#not doing so doesn’t mean more readership but it does mean more people online who are pissed

[koalitee]

​don’t change your choice of adjectives or the audience who you write for if you don’t wanna seem anti-racist, but at least have enough courtesy for the rest of the fandom of a group that is known to have an extremely diverse range of ethnicities or fans (even more so than the rest of kpop which is also WILDLY diverse since it’s a carbon copy & imitation of BLACK people’s music & culture for the greater portion of it) because NCT is supposed to be a ~*gLobAL gRoUp*~), to just,,,,, put SOME kind of disclaimer so we can like not invest interest time or energy beginning to read a piece of writing we will inevitably close the tab on because it says it’s reader insert without warning or notes but is written in a way that suits only people with skin lighter than a paper bag, in 2021, please. Just,, like,, ftlog, please

[rockinlibrarian]

Fic Writer Review

@pixiedane tagged everyone on this, and considering I've been wallowing in my sudden Being Into Fanfic lately (though to be honest I've been READING a lot lately more than writing), see this link, I figured I'd take her up on the challenge. You, too, may take ME up on the challenge if YOU have been writing fic!

how many works do you have on AO3? 19. That's much less than @pixiedane! I'm a baby fic writer!

what’s your total AO3 word count? 66,239

how many fandoms have you written for and what are they? There are technically seven listed, but "Marvel Cinematic Universe," "The Avengers (Marvel Movies)," "Captain America (Movies)," and "Agent Carter (TV)" all apply to the same fic, so really just 4. But that doesn't count fandoms I've written but not completed (and therefore posted) for. So there are more to come. Maybe. Sometime.

what are your top 5 fics by kudos? *

"On the End of Endgame," 51 kudos, because I'm right and Marvel doesn't understand their own time travel rules and 51 people KNOW it!

"The Puppy-Fly Effect," 39 kudos, because it's Back to the Future, the most mainstream property I've written for! So people see it and say, "oh, I've actually seen that one" and they're more likely to read it!

"The Invitation: an Epilogue," 22 kudos, which is pretty good since this is my newest fic on there. It's a Howl's Moving Castle (BOOK, PLEASE, OBVIOUSLY) epilogue, so considering it's not a RECENT thing it just keeps getting slow and steady readership. I myself have been reading a lot of Howl fic lately, and people are getting comments on their decade-old stories from me now, so I imagine this one also will slow and steadily keep accumulating hits and kudos.

"Kerry and the Meaning of Life," 20 kudos. I'm honestly not sure why this is, by far, my most kudoed Legion FX fic. It's the first one I ever wrote, and got me started on the whole writing-the-entire-Loudermilk-coming-of-age rabbit hole I fell into to begin with, but I've only improved over time, I think, but even after I'd posted other Loudermilk backstory I think is objectively better, this one still gets the most!

"Syd's (Third) Childhood Begins," 15 kudos, because when people finish watching Legion FX the NATURAL move is to seek out fix-it fic. I wouldn't say this is fix-it really as much as ensure-the-ending-is-actually-happy-it, but I did use the "fix-it" tag, and at least one of the commenters DID say they immediately came on AO3 "looking for pretty much exactly this"...

do you respond to comments, why or why not? Absolutely, because I know what it feels like NOT to get comments, and also what it feels like to-- I don't know, I just get paranoid, if people don't respond to me, I think stuff like "Did I say something wrong? Do they not care about my opinion? Am I invisible?" so I'm Do Unto Others-y about it, even if all I can think of to say is "Thank you!"

what’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? Well, I haven't actually posted (read: finished) the ending yet, but it's definitely "Exploration of the Astral Plane," because that's just Legion FX canon. No spoilers, Oliver Bird starts out the show having gotten lost decades ago, and this is the story of HOW he got lost, and his friends didn't KNOW if they'd ever see him again, so the paragraphs I've written of the end do make me quite teary! The fic's really fun despite the canonically sad ending, though, honest!

do you write crossovers? if so what is the craziest one you’ve written? I have not written one YET, if I recall, unless you count the several mildly interconnected IPs involved in the Pipeweed Mafia Stories, which isn't even posted because I feel uncomfortable posting Real People fic online, but crossovers are fun and I really enjoy reading them, especially when the writer successfully blends things together while being true to the characters. Just today I read a hilarious one blending The Good Place and Harry Potter!

have you ever received hate on a fic? Gosh, this is such an ironic question. I wouldn't say that I WISH I received hate on a fic, but my fics aren't even NOTICED enough to receive hate! I already feel paranoid-- Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, you know how it is-- when I don't receive LIKE on a fic! It's LIKE receiving hate for me, because my brain goes into "Does nobody like it? Does nobody care? Are they all too nice to say it's terrible?" mode, so, yeah.

do you write smut? if so what kind? Absolutely not. My demisexual self hates reading it, definitely not writing it. I struggled enough writing just a taste of what a horny, slutty teenager who-talks-too-much Oliver Bird would have been in this AU, and that's mild!

have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I'm aware of. That would really suck, wouldn't it, if someone stole my work and ended up getting MORE LIKES AND COMMENTS THAN ME on it.

have you ever had a fic translated? Also not that I'm aware of, and if I'm not aware of it but it happened I guess that would answer the "stolen" question, too.

have you ever co-written a fic before? Ever in my entire life, I feel like I must have, but not anything I've posted online then

what’s your all time favorite ship? Hmm. Honestly, there are ships I defend passionately if the topic comes up, but I'm not sure I have a favorite just on my own. Especially as I hate smut, so I avoid seeking out specifically shipping stories. But, since I have been reading a lot of HMC fic lately, I should mention that Howl and Sophie ARE one of my absolute favorite fictional couples, but that's just how DWJ wrote them, and I can tell you unfortunately that not all fanfic writers QUITE nail that chemistry...

what’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will? Speaking of The Good Place, I really do wish I could write the novelization, and maybe I'd write some pieces of it longer than the few paragraphs I have written? But I doubt I ever will, let alone to the point of FINISHING...

what are your writing strengths? Fanfic wise, I like to THINK I understand the characters very well, at least! Writing in general? I think it's just my quirky voice? I'm the only me.

what are your writing weaknesses? Oh, very much FINISHING. But beyond that, it's pulling teeth to get me to fill out the story sometimes. I tend to draft with dialogue, and then I have to go back and fill in what's actually happening AROUND the dialogue, and sometimes I'd rather not.

what are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? At first I was like, I don't KNOW any other languages well enough to do this! And then I remembered the Firefly fic I have mostly written but not completed yet, and you know how in the show their speech is peppered with random Mandarin phrases? My husband has the Firefly RPG book and there's an appendix of Mandarin phrases you might hear in the Firefly universe, and I DID incorporate a few of those phrases into my dialogue, just from that appendix and it's probably horrible, but it fit the universe...

what was the first fandom you wrote for? EVER? The earliest I'm sure about is the Ducktales fic I found in an old Girl Scout manual that I must have written when I was 11 or 12. The first fandom I ever posted on AO3, in response to an exchange, was Legion FX of course, but that wasn't until the ripe old age of 40.

what’s your favorite fic you’ve written? I'm going to give this one to "Two (or Three) Mutant Freaks Against the Fourth Grade" just because it has gotten the least number of hits of ANY of my posts, INCLUDING THE PLACEHOLDER WITH NO WORDS IN IT, so it needs more love. And it really is one of my favorites, because it's just a sweet little story about nerds making friends, and I love rereading it.

*This made me curious which fics got the most kudos comparative to their HITS, because the Endgame one has WHOA more hits than any other fic, but it's over a thousand, which doesn't make 51 kudos look so good anymore. Percentage-wise, it's less than 5%, which seems to be where most of my fics hit when you do the math-- between 4% and 8% kudos-to-hits. The exceptions, jumping up to about 18% each, are the BttF and HMC fics, and, curiously, my beloved childhood friend AU mentioned in the last question-- it may have the least number of HITS (22), but that helps the math when you consider it's got 4 kudos. The HIGHEST percentage kudos-to-hits is its sequel, the childhood-friends-as-teenagers-AU fic mentioned in question 5**-- it's got 6 kudos and only 29 hits, so that's about 20%! Apparently people LIKE when I have to write a sex-crazed adolescent boy. COME ON, people! (The story is actually about Asexuality so I guess it really isn't people just wishing I'd write smut).

**Oh, I just noticed the numbers renumbered themselves when I put bullet points in the middle of the original question 3 there, so this is actually the answer to question 8? But it SAYS FIVE.

[bigskydreaming]

(Last Anon) I write a lot of dark shit. I’ll openly admit it helps me cope with the shit Ive been through. It was advised to me by a therapist, and reading and writing it makes me feel better. The tagging system helps me avoid the things that WOULDNT make me feel better. It’s up to me to make that distinction. What level of tagging would actually make you comfortable? Do you want to stop people from writing anything noncon all together? (Idk if this sounds attacky, I don’t mean it that way)

I answered before I saw this second question, so I’ll try to make this briefer...

I’m gonna be blunt here: I’m.....not exactly side-eyeing that therapist, because its not like I’ve talked to or worked with every therapist out there lol, and I don’t know their reasoning on this subject, but I DO question whether or not there’s room in your dialogue with your therapist to expand on this and explore if there’s any kind of miscommunication or misinterpretation of WHY they suggested it might make you feel better....as well as whether or not they meant just in writing it for yourself vs writing it to share with other people online.

I say that last part because those can be very distinct things.....because ALL forms of writing, are at their core inherently just....communicating ideas. Even to ourselves.

Its why journaling is so effective for a lot of people. Its literally just us using writing to express our own ideas to ourselves, to communicate what we’re already thinking or feeling to ourselves in more...digestible ways we can more easily internalize even if we’re the only intended audience for what we write there.

And I also say this because there’s a difference between exploration and validation....and the intended results and receptions to both these things.

Like.....tbh, I’ve spent a lot of my life asking WHY, in terms of why certain of my victimizers might have done the things to me that they did. Its been a large, central question at times.....the mystery of it being something that’s bothered me to large degrees.

So in that vein, there is a certain logic to writing various dark shit in an effort to reach SOME kind of understanding, even just in my own mind. Trying to understand what they were even thinking, the WHY of it, in order to at least transform the unknown of it into something real or tangible that I could more easily refute or push back against. 

But all of that can be done in the form of writing just to myself. The second I share that writing with a wider public, many of them unknown to me, however.....it takes on a whole new dimension.

Because now I’m not just communicating my thoughts on this matter to myself.....I’m communicating it to an audience of people all with their own thoughts, priorities, lived experiences, etc. And there is ZERO guarantee, or even really a realistic expectation, that this wider audience is receiving what I’m communicating or interpreting it or whatever.....in the same vein, and for the same reasons, that I’m writing it in the first place.

So not only do I now have to factor in that while say, exploring my victimizers’ mindsets in order to make them more real and thus more realistically refuted, like....that might be my motivation for writing it to myself, and MY understanding of what I’ve written and why......but to people out there in that wider audience....I have NO idea what they’re getting out of it. People who actually ALREADY think this way could see it as validation, proof that the predatory thoughts they had were more normal and acceptable than society otherwise wanted them to think.....or other victims of similar kinds of events could accidentally use it to negatively reinforce ideas they had about THEIR victimizers’ being valid in thinking the way they did, and for doing the things they did to them.

But then I also have to now factor in the ADDITIONAL angle that is....feedback. And especially, ESPECIALLY in a fandom environment which simply does not allow for or condone negative reception to this kind of content, and will default to defending the author and any readers of the author, REGARDLESS of their motivations or intentions....over a reader who is genuinely distressed by how they received the content.

Because feedback IS validating. Plain and simple. Positive reception IS affirming, in WHATEVER we do.

So....now there’s the problem that I can’t honestly say for sure at this point if what’s making me feel better about writing this dark shit is just the writing of it itself, communicating whatever it communicates to me when I put it to paper....OR if maybe what’s making me feel better is the external validation I’m getting from readers who for their own reasons, whatever they might be, are telling me this is fantastic, I’m great at this, they want more.

And that can very easily become a trap, see....because whereas initially my writing this stuff for myself might have had some benefit....if the how and why of me doing this goes somewhere it wasn’t ever intended and becomes something else entirely....that can eventually like....overtake and REPLACE my original motivations completely.

And instead of this being something I do for a FINITE period of time, for as long as I need to in order to work through this stuff....it can become something I kinda just...dwell in, and never move past.....because the validation I’m getting from writing this specific content and how that VALIDATION makes me feel, specifically.....gives me reason enough not to...ever actually move past this stuff no matter how else it might be effecting my life or my mindsets about things.

And I’m not saying that’s what’s going on with you or going to happen with you or anything of the sort, because I flat out DO NOT KNOW your situation or your therapist or what they recommended or why.

I’m just saying....the problem with using ‘coping mechanisms’ as a catch-all defense without ever delving into the specifics of WHY this specific coping mechanism and what specifically its meant to accomplish....is there is nothing inherent in a coping mechanism that’s like.....good.

Because coping is the bare minimum, frankly.

It should never be upheld as the IDEAL.

So for instance, as a survivor of physical abuse and in terms of how that often made me feel weak or powerless....I could, feasibly, say getting into physical fights is a coping mechanism for me, as long as I win them, because they make me feel strong or powerful. I could genuinely say, despite how it sounds, punching someone on some level DOES make me feel better.

But could I actually argue this is any way ideal, healthy or sustainable in the longterm? Let alone ignore the effect is has on the people I fight, for what are essentially entirely self-serving reasons?

