Madison Metricula

By more than two to one, men say that it is harder to be a man today compared with their father’s generation–and a number of the reasons focused on changes in their relationships with women.

This is just one of the insights from a recent Hart Research Associates poll for the Shriver Report Snapshot: An Insight Into the 21st Century Man. The online survey was conducted among 818 men 18 and older.

Eighty-five percent of men say they are clear in their role in society today, but 45% say it is harder to be a man today compared to their father’s generation, while just 20% say it is easier to be a man today (35% say it is no easier or harder). For those who say it is harder to be a man, a number of the most common reasons stem from changes in relationships with women, including that women are in a stronger position in the workplace and financially; men are taking on a greater share of household responsibilities; and more demands are being placed on men.

While the old mold in male-female relationships has been broken, it’s clear that the new shape has yet to set. Sixty-three percent of men say they are very comfortable living with or being married to a woman who works outside the home, and 51% are very comfortable with a female partner earning more money than they do. But 56% of men agree, generally speaking, that men are more concerned about making good impressions and earning the respect of other men than earning the respect of women.  And while a majority are very comfortable with their female partner working outside the home, just 24% of men said they would be very comfortable being a stay-at-home dad and not working outside the home.

These blurred lines and conflicted feelings about relationships with women are present in another way. Men were asked to select from a list of 10 terms the two or three qualities they deem most important in a wife or female partner. From the same list, they were asked to identify the most important qualities in their daughter when she grows up. Intelligence topped the list for a wife or female partner at 72% and for a daughter  at 81%. But the ranking of qualities on both lists diverge after this, sometimes with wide gaps. While 45% of men consider being attractive one of the most important qualities for their wife or female partner, just 11% said so for their daughter. Similarly, 34% specified being sweet as a key quality for a female partner, but just 19% said the same for a daughter. Conversely, men are much more likely to cite being independent (66% for daughter; 34% for wife/female partner) and strong (48% daughter, 28% wife/female partner) as most important qualities for a daughter.

Reading the survey as a whole, the qualities that men want most in a daughter–intelligent, independent, strong, and principled–are the qualities that help women thrive in the workplace. But this, in turn, is what men say has made it harder to be a man today.

Jeff Horwitt is a vice president at Hart Research Associates and is part of the polling team for the Wall Street Journal/NBC News Poll.  He is on Twitter: @jeffhorwitt.

ALSO IN THINK TANK:

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Marvel's Avengers 2 - Character Color Palettes [ Infographic ]

An umbilical cord is that thing that was connected to you in that place where you’ll now find your belly button, and we all used to have one. Thanks to introductory biology classes, I presume that level of umbilical cord awareness is fairly common. But let’s go a little deeper (on Wikipedia) and learn more about what the cord does, besides providing the inspiration for countless movie scenes where the woman giving birth in the backseat of the car is like, “HOW ARE YOU GONNA CUT THE UMBILICAL CORD??”

During prenatal development, the umbilical cord is physiologically and genetically part of the fetus and, (in humans), normally contains two arteries (the umbilical arteries) and one vein (the umbilical vein), buried within Wharton’s jelly.

Two arteries and one vein buried in some jelly. Got it. But what does it look like?

The cross-section looks like a :)! Simply put by a medical student, “the mouth is the umbilical vein carrying all the good stuff & the eyes are the arteries where your mom took care of your trash.” Here’s another, even more ecstatic look.

She’s serving some straight up Wharton’s Jelly realness with that :D! But it’s not all smiles when you’re that close to a placenta 24/7.

This “I’m over all this pumping and this fetus can’t even talk to me” look is more of a ;\.

For more cool faces that are responsible for pumping the essence of life into all fetuses, do some Googling. These two are my personal favorites.

Images via Flickr(Image 1/Image 2) and Wikipedia (altered to remove text)

Contact the author at bobby@jezebel.com.

Here's a question; if you could go back in time and kill Hitler - likely saving millions of lives - would you do it? Your answer, researchers were surprised to find, might depend on your gender.

New research published by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology suggests that, given such a question, men seem more willing to accept the need for harmful actions for the sake of the greater good than do women.

The Hitler question was among a range of moral questions asked of 6,100 people in a study conducted by U.S., Canadian and German researchers.

Although both men and women carefully considered the consequences of their potential decision, women said they found it harder to commit murder and were more likely to let Hitler survive, the study found.

"Women seem to be more likely to have this negative, emotional, gut-level reaction to causing harm to people in the dilemmas to the one person, whereas men were less likely to express this strong emotional reaction to harm," says lead research author Rebecca Friesdorf. A master's degree student in social psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Friesdorf analyzed 40 data sets from previous studies. 

In the study participants were asked 20 questions, all of them involving a moral dilemma centering on such things as murder, torture, abortion, lying or the morality of animal research.

An example was asking them to imagine being a member of a group of people hiding from soldiers and being handed a crying baby. Would they smother the child to save the group or let it live at the risk of the group being caught and likely killed?

The study considered two contrasting philosophical/ethical principles; utilitarianism, which says committing a harmful action is acceptable if it is for the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and deontology, which holds that breaking moral conventions as held by most people, even to secure a favorable future result, is wrong.

Women were more likely to fall into the deontology camp and agonize for a long time over a decision, while men were somewhat more likely to lean toward utilitarianism and make a quick decision, the researchers found.

That leads to a gender difference in making a moral decision, they say, with a stronger emotional aversion to harmful action being seen among women.

However, the study findings contradicted a common stereotype of women being less rational because they tend to be more emotional, Friesdorf says.

The study yielded no evidence of gender differences when it came to the rational evaluation of the outcomes of harmful actions.

The study findings lend support to previous research that found that while women tend to be more empathetic to feelings of other people than do men, gender differences in cognitive abilities tend to be small or even nonexistent, Friesdorf says.

The study was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

I am just about blogged out on the whole Puppygate thing, having devoted half a dozen posts and thousands of words to it over the past few days. However, Larry Correia responded to some of those posts on his own blog, MONSTER HUNTER NATION, as several dozen of his followers immediately emailed me to point out, and I promised to reply in turn. So here it is.

My original posts were long, and Mr. Correia's reply was long, and if quoted them all, and then piled more on top of it, all of Live Journal might sink beneath the weight. So I am going to cut out the stuff by me that Correia quotes, since the originals are all available upstream, and edit down his own reply to just the point I want to answer.

To make it clear who is speaking, I will set off Correia's statements with brackets and try to italicize them... though for some reason the italics on LJ have not been working well of late. We'll see if they work here.

Here goes.

[[CORREIA: When one of the most successful authors on the planet takes the time to talk about something you did, I figure that deserves an in depth response. I’ve got no direct line to Mr. Martin, but I am hoping that this will get back to him.]]

It did. Through several sources. I would have responded earlier, but as you can see, I have been busy posting about other aspects of this thing. But I do appreciate the response, andeven more so, the courtesy you have shown. It's my hope and belief that people on different sides of an issue can disagree, even heatedly, without it turning into rancor and namecalling. We are, after all, fighting about a literary award.

[[CORREIA: When I started this the Hugo Awards were not portrayed as the awards that belonged to WorldCon. They were portrayed as the awards that represented the best of all of fandom. After my first experience seeing how the sausage was made, I publically said the same thing you said there, that the Hugo Awards don’t represent all of fandom, they represent one tiny part of fandom. I was called a liar.]]

I would not call worldcon a "tiny part" of fandom. It's the core of fandom, the seed from which the whole thing grew. Until the mid-80s, it was the biggest and most important convention in the SF world. For people like me, it remains the most important to this day, though certainly not the biggest. The SMOFs who run worldcon made a conscious decision to slow down and even stop the growth, so as to preserve the unique character and flavor of worldcon, the sense of community, the "amateur status" if I might use a sports metaphor. It is not a decision I agree with, truth be told, but I respect their reasons. San Diego Comicon is great, but worldcon is great too, in a different way. The worldcon community did not want a con of 150,000 people, where fans had to wait in line for seven hours to get into a program item.

[[CORREIA: I too was nominated for the Campbell for Best New Writer. As a young, new writer, who had grown up reading the great ones, I was super excited by this incredible honor. See, I was born around when you got your Campbell nomination. I was one of those fans who grew up believing it when great authors said things like “this is your award” and “this award belongs to the fans, the readers”. Because I was naïve. I was overjoyed when I found out I’d been nominated. I was even dumb enough to think that I might have a chance. I had already read works from two of the other nominees and I knew that they were remarkable story tellers. I had read Wells and Beukes and knew the quality of their work was excellent. In any fair wordsmithing contest either could kick my ass, and I hadn’t even read Ahmed or Grossman yet, but if they were as good as the other two, then there would be a lot of quality works to choose from.]]

And indeed there was. That was one of the strongest Campbell fields in recent years.

[[CORREIA: But that’s the kicker… I hadn’t realized yet that for many voters it wasn’t about the quality of the work. Within a few days of the nominations being announced I not only knew that I was going to lose, I knew that I was going to be last place. Only it had absolutely nothing to do with my writing, but rather, who I was, and what I was.]]

Actually, I was pretty certain I was going to lose as well. I was up against George Alec Effinger, Lisa Tuttle, Ruth Berman, Bob Thurston, and Jerry Pournelle for that first Campbell, and everybody and their sister knew it was a race between Pournelle and Effinger, as indeed it proved to be. For me, though, it was an honor just to be nominated... to be recognized as one of the six best new writers of the preceding two years, out of dozens who had broken in during that period. Sure, I dreamed of winning... maybe I'd pull off the most stunning upset in Hugo history... but I was not the least bit surprised when I lost. They never released voting totals in those days, so I don't know if I finished third, fourth, fifth, or last. Didn't matter. What did matter was that the Campbell launched my career, just as it launched yours.

[[CORREIA: I know you remember when you were starting out, Mr. Martin, because you talk about it in this very post, that scrimping, saving, and sleeping on couches phase of your career, where you are desperate to get your work out there in front of people, to get any exposure at all, and I’m betting that you were always really excited to hear what readers had to say about your creations. Right?]]

Sure. Of course, we had no internet in 1973, no emails. I had to make do with a few passing comments in print fanzines, and the occasional encounter at a con with a fan who had actually read one of my stories. Egoboo (as we called it) was hard to come by in those days. I sold my first story in 1970, published it in 1971, went to my con that same year, lost the Campbell in 1973, lost my first Hugo and Nebula in 1974, won a Hugo in September 1975... but it was not until a couple of months later, at the 1975 Windycon, that I was finally deemed to be enough of a writer to be asked to sit on a convention panel. Paying our dues, we called it. Acclaim was hard to come by; it had to be earned, and earning it took YEARS.

[[CORREIA: I know I was. So I went out on the internet and started searching my name, trying to find out what the buzz was for the Campbell nominees. I started calling friends who belonged to various writer forums and organizations that I didn’t belong to, asking about what people thought of my books in there. You know what I found? WorldCon voters angry that a right-wing Republican (actually I’m a libertarian) who owned a gun store (gasp) was nominated for the prestigious Campbell. This is terrible. Did you know he did lobbying for gun rights! It’s right there on his hateful blog of hatey hate hate! He’s awful. He’s a bad person. He’s a Mormon! What! Another damned Mormon! Oh no, there are two Mormons up for the Campbell? I bet Larry Correia hates women and gays. He’s probably a racist too. Did you know he’s part of the evil military industrial complex? What a jerk. Meanwhile, I’m like, but did they like my books?
No. Hardly any of them had actually read my books yet. Many were proud to brag about how they wouldn’t read my books, because badthink, and you shouldn’t have to read books that you know are going to make you angry. A handful of people claimed to have my read my books, but they assured the others that they were safe to put me last, because as expected for a shit person, my words were shit, and so they were good people to treat me like shit.]]

I don't condone treating anyone like shit. And I have never been a Mormon or a conservative or a gun-shop owner, so I don't know what that is like. But I do wonder... you say you were called a liar, that people were angry with you for being who you were, that they said not to read your books... well, no need to paraphrase, you just said it all. But WHO called you a liar? How many people said this stuff, where, in what context? One person, ten people, a hundred?

I don't doubt you got some criticism, that people took shots (no pun intended) at you... but fandom is large, even worldcon fandom. There are always assholes. No doubt they were there in 1973 as well, in that first Campbell race. I mean, have there ever been two contenders as opposite as Pournelle and Effinger? That was a classic Old Wave/ New Wave showdown, with us other nominees just caught in the crossfire. However, the internet did not exist to magnify it all, and most of the sniping went on in room parties, with no permanent record of the drunken debates. I am not sure that what you suffered was any worse than what they did, way back when.

Also, all these things that people said about you... are those direct quotes, or are you paraphrasing? Because it seems to me that the Sad Puppies love to paraphrase, taking any challenge or criticism and tweaking it around to make it more offensive and insulting. Take this "Wrongfan" moniker I now see popping up on Puppy sites. Neither I nor any of the other SMOFs or trufans or worldconners that I know have ever called you or your friends "wrongfans." You guys made that up and applied it to yourself. I wish that would stop. People are saying enough hurtful shit in this debate already without making up new insults and suggesting that the other side was throwing them at you.

[[CORREIA: Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not lumping all of the WorldCon voters in with that perpetually outraged, politically motivated clique. I know plenty of voters read my books and just didn’t think they were as good as the people I was up against. Awesome. I salute you for you being an honest person with an honest opinion, and let’s face it, people have different tastes. But don’t tell me now that the Hugos don’t have whisper campaigns…]]

I really have no idea what you mean by a "whisper campaign." You make it sound so sinister. Do people talk about books and writers? Sure they do. (They used to do it more. These days, con suite debates are more likely to be about movies than novels). But nobody is whispering. Fans don't whisper. Fans are loud-mouthed and opinionated. And yeah, sometimes rude. "Have you read that new novel by X?" "Yeah, I tried it, but Z is better." "Z? You're kidding. Z is shit." And so on, and so forth. Sometimes they tone it down if X and Z are in the room, but not always.

[[CORREIA: Then I went to my very first WorldCon. Mr. Martin, you talked about your positive, joyous experiences at WorldCon. How you were welcomed as a peer, about how you had all these great, wonderful, memorable experiences. But I’m betting before your first WorldCon a whole bunch of malignant lying bastards didn’t spread the word to thousands of complete strangers that you were a racist, sexist, homophobic warmonger who deserved to be shunned.]]

You'd win that bet. Nobody said much of anything about me before my first Worldcon, because no one had any idea who I was. I was pretty much an invisible person at that con. I had been to one earlier con, and I knew maybe half a dozen people. I spent much of that con standing quietly in corners, trying to look interesting so people would talk to me. Oh, yes, there were a few people who were terrific, friendly, welcoming -- Gardner Dozois, Terry Carr, Phyllis and Alex Eisenstein --but you could count them on the fingers on one hand. Nobody rolled out the red carpet for me. Nobody gave two shits that I was a Campbell Award finalist. So we all have our traumas, Mr. Correia.

[[CORREIA: I met many wonderful people at that WorldCon. I also had many people treat me like garbage. I was berated by other panelists. I had people get up and leave the room when I entered. I had belligerent drunks challenging me at room parties because “Oh, it’s that fucker”.]]

How many belligerent drunks? One? Two? Ten? I think it matters. You say that you were "berated" by other panelists... but panels at SF cons do often become loud and heated, it is not at all unusual. I doubt any special malice was directed at you. WHat was the panel topic? Who was on it? Who berated you? With what words? Is it possible that you were berating the other panelists back? I am not trying to call you a liar, Mr. Correia, but... Some people love to argue, some don't. Some take disagreement to mean disrespect. Some are thin-skinned. I don't know you well enough to know where you fall in respect of all that. Must admit, I would be curious to see this panel. Many worldcons videotape their programming. It would be fascinating to see the tape of your Reno panel, to get a better idea of who said what.

[[CORREIA: A lot of people will tell you now that I bring this upon myself, because I am rude and abrasive on the internet now. Yes. Now. But back then I was still trying to play it cool, and didn’t think I could have a successful career if I made the wrong people angry. It wasn’t until after that WorldCon that I said screw it, they’re going to hate me anyway, might as well state my honest opinions. So I mostly hung out with the Barflies, because they were cool. But I can hang out with Barflies at fifty other cons where I’m not assumed to be the second coming of Hitler because the internet said so. And while I hung out with them, I got to hear how many of them were shunned for various reasons too.]]

I don't know who the Barflies are. Do you just mean you hung out in the bar? Lots of people hang out in the bar at a con, I was not aware there was a specific group. You can always find lots of writers in the bar, usually around some editor who is buying the drinks.

[[CORREIA: Then I went to the award ceremony, and the parties, and the various schmoozefests, and I discovered that the Hugo Awards were like one great big In Joke. And the cool kids told their cool stories to the other cool kids, and lorded it over those who weren’t part of the In Joke. Honestly, it reminded me of high school, and I was the poor fat kid who had inadvertently pissed off the mean girls.]]

Come on, Larry. The cool kids? Surely you have been around fandom long enough to realize that there are no cool kids. We're all the fat kids, the nerds, the computer geeks, the guys who always had their nose in a book, who loved comics and played chess and couldn't get a date for a prom. And the girls are the geek girls, our female counterparts.

[[CORREIA: Then I got to meet and hang out with a whole bunch of authors, artists, and creators who spent most of the con bitching about how broken and biased the Hugos were. Some of these were old school, and got the In Jokes. Some were so talented, so famous, so successful, that it blew my mind that here they were at dinner, pissed off and angry that they knew they would never get any sort of consideration.]]

Did you go to the Hugo Losers Party? That's become an offical con thing now, and the SMOFs have taken it over and made it stuffy and semi-formal, with door dragons deciding who gets in (but as a Campbell loser, you would certainly have been on the list. Gardner Dozois and I founded that party in 1976, the night after I'd lost two Hugos. The whole point was to get drunk and bitter and bitch and tell each other we'd been robbed. We had a little contest, each of us insisting "I am a bigger loser, because... " It was all in good fun. People who get honestly for real pissed off about losing Hugos... no, man, really, that's no good. Fake bitter takes the sting out of losing. Real bitter poisons everything.

[[CORREIA: After the awards were over and all the cool kids patted each other on the back about how brilliant they were, and everything shook out pretty much exactly how everybody predicted it would anyway, they released the actual numbers for nominations and votes, and I discovered just how freaking tiny the number of people involved in this supposedly most prestigious award in the world was. The winners were those who played the game, and as I sat there with the losers, I watched the game already being played for next year. As an author, I was sad. As a fan, I was disgusted. But as an auditor, I marveled at how something so statistically insignificant could be taken so seriously.]]

It's history that gives the Hugos their prestige, not statistics. I believe I made that point at some length in my first post, so I won't repeat myself.

[[CORREIA: That was my first exposure to how the process really worked. So I went home, dejected. And when I openly spoke about my experience, and I said pretty much exactly what you just said there, Mr. Martin, that the awards don’t represent all of fandom, and that they just represent one tiny, insular, clique of fandom… I was called a liar. I was attacked all over again. I was told it was just sour grapes from a loser, but what could you expect from a shit writer, making shit product?]]

Okay, these are some strong statements, and I have to ask once again, is it possible that some of this is wounded feelings and hyperbole? Were you actually called "a liar," or did someone just claim your statement was untrue? Big difference there. Were you "attacked," or did people just disagree with you? Did someone actually use the words "shit writer" and "shit product?" Or is this just more "wrongfan" stuff, where someone says something critical, and it gets turned all the way up to eleven on the offensiveness scale?

[[CORREIA: The Hugos represent greatness, worthiness, and all of fandom. WorldCon is inclusive. How dare you question it? So I said I would prove it, and I did.]]

You didn't, though. At least I do not believe you did. I am not calling you a liar, I am just saying that I believe that statement to be false. In fact, I think my own "Where's the Beef?" blog post pretty well demolished the Sad Puppy claims. Your supporters may not think so. Does that mean they are calling me a liar? My supporters think I was totally convincing, so...

[[CORREIA: I am many terrible things, but dishonest is not one of them. Let me clarify something, because I have been personally attacked for this for three years now. Yes, like most authors I dreamed of winning a Hugo, because I was very naïve. In the past I did very much want to win a Hugo. Just like I was dumb enough for a couple days to think that I might actually have a shot at winning a Campbell. However, I know that I will not ever win a Hugo. I’m way too good at statistical analysis. I had a snowball’s chance in hell before I upset the apple cart and made myself radioactive to the typical WorldCon voter.]]

I wish I could disagree with that, but I won't. I am not dishonest either. You're right, Mr. Correia. You will never win a Hugo. Whether you could have won one before the Sad Puppies, well, I don't know, but now, it is true, you have pissed way too many people off. On the other hand, you know, there are many terrific writers in the history of our genre who have never won a Hugo. Your friend Brad Torgersen has his little list, and I have my own, and the names on his list and the names on mine are very different. Doesn't mean there is a secret conspiracy. All it means is that tastes differ.

[[CORREIA: Not only did I know going into this that I would never win a Hugo, I also knew that I was going to make myself a target, and that I would be slandered, threatened, and have my career sabotaged. But I still did it anyway.]]

Has your career been sabotaged? From reading Monster Hunter Nation, it seems as if your career is going rather well. You're on the TIMES bestseller list, are you not? I know a hundred writers in this field, damn good writers, hard-working and talented, who would love to have their careers sabotaged so that they could be on bestseller lists too.

[[CORREIA: I got a nomination for my novel Warbound last year. The people I’m trying to expose rose to the occasion, formed lynch mobs and started attacking. I got a nomination again this year, for my novel Monster Hunter Nemesis, but I refused the nomination, specifically to prove that this isn’t about me wanting a Hugo. Apparently that still isn’t enough. Allow me to demonstrate my conviction, and state for the record that I will never accept a Hugo award nomination for myself. However, I will continue to assist other authors who I believe have been unfairly blacklisted and shunned get theirs.]]

I try to assist other authors (and artists, and filmmakers, and fan writers) as well, by recommending their works on my Not A Blog. Sometimes it works. More often it does not. If you do the same thing, I doubt anyone will have a problem with it. The backlash you are getting now is because you went way beyond that. Yes, all completely legal... but your campaign, your slate tactics, did not just get some authors you overlooked onto the ballot, it pretty much drove everyone else off the ballot. In the three short fiction categories, there are no choices but your choices (well, yours, and Brad Torgersen's, and Vox Day's). You say you just wanted a seat at the table. But you kicked over the table, and took ALL the seats.

And please, please, don't say that was what was done to your side in prior years. I think I demonstrated in "Where's the Beef?" that that claim is simply not true. There have always been plenty of writers and stories that the Puppies should have liked on the ballot every year. If you think that's untrue, please give me chapter and verse, with specific references to the ballots for Reno, Chicon, and LoneStarCon. Let's at least see where we disagree.

[[CORREIA: While WorldCon complains of the shrinking and greying of fandom, Salt Lake City ComicCon has been around for 2 years and has 150,000 attendees.]]

Comicons -- which are really media cons, rather than just being about comics -- are bigger than SF cons, that's been true since the mid 80s.

[[CORREIA: For some people, books might not be their primary fannish outlet, but they still read books. Just because somebody plays Dragon Age or the Witcher doesn’t mean they don’t read fantasy novels too. Heck, I believe Halo tie in novels are some of the bestselling books in scifi. If somebody was introduced to fantasy by watching Game of Thrones on HBO, and then they bought and read all your books, discovered they liked fantasy and read other books, and they thought some are awesome and deserving of an award, are they somehow lesser fans on the scales of fandom because they don’t know WorldCon trivia?]]

Worldcon is a community. FIAWOL. I don't regard that as trivial. We welcome newcomers, but yes, the hope is that they will embrace our history and traditions and culture, not just our awards. It's a proud history and a rich culture. Some of it is silly, sure, but we even love that silliness. Some of it, like the Hugo awards, we take very seriously.

[[CORREIA: The barbaric outsiders shelling out their $40 to get involved now grew up being told that the Hugos were it, the Big Deal, the best of the best, and like me, they were naïve enough to believe it for a long time.]]

So far as I'm concerned, the Hugos are the Big Deal still. There's no other award in the field with half as distinguished a list of previous winners. The Nebulas challenged for a time, but now they are a distant second.

[[CORREIA: Yet, as the Hugos became increasingly politically skewed in one direction, people can now admit that is because they reflected WorldCon, not all of Fandom, only for all these years Fandom were the ones being told that they were dumb for liking the wrong things. They were wrongfan having wrongfun.]]

Your terms. Neither I nor anyone on my side of this debate ever called anyone "wrongfans."

