#in case you were worried about factual accuracy like me

[celaenaeiln]

Dick: *calling in from the Antarctic after a magician magicked him there* well, when’s the fastest you can pick me up then?

Tim: I notified Batman and he’s already on his way. His ETA says 2 1/2 hours. Can you hold on until then?

Dick: Hmm? Oh. Yeah. I can. I’ll just talk to Brutus.

Tim: Brutus? Is there someone else with you?

Dick: Yeah. Brutus just stole Caesar’s egg.

Tim: Egg?? What egg-wait. Are you talking about…penguins?

Dick: *continuing* oh and she just hopped into another nest. I’m gonna name you Guinevere so...that’d make you Lancelot. Aw, poor Arthur looks like he’s gonna cry. Huh. That’s a pretty fast waddle there, Merlin.

Tim:

[the-archlich]

Would you prefer a DW game to be completely Historic without any fictional aspects like characters like Diao Chan and battles like Hu lao gate or do you like that DW leans heavily on the fictional aspects of the Three Kingdoms ?

Take from this answer what you will. My opinion on any semi-historical adaptation is as follows: (this turned into a long, kind of rambling essay.)

First and foremost, I think it is the responsibility of anyone adapting something from history to represent the real people involved with integrity. People who did terrible things shouldn’t have that covered up for the sake of the narrative. People who did heroic deeds shouldn’t have their efforts dismissed. Even if used fictitiously, these were real people. Their hopes and dreams were real. Their suffering and struggles were real. And if you’re doing any kind of adaptation it is important to represent those things honestly. You have a duty to show people for who they were - or, more practically, who you perceive them to be.

Obviously the easiest way to do that is to stick as close to recorded facts as possible. The less you deviate from the truth, the less you have to worry about. If the narrative just doesn’t let you incorporate something factual, then it’s your responsibility to try to get as close as you can. The Sanguo Yanyi usually has Taishi Ci die heroically at Hefei. And while that didn’t happen it does show him as a brave man and a powerful warrior whose unexpected death is widely mourned. That’s now how it happened, but it at least represents the spirit of the man faithfully.

And sure, there’s room for ambiguity. Who is the “hero” in a story about Wei’s Zhengshi period? What were someone’s real motives? What were they really like? Our records only show certain sides of people. That’s okay. That ambiguity is where you have room to improvise and build a historical figure into a character. But if you’re taking advantage of ambiguities to wave away serious problems, you’re not acting in good faith

There is a lot of ambiguity, for example, in the Zhengshi period. At the same time, there are some interpretations that are simply not made in good faith. I don’t believe that anyone can look at Sima Yi’s actions and honestly believe that they were selfless, taken only in the interest of preserving Wei. You could argue that they were justified and logical, but saying that he was doing it all for “the greater good” would be dishonest. Depicting Cao Shuang and his group as innocent victims attacked senselessly by a jealous rival who just wanted to seize power is just as dishonest, as it requires one to ignore the efforts they made to consolidate power. You can build a good character in the ambiguities and the things left unsaid, but it should always come from a place of honesty.

This is a roundabout way of saying that the most important thing to get right - the thing that matters to me more than anything else in adapting a story - is representing the people involved with honesty and integrity. They were real and whether you see them as heroic, villainous, or elsewhere or that spectrum (most people were, of course, in the gray area between) it is important to show them honestly.

The easiest way to do that is, as I said, to stick as close to recorded facts as possible. The more inventions you toss in, the farther from the truth you’ll wander. You mentioned Diao Chan and Hulao, and those are actually two good examples on the opposite ends of this continuity.

Hulao is, of course, a fictional battle. It is often preceded by a battle at Sishui (which appears to have been another name for the same mountain pass) and followed by a battle where Cao Cao gets ambushed and is no longer able to pursue Dong Zhuo. The Sishui battle is pretty directly inspired by the battle at Yangren, the battle at Hulao is inspired by Sun Jian’s battle against Dong Zhuo at Dagu Pass, and the ambush is inspired by the battle at Xingyang between Cao Cao and Xu Rong, which actually happened before Yangren and Dagu.

As an adaptation of those three historical events (Xingyang, Yangren, and Dagu) Hulao is terrible, particularly at the Sishui and Hulao portions. at Yangren, Sun Jian defeated Lu Bu and killed a staff officer named Hua Xiong (a man of no special importance. Then at Dagu he defeated Dong Zhuo himself and drove him off to Chang’an. At Sishui, however, Sun Jian is unable to accomplish anything and Hua Xiong cuts through many fictional characters before being killed by Guan Yu - who was not at Yangren, the battle that inspired it. At Hulao, Lu Bu does the same feat before Guan  Yu, Zhang Fei, and Liu Bei fight him to a draw. Again, none of those men were actually present at Dagu. That was all Sun Jian.

So in adapting Yangren and Dago into Sishui and Hulao to better fit the narrative, Luo Guanzhong completely cheats Sun Jian out of all credit. He was the only character to have success against Dong Zhuo, but he is rendered a minor figure and upstaged by three men who didn’t even fight against Dong Zhuo (they were in Qing or You at the time, nowhere near the campaign against Dong Zhuo). This is an adaptation with no integrity. Sun Jian is robbed of his heroic accomplishments and glory is showered on people who did not earn it.

The Diao Chan story, on the other hand, is a pretty fair adaptation. The woman herself is fictional but the events the story depicts are reasonably close to the truth, if a bit embellished. There was a rift that formed between Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu - and while it wasn’t due to both desiring the same woman that rift was very much a real thing, brought about in large part due to Dong Zhuo’s terrible treatment of Lu Bu (even throwing a halberd at him once). And Wang Yun did take advantage of this rift to turn Lu Bu against Dong Zhuo. This allowed him to arrange Dong Zhuo’s assassination by Lu Bu’s hand - all of which does happen in the fictionalized version of the tale with Diao Chan. My only major qualm is that it writes out Shisun Rui, who was another major architect of the plan, but he didn’t want credit for it anyway so I can let it slide.