I’m just saying....coping isn’t always the be all and end all....and it can get away from us very quickly if we lose sight of WHY we’re doing it and to what end.

And to answer the rest of your questions.....all of this is what I want. All of the above conversation is the POINT of my frequent rants.

Because these kinds of conversations are ESSENTIAL to what fandom CLAIMS are the point of these kinds of fics and content and readerships.

These are not things that can just be assumed, or things that are one size fits all and the same for every writer and reader regardless of personal situation.

But can you honestly say that fandoms, as they exist now, are remotely open or conducive to HAVING these kinds of conversations regularly? To making the asking of THESE specific kinds of questions something people regularly do, or check in with, or consider before or during the creation or consuming of dark content.....as opposed to just taking for granted that its fine and its GOOD because fandom has been doing it this way all along and everyone who’s been a guiding influence to you in fandom has previously assured you this is fine and works and doesn’t need fixing or adjusting?

Because I don’t think they are, and THAT’S my issue, and THAT’S what I want, in answer to your other question.

Do I really want people to just stop writing dark shit altogether? At least the fetishistic kind, the kind that exploits real peoples’ real traumas for entertainment rather than be respectful of the inherent power and weight it comes with just by virtue of being what it is?

I mean, on the one hand, yes, sure. I’m not going to lie. That would be ideal.

But part of why I object so strongly to accusations of purity policing and censorship is because I DON’T view the world in terms of black and white, binary thinking.

And so on the other hand, no, this isn’t what I want, because it isn’t something I spend any time actually WANTING....because that would be a waste of time and effort, because I UNDERSTAND that that’s just not a realistic want. I’m not likely to ever see like, just a full scale abandonment of the consumer culture fad of rape culture.....and I don’t want to actually censor it because I fully believe censorship is just a band-aid slapped on a gaping chest wound....banning content does nothing to address the WANT of a type of content, and as long as that want persists, people will find a way to feed it.

So realistically, ACTIONABLY.....all I really want is this. More of these kinds of conversations, engagements. Open, frank, directness about what’s ACTUALLY going on with a lot of this content and being communicated with it, the risks inherent in it....acknowledgment of the negative impact that goes hand in hand with the positive impact you get from readers saying they like this, they enjoyed it.

And yeah, I fully admit and hope that along the way, it DOES lead to more people just stopping writing this type of content altogether.....BUT the WHY of that is important.

Because I believe this would only happen or come about because in the act of actually ASKING these questions of themselves and their work, ACTUALLY acknowledging the full scale of impact, the bad as well as the good, actually LISTENING to people who complain or criticize it instead of just dismissing them as entitled or whiny or puritans....I do think that this would inevitably lead to some people abandoning this type of content altogether.....because its just flat out not really enjoyable to them when they consider it in the context of its negative impact AS WELL as the positive.

But the thing is......THAT, yeah, I’m okay with. Because I don’t believe anyone is entitled to LIE to themselves or hide from the negative impact of their own actions or actions of those around them, just in order to preserve the entertainment value of ONE aspect of ONE personal hobby.

That, I have no shame about potentially having an influence on people in regards to, because there is literally NOTHING WRONG with asking people to be more aware of themselves and their place and impact among others, and to interact honestly and directly with their own actions, likes, and interests.

Like, there’s just not.

And I fully believe everyone really already knows that, and that’s WHY this conversation so frequently gets twisted and derailed into being about things its just not about...censorship, purity policing, fiction not being the same as reality....

None of those are the point. THIS is the point. Has always been MY point, at the very least.

Bottom line, fandom as is, expects people whose lives are directly reflective of specific types of content to make THEMSELVES smaller in fandom spaces, in order to make room and make way for the content a lot of people like.

And I fully and unapologetically believe that’s backwards.

Fic should not take priority over people. Fictional interests should not be more important to a fandom COMMUNITY than lived experiences.

Nobody has any right to ask or expect other fans to make room, object less, isolate more.....just so that other people can enjoy certain fictional content without having to do any serious examination of it and how that makes them feel.

[innuendostudios]

Research Masterpost

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[thegardenandthegrave]

Okay indiestreet, listen up!

I'm here to talk to you about a subject near and dear to my heart.

Marketing.

I would make a safe bet and say that no one's ever thought to tell you a lot about marketing as an author before and, if they have, I'm going to say you weren't paying a whole lot of attention. I mean, you're a writer for god’s sake!

It didn't apply to you, right?

Odds are, you began this journey with stars in your eyes and big plans for your revolutionary new series. The publishing deal would just appear. Someone else would do the publishing, the publicity, and the marketing.

Yet, here we are.

Now, I don't want you to give up on those big, starry eyed dreams. Just because you've decided to take the long and rewarding journey to taking control of your content doesn’t mean you can’t have that revolutionary new series. Deciding to publish your novel on your own is a huge decision. Bringing it to the same level as a traditionally published book is daunting as hell. It is not impossible.

A lot of what I talk about here is going to run off the assumption that you're looking to take your work to the next level. Whether that looks like publishing your first book, boosting your sales, or increasing your readership, these episodes on marketing can help.

I'm going to walk you through understanding the concepts and resources you have at your disposal, dig into the details that will really elevate your ability to bring attention to your best-seller-waiting-to-happen, and help translate those foreign business terms into more a familiar vocabulary.

A lot of business terminology is synonymous with words you already know.

For example, product.

In the business realm, a product is any item or service offered for sale. And as authors, what do we sell?

That would be our books.

Each story you sell is a product of your business. Your business is the entire body of your work. Everything from that short story you posted to facebook when you were fifteen up to the 32 separate series rattling around in your head that you’ve yet to outline.

That is your business.

Your brand is how you present your business --- and yourself ---to your audience, everyone online, and your network. Your network are all of your writer friends, all of your non-writer friends, your business associates, your mom, and anyone who has a social media page and can get the word out about what you have to offer.

Speaking of people who can get the word out, let's talk about you.

There are several different terms I'm going to use that will reference you. The first term is, of course, author. If you write for pleasure you are an author. I won’t hear otherwise.

Next up is publisher. If you are circumventing the traditional publishing route in any way, including posting to amazon or your own website or even social media like facebook or tumblr, You. Are. A. Publisher.

Just because it's easier than breathing to get your content in front of a stranger's eyes does not make this any less true.

If you are publishing with the intent to make a profit --- and when I say profit I mean an increase in any metric. Money, of course, but also readership, social media followers, interactions, recognition, that warm fuzzy feeling you get when someone enjoys what you do --- any intention to make any of these profits makes you an entrepreneur. And, because you're here, actually investigating ways to increase your ability to market your published product, I now dub thee a business owner.

Some may protest that you can't be a business owner without a degree, or years of experience, or a plan to make money, but I'm going to shut that shit down right now.

The standard industry definition for a small press in the US is any publisher with annual sales below $50 million, or those that publish on average 10 or fewer titles per year.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not making $50 million right now, and I’ll be lucky if I get two books published in the same year.

If you don't start treating yourself like the small business owner you intend to become then you're giving yourself a handicap right from the start, and my friends, making it big in the publishing industry is hard enough as it is.

I should know, because I have one fully published e-book novel and I've sold 15 copies. Now, that doesn’t include the copies I’ve given away, but it’s a fairly low profit.

Don't let that dissuade you from tuning in because I'm starting these episodes now with the express intention of letting the world watch as I grow a 15 copy selling novel into an empire.

I'm calling my shot here and now. The Donovan Chronicles will have 100,000 copies sold, a t.v. series that reaches the 3rd season, and at least 1,000 amazon reviews on book one. 

Right now my review count is at 3.

I believe in this series and in myself, and I know that all of the techniques I'm about to show you will work.

I'll prove it.

There are other terms I'll teach you as we go through this journey together but I have one last essential term I want to leave you with. Call To Action. You might have heard this one before. In its essence, the phrase seems self-explanatory, but I want to be certain you understand the full scope of how it applies to you.

The call to action isn't just a button you push or an email you subscribe to. It's a question you're asking, and a promise your audience makes that they're listening to what you're offering, as well as a form of consent to give them more.

It's the cliff hanger at the end of the book that asks your reader to buy the rest of the series, or the preview on a show hinting at why you want to tune in next time. And then the request that they do so.

So, as my call to action I will give you this; next time I'll be talking about Ideal Customer Profiles, character sheets, and take a stab at describing you despite never having seen you in my life.

Subscribe to Indie Street Marketing 101 series (on patreon or by asking to be in the tag list) to get the next episode as soon as it comes out! Then head on over to indiestreetmarketing.mn.co where we’re going to be talking about what we’ve learned between episodes. I can’t wait to meet you!

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, late February 2020

Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy! This covers articles I came across since the early February report, although some may be older than that. I am a bit behind due to my trip last week and other events, but some things here are a bit time-sensitive so I wanted to release this now. 

I am still looking into setting up a new ecommerce business forum where we can discuss this sort of news, as well as any day-to-day issues we face. I need some good suggestions for a cheap or free forum space that has some editing tools, is fairly intuitive for inexperienced members, and is accessible. If you have any suggestions, please reply to this post, email me on my website, or send me a tweet. (I will put out a survey once we narrow this down to some good candidates, but if you have any other comments on what you want from such a forum, please include those too!)

As always, if you see any stories I might be interested in, please let me know!

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

Since we are seeing more shops closed due to Etsy’s customer service level standards, my blog post on ODR now has major revisions explaining what we have learned, and includes some tips for staying out of trouble and if necessary, appealing a suspension. Please circulate the info widely, as many sellers still haven’t heard about this, and some were closed without having any clue this was possible. 

Mobile continues to grow while desktop use is slowly shrinking. It should affect how we design web pages. “Mobile visitors also behave differently from their desktop web counterparts, staying on pages for shorter periods of time, for example.” Other interesting takeaways from this SimilarWeb report: “[Facebook] lost 8.6% of [web] traffic over the past year alone” but increased in app sessions. 

The price of domains ending in “.com” will almost certainly be going up soon, and will go up most years after that, unless something changes at the last minute. If you are absolutely certain that you will continue to use the same domain name for your website, blog, ecommerce forwarding etc., then you might consider paying a few years in advance to save a few bucks. 

Another article explaining how people are selling thrift store and vintage clothing on Instagram, without setting up a checkout/cart anywhere. (The article focusses on teenagers, but does reference other examples.)

ETSY NEWS 

Two weeks ago, Etsy Support posted on Twitter that they were no longer monitoring the account, and asked everyone to use the help page maze instead when they need support. Forum thread here.  

Another trend report for 2020 from Dayna Isom Johnson [podcast links & transcript] She leads off with tips on how to get featured: “ so it's incredibly important to see a bright representation that really clearly shows your product...Do be original. I'm always trying to find the latest and the greatest that isn’t already on the shelves...Do be inclusive. ... I'm talking about models of all ethnicities, all genders, all body types, all ages.” Etsy chose chartreuse as their colour of the year: “in the last three months, there's been a 12% increase in searches for green already, and a 55% increase in neon green.” The wedding trends part was mostly already covered in a blog post, but she does also answer a few seller questions. 

Website user experience (UX) is a big part of getting people to convert, and an outside group ranks Etsy’s as “acceptable”. Many will be unsurprised that search gets a score of “mediocre” and Accounts & Self-Service get a “poor” grade.  

The migration to Google Cloud services is complete, so now Etsy can run more experiments more often, including those involving AI. (Although the forum thread was laughing at the idea of bad reviews helping shops, there is actually some research supporting that, so it is a logical thing to test.)

Etsy sellers in the US, UK & Canada who use Instagram can apply to win a trip to Etsy HQ here, until March 1.

Etsy is launching an Etsy U program which just seems a bit sketchy. Forum thread here.

Reverb (owned by Etsy) named a new Chief Technology Officer on Feb. 18.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Google does not confirm every large search update, so this one remains a mystery at the moment, since Google refused to give an answer. That means it’s not a core update. 

Another video (with subtitles in several languages) from the SEO for Beginners series from Google, on the basics you need for good website SEO. 

If you are interested in “searcher intent”, this 500 person survey asks about what people are really looking for, and what they think of the search results the end up with. Overwhelmingly, they say they prefer organic results to ads, and the majority see targeted ads that they can’t figure out the reason/s behind. “Sixty-eight percent responded that Google adding more ads to the search results would make them want to use the search engine less.” Also, a slight majority preferred text results to images, video, & audio. “When asked which factor had the most significant impact on their decision to click a result, 62.9% responded it was the description, followed by 24.2% who said the brand name, and 13% who said title.” That means that the first part of your Etsy listing description, or the coded meta description on a page on your website, has the most influence on people clicking on your link once they see it. 

I usually strongly suggest that people setting up their own websites make sure they do some SEO work & keyword research for their category/shop section pages, and it turns out that there is new research showing I am correct. “Specifically, e-commerce category pages – which include parent category, subcategory and product grid pages with faceted navigation – ranked for 19% more keywords on average than product detail pages ranked for. The additional keywords they ranked for drove an estimated 413% more traffic, based on the keywords’ search demand and the pages’ ranking position. With optimization, those ranking category pages also showed the potential to drive 32% more traffic.”

Semi-advanced: explaining the (seemingly endless) debate on whether subdomains or subdirectories are better for SEO. 

SEO study - do you really need to use H1 tags on a page? Maybe not, although some screen readers recognize them as the page title so they help with accessibility. (Etsy & many other marketplaces don’t let you make this coding choice, so don’t worry about it there.)