[[CORREIA: Why do the many people involved in the Sad Puppies campaign seem to hate WorldCon? Because the SJW crowd (I know you don’t like that term, but it is the appropriate one to use here) hates my kind of fan, actively and routinely attacks my kind of fan, and calls them racist, sexist, homophobes without evidence, all day, every day. I know the SJWs are only one small clique at WorldCon, however they are the loudest and the meanest. And sadly, the moderate, rational, normal WorldCon folks rarely seem to condemn them for their antics. So from over here on the Sad Puppies side, they take your silence and lack of condemnation against the hate mongers as tacit approval, and then they tend to lump you together.]]

Perhaps. Maybe there is altogether too much "lumping together" on both sides. From over here, on the other side, it seems as though the "moderate, rational, normal" conservatives rarely seem to condemn the Vox Days and Rabid Puppies on your side, so we take your silence and lack of condemnation against the hate mongers as tacit approval.

[[CORREIA: WorldCon claims to be inclusive, but scroll through the various comments threads on the various fan blogs on my side of the fence and get their perspective sometime. SFWA also claims to be welcoming, inclusive, and apolitical, but again, read how they are really perceived by many. Snobbish, snooty, bossy, self-righteous, etc. Don’t take my word for it—you know I’m terribly biased—but ask them yourself.]]

SFWA can be maddening at times, but it has done an enormous amount of good over the half century of its existance. It is "snobbish" only in the sense that it excludes amateurs and wannabees; it is professional writer's organization, not a fan club. And it is run by unpaid volunteers, much as worldcon is. Having served as a SFWA officer, I can tell you, there's a lot of work involved; work on behalf of fellow writers. I don't agree with everything SFWA does, but I applaud everyone who has given of themselves to work and fight for other writers.

[[CORREIA: Hypothetical question, if Robert Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers in 2014, could he get on the Hugo ballot now? Or would he be labeled a fascist with troubling ideas, and a product of the neo-colonial patriarchy? And before you dismiss that question, maybe you should read up on what the voting clique that shall not be named says about Heinlein now. Sadly, I suspect the only way Heinlein could get on the ballot today would be if my horde of uncouth barbarian outsiders got involved and put him on our suggested slate.]]

Kind of ironic that you should bring up Heinlein, since it was the Puppy slate that knocked William Patterson's Heinlein biography off the Related Works shortlist this year. But to answer your question, I don't think Heinlein would write STARSHIP TROOPERS in 2014. If you know Heinlein, you know that he was a man who changed with the times throughout his career. He was always trying new things, new techniques, new challenges... and his political views changed HUGELY over his lifetime. He wrote much of STARSHIP TROOPERS and STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND at the same time, yet one book is beloved of conservative military buffs while the other became a hippie bible. I have no idea what he would be writing in 2014... but if he were still at the top of his form, I would love to read it.

[[CORREIA: Yes, I do get angry, and yes, I have said some very mean things as part of that. I know you’re not looking for excuses, Mr. Martin, but I’m a little nobody, no name, hack author, who sells a tiny fraction as many books as you do, who had the bright idea to expose the bias in a biased system. As a result I’ve had people who know better spread the vilest lies about me you can imagine, and even when they know it is a lie, they have continued. For five years, nobody on your side said a damned thing about tone when I was the one being labeled a hatemonger, or a “rape apologist” by disingenuous SFWA presidents, or they were using fabricated “scare quotes” to show I was a homophobic woman hater in the Guardian. So, yeah, I’m angry. When people who haven’t talked to my wife since high school reach out to her, worried for her safety, because they read about how her husband is a wife beater, I get angry. Right now in about 50 blogs going out to I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of people, the narrative is that I’m an angry white man, trying to keep scifi straight and white and male.]]

There is no excuse for any of that. I tried to speak to some of these issues in my blog post called "Hatespeech." Too much of this kind of shit is flying across the internet in both directions, and I don't think any good whatsoever is served by debates about who flung the first shit, or who flung the most shit, or who flung the smelliest shit.

More and more, I grow convinced that the internet is toxic. Every controversy brings out the trolls and toads, of every political, religious, and literary persuasion, most of them anonymous, all of them venomous. You can't control the assholes on your side and I can't control the assholes on my side. I fear we will both just have to live with that.

[[CORREIA: You know the most heartening things I’ve seen this week are? Writers who are my polar political opposites finally standing up and saying things like yes, Larry Coreia is an asshole, but he’s not any of these horrible things you are accusing him of, or yes, Larry Correia is an asshole, but please quit threatening to kill him and his entire family. That’s been nice.]]

Nice, sure. Basic human decency, really. It is grotesque how you cannot have any sort of discussion on the internet without rape threats and death threats coming into it. Makes me despair for our civilization. Hell, I ever see these things on sports blogs.

[[CORREIA: So thank you for calling for civility.]]

And back at you.

[[CORREIA: LOCUS I think it has like 40 or 50 books but ZERO from Baen (a publishing house that gets a bad rap because it is willing to publish any author regardless of their politics, from capital L Libertarians to card carrying Communists as long as they can tell a good story).]]

Do you think that makes Baen unique? It does amuse that so many of your Sad Puppies seem to revere Baen Books and despise Tor Books, which reveals an astonishing ignorance of publishing. Both Baen and Tor were financed by the same guy, Tom Doherty. You know who the first editor was at Tor? Jim Baen. Tor publishes your Puppy favorite, John C. Wright. Kevin Anderson too, I believe. And Baen published liberals... me, for instance. I knew Jim Baen. He was well to the right of you, I suspect, and we had nothing in common politically, but TUF VOYAGING made money for him, and that was all he cared about. But if you think that's unique to Baen, you are wrong. Editors may be political, but the companies they work for only care about the bottom line. Bill Mayer, Rush Limbaugh, Hillary Clinton, Bill O'Reilly, Rachel Maddow... they will publish all of them, so long as they sell.

[[CORREIA: Yes, there were competing cliques, but the only cliques who mattered all looked virtually identical to us outsiders looking in. And hardly anything they ever nominated represented anything we liked. To most of us barbarian wrongfans, the competing cliques were indistinguishable from one another. For example, correct me if I’m wrong but I believe with last year’s winners, every single one shared similar political viewpoints. And all but one of them was white, yet that year was hailed as a huge win for diversity. You need to see this from Wrongfan’s perspective. You guys had competing cliques, but to us it was like an Eskimo having a thousand different words for snow, and you can tell us about your many diverse and wonderful types of snow, but all we saw was snow.]]

Come on. Really? Look at the LoneStarCon ballot, the last before the Sad Puppies really began to have an impact. John Scalzi and Lois McMaster Bujold. Indistinguishable from one another? Can't tell Brandon Sanderson from Saladin Ahmed? Jay Lake and Kim Stanley Robinson? Ken Liu and Pat Cadigan, identical snowflakes? How about the editors? Stanley Schmidt of ANALOG and Sheila Williams of ASIMOV's, do you imagine they had the same taste, published the same stories? In long form editor, you had Toni Weisskopf, a Puppy favorite, against Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who your Puppies love to hate, with Sheila Gilbert of DAW thrown in as well, plus Lou Anders and Liza Gorinsky. All just snow? I mean, if you say so... but I see a feast there, a table laid out with all sorts of different meats and fruits and cheeses. Diversity all over the place.

[[CORREIA: And in recent years when we looked at the ballots it was like, awesome, let’s choose between these five items of approved socially conscious message fiction. Yay! We’ve got selections from: religious people are stupid bigots, capitalists are raping the earth, capitalists are stupid bigots, bigots are stupid, and I’m not quite sure what the hell this last thing is about and I’m not even sure if it qualifies as fantasy or scifi but it has bigots in it… Oh man, tough call.]]

That made me laugh, I admit. Very funny... but it's all hyperbole and sweeping generalization. I don't recognize any of those characterizations. Which book was "bigots are stupid?" Which one was "capitalists are stupid bigots?" Can you slap name tags on these straw men?

[[CORREIA: I don’t want to be Hugo Pope.]]

Oh, good. That big pointy hat wouldn't look good on you.

[{CORREIA: Last year I didn't do anything different than what was listed above. I talked about it on my blog. I tried to motivate and rally people to get involved. I plugged stuff I liked. And all of a sudden there was a little clique of Wrongfan nominating for LonCon, just big enough to get one item into every category. We were no different than the other above mentioned subfandoms. Yet, somehow, when I did that, I was a filthy villain, breaking all the rules, with no respect for tradition. Just as I predicted, there was a wrathful terrible public backlash from the clique which shall not be named, and even though I went into it knowing that none of us would actually win, once the final results came in, the leaders of the clique which shall not be named out of respect for Mr. Martin, moved the goal posts, and danced in our blood. Articles were written about how these horrible racist hate mongers were soundly driven from the sainted halls of WorldCon. Back beneath your rock, foul barbarians! And anyone who supported Sad Puppies was motivated by racism! Booooooo!]]

I think that once again you are paraphrasing and turning the insult dial up to eleven. I will agree that there was a backlash. Permit me to suggest that much of the negative press you got derived from the fact that one of the stories you placed on the ballot was that novelette by Vox Day, who was already infamous by that point because of his attack on Nora Jemison, his run for SFWA president, and his expulsion from that organization. Here we are back again to the "lumping together" we discussed earlier. Had Vox Day not been on your ticket, I suspect the backlash would not have been a tenth as vociferous as it was. Imagine, for example, that there had been a "SJW" slate the same year, and that they had gotten half a dozen stories on the ballot, but one of those had been by Requires Hate? (Actually, of course, Hate was nominated for the Campbell, but under a pseudonym). The lashback would have been just as nasty. In your case, it did not help that the Day story was terrible. Your public platform was all about restoring "quality" to the Hugos, and yet one of your standard bearers was the worst piece of writing on the ballot. (In my opinion, of course. All of this is opinion).

[[CORREIA: To be perfectly frank, some things changed between LonCon and SasQuan. I’d proved my point about the bias and attacks, and was ready to hang it up. They poked the bear, the bear mauled them, and now the bear just wanted to go back to his cave and be left alone. But Brad Torgersen is an idealist, Mr. Martin, I can’t accentuate this enough. He would be dead in Westeros in fifteen minutes. Brad is TruFan. That man waves his nerd flag high. He looks at the Hugo with adoration like it is some sort of religious icon with a halo around it. He prays to his altar of Saint Heinlein 3 times a day and lights candles for Frank Herbert. If I was naïve at first, Brad makes me look… hell… I don’t even have a good comparison. So when he grew up hearing that the Hugos represented the Best of the Best, bright shining light on the hill, he incorporated that into the very fiber of his being... At that point Sad Puppies was no longer just about proving a point. It was about giving a voice to a whole mess of fans who didn’t think they would ever have one again. The mission changed, and it became about getting deserving worthy creators who would normally be shunned or ignored some freaking recognition for once in their lives. It was time to stand up to the clique that shall not be named and their lectures about how we were having wrongfun. Unlike the existing cliques, Sad Puppies 3 didn’t give a damn about politics, race, religion, or orientation. All we cared about was could they tell us a damned good story.]]

Got it. Politics, race, religion, and sexual orientation, OUT. Damned good stories, IN. And for this year's Damned Good Story standard bearer, you chose... John C. Wright SIX TIMES!!! John C. Wright, a writer famed far and wide for having no opinions on politics, race, religion, or sexual orientation, and would never dream of injecting such messages into his Damned Good Stories. Because, after all, the Puppies get sad when they are made to read Message Fiction.

So Wright is in, and who is out? James S.A. Corey. Emily St. John Mandel. John Scalzi (of course). THREE BODY PROBLEM. Joe Abercrombie. Larry Niven. Greg Bear. Daniel Abraham. John Varley. William Gibson. Joe Haldeman. Greg Benford. Lev Grossman. Stephen King. No damned good stories there. I guess. No real science fiction, no exciting fantasy, nothing entertaining or commercial, just pretentious left-wing literary crap, right?

[[CORREIA: If the people attacking us don’t chill out, more of my people are going to get pissed off, and it might hit a 12 or 13 next year. :)]]

OH, believe me, I know. And we'll go right up to 13 with you. And Vox Day and his band of not-so-merry-men will go right to 23. And then the Hugos will pretty much be dead, and the world of science fiction will be that much the poorer.

[[CORREIA: If you want to talk about going forward, from here, I don’t know what to tell you about your campaigning cliques. They were already there long before we showed up. But you really want to “fix it” and make sure my people don’t screw it up anymore, and keep the Hugos sacred? Well, right now the ball is in your court. You’ve got people out there who supposedly love the award so much that they are organizing block votes for No Award against absurdly deserving yet consistently overlooked people like Jim Butcher, Toni Weisskopf, and Kevin J. Anderson, all to burn the whole thing down, just because my people violated your secret gentleman’s agreement and plugged them on a slate.]]

I have already posted about my opposition to the various NO AWARD strategies. I hope that NO AWARD will not sweep the board top to bottom. My best guess right now is that it won't, but there is a good chance that NO AWARD will take all the "All Puppy" categories, the three short fiction categories and Best Related Book. No one really knows, of course. We are all in uncharted territory here.

[[CORREIA: I think you will find that the people who are involved with Sad Puppies are willing to talk about the future, but we are very tired of being yelled at and lied about. No matter what happens, whether you like the term for them or not, you guys need to calm your SJWs down, and tell them to quit forming angry twitter mobs, and scaring the hell out of authors who cross their invisible lines.]]

If I could clap my hands and make everybody play nice, I would, but I do not have that superpower. But it is interesting that you talk about "scaring the hell out of authors" on your side. Fear is a big part of this. People on the other side of the fence are scared as well, and when people are afraid, they lash out. Both sides here feel they are being attacked, and the war of words just seems to keep escalating, and all that can come of that is mutually assured destruction.

I like to think the Hugo represents a starship, not a nuclear missile.

I am just about blogged out on the whole Puppygate thing, having devoted half a dozen posts and thousands of words to it over the past few days. However, Larry Correia responded to some of those posts on his own blog, MONSTER HUNTER NATION, as several dozen of his followers immediately emailed me to point out, and I promised to reply in turn. So here it is.

My original posts were long, and Mr. Correia's reply was long, and if quoted them all, and then piled more on top of it, all of Live Journal might sink beneath the weight. So I am going to cut out the stuff by me that Correia quotes, since the originals are all available upstream, and edit down his own reply to just the point I want to answer.

To make it clear who is speaking, I will set off Correia's statements with brackets and try to italicize them... though for some reason the italics on LJ have not been working well of late. We'll see if they work here.

Here goes.

[[CORREIA: When one of the most successful authors on the planet takes the time to talk about something you did, I figure that deserves an in depth response. I’ve got no direct line to Mr. Martin, but I am hoping that this will get back to him.]]

It did. Through several sources. I would have responded earlier, but as you can see, I have been busy posting about other aspects of this thing. But I do appreciate the response, andeven more so, the courtesy you have shown. It's my hope and belief that people on different sides of an issue can disagree, even heatedly, without it turning into rancor and namecalling. We are, after all, fighting about a literary award.

[[CORREIA: When I started this the Hugo Awards were not portrayed as the awards that belonged to WorldCon. They were portrayed as the awards that represented the best of all of fandom. After my first experience seeing how the sausage was made, I publically said the same thing you said there, that the Hugo Awards don’t represent all of fandom, they represent one tiny part of fandom. I was called a liar.]]

I would not call worldcon a "tiny part" of fandom. It's the core of fandom, the seed from which the whole thing grew. Until the mid-80s, it was the biggest and most important convention in the SF world. For people like me, it remains the most important to this day, though certainly not the biggest. The SMOFs who run worldcon made a conscious decision to slow down and even stop the growth, so as to preserve the unique character and flavor of worldcon, the sense of community, the "amateur status" if I might use a sports metaphor. It is not a decision I agree with, truth be told, but I respect their reasons. San Diego Comicon is great, but worldcon is great too, in a different way. The worldcon community did not want a con of 150,000 people, where fans had to wait in line for seven hours to get into a program item.

[[CORREIA: I too was nominated for the Campbell for Best New Writer. As a young, new writer, who had grown up reading the great ones, I was super excited by this incredible honor. See, I was born around when you got your Campbell nomination. I was one of those fans who grew up believing it when great authors said things like “this is your award” and “this award belongs to the fans, the readers”. Because I was naïve. I was overjoyed when I found out I’d been nominated. I was even dumb enough to think that I might have a chance. I had already read works from two of the other nominees and I knew that they were remarkable story tellers. I had read Wells and Beukes and knew the quality of their work was excellent. In any fair wordsmithing contest either could kick my ass, and I hadn’t even read Ahmed or Grossman yet, but if they were as good as the other two, then there would be a lot of quality works to choose from.]]

And indeed there was. That was one of the strongest Campbell fields in recent years.

[[CORREIA: But that’s the kicker… I hadn’t realized yet that for many voters it wasn’t about the quality of the work. Within a few days of the nominations being announced I not only knew that I was going to lose, I knew that I was going to be last place. Only it had absolutely nothing to do with my writing, but rather, who I was, and what I was.]]

Actually, I was pretty certain I was going to lose as well. I was up against George Alec Effinger, Lisa Tuttle, Ruth Berman, Bob Thurston, and Jerry Pournelle for that first Campbell, and everybody and their sister knew it was a race between Pournelle and Effinger, as indeed it proved to be. For me, though, it was an honor just to be nominated... to be recognized as one of the six best new writers of the preceding two years, out of dozens who had broken in during that period. Sure, I dreamed of winning... maybe I'd pull off the most stunning upset in Hugo history... but I was not the least bit surprised when I lost. They never released voting totals in those days, so I don't know if I finished third, fourth, fifth, or last. Didn't matter. What did matter was that the Campbell launched my career, just as it launched yours.

[[CORREIA: I know you remember when you were starting out, Mr. Martin, because you talk about it in this very post, that scrimping, saving, and sleeping on couches phase of your career, where you are desperate to get your work out there in front of people, to get any exposure at all, and I’m betting that you were always really excited to hear what readers had to say about your creations. Right?]]

Sure. Of course, we had no internet in 1973, no emails. I had to make do with a few passing comments in print fanzines, and the occasional encounter at a con with a fan who had actually read one of my stories. Egoboo (as we called it) was hard to come by in those days. I sold my first story in 1970, published it in 1971, went to my con that same year, lost the Campbell in 1973, lost my first Hugo and Nebula in 1974, won a Hugo in September 1975... but it was not until a couple of months later, at the 1975 Windycon, that I was finally deemed to be enough of a writer to be asked to sit on a convention panel. Paying our dues, we called it. Acclaim was hard to come by; it had to be earned, and earning it took YEARS.

[[CORREIA: I know I was. So I went out on the internet and started searching my name, trying to find out what the buzz was for the Campbell nominees. I started calling friends who belonged to various writer forums and organizations that I didn’t belong to, asking about what people thought of my books in there. You know what I found? WorldCon voters angry that a right-wing Republican (actually I’m a libertarian) who owned a gun store (gasp) was nominated for the prestigious Campbell. This is terrible. Did you know he did lobbying for gun rights! It’s right there on his hateful blog of hatey hate hate! He’s awful. He’s a bad person. He’s a Mormon! What! Another damned Mormon! Oh no, there are two Mormons up for the Campbell? I bet Larry Correia hates women and gays. He’s probably a racist too. Did you know he’s part of the evil military industrial complex? What a jerk. Meanwhile, I’m like, but did they like my books?
No. Hardly any of them had actually read my books yet. Many were proud to brag about how they wouldn’t read my books, because badthink, and you shouldn’t have to read books that you know are going to make you angry. A handful of people claimed to have my read my books, but they assured the others that they were safe to put me last, because as expected for a shit person, my words were shit, and so they were good people to treat me like shit.]]

I don't condone treating anyone like shit. And I have never been a Mormon or a conservative or a gun-shop owner, so I don't know what that is like. But I do wonder... you say you were called a liar, that people were angry with you for being who you were, that they said not to read your books... well, no need to paraphrase, you just said it all. But WHO called you a liar? How many people said this stuff, where, in what context? One person, ten people, a hundred?

I don't doubt you got some criticism, that people took shots (no pun intended) at you... but fandom is large, even worldcon fandom. There are always assholes. No doubt they were there in 1973 as well, in that first Campbell race. I mean, have there ever been two contenders as opposite as Pournelle and Effinger? That was a classic Old Wave/ New Wave showdown, with us other nominees just caught in the crossfire. However, the internet did not exist to magnify it all, and most of the sniping went on in room parties, with no permanent record of the drunken debates. I am not sure that what you suffered was any worse than what they did, way back when.

Also, all these things that people said about you... are those direct quotes, or are you paraphrasing? Because it seems to me that the Sad Puppies love to paraphrase, taking any challenge or criticism and tweaking it around to make it more offensive and insulting. Take this "Wrongfan" moniker I now see popping up on Puppy sites. Neither I nor any of the other SMOFs or trufans or worldconners that I know have ever called you or your friends "wrongfans." You guys made that up and applied it to yourself. I wish that would stop. People are saying enough hurtful shit in this debate already without making up new insults and suggesting that the other side was throwing them at you.

[[CORREIA: Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not lumping all of the WorldCon voters in with that perpetually outraged, politically motivated clique. I know plenty of voters read my books and just didn’t think they were as good as the people I was up against. Awesome. I salute you for you being an honest person with an honest opinion, and let’s face it, people have different tastes. But don’t tell me now that the Hugos don’t have whisper campaigns…]]

I really have no idea what you mean by a "whisper campaign." You make it sound so sinister. Do people talk about books and writers? Sure they do. (They used to do it more. These days, con suite debates are more likely to be about movies than novels). But nobody is whispering. Fans don't whisper. Fans are loud-mouthed and opinionated. And yeah, sometimes rude. "Have you read that new novel by X?" "Yeah, I tried it, but Z is better." "Z? You're kidding. Z is shit." And so on, and so forth. Sometimes they tone it down if X and Z are in the room, but not always.

[[CORREIA: Then I went to my very first WorldCon. Mr. Martin, you talked about your positive, joyous experiences at WorldCon. How you were welcomed as a peer, about how you had all these great, wonderful, memorable experiences. But I’m betting before your first WorldCon a whole bunch of malignant lying bastards didn’t spread the word to thousands of complete strangers that you were a racist, sexist, homophobic warmonger who deserved to be shunned.]]

You'd win that bet. Nobody said much of anything about me before my first Worldcon, because no one had any idea who I was. I was pretty much an invisible person at that con. I had been to one earlier con, and I knew maybe half a dozen people. I spent much of that con standing quietly in corners, trying to look interesting so people would talk to me. Oh, yes, there were a few people who were terrific, friendly, welcoming -- Gardner Dozois, Terry Carr, Phyllis and Alex Eisenstein --but you could count them on the fingers on one hand. Nobody rolled out the red carpet for me. Nobody gave two shits that I was a Campbell Award finalist. So we all have our traumas, Mr. Correia.

[[CORREIA: I met many wonderful people at that WorldCon. I also had many people treat me like garbage. I was berated by other panelists. I had people get up and leave the room when I entered. I had belligerent drunks challenging me at room parties because “Oh, it’s that fucker”.]]

How many belligerent drunks? One? Two? Ten? I think it matters. You say that you were "berated" by other panelists... but panels at SF cons do often become loud and heated, it is not at all unusual. I doubt any special malice was directed at you. WHat was the panel topic? Who was on it? Who berated you? With what words? Is it possible that you were berating the other panelists back? I am not trying to call you a liar, Mr. Correia, but... Some people love to argue, some don't. Some take disagreement to mean disrespect. Some are thin-skinned. I don't know you well enough to know where you fall in respect of all that. Must admit, I would be curious to see this panel. Many worldcons videotape their programming. It would be fascinating to see the tape of your Reno panel, to get a better idea of who said what.

[[CORREIA: A lot of people will tell you now that I bring this upon myself, because I am rude and abrasive on the internet now. Yes. Now. But back then I was still trying to play it cool, and didn’t think I could have a successful career if I made the wrong people angry. It wasn’t until after that WorldCon that I said screw it, they’re going to hate me anyway, might as well state my honest opinions. So I mostly hung out with the Barflies, because they were cool. But I can hang out with Barflies at fifty other cons where I’m not assumed to be the second coming of Hitler because the internet said so. And while I hung out with them, I got to hear how many of them were shunned for various reasons too.]]

I don't know who the Barflies are. Do you just mean you hung out in the bar? Lots of people hang out in the bar at a con, I was not aware there was a specific group. You can always find lots of writers in the bar, usually around some editor who is buying the drinks.

[[CORREIA: Then I went to the award ceremony, and the parties, and the various schmoozefests, and I discovered that the Hugo Awards were like one great big In Joke. And the cool kids told their cool stories to the other cool kids, and lorded it over those who weren’t part of the In Joke. Honestly, it reminded me of high school, and I was the poor fat kid who had inadvertently pissed off the mean girls.]]

