how it affects everyone else. The flow and lyrics are there, I just couldn’t really get into the overblown and poppy hook sung by singer Lucy Rose. Logic comes through with a spoken word piece towards the latter end of the track, which was better than randomly switching between rapping and doing spoken word similar to the shit he pulled on “Take It Back”. Not one of my favorite tracks, but still equally heartfelt topically.

“Black SpiderMan” was also one of the lead singles of the album, which I initially didn’t like due to the corniness of the references of wanting a black Spiderman, yet the more and more I listened to the track it really grew on me. The sentiment is definitely there, which is reinforced by these sweet piano keys and choir-esque backing vocals. The track also happens to be one of the more “feel good” tracks, and the feature with Damian Hudson is passionate and full of soul. This is definitely one of my favorite cuts on the album. The ending skit was pretty funny too.

The outro track “AfricAryan” happens to be one of the more personal tracks on the album, in which Logic discusses biracial background even further and how it impacts his life. Although he has rapped about this before on past tracks, he tends to go a little deeper lyrically. The track is jazzy and lowkey, with these sweet-sounding piano keys and saxophone sections. The track initially was supposed to be the title of the album, however was changed to avoid controversy and preconceived assumptions. The latter verse happens to be one of his most impassioned deliveries yet, leaving the listener with a lot to take in. We then get a random phoned-in verse from J. Cole at the end, which wasn’t horrible or detrimental to the track, but just a little extra regarding context.

Overall, the album takes a more political and socially conscious turn in comparison to his previous works. However, with the inclusion of the heady concept of reincarnation with the story of Atom, there was little allusion to the actual songs musically which threw me off a little bit. Despite there being reference to the mistakes of Atom and his overall conception of the world, it would have been logical (no pun intended) if Logic tied in this story more to Atom’s actual view of his own political and social view of the world. The concept is still interesting, however. Lyrically and delivery-wise, Logic doesn’t disappoint, despite a couple struggle bar mishaps here and there. Some features were either misused or completely out of place. Killer Mike could have made a better contribution, as well as J. Cole’s phoned in verse on the outro song. Khalid, Alessia Cara and that other random Lucy girl had no business being on this album. But overall with the message of this album, I felt it seemed a little wishy-washy and disjointed for him to make a cohesive statement. Amidst this trend of being politically conscious, the focus isn’t entirely here on this album, yet he still makes a somewhat decent follow-up to his past two LPs.

RATING: 6/10

#logic #everybody #album review #rap review #hiphop review #music review

2 notes · View notes

libraryreads · 8 years ago

Text

LibraryReads Readers’ Advisory Interview: Jane Jorgenson!

We here at LibraryReads release a monthly list of the top ten most-nominated titles that librarians across the country love - we do this so that librarians can add tools to their Readers’ Advisory toolbox to better help library patrons. But for some of us, RA is a tricky thing. How do we bring it up to patrons? What does Readers’ Advisory look like? Which resources are the most useful? In the latest in a recurring series, we ask librarians to share their own experiences, tools, and advice.

Let’s get started. Who are you and where do you work?

Hello, I’m Jane Jorgenson and I am a neighborhood library manager for the Madison Public Library in Madison, WI. Though I am not on the desk as often as I used to be, I’m still able to keep my hand in a bit by continuing to act as the content manager for our book reviews blog, MADreads (www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads) and running our MADmatches events on Facebook.

How did you become a librarian? What was the process or history that got you here?

I was a big reader as a kid (shocker, I know), always had a book in hand, so of course I was told many times by other kids and adults, “you’re going to be a librarian”. But the profession wasn’t really on my radar until I got a job as a Page at MPL and began working with actual librarians. When I saw what they did, how they helped people every day, how they researched questions and dove into information with a deep, abiding curiousity? And all while seeming to love what they were doing? That’s when I decided on library school. So while working at MPL, I got my Masters’ degree and as I did so worked my way up from Page to Clerk to Library Assistant and then to Librarian.

Have you always been a fan of Readers’ Advisory? If not, how did you become a fan?

I have always been. My first “customer” was my dad. He, like me, was a big reader, but he rarely went out and got his own books, he just read what was put in front of him (though he tended to like thrillers and westerns). He relied on gifts or hand-me-downs. But as I got old enough to start getting him books, I was determined to get him things that he’d love. We talked books a lot, so I knew what he liked and I would search out readalikes for him. He not only didn’t pick his own books, he generally didn’t know what he had read already. So I became both his reading record and personal shopper. A role I took on with all the readers in my family and something I still do.

As an adult, around the same time I got the Page job at MPL, I got a job in a mystery book store. It was there I put my readers’ advisory skills to use in a professional capacity for the first time. Though I spent more at the store then I made, I stuck with it for ten years because of how much I loved talking books and trying to delight customers with their next great read. Finding that perfect match between book and reader were my moments of Zen.

What is the genre/section of the library you’re most comfortable with?

As you might guess, given my 10 years in a mystery book store, I’m pretty expert in crime fiction (mystery, thrillers, suspense, etc.). But I’m pretty comfortable with genre fiction in general, including romance, SF, and fantasy. I also read fiction and nonfiction (though here I tend to lean towards narrative NF).

