#Methodology

[destinationtoast]

Hi, I would like to know how to make a list of all the ships in a fandom on AO3. For example, I use the Tag Search on "Transformers - A Media Types", but it shows that Jetfire/Starscream is the most popular with 641, but it is actually only the 6th with 1074. Furthermore, it quickly drops to showing Relationship with a single digit when I know that there are dozens of Relationship with hundreds of Works! Why don't most Works appear? Do you know of a way to find All the ships of a fandom on AO3?

Hey! Sorry for the slow reply... I was traveling and then covid knocked me flat for several weeks. :P

So let's talk about AO3 Tag Search. In general, I'm very excited about recent improvements to this feature... There didn't used to be any way to find the top ships (or characters, or freeform/additional tags) across all of AO3. But now you can* by doing a tag search and sorting by uses (descending order):

*In practice, though you won't exactly get a trustworthy list of top tags (and, as you pointed out, in some cases tags may even be missing! we'll get to that later). You will get a list where the numbers are not correct, sometimes to a bizarre degree:

For example, when you click through on the Derek/Stiles tag, you find far fewer works using the tag (note that these are the public works -- if you're logged in, you see a somewhat higher number, but not as high as in the above screenshot):

I will be posting some stats soon that show different numbers (and a different order) for all of the above top ships. But why is there the discrepancy? Here are several guesses about why some works are wrong in Tag Search (and then I'll get to why some ships are missing and what to do about it):

TAG INFLATION #1: The above numbers probably include tags used in AO3 bookmarks, which increases some of the numbers quite a lot. [Evidence: if you search for top freeform tags, you get tags like "To Read" high on the list, and authors don't use those tags.]

TAG INFLATION #2: The above numbers seem to include draft works. [Evidence: I just tested this out by finding a rare tag with only one use... I created a draft of a new work using that same tag, and even though I didn't publish the work, Tag Search now showed 2 uses of the tag.]

TAG DEFLATION: The above numbers do NOT seem to take tag wrangling into account. Some AO3 tags have a lot of synonyms or subtags, but I think only exact uses of the tag get counted in the above list. [Evidence: I found at a tag with only one use according to tag search, but two works when I clicked the tag (Peter Gabriel/Mike Rutherford). I found that one of the works contained a synonym of the main tag ("Mike Rutherford/Peter Gabriel (Imagined)"). That would match with Tag Search only listing one of work for "Peter Gabriel/Mike Rutherford." And when I created a new draft work that used the main tag, it increase the count in Tag Search for "Peter Gabriel/Mike Rutherford" -- but when I created a new draft work that used the synonym tag, it did not.]

There may also be other factors affecting the overall Tag Search numbers.

Okay, so I suspect #3, tag deflation due to no tag wrangling, is (helping to?) create the unexpectedly low numbers you are seeing for ships like Jetfire/Starscream. I suspect that many people do not use the full canonical tag "Jetfire | Skyfire/Starscream (Transformers)", and those other uses don't get counted in Tag Search. The only way to address this issue is to click through on a tag returned by Tag Search and find out how many works the tag has once you look at its list of works.

But why aren't some ships showing up at all? That's a different question. Here, I suspect the answer again is related to tag wrangling. Every (?) canonical ship tag has at least one parent tag that is a fandom tag (as well as the relevant character tags). You can see the parent tags for Jetfire/Starscream on its tag page:

Skyfire (Transformers), Starscream (Transformers), The Transformers (Cartoon Generation One), The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers (Dreamwave Generation One), Transformers (IDW 2019), Transformers (Marvel Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Animated (2007), Transformers: Armada, Transformers: Beast Wars (Cartoon), Transformers: Cybertron, Transformers: Cyberverse, Transformers: Energon, Transformers: Prime, Transformers: Shattered Glass, Transformers: The Headmasters, Transformers: War for Cybertron (Video Games)

Jetfire/Starscream has "Transformers - All Media Types" as a parent tag, and I suspect that is why it shows up in the Tag Search for that fandom. I would guess that some of the bigger Transformer ships do NOT have that broad fandom as a parent tag. Let's check the parent tags of Megatron/Optimus Prime:

Megatron (Transformers), Optimus Prime, The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers Animated (2007), Transformers: Armada, Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2001), Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015)

Megatron/Optimus Prime does NOT have "Transformers - All Media Types" as a parent tag. I suspect that's why it didn't show up in your tag search.