Come on, Larry. The cool kids? Surely you have been around fandom long enough to realize that there are no cool kids. We're all the fat kids, the nerds, the computer geeks, the guys who always had their nose in a book, who loved comics and played chess and couldn't get a date for a prom. And the girls are the geek girls, our female counterparts.

[[CORREIA: Then I got to meet and hang out with a whole bunch of authors, artists, and creators who spent most of the con bitching about how broken and biased the Hugos were. Some of these were old school, and got the In Jokes. Some were so talented, so famous, so successful, that it blew my mind that here they were at dinner, pissed off and angry that they knew they would never get any sort of consideration.]]

Did you go to the Hugo Losers Party? That's become an offical con thing now, and the SMOFs have taken it over and made it stuffy and semi-formal, with door dragons deciding who gets in (but as a Campbell loser, you would certainly have been on the list. Gardner Dozois and I founded that party in 1976, the night after I'd lost two Hugos. The whole point was to get drunk and bitter and bitch and tell each other we'd been robbed. We had a little contest, each of us insisting "I am a bigger loser, because... " It was all in good fun. People who get honestly for real pissed off about losing Hugos... no, man, really, that's no good. Fake bitter takes the sting out of losing. Real bitter poisons everything.

[[CORREIA: After the awards were over and all the cool kids patted each other on the back about how brilliant they were, and everything shook out pretty much exactly how everybody predicted it would anyway, they released the actual numbers for nominations and votes, and I discovered just how freaking tiny the number of people involved in this supposedly most prestigious award in the world was. The winners were those who played the game, and as I sat there with the losers, I watched the game already being played for next year. As an author, I was sad. As a fan, I was disgusted. But as an auditor, I marveled at how something so statistically insignificant could be taken so seriously.]]

It's history that gives the Hugos their prestige, not statistics. I believe I made that point at some length in my first post, so I won't repeat myself.

[[CORREIA: That was my first exposure to how the process really worked. So I went home, dejected. And when I openly spoke about my experience, and I said pretty much exactly what you just said there, Mr. Martin, that the awards don’t represent all of fandom, and that they just represent one tiny, insular, clique of fandom… I was called a liar. I was attacked all over again. I was told it was just sour grapes from a loser, but what could you expect from a shit writer, making shit product?]]

Okay, these are some strong statements, and I have to ask once again, is it possible that some of this is wounded feelings and hyperbole? Were you actually called "a liar," or did someone just claim your statement was untrue? Big difference there. Were you "attacked," or did people just disagree with you? Did someone actually use the words "shit writer" and "shit product?" Or is this just more "wrongfan" stuff, where someone says something critical, and it gets turned all the way up to eleven on the offensiveness scale?

[[CORREIA: The Hugos represent greatness, worthiness, and all of fandom. WorldCon is inclusive. How dare you question it? So I said I would prove it, and I did.]]

You didn't, though. At least I do not believe you did. I am not calling you a liar, I am just saying that I believe that statement to be false. In fact, I think my own "Where's the Beef?" blog post pretty well demolished the Sad Puppy claims. Your supporters may not think so. Does that mean they are calling me a liar? My supporters think I was totally convincing, so...

[[CORREIA: I am many terrible things, but dishonest is not one of them. Let me clarify something, because I have been personally attacked for this for three years now. Yes, like most authors I dreamed of winning a Hugo, because I was very naïve. In the past I did very much want to win a Hugo. Just like I was dumb enough for a couple days to think that I might actually have a shot at winning a Campbell. However, I know that I will not ever win a Hugo. I’m way too good at statistical analysis. I had a snowball’s chance in hell before I upset the apple cart and made myself radioactive to the typical WorldCon voter.]]

I wish I could disagree with that, but I won't. I am not dishonest either. You're right, Mr. Correia. You will never win a Hugo. Whether you could have won one before the Sad Puppies, well, I don't know, but now, it is true, you have pissed way too many people off. On the other hand, you know, there are many terrific writers in the history of our genre who have never won a Hugo. Your friend Brad Torgersen has his little list, and I have my own, and the names on his list and the names on mine are very different. Doesn't mean there is a secret conspiracy. All it means is that tastes differ.

[[CORREIA: Not only did I know going into this that I would never win a Hugo, I also knew that I was going to make myself a target, and that I would be slandered, threatened, and have my career sabotaged. But I still did it anyway.]]

Has your career been sabotaged? From reading Monster Hunter Nation, it seems as if your career is going rather well. You're on the TIMES bestseller list, are you not? I know a hundred writers in this field, damn good writers, hard-working and talented, who would love to have their careers sabotaged so that they could be on bestseller lists too.

[[CORREIA: I got a nomination for my novel Warbound last year. The people I’m trying to expose rose to the occasion, formed lynch mobs and started attacking. I got a nomination again this year, for my novel Monster Hunter Nemesis, but I refused the nomination, specifically to prove that this isn’t about me wanting a Hugo. Apparently that still isn’t enough. Allow me to demonstrate my conviction, and state for the record that I will never accept a Hugo award nomination for myself. However, I will continue to assist other authors who I believe have been unfairly blacklisted and shunned get theirs.]]

I try to assist other authors (and artists, and filmmakers, and fan writers) as well, by recommending their works on my Not A Blog. Sometimes it works. More often it does not. If you do the same thing, I doubt anyone will have a problem with it. The backlash you are getting now is because you went way beyond that. Yes, all completely legal... but your campaign, your slate tactics, did not just get some authors you overlooked onto the ballot, it pretty much drove everyone else off the ballot. In the three short fiction categories, there are no choices but your choices (well, yours, and Brad Torgersen's, and Vox Day's). You say you just wanted a seat at the table. But you kicked over the table, and took ALL the seats.

And please, please, don't say that was what was done to your side in prior years. I think I demonstrated in "Where's the Beef?" that that claim is simply not true. There have always been plenty of writers and stories that the Puppies should have liked on the ballot every year. If you think that's untrue, please give me chapter and verse, with specific references to the ballots for Reno, Chicon, and LoneStarCon. Let's at least see where we disagree.

[[CORREIA: While WorldCon complains of the shrinking and greying of fandom, Salt Lake City ComicCon has been around for 2 years and has 150,000 attendees.]]

Comicons -- which are really media cons, rather than just being about comics -- are bigger than SF cons, that's been true since the mid 80s.

[[CORREIA: For some people, books might not be their primary fannish outlet, but they still read books. Just because somebody plays Dragon Age or the Witcher doesn’t mean they don’t read fantasy novels too. Heck, I believe Halo tie in novels are some of the bestselling books in scifi. If somebody was introduced to fantasy by watching Game of Thrones on HBO, and then they bought and read all your books, discovered they liked fantasy and read other books, and they thought some are awesome and deserving of an award, are they somehow lesser fans on the scales of fandom because they don’t know WorldCon trivia?]]

Worldcon is a community. FIAWOL. I don't regard that as trivial. We welcome newcomers, but yes, the hope is that they will embrace our history and traditions and culture, not just our awards. It's a proud history and a rich culture. Some of it is silly, sure, but we even love that silliness. Some of it, like the Hugo awards, we take very seriously.

[[CORREIA: The barbaric outsiders shelling out their $40 to get involved now grew up being told that the Hugos were it, the Big Deal, the best of the best, and like me, they were naïve enough to believe it for a long time.]]

So far as I'm concerned, the Hugos are the Big Deal still. There's no other award in the field with half as distinguished a list of previous winners. The Nebulas challenged for a time, but now they are a distant second.

[[CORREIA: Yet, as the Hugos became increasingly politically skewed in one direction, people can now admit that is because they reflected WorldCon, not all of Fandom, only for all these years Fandom were the ones being told that they were dumb for liking the wrong things. They were wrongfan having wrongfun.]]

Your terms. Neither I nor anyone on my side of this debate ever called anyone "wrongfans."

[[CORREIA: Why do the many people involved in the Sad Puppies campaign seem to hate WorldCon? Because the SJW crowd (I know you don’t like that term, but it is the appropriate one to use here) hates my kind of fan, actively and routinely attacks my kind of fan, and calls them racist, sexist, homophobes without evidence, all day, every day. I know the SJWs are only one small clique at WorldCon, however they are the loudest and the meanest. And sadly, the moderate, rational, normal WorldCon folks rarely seem to condemn them for their antics. So from over here on the Sad Puppies side, they take your silence and lack of condemnation against the hate mongers as tacit approval, and then they tend to lump you together.]]

Perhaps. Maybe there is altogether too much "lumping together" on both sides. From over here, on the other side, it seems as though the "moderate, rational, normal" conservatives rarely seem to condemn the Vox Days and Rabid Puppies on your side, so we take your silence and lack of condemnation against the hate mongers as tacit approval.

[[CORREIA: WorldCon claims to be inclusive, but scroll through the various comments threads on the various fan blogs on my side of the fence and get their perspective sometime. SFWA also claims to be welcoming, inclusive, and apolitical, but again, read how they are really perceived by many. Snobbish, snooty, bossy, self-righteous, etc. Don’t take my word for it—you know I’m terribly biased—but ask them yourself.]]

SFWA can be maddening at times, but it has done an enormous amount of good over the half century of its existance. It is "snobbish" only in the sense that it excludes amateurs and wannabees; it is professional writer's organization, not a fan club. And it is run by unpaid volunteers, much as worldcon is. Having served as a SFWA officer, I can tell you, there's a lot of work involved; work on behalf of fellow writers. I don't agree with everything SFWA does, but I applaud everyone who has given of themselves to work and fight for other writers.

[[CORREIA: Hypothetical question, if Robert Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers in 2014, could he get on the Hugo ballot now? Or would he be labeled a fascist with troubling ideas, and a product of the neo-colonial patriarchy? And before you dismiss that question, maybe you should read up on what the voting clique that shall not be named says about Heinlein now. Sadly, I suspect the only way Heinlein could get on the ballot today would be if my horde of uncouth barbarian outsiders got involved and put him on our suggested slate.]]

Kind of ironic that you should bring up Heinlein, since it was the Puppy slate that knocked William Patterson's Heinlein biography off the Related Works shortlist this year. But to answer your question, I don't think Heinlein would write STARSHIP TROOPERS in 2014. If you know Heinlein, you know that he was a man who changed with the times throughout his career. He was always trying new things, new techniques, new challenges... and his political views changed HUGELY over his lifetime. He wrote much of STARSHIP TROOPERS and STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND at the same time, yet one book is beloved of conservative military buffs while the other became a hippie bible. I have no idea what he would be writing in 2014... but if he were still at the top of his form, I would love to read it.

[[CORREIA: Yes, I do get angry, and yes, I have said some very mean things as part of that. I know you’re not looking for excuses, Mr. Martin, but I’m a little nobody, no name, hack author, who sells a tiny fraction as many books as you do, who had the bright idea to expose the bias in a biased system. As a result I’ve had people who know better spread the vilest lies about me you can imagine, and even when they know it is a lie, they have continued. For five years, nobody on your side said a damned thing about tone when I was the one being labeled a hatemonger, or a “rape apologist” by disingenuous SFWA presidents, or they were using fabricated “scare quotes” to show I was a homophobic woman hater in the Guardian. So, yeah, I’m angry. When people who haven’t talked to my wife since high school reach out to her, worried for her safety, because they read about how her husband is a wife beater, I get angry. Right now in about 50 blogs going out to I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands of people, the narrative is that I’m an angry white man, trying to keep scifi straight and white and male.]]

There is no excuse for any of that. I tried to speak to some of these issues in my blog post called "Hatespeech." Too much of this kind of shit is flying across the internet in both directions, and I don't think any good whatsoever is served by debates about who flung the first shit, or who flung the most shit, or who flung the smelliest shit.

More and more, I grow convinced that the internet is toxic. Every controversy brings out the trolls and toads, of every political, religious, and literary persuasion, most of them anonymous, all of them venomous. You can't control the assholes on your side and I can't control the assholes on my side. I fear we will both just have to live with that.

[[CORREIA: You know the most heartening things I’ve seen this week are? Writers who are my polar political opposites finally standing up and saying things like yes, Larry Coreia is an asshole, but he’s not any of these horrible things you are accusing him of, or yes, Larry Correia is an asshole, but please quit threatening to kill him and his entire family. That’s been nice.]]

Nice, sure. Basic human decency, really. It is grotesque how you cannot have any sort of discussion on the internet without rape threats and death threats coming into it. Makes me despair for our civilization. Hell, I ever see these things on sports blogs.

[[CORREIA: So thank you for calling for civility.]]

And back at you.

[[CORREIA: LOCUS I think it has like 40 or 50 books but ZERO from Baen (a publishing house that gets a bad rap because it is willing to publish any author regardless of their politics, from capital L Libertarians to card carrying Communists as long as they can tell a good story).]]

Do you think that makes Baen unique? It does amuse that so many of your Sad Puppies seem to revere Baen Books and despise Tor Books, which reveals an astonishing ignorance of publishing. Both Baen and Tor were financed by the same guy, Tom Doherty. You know who the first editor was at Tor? Jim Baen. Tor publishes your Puppy favorite, John C. Wright. Kevin Anderson too, I believe. And Baen published liberals... me, for instance. I knew Jim Baen. He was well to the right of you, I suspect, and we had nothing in common politically, but TUF VOYAGING made money for him, and that was all he cared about. But if you think that's unique to Baen, you are wrong. Editors may be political, but the companies they work for only care about the bottom line. Bill Mayer, Rush Limbaugh, Hillary Clinton, Bill O'Reilly, Rachel Maddow... they will publish all of them, so long as they sell.

[[CORREIA: Yes, there were competing cliques, but the only cliques who mattered all looked virtually identical to us outsiders looking in. And hardly anything they ever nominated represented anything we liked. To most of us barbarian wrongfans, the competing cliques were indistinguishable from one another. For example, correct me if I’m wrong but I believe with last year’s winners, every single one shared similar political viewpoints. And all but one of them was white, yet that year was hailed as a huge win for diversity. You need to see this from Wrongfan’s perspective. You guys had competing cliques, but to us it was like an Eskimo having a thousand different words for snow, and you can tell us about your many diverse and wonderful types of snow, but all we saw was snow.]]

Come on. Really? Look at the LoneStarCon ballot, the last before the Sad Puppies really began to have an impact. John Scalzi and Lois McMaster Bujold. Indistinguishable from one another? Can't tell Brandon Sanderson from Saladin Ahmed? Jake Lake and Kim Stanley Robinson? Ken Liu and Pat Cadigan, identical snowflakes? How about the editors? Stanley Schmidt of ANALOG and Sheila Williams of ASIMOV's, do you imagine they had the same taste, published the same stories? In long form editor, you had Toni Weisskopf, a Puppy favorite, against Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who your Puppies love to hate, with Sheila Gilbert of DAW thrown in as well, plus Lou Anders and Liza Gorinsky. All just snow? I mean, if you say so... but I see a feast there, a table laid out with all sorts of different meats and fruits and cheeses. Diversity all over the place.

[[CORREIA: And in recent years when we looked at the ballots it was like, awesome, let’s choose between these five items of approved socially conscious message fiction. Yay! We’ve got selections from: religious people are stupid bigots, capitalists are raping the earth, capitalists are stupid bigots, bigots are stupid, and I’m not quite sure what the hell this last thing is about and I’m not even sure if it qualifies as fantasy or scifi but it has bigots in it… Oh man, tough call.]]

That made me laugh, I admit. Very funny... but it's all hyperbole and sweeping generalization. I don't recognize any of those characterizations. Which book was "bigots are stupid?" Which one was "capitalists are stupid bigots?" Can you slap name tags on these straw men?

[[CORREIA: I don’t want to be Hugo Pope.]]

Oh, good. That big pointy hat wouldn't look good on you.

[{CORREIA: Last year I didn't do anything different than what was listed above. I talked about it on my blog. I tried to motivate and rally people to get involved. I plugged stuff I liked. And all of a sudden there was a little clique of Wrongfan nominating for LonCon, just big enough to get one item into every category. We were no different than the other above mentioned subfandoms. Yet, somehow, when I did that, I was a filthy villain, breaking all the rules, with no respect for tradition. Just as I predicted, there was a wrathful terrible public backlash from the clique which shall not be named, and even though I went into it knowing that none of us would actually win, once the final results came in, the leaders of the clique which shall not be named out of respect for Mr. Martin, moved the goal posts, and danced in our blood. Articles were written about how these horrible racist hate mongers were soundly driven from the sainted halls of WorldCon. Back beneath your rock, foul barbarians! And anyone who supported Sad Puppies was motivated by racism! Booooooo!]]

I think that once again you are paraphrasing and turning the insult dial up to eleven. I will agree that there was a backlash. Permit me to suggest that much of the negative press you got derived from the fact that one of the stories you placed on the ballot was that novelette by Vox Day, who was already infamous by that point because of his attack on Nora Jemison, his run for SFWA president, and his expulsion from that organization. Here we are back again to the "lumping together" we discussed earlier. Had Vox Day not been on your ticket, I suspect the backlash would not have been a tenth as vociferous as it was. Imagine, for example, that there had been a "SJW" slate the same year, and that they had gotten half a dozen stories on the ballot, but one of those had been by Requires Hate? (Actually, of course, Hate was nominated for the Campbell, but under a pseudonym). The lashback would have been just as nasty. In your case, it did not help that the Day story was terrible. Your public platform was all about restoring "quality" to the Hugos, and yet one of your standard bearers was the worst piece of writing on the ballot. (In my opinion, of course. All of this is opinion).

[[CORREIA: To be perfectly frank, some things changed between LonCon and SasQuan. I’d proved my point about the bias and attacks, and was ready to hang it up. They poked the bear, the bear mauled them, and now the bear just wanted to go back to his cave and be left alone. But Brad Torgersen is an idealist, Mr. Martin, I can’t accentuate this enough. He would be dead in Westeros in fifteen minutes. Brad is TruFan. That man waves his nerd flag high. He looks at the Hugo with adoration like it is some sort of religious icon with a halo around it. He prays to his altar of Saint Heinlein 3 times a day and lights candles for Frank Herbert. If I was naïve at first, Brad makes me look… hell… I don’t even have a good comparison. So when he grew up hearing that the Hugos represented the Best of the Best, bright shining light on the hill, he incorporated that into the very fiber of his being... At that point Sad Puppies was no longer just about proving a point. It was about giving a voice to a whole mess of fans who didn’t think they would ever have one again. The mission changed, and it became about getting deserving worthy creators who would normally be shunned or ignored some freaking recognition for once in their lives. It was time to stand up to the clique that shall not be named and their lectures about how we were having wrongfun. Unlike the existing cliques, Sad Puppies 3 didn’t give a damn about politics, race, religion, or orientation. All we cared about was could they tell us a damned good story.]]

Got it. Politics, race, religion, and sexual orientation, OUT. Damned good stories, IN. And for this year's Damned Good Story standard bearer, you chose... John C. Wright SIX TIMES!!! John C. Wright, a writer famed far and wide for having no opinions on politics, race, religion, or sexual orientation, and would never dream of injecting such messages into his Damned Good Stories. Because, after all, the Puppies get sad when they are made to read Message Fiction.

So Wright is in, and who is out? James S.A. Corey. Emily St. John Mandel. John Scalzi (of course). THREE BODY PROBLEM. Joe Abercrombie. Larry Niven. Greg Bear. Daniel Abraham. John Varley. William Gibson. Joe Haldeman. Greg Benford. Lev Grossman. Stephen King. No damned good stories there. I guess. No real science fiction, no exciting fantasy, nothing entertaining or commercial, just pretentious left-wing literary crap, right?

[[CORREIA: If the people attacking us don’t chill out, more of my people are going to get pissed off, and it might hit a 12 or 13 next year. :)]]

OH, believe me, I know. And we'll go right up to 13 with you. And Vox Day and his band of not-so-merry-men will go right to 23. And then the Hugos will pretty much be dead, and the world of science fiction will be that much the poorer.

[[CORREIA: If you want to talk about going forward, from here, I don’t know what to tell you about your campaigning cliques. They were already there long before we showed up. But you really want to “fix it” and make sure my people don’t screw it up anymore, and keep the Hugos sacred? Well, right now the ball is in your court. You’ve got people out there who supposedly love the award so much that they are organizing block votes for No Award against absurdly deserving yet consistently overlooked people like Jim Butcher, Toni Weisskopf, and Kevin J. Anderson, all to burn the whole thing down, just because my people violated your secret gentleman’s agreement and plugged them on a slate.]]

I have already posted about my opposition to the various NO AWARD strategies. I hope that NO AWARD will not sweep the board top to bottom. My best guess right now is that it won't, but there is a good chance that NO AWARD will take all the "All Puppy" categories, the three short fiction categories and Best Related Book. No one really knows, of course. We are all in uncharted territory here.

[[CORREIA: I think you will find that the people who are involved with Sad Puppies are willing to talk about the future, but we are very tired of being yelled at and lied about. No matter what happens, whether you like the term for them or not, you guys need to calm your SJWs down, and tell them to quit forming angry twitter mobs, and scaring the hell out of authors who cross their invisible lines.]]

If I could clap my hands and make everybody play nice, I would, but I do not have that superpower. But it is interesting that you talk about "scaring the hell out of authors" on your side. Fear is a big part of this. People on the other side of the fence are scared as well, and when people are afraid, they lash out. Both sides here feel they are being attacked, and the war of words just seems to keep escalating, and all that can come of that is mutually assured destruction.

I like to think the Hugo represents a starship, not a nuclear missile.

Previously in this series: The Little Red Hen. Original texts by the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault.

There once was a king who had a beautiful wife, and many other beautiful things besides. He was gentle in peace and terrible in war. Every country he found, he conquered, and every country he conquered he plundered, because he was a man who knew the value of things. And he brought gifts on the backs of serving-men to his beautiful wife, and he had them spilled at her beautiful feet, until the floor of their castle shone almost as brilliantly as her golden hair. And she clapped her hands in delight to see what he had brought her.

She had no equal in beauty in any of the lands he visited, so he knew the value of her.

Then it happened that the queen was struck ill, and in her heart she knew that she was going to die. She was sick and sad in turns, and turned her face to the wall, and pushed away comfort, and she called for the king her husband.

“If I die,” she told him, “you must remarry, for we have no sons, but I ask that as a favor to me you do not wed any woman who is not as beautiful as I was, not unless her hair is as golden and brilliant as mine.” In doing this the queen hoped the king would never remarry, and that she would never be replaced in his heart. Better the floor of the throne-room lie empty than strewn with gifts for a plainer woman.

So the king agreed to the promise. Shortly after this the queen died, and so they put her away in the ground, where the dirt closed over her like a mouth and kept her brilliant hair for itself.

For a long time the king could not be led away from grief, and he would hear nothing about taking another wife. But there is no man so sad that he cannot be talked out of forgetting a woman, and his councillors had light and time and forgetfulness on their side.

“You must have a queen,” they told him, and he felt all the better for letting himself be persuaded.

So the king sent out messengers to all the lands he had conquered to find himself a bride from one of them, whose beauty matched that of the queen-in-the-dirt. But the king himself had traveled to these lands before, and he had not found her equal there then. She was not to be found now.

Now the king and queen had had a daughter, and it so happened that the hair on her head was golden also. And the king had not looked at her while he had a wife living, but he looked at her now.

The king’s daughter had lately come of age, and she had unbound her hair. And as she tried on one of the dresses her mother had left to her, her body and her beauty betrayed her, for the king saw that she looked like her mother in every way, and he was seized with a great desire for her.

Desire seized the king, and then the king seized his daughter, and so everyone was snatched up in turn. And his daughter cried out in confusion, for she did not know what her body had done to her.

Then the king strode into the hall, dragging his daughter behind him, and he said to his councillors, “Here is the woman I will make my queen, who is the equal of my dead wife. Her likeness I cannot find elsewhere, and no one else will content me.” And his daughter wept, but her tears did not detract from her beauty, so nobody minded.

When the councillors heard this they were horrified, and said, “This cannot be.” But there is no man so horrified he cannot be talked out of it, and the king persuaded them to be led away from their scruples. There was only one king, after all, and the king needed a son. And if the king was willing, that was consent enough for both of them.

The daughter’s heart shrank inside her when she saw no one would oppose the king’s decision. She ran to the kitchen and seized a knife from a scullery-maid and began to saw away at her golden hair. When she had finished, her scalp was glistening and patchy and covered in blood.

The king was not dissuaded. Conquerors never are. “It will grow back all the more beautiful,” he assured her, and he ordered all knives out of the castle.

And the princess grew frantic when she could not erase her own beauty, and she tore at her face with her fingernails. She tore out her eyelashes all in a row so her eyelids were red and skinless. She carved a hole in her cheek large enough for her pinky finger to fit through. She reached for her own skull.

But this only made her father the more tender. And as he grew more tender, he also grew more determined. “Have my daughter the princess’ hands bound in velvet and in silk,” he told her servants, “that she may not harm herself again.”