What I’m saying is, it’s all about integrity. It’s easiest to represent people honestly when you just stay close to the truth. Inventing and embellishing things is fine - that’s how you get a story instead of an essay. But those inventions and embellishments should serve to reinforce who these people really were, not cover it up.

So what I ask from any adaptation of any historical period - Dynasty Warriors or something else - is this integrity. I don’t demand strict accuracy or realism but it’s easiest to achieve this integrity when you stick close to the truth.

One other thing I’ll add is that in most cases, and especially in the Three Kingdoms, I find the truth to be far more interesting than the stories made up later. I prefer that any adaptation/narrative about the period stay close to the truth not just to represent people with integrity but because the events that actually happened are usually more exciting than invented tales. And history can get away with things that fiction can’t. The story of Taishi Ci rescuing Kong Rong is downplayed in the Sanguo Yanyi because even for a novel like that, the truth seems hard to believe.

[g-r-a-g]

On Tentative Mother 3 Naming

Note: this was originally written some years back, then pulled for Unspecified Reasons.1

First and foremost, you should probably read Tomato's official MOTHER 3 translation notes, because he is a consummate professional. This also, unfortunately, means that he is often too busy being professional to do write-ups on personal side projects, especially ones that are finished. I myself would love to see notes covering beyond the beginning of the game. On the other hand, his site is still awesome overall. Gotta love stuff like the Super Mario Bros. manual write-up. Fascinating stuff.

So yeah. Please allow me to lay my credentials on the table. I was the translation guy for the now-long-since-defunct mother3.org translation, which got started a good bit before Starmen.net decided to enter the game and essentially blow us the hell out of the water. Long story short, most of our team was frankly not ready for the project, though the hacking talent (Jeffman, if memory serves) turned out to be super awesome at things. I emailed the project leader at the time, volunteering "I'm majoring in Japanese here in college," with all the linguistic skill level that that level of confidence would imply, and that was essentially enough for the project at the time. It wasn't an especially fancy group at the time, and they were looking for pretty much any talent that could conceivably help out on basically any level.

A word of caution: none of this is organized in any meaningful way, and my memory of a project that was now about half a decade ago3 is gradually fading, so I may have some factual errors or conflations. There are almost certainly cases where I take credit for something that wasn't, strictly speaking, me, but I'm not in contact with any member of either translation team at this point, and much of the pre-merger stuff was pretty much just me translating and/or tossing out ideas to the rest of the team. I do apologize in advance if anyone else from either team sees something I inaccurately take credit for. Furthermore, I think that it's been long enough since the release that I can probably safely talk about What Could Have Been without having to worry about sparking any alternate-continuity concerns, given that the Starmen.net translation patch is very nearly official canon at this point, at least among the people who actually care about the series in non-Japanese-speaking countries.

Also, I make no guarantees that any of this will be even remotely interesting.

So here we go.

Enemy names

A lot of people seem fond of a lot of the enemy name translations, and they're generally among the things I'm proudest of. A lot of them were just plain tough to translate, because, despite the overblown stuff you've no doubt read by Tim "I'm in love with my own importance for Living In Japan" Rogers and decided to think better of,4 Itoi really is a pretty good writer and likes to play with portmanteaus and other wordplay.

These aren't in any real order other than when my memory gets jogged. It's also partially that I'm looking at them in the order they're stored in the game data, which is all jumbly.

Mr. Generator was, at one point, going to be called Gene Rator. This was kind of a tough one for us5, as the name in Japanese, Jenetta-kun (ジェネッタくん) was kind of a play on words inasmuch as it was a modification of "generator" but done so as to sound like a name or something.

The Oh-so-Snake was going to be the Vanelizard early on. This requires a bit of explanation: there was never any real clear indication of what "Osohe" (オソヘ) in the original was intended to mean, so we interpreted it as a sort of inversion of "navel" (おへそ), and wound up with "Vanel." This also worked nicely, because the boss enemy was named the Osohebi (オソヘビ), with "hebi" meaning "snake" in Japanese. In the end, though, "Vanel" was nixed and it's unclear whether that's even a bad thing. Granted, this is all what-could-have-been stuff, since a large part of this stuff has essentially become canon by this point.

While everyone seems to love the name "Navy SQUEAL," the fact is that the Pigmasks don't really have special names at all in the original Japanese. This guy was originally just something along the lines of "Submarine Pigmask," which obviously isn't memorable or delightful at all. In the mother3.org days, we were going to use "Pork Trooper" (you know, like storm troopers) instead of the more literal "Pigmask" (ブタマスク) and have different names for the different ranks rather than the eventual, more direct translation. The change back to "Pigmask" was probably for the best in the end, though I'm really glad they kept "Navy SQUEAL," since that was one of my favorite name change ideas in the whole project.6

A lot of the enemy name translations were just things that fell into place. There's nothing in the Japanese that would suggest "Top Dogfish" ("Nushi Wanwan"/ヌシワンワン) for the tougher version of the Dogfish ("Wanwan Fish"/ワンワンフィッシュ), but a bit of knowledge of common (if slightly outmoded) English expressions leads that sort of thing to seem a natural fit.

Another one that seemed only natural was the Beaten Drum, which (if memory serves) translates more accurately as "punctured drum." On the other hand, I was too enamored with my own cleverness to realize that my original "Wailing Guitar" was nowhere near as good as "Gently Weeping Guitar," given Itoi's fondness for the Beatles. Tomato definitely made the right call on that one, unambiguously.

One enemy that I'm not really satisfied with the name of, in either my own stuff or the final translation patch, was the Bitey Snake ("Kamu toki wa kamu hebi"/かむときはかむヘビ), which I'd translated as "Snake that Might Bite." Both of these have issues in terms of accuracy of the translation, though given the actual picture of the Bitey Snake, that seems almost fine. The issue is that the name translates most accurately to something like "a snake that will bite when it's time to bite" or "that bites when the situation calls for it" or something equally unwieldy to express in English. That one was frankly a mess and I can't really think of anything that would have actually worked better than Tomato's "Bitey Snake."