Confused about how to apply all of these SEO tips I post here to your Shopify site? Good news! Here’s a list of what is most important for Shopify SEO. Note the attention to setting up your category pages, which is something I completely agree with. (it’s by Ahrefs so of course it pushes their tools; you don’t need to pay for that.)

CONTENT MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails) 

Some businesses say social media doesn’t work, but maybe they aren’t doing it right. See if you are making one or more of these three mistakes. “Understanding who your target audience is - what they want, what they need, where you fit in, etc. - is critical to maximizing your social media marketing performance.”

Email marketing also works better if you do it right, so here are 5 things you might be doing wrong. And if you like a quick read, here’s an infographic on the psychology of email marketing. 

8 ideas for getting more interactions on Facebook (detailed infographic).

More fourth quarter reports continue: Pinterest’s 4th quarter revenue was up 46% but they lost $1.36 billion, and they are introducing a verified merchant program. “Almost all (97%) of the top searches on Pinterest are unbranded, according to the company, giving merchants a chance to stand out.”

Want to tap into that Pinterest traffic? You should because “90% of weekly Pinterest users log in to make buying decisions.”  Here are 10 ways to get more attention, followers, and pins. 

Like almost all social media, Twitter has an algorithm that mediates what users see (although you can turn it off, or use apps such as Tweetdeck to get around it as a reader). Ranking factors include recency, engagement, media and activity. The article includes a few tips on how to make it work for you, but then slides into promoting its app as the solution - you can just skip that part. 

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS) 

Google search ads get more results than Facebook and Instagram, simply because more people who see them want to buy something. “Less expensive products tend to sell better than more expensive ones on Facebook and Instagram, per the study.”

If you are running ads where you can choose your keywords, don’t forget to examine your organic search results and impressions for new words to advertise. Google Search Console is a great source.

If you found Instagram ads too expensive, check out this post on how the ads are priced, which can help you make decisions on your spend. 

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS 

Amazon has nearly 40% of the US ecommerce market, according to a report by eMarketer. Etsy is not in the top 10; eBay is 3rd behind Walmart. 

Sales on Shopify sites during the Black Friday-Cyber Monday long weekend went up 61% to $3 billion in 2019. They claim that the “direct -to-consumer” approach can be successful for both big & small brands. 

Japanese authorities are going after Rakuten for the ecommerce company’s push to make its sellers offer free shipping. 

eCommerceBytes’ annual Sellers Choice survey placed eBay first out of the online marketplaces that were rate. Note that this is not a scientific survey and largely covers the site’s readership only. Bonanza was the most improved & Etsy showed the worst drop (from 1st to 5th place). 

A review of that article last month that says ecommerce sites should have info pages as well as product pages, if only for SEO reasons. The author approves. 

The CBC show Marketplace did a large test buying branded items on AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Wish. It turns out that most were fake. 

Facebook’s cryptocurrency plans (Libra) finally have a partner: Shopify. The potential benefits include no credit card processing fees. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

Younger people (think Gen Z) expect to see gender treated expansively and beyond traditional stereotypes, and they expect this from companies and advertising. “Half of women and four in 10 men in the U.S. now believe that there is a spectrum of gender identities, according to a recent Ipsos poll titled "The Future of Gender is Increasingly Nonbinary." An additional 16% of those surveyed said they know a person who identifies as transgender”

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour) 

Google employees are pushing back against the sea change in the company’s culture and values - and some are being fired. 

Turns out that the “Peleton Wife” ad might not have hurt them as much as you might think. However, their stock dropped 12% after the fourth quarter report showed a 77% increase in revenue that still managed to be below market predictions. Interesting discussion around going viral in a negative fashion.

[jencala]

I wonder how marlenemckinn can actually write with your head so far up her ass. You rec and reblog her fics all the time and gush about her so much. Is this another crush? There's lots of other writers in the fandom that could use the recs from a big blog like yours. Use your popularity to help other writers please. I do love your writing but you reblog the same writers over and over and then fangirl over some writers and rp'ers like you're a teenager.

Nonny, did you ever think maybe I like eating ass?  ;-)

Ah, where to start with this lovely ask?  Let’s start with @marlenemckinn.  I absolutely do gush over her and her fics because I love them.  I’ve been a fan of her work for a really long time and only found her tumblr a few months ago and you’d better believe I gushed at her.  She’s talented, has extremely diverse fics, is my Queen of the Wolfstar AU and if you follow my blog you know I get a massive hard-on for AU’s.  She writes my OTP beautifully and in any setting and trope she does.  I’ve also been lucky enough to get to know her a bit and she’s sweet and funny and just a lovely person.  What’s not to gush about and fan-girl over?  

You talk about me gushing over people as if in order to do it has to be a crush.  First of all, having a crush, even a fandom crush, is not a bad thing even though you seem to  think it is.  For the record, I do not have a crush on @marlenemckinn, but I definitely get a lady boner for her writing and her posts. ;-)  

Since you seem to follow me you know that’s what I do; I gush about people.  I’ve always been a fan-girl from the time I was like 9 and crazy for Menudo and when I was 15 and dying over the New Kids on the Block.  Hey, give me a break, I’m old, remember?  The point is that I’ve always been a fan-girl and I do love to shower praise on my favorite fanfic writers and RP’ers.  They work hard and deserve to be praised and gushed over.

There’s always a rise and fall of nasty stuff in fandom and right now we seem to be going through a big rise in nasty anons.  Why not spread some love and positivity when and where you can?  This fandom is blessed with a plethora of really talented creators and as someone who really likes to give praise (why yes, I do have a praise kink, thank you very much) and make others feel proud and happy about the things they enjoy, I’m going to continue doing just that.  It feels good when someone compliments you about something you’ve done and when I enjoy someone’s art, their writing, their RP or even just who they are as a person, you had better believe I am going to sing their praises from the rooftops if I can.  I don’t see why that’s a problem.  This is who I am in real life as well as online.  I won’t change and won’t apologize for it.

Now let’s address another point you made.  My popularity and helping other writers with it.  What makes you think I’m popular?  My blog has a really decent following but it’s only ¼ of what @captofthesswolfstar has and even half of what @padfootlupinblack has and that dork doesn’t even publish his writing.  lol  I have no idea where the notion that I’m a “big blog” came from.  Maybe it’s because I’m friends with some of the people who are considered to be “big blogs”, but I honestly don’t know where that perception came from.  I’m just a massive dork who writes gay porn about fictional characters and proclaims her love for other dorks.  

I have a very busy life offline and my time to read fics is really limited.  Of course the first fics I read are going to be authors I already know and love.  Of course I’m going to rec those fics.  However, I regularly read new writers as well as lots of recs that come my way.  I always make a point of asking for recs and encouraging new writers or writers that might be flying under the radar to dm me their work or to send me links.  I love finding new Wolfstar writers and recc’ing them.  I do it all the time.  If you look under my fic recs tag I’ve got tons of recs by well known writers and some you might not have heard of.  If I like the fic it gets recc’d.  

But if I don’t know about it how can I rec it or even read it?  

I really hate this thing where the “big blogs” have to feel pressure to help new creators.  Please don’t take this the wrong way, but no one has to help anyone get more readers or followers.  Most blogs with a larger following do rec newcomers and love to do so.  But it’s not their responsibility to do so.  

I have had this blog for almost 5 years and the first few years I was lucky to have 100 followers and I was thrilled to have that.  You mean 100 people want to hear the nonsense I spew?  DAMN.  I’ve worked hard with my writing, I’ve tagged other blogs to share my work and I post all the time.  It’s how I built my following and my readership for my fics.  I have zero shame in promoting myself or my work because I want it to be seen. BUT, if another blogger or writer isn’t doing the same thing and fly under my radar, how is it my job to help promote them when I don’t know they exist?

I really appreciate your comment about my writing and I’m happy you enjoy it, but this ask really threw me for a loop.  It’s not hateful per se, but it’s really not nice is it?  Bottom line is I’m going to keep gushing, keep recc’ing, and keep spreading the love I have for other creators and yelling my praises at them because that’s who I am.  Like it or not.  

Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to change positions because having my head so far up @marlenemckinn‘s ass can get a bit uncomfortable for both of us and I need that woman to crank out another chapter of her fic for me.  ;-)

[comicteaparty]

January 22nd-January 28th, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from January 22nd, 2020 to January 28th, 2020.  The chat focused on the following question:

How do you react to comics going on hiatus, and how does that affect your readership for it?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Being a webcomic artist, I'm always very understanding when an author needs a break. Life happens, and most of us are hobbyists. I will wait as long as it takes for the comic to come back, even if that means years. I'll keep checking in every few months unless the artist makes a post saying the comic is dead and they're moving on (and if 'moving on' means starting a new comic, I'll usually start following it). I have quite a few life circumstances that have forced long hiatuses of my own comics, so I feel it would be a tad hypocritical of me to give up on a comic that needs a long break or has to update very infrequently for a while. Also since I have trouble following a lot of comics at once, my reading list is fairly short and it's easier for me to be very dedicated to and patient with the comics I do read.(edited)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Even before I started doing webcomics, I knew it wasn't the end of the world when a comic went on hiatus. Like, it's free entertainment, I don't blame the author for not sticking to a specific schedule. As for if it affects my readership... yeah? I usually stop checking in after a year or so if a comic hasn't had any updates, and even in that time I don't check up very often. And I don't often re-read hiatus'd comics until they come back off hiatus (as a sort of refresher) so they don't usually get my readership that way either.

varethane

I don't have any hard feelings when creators go on hiatus, whatever their reasons; life happens, webcomics are a lot of work for (often) little compensation, and people's priorities change over time. It's fine. I am one of those readers who is often prone to having a short attention span, though, so I confess that if a comic goes on hiatus and its creator isn't active on social media, there's a pretty good chance I'll lose track of it. And if the comic returns after a hiatus of more than a year, it may take some months before I will come back as a reader, just because I would need to reread the story in order to catch back up with what's going on.

SAWHAND

I don't tend to keep up with webcomics on a day-to-day basis anyway. I prefer to wait and then be able to binge-read a whole chapter or at least a few pages at a time. I actually really like when comics do a brief hiatus in between chapters to build up a backlog of pages and then post a lot of pages quickly (more than someone usually would do anyway) and then go back on hiatus. Kind of like seasons on tv.

Deo101 [Millennium]

I just had a hiatus that went longer than a year so I can't really fault an artist for needing a break. I understand, and also it doesnt bother me too much because I just read whenever there is an update, it's not like I'm checking at the scheduled time or anything! When it updates, I'll be there.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Life happens, circumstances change, people grow. So many of us are making webcomics at very transformative times of our lives - we can outgrow the stories, get tired of them, or begin to associate them with bad memories (poor artistic partnerships, commercial failures, etc). If a really good webcomic I follow goes on hiatus, of course I'll be disappointed. But behind every webcomic is an author with a life. If the webcomic is keeping their life from improving, then screw the webcomic. I'm always far more concerned about the person.(edited)

I get SO much joy watching webcomics come back after a long hiatus. It's worth any sadness felt during the hiatus itself. And I'm not happy just because the story is back - but because it's a sign that the author has taken care of themselves. You can often feel it in the new pages. It's really cool and good to see.

2

January 23, 2020

Kabocha

I think it depends on the comic. I prefer it when a creator can say, "hey, I'm going on hiatus" so I know to stop checking (or to set my expectations accordingly). They don't necessarily have to post an end date, but if they can, that's always good! Sometimes creators just stop updating, and that's fine too. But one's comic's site is going to be the central hub for anything regarding your comic's news, too. There are some comics where... I'm a little less understanding of hiatuses with complete silence -- and these are usually ones that have an actual publisher backing them and paying for the project's completion. Like, I get that life gets in the way, but when making said comic is your job -- or you have a perceived contractual obligation, maybe your publisher ought to step up and say something if the project is on hold or delayed or something. There's something about the line between "I am doing this project for free and the occasional donation" versus "I am getting paid for this project's completion as a product" that kind of... I dunno, makes the whole thing feel a little different? Like, sure, it might be up for free online, but like... when there's an actual publisher or platform paying the creator to make it it and they've got editors and stuff... It's less like someone's brain baby and more like a product. I actually have a folder in my favorites for comics on hiatus, but ArchiveBinge also tells me when they updated last, so... Not a huge deal. My ability or desire to read a project isn't hugely affected by a comic's status on hiatus, but I have found with some comics that come back years after going on a break... Well, I've changed enough that I'm no longer their target audience. And it can suck to realize that.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

@LadyLazuli (Phantomarine) Oh man, your comment about being able to feel that an author has taken care of themselves after coming back from a long hiatus reminded me of when I once returned a comic from a 3 year long hiatus. I had put it on hiatus after a ‘friend’ completely ripped it apart and essentially called it trash. I was already going through some really bad stuff IRL and I lost all motivation to keep going. But three years later I came back, and the colours in the pages were so much brighter and more vibrant. The change was so obvious a reader actually gave me an impassioned speech about how the previous muted, greyish palette was a a better fit for the story. But only a few pages later they changed their mind and said they were wrong; the more vivid colours worked after all. I think maybe they could see how happy I was to be working on it again.... and maybe just how much happier I was in general. Sorry for the long anecdote; that second paragraph just really hit home for me. (edited)

MJ Massey

I think it depends on a few factors for me. In general I am pretty understanding of hiatus in general - it can be really good for the creator to take a break and set things in order for themselves as well as putting out work they enjoy rather than rushing to get a page out. Especially if this is someone's side gig. I appreciate it all the more if the creator can be honest. Even if they can't give a return date, coming out and saying "I can't work on this comic right now" is enough and perfectly fine

I get annoyed if someone who is PAID to make a comic just disappears and won't take responsibility. If it's your job, then you can't just run away from it. Again, even saying something like "I cannot work on the comic for now" is fine, but don't just run off and make some vague remarks on your social media that's not even where your readers normally engage with you.