What is the genre/section of the library you most fear?

I’d have to say childrens’ RA is what most often gives me a moment of panic. Since taking on a supervisory role, I’m not on desk as much, so I’ve gotten away from what kids and their parents are regularly asking for. I know what my go-to titles were a few years ago, but what’s hot with kids changes pretty quickly, so I do have to pause and take a moment when working this kind of RA.

When someone asks for a reading recommendation, how do you go about answering their question?

In Andy Weir’s THE MARTIAN, Mark Watney, the astronaut stranded on Mars, talks about how he dealt with the challenges that arose. He’d have his moments of anxiety and panic and then he’d begin to “work the problem”. That’s how I operate with both reference and readers’ advisory – and really it’s good advice for pretty much everything, so there’s a tip for you.

I remember the feeling I got when I was first working a reference/readers’ advisory desk, that moment when someone would come up to me with a question that I just had no clue about. For a few seconds my brain would be whirling madly, like ‘oh my god, I don’t know how to answer this, where to look’ etc. And then I’d begin to work the problem.

When someone asks for a reading recommendation, I ask them what they’ve liked recently and what they liked about those reads. I can start to build my mental suggestion list from that. If their reading is familiar to me, I might begin to pull up titles in our ILS so they can see the covers, hear the descriptions. If they read in an area I’m less familiar with, I’ll put the RA tools to use. If they haven’t been reading at all, I’ll ask about movies they’ve liked or tv shows they love. From all of that I begin to try and make some connections for them.

In all cases I try to get them over to a section of the shelves as soon as possible – something that I learned in my book store days. There’s a lot you can gather from facial expressions and body language when you put a book into their hands. At MPL we have a collection called ‘Too Good to Miss’, made up of fiction, genre fiction and nonfiction titles that have been steadily popular or have generated long-term, low-grade buzz. Not the hottest, bestseller of the moment, but those titles that just work over time. This is a great starting point for readers who are a little unsure of just what they want or haven’t been reading for a while. I put the books in their hands, I point out the covers, I book talk the titles, all while reading their responses (both verbal and not).

What is your favorite book (or books!) to recommend to people?

Hmmm, I think I have books of the moment; books I’ve read recently that I’ve loved and want to make known to other readers far and wide. But I don’t think I have any books that have always been something I want to recommend. So much depends on what the person in front of me, physically or virtually, wants to read that I really couldn’t pick one or even a few titles.

That said, what I’ve been raving about recently to my fellow readers of the world, are K. B Wagers’ SF Indranan War series, starting with BEHIND THE THRONE, which combines great SF worldbuilding with political maneuvering and machinations, all seen from the eyes of a kick-ass heroine. In mysteries, the book that’s been on the tip of my tongue is not due out until July, but I just want everyone to read it when it does come out. THE LOST ONES by Sheena Kamal is haunting and suspenseful and again features a strong, intelligent heroine (something I’m always drawn to), who is damaged, but determined to not be a victim. And in fiction, I’ve been talking up THE MOTHERS by Brit Bennett, a book that was on a lot of “best” lists this past year, but still is somewhat unknown.

What are your favorite RA sources to use?

I generally use a combo of Novelist, Goodreads, Amazon, Fantastic Fiction and our library catalog to get me started. I augment these with genre specific sites if necessary, Stop You’re Killing Me for mysteries or All About Romance as examples.

How does LibraryReads help you with Readers' Advisory? (Or does it?)

I mentioned our ‘Too Good to Miss’ books as a physical collection of can’t miss titles. That’s how I view LibraryReads. I use it to build my mental list of surefire, solid choices that I know will appeal. So I use it much like I would our TGTM books. I pull up previous month’s lists to show to customers who just want “something good to read”. Additionally, I have found it’s a good source for book groups who are looking for fresh titles to choose from – especially those book groups that want to get a little ahead of the buzz.

What RA advice would you give a younger version of yourself?

My first job out of high school was working as in shoe sales. I learned a lesson there about choices and selection that I eventually realized was applicable for RA work as well. The lesson was; don’t overwhelm customers with too many choices. When I was trying to sell shoes I found that if I went beyond about five or six choices for a customer, nine times out of ten they ended up walking out without buying anything. If I kept their range of choices down below that number, a sale was much more likely. I can’t tell you all the psychological whys and wherefores of this, but I sold shoes for four years, so I know it to be true. If they got overwhelmed with choices, they just couldn’t decide on anything.

A rule that I eventually realized applied to readers too. You can probably guess I’m pretty enthusiastic about this area of our profession, and when I was younger I was VERY enthusiastic. I just wanted to talk all the books all the time. But if you bombard a customer with a dozen titles that are just “perfect” for them, they will invariably walk away with nothing.

So what I would tell the younger RA me is to edit my suggestions a little, pull back before putting more titles in front of the reader. Pause a moment to read their expression and body language. Be enthusiastic, but judicious.

Thanks, Jane! If you want to catch up with what’s she’s reading, you can follow her on Twitter and Litsy (username “poptart”)

#libraryreads #readadv #readers advisory #poptarts

10 notes · View notes

s0022374asfilm-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Post G. Initial ideas

For my short film I aim to produce a sequence that is based around the idea of a journey or adventure, which links the concepts of man and freedom to nature.