So what can you do? Unfortunately, I think the only way to be sure to find all the Transformers ships is to do a Tag Search within each of the different Transformers subfandoms (and I know there are a lot) and then combine the lists of ships you find for each. And then be sure to visit the tag works page for each resulting tag to get the actual number of works, as discussed above. I also discussed other ways to get the find the top relationships here, but I think they're all either less reliable or more arduous than this method, at least for a big fandom like Transformers.

Best of luck!

[more-flotsam-and-jetsam]

[historicity-was-already-taken]

In the past I have been highly critical of the fact that so much Holocaust memory is constructed through the autobiographical/memoiric writings of men, like Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi. And I remain critical, because that male canon obscures the experiences for women.

I've understood for a while that women write for their families while men write for history, but I've finally figured out how to put words to another piece of it. Because women perceive their individual experiences to have been unimportant, or as a tiny part of a whole, their writings are much harder for laypeople to understand.

One of the most moving Warsaw Ghetto resistance memoirs I've read so far has been I Remember Nothing More: The Warsaw Children's Hospital and the Jewish Resistance by Adina Blady-Szwajger. Towards what I'm going to call the first ending of this memoir (pg. 153), she writes:

When I finished the last page of my memoirs, I went back to the beginning. I read them through-and suddenly realized that something was wrong. I had wanted to bear witness to the true events of those times, but I had done it very awkwardly. Over the last forty-five years, the world has changed, new generations have grown up, and everything that happened has faded in the mists of history ... Everything has changed - even the streets I wrote about are no longer on the map of contemporary Warsaw. So much of what I wrote has ceased to be clear and comprehensible ... We have crossed the barrier of shadows, and one by one we are leaving. The young are left behind. And it would be a good thing if something of those years remained for them. And so we need to explain, not just to reminisce. I don’t know whether I am able to. I am not a professional writer, or a chronicler. But I must try ...

This type of ambivalence towards one's right to record their memories over such a traumatic past is a typical presence in women's Holocaust memoirs, but so is the issue Blady-Szwajger so eloquently points out above: the memories recorded are niche, interpersonal; recording events and landscapes and individuals which have not penetrated collective memory, and remain obscure to laypersons. At the time, the massacre of a Ukrainian shtetl was the most memorable moment in a writer's life, but from the lens of us, as students of history, it may be a blip in the larger history of Einsatzgruppen actions at the beginnings of Operation Barbarossa.

Because male writers are much more likely to understand themselves as purveyors of history, and not simply as small, modest pieces of a collective, many of their writers include attempts to contextualize events they personally experienced within the larger history of World War II and the Holocaust. Whereas women, simply remember.

[dijaad]

25.09.2024 🎈

day 2,

well well well, i didn't do much today but hey, slow progress is still progress right? RIGHT?

i'm gonna try to finish up the chapter i started today before going to bed.. so i can wake up all motivated to start a new one tomorrow inchaAllah.. (remember, fake it till you make it xD, i'm faking 'the motivation' hehe, but hey you know what? i don't really think i'm faking it anymore :O?? i do feel motivated!! :O *wink*)

btw i think i love 'Méthodologie' , it makes me use my brain, i actually did enjoy what i studied today, but i have so much more left T^T.. well, i could've had many more things done today, if my auntie and lil cousins hadn't thrown me a surprise birthday party 😎!