I also agree that any partners, like a publisher or editor, that might be employing said artist could also step up and let readers know what's going on. If any of that happens, I am happy to wait as long as it takes

Readers are more understanding than you think, it's okay to just come out and say you're gonna miss updates, need time off, etc. You don't need to say anything more than that.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I'm not quite understanding the hostility towards people who get paid for creating webcomics, but hiatuses aren't something i could really call our personal business to make any calls regarding their obligations. Like @LadyLazuli (Phantomarine) said, life happens and circumstances change. I'm pretty sure whomever the creator is with has their own reasons as creative projects evolve differently for everyone and that their parties concerned have dealt with it in a necessary way. That is just the nature of them, we won't know or understand the full picture, and while i get being disappointed, it's not something that can be helped! I encourage hiatuses in fact, because webcomics are A LOT of work!! It can give the creator time for revisions, writing the story, and general self reflection of the project. I've stated this before on twitter, but ppl tend to forget that webcomics are typically made by 1-2 ppl and can produce the quality/quantity easily created by a small studio. Take a break!

Kabocha

It's not a hostility thing necessarily, but I do think that when, like, an actual publisher is involved, there should be some sort of expectation of... I dunno, communication? Traditionally published books and such get delayed (and canceled), but usually there's some form of communication as to the change in release dates or if it's going to come out at all. I think that's more or less the expectation with something that's being paid for by a publisher: That there's some form of communication between the audience regarding the story's state or future. It doesn't have to be a total "HI THIS IS MY LIFE" just more of a "hi the comic's on hold". But hiatuses, I think, are maybe different than a break? As a creator, I traditionally take a break between chapters to do editing and such, but I think a hiatus tends to be more... unplanned for. (and I'm not exempt from going on hiatus - I've had issues this winter that made it necessary for me to tell my readers "hi I'm not updating until april". So I'm sympathetic to health/life -- but I do think a "hi the comic's on hold" on the comic's site is warranted in a lotta cases.)

(or hell, even a "the comic's canceled" is fine too hoo boy, I just saw one that I wasn't aware of that got canceled for life issues... I feel for the creators.)

RebelVampire

I'm kind of on the higher standard for creators who are being paid to do it as a job train. At least a higher standard of communication. Cause I never really consider the hiatus itself the problem, but how the author communicates about the hiatus. Cause again, when being paid to do something, I just kind of expect more professionalism, and communication is a huge part of professionalism.

Kabocha

I think webcomics with a publisher -- like, an actual "hi we are paying you to produce this work" that isn't just patreon -- it's more of a commercial work. In one of the cases I have in mind, they're paid to do it per-page, through a well-known webcomics publisher. Sure, the creator loses out, because they're not being paid, but it is also a commercial work in the end. They have an editor, ostensibly someone to communicate with them and the manager, and went through some sort of acquisitions process to sell the work to that publisher. Kinda like the difference between "hi this is my fanfic" versus "hi this is my book that I got put through a small press pub"

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I agree. Ghosting your paying customers is very unprofessional. Just informing readers that there’s a break or cancellation feels necessary if money’s involved. I‘d feel pretty burned if a comic I was pledging for on patreon just stopped updating for more than a few months without any communication whatsoever. A quick note that says ‘Hey, my comic is on break for an indeterminate amount of time because I need to take care of some things / am creatively exhausted / whatever other vague reason’ and I would understand. But if I’m paying the creator and they just vanish without a word, you can bet I won’t trust them enough to pay them again even if they come back later.

RebelVampire

Yeah. Those are my feels too. That it doesn't even need to be some essay message. It's just the giving a heads up so you're not sitting there staring wondering if someone fell into the abyss.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

You can say Tessa Stone, it's okay.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I... I don’t know who that is?

Nutty (Court of Roses)

She was the author of Hanna is Not a Boy's Name. Very popular webcomic, did a kickstarter for a book, then vanished with the money, and reappeared four years later working for another company.

Kabocha

That's... Not who was in mind.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Oh wow that’s scummy.

I’d read the comic waaaaay back but dropped it long before there was a KS.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

Yeah. Other than that, I always understand when hiatuses happen, we all have lives outside our comics.

RebelVampire

Professional comics aside, overall, for me, my reaction to a comic going on hiatus depends on a ton of factors. I will preface this first part, is that I'm always understanding of it. Life happens, interests change, etc. etc. etc. I would never tell a creator not to go on hiatus or that they were magically a bad creator or something for needing to stop for a bit (or indefinitely). People should take care of themselves both physically and emotionally first, so I get why hiatuses happen. That being said, I as a reader also have my own life. And the fact of the matter is, there are thousands of comics out there to read - many of which are not on hiatus. So I'd be lying if I said a hiatus had no effect on whether I'd continue to read a comic. That being said, it's not like a hiatus will make me instantly drop a comic either. This is where the many factors come in. Like how much do I love the comic? Has the creator communicated about the length of the hiatus and given a heads up? Does the comic have a very unreliable history of hiatusing and coming back and then immediately hiatusing etc.. Which again, I get and sympathize with creators and hiatuses. But there's a point where you just gotta move on if the comic's updating isn't to your liking.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

also i just want to chime in and say that as one of those people who get paid to make my comic i don't appreciate it being called commercial work. It's still the creators property and honestly the money earned doesn't change the product, nor should it change the 'merit' of a hiatus. Hiatuses are also planned and not planned. They are both breaks and unseen stops in work, they are necessary and needed- much like vacation time or sick leave at other jobs. Having been paid for making comics shouldn't differ with who is more worthy of one. Again, they all happen with reasons the public doesn't need to fully know bc even if the work is produced 'free to read', it's still not an obligation to the readers for any full disclosure. I get being dissapointed, it's a work you enjoy, but like any type of work, schedules change, lives conflict, and projects get canceled.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I don’t think anyone is saying that we mind hiatuses when comic artists are being paid, we all explicitly stated we mind poor communication about it from the creator

Big difference

varethane

the main thing I look sideways at is a creator who ghosts their existing audience and goes incommunicado for years, and then returns with either the same product or something very similar. I'm not so much mad, as.... unlikely to keep reading their work, even once it's back? Or I'll have trouble convincing myself to dive back in, even if it still looks like it should be my thing. I'm thinking of a specific comic I used to read called Astray3, which stopped updating with no news updates sometime in like..... 2011? And then after a year or so the website went down, and I assumed that was just.... it, the creator had left comics. Then just this year I was thinking about it while talking to friends and did a google search, and discovered that it was back On a new webhost, totally rebooted and fresh, with gorgeous new art

I had no idea, lol. I guess it had been back for maybe a year or two? It's really beautiful, and if I'd found it fresh I'd probably be super excited to dive in, but I haven't gotten around to it yet and that's the only real reason I can think of as to why.

This is a personal thing though. I don't know why all that happened or what led the creator to shelve the comic, I bear them no hard feelings. I just..... may or may not start reading again (maybe I will when I get some time!! Who knows lol)

keii4ii

@varethane I gotta say I'm sort of guilty of that. I stopped working on my previous comic after I'd gotten pretty far in the story. Things happened IRL and I just couldn't keep working on that story. My main site host died (the hosting business closed), and I didn't leave a proper goodbye on my SJ mirror. Then a few years later, I came back elsewhere with a new comic. X'D I don't really have a point here (yet?), just waving a hand from the other side of the fence.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

@Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios) im responding to the commercial work comment

varethane

I don't even really think there IS a fence, lol. There are so many reasons why I may or may not read a comic, up to and including how I happen to feel on a given day; when I read something really often has more to do with my mood than with how much I feel like it 'should' appeal to me, so long breaks in updates are just one more ingredient in the big old soup of 'will I jump into this story today'

keii4ii

Yeah, readers come and go all the time, for all sorts of reasons

Deo101 [Millennium]

I'd also like to wave my hand from the side of the fence of "basically going completely radio silent" I did it because I had an incredibly difficult personal experience, that I didnt really want to share with all of my readers, and I don't think I should HAVE to share what happened in order for it to be valid for me to have dropped off like that for a while.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

Exactly what Deo said

varethane

while I agree you don't need to say why, a quick news update saying 'hey something came up and this won't update for awhile, maybe forever' would be appreciated in a lot of cases

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

but the thing is, nobody said you have to say what happened It doesn't have to be a total "HI THIS IS MY LIFE" just more of a "hi the comic's on hold". like it's the difference between saying "there won't be updates for a while" and just leaving the comic hanging on the latest page with no comment.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah, I don’t think anyone needs to leave a reason. But if people are paying you, just a ‘Hey this is on a break’ to the audience.

Deo101 [Millennium]

I did say "hi I'm gonna be on hiatus!" and people did still get upset with me for being gone so long so :/

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

well they were rude

varethane

I don't read anything as obsessively as I used to, but one of the first webcomics I ever read trailed off forever with 'see you next week!' as the last news update lmao

I went back to that homepage like a million times

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

Theres no winning with it honestly. I haven't had a hiatus with my comic im working on now, but a previous one earned us threats when we had a break

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

People getting upset isn’t your fault. You communicated, and that’s all you needed to do. We all know some readers can be fickle or downright rude.(edited)

Deo101 [Millennium]

IN THEIR DEFENSE i did say "brief hiatus" cause the situation around it was really weird, and then it was a very not brief one

varethane

no excuse for bein rude about it tho >:U sorry to hear about that!

keii4ii

Yeeeah

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

The threats that we got and harassment definitely made me realize that you don't owe ppl any thing. It's your work, and at the end of the day, you're the one in charge. We literally don't know the reasons to the breaks of a fave creator, it could be something as simple as boredom to something dire. I again i understand the want for communication but there are times where it just doesn't come first or at all.

I think in the situation of finding a ks or something u paid for directly? Yes, you deserve that right to know. But a project that isn't going to affect u in that way, well, it's a mystery we're not owed sometimes

Deo101 [Millennium]

yeah I'm just gonna get back to making it, and if people are going to leave and be upset with me I... cant control that... so I shouldnt try or worry about it. just offering the perspective of someone who p much did drop off the face of the earth

oh yeah for something youve paid for its different

Kabocha

Allow me to say that when I say commercial work, I mean it strictly in a "This is a thing that you are making money or aiming to turn a profit from." That's it. There's a difference in expectations, I think, for something where the creator is doing it as their job vs the creator doing it as a hobby. (but also -- like, if you have a publisher or an agent, they should be stepping in to help you field things like communication!!)

But also yes -- my essential point is that communication is key.

And yes, there is an overlap between hobby and earning money off said hobby, but once a thing is available for consumption as something you're earning income off of, I think the expectations ought to be slightly different. I think it's fair to expect someone to say "hi I'm taking a break" on the comic site. Edited to clarify the "income" part of this -- I mean like, a significant portion of your income. Tips are always appreciated, but don't generate an obligation in any sense of the imagination imo. Or like. Yanno, a publishing deal? I dunno. But that gets into contractual stuff.(edited)

spacerocketbunny

As long as someone didn't literally run off with your money, I think a bit more empathy and compassion can be exercised, even if the only communication that's provided is radio silence. It just happens man, sometimes life sucks and you don't get to have a word in edge-wise. There's just so many factors as to why it can happen, it's not a divide between who does and doesn't get a paycheck for their work. Stuff happens and at the end of the day it's still free content that's available to you.

Like @RebelVampire said too, it's totally up to you what you do with your engagement when hiatuses come up

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

Agreed

Basically, i hope that if ever the case a creator drops from their project without notice or any word, readers express concern and compassion

Kabocha

That is a fair expectation -- and readers need to remember not to be jerks about it.

Mei

Reading through all of this was super interesting. I think hiatuses are just something that in a medium like webcomics is something to almost 'expect'? if that makes sense? Whether it's because of personal reasons, or work reasons, or any reason that we as readers are not privy to, I think it's part of the process. Of course it's great when creators mention they're going on a hiatus, but I suppose it's also having that understanding that sometimes creators may lose the drive or motivation for what they're creating, and they need a break from it. But yeah, I think it'd be awesome for readers to show understanding for webcomics going on hiatus for a short while or indefinitely. They're a LOT of work and most of the time life takes precedent over that?

RebelVampire

I just want to add myself that jerk readers are a diff issue all together and they are legit not the readers you should care about. Cause at the end of the day, you will never ever make them happy whether you communicate or not. So ignore them and do what you need. The communication is for everyone else who isn't rude and likes your comic (whether a vocal fan or a silent fan). Cause frankly, I think it also shows a certain amount of respect as well for readers when the author communicates their status. But just to clarify in case it wasn't clear in my own statement, you are not obligated to share your life story. TBH, I don't even read people's life essays for their reasons in a lot of cases cause it's their personal business. The reasons for the hiatus are largely irrelevant. But you can still leave a small message that says "Hey I'm not gonna be updating for a bit." Like that's not an exaggeration. That's all you have to say. XD Last, I do want to add, of course there are exceptions to this with extenuating circumstances. Like I know a few people who have had all means of communication break for them - and that of course is understandable then. Since it's not that they didn't want to communicate, it's that they literally had no choice in the matter.