One that I still actually prefer my original name for is the Ten-Yeti, which I'd originally translated the name of as "Cowabungable Snowman." Yes, the word is kind of dated (to say the least) but I'm apparently not the only one to have missed the intended wordplay involving "ten-eighty" (which, to be fair, works better in Japanese: compare テンエイティ and テンイエティ, though that didn't stop me from missing it entirely in Japanese too). Maybe it was meant as a nod to Nintendo's now-essentially-defunct snowboarding game series.

Speaking of silly and awkward puns, the Boa Transistor is victim to those on both ends. Obviously the English name is a play on "boa constrictor," but for the longest time it was just such a challenge to think of a decent translation for the Japanese "Hebii Metaru" (ヘビーメタル), a play on "hebi" (snake) and "heavy metal." Eventually I decided to pull the trigger and write in "Boa Transistor," which I'd thought was just unforgivably contrived, and it was received way better than I'd expected by basically everyone.

Barrel Man ("Taruman"/タルマン) was originally going to be "Casked Man," because, once again, I was a little too in love with my own cleverness. You see, because it is a play on "masked man," and there's a masked man in the story, and oh I'll just show myself out

The Pseudoor basically named itself — the Japanese name ("Tobira-modoki"/トビラモドキ) basically translates to "pseudo-door" and it was only a small jump from there.

The Sara-Sara-Sahara was frustrating, because it was clearly meant to resemble plates ("sara"/サラ) but the silliness of the name was just lost in English. The mother3.org translation had been using "Desert Plate" but that name is arguably hard enough to catch at a glance that it probably wouldn't have been much better in the end.

The Artsy Ghost was originally going to be the Abstract Ghost. The name ("Geijutsu na obake"/げいじゅつなオバケ) really does translate to "Artistic Ghost," so "Artsy Ghost" is a more accurate name overall, but I just liked the ring of "Abstract Ghost."

The Whatever was originally going to be called the Halfhearted Attempt. Probably a better translation of the original "Tekitou" (テキトウ) in the end anyway.

The Really Flying Mouse is worth noting just because of the Japanese name, which took a minor liberty with grammar to be pretty clever ("tobimasu tobi-mausu"/トビマストビマウス — literally it means "flying flying-mouse" but it's fun to say).

The Return of Octobot was one of my favorites (and I was glad that it got kept for the final). The Octobots all have weird names in the original Japanese, and the Japanese name in MOTHER 3 ("Tako Fu Tatabi"/タコ・フ・タタビ) basically translates to "Octopus Again," though with needlessly weird spacing to make it look/sound unnatural or foreign or something. I figured that "The Return of Octobot" was sufficiently cool-sounding, and I guess other folks agreed.

I'm ambivalent whether the change from our "Loose Screw" to "Screwloose" even makes much of a difference. In the original Japanese, there wasn't any pun of the sort involved, so it's not like either one is more accurate.

On the other hand, the Punk Rock Lobster became the Rock Lobster, making the clearly intended pun more obvious, though I still think those sunglasses are less rock 'n' roll and more punk rock.

Items

The Pasta with a Past is just about the only food name worth mentioning, really.7 The original Japanese "Wake-ari Pasta"/わけありパスタ wasn't really a joke in the name: the phrase "wake-ari"/わけあり refers mainly to the sort of mildly damaged goods you'd find at a store with a handwritten price tag and a minor discount. It literally means, essentially, "there's something about this item." On the other hand, the item's description is where it becomes a joke, stating that an "unspeakable circumstance" surrounds the pasta, rather than the usual meaning. While the innocuous name couldn't be translated while keeping the joke, a bit of wordplay was entirely within the bounds of possibility for the English version.

The Bufferizer and Defense Spray were originally named the Beefener and the Turtler, mostly because the actual items were named like energy drinks and there's no clear right choice. "Turtler," incidentally, was derived from fighting game terminology (e.g. to turtle, being the action of playing very defensively). On the other hand, the final version's Defense Spray is a neat call-back to EarthBound/MOTHER 2.

Characters

First and foremost, the mother3.org team had noticed that the game, much like EarthBound/MOTHER 2, allowed for a substantial number of "Don't Care" names to be stored. In the final game, this was only used for favorite food and your special PK power's name, but all of the characters had the same number of slots available for "Don't Care" names; they were each simply filled with a bunch of copies of the official name. We basically tried to take advantage of this as a sort of personalized easter egg, with each member of the team basically getting their own "set" of names to assign. These were generally named after friends and family, though I tried in vain to use my own set to follow a clever theme of some sort. Naturally, I never thought of anything particularly good.

Hinawa is named after a type of gun, along with Flint (Flint being named for flintlock guns, and Hinawa being named for matchlock guns, in Japanese). Obviously, while Flint is a nice, manly-sounding name in English, Hinawa is simply a no-go. Until the translation patch projects merged, the plan was very definitely to rename Hinawa to Amber, in order to provide a name that was actually a name in English, as well as keeping to a motif of some sort (in this case, types of stones). Un(?)fortunately, in the end the official translation wound up being Hinawa, though this was, in fairness, because the Starmen.net translation team preferred, whenever possible, to keep the names accurate to Nintendo's official translations they'd made public at various points.8

Ocho the octopus was originally Hachi (ハチ) in the Japanese. While the story of Hachiko is famous enough (and was even made into an American remake-of-a-movie movie starring Richard Gere), we9 figured we could do better for the English release. For one thing, the pun between the name "Hachi" and the fact that it means "eight" would be lost. For a while we just sort of hoped that maybe "Octo" would be an acceptable name, but it was pretty obvious it was kind of lazy and didn't have much cleverness or even giving-a-crap to it. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon an Addams Family retrospective around this point, and found out that, at least at some point, Pugsley had a pet octopus named Ocho. Perfect!