I am really so grateful for today, i had a really good time with my loved ones, Alhamdulillah for these little moments for they aren't little to me!

alright! see you! ^.^

oh wait i think i have more things to say..

that peach&passion fruit black tea tasted so good, and those beautiful toasts were a true delight! i also had a good shower, then put on a sheet mask my lil cousin gifted me the other day! and the cat you see in the picture is Shoyo, my buddy <3!

Alhamdulillah once again!

see yaaa! now i really have to go >.< !!

(ps: i think i have some sort of problem in my phone camera? i don't know maybe a stain in the inside of the cam?? it's not bothering me that much and i don't notice it all the time but today i did.. idk if you guys can see it but it's quite noticeable in the 'notebook' pic..)

[itsalwaysjune]

17.05.24

The weather is nice again! I'm glad the rain definitely dampened my mood.

I spent almost the entire day in the library- found 'You will beat this essay' written on the cublicle wall, it gave me the motivation I needed to get a big chunk of my Lab reoprt done.

Today I;

Did the introduction of my lab report

Did the methodology of my lab report

Created the Figures for my lab report

Started to contact the study abroad students I will be travelling with

Studied social categorisation, stereotyping and prejudice

Studied intergroup relations and conflict

I went to the library and forgot my tablet, so I had to walk all the way there and alllll the way back.

[philosophybits]

In fact, nothing is more conservative than science. Science lays down railway tracks. And for scientists it is important that their work should move along those tracks.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, in Recollections of Wittgenstein, Rush Rhees, ed.

[gamylost]

53/100 days of productivity •29/02/2024

• went to work - 8 a.m to 6p.m

• Duolingo : Portuguese

• mails

• methodology : research qualitative

• digital humanities

• preparation for work

• English

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“The child, a free human being, must teach us and teach society order, calm, discipline, and harmony,” Montessori wrote. In some ways, the engine of her method was paradox: order is freedom, and vice-versa; the teacher is subordinate to the child, but powerfully so; a child must be left to her own devices, but left to them systematically, and the devices shall be made of wood.

[The New Yorker]

[fanhackers]

The Classics of Fan studies: Matt Hills - Fan Culture

The classic of fan studies I want to introduce today is a theoretical overview of the discipline from 2002. Indeed, in Fan Culture, Matt Hills explores the different theories of fan culture and the methodologies that had been used by scholars before him. 

I particularly like the first chapter in which Hills challenges the idea that there is a dichotomy between passive consumers and resistant fans:

“Conventional logic, seeking to construct a sustainable opposition between the ‘fan’ and the ‘consumer’, falsifies the fan’s experience by positioning fan and consumer as separable cultural identities.”

In this chapter, he demonstrates that fans are also consumers and that depicting them as a separate group ignores the complexities and multiplicities of fandom. 

While I found this book compelling, I would only recommend it to people who have read some fan studies works already as it might be a bit complex as a first introduction to the subject. However, if you are interested in fan studies theory and methodology, this is the book for you!

[blackcrowing]

My Personal Methodology for Divination Reading

I will start by saying that every individual is different, and so the methods for one person almost certainly won't ring true for all people, but I'm going to do my best to cover what I believe are the most important aspects of my own divination methods.

1. My Tools are Only Tools

While I care deeply about the quality and care of my divination tools (my rune and ogam sets) at the end of the day they are mearly the tools I use to see the 'tapestry' of the future, or present in some cases. My tools may work a little differently (my ogam tends to lean more towards the emotional aspects of situations and speak in a more poetic fashion, while my runes tend to be pretty blunt and more straight forward) I don't personify them. THEY are not telling me what I'm reading, they are just the means by which I'm able to read.

2. Context is Key

Context when reading is absolutely EVERYTHING. The same stave could have dozens of different interpretations depending on the context of whats around it and the same 6 staves could have a dozen interpretations in the context of an individuals life. A reading discussing the persons ability to nurture and need to learn quickly could apply equally well to someone about to become a parent or someone entering a helping profession. Context is EVERYTHING.