[hempoilfrog1]

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    Ways to Make an Extra $100 a Day

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    18) Start an eCommerce Website Using a Method Called Drop Shipping. When you take a look at how shopping trends have changed over the last decade, you will see that the majority of individuals actually prefer to shop online and have their goods delivered to them. You can take advantage of this by creating an eCommerce website through one of the more popular channels like Shopify. There are hundreds of website builders out there that allow you to create a dropshipping website from scratch with no coding knowledge necessary, so getting a website built shouldn’t be very difficult. Once you have a website built, you simply sell products from retailers like AliExpress, who ship all of the products for you. Will you ever see the products that you sell? No. But you can easily earn a $100.00 a day doing this.

    19) Consider Working for Amazon in a Non-Traditional Role. If you are looking for a side hustle that can earn you an additional $100.00 per day, consider working for Amazon either as an Amazon customer service agent or through their Amazon Mechanical Turk program. As a customer service agent, your responsibilities include assisting customers with their complaints, with their orders, and with their questions but can be done remotely from your home. This can earn you about $11 per hour, so would require you to work at least 9-10 hours a day. If you choose to go the Mechanical Turk route, your responsibilities would include performing small data entry tasks, doing translations, making transcriptions, removing duplicate content from listings, and processing photos and videos. This can earn you anywhere between $6-10 per hour.

    20) Get Paid to Answer People’s Questions. While some of us are terrible at finding what we want on the internet, others are extremely good at it. If finding information online comes naturally to you, consider signing up for websites like Experts123, JustAnswer, Wonder, and Answeree which allow you to share information about things you know or can easily find online. Now, while this may take a little bit more effort than other methods in this list, it is possible to make a $100.00 a day if you work at it and sign up for multiple sites.

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[4n0th3rm3]

Who has control over a story? Or: presidency as a metaphor for authorship

So… I have read the meat part of the Homestuck epilogues and I have to say, I am impressed. I have to admit that I was initially wary of the experience because the first opinions I’ve read on tumblr have been controversial, to say the least. But before I talk about the epilogue itself, I have to make some things clear. I haven’t read Homestuck in my formative teenage years. I started reading it when I was 18, so I had a lot more distance to the main characters and their experiences than I would have had if I was younger. This was also an age when my English could have been considered „good“ enough to even understand what was going on since it’s not my mother tongue. Additionally, I was just starting my degree in literary studies, so the interest in narrative structure has always been on the forefront of my reading experience, so that’s what I’ll focus on in my analysis. And hoo boy does Homestuck deliver in that regard.

First of all we have to ask: in what situation are the epilogues written? Homestuck is „officially over“, the fans are more or less satisfied, the „canon“ is supposed to be finished and can now be looked at in its entirety. This is not only important for the creators of fanworks, but also for Hussie himself. In a lot of ways, when a work is canonically finished, the author has distanced themselves from the story and the writing process. So how to write epilogues, when you have given up control over the narrative? It’s at this point that Hussie decides to make the problem explicit in the work itself: he changes the medium. What has been a narrative element in Homestuck before now becomes once again necessary for understanding the story. By changing the webcomic format to an Ao3 fanfiction format he shows the reader that these are indeed „tales of dubious authenticity“.

Now, finding the tone for the continuation of a finished work can be difficult (and we have to keep in mind that Homestuck has been over for three years). When we take a look at the Harry Potter series, where lots of fans were disappointed by a seemingly overly saccharine epilogue, we see how much can go wrong in the fans’ opinion. Actually, Harry Potter is also a good example of the consequences it has for a work of art and its fanbase when the author tries to uphold their control over the narrative after the work is finished — it can be disastrous (case in point: jkrowlings borderline surreal twitter presence). The expectations readers have are repeatedly mirrored in the epilogue itself:

And all of us are definitely the „devoted fans“ who show up to any new content, even if it’s bad. But is it bad? Whether there is too much meat (brutality, tragedy) or too much candy in it, both will be unsatisfactory. This is a thing that Rose, in the process of becoming a aware of the whole canon herself, comments on:

Even before the epilogues, Homestuck has always had lots of both, it varied in tone and regularly switched between tragedy and comedy, most often depicting tragedy through the lens of comedy. That was one go the things that made it unique. The way that Karkat reacts to the fact that Jade didn’t know that Obama was a real person shows how important the framing of events can be:

How comedy and tragedy are received respectively is very subjective to the reading experience. The reactions of the characters to canon and post-canon events mirror different fan behavior. Take for example Calliope, who seems to obsess over overly saccharine fantasies, mixed with gore and pornographic content:

The way it is framed here, it seems to sum up the fanfiction side of the Homestuck fandom pretty well. It frankly reminded me of the times when a lot of the fandom was pretty obsessed with the dark and horny parts of Homestuck - and unapologetically so. I mean, remember the 4chan „raids“ on Tumblr? That’s what they had to say about the Homestuck tag:

Now, please keep in mind that I haven’t read the candy part yet, so if Calliopes behavior is directly referring to it, it partly goes over my head at this moment. That the different perspectives and reading experiences can clash with each other and even canonical events itself is shown in John's own discomfort at the reunion with his friends:

It reflects on the way that the whole of Homestuck has been perceived by the readers not only while it was running but also after it has ended. Looking at a story after it’s been finished and at the sum of all its parts leads to some problems - for the author and the creators of fan works alike. From a distance and after three years, everyone is „stuck somewhere in the harrowing nexus between canon, post-canon, non-canon, outside canon, and fanon.“ Or as Rose puts it:

Rose realizes at this point that, much as we, the reader, the characters (especially Rose and Dirk) have also become readers of their own, their whole story. This forces them, much as us, to confront every aspect of every character that has been written in the Homestuck canon, what Dirk then calls the Ultimate Self. How do you for example characterize a person like Dirk when you know how different aspects of his personality play out in different scenarios? I mean, Bro is very much a character that exists in the Homestuck canon and — shitty as he is — shares Dirk’s genetic information. Dirk on the other hand is a person who has always tried to overcome the negative aspects of his personality that are realized in other versions of him. The convergence of personalities that happens when the characters become readers of canon themselves is in Dirk’s case as much a tragedy as it is for us, who have also seen the positive potential of his character. ultimate!Dirk then goes — in the manner of an overly sarcastic megalomaniac — from reader to narrator:

So it’s not surprising that looking at the whole of canon itself, different characters show different reading behaviors. This is as much true for Dirk as it is for every single reader, especially every creator of fan works. We take the elements that are given to us and try to create something from it. In one way or the other, by interpreting a story, everyone tries to take hold of the narrative. This is especially true for a story like Homestuck, where the interaction with fans and fan culture have been a central element of storytelling and has lead to the inclusion of multiple contributors to the work itself.

In ultimate!Dirk’s case, it is made very explicit how his particular perspective influences the narrative structure. The lines between reader and author blur even further than before:

But not only ultimate!Dirk and muse!Calliope, who tries to take the narrative away from him, have conflicting views and agencies, other characters also start framing actions and people in a certain way. It’s no coincidence that Hussie decided to make an election the setting for the epilogues. In meat, Jane runs for presidency and is then rivaled by Karkat, who decides to take a stand against her „xenophobic“ views. While Karkat says:

It quickly becomes clear, that a lot of what we think about Jane in the meat epilogue is framed on the one hand by ultimate!Dirk’s manipulative narrative that influences the behavior and events, and on the other hand by Dave and Karkat’s political campaign. (Both of whom don’t leave their house very often and have probably not spoken to Jane in a long time.)

We think that Jane is xenophobic because ultimate!Dirk and Karkat tell us she is. Not to say that Jane doesn’t have some problematic views, but she seems to be far from a fascist dictator.

It mostly shows how politics is very much about presenting a certain narrative to your potential voters. And whoever controls the political narrative has a hegemonial perspective on cultural narratives as well. This is an idea that has probably been best presented in the texts of the philosopher Walter Benjamin. In his essay „On the concept of history“ he remarks on the way a ruling class presents history and historical events as a legitimization of their power, and ultimately concludes that historical methodology is also a question of politics and questioning narratives that are presented to us. In 1940, when the essay was written, it was the conflict between fascism and socialism that influenced Benjamin’s work, but today his ideas are just as relevant.

By presenting the election and conflicting narratives (ultimate!Dirk vs. muse!Calliope, Jane vs. Karkat and Dave) side by side, Hussie builds a bridge between those two. It is not only that the text is a metaphor for the current political climate, it is a metaphor for the way that current behavior in general is shaped by controlling narratives. We live in a time when fake news and callout culture are two sides of the same coin: especially in America, these two intersect more and more, in political campaigns and online. Not to say that this kind of discourse isn’t developing in Europe as well, it’s just that the American one seems to be central for the discourse and views that shape sites like tumblr. On Earth C, in the „post canon victory state“, we can see these methods of political strategy developing from the very beginning.

This becomes especially clear as Vriska comments on Hussie’s behavior (as in: Homestuck-character Hussie): „not to mention your flawless defeat of an obstructionist, hectoring, orange man, who for reasons you cannot begin to comprehend seemed to be obsessed with you.“ While the whole world sees itself confronted with the weird views of a megalomaniac orange man (Trump), so does the readership of Homestuck: Hussie and Dirk’s text are both orange and are a constant obstacle for the fans who try to take hold of the narrative, to make their perspective the right one.

Actually, ultimate!Dirk’s perspective is skewed by numerous biases, mostly concerning women and gender issues. Jade is repeatedly called „bitch“ in a derogatory way and Kanayas behavior is framed as being „hysterical“. Roxy’s transition goes straight over his head, he can’t read her intentions because he is blind to gender issues that don’t fit his limited understanding of the concept of gender. He reminds me of a member of the alt-right, shutting women out of conversations and disregarding their opinions. This quote especially:

This sounds like it’s ripped straight from an alt-righter defending his free speech while at the same time trying to shoehorn his dubious political intentions in. In contrast to that, muse!Calliopes way of telling the story seems to be fairly neutral.

So it’s no surprise that the people he tried to shut out before (women and trans people) are realizing that his narrative behavior is trying to manipulate them and they take action. Especially Terezi seems to be immune to his narrative manipulation:

The moment that they break the hold ultimate!Dirk has over the narrative, they are beginning to feel like the old „canon“ characters.

Up to this point, we had to look at genuine character moments through the lens of an unreliable narrator. Homestuck has always been a parody that got unintentionally serious, so I think we have to look at the epilogues the same way: genuine character moments under the layers of parody, commentary on fan behavior and politics.

Ultimate!Dirk ultimately fails to create a cohesive narrative, one that favors only one perspective. This is reflective of the way Homestuck has been written and perceived these last ten years. He has to fail, because the author has lost control and interpretative hegemony over Homestuck canon — no one has it.

That is why it’s so important that the voice of the epilogues is not only Hussie’s voice, but was written in part by Cephied_Variable and ctset. While Hussie was responsible for writing the dialogue, the surrounding prose is entirely in the hands of fans. It’s a decentralized narrative that refuses to acknowledge one perspective, one reception as the right one.

And much like the kids in the juju, we are now stuck in a place outside of canon, after Homestuck ended. And it just happens that everyone is starved for new content: We all wish we had brought something to read. Be it the epilogues or fanfiction, we are all stuck in a place that no longer really affects the narrative:

And look at me, how I desperately try to take hold of the narrative in this long ass meta post. This is what Homestuck means to me and this is my perspective, my narrative.

[cornelisdemooij]

Innuendo Studios Research Masterpost - With More Links

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

[kierongillen]

On First Issues

I wrote this for my last newsletter, and figure it likely should be added to the tumblr, just it can be added to the Writer Advice tag. Anyway! Sign up to the newsletter for more of this kind of stuff, of course.

Mags Vissago on twitter asked what people's favourite issue ones were, which spiralled into a larger discussion of what makes a good issue 1. That I'm back in the world of Number Ones with the new projects kicking off meant I felt like throwing in my assorted spare change. Also, it was a good way to avoid work. The conversation spiralled a bit, and I thought it worth trying to pull some of this together in a chunk.

There will be a lot of obvious caveats in what follow. I would question anything and everything. What follows below is what I consider pretty solid advice, but pretty solid advice collapses into useless dogma is unexamined. This is just where my head is at presently. Now that I've put it down, I'll likely set it on fire.

Firstly – most of what follows is about writing about a comic which tends to be a standard 20 page unit, released sequentially in a regular release schedule. It doesn't apply to graphic novels. It doesn't apply to comics released irregularly. It doesn't apply to any other form that isn't comics. This is stuff which is warped because of the economic construct. It is also leaning towards what I'd call a pop comic. These are almost entirely genre comics of one form or another.

Issue 1s obsess many writers for various reasons, both good, bad and necessary. Part of it is simply because anyone working in a serial comics in the Anglophone American pamphlet model have more experience in writing issue 1s than any other issue number (“Last issue” isn't an issue number, pedants). So you spend more time proportionally working on them and thinking about them. Perhaps most tellingly, in the present Direct Market, your sales of the first issue are what establish the sales of the latter issues. If you can launch stronger, you have longer until the standard erosion of sales makes the book commercially unviable in singles (and so also gives longer to gain a trade readership which means that doesn't matter). “How effective the first issue is” isn't the only thing which effects sales, but it doesn't for hurt.

Even for books which find an audience in trades, it's worth noting that the number of books which are huge in trades are often books that also did well in singles. The single is many things, including an advertisement, and the more part of a conversation the single is, the more there is an awareness of the trade. The weirdest thing about WicDiv being a hit was how much easier it was to sell more copies of WicDiv. Its success kind of sold itself.