I want my film to begin with several opening shots of different fields and open spaces in nature, the diegetic sound recorded from those locations will be heard, as well as an internal monologue from the main protagonist. The location then changes to the protagonist’s home, which features various shots of travel-related items, such as a map, a globe, postcards or posters of different places and a waterproof jacket. The camera will pan over these in several close up to medium close up shots, eventually resting on the jacket, before cutting to the protagonist. This allows the audience to understand the protagonist’s need for adventure and to be in nature. This will also set the scene for the narrative to progress, and highlight how integral this kind of freedom is to the protagonist’s life.

Following on from this, I want to portray my character as they go on a physical, emotional and mental journey.

Idea 1

My first idea is centered around an older main protagonist, who is middle aged or above, as they explore the area in which they grew up. As the protagonist reaches each location, we are shown flashbacks, or memories the protagonist has of how they spent their childhood there. My film is based around reconnecting with your youth, and the freedom it holds.

Idea 2

My second idea is centered around a younger, college aged protagonist who is deciding what to do with their future. Similar to my first idea, my protagonist explores the areas in which they grew up. In this idea, the memories and flashbacks appear as film footage shot by my protagonist or their friend. This idea is based around the freedom we are given as young people to make our own future, and the conflicts that can arise between modern society and the natural world.

Narrative in my short film:

I plan to explore Todorov’s stage of disequilibrium in my film. This is because my protagonist has just set out on their own journey, allowing me to show how they develop as a character.

I plan on using voice-over and on-screen dialogue in my film to show my character’s thoughts on the events happening in scenes

My main character is going to be the ‘hero’ of the film, as they are the one going on their own adventure, and as thus, are also their own dispatcher. I also plan on having a very minor second character, who accompanies my main character on their venture. This character will be the ‘helper’.

There will be a lot of voice-over narration and monologue in my short film, as it has been a key component of my textual analysis film, Into the Wild, as well as two of the short films I researched.

My narrative structure will be primarily linear, as it follows only one character’s narrative line. I do hope to incorporate some features of anti-narrative, as I want to add a variation of flashbacks into my film. These will be shown as videos that my character has taken of themselves and their friend as they explore, and the conversations and events that happen between them in these.

I will mostly be relying on Bathes’ action code for my short film, as there aren’t many aspects to present in my film that can be explored with the enigma code.

The main binary opposition I plan on exploring in my short film is western civilisation vs the natural world. Through this I want to show how nature can be, and is for my protagonist, just as thrilling as urban environments.

Themes: As in my textual analysis film, I will be exploring the themes of freedom and man and nature. This is because freedom is a concept that is heavily explored throughout both films, and the protagonists of both films also journey through nature in some way. In The Way Back nature is shown as an obstacle, whereas in Into the Wild it is a salvation.

Representation: As my films do not tackle any particular representation or stereotypes I have decided not to specifically show my film conforming to or confronting any stereotype.

Messages and Values: I want my audience to come away with an urge to explore and to seek new experiences. I want to be able to inspire my audience into goin on their own journeys and give them the idea that anyone can have an adventure.

Style: My textual analysis films were not hugely influenced by any particular film movements, and so I do not plan on incorporating many elements of these in my own short film. However, the director of one of my TA films, Peter Weir, was a leading figure of the Australian New-Wave film movement, so I may incorporate some aspects of that movement in my film.

Australian New-Wave was the film movement which paved the way into modern Australian cinema seen today. It often consisted of landscape shots featuring Australian land and centered on he qualities that made people Australian. Although I won’t be using Australia as a location for my short film, or focusing on it very much at all, I do plan on following the style of the nationalist landscape films produced by that era.

Cinematography in my Short Film

I plan on including several long shots of my chosen locations to show their natural beauty, which would help to reinforce the link between nature and freedom, it also helps to show the vastness of the outside. This is also similar to many shots used in my Textual Analysis films.

Here is a long shot of the main protagonist of my chosen film in nature. I want to incorporate similar shots in my short film in order to show how my protagonist feels free in nature, and to display their own excitement at their journey.

I plan on using some panning shots and tilts to show how nature is vast and keeps on growing, as well as to display the beauty of nature. I also want to use these to possibly portray how my character has every direction to consider.

I also plan on making some shots seem handheld, to try and give my film a cinema verite-esque feel.

I plan on having some tracking shots in order to follow my character(s) as they go on their journey, and present more of a sense of exploration and discovery.

The composition of my short film will include montage editing as well as several interview style shots and sequences.

In my short film I plan on replying mostly on natural lighting as opposed to using lighting panels or other such equipment. This is to give my work a more natural feel and to increase the sense of realism surrounding it.

I also hope to incorporate lens flares into my film in order to reinforce the perceivable beauty of nature to the audience.

Mise-en-scene

The locations that I plan using in my short film include my house, and two to three different fields and farm tracks that are close to my area. I plan to use these as they are easy to access and I know the areas well, meaning I can navigate the areas easily in order to get the best shot.