And the princess wandered the halls with muted hands and watchful attendants, and her hair began to grow back, and the king declared that the time had come for them to set a date for their wedding.

The princess had learned guile when the opportunity for force had been lost. “Before I marry you, great king,” she said to him, “I must have three dresses: one as golden as the sun, one as silver as the moon, and one that glistens like the stars. Further, I must have a cloak put together from a thousand kinds of pelts and fur. Every animal in your kingdom must contribute a piece of its skin for it.”

Now she thought, “That will be entirely impossible for him, and perhaps in the meantime I can find another bride for him.”

But the king did not give in, and the most skilled maidens in his kingdom had to weave the three dresses, one as golden as the sun, one as silver as the moon, and one that glistened like the stars. And his huntsmen had to capture all the animals in his entire kingdom and take a piece of skin from each one. From these a cloak of a thousand kinds of fur was made.

Finally, when everything was finished, the king had the cloak brought to him. Spreading it out, he said, “Tomorrow is our wedding day.”

When the king’s daughter saw that she had lost all hope of changing her father’s mind, she rearranged her face entirely and embraced him smiling. “I have made up my mind to be a wife to you,” she told him, and everyone rejoiced at her obedience.

“I thank you for your promise,” he said, and kissed her solemnly on the forehead. “Rest well, and marry me in the morning.”

That night, while everyone else was asleep, the princess got up and took her three dresses and placed them in the smallest traveling-case she could find. She put on the cloak of furs and darkened her hair as best she could and covered her face and hands in dirt until she looked as much like a peasant-woman as a king’s daughter could hope. Then she left her father the king’s house.

She walked toward what she hoped was the border of her father’s kingdom, until she came to the edge of a great forest. Being tired, she sat down in a hollow tree and fell asleep.

The sun came up, and she continued to sleep, and she was still asleep by broad daylight. Now it came to pass that the king who owned these woods was hunting in them. When his dogs approached the tree they sniffed then ran around it barking.

The king said to the huntsmen. “See what kind of wild animal is hiding there.”

The huntsmen followed his command, and when they returned they said, “A strange animal, like none we have ever seen before, is lying in the hollow tree. There are a thousand kinds of fur on its skin. It is just lying there asleep.”

The king said, “See if you can capture it alive, then tie it onto the cart and bring it along.”

When the huntsmen took hold of the girl, she awoke. Filled with fear, she cried out, “I am a poor child who has been abandoned by her father and mother. Have pity on me and take me with you.”

Then they said, “Thousandfurs, you are good for the kitchen. Come with us. You can sweep up the ashes.”

Thus they set her on the cart and drove her home to the royal castle. There they showed her a little cubbyhole under the stairs, where the light of day never entered, and said, “This is where you can live and sleep,” and she rejoiced in it. She never wanted to be seen again.

Then she was sent to the kitchen, where she carried wood and water, tended the fire, plucked the poultry, sorted vegetables, swept up the ashes, and did all the dirty work, and she did it with a smile that no one saw. No one looked at her, and she grew all the more beautiful under her filthy disguise for it.

***

Now it happened that one day a feast was held in the castle, and Thousandfurs said to the cook her mistress, “May I go upstairs and look at all the guests through the window? I will only be a little while.”

And the cook gave her leave for half an hour. So the princess took her oil lamp and went to her room, where she took off her fur cloak and washed the ashes and dirt from herself, and unbound her hair for the first time since she had cut it. Then she opened her traveling-case and took out her dress that glistened like the sun. And after she had done all this she went upstairs to the banquet. Everyone stepped out of her way, for no one knew her, and everyone thought that she was a princess.

The king approached her, reached his hand out to her, and danced with her, and thought in his heart, “My eyes have never before seen such beauty.”

When the dance had ended, she curtsied, and while the king was looking around, she disappeared, and no one knew where she had gone. The guards who stood watch in front of the castle were called and questioned, but no one had seen her.

Now she had run back to her room, quickly taken off her dress, dirtied her hands and face, put on her cloak, and was once again Thousandfurs. She was not yet ready to be seen all the time.

After she had returned to the kitchen and was about to set to work and sweep up the ashes, the cook said, “That’s enough until tomorrow. Make the king’s supper for me, so I can have a look upstairs as well.”

Then the cook went away, and Thousandfurs made soup for the king. While she was making it, the golden ring she had worn on her finger for the dance slipped into the dish and sank to the bottom of the bowl, and she did not notice it.

When the dance was over, the king had his soup brought to him. He ate it, and it tasted so good to him, that he thought he had never eaten a better soup. But when he reached the bottom of the bowl, he saw a golden ring lying there, and he could not imagine how it had gotten there.

He ordered the cook to come before him. The cook was terrified when she heard this order, and when the king asked who had cooked the soup, she answered, “I cooked it,” for she did not want Thousandfurs to be punished.

The king said, “That is not true, for it was made in a different way, and much better than usual.”

The cook answered, “I must confess that it was the little Thousandfurs, who sweeps in the kitchen.”

The king said, “Go and have her come up here.”

When Thousandfurs arrived, the king asked her, “Who are you?”

“I am a poor child who no longer has a father or a mother.” (It is true, she told herself, because the king wishes to be my bridegroom and has relinquished his duties as a father.)

He asked further, “What are you doing in my castle?”

She answered, “I sweep and I peel the vegetables.”

He asked further, “Where did you get the ring that was in the soup?”

She answered, “I do not know anything about the ring.”

Thus the king could learn nothing, and he had to send her away again.

Some time later there was another feast, and Thousandfurs, as before, asked the cook for permission to have a look. She answered, “Yes, but come back in a half hour and cook the soup for the king that he likes so much.”

She ran to her room, quickly washed herself then took from the case the dress that was as silver as the moon and put it on. Then she went upstairs and looked like a princess. The king came up to her and was delighted to see her again, and because a dance was just beginning, they danced together. But as soon as the dance was over she again disappeared so quickly that the king did not notice where she went.

When the king gave a banquet for the third time, everything happened as before. But this time she put on the dress that glistened like the stars, and thus clothed she stepped into the hall. The king danced again with the beautiful maiden, thinking that she had never been so beautiful. And while he was dancing he placed the golden ring back on her finger, without her noticing it. Further, he had ordered that this dance should last a long time. When it was over, he tried to keep hold of her by her hands, but she tore herself loose and jumped so quickly into the crowd that she disappeared before his eyes. She ran as fast as she could to her room beneath the steps, but because she had stayed away too long, more than a half hour, she could not take off the beautiful dress, but instead just threw the fur cloak on over it.

Thousandfurs ran to the kitchen to make the soup for the king. But the king had followed her and took a hold of her gently by the hand, and held up the finger that bore the ring he had given her. As Thousandfurs struggled to free herself, her fur cloak opened a little, and the dress of stars peeked out. The king grabbed the cloak and tore it off.

The princess was no longer able to hide her beautiful hair. And after she had wiped the soot and ashes from her face, she was more beautiful than anyone who had ever been seen on earth. But this time she was not afraid to be seen.

The king said, “You are my dear bride, and we shall never part.”

Preparations for the wedding were begun at once, and the kings of all the surrounding countries were invited. From all the corners of the world they came and descended on the court in great numbers.

But neither the king of the country himself nor the many visiting kings appeared in such splendor as the bride’s father, who now recognized his daughter, whom he had not forgotten. He had been searching for her now for many months, and when he explained the situation to the king of the new country, Thousandfurs was given back to her father, because kings owe more to other kings than they do to women.

“You should have told me you belonged to someone else,” he said to her. And Thousandfurs said nothing.

And the king of the far country was sad, for he had loved Thousandfurs, but he soon allowed himself to be persuaded out of his sadness, and married another.

And Thousandfurs was returned to her kingdom and her father and her promise. And the kingdom rejoiced at her obedience.

[Image by Gustave Doré]

Tags: books, children's stories made horrific, fairy tales

Adam Sandler's most recent project is a movie called The Cobbler. In it, Sandler plays a washed-up cobbler named Max Simkin who finds a magical shoe-fixer machine that allows him to walk in other people's shoes. Here are several more movie ideas for Adam Sandler.

The Chocolate Guy

James McNamara owns a chocolate shop but he's allergic to chocolate. By accident he eats a square of chocolate and saves the neighborhood from gentrification. He dies but that's okay because the neighborhood is all good now.

The Dildo Maker

A man working in a ramshackle dildo factory in the Lower East Side (played by Adam Sandler) finds a magical dildo. When he accidentally sets it to vibrate, the man discovers that he can travel back in time. He travels 30,000 years back in time, invents the dildo, and becomes a millionaire in the future. He feels guilt when he meets the woman of his dreams and cannot explain how he amassed his fortune. He decides he is happier making dildos in the basement of the ramshackle dildo factory and gives all his money to a melanoma charity. The woman of his dreams is played by Sofia Vergara. They get married at Shea Stadium (CGI).

Hot Dog

Adam Sandler plays an animated hot dog named Curly. He falls in love with a park bench.

Big Mommy

It's just Big Daddy, but with a lady.

I'm a Construction Worker

Joe DiJolio is a construction worker in Queens and no one fucking likes him because he's a no-good loser. He finds a magical jackhammer and jackhammers all the way to China. In China, he meets a lot of people but man, do they not get his New Yawk demeanor. DiJolio befriends a local woman who looks like Sofia Vergara and she shows him how to appreciate Chinese culture. The pair jackhammer back to Queens and they marry at Shea Stadium (CGI). She does not stuff her bra, if you know what I mean.

Happy Gilmore But With a Lady

She's not as good at golf though.

Franglish

A French family emigrates from France to work for a bigshot business guy. I didn't see Spanglish so that's about all I got.

The Brave Little Toaster

Everyone loves this movie and would love it more if Adam Sandler was somehow in it!!!!!

As a man who reads superhero comics, I confess that I share a commonly-held prurient interest in big-chested, long-legged heroes in skin-baring costumes that barely cover their naughty bits — or as I like to call him, Namor.

Sadly, Namor is pretty much alone in his category. Contrary to the perception that male heroes in comics are frequently sexually objectified, it’s my experience that even Namor is only rarely presented as someone to lust over. Yet I’m fortunate that my tastes run towards the Hemsworth end of the scale. Like many straight men, I admire the kind of buff dudes that are the staple of superhero comics, even though they are rarely sexualized. If I shared the tastes of most of the women I know, I think I’d find superhero comics an even more frustratingly sexless wasteland.

Big muscles are a male fantasy. That’s not to say that women aren’t ever into them, but let’s face facts; women have never been the primary target audience for superhero comics, and male heroes are drawn with big muscles anyway. Make no mistake; women are there. But those big muscles are not there for women. They’re there for men; straight men who find male power exhilarating. If women didn’t exist, superheroes would be drawn just as buff as they are today — because as far as most superhero comics are concerned, women as consumers do not exist.

Yet I’ve seen it said more times than I can count that male heroes are objectified, sexualized, idealized, just the same as the women — because they’re big and ripped and dressed in tight costumes. It’s an idea that’s completely tied up in the narcissistic notion that androphile women are attracted to the same qualities that men find appealing.

Talk to a few women, and you’ll find that’s broadly untrue.

“Heroes tend to be drawn with tons of bulky muscles and weird proportions that I find unappealing,” said Lysandra, one of a number of women I reached out to via Twitter to find out what they want to see in superhero comics.

All of the women I spoke to seemed to echo Lysandra’s sentiments. Amy said she likes men “lean and muscular, but not bulky.” Tory noted that “too much muscle is gross, it looks like they can’t move.” Sarah said the focus on muscles “veers into the grotesque”. She noted the designs of Hulk and She-Hulk illustrate how both male and female characters are designed for a male reader; “one is a musclebound power fantasy, whereas the other is a powerlifting pinup girl.”

The broad consensus is that lean muscle is sexier than bulk — and that’s not only true among the women I spoke to for this article, but among the women I’ve spoken to in a lifetime comparing notes about hot guys. The superhero names that keep coming up as popular examples of sexy dudes among androphile women are Nightwing, Gambit, and Hawkeye — all gymnasts rather than powerhouses.

Too much testosterone can be a turn-off. The women I interviewed were turned on by guys whose masculinity is tempered by other qualities: guys who can be a little goofy; guys with generous smiles; guys with feminine features.

“A mixture of masculine features with a brush of effeminacy is most appealing to me,” said Sarah. Another respondent, Tiger, agreed; “I really love men who have a blend of masculine and femme features. Like muscly gachimuchi kinda dudes with lush eyelashes and a full mouth, or graying angular older gents with big doe eyes, or fellas with dainty complexions on a firm jaw with soft eyes and unruly caterpillar brows.”

Long hair, long eyelashes, full lips, soft eyes. It seems obvious to say it, but faces matter — and in superhero comics it perhaps isn’t that obvious, because men’s faces are frequently obscured to protect their “secret identities,” which apparently is less of a priority for female heroes.

“Faces are very important,” said Amy. “It’s better if most of the face shows — Winter Soldier, Nightwing, Gambit, Iron Fist — than if it doesn’t — Flash, Red Hood, Iron Man.” Seeing faces not only allows the reader to appreciate fine features and intense smolders, but it also makes the characters more expressive. Personality is sexier than dour macho grimacing.

None of this is to suggest that androphile women never find broad shoulders or six-pack abs attractive — the cut obliques that form a classic “Adonis belt” seem particularly popular — it’s just that the muscles that some straight men claim are drawn as titillatingly as the female forms they admire is neither the whole thing nor even the first thing androphile women mention.

When women’s magazines post polls of the hottest guys in the world, classic hero-types like Chris Hemsworth, Henry Cavill, and Chris Evans all place very high. But it’s worth noting that Chris Hemsworth’s eyelashes are a feature you never see in any comic version of Thor; Henry Cavill’s bone structure places him at the high end of pretty compared to any print version of Superman; and Chris Evans brings a sensitivity to Captain America that the comics rarely show. New international sweetheart Chris Pratt literally provided a whole new charmingly goofy personality for Star-Lord, a generic straight-laced dude hero that few readers could previously have pinned a specific personality trait to.

And for all their size, none of these guys are actually roided-out monsters. Today’s leading men are a lot leaner and sweeter than the Schwarzeneggers and Stallones of yesteryear — and these new hunks share room at the top of magazine polls with the lean or skinny bodies of guys like Tom Hiddleston, Zayn Malik, Zac Efron, Pharrell Williams, Benedict Cumberbatch, and James McAvoy.

The women I interviewed nominated Timothy Olyphant, Ben Wishaw, Aidan Turner, Jensen Ackles, and Tom Hardy as personal pin-ups — all of them either very lean or with markedly pretty features, or both. (Hardy is a brick, and Ackles looks like a farm boy, but Hardy’s lips and Ackles’ eyes could both win best-in-class when it comes to prettiness.)

All my interviewees agreed that superhero comics don’t pander to their tastes — Tory noted that she feels like she’s not even supposed to find these men sexy. But do these women want to be pandered to?

“Yes,” said Sarah. “Yes please.” Tiger added; “YES. ALWAYS.”

But all the women I spoke to also had more nuanced answers to offer. “Humanizing heroes is what makes them appealing to me in the first place, and I think having a character be relatable is appealing on a level of its own,” said Sarah.

“I love sexy. But at the same time I don’t like the way women are made sexy all the time,” said Tory. “It’s exhausting to have to deal with that. I want sexy, but not at the expense of the story.”

“I think the best way to ‘pander’ to me, or frankly the greatest slice of heterosexual women, is to incorporate a range of body types, facial features, and ethnicities,” said Lysandra. “Because what I like isn’t necessarily what another woman will, and even my preferences change a lot.”

“I want fully realized characters — if they’re sexy, that’s a bonus but not totally necessary,” said Amy. She notes that male characters are often presented as sexy by having female characters drape themselves over them, and that doesn’t work for her. “Give me guys who are more [defined by the] female-gaze, keep their faces visible, and don’t try to make them sexy just by making them have sex.”

Tiger agrees that superhero comics have a lot to learn when it comes to embracing male sexuality for female readers. She wants editors to shake off the puritanism that puts Namor in long trousers, and to embrace ideas like the recent Kris Anka X-Factor cover that showed Gambit naked in bed (but for a well-placed bed sheet, in the final version). “Let your artists run free. Let them draw all the assless pants and naked butt, and lovingly render that V-curve on lower waists.”

As for who should do the pandering, my interviewees had plenty of suggestions. Tory said that Becky Cloonan and HamletMachine are “miles above the rest” when it comes to drawing the kind of sexy she finds appealing. Lysandra singled out Fiona Staples — “it’s great to see at least one mainstream comics artist drawing male characters with necks!” — while Sarah praised Kevin Maguire and Stefano Caselli for the way they convey character through facial expression and body language.

Amy highlighted a number of artists who excel at drawing pretty, youthful guys, including Marcus To, Jo Chen, Francis Manapul, and the man she credits with first finding Nightwing’s sex appeal, George Pérez. Tiger noted that artists with a background in illustration, like Phil Noto and Mike Mayhew, often seem the most comfortable portraying genuinely handsome men in their work. Kevin Wada, Olivier Coipel, and Sara Pichelli were all named more than once for their shared gift for drawing sexy men.

The pool of artists within superhero comics who can turn their hands to equal opportunity sexiness is only going to keep expanding — and the audience for those comics is growing as well. Finding the will to bridge the gap between those two groups lies in the hands of publishers.

If those publishers aren’t sure how to appeal to a female audience after years of trying to please male readers with hyper-buff grimacing supermen, here’s a hot tip for finding out what women want:

Ask them.

I remember, as a brand new bride, my new mother in law grasping my arm before I even left the sanctuary. Smiling at me, she burbled, “I'm so glad he married you! Now I won't ever have to be in a nursing home!”

If I'd been able to muster the power of speech, I would've croaked out one word. To this day, I'm not sure if that would have been, “No,” or “Annulment.” Thankfully, I was completely speechless, and am still happily married to my husband, almost a dozen years, and another four children later.

My mother once informed me that, as the only daughter, I would be expected to move back across country when she was elderly and in need of care. “A son is a son until he takes a wife, a daughter is a daughter all of her life,” she quoted, ominously.

But my answer is still no. I will never, ever, provide home care. As someone in the so-called “Sandwich Generation” -- those caught between the demands of child rearing and elder care -- I refuse to be the filling.

Maybe it's because of my experience as a health care professional. I've worked in home care. I've witnessed, up close and personal, the toll it takes on the caregiver, and on the family. I've sat, holding the hand of a daughter, as she sobbed, exhausted from the strain of caring for her elderly mother. It was destroying her marriage, her children were miserable, her physical and emotional health was in ruins. 

And she wasn't alone. Almost every home I was in as a health care aide was somewhere along the same continuum. Not everyone was at the same stage she was, but all were heading that direction.

I won't do that to my husband and children, nor to myself.

Too often, the argument is made, “Well, they took care of you!” when attempting to guilt an adult child into caring for an elderly or ill parent. This argument is ludicrous. There is no logic to it at all. First of all, children grow in skills and independence. While a newborn is completely dependent on their parents, a toddler is less so. And as the years go by, the dependence becomes less and less. 

For the elderly, the opposite is true. Someone that is unable to live on their own becomes more dependent, not less.

Let's take a closer look at that argument, shall we? Your toddler is throwing a tantrum. She lashes out physically, kicking, hitting and biting. As the parent, you are able to physically remove the child from hurting themselves or others. You can remove the toy in their hand before they hit someone, or throw it across the room.

Now, imagine an adult, who has dementia, and lashes out. How can you possibly ensure their safety, or those of others around them?

Is that a safe, or healthy environment for anyone, let alone children in the home?

Even when dementia isn't an issue, there's still the reality that elder care can be a 24 hour a day job. Bathing, changing, dressing an infant or toddler is a vastly different situation than doing those same tasks for a full grown adult. If you think daycare is expensive, try pricing home care. I honestly don't know of any insurance that would cover around-the-clock staffing, and very few families could afford that out of pocket.

Then there also becomes the question of who provides care. Do both partners in the marriage work? Will one have to quit their job in order to provide elder care? Can they afford to do so? Can they afford not to do so, with the exorbitant costs of home care?

The cold reality is that providing eldercare means putting an entire family's life on hold. So many times, adult children are called "selfish" for not stepping up and offering to move in an elderly parent. I would suggest that someone is being selfish, but it's not the adult children. It's the parent.

Realistically, what does in-home elder care look like for the average family with children still at home? It looks like a nightmare. Decisions are made based around the needs of the elder, at a time where children should be -- and deserve to be -- the focus of their parents' time and energy. Children deserve to be in a home where they can laugh and run and play, but an elder in the home is unlikely to be able to tolerate that sort of noise and chaos.

Children deserve to be able to have parents attend their events, be it school, sports, or other extra curricular activities. This becomes an impossibility if there is an elder in the home that cannot manage that sort of outing, or cannot be left unattended for any period of time.

How is it reasonable, or anything but selfish, to expect your adult children to revolve their life, and that of their spouse and children, around your health care needs?

When did a parent's perspective change from, “I want my children to be fulfilled, successful and happy,” to, “I want my children to tend to my needs, and put those of everyone else on hold until I die.”? That's the reality of what parents who expect or demand their adult children to care for them in home, and refuse to consider assisted living or long term care facilities are essentially saying.

Some adult children don't even live in the same area as their parents. Myself, I haven't lived in the same time zone as my parents -- or my mother in law -- since before I met and married my husband. So, to provide care would require a major move for one party. Some folks don't even live in the same country as they grew up in, and where their parents still reside. What then? Uproot an elderly person from the only country and culture that they know? Or expect the adult children to uproot their entire lives, and possibly end their career, to provide elder care?

Some folks talk about elder care as a temporary arrangement. “If Mom's care becomes overwhelming, we'll place her in a facility.” Sounds reasonable, right? Here's a little-known truth that most people don't realize, and professionals will rarely admit to: when an elderly person is being taken care of by family members, they're deemed "safe" and "not at risk." That designation means that they are at the bottom of every waiting list, and will constantly have others placed ahead of them, as their needs are greater. The wait can be years after care has become overwhelming.

Also, the unspoken, underlying assumption, when it comes to elder care, seems to be that older people have been good parents, and are nice people. What of those that aren't? What of those parents who were negligent, toxic, even abusive? Is it a fair expectation that those who suffered as children should now be responsible for the care of their abusers? And inflict their childhood abuser upon their own children?

There are no easy answers to the looming dilemma of elder care. People are living longer than ever before, and statistics tell us that the Baby Boomer generation is going to require more care, for longer periods, than previous generations.

As a wife, a mother, I cannot, and will not put my husband and children through hands-on, in-home elder care. My commitments and responsibilities to them outweigh any I may have as a daughter or daughter-in-law.

It's been a little more than a year since the family of Marlise Munoz was allowed to take her off life support. The Azle, Texas woman was kept artificially alive against her family's wishes for two months while clinically brain-dead because she was pregnant. Now her family is supporting a new bill that would give pregnant Texans advance directive rights in the event of a similar tragedy.

RH Reality Check's Andrea Grimes reports that HB 3183, dubbed "Marlise's Law," has been introduced by Texas State Rep. Elliot Naishtat; in a press release, Naishtat says the bill is meant to repeal the state law that makes someone's advance directives null and void once they're pregnant.

"Being pregnant should not prohibit a woman from having her personal decision respected," Naishtat is quoted as saying. "The law should reflect the consideration a woman puts into planning the treatment she wishes to receive, or not receive, when she is no longer able to express herself. Planning for end-of-life care is a deeply personal decision-making process for all persons, including those who may be pregnant."

Grimes reports that Munoz's husband Erick and her father Ernie Machado supported the law at an emotional press conference, saying it would keep other families from going through the ordeal they experienced. The family had to face off in court against John Peter Smith Hospital, arguing that Munoz, a paramedic, had been clear that she never wanted to be kept alive artificially.

"We did what was best for Marlise," Machado said at the press conference. "We continue to do what we think is best for Marlise now that she has passed away, so that other families don't have to go through what we did."

Meanwhile, though, another state representative, Matt Krause, is sponsoring a bill that would appoint guardians ad litem for the fetuses of brain-dead people. (Not the first time a non-person has been given more legal rights than the living person whose body it inhabits: states like Alabama already appoint attorneys for the fetuses of pregnant minors.) Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed a bill last June making it illegal to take a pregnant person off life support in the event that they become mentally incapacitated. You can check here whether your state overrides advance directives in the event of pregnancy.