Following this "replace one old pop-culture reference with another" pattern, a lot of people have noticed that Achato and Entotsu (アチャト and エントツ, with the latter literally meaning "chimney") were renamed Bud and Lou, after Abbott and Costello. Incidentally, the original characters were also named after comedians from the early to mid 20th century: Achako and Entatsu.

Fassad's English name has a surprisingly unexciting origin. The Japanese name Yokuba/ヨクバ is basically derived from the word for "ambition" or "greed" ("yokubari"/欲張り), and that just didn't work in English. So I asked a friend of mine, one night, to help bounce ideas back and forth. I figured he was studying Arabic in college and could help out, so I asked him what various words were when translated into Arabic. After a couple of nonstarters, I tried, "What's 'corruption' in Arabic?" and his answer, "fassad," sounded sufficiently Arabian-y (given the character's appearance), as well as just being ever so perfect on multiple levels (given its Arabic meaning as well as the fact that it sounds a whole lot like "façade," which is ridiculously appropriate on, itself, at least two different levels). And that's why Ben Cocchiaro is credited under "Special Thanks." Thanks, Ben.

Frankly, we never had anything good lined up for Kumatora. We had her name as "Jackie" for a while, since it kinda sorta sounded like maybe it could also be a guy's name (c.f. Jackie Gleason), but we never felt particularly confident in it. "Violet," though, was picked for her cover identity later on, because we figured it had a "good, diner-y sounding" ring to it. We kept that in the end.

Salsa's name was kept, though the pun on "saru" ("monkey") was lost, so we figured that we should probably keep to some sort of name motif for his girlfriend-monkey too. "Saruko" just didn't work, so I wound up suggesting "Samba" for her name, partially inspired by Samba de Amigo. This is another case where one motif was switched out for another with the translation, though this one was kept in the end by the post-merger team.

There was a brief time when we considered changing Lighter's name to "Bic" or "Vic," but we eventually thought better of the idea. It's not as though EarthBound/MOTHER 2 wasn't full of silly names like Mr. Spoon, either.

Places

For the longest time, the Sunshine Forest was just called the Terry or Telly Forest, because of the way the Japanese name was written ("Teri-no-mori"/テリのモリ). At some point along the way, I got bored and looked up whether "teri" was even a word, and it turned out that it meant "sunshine" or "clear/dry weather," and there was a sort of collective OHHHHHHH among the team. Given the idyllic setting of the prologue, it seems only natural that that was the intended meaning. Tomato initially opposed it, but eventually relented, since it did make more sense as the name of a place.10

A lot of the other place names were way more contentious, though. The name of the town was the source of some reasonably substantial debate within the post-merger team, since the mother3.org team had been using "Dragonstep" for its translation of the admittedly fairly ambiguous "Tatsumairi"/タツマイリ. Tomato vetoed it based on the fact that the Japanese is far from 100% clear on what the name's derivation would be, and looking back the "Tatsu"="dragon" thing really only applies to very limited contexts in Japanese. Still, between that and the money being called DP (for "Dragon Points") Tomato thought it was just too blatant as dragon-related foreshadowing, and I eventually conceded the point, since he was the guy with professional experience and who could actually, you know, speak Japanese fluently at the time.11

Most of the place names were, at one point or another, going to be translated into at least some semblance of English. Tanetane Island ("Tanehineri"/タネヒネリ) was going to be something like "Twisttrick Island," given that "tane" can mean "a secret" or "a trick," and "hineru" can mean "to twist," or "to puzzle over something." On the other hand, Twisttrick kind of sucked as a name, so the Starmen.net team rightly chose to discard it. Plus, in the debug menus it was already referred to as Tanetane anyway — the final Japanese name appeared to be a fairly late change.

The Sunset Graveyard was, in the mother3.org translation, going to be the Chowding Graveyard, because of the original name "Misoshire" being an apparent play on "miso-shiru" (miso soup), treating it as a verb instead of a noun. If memory serves, this is another case where we wound up going with an internal debug name instead in the end. "Chowding" wasn't very good anyway.

Looking back at the notes, it's clear that we just didn't have any good ideas for a lot of the places in the game, though we probably would have worked something out in the end. Honestly, though, the Starmen.net team's approach of leaving all but the most egregious obviously-meant-as-wordplay names intact was probably the best option in the end.

So that's about it, really.

I just want to finish this up with a big ol' THANK YOU to everyone who did the real work and heavy lifting on the patch, especially Tomato for his insanely great translation work, and the hackers who found a problem that we thought at first would be literally impossible, and then fixed it, to a degree that their fix went beyond the impossible. Thanks again to Ben Cocchiaro, all-around swell guy and owner of an Arabic-English dictionary, for helping to provide the ridiculously appropriate name of a major character in a cult hit, and thanks to @gigideegee, whom I promised via Twitter that I would actually write all this stuff up, and that gave me the motivation to do it because TWITTER PROMISES are SERIOUS BUSINESS. I also highly recommend her great webcomic, Cucumber Quest, especially if you liked her older "Let's Destroy Metal Gear!" and the like.

Thanks for reading.