The room we will be using in my house will be my room, which I will change and design to suit my character. I will do this by adding props that reflect my characters personality, such as posters, ornaments and maps. These will also help to strengthen the theme my narrative is based on: man and nature. I will use maps and a globe to display my character’s desire to explore, and posters of plants and different natural areas to represent their ties with nature and the natural world. I am also going to add posters of popular culture references, such as Tv shows and films to show how my protagonist still wants to be a part of westernized civilisation and modern society. I want to use my room and the props inside of it to reflect the inner turmoil of my protagonist’s mind as they try to fit both nature and urban society into their life. As a result of this, the room will also be messy, so as to show the effect this has on the protagonist themselves.

My main protagonist’s costume will most likely combine clothing typically worn by modern-day teenagers with outdoor based clothing such as a waterproof coat and walking boots. This is to help reinforce the binary opposition of the western vs natural worlds as it shows how my protagonist doesn’t want to let go of the fashion and style of society, but also wants to be more adapted to explore the outside world.

I don't plan on using makeup on my characters as my film focuses on naturalism, and thus I think that using makeup would be a contradiction of this idea.

Sound

Both of my chosen Textual Analysis films rely heavily on both diegetic and non-diegetic sound. I plan on taking my influences of non-diegetic sound (such as the soundtrack) from Into the Wild, and my diegetic dialogue mostly from The Way Back. I think that the soundtrack used in Into the Wild is very powerful and helps to effectively set the tone in scenes. As well as this, dialogue between characters is a key element in The Way Back and helps to push the narrative forward.

For part of my soundtrack I plan on using the first minute (0:00-1:18) of You! Me! Dancing! by Los Campesinos! I chose to use the intro to this song as the use of the guitar chords at the beginning creates a calm and nostalgic feeling, reminiscent of hazy summer days spent with friends and watching sunsets from a field. I think the intro to this song also has a very hopeful tone, due to its ascending pitch, which presents that the protagonist’s future after the film is bright, as I plan on playing this towards the end of my short film as the main character looks into the distance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj6SO_yKMe8

Voice Over:

A lot of my film will feature a voice-over of an internal monologue of my character. This will offer an insight to my audience into my protagonist’s thoughts and feelings, which will allow an audience to relate to and understand my character more. In one of my TA films, Into the Wild, the main protagonist says aloud what he has written: “Two years he walks the Earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the great white north. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.”

My film will also feature some dialogue between my main character and a minor character. This is to show the protagonist’s bond with people in society and their need for contact. This presents a similar idea to dialogue in my TA film The Way Back, where the main characters relied on each other to provide themselves with a sense of identity, and the strength to carry on journeying to their freedom.

I don’t plan on using any sound motifs or sound bridges as they aren’t featured in either of my chosen films. Likewise, I won’t be incorporating any asynchronous sound as it would not fit the style of my short film or the styles of my textual analysis films.

Editing

Following the examples of my chosen scene in Into the Wild, I will be using a lot of dissolve transitions between shots. This will be to show both how time and events pass and blend into each other, as well as helping to represent how all things in nature are connected and one. This will also symbolise how my character is reflecting on their journey and the places they have seen, as the transitions could be representative of my main character’s memories.

In the beginning of my short film I plan on using plain cuts between shots, as these are fast and quickly executed, showing how events are moving forward for my protagonist. This is similar to the cuts seen in my other TA film, The Way Back. The use of cuts also suggests that the protagonist is moving quickly and urgently, which will show that this journey is important to them. It will also suggest that the main character has been struck with spontaneous motivation.

Once again taking inspiration from my TA film Into the Wild, I also plan on including a montage toward the end of my short film. This will incorporate the transition shots I mentioned above, and similarly will be used to represent a time of reflection for my protagonist and the passing of time.

Synopsis

Logline:

Early on a Saturday, college student DAN embarks upon a spontaneous journey of discovery and self-reflection.

Pitch Paragraph:

Deciding that he needs time away from his home, Dan explores the woodlands and fields nearby, reflecting on his past adventures there with friend JAKE and thinking ahead to what his future may hold.

Summary:

As Dan ventures further away from civilisation and deeper into the wilderness, we begin to see glimpses of his past, shot from his perspective on a video camera. These show the memories he has of the places he visits, and how they have impacted him. The first video roll is on a field next to his house, Dan is behind the camera and is filming his friend Jake, as he urges him to roll down a hill. We then see Dan as he leaves the field, travelling to and arriving at a nature reserve. There is a quick flashback of a slightly Younger Dan walking past the same sign as Older Dan, which is presumably being filmed by Jake. This then cuts to a scene where Older Dan is walking through some undergrowth, the flash backs appear here too, showing Dan and Jake as they run between trees. The final scene shows Dan as he emerges from the undergrowth into a second field. There are no more flashbacks from here on, and we see Dan standing alone in the light of the setting sun, as he contemplates his future.

Later Changes

Links to my Textual Analysis

3 notes · View notes

shirlleycoyle · 5 years ago

Text

How Censorship Created Porn’s New Face of Pleasure

Welcome to Rule 34, a series in which Motherboard’s Samantha Cole lovingly explores the highly specific fetishes that can be found on the web. If you’ve thought of it, someone’s jerked off to it.