Erick Munoz, center, leaves a Fort Worth courthouse last January. Photo via AP

Contact the author at anna.merlan@jezebel.com.
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Theme Parks have been at it for a long time now. Technically for about 60 years, but theme park-style experiences go back even further, to the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, and Coney Island, and on. There was even an early chain of amusement park attractions - Hale's Tours - that were pretty similar, in concept, to rides like Back to the Future and the Hogwarts Express. And, once you take into consideration the unique style that Universal Creative has cultivated since the 1980s, and the way the WED house style, and WDI house style, and the Universal house style have cross-pollinated and informed each other, there's a pretty rich history of traditions to draw on.

Or, to put it another way, there's a whole history of rhetorical devices, narrative conceits, motifs, and cliches that theme park attractions draw on to communicate with us strongly and basically visually. We can call these tropes. And no, I'm not going to pull a TV Tropes here and catalog every single device or theme that's been used in the history of human endeavor. I'm after most or all of the big ones, however. So no, you wont see "Exit Thru the Gift Shop" here because they're as much formal expectations at this point as they are narrative cliches, which to me would be like calling editing in films a "Trope". For this same reason you won't see things like a Themed Queue or Ride Vehicle. I want to dig into the deeper predictable patterns of the experience.

So myself and my friend Brandon (@DCAlover on Twitter) put our heads together and came up with a pretty extensive list of the various reasons and ways rides have been dropping us down waterfalls, spinning us in circles, and running us over with trains (or garbage trucks piloted by Stan Lee) for generations.

--

Invisibility Cloak On - A classic of WED design. In Pirates of the Caribbean, we're expected to be concerned about getting exploded or shot in the face, but the pirates don't seem to see us - are we really there or not? Often results in a weirdly voyeur-like experience.
Examples: Pirates of the Caribbean, Horizons, World of Motion, Primeval World, Swiss Family Treehouse

Harold Isn't Going To Like This - a.k.a. The Fourth Wall Won't Save You, and the opposite of Invisibility Cloak On. Often used in scary or intense attractions to "imperil" riders, especially Universal shows, although Disney pioneered the form by killing guests with a train! It's any time a dangerous or villainous character notices and/or pursues the riders.
Namer: Matterhorn Bobsleds
Examples: Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Revenge of the Mummy, The Haunted Mansion, Jaws, Indiana Jones Adventure, The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man

Captain Rex Day - Every day is Captain Rex Day, because every day is your guide's first day of doing something highly dangerous! You're nearly guaranteed to hear this if your theme park experience includes a live actor.
Namer: Star Tours
Examples: Jungle Cruise, Poseidon's Fury, Cranium Command

The Nickel Tour - Arguably the foundation conceit of most theme park attractions, this trope claims that the attraction is actually a tour of an imaginary, specific indoor facility or location. It's the next logical evolution away from the "themed scenery" mode of attractions like Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland or Jungle Cruise, which often include multiple, abstract locations.
Examples: The Haunted Mansion, The Living Seas, Back to the Future, The Disney-MGM Backlot Studio Tour

Not a Tape - There's many reasons why that recorded narration you're hearing isn't meant to be that recorded narration you're hearing. It could be... spooky ghosts! Or the invisible crew of your tiny submarine! Or the thoughts of Paul Frees suspended in inner space! How about a radio transmission?? Please don't think about this too thoroughly.
Examples: Pirates of the Caribbean, The Haunted Mansion, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Kilimanjaro Safaris, Indiana Jones Adventure, Adventure Thru Inner Space, Space Mountain

Three Hour Tour - Happens every time a narrated ride, often a leisurely one, claims that those ten minutes you just spent looking at fiberglass critters in relative comfort constituted days or weeks of your life. There is never any apology or rationale given for this timeslip. You are now old.
Examples: Disneyland Railroad, Jungle Cruise, Mike Fink Keelboats, Sailing Ship Columbia, Kilimanjaro Safaris

Easy On The Curves - Wouldn't you know it, it's the darn finicky cutting edge / patched together / shopworn technology going and breaking down and/or messing everything up! I never could have anticipated this happening in a theme park. Your Uncle who only buys products from The Vermont Country Store and writes with a typewriter was right all along.
Namer: Indiana Jones Adventure
Examples: Alien Encounter, Honey I Shrunk the Audience, Stitch's Great Escape, Dinosaur, Timekeeper, Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem!

Eisner Institute - You know what's boring? Going somewhere and having something amazing and impossible happen. Wouldn't you much rather go to an institute or research center where there's drywall and doors with names on them and then have something whimsically unexpected go horribly wrong once you're there? Wouldn't that be so much better?
Namer: Michael Eisner, the patron saint of institutions
Examples: Test Track, Journey Into Your Imagination, Body Wars, Back to the Future, Mission: Space, Dinosaur, Alien Encounter, Honey I Shrunk the Audience...

We Have To Save Elroy - A normal theme park demonstration is interrupted when - oh no! - a plot device occurs! Being the red-blooded Americans that we are, the entire audience is enlisted to help. "Elroy" can also be a macguffin (the gift in Despicable Me) or a red herring.
Namer: The Funtastic World of Hannah-Barbera
Examples: Despicable Me Minion Mayhem, Transformers the Ride 4D, Ghostbusters Spooktacular, ET Adventure, Kilimanjaro Safaris

Little Red is OK - Corollary to We Have To Save Elroy, where of course "Elroy" is always OK at the end. Sometimes other trams/boats full of people will be shown to have perished, but the nearest any theme park ever got to actually doing off a supporting character was the unlucky submarine 13, crushed by a giant squid in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Namer: Kilimanjaro Safaris

Torturing the Recruits - At Imagineering in the 90s and early naughts, if you weren't going to an institute you were always some kind of recruit. You apparently got drafted by walking in the door. What could be more lighthearted??
Namer: Stitch's Great Escape
Examples: Alien Encounter, Men in Black: Alien Attack, Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin, Mission: Space, Body Wars, Ghostbusters Spooktacular

Background Action - Mostly-Universal-Specific Corollary to Torturing the Recruits, where you're supposed to be playing extras in a film shoot of some sort. Unlike real movie extras, you don't get a free lunch out of it.
Examples: Earthquake: The Big One, Revenge of the Mummy, Backdraft, Disaster!, Twister: Ride It Out!, Catastrophe Canyon

Sherrie Wants To Kill You - Sherrie may look pleasant sitting at that desk near Bill McKim, but she actually wants to murder you by driving you into a wall. Sometimes an innocent-looking secondary character, sometimes the main antagonist.
Namer: Test Track
Examples: Snow White's Scary Adventures, Revenge of the Mummy, Alien Encounter, Tower of Terror (TDL), Indiana Jones Adventure

You Die At The End - Especially if you go to hell.
Examples: Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Snow White's Adventures, Fata Morgana (maybe), Men in Black: Alien Attack (maybe)

I Got Some In My Mouth - Nothing could possibly make any ride more cutting edge and intense than spritzing the audience with water, right? Nobody's ever done that before! Bonus points if the water is supposed to be dripping blood, as in Revenge of the Mummy (Hollywood).
Namer: Alien Encounter
Examples: Mickey's Philharmagic, Jurassic Park, Stitch's Great Escape, Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem, Toy Story Midway Mania, Revenge of the Mummy, Muppet-Vision 3D, Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey, Ellen's Energy Adventure, Harry Potter and the Escape From Gringotts, Captain EO

Beware of Glass - Inexplicable Universal-only subset of I Got Some In My Mouth, where being spritzed with water can also represent glass shattering nearby.
Examples: Terminator 2 3D, Revenge of the Mummy, Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man

EllenBot - It's a bad idea to cast a recognizable person in your attraction because their audio-animatronic incarnation will probably look nothing like them. Is that Tim Allen or a Country Bear??
Namer: Ellen's Energy Adventure
Examples: The Hall of Presidents, Superstar Limo

The Book Report Ride - An attraction which shows exactly the same events which occurred in the source film in the same order. You know these well.
Examples: Peter Pan's Flight, The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh, The Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, The Seas With Nemo and Friends

Ride the Movies - This is what happened after that movie you saw probably recently! Sometimes, the theme park attraction is the proper direct sequel to a film, but represents an alternate universe if the source movie got another sequel, as in the case of Terminator 2. Or, the story can be dropped into a specific point in a movie chronology rather than being set "after" the main events of the story.
Namer: Universal Studios Florida
Examples: Back to the Future, E.T. Adventure, Indiana Jones Adventure, Men in Black: Alien Attack, Star Tours, Jaws, Stitch's Great Escape, Revenge of the Mummy, Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, Jurassic Park The Ride

It's Not About Finding Hot Tubs - Subset of Ride the Movies, and differentiated from the Book Report, where an attraction specifically tells you that the events depicted therein take place after the movie -- but everything that happens is just something that happened in the movie.
Namer: Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage
Examples: Radiator Springs Racers, Ratatouille: L’Aventure Totalement Toquée de Rémy

The Enchanted Tales Razor - The rule that states that no explanation is sometimes better. Named for Enchanted Tales with Belle, where a straightforward character meet and greet is burdened with an absurd time travel conceit which not only makes no sense, but conveniently vanishes after it's no longer needed.
Examples: Enchanted Tales with Belle, Mission: Space

Why Did It Have to be Tourists - "You're sending a bunch of wet behind the ears tourists out in the SCOOP?" Or: any time a beleaguered hero has to save your miserable ass because you were a bunch of dumb tourists. You are lower than dirt.
Namer: Indiana Jones Adventure
Examples: The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, Star Tours, Transformers the Ride 4D, Dinosaur

Where Have You Been?! - A Harry Potter-specific subset of Why Did It Have to be Tourists. Harry Potter is constantly saving your ass. There's no moment when he isn't. Dementors? Voldemort? Whomping Willow? Harry Potter saved your ass. Theme Park Harry Potter is more competent than movie Harry Potter, book Harry Potter, and fanfic Harry Potter rolled into one. That time you nearly fell trying to buy a carton of milk in Target? He saved your ass that time too. Harry Potter is the hardest working guy in theme parks. He hates you so much.
Namer: Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey
Examples: Hogwarts Express, Harry Potter and the Escape From Gringotts, Harry Potter and You In Line For Butterbeer, Harry Potter and the........

I'm Bill Paxton - Most commonly used in Universal attractions where an actor appears on a screen to address you before the main experience; also snuck into Disney rides in the 90s.
Namer: Bill Paxton in Twister: Ride It Out!
Examples: Steven Spielberg in E.T. Adventure, Angela Lansbury in Murder: She Wrote Mystery Production Theater, Ron Howard in Backdraft, John Michael Higgins in Test Track, Wallace Langham in Countdown to Extinction / Dinosaur, Gary Sinise in Mission: SPACE, Jeffrey Jones in Alien Encounter, Patrick Warburton in Soarin Over California

The Hunky Tuna Tostada - Corollary to I'm Bill Paxton. Any time a highly recognizable celebrity or entertainer pops up unexpectedly in the middle of an attraction experience for a cameo, it's always going to take the audience out of the experience, even if it's intended strictly as a joke.
Namer: Enchanted Tiki Room: Under New Management
Examples: The Timekeeper, Disaster, Ellen's Energy Adventure, Revenge of the Mummy, Superstar Limo

Mission: Tortilla - OK, listen, maybe you didn't like all those institutes or research centers,  but Eisner sure loves industrial tours, because that's where people who actually have to work for a living are! Fascinating! Bonus if you get a free food sample for showing up.
Name: Mission Tortilla Factory
Examples: Universal Studios Tram Tour, Boudin Bread Factory, Disney-MGM Studios Backlot Tour


Feel free to propose any we may have missed in the comments! If I like one, I may add it to the article!

Let’s settle this tiresome debate once and for all: Women ARE funny. Want proof? Phyllis Diller. Wanda Sykes. I just took a big ol’ dump on Ryan’s desk.

Any questions?

This morning, I overheard our project manager, Ryan, explain to our coworker, Patrick, how Sheila from marketing is NOT funny. “She thinks she’s so funny by just leaving this packet on my desk with a sticky note with a smiley face doodled on it. Now I need to proofread the whole thing before the weekend on top of all of the work Brenda gave me,” he said in a judgmental tone.

By the way, I’m Brenda.

For some reason, the idea that women aren’t funny has always been a topic of debate. From Sarah Silverman to Tina Fey to Anna from Disney’s Frozen, it’s been proven time and time again that women CAN be funny – and yet NO man wants to believe it! Why do men still think this way? I know one thing that will change their minds – the poop that is currently cooling on Ryan’s desk.

“Hello! Haven’t you seen Bridesmaids?,” I said to myself, while marching toward Chipotle. “Maybe the problem is that the jokes he hears women tell are too sophisticated for his tiny man brain!” That’s when I thought about pooping on his desk.

After seeing what amazing women are doing in film and TV today, I challenge ANY man to call women unfunny after I have pooped on Ryan’s desk. They’ll have no choice but to say, “You know what, Brenda? You’re right.”

So I snuck into Ryan’s cubicle, and spotted the sticky note with the smile and planted a wet, moist log of a poop on top. Now, does anybody have anything to say about women not being funny? Didn’t think so. After all, they have to be on the right side of history.

I love women. I love comedy.

The Newport, VA community is shocked today after a lengthy investigation into the recent emotional behavior of 22-year-old woman, Carly Smalls, revealed she was not inebriated, but rather just “feeling things.” Officials say that despite spending an entire evening saying things like, “I really appreciate your friendship” and “We should definitely hang out more,” she was somehow not super drunk at the time.

In a statement just released, Police Chief Henry Carter claims, “Blood alcohol tests reveal that Ms. Smalls is, in fact, stone-cold sober. This is something we have never seen before, but she is simply able to express her emotions…out loud…with her mouth…in a clear, direct manner.”

At 11:30 PM Thursday, police responded to a call about a young woman at Jackson’s Pub. According to witness testimony, “Farrah was just like ‘Go home, Carly, you’re drunk!” But after consenting to a Breathalyzer test, Smalls had no trace alcohol in her system. Psychologists confirmed that Smalls possesses a rare quality to express her emotions using her words, or “speak what she feels.”

“Most people need to be inebriated in order to access the emotional center of the brain,” says psychotherapist Dr. Adina Hall. “However, this woman is displaying the ability to tell people she loves how she feels about them in a state of sobriety. This is highly unusual.”

“It’s amazing,” says Jackson’s Pub bartender, Carl. “I’ve been working here all my life and never seen a thing like it. She didn’t order a single drink, but still told me I was a good listener.”

A witness to the event states, “She’s 22. We just assumed.”

Dr. Clark Jamesman of the Center for Mental Disease Control at New York University adds that Smalls also has no signs of a mental disorder of any kind. “It’s clear: She’s a total anomaly,” says Dr. Jamesman.

But Smalls is “always weird like that,” according to Farrah Carlos, her alleged “lifelong bestie for life.” “She just has feelings and says them out loud when she feels them. When I start to get emotions, I let Jack Daniels say them for me.”

Smalls was still taken into custody. According to reports, police were so confused that they decided to book her anyway.

When asked to comment, Smalls had just this to say: “Sometimes I just like to remind my friends that I respect and care about them. I find it overwhelming and unfair that I’m being arrested but will cooperate calmly because I’m not drunk.”

The Maryland Renaissance Festival, aka The World Series of Cleavage, features a lot of weird things (its clientele typically chief among them), but it's possible that nothing there is more bizarre than the food. Last weekend, I set out to eat these experiments in gastronomic mad science, because I am just that committed to comedy/taking vengeance against my digestive tract.

It's worth noting that I didn't eat everything below by myself, although that should be fairly evident by the fact that I'm sitting here typing this rather than spending time in an ICU. Both my girlfriend and a friend of ours joined me for this misadventure, and we split most of the items below between us. Also lending sympathetic (no) texts were Jezebel's own Isha Aran, Mark Shrayber, and Tracy Moore, all of whom reacted to everything I was shoving in my face without once urging me to seek medical attention. I actually appreciate that, because I too consider comedy to take primacy over my own physical well-being.

Turkey Leg

The classic Renaissance Festival turkey leg may look like an infected scab on the outside and a biology textbook muscle map on the inside, and it may photograph about as well as a dumpster fire, but there's something incredibly compelling about it. This is doubly confusing when you consider that 90% of all turkey legs are thrown away half-eaten because fighting through to get to the meat is basically the shitty eating version of summiting Everest.

Tracy: That turkey leg is the profile of a very sad dog who looks like Elvis.
Isha: It looks like a frog if the frog was a burn victim.
Mark: That turkey leg has Ebola. It looks like a rhinoceros penis with Ebola.
Tracy: I showed my four-year-old that turkey leg. "It looks like somebody touching blood on a bone."

Verdict: The classic turkey leg has no earthly right to be as delicious as it is, yet here we are. Every year I think "maybe I won't get one of those this time," and every year I wind up going "NOPE, GET THAT FUCKER IN MY FACEHOLE."

Chocolate-Covered Cheesecake on a Stick

I expected this to be just a nominally cheesecake-flavored ice cream bar, but no, this was an actual wedge of cheesecake, complete with crust and everything, coated in chocolate. If nothing else, I have to commend their commitment to not half-assing it — they straight up dunked a cheesecake in a metric ton of chocolate. There's something noble about that (no, there isn't).

Tracy: Torpedo poop.
Isha: No thank you. I can only handle two of those three gimmicks at a time.
Tracy: Four-year-old: "It looks like a popsicle that has blood on it." I think my kid is messed-up a little.
Mark: I would absolutely eat that. I would deep-throat the shit out of that cheesecake. I imagine heaven is just Bea Arthur, Rue McLanahan, and Sophia Petrillo just deepthroating frozen cheesecake.

Verdict: Better than I had expected. I mean, still weird, cloying, and a little bit terrifying, but better than I expected.

Crab Pretzel

If you've never had a crab pretzel (possibly because you live in some unfortunate place where "crab" is considered an exotic foodstuff), it's basically just a soft pretzel with crab, cream cheese, and cheddar cheese lumped on top of it. If you're in Maryland when you eat one, I'm reasonably sure you are legally required to dump so much old bay on it that you practically asphyxiate with each bite, so thanks to my girlfriend for helpfully complying with the law here. Trufax: we were home three days and we ate two of these things, because that's what you do when you go to Maryland. I feel like if the various States were Game of Thrones Houses, Maryland's banner would just be a picture of one of these and the words "None More Maryland."

Tracy: Is that a cheese loaf?
Mark: That crab pretzel looks like a barrier method.

Verdict: Fuck all y'all, this shit was bananas. Maybe the best thing I had all day. Life tip: always order the crab pretzel.

Mac and Cheese on a Stick

While I have and will continue to argue that Maryland is not the South (well, not the counties that actually matter, which, to be fair, is like five of them), they're really not helping their case by serving tons of fried weirdness on sticks. C'mon, Maryland, Southerners hate you because you didn't rebel in support of literally enslaving other human beings; don't try to live up to that standard. Don't be that guy.

Tracy: Cheese-fried-cheese is never not going to be appealing.
Isha: OK, both of those last two things could be anything. I think they only have three ingredients at the Renn Faire and they just arrange them in different ways.
Mark: The ingredients are sadness, self-hatred, and cheese.

Verdict: Good, but good in a way you don't want to experience again any time soon, kind of like the movie Se7en. To quote the people I was with, "Those were good, but I think that's probably enough of those for the next year."

Oyster Shooters

I knew this was a bad idea going in. As I've noted before, I'm not the biggest fan of oysters, and floating in a minicup full of cocktail sauce didn't do a whole lot to improve the situation. The fact that the Coors Light chaser (WHY?!) actually WAS an improvement should be pretty telling.

Also, yes, I drank the Coors Light chaser (and someone else's who didn't want it). Why? Because I paid for it, dammit.

Isha: Oh good. Afterbirth. Yum.
Tracy: Those look like bodily fluid body shots.
Mark: Liquid oysters or hemlock? Who can tell? Which is better? Probably hemlock because you die and don't have to worry about gastrointestinal distress for 24-48 hours.

Verdict: About as well as you'd expect a wad of horseradishy phlegm to taste.

Scotch Egg

If you've never had a scotch egg before, yes, that is in fact a hard-boiled egg wrapped in fried sausage. That's a thing the Scots came up with, and America should just bow down to them now for their clear and frankly surprising superiority in epic fried disaster engineering. You win, Scots — Outlander is awesome, kilts are the height of fashion, and bagpipe music is...semi-tolerable.*

Mark: This is the kind of shit that makes me want to go to the Renn Faire as a robot from the future (year 1999) to warn people about high blood pressure and diabetes.
Isha: The idea of holding that thing and sausage touching the palm of my hand really freaks me out.
Tracy: My four-year-old: "It looks like a burned table."

Verdict: While I agree with Mike Myers that all Scottish food originally started as a dare, in this case it's a dare I actually appreciate. It's actually not surprising that this works — "egg + sausage + murderous amounts of grease = delicious" is a recipe that has served the McDonald's breakfast menu well for decades now.

Pork Chop on a Stick

This is my pork chop on a stick. There are many pork honks like it but this one is mine. I will eat with it, I will sleep with it, I will have diarrhea with it. My pork honk is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my colon. I must eat it despite the fact that I know it will fire true out of my butt in a couple hours. I must resist the voice in my head screaming that my pork honk is trying to kill me. I must eat it before it eats me.

Tracy: That is a catcher's mitt of meat.
Isha: OK, I'm officially done with things on sticks.
Mark: Isn't a pork chop already on a stick by default? This seems unnecessary.

Verdict: Why does putting it on a stick somehow make it taste better? It shouldn't, and yet it does. A+, Pork Chop on a Stick. A-fucking-plus.

King's Baked Potato

Since you can't really tell from looking at it, the King's Baked Potato was filled with nacho cheese, bacon, sour cream, butter, and broccoli. This ingredient miasma should've been horrifying, and it was...but it was also strangely appealing. Like, I immediately wanted another one appealing. In a related story, I can't feel my legs.

Also, my colleagues went NUTS with this one:

Isha: That baked potato looks like a Taco Bell item, which is about the worst thing I could say about it.
Mark : That baked potato looks amazing. I have had a potato with nacho cheese before, and let me tell you, it was an EVENT.
Isha: No way, Mark. That thing looks like the future version of itself. Post-poop.
Mark: Because it is the shit. Like, obviously it is the shit because you shit yourself real hard after. But it's delicious, so it's worth it.
Tracy: Four-year-old: "That looks like a burned eggplant."
Isha: That nacho cheese looks like stress putty.
Mark: Honestly, I think the sour cream looks more offensive. Like someone just splooged some dairy on a potato.
Tracy: The sour cream is the one thing that looks amazing to me.
Mark: That's a potato facial. A pokkake. Bet Tracy Moore wishes she had a picture of this potato while giving birth!
Tracy: I wish a baby felt only like a potato coming out.
Mark: Tracy would you rather shit yourself eating a potato or give birth again? Like, here is your choice: you go to the Faire, eat ten of these potatoes, and have the dairy constipation, or you have to give birth again. Which would you choose?
Tracy: Talk about a Sophie's Choice! The potato.
Isha: Sophie's Choice is still a better love story than that sour cream.

Fried Thai Green Beans With Coconut Curry Peanut Sauce

Not that I'm actually complaining (there is no word in that title that doesn't sound delicious), but I question whether this dish makes sense in context. Did Queen Elizabeth have a favorite Thai place? Did Michaelangelo sculpt a statue commemorating Lorenzo de Medici's legendary love of Pad Thai? I am dubious.

Mark: Lots of thai green beans during the Renaissance. Shakespeare loved them.
Tracy: This seems so exotic compared to everything else.
Isha: If at first you don't succeed with putting shit on sticks, Thai, Thai again.**

Verdict: Thematic inappropriateness be damned, this was the best fucking thing I ate all day other than maybe the crab pretzel.

Soup in a Bread Bowl (Clam Chowder)

That's New England Clam Chowder, not jizz. I'm almost positive. Wait, does jizz taste like clams? Shit, did I just eat a jizz bowl? Is this my trembling bukkake?

Mark: Jizz. Drink up!
Tracy: Definitely jizz.
Isha: Jizz. That is the whitest thing I have ever seen in my life, in all senses of the word.

Verdict: The soup wasn't bad, but the bread is some sub-Wonder Bread bullshit. Come on, Ren Faire. You can do better.

Dirt Cake

This photo is not doctored in any way. That was literally taken within ten seconds of them handing it to us. I wasn't even going to bother taking a picture of it before ordering (because I didn't eat it), but when I saw them hand my friend a bowl full of moldy bear diarrhea topped with a lone, suffering gummy worm, I couldn't resist.

Isha: If you have to put a fucking gummy worm on your food to spruce it up, you're not doing it right.
Tracy: For some reason, I just heard the words "baby's Oreo surprise" in a very Southern redneck voice in my head. That thing would be a huge hit at Sonic.
Mark: Would eat. No ragrets (misspelling intentional).