I applied for a job at Nintendo of America, and hoped that they wouldn't find out about my Sordid Fan Translation Past, so I pulled the page. Given that they just sort of suddenly stopped responding to emails at one point in the application process, TECHNICALLY they have not turned me down for the position. ↩︎

"Localization" is a fancy term that means changing a name or a joke so that it makes sense in the target language, especially when it comes to wordplay in the source language. Sometimes the changes are also just kind of arbitrary, though that can at times be in order to avoid potential lawsuits and the like. ↩︎

!!!. Actually, looking at the files I still have on my computer, they generally show a "last modified" date in April of 2007, so that'd be about five years ago now. Dang. ↩︎

Factual errors I can think of off the top of my head in his EarthBound/MOTHER 2 article alone: the phone call asking for your name happens on a specific tile in Summers, not "at a number of steps that's about halfway through the game," and there's no obscene pre-set name set. The guy's a prolific writer but he needs an editor and a fact-checker, because the editor will already be busy enough trying to cut 60–70% of the length of any given article he writes. TAKE THAT, FAMOUS PERSON! SAYS RELATIVE NOBODY ↩︎

By which I mean, over the course of this write-up, primarily me, because after the projects merged Tomato basically took over all translation duties, and before the merge I was basically the guy doing all of the translation stuff for the mother3.org project, if memory serves. ↩︎

Your run-of-the-mill, never-studied-Japanese anime fan will probably pitch a fit for my suggesting this, but English is a WAY richer language for nuance, wordplay, and just generally enjoying words. Japanese nuance can be hard to translate in certain circumstances, but 90% of English-language movies are subtitled into Japanese with what are basically just factual translations of the content of what each character said, with virtually no effort taken to preserve nuance and color. In other words, you're damn right I'm proud that I made a pun that was impossible in the native language, but that works perfectly. ↩︎

With the possible exception of the Fizzy Soda, which was called the Extreme Soda in the mother3.org translation at the time. There, now you know the entire story of that one. ↩︎

This includes places like Nintendo Power previews of the then-not-yet-canceled 64DD release, as well as the bits and pieces of text in Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii. ↩︎

See footnote 4. ↩︎

Have I mentioned what a consummate professional and just generally swell guy he is? ↩︎

Whereas now I look back on my attempts at translation in the various files I still have stored on my hard drive, wondering what on earth was I even thinking? at roughly one in three lines. Funny thing, language acquisition. ↩︎

[toast-the-unknowing]

Hi. Hope you're doing okay. I'm a newbie fic writer and am hearing a lot about betas. I wanted to know: do you have a beta reader or critique partner? Do you beta their fics in return? Does this person need to know my fandom? I'm worried I'll have to go thru a few ppl to find someone who suits me.

I don’t have a beta at the moment. I’ve used them in the past, usually in a one-off kind of way; I haven’t had a regular standing arrangement with one person who was “my” beta since, oh Lord, the late aughts. I’ve also beta read for people in the past, but I don’t think I ever beta read for anyone who beta read for me; it was more one-off kinds of things.

There are a lot of different forms that a beta/writer relationship can take, so the most important thing if you decide you want one is to figure out what you are looking for from your beta and then find a beta who wants to provide that.

Do you want someone to check SPAG -- spelling and grammar -- and catch your typos and your there/their/they’re mixups

Do you want a beta who will check for the readability of your story on a more stylistic level and let you know when your long flowery sentences have gotten too damn long or when you’ve used the same adjective six times in this scene so pick something else

Do you want a beta who will give you feedback on whether your story works as a whole, whether the plot/pacing/character arcs need work

Do you want a beta who will help you make sure your characters are in character

Do you want a beta who will check your story for canon compliance

Do you want a beta who will check your story for factual accuracy

Do you want a beta who can read your work for sensitivity and representation around issues of race, disability, etc.

Do you want a beta who will read a story that is still in the works and help you figure out how to get it where you want it to be

It’s okay to want some of these and not others. I am selfish writer and a youngest child who grew up with a lot of hand-me-down clothes and so never feels like she has enough stuff for HERSELF, so I do not appreciate some other person swanning into my story and telling me that the plot needs to change or that my characters are acting wrong. Sometimes I do just get stuck on a story, or have a particular concern, and I want some input, but in those cases I usually just talk to a trusted friend about the story and see if they have any suggestions. Sometimes just talking about it helps me find the solution for myself.

(I could use SPAG and readability help -- every writer alive could -- but by the time a story is done I just want to POST IT and be DONE with it, I do not want to email it to someone and get it back a week later and put more work into it and maybe need to email it back again, OH MY GOD, THE BABY IS BORN, JUST CUT THE UMBILICAL CORD ALREADY)

So in the past when I’ve had betas, and if I have a beta again, I would go into the arrangement saying “hey, I want you to check SPAG, and readability on a scene level, and let me know if you spot anything that’s just flat out inaccurate, but I don’t want character or plot notes.”

This also comes back to the “trusted friend” thing. You might start off with a beta that you ask for SPAG and fact checking, and then over time you get a feel for how they work and their taste and abilities, and decide, yeah, actually, I do trust this person to give me feedback on the bigger elements. You can let them know and see if they’d be into that! It’s not written in stone. Waaaay back when I was writing shippy fic for the first time ever, I used to die of embarrassment writing romantic scenes. Which is, uh, kind of a problem for ship fic. I talked about it with my beta and she had some suggestions for me about how to work through that that were really helpful -- but we’d worked together before that; I don’t know that I would have asked just anyone for that kind of help.

Does a beta have to know your fandom -- depends on what you want. If you want a beta who can tell you if your characters are acting true to themselves, or who can catch it if you screw up a canon detail -- yup, you need someone who knows your canon. For proofing, flow, sensitivity? Nope. A good beta can also comment on your plot structure, pacing, tone, character arcs etc. even without knowing canon, although they may give you the odd note that doesn’t work. My brother beta’d a fic for me once and mentioned it was weird that there was a character referenced in the very beginning of the fic who never appeared and was never mentioned again -- but that was the point, and I trusted that people who knew canon would realize that the other characters were trying and failing the entire story to ignore that character’s absence. So I didn’t change it.

Anything a beta tells you is a suggestion. Okay, not whether “dessert” has one s or two, but anything else. If they say “that line doesn’t work for me” but you really like it, keep it. If they tell you that your characters need another scene or two to work through their issues but you think they’re good, let it ride. Or, try to figure out if there’s something else you can change; a reader might pick up on the fact that there’s something wrong with the story without being able to accurately pinpoint what is wrong with the story.