The links in this article may be considered NSFW.

"I know it when I see it."

That's how United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously defined obscenity during a 1964 trial that would decide whether the state of Ohio could ban the public showing of a hard-core porn.

But when you see a woman with her eyes crossed and strings of spit dripping from her gaping mouth, do you "know it"? Riley Reid, one of the most popular porn performers in the world, dabbles in it. Wildly popular internet personality Belle Delphine did it, a lot.

But ahegao—the gagging, drooling face made popular by hentai—started long before either of these performers began experimenting with it. And as a fetish, it's still considered taboo by some.

In Japanese, ahegao translates as an onomatopoeia mashup of panting (as in, "ahe ahe") and "gao," or face. It's different from the more natural ikigao, which means "orgasm face." It's more outlandish. Few people having real sex and experiencing a real orgasm pull the face ahegao girls do, which is part of its allure; It's a juiced-up parody of an O-face. Like so many aspects of porn, it's greatly exaggerated and unrealistic.

In a different context, there's nothing technically sexual about the hentai facial expression known as ahegao. It's definitive features include crossed eyes, flushed cheeks, and a lolling, drooling tongue—and on their own, none of these are explicit. A face that looks like this could plausibly represent anything: someone in pain, or extreme ecstasy, or lusting after a really good meal.

But even if you're a very, very offline adult, you can look at an ahegao face and know something else is going on outside the frame. And from ahegao's origins, that's by design.

"Censorship made ahegao come into being"

In her highly influential 1989 book Hard Core, film and pornography scholar Linda Williams explored the idea that a woman's orgasm is invisible: that for men, in porn at least, you can rarely deny that they're cumming. There's jizz everywhere. For many adult films, that's the whole point: the "money shot."

But for onlookers, evidence of a woman's orgasm isn't in the genitals. It's in the sounds she makes, or the movement of the rest of her body, or especially, her eyes and face. It's a lot harder for a penis-haver to fake a mind-blowing orgasm than it is for a woman. In ahegao, the idea is that the experience is beyond fakery: she's cumming so hard that she's lost all control of her face.

"In Japanese adult video as in manga, there is an art to expressions of pleasure on the face, and ahegao works as the displaced climax, or the loss of self and mind in moment of overwhelming pleasure," Patrick Galbraith, professor at Senshi University in Tokyo, told me. Ahegao is an example of Williams' expressions of female orgasm, he said.

Thomas Baudinette, lecturer in Japanese Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, told me that ahegao may have its earliest origins in late 1990s or early 2000s Eromanga, pornographic magazines for heterosexual male audiences. From there, it's spread in Western culture—but it's roots are in erotic artists' workarounds for strict censorship laws.

In Japanese obscenity law, a person who "distributes, sells, or displays in public an obscene document, drawing or other objects" is punishable with up to two years in prison or a 2,500,000-yen fine. Censorship of pornography and hentai in Japan is a huge cultural issue—so much so that politicians include the issue in their campaign platforms.

"Pornography producers in Japan have interpreted this law as requiring the censorship of the sexual organs and pubic hair, which are typically obscured in video and manga pornography through the use of mosaicking," Baudinette said.

Penatrative sex becomes a lot more difficult to portray if you can't show a penis entering a vagina, so artists had to get creative. "Ahegao was born out of the need to show bodies in pleasure within a context where it is difficult to draw penetration," he said. "Censorship made ahegao come into being."

Just as we have censorship to thank, in part, for tentacle porn, we have it to blame for ahegao. And some adult performers have it to thank for discovering a whole new fanbase.

"Remember to drool"

On her Instagram, Tira Part leans into the camera in what seems like unbearable anticipation.

View this post on Instagram

🍭 ecchi till I die, all these shorty’s call me… #senpai #waifus #tirapart #ahegao #princess #ahegaoface #ahegaogirl #weeb #anime #girlswithpiercings 🍭

A post shared by Tira Part (@princesstira.chan) on Dec 27, 2019 at 11:26pm PST

Part, who is one of the most popular ahegao performers on Pornhub with 30,500 subscribers, told me that her fans enjoy this "mind break" fantasy. "They like to see when tongues hang out and eyes cross/roll back in sheer ecstasy," she said. "Whoever makes the face is enjoying themself so much they lose control of their moans and expressions. All they can do is pant and cross their eyes, and that's really attractive."

"The face is basically just an over-exaggeration of an orgasm or being banged brainless," adult performer Littlerosexo, who frequently does cosplay and camming with her fiance, told me.

The first time Elisabeth Weir—who's racked up more than 43,600 subscribers on Pornhub—encountered ahegao was in 2016. She started doing what she only knew as "weird" faces to be silly, but her fans loved it.