Verdict: I chose not to partake, because if I'd vomited at this point it would've been basically pure Velveeta. The person who did gave every sign of enjoying this poop disaster, though. She even ate the gummy worm.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to spend the next month doing unspeakable things to my toilet.

* Look, I can only stretch the truth so far.

** This is my single favorite text of the entire day.

Image via FomaA/Shutterstock. Bonus points because this image was titled (I swear I'm not making this up) "Healthy breakfast of meat stuffed egg on the lettuce."

Breasts swing. They sag. They flop. They can move. Over the years, many games have tried to emulate the way breasts behave. There's even a term for it: "Breast physics."

If you've played games that have breast physics, you've probably seen how uncommon it is for games to show breasts that move like what they actually are: bags of fat affected by gravity. Instead, it's more likely for a game to depict breasts as helium balloons that have minds of their own. Certain games have failed at rendering realistic breasts so widely that some people seem convinced that bad breast physics are the result of sexism, or of an industry that likes to objectify women. I've seen unfair conjecture about whether or not developers have ever interacted with real-life breasts. I've seen people imply that developers simply don't know how to properly characterize women in games, and that gaming's ocean of unrealistic breasts is what happens when we have so few women developing games.

Are any of these sorts of claims true, I wondered? Plenty of people theorize about why games often feature bad breast physics, but there is little hard information about the actual breast-creation process. After looking into it a bit, I found that many amateur developers seemed to genuinely have a problem figuring out how to tackle breast physics in their games. There are a startling number of forum posts and tutorials where people discuss the best ways to achieve good breast physics online. One person even created a four-part Powerpoint presentation titled "The Quest for Boob Jiggle In Unity." People have developed specialized tools for other developers to use, to help demystify the enigma that is "how do breasts work."

Meanwhile, veteran game developers have been messing around with the way breasts move for almost two decades now.

And in case it needed to be said...NSFW warning!

1992: It Begins

In 1992, a fighting game called Fatal Fury 2 was released. Described by some as a "blatant clone" of Street Fighter II, Fatal Fury 2 did actually have a few noteworthy quirks of its own: it was a gorgeous-looking game that allowed players to perform "desperation moves" when their health bar was low, and it gave players a chance to get out of danger quickly through a hopping mechanic.

But let's be real. One of Fatal Fury 2's biggest contributions to the medium was that it was the first game to introduce a character with breasts that moved on their own.

(Source: TheInnocentSinful1)

Known as Mai Shiranui, that character is famed for having very, uh, lively breasts. Though Fatal Fury may not be a huge franchise nowadays, its legacy is very much alive: many top fighting games include a similar jiggle effect:

Street Fighter 4

(Source: CeruleanNight)

Soul Calibur

(Source: Thegamerwalkthroughs)

Skullgirls

(Source: Poccola_margherita0141)

Of course, fighting games aren't the only games that have wrangled with breast physics over the years.

Tomb Raider

(Source: sys2074)

Resident Evil

Metal Gear Solid

(Source: Saladtoser69)

Ryse

When developers don't include breast physics, it's not uncommon for savvy players to take matters into their own hands via modding. A popular type of Skyrim mod adds most robust breast physics to the fantasy game:

(Source: Marek Iwanowicz)

In 2009, there was also a Second Life mod that allowed players to add breast physics to characters. It became so popular, the actual game ended up incorporating the same feature—and now players try to advise each other on how to fiddle with their characters to achieve the best effect.

(Source: BlakOpalDesigns)

Even Minecraft players have figured out ways to add breast physics to their game. Then again, Minecraft players have tried their hand at adding pretty much everything to their games, haven't they?

The Most Famous Breast Physics of Them All

When it comes to breast physics, the most notorious game of them all has to be Dead or Alive. While breast physics might just be a minor 'feature' in the games I mentioned above, for Dead or Alive, breast physics are woven into the identity of the game. That emphasis might give the games a bad rap, as Mike Fahey argues in his piece about Dead or Alive, since fans find plenty to love in the way the game plays, some of which have nothing to do with breasts. Still, you can't really divorce Dead or Alive from its breast physics.

(Source: Thegamerwalkthroughs)

"I wanted to do something that would attract people's attention as I worked on the DOA game," Itagaki said in a Game Informer interview from 2004. "Of course, DOA is known for its bouncing breasts...when I applied [breast physics] to a 3D game, it was almost too much for people."

One of the big selling points for the latest game, according to the marketing at least, is the new engine—which will allow players to adjust the breast physics on their characters.

"We call the technology we used to advance skin and breast physics and make that a reality, the 'Yawaraka Engine,'" Yosuke Hayashi, producer on Last Round, told Famitsu. "Once you see it on the new consoles, you won't be able to go back."

What they're saying: thanks to the power of technology, the development team has realized more complex breast physics. The marriage of technological prowess and sexuality is a curious one...of course, anyone that watches footage of Dead or Alive knows that the series doesn't care about realistic physics, not really. Instead, the game has always featured outlandish physics, both for the breasts and for the gravity-defying fighting moves. Whatever misgivings people have about the realism of the breasts, the intense physics seem like a deliberate choice meant to realize a particular aesthetic.

Can the same be said of other games? I've spent the past few months trying to talk to developers about breast physics. It's been surprisingly difficult getting people to talk—I've had an easier time trying to poke people for details about high profile unreleased games than I have asking them about why games depict breasts the way they do. Despite speaking to a number of developers on the subject, only a few would speak to me on the record. Fortunately, I've managed to get a basic handle on how breast physics work.

How Video Game Breast Physics Work

Basically, in a modern game with 3D graphics, each character has a model. Underneath the textures that cover them like a "skin," these models are made up of "bones," which can be manipulated so that the character can move. The number of bones a character can have depends on the game's graphics engine; certain engines allow for more bones than others. The number of bones a character has also depends on the overall number of characters rendered at any given moment—the more characters there are, the more taxing it is on whatever hardware is processing the game, so the fewer number of bones each of these characters is likely to have. (Thankfully, real life doesn't work this way!)

All of these bones are prepped to be animated via a process called "rigging." Rigging allows developers to determine the extent to which a model can move, and how. Breasts don't generally move of their own volition, they move in reaction to something else, much like hair and clothes do. If a developer wants breasts to move, then they'll likely "rig" a character's chest area. How the breasts move depends on how many bones are in the bosom area: when breasts both move in unison, it's likely that the model's chest has a single joint. If both of the breasts move independent of one another, the chest likely has at least a couple of bones rigged.

(Source: Maya Learning Channel)

"Mechanically, breasts anchor off the pectoral but loop up and connect at the shoulder, so they get pulled back when the clavicles move," Tim Dawson, an indie developer that has previously worked on games like LA Noire, told me.

Once breasts are rigged, developers can add breast physics in a couple of ways. Breast movement might be dictated by a simulation system that lets developers add "springs" to breasts. These springs take motion and use it to determine how much something should move after, say, a character jumps up and down. Springs help make it so that breasts can continue to move even after a character becomes still. If a character has two springs, one might be used to determine how far a breast bone is distanced from the sternum, and a second spring might control how much the breast deviates from its starting point. Then, on top of all of that, developers can add a dampening effect that determines how long it takes for the breasts to settle down.

"Imagine the character standing up," Dawson said. "The sudden movement would pitch the breast bones downwards. Then when the character reaches their standing height, the bones catch up, pitching upwards slightly, then back down and come to a rest. This would be a procedural breast bounce and settle. The rest just comes from thinking it through: how much heft are [the breasts] likely to have, how well-supported are they?"

Why Developers Get It Wrong

I'm told that a good number of games use this system. Thing is, a spring system isn't necessarily effective in creating realistic physics, but it is considered a cheap, easy solution to add breast physics. Some engines even come with it built-in. Spring systems are meant to help with something called "rigid body physics," and, well, breasts aren't rigid. To create realistic breasts, you'll need something called "soft body physics simulation," and it's a lot more taxing for a computer to calculate.

Another way to add breast physics involves animating the breasts by hand—that is, the breasts would be treated no differently than other major body parts, like arms or legs. In this case, the breast physics aren't left up to a simulation system but instead determined on a case-by-case basis by an animator. I'm told hand-animated breasts are rarer than a sim system, due to how time-consuming it is. Animating breasts is a real handful, so to speak. (Sorry.)

While those aren't the only ways to animate breasts, they help explain a few things. Why distinct breast physics are so prevalent in fighting games, for example: when you only have to worry about two characters on the screen on any given moment, of course developers can add details like breast physics. Fighting game characters characters can likely have more bones than characters in an average game. The difficulty of crafting breast physics may also explain why so many games have strange-looking breasts: developers who are interested in adding this detail can't financially justify doing so, so they have to cut corners any way they can.

(Source: Huy Tran)

Still, it'd be a stretch to suggest that unrealistic breast physics are purely the result of technological shortcomings. Breast physics are a choice, after all, and not every game implements them.

One developer who I'll call "Alex," because they didn't want to be identified by their own name, told me about a situation where breasts had gone wrong—and it wasn't the result of tech limitations. Alex told me that their studio was very concerned with its depiction of breasts. Even so, there were stumbles along the way.

"The very first thing I noticed when [the studio was] animating breasts is, I would look at them, and they were just not moving in a way that was even remotely natural," Alex said.

"I remember saying to the artist, 'the breasts are moving wrong.' And I remember directly asking him, 'Have you watched breasts move? Have you actually watched breasts move?"

Chances are good that the animator in question had in fact seen breasts before. The thing to remember is, it's actually damned hard to remember how breasts actually move. As a card-carrying Breast Haver™, even I'd have to check how my breasts act before being able to properly gauge them in a game. Of course, it's an animator's job to figure this stuff out.

"I think [people] remember the fantasy of breasts, like how we remember lips being redder, how we see waists as [smaller than they actually are,]" Alex explained.

"If you're around animators working, you often will see them stand up, or they'll ask someone they're working with—they're trying to watch the motion, they will film themselves doing that motion. Interestingly enough, I've never worked with any female animators.

"Anyway, while doing these things, [animators would] swing their arms, and try to get an idea, they're looking at what the animation is like, and I think...breast physics are often accentuated in a game, without the movement that would create that accentuation."

"People remember the fantasy of breasts."

Absurd breast physics aren't always unintentional, though. A couple of developers described situations to me where people took breast physics too far on purpose, because if they put the work into making sure breasts can move, they're probably going to want people to actually notice it. This phenomenon is not exclusive to breasts. If a developer puts time into any detail in a game, they probably want players to notice it. That's why we get development videos about how a game handles things like wind, or how a character's cape sways: these aren't the sort of things that truly determine the quality of the game, but they are things actual humans likely spent a lot of time implementing.

"When a developer goes to the trouble of setting up the breasts to move, there's probably someone keen to see it working,"Dawson told me. "So, if you're not careful, that translates into breasts that swing and bounce at the smallest hint of motion. Picture the boss of the studio coming in and wanting to know why he can't see any breast-bounce when the character is talking. The effect is increased until her breasts are reacting to the chest movement of her dialogue animation, but now it's going to look ludicrous when the character runs around performing actions. But the person implementing it is told to leave it like that because somebody thinks it's cool that way.

"Ultimately though, I sort of suspect that when a developer doesn't get breast physics looking right, it's because, for whatever reason, somebody wanted them to look that way," Dawson said.

Obviously, Dawson can't speak for the decisions made at studios he doesn't work for, but what he's saying makes sense. Soul Calibur developers, for example, have been pretty open about the fact they have an entire system revolving around the depiction of breasts in their games:

There's no doubt there that they very much want the breasts to look and function the way that they do. But just because it's intentional doesn't mean it'll be received well.

"Every other woman in the universe has sort of a cringe reaction, you know? 'Boobs just wouldn't move that way. That's not natural'" Alex said. Alex would know; at Alex's studio, the models were all focus tested. The developers actually received feedback from women who saw the game. While it may not be typical for most studios to do this, in this case, research was conducted because there weren't many women game developers on the team that could weigh in on the subject.

"Across the board, [the response from women] wasn't a neutral response, it was a negative response," Alex said. Curiously, the negative response occurred both when the physics were unrealistic, and when the physics were turned off. It seems as if there's a very fine line to walk when it comes to breast physics: they can't be too exaggerated or too toned down without having people feel as if something is wrong. You might think of it as "the uncanny valley of breasts."

We Like It Like That

It was through focus testing, the usage of good reference materials, and honest conversations about anatomy that Alex's studio was able to improve their breast physics. But, when I say "improved," I don't necessarily mean "made more realistic."

"Many games are full of exaggerated [male] forms," Alex said. "We don't point at those and go, huh, that doesn't look realistic at all. Of course it doesn't! It looks superpowered, and we like that. The same thing would apply to breasts."

Tim Dawson seems to agree. To him, developers tend to include unrealistic breasts, because exaggerated bodies have become a staple of the medium.

"The developers might be playing fast and loose with their anatomy, like breasts that are too large or too unsupported for what the character does, or that are just in an unnatural shape," Dawson said. "I once received a female enemy model that appeared to have balloons protruding out of her torso and couldn't convince the art director that it needed fixing.

"But even when well-modelled, if a character with breasts the size of watermelons is wearing a metal string bikini and attacks enemies with cartwheels, it's going to be hard to make the breast physics look realistic because the scenario is not realistic," he said.

"People like the movement of breasts, that's a hard-wired thing in our heads," Alex said. "So, for some people, exaggerating that is a net positive. I think [breast physics] are in games for that reason."

Ideas For Game Developers

Regardless of whether a studio is going for realism or digital beauty, there are still video-game breasts that look good, and breasts that look ridiculous. Game developers can do some things to help swing more toward the former.

"Just run it by a few people, run the animations by people," Alex said. Alex emphasized to me that this was particularly important if the studio doesn't have many women.

It's also worth considering what kinds of breasts the game has on display. Alex pointed out that there's a difference between natural breasts and augmented breasts. A person's specific body-type can influence how breasts move, as well. Some people are bigger than others, and this affects the way their breasts move. Some people have breasts situated at different heights on their chests. Some people have perkier breasts than others. The list goes on. "Even the absolute best natural breasts have some sag," Alex said. It's important for developers to think about these things, if they're interested in better breast physics.

Another thing that Alex suggested was for development studios to make use of porn, particularly older pin-up nude magazines. Really. It's apparently great for reference material.

"[They give you] a really good opportunity to see, 'where is the nipple placed? Where do the line on the chest? What is the curve underneath?'

"I don't [think] breasts need to be realistic in games, unless that's what [developers] are going for…but [developers] should be aware that if the breasts are moving in a weird way, then it just becomes the uncanny valley for women."

With these things in mind, maybe games can get better at depicting breasts. And when that happens, maybe the game industry can move on to figuring out the mystery that is…dick physics.

"If I were animating a naked man walking, I really honestly have no idea how balls move," Alex joked. "I don't!"

Illustration by Jim Cooke.

To contact the author of this post, write to patricia@kotaku.com or find her on Twitter @xpatriciah.

Lianne Moseley is able to turn regular human beings into comic book superheroes, using only the powers of...a make-up brush.

Just look at this! She-Hulk, Green Arrow, X-Men...even Archer, who isn't really a comic book hero, but whatever, close enough.

You can see more of Lianne's work at her Facebook page (via Fashionably Geek).

Contact the author at plunkett@kotaku.com.

Here is my disclaimer, friends. This article is not PG rated. It might make you blush. It will probably stir some feelings of either strong agreement, or perhaps strong defense, but no matter how you feel by the end of this, I need you to know one thing going in… If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t say it. If I wasn’t honestly deeply concerned, I wouldn’t take my very valuable time to talk about it. And if I didn’t love the people that I know will read these words, then there would be no point in discussing it. But because I care, and I’m concerned, and I love you, I cannot leave these words unsaid. So, here we go…

I was scrolling through Facebook a few years ago, when I began to hear talk of a new book, 50 Shades of Grey. Friends of mine from high school, college and even church were all raving about finishing the first and eagerly anticipating the next in the series. I was intrigued, (and out of the loop.) So, I Googled it.

From Amazon if you have no previous knowledge of it, “When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview young entrepreneur Christian Grey, she encounters a man who is beautiful, brilliant, and intimidating. The unworldly, innocent Ana is startled to realize she wants this man and, despite his enigmatic reserve, finds she is desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her, too—but on his own terms.

Shocked yet thrilled by Grey’s singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success—his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family—Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a daring, passionately physical affair, Ana discovers Christian Grey’s secrets and explores her own dark desires.”

I didn’t have any desire to read it, so I moved along and didn’t think much more about it. But soon, the books began to create a buzz. People became divided about whether or not to read them, and articles and posts were written from those on all sides of the argument. And honestly? I felt like everything had been said that needed to be said about it. Minds were made up. Hearts were sure. People were going to do what people were going to do when it came to reading or not reading. And so, I stayed (mostly) quiet.

But with the resurrection of the books now in movie form, I feel absolutely obligated to say this to the Christian women who read these words and plan to see the movie.

Please, sweet friend. Don’t. Just… don’t.

I hear from young wives and mothers all of the time who are struggling in their marriages. Who desperately need help finding hope in the day to day tasks that are asked of them. Who feel as though their marriages are falling apart because they don’t know how to balance being a wife and a mother and everything else, and who need help remembering what it feels like to be deeply in love with their husbands again.

And yet, I hear so many Christian women argue that going to see this movie is simply entertainment and may even help their marriage.

But friend? I must say this. It is a complete lie that going to see the movie will help your marriage. And an even bigger lie is that it won’t affect you it all. Because it will. The things that you see cannot be unseen. The feelings that you experience from being entertained by those scenes cannot be unfelt. And if marriages aren’t under enough pressure already, going to watch pornography is only throwing gasoline on relationships experiencing fire from all directions.

It’s destruction. And you are walking to the door, and inviting it into your life.

You want to spice up your marriage? You want to save your relationship from being stagnant, or save the passion from slipping away in the day in and day out expectations of you and your husband? Don’t ask Christian Grey for help. Don’t watch Christian Grey do whatever he would like to Anastasia Steele and expect it to heal that deep hurt and need for intimacy in your own heart.

Only Jesus can do that. Only Jesus can speak to the places in our hearts that need to feel alive and loved again.

I have thought a lot about whether or not Jesus would speak about this if He lived today. And I decided this. No. He probably wouldn’t. He wouldn’t waste one breath on seeing this particular movie.

But do you know what He would have done? He would have addressed the bigger heart issue that our society is facing which is the lack of respect and honor for our spouse in a culture that is saturated with pride and selfishness.

Jesus would have spoken to the greater hurt so many wives experience as they feel unseen and unloved in their own marriages. And He would have addressed the men who feel as though they aren’t respected in their own homes. He would have said this,

“Wives honor your husbands. Husbands, love your wives.”

He would have reminded us that our marriages are designed as a reflection of Christ’s love for the Church (us.)

SO that’s what I want to do. I want to remind us of the bigger issue here, but I want to do so by saying this. If we are going to honor Christ with our marriages, then we need to leave Christian Grey out of our minds.

We need to honor our husbands by keeping our sexual desires and (arousal) for them only. Because, friend, the place where families are torn apart is not at the dinner table or in the living room. The place where families fall apart is in the bedroom. The words that we say to each other outside of the walls of our bedrooms are simply a reflection of the level of intimacy AND RESPECT that takes place when we are alone and vulnerable with our spouse.

And personally, if my marriage is sacred and holy and the foundation on which my family and children stand? Then the last thing I’m going to do is invite the imagery of Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey to play in my mind while I’m alone with my husband. My heart and my mind should be his alone when it comes to sexual intimacy.

Wanna know what’s really sexy? I’m going to begin to spice up my marriage by talking highly of my husband to my children and to others. I’m going to show him that I love him by respecting him as a man. And then? On top of all of that? I’m going to love him intimately. Yes. Intimately. Because sex was designed by God as a gift for me and my husband. It’s not taboo. It’s a gift that has been stolen, twisted, and turned into something that is the opposite of safe and beautiful. Which is exactly what this movie has done. It has taken the vulnerable and beautiful thing that is married sex and entertained the world with a man who uses sex to control, manipulate and introduce pain.

And yet we say, “No big deal.”

So, here’s my challenge. (My apparently long-winded challenge.) Let’s take back sex. No. Seriously. Instead of watching Christian Grey have sex with Anastasia Steele? Try this. Have sex with your own husband. Spend the evening in your own bedroom remembering what being in love felt like when you first got married. Yup. Sex is good and important.

And friend? Your husband and your marriage are worth honoring… and you know what? I think deep down… you agree with me.

As always,

Agree? Share this post to pass it on, and then come find me on Facebook! I try and stay in touch with my readers on a personal level through social media!

Gleefully shitting on Fifty Shades of Grey became its own pastime as soon as the books started climbing up bestseller lists. But as easy as it is to lambast a trilogy of books written from the standpoint of a sexual idiot savant with a fifth-grade reading level, there's something smarmy and inauthentic about knocking something you haven't read. So, recently, I read them.

To understand my journey into the darkest recesses of the lowest common denominator, it helps to understand how Fifty Shades of Grey came to be. In 2010, a British mother of two who called herself Snowqueen's Icedragon posted the first chapter of a book called Master of the Universe, a smutty Twilight fanfic starring Edward and Bella. (Why name yourself the inscrutably possessive "Snowqueen's"? What is an Icedragon? I'd be a pretty cocky shit about that ruffly fanfic pen name right now if I weren't ridiculing a zillionaire who obviously knows something about humanity that I don't.)

But Snowqueen's wasn't alone in producing her magnum opus. Perfecting MOTU was a group effort, edited and punched up with the help of her legions of devoted fans (very, very horny members of Team Edward who offered her pointers on American slang and dirty-talk). Because a trilogy of books about Twilight characters fucking like S&M rabbits is less marketable than an
"original" trilogy of books about new, original people (that just so happen to resemble Twilight characters) fucking like S&M rabbits, our scribe Snowqueen's Icedragon "reworked" and extended MOTU before marketing it as the Fifty Shades of Grey we've been taught to know and loathe.

Whether or not the first installment of Fifty Shades was actually changed all that much at all has been called into question; one fan analyzed chapter one of FSoG against chapter one of MOTU and found an 89 percent similarity between the text of both; essentially, only the names of the characters had been changed. Furthermore, as the Fifty Shades wiki notes, there is a direct correlation between almost all of the characters in Twilight and almost all of the characters in Fifty Shades of Grey, right down to Christian's exes.

(Unfortunately for amateur Snowqueen's Icedragon archeologists who wish to further examine the two literary masterpieces' similarities, all traces of the original MOTU—with the exception of a few precious screengrabs featured in this fascinating 2012 article on AdWeek—have been scrubbed from the web. Their truth is lost to the digital ruins. Who says the internet is forever?)

As Master of the Universe changed to Fifty Shades of Grey, so too did Snowqueen's Icedragon turn into E. L. James, entrepreneurial writer of sophisticated erotica which was definitely not just Twilight fanfic with the names swapped out. Books one and two of the trilogy were released by an Australian self-publishing house in May and September of 2011, respectively, and Book three followed in early 2012. Fans ate them up like Christian ate Anastasia's asshole in Book two: disgustingly, and with no regard for the shit they were putting in their face. Major publishing houses took notice of the book's virality, and in April of 2012 the books were re-released by Vintage. The rest is Burn Your MFA history: 20 weeks atop the bestseller list, James surpassing J. K. Rowling as the most popular writer of all time on Amazon UK. A million and a half giggly morning show puff pieces. A billion finger-wagging pieces from both ends of the political spectrum about how the books glorify abuse and are capital-B Bad. Now, a movie that promises to get women to seductively open their hot, wet wallets.

It's been a full-blown cultural phenomenon for years, and I could no longer deny the fact that I had to read it or risk being a fake-ass hack.

I start this journey by downloading the first book to Kindle, because like hell I was going to kill trees in the name of a snickering hate read (and like hell I'd be caught dead reading Fifty Shades on a train where I once definitely saw Martin Amis). I begin book one on the day after Christmas.

Having fully expected the book to be bad, I nonetheless feel truly unprepared for the degree to which the first book sucks. By the time I've gotten to the part where Christian Grey—a 27-year-old billionaire shithead who has a company that may as well be called Business, Inc.—signs Anastasia Steele, 21-year-old virgin about to graduate from college with a degree in English, up for her first email address (in the year 2011), I feel so smugly vindicated that I begin highlighting the passages that read exceptionally badly to me. I highlight, giggling to myself, the part where Christian asks Anna to sign a multi-page legal contract detailing her role as his sub, and his as her dom (one requirement: sub shall not snack upon anything other than fruits, because Christian Grey loves spanking but hates Type II diabetes.) I highlight the scene where Ana comes so hard she has to be carried to bed, like tiny baby Ariana Grande. The first time Christian Grey's S&M playroom is called "The Red Room of Pain" gets highlighted, as does the part where Anastasia astutely notes that Edward looks like a model in "some glossy magazine" and was wearing "some expensive cologne." This book is so descriptive. Reading this, I can picture exactly what "some expensive cologne" might smell like.