Not every beta is going to be a good fit for you, or for your particular story. This is why you need to talk all of this through before they start working. Tell them your ships, your concept, your story length, your rating. Tell them the kind of beta reading you want. Avoid a situation where they don’t get your fic back to you for weeks because they didn’t have enough time to proof a 100k epic, or where they give you a lot of critical notes you weren’t expecting and feel hurt by, or where they have to read something that makes them uncomfortable or do a lot of research on something they didn’t know about. Better to find out ahead of time that you’re not a good match and keep looking.

Once you’re found them...well, I am sorry to say, you probably will have to go through a few people before you find someone who suits you. Especially if your beta isn’t someone you knew previously, as a friend or as a writer, you can’t really say whether they’ll have feedback you find useful, or whether the two of you can communicate effectively, or whether they’re reliable and timely, or whether you guys have complementary tastes and priorities. Better to accept that now and plan for it. When you find someone who’s willing to beta, while you’re figuring out what that beta-ing is going to entail and the best ways to communicate with each other and a rough timeline for them getting back to you, set up the arrangement as a one-time thing. “Hey, do you want to beta this story for me,” not “hey, do you want to be my beta.” If you liked your experience working with them, you can always ask if they’ll beta another story for you. If you didn’t (and the more you want from your beta above basic SPAG, the more likely you’ll feel a disconnect), shake hands, part as friends, and try another beta.

You don’t have to stick with the first beta you meet if it’s not a good fit. I hear discord fandom chats can be places to find betas, but do not ask me how or why because I don’t use discord and I don’t know. You can try posting in your author’s notes on your fic that you’re looking for a beta and see if someone reaches out to you. If you notice the same commenter popping up in multiple stories, you can try reaching out to them and asking, very nicely and ready to hear a “no,” whether they’d be interested in beta-reading for you. Just go in with a clear understanding of what you want, communicate that, and see if they’re willing and able to provide.

[ficstogo]

Proposal (Request)

Request: Okay I have a request. I would just die for a fic of Freddie and Jim’s wedding even though they weren’t technically married- Anon

Pairing: Freddie x Jim

Word Count: 1238

Summary: Jim prepares himself to pop the question to Freddie.

Warnings: Language

A/N: Although I’m not at the point where I have an exceptional amount of knowledge about Queen like I do with the Beatles, I know one or two things thanks to those on tumblr. So obviously (and it will bother me because I care about accuracy) this won’t be at all factual. I also haven’t read Mercury and Me (which I am dying too) so this is just based on tid bits from those who put interesting info from the book on some posts.

Also, you probably actually wanted an actual wedding with a party and friends and all, but this is where my mind went to, so hopefully this is good enough.

If you were to tell Jim that he was going to end up in a relationship with a famous rockstar, he’d give out a hearty chuckle. If you were to tell him that it was the man that asked how big his cock was at one of the clubs he went to before, he would more than likely roll his eyes and end the conversation there. And yet here he is, a simple gold band in between his gloved fingers, contemplating over the past, the present, and his near future.

Although he knew it was impossible for him and Freddie to officially get married, the ring, the gesture, and his feelings were really the only things that mattered. They didn’t need some pieces of paper to say that they were married, they’ve been together for what seems like forever. What difference would it make?

He tucked the ring back into his pocket and continued onto weeding the garden. As he thought about it, he couldn’t help but notice what far different worlds they came from. How Freddie was from all the glamour and lights while Jim came from a modest place. How Freddie wanted to spoil him any chance he got while Jim wanted to do and earn things himself. He smiled at the thought. Oh, how his boyfriend was such a theatric character. If anything, it only made life a little more exciting, yet at the same time, he kept his boyfriend leveled and on the ground. They benefitted each other in ways they never realized.

Getting up and patting away the dirt from his legs, Jim headed towards one of the flower beds and picked one of his many beauties. Inside, wiping the sweat from his forehead, he went up the stairs to the shared bedroom where his boyfriend would be. More than likely taking a shower or playing with one of their many cats.

There he sat with a cup of tea to his side, the children at the foot of the bed and his dark eyes skimming the paper, getting his daily intake of the news, Jim prepared himself for what he was about to do. Taking the steps in, Freddie took a quick glance at Jim as he continued on with reading.  “Hello darling, done with getting those nasty weeds out of the garden, I see?”

“At the moment, yes. But you know they’ll keep popping up.” Jim looked down at his shoes, feeling a bit hesitant.

“What’s that you got there, dear?” Snapping out of his little trance, he looked back up at Freddie with a look of surprise.

“Oh!, uh, just, uh, flower,” he made his way to Freddie as he looked up at him. “for you.” He stuck his hand out. From then, Freddies smile shone as he took the flower from Jim’s hand.

“How thoughtful of you to be thinking of moi!” Jim implishly sat next to Freddie at the edge of the bed, looking down at his hands, pulling at his fingers, a way to sooth his anxiousness.

Freddie took notice of this, a bit worried as to what was bothering Jim. Worst case scenario that this would be the end. The end that he expected one way or another and his heart couldn’t take that. Not that kind of pain. “Jim, darling, what’s wrong?”

Jim glimpses at the man to his side, a smile on his face as he notices the worried look on his face. He gives out a small laugh, knowing that he has to give it up or else his boyfriend would have a panic attack. “No nothing’s wrong. I just, uh, was thinking a lot, about us and all…”

“What about us?” He was getting more worried. He prayed that this isn’t heading to where he thinks it’s going. His heart pounded against his rib cage. No way in hell was he going to let Jim slip by without having a good fight about it.

Look at his poor face, Jim could only giggle. He’d keep up the act. Just for a little but not to the point where it could lead to poor man crying his eyes out. “I’m not happy with where I am. With you. Right now, I think I could be happier, in another state than the current one I’m in.”

“Darling if there’s something I’ve done, if there’s something you don’t like, I can change. I’ll do whatever you want me too, I’ll stop-”

“Fred, Fred, Fred! Calm down, love, “ Jim grabbed a hold of Freddies hands, rubbing his thumbs against his smooth skin. “I’m joking.” he said softly. Freddie’s eyes were glassy, a mix of horror and shock coming across his face.