View this post on Instagram

#kawaii #kawaiigirl #kawaii🌸 #kawaiiaesthetic #pink #pinkaesthetics #pinkfeed #lewd #stockings #可愛い #可愛い💕 #ahegao #ahegaoface #blonde #bimbofashion #bimbo #bimbodoll #dollyfashion #tongue #アヘ顔

A post shared by 🌸megaplaygirl🌸batsxlizard🌸 (@megaplaydoll) on Jun 2, 2019 at 2:53pm PDT

"I was surprised that some people find it not only entertaining but also HOT," she said. So many people requested it, she had to add it to her cam show requests list on OnlyFans: 20 tokens (around $1) to see her do it during a live show, and for adding ahegao to a custom clip, that'll be $15 extra on top of the clip price. "People wanted to see me performing it and were ready to pay."

Weir's advice for a great ahegao: "Ideally you need to think about your best orgasm but make it 1000 times stronger," she said. "So strong that your eyes started rolling/crossing and you can't control your mouth so tongue sticks out."

Littlerosexo also first encountered ahegao thanks to a fan who requested it. She had to look it up, but was excited to try it.

"You definitely have to be serious about making it 'believable' but also silly enough to have fun with it," she said. "And remember to drool! The most helpful thing for me to run through my mind while doing it is literally repeating 'NYAAAAAAA' in my head over and over. But there's definitely some internal giggling that goes between that."

"Somebody think of the children"

Unfortunately, we can't talk about ahegao without addressing the infamous "ahegao hoodie."

According to Know Your Meme, in 2015 a collage of hentai characters by manga artist Hirume started circulating online. Someone put it on a bunch of apparel—hats, phone cases, shirts, and more—in 2016, and from there it made its way to mass-production custom design shops like Redbubble. In May 2017, a Reddit user posted a photo of someone wearing a different ahegao collage design, this time on a hoodie. That hoodie is the one that's become notoriously controversial. It's still on eBay.

This thing has been banned by anime conferences, as it's widely derided as featuring faces from shota or loli—depicting minor characters in sex acts.

Last year, organizers of the SunnyCon Anime Expo made an announcement: Clothing depicting ahegao would not be welcome at their convention.

"Going on attendee feedback, people wearing ahegao made the majority of attendees uncomfortable especially those with children at the event," a spokesperson for SunnyCon told me. From their personal standpoints, they don't see anything wrong with ahegao, especially in a controlled, adult environment, they said. But SunnyCon—held annually in the UK since 2010—is an all-ages event.

"Despite there being no porn on show, it is still taken from 18+ content and some of the faces also can be considered underage as well," they said. Hypothetically, they said, a concerned parent who knew the context of ahegao could claim that SunnyCon exposed their child to mature material. "This would result in police being called and with them informed of the context it would spark up a powder keg of legal issues," they said. They imagined a whole chain of horrifying events taking place at their expo: the wearer being dragged out of the event and charged as a sex offender, the organizers losing their venue and tens of thousands of attendees.

"Given the potential legal ramifications it's not as simple as 'somebody think of the children' or 'it's just some faces,'" they said. "People with these types of attitudes need to realise that events are businesses and have to follow the law and make money… as hard as it is for hardcore fans, times change… trends like ahegao will be phased out," with an influx of younger, new fans.

"Wearing an ahegao hoodie in Japan would be unthinkable," said Baudinette, "and the only time I have seen it at a Japanese convention, it was being worn by a Westerner."

"In Japan, ahegao is strictly limited to the world of manga and it forms part of a broader trend within Japan’s otaku culture for a sexual attraction to imaginary characters," he said. "Outside Japan is a different story… It tends to be fetishized or used as an 'in-group' marker tied to the Western otaku fandom more broadly."

One could view the existence of the virally-memed ahegao hoodie itself as the import and appropriation of an art form gone wrong. Like getting a kanji tattoo that says "small charcoal grill," unless you already understand the context of the art form, you won't be able to understand the art itself.

Contrary to SunnyCon's predictions, ahegao likely isn't going anywhere. Searches for the word have exploded in the last two years, with more cam models and influencers jumping and drooling and panting all over the ahegao wagon. Most of those models are white. As ahegao transforms from a hentai expression to viral Western meme, it could change in meaning altogether—into simply someone showing pleasure with a little cross-eyed slobber.

How Censorship Created Porn’s New Face of Pleasure syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

1 note · View note

getseriouser · 5 years ago

Text

20 THOUGHTS: Trade Radio Ga Ga (’is this real life or just a fantasy?’)

WHAT a stupid year.

The losers of the NRL Grand Final are paid out as winners by bookmakers, and not because of a silly betting promotion but because the code and its officials are as relevant and effective in their jobs as contraception to Irish catholic newlyweds on their honeymoon.

Where Donald Trump himself is evidence our species might now be regressing, the fact endless hours of Trade Radio always have talkback callers is the proof in that devolution pudding.

And in a year where all the conservatives and right-wingers in this country should be as excited as a Beagle on full lipstick following ScoMo’s Steven Bradbury effort in May, they’re got their pantyhose and pressed slacks in a twist because of what some Volvo factory-worker’s teenage daughter has to say about the inclement weather conditions.

There was chaos and anarchy on Swan Street for the second time in three years last month but Hold Kong locals asked Richmond fans if they could hold their beer. We lost Polly and Spud, and said vale, gone too soon, to Saturday Night Rove. Five clubs let go of their coaches, Pope Francis delisted one of his cardinals, and a ginger from Christchurch defeated his own country by the virtue of most boundaries.