I suppose it's unfair for me to describe Anastasia as a single character; in Book one, she is actually three characters: Anastasia the human person, Anastasia's "inner monologue," an uptight librarian-type who is always peering over half-moon spectacles in judgment of Anastasia's moral choices, and Anastasia's "inner goddess," a sex-crazed Cathy cartoon who shows up during the middle of sexual encounters to like, do the merengue. Occasionally, Anastasia's conscience shows up to chastise her, but she's not near as cunty as the inner monologue. Incongruous and jarring doesn't even begin to describe the effect of this writing style.

The fucking in Fifty Shades is mildly boring—a difficult feat, when the act being described is an orgasmic deflowering following heavy nipple play. Things take a nosedive as Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele continue to fuck, endlessly, for 400 more pages, and as every single love scene reads like a magnetic poetry version of the first. Reading them one after another has the cumulative effect of rendering my pussy drier than an economic policy lecture delivered by Aubrey Plaza. Grey's penis interminably "springs free" of his boxer briefs, a description that I suppose is apt if not exactly alluring. Anastasia refers to her ass as her "behind," her vagina as her "sex." Her juvenile exclamations of "Jeez!" and "Oh, my!" and "Hmmm" are interspersed with the least specific descriptions of Christian Grey—the guy who threatens to beat her up for mouthing off or misbehaving—as the hottest man in the history of men. "He's just sex on legs," Anastasia says on page 316. From that point forth, my brain will read the remainder of the trilogy with the vocal inflection of the mother from Bobby's World.

It's bad. It's a bad book about bad people written badly. It glorifies the sort of domineering masculine violence that lands women outside of James's jill off fantasyland in the hospital, in domestic violence shelters. Perhaps most unrealistically, its male protagonist is a 27-year-old man living in Seattle who wears ironed shirts, cleans his room, and has his shit together. I'm far from the first person to realize this or to write this. But, somewhere in the first book, I realize I have been hooked.

Over the next two dreary end-of-December days, I find myself seeking out solitude with my Kindle and the ridiculous world of Christian and Ana. This book doesn't make me want to masturbate, as so many winky writeups on Fifty Shades have suggested. I'm much more concerned with the general welfare of Anastasia Steele, the poor sexually gifted moron, instantaneously perfect at blow jobs, owner of the best-tasting pussy in the world, who is apparently so simple and uncurious that she can't be bothered to worry about her personal safety. I'm worried about Anastasia Steele as a cagey shopper worries about an unrelated five-year-old child wandering unsupervised around a store. I'm not titillated; I'm terrified for the naive sex-baby Snowqueen's Icedragon has unleashed into a world intent on harming her. My inner goddess is calling the police.

At the conclusion of the first book, Kindle prompts me to read the second book, and without hesitation, I buy it. I do this of my own free will. I submit willingly.

Unfortunately, in Book two (ominously called Fifty Shades Darker), the book tries its cramped hand at a plot centering on bad women trying to steal Christian away from Anastasia. We meet former sexual partners of his driven mad by his magical dick (none of his exes seem to think he's a jerk) and determined to have him back, an older woman who Christian says seduced him at age 15 (who Ana refers to as "The Bitch Troll"), random waitresses who cannot stop eyefucking him. "Yeah girl, he's mine!" says Ana's inner monologue in response to all of these women who want to steal Christian from her like he's an Edvard Munch, which makes the book read as though it were written by a defensive guest on an episode of Jenny Jones.

But Ana's not the only one suffering from suffocating bouts of jealousy; subplots in Fifty Shades Darker center around the men who try to steal Anastasia away from Christian, too. These men include Jack, a predatory and beponytailed editor at the publishing house that employs Ana; Jose, the underdeveloped and hopelessly friendzoned Latino Jacob the Werewolf of the Fifty Shades series; even Christian's bodyguards get little crushes on sexy baby Ana. She's just so bland and irresistible. I love you, Ana! Christian says constantly. Anastasia, like a squirrel with a head injury, in turn wonders whether or not Christian loves her. Could it be love? "I love you, Anastasia," Christian would say, again, and Ana's horny rodent brain wonders anew if it was, in fact, love. Then she'd "misbehave," and Christian would hiss that he wanted to beat her up, and Anastasia would get super turned on, but also scared. For a thousand pages.

But all isn't lost. In the second volume, Anastasia is less of a fuck noodle; she gets to kick a guy in the balls, steals her crooked boss's job, throws a drink in a woman's face, and agrees to marry Christian after they've been dating for only five weeks. By this point, even E. L. James is getting bored writing dozens of sex scenes for the pair, and so she mercifully ends a few of them once the foreplay starts. I find myself skipping past the sex scenes James does manage to see through to the end, out of sheer boredom and desire to make sure that Anastasia doesn't accidentally wander into traffic. I hate literally every single character in these books.

And still I remain, faithfully reading, so accustomed to James's style that the snarkily highlighted passages grew fewer and further between. Still, I run to the book during every free moment. I'm reading the book as the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve. Only a week after starting Book one, I worry that Anastasia's speech patterns have seeped into my brain. I forget to pick up eggs at the store one day before making a recipe that required them, and said to my boyfriend, without thinking: "Oh, crap," an expression I haven't used since I was in elementary school and was still scandalized by the word "shit." I realize that Snowqueen's was getting to me in ways I hadn't bargained for. My inner goddess self-immolates.

I worry that, just as reading excellent writing can make one a better writer, reading shit writing could make one worse, and that when I came out of the other side of the books, I'd be a mental Anastasia, muttering Oh my… to myself as I enjoyed anything. I try to take a mental break with The Goldfinch, but when I got back on the subway with my Kindle, I find myself back to the trilogy. I can't stop myself: I'm drawn, like a moth to slobbering descriptions of Christian Grey's dick.

In the same way I'd worry that I worried the book was making me worse at thinking, reading, and writing, I worry that all of the bad sex writing in would make me worse at sex. I worry I've been so immersed in the desperate hair-grasping world of Christian and Anastasia, the deep frenching, simultaneous orgasms and near-complete lack of pre-intercourse blow jobs that I'd start fucking like a thirsty 21-year-old who just lost her virginity. Would my sex life become the scene in Forgetting Sarah Marshall when a desperate Kristen Bell fakes a theatrical orgasm atop a horrified Russell Brand? Would I be able to become sexually aroused without thinking about the scene when Christian shaves Anastasia's pussy because she didn't do it right? During foreplay one night, a passage from Fifty Shades Darker involving vaginal weights pops into my head and it takes all of my mental strength to banish it.

Book two ends with Anastasia and Christian engaged. In mental tatters. I purchase the final installment, Fifty Shades Freed, immediately.

Book three commences promisingly, with the pair on their honeymoon in Europe. Anastasia sunbathes topless, which infuriates Christian, so he covers her boobs with hickeys, and Ana gets mad and throws a hairbrush at his head. Christian buys her a $50,000 bracelet to cover up the marks left by handcuffs and won't let her pee before sex because, he explains, it will make her orgasm better if she's gotta whiz. Romance! Meanwhile, someone is stalking them. WHO COULD IT BE? wonders Ana's overheating brain, failing to recall mere weeks ago, when she kicked her bepoyntailed editor in the balls and effectively ended his career.

Somewhere during Book three, it's clear that the dum-dum masterpiece lightning that Snowqueen's Icedragon captured in the first book has long fled its bottle for greener pastures. Both the inner goddess and the inner monologue have disappeared, never to be mentioned again. The sentences are more smoothly constructed, the vocabulary more grown up, Anastasia less of an idiot, Christian more of a nuanced prick than a yelling emotional teen. James's prose has improved from comically terrible to boring and banal. Violently awful writing is so much more interesting than barely passable writing; an Anastasia who doesn't say TRIPLE CRAP after stumbling on a loose carpet isn't the Anastasia whose personal safety I became accustomed to fearing for. Married Christian is boring. I no longer give a shit about Anastasia finding out who Christian used to date and throwing it in his face like a child.

Snowqueen's Icedragon's masterpiece and I drift apart. I procrastinate by spending weeks reading takes on Jonathan Chait. When I force myself to slog through what remains of the trilogy, it reads like a right-wing fantasy. Anastasia just, like, forgets to get her birth control shot for four months in a row and finds out she's pregnant and is like "WHELP GUESS I'M HAVING A BABY NOW!" Christian's sister gets kidnapped and Anastasia saves her, using a gun her stepfather, who used to be a Marine, taught her how to shoot real good. Christian changes his mind and is all, "Sure, I guess this human who cannot get it together enough to attend a birth control shot appointment every few months is 100 percent equipped to care for the life of a human baby." Anastasia looks in a mirror and says she feels old. Anastasia is 22. And then, right before the epilogue, comes this scene:

"I want in your mouth." His voice is soft and seductive. My body, ripe and ready, clenches deep inside. The pleasure is sweet and sharp.

I moan. Turning to face him, I pull his head down to mine and kiss him hard, my tongue invading his mouth, tasting and savoring him. He groans, places his hands on my behind and tugs me against him, but only my pregnant belly touches him. [...]

He grasps my head, stilling me, and I sheath my teeth with my lips and push him deeper into my mouth.

"Open your eyes and look at me," he orders, his voice low. Blazing eyes meet mine and he flexes his hips, filling my mouth to the back of my throat and then withdrawing quickly. He pushes into me again and I reach up to grab him. He stops and holds me in place.

"Don't touch or I'll cuff you again. I just want your mouth," he growls. [...]

Christian lies beside me, his hand caressing my belly, his long fingers splayed out wide.

"How's my daughter?"

"She's dancing," I laugh.

"Dancing? Oh yes! Wow. I can feel her." He grins as Blip Two somersaults inside me.

"I think she likes sex already.

"BANANA!" I call out to empty living room. Banana is my safe word. Sexual beating of a pregnant woman is too much for me to take. Snowqueen's Icedragon has finally gone too far.

I started reading the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy convinced that it would be the Killer Klowns in Outer Space of literature, and Shakespeare it wasn't—but by the end, I wondered if its stupidity was deliberate, perfect, and therefore, genius. If E. L. James is capable of writing smarter characters than Anastasia, as evidenced by the more intelligent voice used to write during the rare moments in the books that the story is told from Christian's perspective, is she a bad writer or a good writer with a virtuoso grasp on stupid? If the latter is the case, Fifty Shades of Grey is the literary accomplishment of our time, the Great Idiot American Novel, told from the perfectly captured perspective of an idiot, written about an idiot and available to be enjoyed, primarily, by idiots.

Fifty Shades nails how idiots think and (apart from the physical violence) how adolescents love. I winced with familiarity when I recognized that Ana saw Christian with the same retrospectively embarrassing adoration I remember lavishing on the first men I ever thought I loved. Christian traipses into the room wearing a particular pair of faded, loose-fitting jeans that sound like the sartorial equivalent of a wearable dog turd, and Ana feels a sexual clench in her stomach. Christian, in sunglasses, says "Gotta love Bruce" as Springsteen's "I'm On Fire" plays on his car stereo, something that would make me want to tear my face off now, but cartoon hearts erupt from Ana's head—the same cartoon hearts that erupted from my head when my college boyfriend insisted on playing 50 Cent while we had sex in his lofted dorm bed. Christian is an uptight dork at his best and an abusive monster at his worst, perhaps the least chill man in human history, but Ana loves him because she's an emotional baby with no self esteem. Like we all were. My inner goddess deletes her LiveJournal.

Weeks ago, I began a painful journey that promised to walk the line between pain and pleasure and ended up here, with a reluctant admission: no matter how much reading PG-rated mom-swearing in the context of a graphic penetration scene made my brain flinch, no matter how incomprehensibly it smarted to read a book written by a woman and narrated by a woman that would fail the Bechdel test—that, in the end, I would give in. There would be times during the process I didn't think I could take it; I'd want to put my head in a blender and light my Kindle on fire. There would be times I'd avoid finishing the task, that I'd nearly give up. But in the end, I'd finish all three books, 1,600+ pages of what I'd sneered at as mindless drivel with a terrible moral outcome when I could been reading smart things by good writers. I'd soldier through the beaten-to-death linguistic cliches, a surprising amount of footplay, Anastasia talking about that time Christian put stuff into her anus. I'd allow myself to be assaulted by Anastasia Steele's relentless dullness until I broke through my disgust and found myself in a dark new place, one I didn't know existed inside me. By the end, I—in a fucked up way—actually liked how it felt.

Image by Jim Cooke.

Question: Who brings the cupcakes at your office, is more likely to toss the moldy leftovers from the communal fridge, or gets stuck organizing the office b-day shindig? Answer: Hey guys, I can make reservations at the bar for today's post-work drinks. It's no problem, really!

In a Sunday NYT opinion piece, crouched-ever-forward Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg and Wharton School prof Adam Grant co-author a look at what anyone who's ever held an office job can tell you, summed up in one sober sentence you'll want to just linger over with a sad haunted look. They write:

This is the sad reality in workplaces around the world: Women help more but benefit less from it.

Help more, benefit less. Do more stuff, get less money and maybe less respect. Cool reality, guys. An example:

Late one Friday afternoon at a leading consulting firm, a last-minute request came in from a client. A female manager was the first to volunteer her time. She had already spent the entire day meeting with junior colleagues who were seeking career advice, even though they weren't on her team. Earlier in the week, she had trained several new hires, helped a colleague improve a presentation and agreed to plan the office holiday party. When it came time for her review for partner, her clear track record as a team player combined with her excellent performance should have made her a shoo-in. Instead, her promotion was delayed for six months, and then a year.

Of course, on a case-by-case basis, sexism thrives in the vague amorphous swamp called Who Can Know for Sure? Only, we can know for sure. Sandberg and Grant write:

In keeping with deeply held gender stereotypes, we expect men to be ambitious and results-oriented, and women to be nurturing and communal. When a man offers to help, we shower him with praise and rewards. But when a woman helps, we feel less indebted. She's communal, right? She wants to be a team player. The reverse is also true. When a woman declines to help a colleague, people like her less and her career suffers. But when a man says no, he faces no backlash. A man who doesn't help is "busy"; a woman is "selfish."

This whole she-wants-to-be-a-team-player thing really struck me, because when I think back over the sorts of things women handle around the offices I've worked in, from remembering to bring the napkins for the potluck to organizing a better system for delivering the inter-office mail, the recurring attitude is exactly that: Hey, don't women like doing this stuff more, anyway? Aren't they naturally better at it? Why not let them make these office events nicer, since it's such a breeze for them. We'll just muck it up anyway.

At this point, someone will argue: So what's the big deal? Sure, maybe women do more of this stuff, but they do this stuff their whole lives, so they're better at it, so why can't they just handle what they're better at?

Because they aren't "naturally better," they're conditioned. And they're quite literally penalized for it, which is a lot like being set up to fail. NYU psychologist Madeline Heilman recently conducted a study that asked participants to rate men and women employees who did or did not stay late to prep with colleagues for a big meeting the next day. When both agreed to stay late, the man was still rated 14 percent more favorably than the woman for no good reason. When both refused, the woman got dinged by 12 percent more than the man for no good reason. From her report:

Over and over, after giving identical help, a man was significantly more likely to be recommended for promotions, important projects, raises and bonuses. A woman had to help just to get the same rating as a man who didn't help.

This rings true to a maddening degree, and it clearly has to do with the same thing that happens to women on the domestic front—whatever work women are doing is simply valued less, so doing it can never count for much. It's necessary; things can't run well without the administrative systems working smoothly. No one thinks it takes much brainpower to get the cake right, but that flowchart outlining the office phone tree? That takes initiative.

Joan C. Williams, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, finds that professional women in business, law and science are still expected to bring cupcakes, answer phones and take notes. These activities don't just use valuable time; they also cause women to miss opportunities. The person taking diligent notes in the meeting almost never makes the killer point.

But I gotta say: Even if a woman isn't bogged down with pointless administrative tasks and manages to make that killer point in the meeting, it's just as likely that point will be repeated by the guy sitting next to her and then he'll be praised—or that later, and when it really counts, it will be credited to another man anyway.

And I think what we're talking about is also no different than how women are conditioned to perform femininity in the first place: To put a lot of invisible work into something but make it look effortless. This old dress, that five-minute makeup, that spotless house and those marvelously well-behaved children? I did it in no time and still made it to hot yoga. It's ridiculous to think this expectation of women to be everything, and poised and charming to boot, would magically disappear at the office.

Men, on the other hand, are allowed to be hard-charging, naked careerists who are expected to know better than to waste their time doing dumb shit that won't get them noticed. And if they step on a few toes or come off as domineering or arrogant in the process? Well, you can't just slap a bridle on that kind of ambition. Everybody knows this because it's telegraphed from day one—girls learn to tone it down; boys learn that rambunctious show-offy aggression is just being a boy. We make space for them to realize their full boyness. We condition women to minimize everything.

Watch out, this one stings:

When men do help, they are more likely to do so in public, while women help more behind the scenes. Studies demonstrate that men are more likely to contribute with visible behaviors — like showing up at optional meetings — while women engage more privately in time-consuming activities like assisting others and mentoring colleagues. As the Simmons College management professor Joyce K. Fletcher noted, women's communal contributions tend simply to "disappear."

Question: Where on a resume do you put how often your colleagues have asked you to read their work, help brainstorm ideas, or give them feedback in your downtime with no credit whatsoever? There's no "Shit I Do Quietly That Proves I'm Respected and Capable But Can't Really Back Up" section.

And it's not just that women are viewed less favorably for the work they do. They are more likely to burn out doing it. Sandberg and Grant write that "Research shows that teams with greater helping behavior attain greater profits, sales, quality, effectiveness, revenue and customer satisfaction. But doing the heavy lifting can take a psychological toll."

The toll is that some 80 more women than men will burn out per 1,000 workers due to this behind-the-scenes helping. Women "sacrifice themselves" to help others, another learned behavior.

But this wouldn't be Sandberg without some pragmatic ideas about how to fix this problem. She and Grant ask why corporations don't track acts of helping in tandem with an individual's performance. They ask why these communal tasks aren't assigned more equitably in the first place. This may sound cynical, but it's all but impossible for me to imagine this ever happening. There is deep deep bias among men and women, too about the roles we are meant to play but more specifically how those roles are valued. In my experience, usually when women are hard workers who also pitch in with these sorts of tasks, this simply becomes the standard by which other women are measured, but never other men.

They offer other solutions. For starters, women should take better care of themselves to avoid burnout. Agreed. Second, women should reprioritize how they mentor or help others to better help themselves. And this makes sense, too. In the earlier example, the woman with the delayed promotion chose to make some changes to her helping. She began mentoring others in group lunches, which gave them a built-in network with each other. She stopped answering so many one-on-one calls for advice and wrote an FAQ. She didn't say she was too busy when she couldn't take on a new task—she said she couldn't stretch her team. That way, she still looked caring! And giving! And eventually, she made partner.

Ladies, never forget these emotional contortions which are essential to your Making It. Dudes, of course, are still encouraged to bluster straight to the top. Men can help, too, though, by speaking up and pointing more directly to women's contributions. By stepping up and doing more of the office work. Great ideas, but please tell me how many guys angling for more money or a better title are going to go out of their way to make sure a woman's ideas are highlighted or to do menial tasks?

The answer, I think, is much more difficult to pull off: It's to raise boys differently from the start. The answer is not to teach women to care less; it's to teach men to care more. It's to teach boys how to care—with detail and empathy—so that as adults, men and women no longer have a gendered notion of what it means to pitch in in the first place. So that when everyone is doing a little bit of menial work, everyone is just as capable of reaching for the brass ring with their big ideas, if that's what they are after. No cupcake fetching required.

Illustration by Tara Jacoby.

After over five years of toil, 32-year-old Kaitlyn Pearce is no longer sure what the unidentifiable wool garment is that she is knitting.

“I have to finish it,” said Pearce as she continued knitting. “I don’t even know what it is anymore, but I told myself I’d finish so I’m going to finish. Plus I have this whole skein of yarn left.”

“I’d successfully finished dozens of scarves, a bunch of hats, three pairs of mittens – I’d even made a pair of socks,” Pearce explained, her fingers moving quickly and almost automatically, churning out row after confused row of knitted fabric, careening all over her person. “I lost the original pattern about a year in, and ever since, it’s been a game of chicken between me and this scarf-hat with sleeves.”

Ms. Pearce related that when she started this project, whatever it was, she was perhaps feeling overly confident that she could determine what exactly she was knitting. Then life got busy, and she had only been able to work on the mystery project in short spurts over the course of 14 years. “I’m sick of looking at this bag of yarn in my closet, and knowing there’s something in there that I haven’t finished.” said Pearce. “It’s go time now, and there’s no turning back.”

Pearce said she believed that the project had started as another sweater, or maybe some sort of long coat, as she held up the tangle of knitted panels dotted with stitch markers and holding various potential new sleeves, hoods, or god-knows-what. The project blended several different patterns distributed throughout, including stockinette stitch fading into unexplained cable knit portions that then abruptly stopped to make way for uninterrupted flats of seed stitching.

“There’s a hood in here somewhere,” said Ms. Pearce, turning the unnamed project over in her hands to reveal what appeared to be three different sleeves and at least two openings that could qualify as the head hole. “At one point I think a pocket turned into a mitten,” she admitted. “I don’t know what I was thinking. But pockets keep your hands warm, and so do mittens. Same function, different form, that’s all. I’m trying to keep an open mind at this point.”

When asked why she didn’t just unravel the project until she got to a point where she could identify the original intent of the piece, Pearce balked. “I just don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

“Life is messy, and it definitely isn’t fair,” said Pearce. “But you just gotta keep going. We’re all making it up as we go along. Especially me.”

At time of publication, Ms. Pearce’s knitted mystery project was nearly five feet long, and contained the beginnings of what looked to be a leg portion.

“I thought I was out of yarn, but then I opened another drawer and I found five more balls,” said Pearce. “I don’t know where I’m going with this, and I definitely don’t know when I’m going to finish. But I do know that whatever it is and whenever it’s done, it’s going to be an amazing gift for my niece, Janie.”

“What is your fucking problem?”

I knew when I decided to spend one day smiling at every person I made eye contact with that someone would curse me out. I did not, however, think that this would happen immediately. I also did not think that after being cursed out for grinning affably, I would then turn purple in the face, get teary, and apologize, shuffling off awkwardly in my entirely-too-puffy coat. But that’s exactly what happened.

Do you smile innately? Is it your default facial expression? If so: YOU FASCINATE ME YOU RARE AND SPLENDID CREATURE. This is not the case with my little mug. I don’t have a resting bitch face, nor do I actively scowl, but as I scuttle around town doing things like spending too much on cold brew coffee and trying not to post to Instagram so much, my face rests in a blank-to-sad pose. My lips naturally turn slightly down. Because I’m a girl, that’s not acceptable.

No but really.

Ask any of the number of people who have felt it was perfectly within their rights to say stuff to me like “It can’t be THAT bad” or “Show me that smile, baby girl!” Usually I just cave under the pressure and offer them a painful grin that doesn’t reach my eyes — Tyra would not be fooled. But what if instead of giving these strangers exactly what they demanded of me, I responded in kind, “Yeah, it IS that bad — I just found out I have to some of my moles removed because they are suspicious.” What if I smiled at the man who called me "baby girl," revealing a toothless, gummy maw more suited to the baby he imagined me to be?

Because the first option would invite violence and/or involve removing all of my teeth and hoping for the best, I decided to go another way with it. If everyone wanted me to smile all the time, why don’t I try smiling, see what that does? Maybe I’m instinctively bucking against orders for no actual reason other than some vague, unthought-out hostility toward the patriarchy. 

Conversely, I could absolutely be right to police my facial expressions when out in the world. Either way, it was a science experiment, and science is the greatest, so I dug in.

So let’s try this, I resolved quietly: For one day, and one day only, I would smile at every single person I passed and made eye contact with on the street. 

It was, well, not awful exactly, but totally exhausting. Not to be overly melodramatic but each time you lock eyes with another person and smile and they look away from you and keep going as if they haven’t see you, it’s a little bit like they’ve denied you your humanity? That said, because this is New York, everyone probably thought I was insane, about to hit them up for money, share with them the good news of our lord Cthulhu, or a terrible combination of all three.

The outright denials of humanity were absolutely not the worst part of this endeavor. The second person I locked eyes with, while walking to a lunch meeting, stopped in her tracks and asked how she knew me. Then I had to very quickly and awkwardly explain that no, no, we aren’t friends in any way, I was just, you know, being decent. She left this encounter visibly frightened. 