3. Intuition is just as Important as Memorization

People tend to spend a lot of time and energy on memorizing the 'textbook' meanings of each tool that they're using. This is important because obviously you need to be able to speak the language of your tools in order to translate their meanings but I have been preforming divination for 10+ years and I ALWAYS have a quick reference on hand because KNOWING what is being said is more important practically than having the book meanings memorized. This idea feeds back into context, because a staves true meaning in a reading is based on the context of the staves around it and no book can account for all possible contexts.

[historicalfightingguide]

"

Introduction

Whether you’re aware of it or not, your engagement with Historical European Martial Arts is informed by a methodology. That is, the kinds of questions raised by our collective exploration of written sources related to swordplay have to be answered by historical inquiry. Historical inquiry can’t help but have a methodological construction, even if the person making the inquiry is unaware of it. Methodology is, pretty simply, the use of particular tools of analysis related to the goals of the analysis. To a historian, the goal of an analysis is to answer a historical question. For a historical fencer, the goal is likely something much more general. 

The following article proposes a basic outline of the methodological approaches that are most visible among people in the HEMA community, whether they are individual fencers, club leaders, scholars, or otherwise. This outline is meant to be a tool and resource for fencers looking to make their practice and inquiry more meaningful. None of the following approaches or goals are considered more or less important than any other." An excellent article that aims to simply describe some of the methodologies in the historical fencing community, or as Brian Puckett wrote "

his schema is intended to be “descriptive,” not “prescriptive” - aiming not to lay down recommendations for how fencers should approach their hobby, but to provide a framework to understand how people actually do approach their hobby." in his article 'Goals and Methodologies of Source-Use in Historical Fencing and Martial Arts' which you can find here.

Both articles found here in the HEMA World Domination facebook group.

[destinationtoast]

Hi! I really like your stats! I was browsing your character stats published in January 2024, and I was surprised by the fact that Wanda Maximoff didn't appear in the list. I checked, and there are ~38.000 public works under her tag. Did I miss her on the list? In any case, I just wanted to let you know, if it may be useful. Thank you for your great work!

Hey, thanks for the compliment and for the great question! :) I went back and checked my January big fandom/character/ship stats and also the underlying character data, and you're not wrong! Wanda is missing, and so are others. I'm going to post graphs with data about Wanda plus a bunch more missing characters -- and some missing ships! -- shortly. But here, let me explain how some characters inadvertently got left out.

Until recently, there was no way of directly finding the top characters or ships across all of AO3. Now there is a Tag Search feature (edit: sort by usage) that allows you to do so (though, as I posted about earlier, it has some limitations). But because I didn't have access to that method until recently, I used to instead do the following:

Find all fandoms with 10K+ works. (tutorial)

Combine the top 10 characters (and ships) listed in the Sort & Filter sidebar for each of those big fandoms.

Find out how many works each of those characters (and ships) have, and make my top characters / top ship lists from that data.

This worked well for many popular characters and ships. However, for really huge fandoms with lots of popular characters, like MCU, it misses a lot of big tags. My hope was that most of the characters that were missed in a giant fandom like MCU would show up in the top 10 list of some other popular fandom. E.g., Pepper Potts isn't in the top 10 characters listed in the Sort & Filter sidebar for the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" tag, but she is in the top 10 for the tag "Iron Man (Movies)." However, Wanda is an example of where this didn't work out. The WandaVision fandom didn't have 10K works, so it didn't make my list of fandoms in step 1 -- and Wanda wasn't in the top 10 for any fandoms with 10K+ works. So I just missed her altogether despite the fact that she appears in more fanworks than other characters in my list.