But at least we retained the Ashes in England.

1. Let’s start with the footy, trades season is almost done. Hutchy to his credit was a genius for seeing revenue opportunity in this trade period, with an ‘insert sponsor here’ open line and hours and hours of coverage, its been a windfall and then some for his business. But I reckon we’re only a year or so away from the unwashed realising there’s no relevance in any of it until the final day. There’s only so many Terry Wallace orations on the merits of list analysis before your average punter switches off. Know when to hold them, know when to fold them, Craig.

2. The biggest name out there with a day to go is Joe Daniher. Was that meeting with Tom Harley a personal one or an actual, official Swans’ approach? Soft tacos, hard tacos, why not both? Now we have Essendon playing hardball and who knows if it gets done. Chances are it does, Geelong last year with Tim Kelly was more exception than example, if the Swans want him bad enough, they’ll lump up the pieces, especially if they fear as I do that Bud’s barely got ten more games in him in a market that requires a star.

3. St Kilda has a lot on. Jack Steven and Josh Bruce are two big losses, but getting in Dougal Howard, Bradley Hill, Zak Jones, Paddy Ryder and Dan Butler are some nice pieces. If Ratten can indeed coach, and as an ex-Clarko assistant he should be just fine, next year looks properly solid down at Moorabbin.

4. Whats the thinking with the Dogs? Aaron Naughton looks like a key forward gun, and Josh Schache was just starting to show something as a footballer without being a star. Yet they’re throwing all the cash at Josh Bruce for a go at a third flag? I do know he was free to a good home because the Saints were hellbent Max King’s twin at the Gold Coast would head home next year – not now after that re-signing yesterday. Couple big mistakes there for mine.

5. Tom Papley worth pick nine? Righto. And the Masked Singer will be popular on Australian television too, right?..... Yep, pick nine sounds about right then, forgive me.

6. Jack Martin though, to Carlton, that’s the steal of the whole thing. Martin is a freak, who has gone underappreciated playing in the ghost town that is Gold Coast, for a horribly weak side, in a club that can’t develop anyone not named Tom Lynch. But has talent to burn and could easily become one of Carlton’s top 10 players next year, in fact based on the player he can become, he should. Think 2019 Michael Walters. Seriously. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

7. Collingwood have cap issues? Really? Firstly who really knows, unlike North American sports where contracts are public, only each club really knows how much room they’ve got and how that ever would be divulged puzzles me. And yes they have to pay Grundy, De Goey and Moore next year, although the latter won’t be all that much given his hamstrings are like an Uber driver with turrets, unreliable and could snap at any time. But given the Pies were offering Tom Lynch the same financial terms as Richmond this time last year, with Scott Pendlebury out of contract next year and coming down in salary, with less stars to pay than West Coast, how is this a thing? It isn’t. Chris Mayne is overpaid, sure, but that’s it. Wells has retired, Beams took a cut, and unless George Calombaris oversaw their player payments and there’s backpay to cover off, I think it’s a total beat-up. But sure, let James Aish being wanted by his former backs coach at Freo to fuel that fable.

8. Crows hired Matthew Nicks. Reckon that’s got fail all over it. Adelaide’s list is in a heap, the review basically said their post Grand-Final plans two years ago totally wiped the place out like a broken toilet on a buck’s weekend, and not seeing to the damage since has only exacerbated the crap spilling out all over the shop. Good half dozen or so quality players leaving this offseason, Walker and Sloane are the wrong side of 30 and they’ve got only a few good kids, most clubs around them have better youth and are more rapidly improving. Either Nicks can’t coach at the level or he can but the Crows will be a bad side regardless, either way it doesn’t see him making a new contract beyond whats given out today.

9. NRL. Definiton of a pub league. Your local Wednesday night basketball is better run. And with better officiating. That Six Again controversy was the most befitting thing you’ll ever see to a sport, a sport where 13 of its 16 clubs run insolvent, but that’s ok because all their giant pokies-infested leagues club venues write them all a cheque to cover the losses each year. Absolute pub league.

10. If an umpire or referee makes a bad call, it’s only made worse by changing that decision midstream. If a player marks the ball, but then the umpire overrules saying no, it was touched, its no mark, and because you’ve claimed it and made no attempt to get rid of it its now holding the ball, you just can’t do that. Kids are taught to play to the whistle. Except in rugby league then. Because chances are what the ref just said isn’t what he is about to mean in a couple seconds time, just be patient. That referee shouldn’t be crucified for what’s essentially just one error, but in the grand scheme of things, he needs witness protection. Or better yet, stay off the roster for trips to Canberra next season.

11. It was mentioned in the preamble but no wonder SportsBet paid out all Canberra to win bets. The Raiders had all the momentum, it was 8-all, and it was near the Roosters tryline. They were no guarantee to score off that play, at best they might have got a repeat set. But if there was anyone more likely to break that deadlock given who was playing better but also, more importantly, the territory battle, it was the Green Machine. This isn’t SportsBet just being philanthropic, the result is just that shady.