Women in groups were the most hostile to my beaming, and that makes sense. I was basically a weakened gazelle, my smile must have suggested a desperate need to be liked, to be included, to not be eaten, my bones strewn about in every direction. For the most part, these women looked at each other and laughed at me. This was fine, because I made it through middle school and developed some coping mechanisms along the way. 

It was harder when the group had a leader who decided they couldn’t let it go with looks of incredulity alone, “Are you kidding me right now?” You guys. I promise you. I wasn’t even smiling that hard. I am a shy person. It was like, a polite, business-y closed-lip grin at best.

Then there were the dudes. Oh, the dudes. Sure, my smiles directed their way elicited some sweet eye-flirting and return grins which put a little pep in my step. But less compelling was the man on the F train who asked me if I’d ever sucked anyone off on the train before. I did not answer him — because I am a woman of mystery. And also because I was mortified. 

When I got off the train, returning home after running some errands, a man at Rite Aide greeted me with kissy noises and a whispered, “Where are you going, glossy lips?” Let the record show two things. Thing one, my lips were chapped and peeling due to a cold that had hit me half-way through the day like a ton of bricks. Thing the second, an OKCupid dude had recently greeted me with the same moniker. Verily, my lips must secrete a luminous ooze of which I have been unaware and should probably have checked out when I go see my dermatologist. The smile on my face ruptured at this and I felt teary as I blasted past the guy to get cold medicine. I was tired and feverish. I blamed this forced visual communication of my happiness: Smiling had drained my life force.

With my drugs in hand, I began to trudge home. I stopped at a corner waiting for the light to change. A man, probably 10 years my senior, stopped beside me. He felt awkwardly close, so I didn’t quite move over, but more like shifted away from him keeping my eyes on the traffic. 

“Cold.” He was talking to me. I was confused for a minute — did he mean the temperature or my health? Then I remembered that I was supposed to smile and I did in a manner that I’m sure was vaguely alarming. 

“Yeah,” I said, being the sparkling wit that I am. 

“This is nothing,” he continued, “where I am from — in Russia — it is much colder.” 

I made a noncommittal noise, as is often my wont. The light changed and I tried to charge ahead and pull away giving him a firm nod but I’m short and he was tall and persistent. 

“Do you smoke?” He asked. I shook my head. 

“This is good, a woman should not smoke too much — unless she is drinking of course. Do you drink?” 

I lied, “No,” I said abstemiously (I might add). 

“This is nice to hear. You come with me sometime, to my mother’s house, in Sheepshead Bay — she cook for you!” In a flash, I saw myself, the awkward journey to this man’s mother’s house, me smiling and in a panic the entire time. What about my timid grin made for an open invitation to meet the folks? In a way, I was less put off by the dude on the train who loudly tried to get me to perform fellatio upon him in front of a group of teenager Euro-tourists. A blow job in public is just a blow job in public, after all. Meeting someone’s mom? That’s personal.

My main takeaway from smiling for a day was that it’s a terrible idea if you’re a girl. If a man smiles at someone on the street in passing, he’s either a letch or trying to make it clear that he’s courteous and has no immediate plans to murder you. But if you’re a woman all it does it stamp "VULNERABLE AND FOOLISH” and your forehead and leave you running a fever and in desperate need of a drink. 

I think there’s something to it, this idea that we can exist in a bubble and deny other people their right to exist — but I don’t think that means trading one scowling set of armor for another of wincing obeisance. 

I’m getting married!

Yup, my boyfriend — well, fiancé — proposed to me this weekend and of course, I said yes. Announcing it was weird, though, because while most couples take a ring selfie and post it to social media for an engagement announcement, our engagement selfie would have just kind of looked like a selfie. I told him a long time ago that I absolutely did not want a ring. Instead, we took a picture of our feet on the spot where he proposed — outside of the Museum of Contemporary Art, after Neil Gaiman (my favorite author/hero) did a reading to close out the MCA’s retrospective on David Bowie (my favorite musician/hero).

Most of my loved ones know me well enough to at least not be surprised that I didn’t want an engagement ring, but have wanted to know why. I actually hate the whole conventional proposal process because rather than feeling like it’s exciting, I feel like it ends up being unfair for everyone: the woman just keeps wondering when it’s going to happen (“it” being a life-changing commitment, the timing of which she has no control); the man feels like he’s under pressure to do something “big,” especially with all of the rather grandiose public proposals publicized in viralvideos in the last few years. I’m glad that my boyfriend’s proposal was simple and special and just between the two of us, that we had pretty open communication about when approximately it was going to happen, and that every time I go to the MCA I get to be all dopey and nostalgic about it.

But on top of the whole conventional proposal process, there’s the issue of engagement rings. Let me note before I continue that I totally understand that I might be ignorant to a variety of ways that engagement rings are conceived or perceived in cultures and subcultures other than my own, as a white, middle-class woman in a monogamous male-female relationship (if not exactly “hetero”; I’m queer). But I think that a lot of my own ideas about engagement rings in the past, in my former marriage, as well as the ideas that I’ve encountered about them with other people are representative of a pretty good chunk of American men and women. And I’ve encountered plenty — my first line of work was luxury jewelry sales.

I respect it if other people happen to really love engagement rings; I’d never poo-poo a friend’s ring or tsk-tsk them for wanting one or their partner for wanting to buy one. But I do have a number of objections that might at least be worth considering:

1. Prior to the 20th century, they didn’t exist except for the very richest people, which means that the vast majority of brides up until 1948 didn’t feel they were necessary. DeBeers popularized the concept of the diamond engagement ring with the “A Diamond Is Forever” marketing campaign only 70 years ago. [Side note: J. Courtney Sullivan’s novel The Engagements is really enjoyable and based around this whole campaign. — Amelia] I don’t know if maybe my concept of “only” is different than other people’s, of course, but since marriage has existed for millennia, 70 years doesn’t cut it for me to consider it a long-standing cultural phenomenon that you could really call a “tradition.” Here’s the kicker: DeBeer’s CEO, Nicky Oppenheimer, told the New York Times in 1999 that diamonds are worthless “except for the deep psychological need they fill.” Given that that’s the case…

2. They’re way too expensive. Median household income in America last year was$51,939. Say you take 20 percent of that for taxes, and you’re down nearer to $40,000. In 2012, the average engagement ring cost $4,000, but a study from The Knot showed something more like $5,400 in 2012 and $5,600 in 2013. So, let’s say that an engagement ring, on average, costs between 10 and 13 percent of your gross income. The average apartment costs $1,300 a month to rent, or $15,600 a year, so less the cost of housing — and that’s not utilities or food — an engagement ring is more like 16 to 23 percent of a year’s disposable income. That’s all approximate, of course (and not everyone rents, and cost of living is lower in some places and higher in others), but the point is that the expense of an engagement ring — a thing that is worthless except for the capacity in which it fills a psychological need — could be expected to take up at least a fifth and at most almost a quarter of a person’s disposable income. With the cost of living rising, that seems like an unreasonable expectation.

3. They start a marriage out inequitably. On the one hand, you have a situation in which a woman is basically being paid for. As in, he is buying your commitment with that ring. Looking at it a different way, you have a situation in which the woman has the privilege of not absorbing the exorbitant, extravagant, unnecessary cost of an engagement ring for her husband-to-be. Either way, that sucks. What kind of relationship dynamic does that establish? For that matter, what kind of social dynamic does that establish, or entrench? Well, one in which a man’s modus operandi is to purchase things, and a woman’s modus operandi is to be given things, especially if those things are pretty. I don’t know. My feeling is that if I want something pretty, I can buy it for myself. A partnership in which I don’t contribute proportionately — in which I don’t contribute at all — to any major expense doesn’t feel like much of a partnership, at least not by contemporary standards.

4. Men show commitment by the mere act of asking a woman to marry them.Here I’m referring to the not ubiquitous, but at least common, idea that the purpose of an engagement ring is for a man to signal his commitment to a woman by making a financial investment in their relationship. The implication there is that men can’t be taken at their word, which is part of the stereotype of men as unfaithful, as instinctual, as merely following their “primal urges” to “sow their oats” or whatever — not to mention the implication that a men only care enough about a woman or their relationships to commit if they have to put down a huge chunk of money. As in, women and relationships have no worth to men on their own, only money does, and he’s only going to care about a relationship if it means that his investment is going to be a bust. All of that is an incredibly fucked-up way to think about men, at least, again, by contemporary standards.

5. It has the stigma of marking a woman as property. There’s also the idea that is again not ubiquitous, but at least common, that women should wear engagement rings to signal to men that they’re taken. That whole concept speaks to a deep distrust in women, and although it’s the sort of thing to which plenty of men would respond, “It’s not that I don’t trust my fiancée, it’s that I don’t trust other men,” the fact is that an engaged woman without a ring is perfectly capable of rebuffing advances without an “I’m Taken!” Bat Signal on her hand. So it’s not that they don’t trust other men, it’s that they don’t trust their fiancées to rebuff advances unsupervised, which is unspeakably patronizing. If one’s fiancé believes that it’s important that she wear it to fend off other men, the message he’s looking to send is really, “I bought this person, this person is mine, back off.” And, well, that’s gross.

6. The money is better spent elsewhere. If your partner happens to have that money to spend, cool beans. But why not spend it on the relationship? Why not spend it on both of you? Why not spend it on the wedding, the honeymoon, or put it in an investment account? An equal relationship would be one in which both partners contribute what they can — money if both parties have an income, or time and effort if one doesn’t — to expenses that benefit both people. Birthdays and holidays are different — a wedding, and a marriage, is about two people and their relationship. Engagement rings are incredibly one-sided.

I’m very happy with my bare fingers — happy that I don’t have $4000 sitting on one of them, doing absolutely nothing when it could be making us memories in some beautiful locale or accruing interest somewhere. I’m also very happy with what I feel is an honest, communicative, and trusting relationship that’s going to be even and supportive for the rest of my life. We’re betting on that with the whole of our respective beings, not with the whole of our bank accounts.

Reprinted with permission from The Frisky. Want more? Check out these related stories and follow Emma on Twitter:

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“I bet this was written by a woman.”

I remember my friend and I visiting a Gamestop two years back to check on their preorders. While waiting, I had picked up a Game Informer and flipped to a top ten list of attractive male characters. It’s not very common to read a gaming article that presumes more than a straight male reaction when it comes to sexuality, nor treats that attraction as something purely humorous (“I’d go gay for this guy! Just kidding, no homo.”). When my friend took out her wallet to pay, the two men behind the counter took a glance at what I was holding. The muttered rebuke of one had she and I momentarily speechless.

In hindsight, we really should’ve canceled that preorder.

After a while, each little flick to the proverbial nose starts to feel like a punch to the face. The “Are you on your period”s when you show emotion during a match, the “Suck my dick”s in online play, the unwanted come-ons during a social gathering, the skin-crawlingly specific threats to your person in a tweet—it’s all a gradual smother of a blanket you don’t even know is wrapped around you until you snatch a breath of fresh air. For the sake of brevity, let’s call that repeated peep out of the blanket ‘self-care.’

The female perspective saw many fascinating developments in the game industry during 2014. Everything from tactless commentary by leading developers to entire e-movements dedicated to the harassment and silencing of marginalized voices slammed one more nail into the coffin of women’s confidence and security. On the other hand, 2014 released multiple impressive games starring female protagonists and prominent female supporting characters (here’s winking at you, Never Alone and Inquisition), a surge of activity in feminist communities, and a flood of positive media and studio attention in favor of diversity. Phew! How does one take care of themselves when everything attempts to whittle you into a bunch of curly little feminist pieces?

1. Knowing Your Limits

In the age of the internet, where sinking into an hour-long e-argument is too easy once logical fallacies start to fly, you need to know when to call it quits. You will never convince someone of your humanity when their mindset going in is to figure out how sensitive your bruises are and where to subsequently grind a finger. I’ve had my fair share of long-winded ‘debates’ online where the intent is not to learn, but to win.

Casual slurs, defense of one’s already protected social status, and demands to be educated (while ignoring many educational comments) are attempts to control the conversation. It makes you waste your time and exert your emotional energy in a fruitless endeavor that won’t be reciprocated with the same care: a five-paragraph comment and ten links to funded sources will be glanced over every single time. While they are clever tactics (“Don’t you want me to stop being terrible to you and people like you? Dance for me!”), they’re easy to expose once you acknowledge them as red flags instead of olive branches.

When I respond to ignorant and/or inflammatory commentary on social issues, it’s mainly for the benefit of others who come onto the page to read and I will always back out once the replies go far enough into the deep end. Stressing myself out overmuch at my computer isn’t my usual forte anymore, especially when there are puppy videos I could be viewing instead.

2. Picking Your Battles

“Anita Sarkeesian is a scam artist.” “What’s the big deal if women are drawn sexy?” “I’ve never met a girl gamer before.” “I bet this was written by a woman.” These are just a few of the microaggressions off the top of my head I’ve heard when entering a space men have tried to craft as uniquely theirs. Half the time I’d have something to say. The other half of the time I’d wonder: wait, is this actually worth it? While it’s important to know when to step back and call it quits, sometimes you need to know when not to engage at all.

Rebuking your male family members at dinner or calling out your boss at a meeting aren’t always worth weeks of passive-aggressive backlash or getting your hours mysteriously cut. Gaming misogyny’s fun flavor shares many similarities: if you feel keeping your mouth shut during a tournament will do more for your heartrate than telling the guy next to you that programming actually used to be considered women’s work, then go for it. You are not weak or a pushover for weighing your options in the face of sexism, nor are you doing it wrong if you choose to call out said guy publicly.

Sometimes I like to embarass a dudebro in a crowded room, keeping my humor just sharp enough to make onlookers more confused than irate at the obvious feminist. A friend to weather the blowback with me is also a plus. Other times, I actively shut out whatever was said in favor of another hour of being relaxed and buzzed. Only trial and error will figure out what works for you and, if you’re here reading this, you’ve likely already got a foundation to work off of.

3. Strength of Community

Society at large is not going to give you a space, so you have to craft one yourself. Number three should already be apparent—you’re on FemHype! We talked about knowing one’s limits in the face of adversity as well as acknowledging when to never start. Now how about just remembering that you’re not alone in all this?

I can’t stress enough how much the combined creativity and kindness of female gamers has done to help me. Every time I had doubts about whether or not to take the plunge and start getting active in games writing (thanks, Gamergate!), I thought about how much their collective art, articles, and good ol’ fashioned humor has meant to me. They validated my anger when I was at the risk of finding it petty and unnecessary like men did. They took the heat so others coming into the industry could have it a bit easier. They were there—no matter how hard the mainstream gamer populace tried to combat it.

Anita Sarkeesian, Mattie Brice, Katherine Cross, Brianna Wu, Carolyn Petit, Zoe Quinn, Tanya D., The Mary Sue, Bitch Magazine, those hilarious gals on Twitter, the women filling up less than half of their classrooms at tech and animation schools, the young girls with brilliant ideas hatching in their heads: you all inspire me. If you are unfamiliar with some of the people and sites I’ve named, check them out. You’ll be inspired too.

4. Put Your Time and Money Where Your Mouth Is

A game is not immediately worth ditching because of sexism. Hell, sexism is practically in the very air you breathe. It’s more reasonable to approach the change you want with a balanced scale: laying down boundaries and consistently supporting what you actually want to see.

Kickstarter, Steam Greenlight, and Indiegogo are just a few places where you can find women-created/female-starring games. You might’ve heard of Transistor and Never Alone. I have my eye on Steam’s Gravity Ghost as well as the recently funded Kickstarter Sunset in particular. AAA titles and popular MMOs are, most of the time, not the places you usually turn to for representation (though some major studios, like Bioware and Gearbox, have made concentrated efforts to be inclusive). Smaller development groups and crowdsourcing are affordable and more fruitful alternatives I highly recommend.

If you don’t have money to spare, plug what you like on a social media account. No Twitter or Facebook? Share with your friends next time you get together. Send a positive e-mail to the developers. Go to one of the smaller panels instead of the big-budget extravaganza at the next convention or gallery you attend. Draw some fanart and give what you love a little free advertisement. However your voice sounds, it will only make the choir richer.

5. Pressure

‘One of the boys’ and ‘performance anxiety’ are rites of passage for female gamers. You’re hunching on the floor with a few friends in front of Super Smash Bros. when men start shit-talking and the thought crosses your mind: “If I lose, will they attribute that to all girls?” Buying a game at a store. “Please don’t assume I’m getting this for my boyfriend…” Playing in online co-op. “Don’t hit on me, don’t hit on me, don’t hit on me…”

To reconcile, some of you decide to play along with men’s territorial pissing contests in order to enjoy yourself, laughing uncomfortably at objectifying comments to keep the pressure at bay. Some of you opt-out entirely and avoid situations that could cause embarrassment, declining invites and even self-depreciating before others get the chance (“Oh, I’m no good at these games.”). While I was fortunate enough to grow up in a supportive environment, I still had the occasional desire to prove myself when I noticed I was the only girl in the room.

A good friend of mine doesn’t share her gender on World of Warcraft and prefers not to interact with players outside of dungeon raids. For her, the benefits of a relaxing handful of hours grinding and exploring takes precedence. While she stays silent knowing full well the blowback she’s likely to get—an effective tactic—she is nonetheless reconciling with her situation and still putting her enjoyment as the highest priority. I could stand to learn from her when my blood gets boiling!

6. Create

To all the current and aspiring female game designers, illustrators, programmers, and journalists: so many want to see your work. Like, I can’t stress this enough. Skate past the muck of virulent comments sections on major game websites and -chan threads and you’ll find women in the same boat as you are, dealing with the same shit you are, wanting to make the same things you do. Myself included.

Nobody (at least, nobody without a grain of empathy) will judge you for steering clear of the industry and pursuing something similar or completely different. To reiterate: I think about it. A lot. Too damn much, in fact. It’s infuriating how effective the tactics of squalling manchildren are and the very real terror their temper tantrums instill in you every time you open your mouth. It’s all you can do not to quote “Bohemian Rhapsody” when a plea for basic decency is met with a flood of Twitter harassment. Is this the real life?

But just know that there are people who want to talk to you and swap ideas and stories. There are safe spaces online for you to showcase your work and share your thoughts. Blogs are free. Commenting accounts are easy to access. And we are here whenever you are ready.

7. Breathe

Breathing is a therapeutic skill—trust me, no new-age hippie nonsense here—that aids in counteracting the physical and emotional microtears that compound over time in response to constant pressure. There are benefits to inching down your stress past the flooding level, including reducing irritability, improving your sleep patterns, counteracting nausea, and preventing long-term conditions like heart disease and a weak immune system. For example, I only recently found out that my teeth-grinding habit when I slept was a side effect of stress!

While I’m well-versed in coping strategies (thanks, cognitive behavioral therapy!), it doesn’t make me infallible. My chest still tightens when I’m being confronted by a sexist jackass, even though my mind knows it’s the human version of a territorial stray dog and should be taken about as seriously. My breath comes in short bursts and my heart palpitates and my palms sweat and I get angry racing thoughts. Although the temptation to stomp and huff and lash back is strong, my self-care comes first.

To control your breathing is to take charge over your body’s natural responses. For example, I like to take in a deep breath from my stomach, five to six seconds long, hold it for three, then let it out in another five to six second span. Repeating this a few times reduces the physical tendency to resort to ‘fight or flight’ at the slightest provocation. ‘Grounding,’ for those who struggle with disassociation or light-headedness when faced with stress, is the act of using your senses (taste, touch, smell, etc) to put yourself back in touch with reality. While this list isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list of all the options available to you, these are just a few that have helped me cope with frustrating situations.

8. Reinforcement

Gaming communities remind you that you’re an outsider and an intruder. Feminist communities remind you that you’re worthwhile. You are your biggest critic, so why not be your biggest supporter as well?

When I come across yet another article detailing the doxxing of a female journalist, I like to watch a let’s play of a female-led game or play one. Not subtle, but I don’t want it to be. Seeing women kicking ass and taking names in my games makes me feel good. I like watching Yuna, Rikku, and Paine run around Spira defeating fiends in Final Fantasy X-2. I like my female-dominated party in Dragon Age exchanging quips while they slay demons. Child of Light is my nostalgia-induced feminist fantasy and FemShep’s epic speeches in Mass Effect complete me.

You could save up for the empowering experience of Assassin’s Creed: Liberation or Beyond Good and Evil, or you could tear into a bag of chips. Rant over Skype about a ridiculous comment made by your friendly neighborhood neckbeard or, shit, take a selfie of you eating your controller and share it online. Whatever gets a laugh. Whatever reminds you that you’re worth it. Just like it takes a lot of little efforts to whittle you down, it takes a lot of little positive efforts to bring you back up to speed.

In Closing

You’re not going to flush the collective bile of an entitled, gatekeeping culture down the toilet all by yourself. It’s been years and still it’s taking quite a bit of time with the combined energies of multiple communities and subversive video games that treat women and girls like people. Your mental and emotional health affects every aspect of your life, so turn self-care into a good habit. Video games, like any other art form, are entertainment and education, release and community: you shouldn’t have to wait until you’ve taken a break from them to feel good.

If you play games, make them, want to make them, work at a game store, whatever your personal experience, you are part of this culture and you are valid. One of the most successful results of constant harassment is making you feel isolated and alone in your struggles. Please share your thoughts and feelings with your fellow women, as fresh air is not a luxury—it’s a necessity.

A new analysis from the Guttmacher Institute shows that U.S. states have passed 231 new abortion restrictions since the 2010 midterm elections. In what's probably just a huge coincidence, the 2010 midterms were also the ones were we elected all those Tea Party Republicans.

The new Guttmacher report finds an enormous upswing in abortion restrictions starting in 2010. Seriously, look at this shit:

Also from their report:

The large number of recently enacted abortion restrictions has dramatically reshaped the landscape for women seeking an abortion... In 2000, 13 states had four or five types of abortion restrictions in effect and so were considered hostile to abortion rights. In that year, no state had more than five types of abortion restrictions in effect. By 2010, 22 states were considered hostile to abortion rights; five of these had six or more restrictions, enough to be considered extremely hostile to abortion rights. By 2014, 27 states had enough restrictions to be considered hostile; 18 of these can now be considered extremely hostile. The entire South is now considered hostile to abortion rights, and much of the South, along with much of the Midwest, is extremely hostile to abortion rights.

Guttmacher says that 57 percent of American women now live in a state that is "hostile" or "extremely hostile" to abortion rights, compared with 31% in 2000. The very slim silver lining: fewer abortion restrictions were enacted in 2014 versus 2013, but Guttmacher's analysts believe that's largely because some states weren't in session, others had shorter sessions, and because abortion restrictions took a temporary backseat to debates over the Common Core and minimum wage.

But after the disastrous 2014 midterms, we're freshly screwed. Republicans now controls both legislative chambers in 30 states. In 23 of those states, the governor is also a Republican, meaning whatever wild shit the legislature passes will likely get signed into law. Democrats control the legislature and the governor's office in just seven states. Remind us again why Women on Waves doesn't operate here?

You can read Guttmacher's full analysis on 2014 trends here.

A protester stands outside North Dakota's only abortion clinic, February 2013. Image via AP

It seems like everyone and their mother has an opinion about your skin, and most of it is malarkey. People with oily skin don’t need moisturizer, they say, or, You only need sunscreen if you’re at the beach. The one thing these myths all have in common? They’re all based on classical Greek mythology. Here are some of the most common skincare myths that are based on Greek myths.

The heavier the moisturizer, the better it moisturizes. This common myth comes right from the story Echo and Narcissus. Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection, which he sees in a lake, so his face is real nice and close to that water. And look what happens to him! He dies. So heavy moisturizer is not always best.

Eating greasy food makes you break out. This skincare falsehood arose out of the story of Icarus and Daedalus. Daedalus fashions two pairs of wings in order for him and his son, Icarus, to escape the island of Crete. He warns Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, but Icarus disobeys. Icarus certainly dies, but as far as we know his skin was as toned and glowy as ever as he plummeted into the sea.

Exfoliation should hurt — that means it’s working. The notion that beauty is pain is as old as Athena herself, and Athena didn’t exist. Anyway, Athena was born out of her father Zeus’s head, already in full armor. But your skin isn’t armor — it’s a delicate organ that requires delicate exfoliation. Leave this myth to the gods!

The right skincare can change the shape of your face. We’ve all heard about “miracle creams” that are a “facelift in a bottle.” Unfortunately, this turns out to be just another myth, this one based on the story of Pygmalion and Galatea. Pygmalion sculpts his perfect woman, Galatea, out of marble, but that doesn’t mean you can sculpt yourself into a perfect woman by using falsely marketed miracle serums.

Remember: Your skin is your skin. And a lot of the skincare advice we receive is not just outdated — it’s based on the pseudo-religious mythology of an ancient civilization. Don’t buy into it!