Anyway – in the conversation online, I argued that the best first issues tend to do two things, which I unhelpfully described as “First It” and “Second It.”

The First It is includes everything which I would describe as good writing (good writing, for comics, includes everything, not just the words – it's also art, design, etc). You introduce everything the reader needs to know about your book to have a fair understanding of it. The “Needs” is key. It's not the whole book, but certainly enough to give a reader a fair understanding. You show the sort of thing you do, and how you choose to do it. Obviously not everyone who ends up liking the book will like it (or vice versa), but generally speaking, you lay out who you are, as honestly as you can.

(Worth noting this also includes possibly alienating some readers. If they're going to burn out of a book, I'd argue its rude to string them along. I've never done this as aggressively as I did with my first comic, Phonogram, whose opening caption was so noxious to basically show the door to anyone who wasn't in for this level of nonsense. Why waste anyone's time, eh?)

A competent first issue working inside First It principles will introduce initial key characters, delineate them, their desires and the world they operate inside. In the style you do so, the readers will get an understanding of the book. Frankly, anything which you reveal when hyping the book is almost certainly inside the First It.

In short: most of First It is actually The Pitch – or rather, showing you can competently execute The Pitch.

(A common form of incompetence in Pop Comics writing is failing to do that, and you end the issue with less information delineated than you got from the solicits. I read a first issue in the last year, and found they'd printed the pithy series blurb on the back cover, none of which was explained to any degree in the comic I had just read.)

The Second It is where it gets tricky. This is more rarely pulled off, and also much more subjective, but it's also something that the vast majority of hit books have managed to do, which makes me suspect there's something powerful to at least consider.

The Second It is giving the reader something that wasn't in the pitch. This normally speaks to the actual truth of what the book actually is, or at least gives a sense of the book's direction. It can be a big huge genre twist, but it doesn't have to be that large. But it does have to be something.

(Or at least, it has to be something unless your core pitch is so unique, so magical, so entirely without precedent that you don't have to worry about any of this tawdry nonsense.)

There's a TV first episode which is often mentioned by other writers when talking about this. It's The SHIELD. Spoilers, obv. The show is about corrupt cops. We know this going in. Hell, you know that throughout the first episode, as it's delineated carefully (This is all First It stuff). However, in the final scene, the lead shoots another cop who's on his team. That's the Second It. It lets us know exactly how corrupt these cops are, and also immediately lets us know the direction of the series. For the genre it's working in, that's a strong opening.

A book that is competent with First It regularly fails to hit Second It in various ways, but there's two which I see a lot.

Firstly, the last page reveal is actually just the book's high concept. As in, what the reader already knew by how the book was described to them, or included in solicits. If it was Harry Potter, it'd be “You're a Wizard, Harry.” This means that a reader has paid $3-5 dollars to learn what they already knew. No matter how well executed, this tends to be a turn off. It's also a turn off which is 100% great writing if you were writing (say) a Novel. But there you aren't selling sequential units.

Secondly, the last page reveal is a big event which the reader simply doesn't care about. This is a failure born of the rest of the book, and shows well how First It and Second It aren't separate units. If you know the Second It is reliant on some emotional underpining, you need to make sure that is established. A classic example would be (say) a long absent relative turns up. If the issue has not spent sufficient time making the absence of the relative to your cast of absolute interest, that isn't going to land.

In Doctor Aphra 1, her Dad turns up into the end, and that's not set up at all in the issue. However, my hook was “her dad has turned up... and he's just fucked over Aphra.” The latter is the reveal of character about the former, and is the directional thrust. It's not about the existence of her father, but rather her father's character and what that means for Aphra.

Yes, you should be raising an eye on “Last page Reveal.” The commonality of “Last Page Reveal” in these books is another question, and a hint towards how this kind of writing has been codified. There's been a lot of people reverse engineering BKV, shall we say. “Reveal in final scene” may be a better way of thinking of it, and even that is too small for my liking.

To talk about WicDiv for a second, it's a complicated mess of a book, but our First It is establishing a bunch of the key mythology, vibe, style and two lead characters. The Two Lead Characters feed into the Second It – which is “A Judge is Murdered in the Middle the Court. Did Lucifer Do it?” That only even vaguely works because we spent the majority of the issue delineating Lucifer as much as we did Laura. The Second It for WicDiv was signalling this is a genre work with an actual plot, and not just ambling along Phonogram style. First It was “Here's our world” and Second It is “And here's where we're going next.”

You may be reading the above and thinking of it as a checklist. “Must make sure I have Two Its.” That would be a mistake. The two Its are an analytical tool. It's an editing principle when approaching your own material of what narrative unit makes a useful, accurate and compelling introduction to the story. In my case, it's looking at my story, recognising the point where First It (introduction to the book) and Second It (reason to continue reading book and hint at immediate direction) have been fulfilled to my satisfaction, and then writing and editing to ensure I include them both.

In the case of WicDiv, I looked at the story and thought “I have to get to the murder of the Judge.” I could have perhaps ended with Lucifer having just murdered the assassins who tried to kill her... but all that would have shown is “these pop star gods who claim to be gods have godly powers” and I said that in the hype. Perhaps I could have worked out a way to make that work if I played with the sympathy towards Lucifer differently, but that still felt like reiterating the pitch. The Death Of The Judge leading to a murder mystery was clear and direct. That's what I had to get to.

It's also worth noting that many of the most successful first issues (and some of the biggest hits of recent years) are longer than 20 pages. Y: The Last Man (which is a clockwork masterpiece of First-Issue-ness) was 28 pages. Saga is double issue size. Monstress was triple sized. For me, WicDiv was 30 comics pages. Spangly New Thing is 34. Longer issues both let you spend more time making sure First It is done well, and more time to push towards whatever beat you consider to be Second It.

(That's another reason why the Second It can come at the end of an issue. By definition, it's the point you were trying to reach. When you've reached it, you can stop.)

And as another side point, it's also worth remembering that How You Hype The Book can vary hugely. If I'd sold WicDiv as “Pop Stars who claim to be gods...” perhaps Lucifer having actual powers would have been enough for a Second It. I suspect not, because clearly me even posing the question is implicitly promising the reader the answer is “Yes.” That'd be like me selling an autobiography with “Does Kieron Gillen have magical powers?” and then showing across 300 pages that no, he's just a dude. But still: you get the point.

That's enough on this. It's interesting stuff to think about, because this is only a tiny fraction of it. If Issue 1 is everything that has to be in issue 1, what is Issue 2. Issue 1s are the hardest worked issues in a series, because you're preparing for so long, but Issue 2 are a special kind of heartbreaker.

I said it at the top, but all of this is also for a certain mode of comics. And not even all that certain mode for comics. The First Error I listed above? If a writer is figuring it's primarily a trade based book, and they feel it's not worth distorting issue 1 to serve the single, that could be a fine choice. I sometimes wonder if I'd have been better ending THREE's first issue with the Spartans turning up rather than the slaughter.

That's still a cliffhanger. You can go more extreme that that. When I launched WicDiv, and Warren and Jason Howard were launching Trees, I felt entirely ashamed having done this Pop Thrill Banger and Trees just cuts at the end of an issue and assumes you'll be back in month. It believed in a maturity in the audience and a willing to follow it wherever it went. That's something I find entirely admirable.

Point being: the above is only useful tools in so far as it aligns with your goals as a creator.

[seotoolskit]

How can I bring traffic to affiliate links?

Sixty-three percent of businesses say their number one marketing challenged is generating traffic and leads.

In affiliate marketing, the advertiser has already created the product or service and the affiliate program, and provided the tools and creatives needed to help market their offering. The main task for publishers is to generate traffic to these affiliate offers, which equates to more traffic to the advertiser’s website via an affiliate link. This ideally leads to more conversions and higher profits. Therefore, to be able to generate traffic has to be top of the list of priorities for publishers.

Methods of generating traffic

We’ve explored some of the most effective ways publishers can generate traffic for their affiliate offers and are sharing our top nine methods below.

1. Paid online advertising

Advertising is the mainstay of lead generation. Whether you choose to do paid search, social media campaigns, re-marketing or display advertising, it’s a tried and tested method to drive traffic to your affiliate links.

One of the advantages of using paid lead generating techniques is that people who click on your links are usually high up in the buying cycle, and are therefore ready to purchase. However, you need to balance the cost of your advertisements with the commission you receive per sale. If each ad conversion costs $50 and the commission per sale is $40, it is not worth pursuing this form of lead generation.

2. YouTube

YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the internet, with approximately three billion views per day. As such, it is beneficial for you to start your own channel to promote your offers. Add an interesting video that relates to your offer, then include a compelling call-to-action that links to your affiliate product. Make sure to also put your call-to-action link or discount code within the description box, with a short description of your video. To further utilize your video add an Overlay, which is a little box that stays on the video throughout with your CTA on it.

Don’t restrict yourself to You tube as there are other video channels like Vimeo that can be used to good effect. However, one of the disadvantages of video promotion is it does take time and effort to produce good content that is going to attract a loyal audience. On the plus side, great videos have the potential to go viral and can escalate very quickly to hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Visit Seotoolskit for more exciting and free SEO Content.    

3. Blog posts

Blog posts are a great way to share affiliate links. If you have an active readership your audience will already be warm to your reviews and advice. Just make sure not to use your blog posts as sales letters; the content should provide value to the reader and your affiliate links should sit naturally within the topic. Recipe blogs use this to good effect. As they discuss the method to follow to create the dish, recipe blogs describe the tools needed for the job, using affiliate links to the sales page of the item in question.

Another method of using your blog posts to promote affiliate links is to answer your readers' comments and use your affiliate links in the replies. If the product you are promoting is related to the answer, it doesn’t look like a sales pitch but a solution to the reader’s problem. Be careful of doing this on other people’s blogs as it may come across as spam.

If possible, try to make the content evergreen. Evergreen refers to content that stays relevant for many years to come, and could include how-to guides, best practices or tips and tricks. These types of articles are read and referred to over and over again. Although you may have to refresh them occasionally, the information still remains relevant. This means you can roll out this content to a new audience every so often and expose your affiliate links each time you do so.

4. Email

Email marketing is still alive and well, with 64% of companies believing it is the best marketing method they have, with an estimated ROI of 3800%. Because of this, make sure you don’t overlook it in response to some newer, more exciting methods.

You first need to build a list, which you can do through providing a free offer - like sharing a report, e-book or webinar - and using a form to capture email address. When emailing your list you must be careful to provide them with useful, relevant content. Otherwise, they will quickly unsubscribe.

Affiliate links can be used to good effect in emails, either as part of the body text or in the signature. It is also perfectly acceptable to promote affiliate products directly in emails, as long as you balance it out with valuable and useful content. If possible, segment your emails so the appropriate affiliate links go to the right audience.

5. Quora

Quora is a questions site, providing a platform for users to ask whatever they want. Experts then give guidance and advice on the subject matter. Although direct affiliate links are not allowed, you can link to a website or a blog post if it provides more information on the answer you are giving. Make sure the website you send people to contains content with your affiliate link.

Again, when using Quora you must genuinely be looking to provide a valid answer and help the person submitting the question. Good advice will be read and shared, while answers that are just sales pitches will get a thumbs down.

Visit Seotoolskit for more exciting and free SEO Content.    

[copperbadge]

There was a recent discussion on tumblr, which I didn’t reblog for obvious reasons, about how people with a large readership cope with a heavy interaction load -- how the person would be anxious if they dealt with that volume of notes on each post, that amount of interaction and contact. I was tagged in it because of my habit of "lochnessing", where I cause an activity spike on posts I reblog that looks like the loch ness monster.

It never occurs to me, because I’ve dealt with high-volume social media for so long -- realistically about ten years, probably closer to fifteen -- that it’s difficult for people to handle that, because they don’t have the systems in place that I do. I mean it does occur to me in the sense that I have become more cautious about what I reblog and its impact on the OP; there are things I’d like to share with you but don’t because I recognize it would be harmful to the person who wrote them. But it doesn't occur to me that someone might struggle with a high volume of notes purely because it's a volume that they don't have a system in place to deal with the way I do.

So I said I'd do a writeup on the "entire ecosystems" I had in place for handling the high volume of interaction I receive online. I sit at a weird place where I'm not so well known that I can just ignore most of what comes at me with impunity because everyone acknowledges I can't answer it all, like say a youtube star. But at the same time I do get too much attention to return it at the same level I receive it. I am one and you are sixteen thousand. So I had to make systems to return as much as I could and feel okay about not returning the rest.

Reading through this, of course it sounds like a weird humblebrag: "Here's how I deal with my MASSIVE POPULARITY". There's no real way around that; I can't talk about how I deal with comments without talking about how I get a disproportionately high number of them. The fact that I do is what leads me to do things like the Zero Comment Challenge, or Radio Free Monday, to try and balance shit out. So, as I mention occasionally below, you can think I'm an asshole for talking about how I am popular, but I can't talk about how to deal with that popularity without acknowledging the reality of it, and someone somewhere's gonna think I'm an asshole anyway, so whatever.

These are the systems I use to manage my life -- work, play, the weird inbetween space that's kind of both. Many of these are akin to the systems that I use in managing my depression, in that they involve a lot of small steps building up to a big result, but each small step on its own is manageable.

Let's start with AO3, because it's actually probably the simplest.