I will use Tag Search in future years and hopefully avoid this issue. That method would have caught Wanda -- and when I used that method as a starting point earlier this week (and then did follow up work to address the limitations of Tag Search), Wanda came in #108 out of all AO3 character tags! I'll share the resulting data that includes the previously missing characters in a bit. :)

[pefkaes]

“The question of method may be a matter of fraud and artifice, but they wanted to know how to tell the difference between one story and another, and in order to try to provide some clues it will be necessary to speak of ghosts and hauntings and crazy women and territorial dislocations. It will be necessary to take a detour.”

— Gordon, A.F. (1997). Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. University of Minnesota Press.

[whats-in-a-sentence]

In glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find maybe tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement is wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic.

"The Illustrated Sherlock Holmes Treasury" - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

[dailycharacteroption]

Class Feature Friday: Forensic Medicine Methodology (Pathfinder Second Edition Investigator Methodology)

(photography by drop-the-dagger on DeviantArt)

It is gristly work, but there is much that a body can tell us about the events that lead to their death if we know what to look for. Such is the basis of forensic medicine, and therefore, the subject we are looking at today.

The exact shape and results of a wound can tell the investigator what sort of weapon was used to make it, as well as anything unusual about it, while the presence of carrion insects can tell a lot about the time of death, and small marks and wounds might tell more about the exact circumstances that led to the deceased entering their current state. Imagine how this is extrapolated in a fantasy universe where a victim might show signs of unusual necrosis from a necromantic wound, or how they might show signs of extreme fright from a phantasmal killer spell, and so on.

While other investigators may be called in to examine the evidence of any sort of crime, today’s subject is almost exclusively expected to be investigating scenes of murder and death. However, their keen eye for detail can be used elsewhere, and their medical knowledge can also benefit the living. Such is the nature of their chosen profession.

In any case, this methodology might not have any fancy tricks like their counterparts, but with a little creativity and love of investigation fiction, it can be a perfect way to add some fun flavor to investigating, giving clues to upcoming foes.

With their training, these investigators have a knack for gaining additional details from examining cadavers. What’s more, they’re trained in medical practices, and able to heal themselves and others much more regularly through completely mundane methods.

That may be fairly basic, but there is one feats out there specifically tied to this methodology: Scalpel’s Point, which lets them use their knowledge of anatomy to strike for their foe’s arteries to cause bleeding.

Of course, other feats might prove useful for them as well, such as Flexible Studies, Known Weaknesses, That’s Odd, Ongoing Investigation, Connect the Dots, Predictive Purchase, Thorough Research, Whodunnit?, Reason Rapidly, Strategic Bypass, Reconstruct the Scene, and Just the Facts, though obviously some may be more useful to you depending on your build.

While not as flashy as other methodologies, being able to gain information specifically from the dead can be quite useful. What’s more, it’s unobtrusive, letting you dictate most of the rest of the build based on your own preference as well!

It’s a long-running trope that coroners and others that examine the dead tend to be… eccentric, to say the least. Often talking to the deceased or behaving in strange but otherwise harmless ways. If that fits what you’re going for with your character, then go for it, but don’t feel forced into it. Also remember that often in real life, forensic science is not always the foolproof method they portray it as in certain shows.

Exceptionally old for even a ghoran, Tender has watched friends grow up and die, while their own cycle of rebirth only briefly has interruptions. This has given them a fascination with the state of a body after death, which they’ve channeled into their investigative pursuits to bring murderers to justice.

A common method of disposing of bodies in the Red City is to feed them to the khefaks, a species of mineral-eating arthropods. However, the half-eaten body discovered in the pits shows signs of radiation poisoning, suggesting they were still alive when the radioactive specimen consumed them. Now the investigation turns to identifying the body and the sadist that doomed them to such a fate.

A recent string of serial murders has the city in an uproar, the only connecting factor being the method. The victims literally have their hearts ripped out by violent force, as if by an impossibly strong hand. Some has suggested a warrior bolstered by some potion of strength, while others think it might be some powerful wizard’s construct. Finding the truth will mean combing each killing for evidence.

[philosophybits]

Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue Book