12. Speaking of Sportsbet – Western United. Made their A-League debut on the weekend, won one-nil in front of some fans at Wellington. But it was midweek that we saw their announcement which said “we are proud to announce SportsBet has joined the club as its exclusive sports wagering partner”. Firstly, poor form, in a city where all the AFL clubs are quite publicly backing out of gambling revenue, to be going the other way stinks big time. But secondly, what does that even mean? That if I go into a TAB all Western United games are unavailable to bet on. Coz that’s just not even close to true. Dumb and stupid in all of the ways, that.

13. So the new boys have their home opener this weekend down at Geelong, even though they’re a team based out of Tarneit. Melbourne Victory when they’ve ventured down to Sleepy Hollow attract 14,000 or so, who knows how many turn up for the novelty first time around this Saturday. But going forward, given Melbourne City don’t exceed 10,000 and they play in town, if they’re getting anymore than 5,000-6,000 in what’s otherwise a 36,000 AFL venue, its going to look oh so pretty on television. What’s the opposite of the eggplant emoji?

14. Few more on the A-League, firstly, why have your opening round smack bang in the middle of an international window? They were so hyper vigilant to schedule their opening round after the AFL and NRL had ended they failed to recognise all of the good Aussie players will be off winning 28-nil against Chinese Taipei or Christmas Island or whoever it was. Its like Victoria Police planning a social function on New Year’s Eve. No-one’s going to be able to make it you morons.

15. And you open up with the Melbourne Derby. Lucky Victory is a terrifically run club with a strong, loyal fanbase. But only 33,000, with zero promotion? These should be nudging 50,000.

16. Lastly, you know they’re going really well when the free-to-air partner this season is the ABC. Even the VFL got a commercial broadcaster, yet the country’s premier round ball competition shares a channel with Gardening Australia and Four Corners. And the cherry on the top is when it comes to finals, and I’ll quote the ABC press release on this one, where “one A-League match per round broadcast live on ABC TV and iView around the country… and a selection of A-League finals on delay, including the grand final.” Delay?! Remember those days? You can’t make this stuff up.

17. Darren Weir got done for using jiggers. Rest of racing stays dead quiet. Right. Now is that because Darren is their mate and despite the heinous crimes blood is thicker than water in the industry and they have some empathy for him? Or is it a case of if he can get caught, then maybe some of the others equally as guilty could so easily as well, and staying mum is step one of avoiding such scrutiny? I wonder.

18. So, Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge broke the two-hour barrier for running a marathon. Phenomenal achievement, just ridiculous to even comprehend the feat. Amazing. But it won’t count as a world record. Why? Well it wasn’t a race. Old mate contrived the event with a couple dozen pacers to help him do it and that’s it. It’s like if me and some mates hire lane eight down Altona Pool Thursday morning, and fresh off a high-protein breakfast and a quick hit of flakka happen to break 20 seconds for one-lap of freestyle – you think FINA will recognise it? You think Kieran Perkins will shout me free Light Start for life off the back of it? As a milk crusader I could only dream of such a reward but yeah nah. Nice stunt Eliud, you’re a freak of a human. But we’re in the same boat brother.

19. Tough one, not just for boxing because its bigger than that, but Patrick Day is in real bother and sincere optimism about his recovery to one side, so is his sport. Day was knocked out in the tenth round in a bout with Charles Conwell in Chicago in the weekend, which in itself is not unusual. But the consequences of the blow are such that Day is in a coma and in an “extremely critical condition”. Again, nothing but positive wishes about his eventual recovery first and foremost, but in an era where concussion in the football codes is as alarming as ever, combat spots’ existence, like boxing, could/would/should be on borrowed time with cases like this.

20. TV ratings worry the pants off me. By far the most important and major revenue source for all the sport we love to watch, it helps grow the professionalism and the standards, and the access really. But as TV viewership declines, so does the viewership with live sport. And we all waited with bated breath for the NRL Grand Final numbers in the hope maybe they would be good, and it wasn’t just sport in general in trouble, that maybe rugby league was still on an upward trajectory and its just everyone else.

Nope, it was down too. Usually something that rates at times near 3m nationally, it was around 1.8m. The AFL Grand Final, with an engaged Sydney audience, has been on a trajectory over 3.5m, topping 4m occasionally, it was under 3m for the first time in years. Australia Open primetime slots were down, cricket was good but still down, be it the summer on Seven or The Ashes mid-year on Nine.

What does this mean? It means less people are watching live sport. And when advertisers hear that, they’ll be paying less to the networks for the privilege of putting 30 seconds of their product in front of the eyeballs of footy fans. And that then means TV networks will hand over less cash, subsequently, to the sporting bodies for the rights to broadcast their fixtures.

It doesn’t mean that we’re all destined to see the days of the 1980s return where players need a job outside of footy and only one game is broadcast a week and all that nostalgia. But the idea that salaries will keep going up and up is gone, the idea the game can grow at the same rate looks doomed. So unless someone makes Foxtel honest (nudge nudge Amazon Prime) or this is only a lull, and once we get over Fortnite and Korean boy-bands we will all fall back in love with Friday night in front of the telly watching footy, it’s a big, big concern.

0 notes