I clean out my comments once a week. Usually there are between forty and a hundred and fifty, depending on if I’ve published something recently or been recommended by someone. 

I go through all the one-sentence comments first, because those are the ones that are least likely to require a response. I read all comments but I learned through trial and error, twice in ten years, that I am physically and emotionally incapable of responding to every comment I receive even if it's just with a "Thank you!" and I'm just going to live with the fact that people think I'm an asshole for that. Also while I appreciate someone who leaves a "Great fic! <3" comment, that's genuinely really cool and validating, I don't think they truly need or expect a response. So most one-line comments, unless they are super weird or contain a question, get read, appreciated, and then deleted. 

Then I go through the longer comments that need a closer reading, and delete any that are cool but still don't seem to require responses. If someone has left a ton of comments, I'll find the one I think is coolest or most needing of response, delete the others, and reply to that one comment with a thoughtful response including a line thanking them for all their other comments.

Finally, I respond to comments that are in-depth or have questions that require some thought. I find that if I don't respond to these on a weekly basis they pile up and then someone who asked a question like six months ago is still waiting for an answer, so this one is non-negotiable: my AO3 inbox has to be empty at the end of each week, and everything that needed a reply has to have one. (I do have one or two that just live in my inbox because they are cool ideas I will one day get round to writing, and I want to credit them when I do, but it's never more than two.) For me, it's easiest to wait until Friday or Saturday and just take an hour to clear them all out, rather than clearing as I go, because I don't have AO3 open all the time the way I do some other sites.  

Tumblr: Every morning, before work, I go through the previous night's responses; I open all reblogs/mentions in new tabs to read and reply-as-necessary, and I reply to all comments that need responses. (This is also something I'll do throughout the day, but especially if I'm tired or pressed for time, the comment replies might be saved as a draft or left in an open tab until I can get to them). Occasionally shit doesn’t show up or I miss stuff but I’ve learned to just live with that as the price of doing fandom on Tumblr. 

If there's a post by someone else that requires a response from me -- either a reblog of one of my posts, or someone tagged me in a post -- I Like it to find it later or I save it as a draft. I don't use Likes as anything other than "I want to be able to find this again in less than a week's time" and I never have more than about 20 Likes in my files. (Unless I’m traveling; it’s easier to Like something than save it as a draft or respond, so when I get home from traveling I often have 30-50 Likes in my file.)

Often on Tumblr I go through what I call the Line Cycle -- I read my dash, and then I go "down the line" and open all the other pages that might need attention, in specific order. I open asks and try to respond to a few -- I try to answer at least five every time but sometimes I don't manage to answer any for whatever reason -- then I open likes and try to convert as many likes as I can to either queued reblogs or drafts. I open drafts and try to convert some of those to queued reblogs. Then I go through the same process for one or two side blogs.

(Also in drafts are a lot of things that I'm not sure I want to put in my queue yet, or things that I put in the queue weekly like the Zero Comment Challenge post, which I dust off when I'm ready to queue it, then immediately re-save to drafts when it posts.)

Occasionally if I feel shit is getting out of hand I dedicate myself to, every time, not leaving the page I'm on until I've reduced its "count" (number of asks, likes, drafts, etc) by five, or at least to below the next multiple of five -- if I have 23, for example, I'll try to get it below 20.

Sometimes posts in tabs sit open for a while because in order to respond I have to read an article or watch a video, which take a lot of focus and attention. It used to be that recommendations for books or stuff to watch also sat open forever until I could get round to doing it, but now I just have a "reccs" file on the cloud that is a list of what I've been recommended and who recommended it, and I work my way through them slowly.

Email: Once I've read them, site notifications in my inbox get deleted; I've turned off follow/kudos notifications because they tend to be white noise.

Email is tough for me, it requires a lot of focus and emotional attention to answer emails, so I treat it the same way I would asks or likes or whatnot, but much more slowly. I tend to have a backlog of about thirty emails in my inbox, though often five to ten of those are emails that don't need response and that I'm saving (I star them to mark them as not needing attention). I have the multiple-stars function in Gmail turned on, and when it gets really bad, I start opening emails and triaging -- "This will be easier to answer" "This will take some time" etc. by starring them different colors.

I like to have no more than fifteen emails in my inbox but that is a rarity. 

The Internet: Because social media takes up a lot of my time and I also work eight hours a day (well, four, we'll get to that in a bit) I have streamlined the way I encounter the internet, as well. I have a list of "daily reading" bookmarks that I open every morning and check through -- the horoscope page, the mustard tag on tumblr (which I don't follow because then the same dumbass two hipster fashion posts keep showing up on my dash), a blog that follows and posts about new small flash games that I might enjoy playing, a few others. (I also have a Monday file that I open once a week, it's calendars of events and such, and I go through on Mondays and add anything to my calendar that looks interesting.)

But if I can, any regularly-updated page that has an RSS feed gets converted to RSS and put into my Netvibes reader account, where I peruse it at my leisure. The Netvibes reader account includes a direct feed from the Steve/Tony and Steve/Sam tags on AO3, plus a few others; longform.org, some cooking blogs I follow, a bunch of podcast pages, a few webcomics, and one or two tumblrs that I don't want showing up on my dash (mainly artists' porny sideblogs, what up you glorious pervs) or think I would make the person uncomfortable by following them.

I have five tabs pinned to Chrome at any given time, and four tabs pinned to Firefox. The Chrome tabs are my personal Netvibes, Google Drive, a Google Sheets spreadsheet with my calendar and accounting tabs in it, Gmail, and Tumblr. The Firefox tabs are a second Netvibes account I use for work (we have several news sources we all monitor daily), my non-fannish gmail, my non-fannish facebook with a custom reading page so I never see anything twice, and the Google "family calendar" that I and my family use to track where we all are and what we're doing.

My parents use this more than I do, which is why I often open the calendar app on my phone to check my work schedule and find that my parents are taking the dogs to the groomer's today (yes, I know I could turn this off, but it amuses me). When I introduced my mother to Google Calendar her eyes got super big and she fell in immediate love; the first three things she added were the birthdays of her two dogs, followed by the birthday of Jesus. I would be more insulted by this but I had already added all the family birthdays, so at least I didn't come in behind the dogs AND the Christ Child.

Once in a while, when I'm at work and I feel like I'm not sure what I should be doing or that my day is spiralling out of my control, I'll take a deep breath, pull up Chrome, and go through all my pinned tabs, one by one, changing or fixing something on each -- I'll clear out my Longform reading, answer a few emails, check the calendar, etc. Then I'll go through any open tabs and try to close at least one. I get anxious if I have more than five or six non-pinned tabs open. Like having an inbox that's rarely over thirty emails total, it's not a sign I'm more effective or efficient than anyone else, it's just a sign I'm debilitatingly anxious about this kind of thing.

Work: I've read, many times, that people who work eight hours a day in a white collar job like mine really only do four hours of actual work. And for a while I joked that I wondered if I even did four, because I dick around on the internet A LOT. But lately I started to genuinely wonder, and so for the past six weeks, I've put that statement to the test.

When I arrive at work, I immediately put in two hours of solid work. I don't read tumblr, I don't read anything but work-related material. I triage all my work emails, I go through my Google Task list for the day and sort things by most to least urgent, and then I work my way through them for two solid hours. It's not easy at all, but any time I think "This is when I would stop and read tumblr" I shake my head and try to do one more work thing, and then I get back in the groove and can do like, three more. I also use this first morning period to take care of "personal work", stuff which has to get done to keep my life running smoothly, like mailing packages or replying to my parents' emails or whatnot.

Then I get a half-hour break to read tumblr, play a flash game, maybe read a piece on Longform. (I don't read fanfic at work; I sometimes clean out Netvibes of fics that from the tags and summaries I know I won't be interested in, but I don't open fanfic at work at all.) I also use this time to get some food in me.

Then I do another two hours of work, same deal. And that's four hours of work. And I get a shitload done, let me tell you.

For the next three hours after, I am basically free to do whatever I want. I usually use about an hour to do some freelance work, and I spend time on tumblr or on personal email, reading articles, listening to podcasts, playing games. I eat a snack, I talk to my coworkers. I find I actually run out of new stuff to read, and I do try to process the old stuff, like empty out my drafts and likes. And of course the nature of my job means that sometimes there is work to be done that comes up suddenly, but it's usually just a matter of teeing it up for the following morning's work shift.

For the last hour of my work day, I go through my work inbox, make sure everything's set up for tomorrow, send any last emails, do any last wrap-up, and make sure all my documents are either saved or closed. (Our IT team likes to run updates and involuntary restarts without warning, so I've learned to always save at end of day.)

So, yeah. Those are some of the systems I have in place in order to run a very mentally busy life. I'm not necessarily recommending them; a lot of them won't work for everyone because everyone is different, and I recognize that some of them are inapplicable (I work a job with no outward-facing element to it; a barista or a librarian or a teacher can't do what I do, schedule-wise), and some of them are a level of regimentation I'm not sure most people would find healthy. But that's how I do my thing, and maybe some of my techniques will sound appealing to other people who occasionally feel, as I do, like they're drowning a little bit.

(Did you find this useful or interesting? Keep me organized and drop some change in my Ko-Fi or at my Paypal!)

[epublisherworld]

The best digital newspaper app services | Epublisher

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Why Publish A Digital Newspaper App?

Did you know that 52% of Americans are reading their news online, and digital newspaper apps are one of the most popular ways to do so? And, according to a 2017 report from MediaPost and Statista, newspaper app revenue is expected to reach $1.13 billion by 2025. That’s why it’s so important for publishers to create an effective digital newspaper app

but there’s a problem. Many digital newspaper app solutions simply aren’t sustainable enough for smaller-to-medium sized newspapers looking to increase revenue and audience engagement.

There are costs associated with each use of those apps, including huge installation fees, high maintenance costs and transaction charges. ePublisher solves these problems through our technology, which allows your readers to read articles across multiple devices while eliminating any paywalls or subscriptions required for content access.

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Using good design standards is a great way to ensure your digital newspaper app appeals to your readers. Standard fonts, smooth scrolling and clear layouts will improve user experience. It’s important that you try to keep your digital newspaper app simple and intuitive, too.

The last thing you want is for a reader to get stuck trying to understand how they’re supposed to interact with your new format. Beyond visual appeal, speed is very important as well — remember, most people are used to reading their news digitally so having a digital newspaper that doesn’t open quickly or read smoothly will make them lose interest.

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The new modern app, from epublisher, is packed with awesome features. The in-app sharing allows your users to share content easily across social networks. Bookmarking saves articles for a later date, so if your reader misses an issue of their favorite magazine or comic, they can go back and view their favorite articles.

With a comment box feature readers can converse and reply to comments posted by others throughout a specific page. If you are looking for multilingual in your application then we have got you covered too (in languages such as Spanish, French & Dutch).

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

micah (Micah Cohen, politics editor): It’s time to gaze at our navels!!! We’re chatting about the media. Everyone ready?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): I’m not not ready.

julia_azari (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): Technically, I’m in a different field full time, academia, where we never do any navel-gazing, sooo …

micah: On this week’s FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, we talked about President Trump’s attacks on the press. Trump’s criticisms are mostly wrong, but the press as a whole (yes, it’s not great to lump all the media into one) does have a trust issue.

With that in mind, our mission for today: What resolutions do we think journalists (us and everyone else) should make to improve Americans’ faith in the press? Who wants to go first?

julia_azari: I nominate Perry as the seasoned press type among the three of us.

micah: Perry, Julia has thrown you under the bus!

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): OK …

micah: I will say, to Julia’s point, I like the mix of experiences we’re bringing to this question: Julia is from academia but is obviously deeply immersed in the media world. Perry is an experienced reporter. Nathaniel is newer to journalism and comes more from an online/quanty background.

perry: The media should stop aiming for a middle or for a balance between “both sides.”

Some issues have four sides. Some have one. But there aren’t many issues with two sides, with the Democratic and Republican views equally valid.

The “both sides” model manages to annoy the left and the right, as well as undermine trust in media.

In other words, I think, for example, CNN should avoid panels of two Republicans and two Democrats giving their talking points, no matter the issue.

nrakich: The problem is: How do you assess “validity”?

micah: That’s a journalist’s entire job!

julia_azari: That’s a question — how do you assess validity — whose answer is in your process for gathering information, not in the answer itself.

micah: Julia, waddya mean by that?

julia_azari: In academia, we sometimes say “the content is the method.” Information is only as good as the method by which it was gathered. So if we’re trying to, say, assess the validity of different perspectives about immigration, you don’t just say “well here’s talking point No. 1 and here’s talking points No. 2.” Instead, you can say: “Here is a study and how it was conducted. But I also talked to 12 people who think immigration is affecting them in X way. That doesn’t mean it’s objectively true, but it’s their experience.”

I am not explaining this well.

nrakich: No, I think that’s helpful.

julia_azari: To be clear about perceptions vs. hard facts: Both are important but do different work.

And journalists could also be clearer about whether information was derived from interviews (how many), observation or a large-scale study or whatever.

nrakich: Exactly. A big part of journalism is seeking out how people perceive an issue or event — whether through interviews or polling.

perry: Let me make an aggressive statement here: We have already lost something like 30 percent of the audience, in terms of confidence in media. As a rough proxy, let’s say it’s the portion of people who said in a July Quinnipiac University poll that they trust Trump more than the media to tell the truth about important issues:

A significant bloc of conservatives are not going to tell pollsters that they trust the media — no matter what.