Taking one of his hands away, Freddie gave a light smack across Jim’s shoulder. “You prick! Stop that shit! I was on the verge of tears!”

“I’m sorry love! I’m sorry.” He looked down at their hands, appearing thoughtful, planning on what he was going to say next. Best to let the words just come out. “In all honesty, I am happy but I’m not at the happiest that I can be.” He looked back up at Freddie with a smile on his face. Digging into his pocket, he pulled the ring out hiding it in his fist.

“I just want to let you know that you’re honestly the only one that can make me even more happier than now.” Holding open his hand to reveal the gold band, he continued on. “I know we can’t really make it official but I just want you to know how much I love you and how far how would go for you.”

Freddie, with a hand up to his face, wide eyes in shock, could only stare at the moment. The man in front was wanting to marry him. Be his husband. For some reason, he never thought that this moment would come to be. He didn’t care about the law, it was more of the fact that he didn’t think that far ahead. He only wanted to live in the moment when it came to Jim. The idea of marrying him was more of a passing thought if anything. With a small sniffle, a giggle, and a wipe to his eyes, Freddie stuck out his hand, palm downward and said, “Well you must put it on me darling, I would love to see how it would look on me.”

With a laugh to cover up the breath he was holding in, Jim took Freddie’s ring finger and slid the ring right in. A perfect fit. Looking down at his finger, Freddie couldn’t help but have a smile on his with tears on the edge of his eyelids. “Jim, my lovely husband, you have certainly made me the happiest man alive.” Looking back up he couldn’t help but let the tears run and have his smile glow.

Smiling in return, Jim takes Freddie’s face in both of his hands and pulls him in for a short yet sweet kiss, and then looking at him in the eyes and respond, “And you, I, love.” He then goes on and pinches Freddie’s cheek. “What a pleasure to have such a cheeky bastard like yourself to be my husband.”

For the rest of the day, Jim and Freddie lie in bed with their children beside them, talking and holding onto each other, often looking at the ring on Freddie’s finger.

[grindellore]

fanfiction: the secret she hides

Fandom: Harry Potter | Fantastic Beasts Pairing: Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald Characters: Bathilda Bagshot, Rita Skeeter; Bathilda reminiscing about Albus and Gellert Rating: T

Summary: When Bathilda Bagshot realises Rita Skeeter has dosed her with Veritaserum, she sees only one way to protect her most precious secret.

Also available on my AO3 (see the link in my profile).

As a historian, Bathilda Bagshot knew intimately well how important it was to keep contexts and motifs of historical events in mind. She also knew that neutral historical sources and infallible eyewitness accounts didn’t exist: Everybody’s memories were shaped by their own perceptions of reality, sometimes even by outright personal bias. There were occasions when a look at Pensieved memories could bring some clarity, but only if a person’s bias stemmed from a first-hand experience, which was rare.

Bathilda knew there were people who might suspect her own writing of being biased. After all, she was the great-aunt of one of the most dangerous Dark wizards of the twentieth century whom she had always loved, despite all he had done.

Bathilda herself would have argued that her affection for Gellert had never stopped her for seeing his crimes as any less horrid as they were. It just stopped her from condemning him because of them. Her research had shown her that it was fairly common for Dark wizards not to be evil throughout; to have two faces, so to say—one for the world, one for the people they loved. You-Know-Who actually was an exception. Then again, he was also far less human, far less emotional than Gellert had ever been.

As it was, hardly anybody had realised—or told other wizards and witches they had realised, at the least—that Gellert and her were related. Perhaps that was the real proof her writing wasn’t biased.

Then again, perhaps there actually was a bias but one that was evened out by her affection for Albus; poor Albus who had recently died under such dire circumstances. Still, even if she was biased, it had to be nothing in comparison to the bias she found every time she read the writings of the person who was in her sitting room now.

Rita Skeeter had tricked her way inside Bathilda’s cottage pretending to write a historical biography on Albus’s life. As always with shallow people, Bathilda had pretended to be a somewhat senile beldam, but she had let her in. She hadn’t been able to think of a reason not to other than the fact that Rita had always been more interested in telling juicy stories than in factual accuracy.

Bathilda had only realised Rita had dosed her tea with Veritaserum after she had taken her first sip. Perhaps she was actually becoming a senile beldam.

However that might be, there was only one way out now. It was a way that saddened her.

“If you may excuse me,” Bathilda had said. “I need to use the bathroom.”

She could say that. It was the truth. And if she didn’t need to use it for one of the obvious reasons, how was Rita to find out? She seemed to have bought Bathilda’s semblance of senility. The fact Bathilda had failed to notice the Veritaserum in time certainly came into play there.

Now Bathilda was standing in front of the mirror in her bathroom, wand raised but hesitating to go through with the spell she knew to be necessary. The problem was that she didn’t want to give up on these particular memories. They were her secret; a secret that had always made her feel protective of her great-nephew and her former neighbour alike.

She had never even told Albus she knew. It was only Gellert to whom she had confessed during one of her first visits to Nurmengard after Albus had taken him down.

But of course she had known. In a way, she had set them up—two bright minds that had never met another person their own age who was as brilliant as them. Of course they had taken to each other instantly, and of course she hadn’t missed how their glances were sometimes lingering on one another when they thought the other wasn’t looking.

Then she had spotted them kissing behind her cottage and her assumption had become a certainty. She hadn’t seen any reason to interrupt them. They were careful enough to know when to cast protective enchantments, and when she had told Gellert so that day, she had actually assumed she would need to spend the whole afternoon at the Ministry archives.

True, she had worried a little when she had heard the ivy crack on the wall one night. Her first thought had been Muggle burglars, but then she had spotted Gellert climb into the window of his own room, using magic only to open it from the outside. At first she had assumed the boys had simply huddled together over some books and lost the time. She had reassessed that assumption the following morning when she had found Gellert at the breakfast table, dreamy-eyed, not hungry at all and with a smile that wouldn’t leave his face.