So I think we are really talking about, as people who might trust the media, Democrats and Jeb Bush-style Republicans. I worry that the “both sides” obsession fails in building support and trust for the media from either side: Democrats feel the media strains unfairly for balance; a lot of Republicans, I would argue, hate the media as part of their partisan identity — it’s on the other “side.” So, I don’t think that group would be placated by media moves to show it is in touch with conservatives.

nrakich: Here’s a question I’ve batted around at dinner parties (yes, I know I have no life): Do we think it would be better to return to the days when there was a liberal media and a conservative media and they were just open about it?

julia_azari: Nathaniel, does anyone answer that question, or do they just quickly move to the dessert course?

nrakich: Usually the dinner parties end when I ask that question.

julia_azari: Resolved: Nathaniel needs better friends.

nrakich: My gut instinct is that an explicitly partisan media is a bad idea. But it might very well solve some of these problems we’re talking about. The people who hate the media don’t hate ALL media — their readership could probably be retained by partisan media that agrees with them. Case in point, here are “net bias” scores from The Knight Foundation, via The Nieman Lab (positive scores mean more people think the outlet is unbiased; negative scores mean more people think the outlet is biased). Democrats are on the left, Republicans on the right:

julia_azari: Can I come back with a reframing of the question? At the risk of alienating Micah and everyone else forever.

What if the question was less, “how do we win back people who hate the media because of their partisanship,” and instead was, “how do we help people who want to like the media become more engaged consumers of it.” Or, “how do we make the product resonate more with the questions people already ask themselves and guide them to ask deeper ones.”

perry: “What resolutions do we think journalists (us and everyone else) should make to improve Americans’ faith in the press? Who wants to go first?” was Micah’s question.

As you are all saying, that question depends on which Americans we’re talking about. There are different reasons people hate the media: the Democrats (too much both sides-ism) vs. Republicans (too liberal/it is part of their party tribe to be against media). It won’t be easy for media outlets to build trust with Republicans — they’ve been told for decades that the media is against them.

nrakich: A partisan media would resonate more with people’s internal questions because they would be asking the same questions. And a responsible media outlet would guide them to those deeper questions.

julia_azari: Right. Explicit first principles like “we believe less government is better” and “we believe in reducing economic inequality” and then real reporting.

nrakich: Right — exploring WHY those principles are “good” (from their perspective) to have. Then at least people will be intellectually informed about why they believe something instead of it just being tribal.

micah: I think an explicitly partisan media structure sidesteps the problem.

Don’t we all need some agreed-upon facts?

nrakich: In this admittedly idealistic scenario, all media would still stick to the facts.

But there are some facts that support liberal positions and some that support conservative ones.

micah: Yeah, I don’t think that works.

julia_azari: Micah, do you think we have agreed-upon facts that would be assumed, or does everything have to be interrogated? (I was taught in my one journalism class to fact-check my mother’s love for me.)

micah: lol

What did you find?

julia_azari: We just took a long car trip together, so the facts are evolving.

micah: I think everything gets interrogated.

But let’s return to Perry’s resolution real quick and then go to the next one.

Perry, don’t you think this is less of an issue than it used to be?

Both-siderism, that is.

This is actually one area where I think people have improved.

perry: This is from a New York Times story about the Georgia governor’s race:

ATLANTA — The Republican won the nomination Tuesday after branding himself a politically incorrect conservative who would “round up criminal illegals” and haul them to the border in his very own pickup. The Democrat all but opened her campaign by demanding that the iconic carvings of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson be sandblasted off Stone Mountain.

micah: Eek.

perry: The story implies both candidates are really partisan. That is a useful frame for news outlets trying to show they are not partisan. But it’s hard, and maybe this is my bias as a black person, to take that framing seriously as an example of both sides being really partisan. (How reasonable is it to expect a black candidate to not be opposed to Confederate monuments?)

Coverage around Trump himself seems less both sides-ish. But once you leave Trump, coverage of Democrats vs. Republicans has many of these problems.

micah: That’s a good point. I was thinking of coverage of Trump.

nrakich: I don’t know that it’s gotten better. I think back when politics was “normal” and Democrats and Republicans had their relatively moderate platforms, it was easier for the media to say “that comment was racist” when, say, Steve King said that Mexicans cross the border with “calves the size of cantaloupes.” But now the goalposts have moved, and the media isn’t sure what to call out as racist or sexist anymore since it’s become clear that these views are mainstream enough to get you elected president.

micah: OK, Nathaniel, you’re next. What’s your resolution?

nrakich: I kinda have two, because we haven’t already gone off on enough tangents.

More diversity in newsrooms. This one’s pretty obvious — we need people with a wider range of perspectives, including women, non-whites and conservatives.

I think the media needs to seriously beef up coverage of local politics and issues. Most governing that affects people’s lives happens at the state or local level, but local media outlets are being decimated. And state capitol bureaus are shrinking to almost nothing. That’s a real problem.

julia_azari: On No. 1, some of those groups may be at odds. Adding women and non-whites is not likely to pull a newsroom to the right.

I mean, add everyone! But that’s gonna make things interesting.

micah: For some context, this is from a report from our former colleague Farai Chideya and the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard:

julia_azari: This seems like a good time to point out that FiveThirtyEight contributor Dan Hopkins (also a political scientist) has written about how the nationalization of media has contributed to the nationalization of politics.

perry: I’m pretty opposed to calls for ideological diversity. A few reasons:

It could result in favoring whites and disfavoring minorities (blacks in particular) in hiring. Do we have a national history of discrimination against conservatives for jobs?

Also, do we want job interviews in which people are asking applicants about their ideologies? What if the person lies? And, again, that will create a racial bias. (It will be harder for a black person to credibly claim he or she voted for Trump.)

Hiring a reporter who is supposed to be for conservatives will basically force that reporter to find articles favorable to his or her team. Do you then find an explicitly pro-Democrats reporter too?

I think this kind of hiring approach would undermine the idea of nonpartisan reporting as a field with defined skills or norms, like lawyers or doctors. I believe people can be experts in their fields and put aside their personal views. I worry that when Trump attacks the lawyers on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team for having donated to Democratic candidates, he is undermining the idea that somehow these lawyers can’t separate the law from their personal opinions. You can have experts in their fields who ignore their personal views and act objectively.

julia_azari: The ideological diversity thing is a big question right now in academia, too.

micah: That’s a tough one.

julia_azari: Here’s the thing: I’m happy to have a colleague who teaches students to read the big works of libertarian economic thought. You go in a classroom and make comments about race science, and I am coming down on your ass.

micah: I think you’re right, Perry. But it’s also hard to argue with a conservative who just feels like the mainstream media is coming from a different place than he or she is.

nrakich: Very good points, Perry. I have no idea HOW you’d do it. I certainly don’t want to create litmus tests. But if The New York Times magically hired the entire staff of the National Review, I feel like conservative trust in the media would increase.

perry: It would not.

micah: Perry, why don’t you think it would?

perry: Jonathan Martin, the one of the top political reporters for the Times, used to work at National Review. So did Robert Costa, one of the lead reporters at The Washington Post.

julia_azari: There are some very smart folks at National Review. But it’s an elite publication.

nrakich: That’s a good point, Julia.

julia_azari: When we talk about distrust of elite media, that’s a populist attitude, and the point of populism is that the institutions themselves are suspect.

perry: The Weekly Standard is pretty skeptical of Trump.

nrakich: Yeah.

perry: In January 2016, National Review ran a series of essays written by prominent conservatives who were blasting Trump.

nrakich: And newspapers aren’t going to hire non-elites, nor should they be expected to. The Times should hire the best and the brightest! Even if they were all conservatives, a lot of Trump’s base would hate them.

perry: If The New York Times changed its journalism practices and, say, got rid of pieces saying that Trump is lying, that would help with conservatives. But then it wouldn’t be The New York Times, a fact-based newspaper.

julia_azari: It’s a problem when people who distrust elite media aren’t starting zines or indie blogs, but rather watching Infowars. Or consuming other non-factual or racially inflammatory material.

nrakich: It kinda goes to the point that maybe the true divide in this country isn’t Democrat vs. Republican, it’s elite vs. non-elite. Bernie Sanders’s and Trump’s rhetoric (if not positions) kind of wrapped around to the point of almost touching in a lot of ways.

julia_azari: Also, how many people on this chat have a degree from Harvard or Yale?

nrakich: 75 percent.

micah: Not me. I barely graduated from college.

perry: I think I object to this framing too. I, a black person from a working-class area in Louisville, got on the path to get this job in large part because I went to Yale. That credential really helps in an elite field like this. I was not vacationing on Cape Cod as a kid.

julia_azari: I technically have three degrees from Yale (but a B.A. from a state school), so I’ll see myself to the guillotine.

micah: But Perry’s right that the standards are different.

perry: Here’s an idea: What if publications, instead of having a program of specifically hiring conservatives, had beats like rural policy, religion, regulation and family development. (I know there are some religion reporters, but maybe we need more of them and at every outlet.) That would diversify their coverage. Which is what I care about.

nrakich: I really like that idea.

julia_azari: That is an excellent idea.

perry: Part of this is how news organizations hire. “The race reporter” is maybe not going to be a conservative, but the religion reporter will understand how deep and sincere opposition to abortion is among religious conservatives.

micah: It would diversify coverage and expose a mostly cosmopolitan reporting force to new worlds — which probably would have some effect in making them more conservative, honestly.

julia_azari: This again is true about academia. People who write on religion and, say, the military are probably still often left of center, but they are a lot more sympathetic to certain perspectives than a randomly selected social scientist.

nrakich: This also goes to my resolution about local media.

micah: Yeah.

perry: Right, the rural reporter would be more likely to work in Iowa than Seattle.

micah: OK, we gotta move on to Julia’s.

julia_azari: My resolution is that we should be more attentive to power dynamics when we write.

micah: I like this one.

julia_azari: This is a set of growing pains that academia had to deal with and still does — primarily that when you write about someone, you attain a certain power to tell their story. How do you do rigorous work while simultaneously allowing people to tell their own stories? This set of questions is really for writing about people who are marginalized, not for reporting on powerful officials.

How would we want to be written about if we were the subject of the story? Is it respectful?

But also I need to slag on WaPo.

micah: Haha … go on.

julia_azari: This piece — about white workers who feel like they’re in the minority working at a chicken plant — got a lot of pushback (some of which the Post published).

This is the kind of story where you need to tread a delicate line between letting people tell their stories as they see them and questioning concepts like the sense of entitlement to be in the majority or surrounded by people who share your language.

So you want to ask multidimensional questions about what kinds of power different people have.

perry: My objection to that piece is that I think its genesis was an attempt at balance — i.e, “if we do stories about how ICE mistreats some undocumented immigrants,” we need to do this one too. The subtext is: “Conservatives/whites/rural people have problems too.”

julia_azari: I read it more sinisterly than that, to be honest. I read it as centering white perspectives in a way that was worse than both-sidesism.

micah: Julia, are there concrete things that journalists can do to better account for power dynamics? I just worry “think about power dynamics” is hard to put into action?

julia_azari: I’m an academic, as we said at the top. I don’t do “action.”

micah: Haha.

OK, we gotta wrap.

I had a couple, but maybe we don’t have time.

perry: I would love to hear them

Maybe we quickly weigh in on them?

micah: OK, real quick …

micah: 1. Do a better job. I don’t mean this flippantly. A huge share of journalism is sloppy or ill-conceived or surface-level. Much of that is unintentional or seemingly unavoidable — deadlines, resources, etc. But not all those factors are set in stone. I’m pretty sure that newsrooms could put in place some incentives to just improve the quality of their work by, say, 30 percent.

nrakich: Employ fact-checkers! We have a phenomenal copy desk (hi, guys!). Other places I’ve written for haven’t had nearly as stringent a fact-checking layer in the editing process.

micah: 2. Be more transparent. This is really the big one for me. Treat the reader/viewer as an equal, explain how you’re doing the work you’re doing. Explain what assumptions you’re making and what you don’t know.

perry: Endorse both of Micah’s

julia_azari: Same!

perry: No. 1 is hard to define, but I see bad work all the time (and produce some of it myself). And I just wish editors were stepping in more at times.

nrakich: As for No. 2, I agree, obviously. I feel like the mindset for a lot of places is to be the “expert” and insist to their readers that they know what they’re doing, even if they’re a lot less sure themselves. I agree that it’s OK to say, “Hey, we’re not sure about X, but maybe it’s a thing?”

julia_azari: Agreed.

nrakich: As we like to say here at FiveThirtyEight, get comfortable with uncertainty.

Not every article has to come to a firm conclusion.

micah: Being able to say “we’re not sure about this” is a huge advantage, and — going back to No. 1 — removes an incentive that pushes people toward crappy work.

Also, more transparency shows readers/viewers that we’re just people trying to do a job.

julia_azari: Can I add something to kinda maybe answer the “what do we do about power dynamics” question?

micah: Take us home, Julia.

julia_azari: Warm, fuzzy feature pieces need more analytical framework, IMO. Why has employment changed in certain circumstances? How does the rate of immigrants in community X compare to surrounding ones?

Put people’s stories into a more structural context, highlighting how something like state budgets or other policies might affect what people are facing. Framing a piece like a biography puts too much emphasis on both individual experience and individual responsibility for circumstances. These are part of bigger — and often more technical — stories. I’m not saying that some journalists aren’t already doing this, but in my opinion, some of the stock frames for pieces need an update.

If that makes any sense.

You have a lot of efforts to humanize policy. Maybe policy-ize humanity.