After that, Gellert would sometimes spend the night at the Dumbledores’ and Albus would sometimes stay over at her cottage. She never heard or saw anything suspicious, but she didn’t exactly look for evidence either. The one time she almost walked in on Gellert in Albus’s lap as they were reading the same book in her sitting room was harmless enough.

Once she had found Albus asleep with his face next to one of their books while Gellert was brushing strands of hair out of his face with a tender expression. The scene had been more telling, but still so innocent it made her heart clench when she remembered it now. The course of time could be so cruel, making enemies of these two loving boys who were to to fight each other in the end!

Bathilda looked into her bathroom mirror. Her wrinkled face was saddened but resolute.

Of course she couldn’t part with all her memories. For once, she needed to remember her annual visit to Nurmengard. She also needed to remember some details because she was determined to try to console Gellert, if consolation was even possible for him after Albus’s death.

She raised her wand, almost touching it to her head.

“Obliviate,” she whispered.

Bathilda could only hope the memories she had selected were enough.

Note:

This is my headcanon why there doesn’t seem to be anything about Albus and Gellert’s romantic relationship in Rita Skeeter’s The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore even though I believe it’s unlikely Bathilda didn’t know they were lovers.

Did Bathilda live to visit Gellert one last time in Nurmengard? It’s up to you to decide. In any case, I’d like to write a story about how she visits him sometime during the First Wizarding War (or perhaps sometime before) and how they talk a little about Albus.

[funkymbtifiction]

sorry if this goes through more than once Tumblr is weird

Sorry to bother you, but how would a particularly young si-dom come across? Through a lot of painful admission and introspection, I’ve decided I’m most likely a Fi/Te, Si/Ne user. I do have moments where i could look you in the eye and say I’m Ti/Ni, but those moments of clarity are far and few in between. Expecting things to go the way they usually do, making note of patterns, remembering events personalized to me, that is a constant white noise.

And, say if you were 19 years old/an so-6, would it be possible for your Te to be softened if you were an ISTJ? My Six-ish fear of being attacked left me dancing around being blunt with my opinions on things (cos that’s how the internet works, and I feel like i can never voice them properly), until recently I have been opening up more without fear, letting things slide away easily, and getting stuff done. So I can’t tell if Te is developing or if I’ve finally just mentally gone “screw it” and started being truly honest.

You sound more like a feeler than a thinker, if I’m being honest.

Si is the same, regardless of your age. If it’s your dominant function, it’s as easy as breathing. I’ve talked about it before as an internal system of recording things. My ISFJ friend has explained it like being able to shut her eyes, walk into a mental library, and pull a book off the shelf – only the book is a memory of her doing / seeing / experiencing something. It’s a process of absorbing experiences in order to build up a big internal catalogue of experience, so you can face new situations confidently through an instant process of “comparison.” You may not even be consciously aware of it, but your Si-dom brain will go, “This is similar to this, so I can do THAT, and expect THIS result, because it worked in that other situation.” And it usually works.

The book I’m reading talks about ISXJs in the context of them developing interests, which are of particular interest only to THEM, and becoming detail-driven experts in their field. Si-dom has the potential to store massive amounts of factual information, especially with ISTJs. One ISTJ I knew became an expert in fashion across the ages; she could tell at a glance not only if a costume in a movie was 5 years out of date, but she knew if the fabric was correct for the time period. It was effortless for her, because she had studied and learned so much related to her particular interest. (This is in direct contrast to the NP type, who is a “I know a little bit about a lot of things” personality.)

If your Te is only kicking in near your 20s instead of your mid-teens, you could be in low-Te development. Being an Enneagram 6 has SJ overtones (in terms of anxieties and descriptions of the type) even for non-SJ 6s. I mistyped as an SJ for a long time due to being a 6, because the reckless ENFP descriptions did not mesh with my logical, standoffish, “think before you do this” 6 core personality. Have you read them? “The ENFP is the kind of person likely to on a whim move halfway across the country and live out of a backpack.” Um. Hell no. I do not instantly react. I do not leap into things before I look. I am responsible, dedicated, and hardworking. I finish what I start (which means I’m careful what I start). But my mental process is very Ne-driven. I can take and run with other people’s ideas; their ideas carry me along with them; I wing everything because dealing with details and organizing factual information is exhausting for me (I have to force myself to start using it); I find it very hard to introspect and find myself; and my Si awareness is extremely poor. Details stress me out. Even when writing, I have to keep a list of details above my desk to pull on, so I don’t use generic words (“flowers” – um, what kind? and what year was that again? were handsaws even invented by this period??).

Being a 6 would soften your Te, yes, but… what’s your mental process like? The mental process of an ISTJ-6 is going to differ from a feeler-6. Feeler 6’s care about people’s emotional responses on top of not wanting to cause conflict, because their relationships are important to them; in many ways, feelers define themselves by their people skills. The ISTJ-6 is more concerned with factual accuracy and logic, and I think would push more in 6ish cases of “wanting to keep people safe” due to being a Judging personality. (If you have seen Bird Box, John Malcovich plays a 6w5 INTJ. That’s 6 + Te: direct action. Not a lot of concern over whether people are offended or not. Not like a feeler would worry.)

What you need to do is comprehend 6 enough to tell what are 6 behaviors, then study SJ and NP enough to know what they are actually about (not their BEHAVIORS, but their MENTAL PROCESSES), and see them as separate. Then you can divide your 6ish motivations from your cognitive processing and be sure of your type.

ENFP Mod

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Imagine two people walking through a field. One of them tiptoes gingerly, zigging and zagging from one side to another. The other strides confidently straight ahead. Who looks more like they know what they’re doing?

Now what if I told you the field is full of land mines?

Confidence doesn’t equal competence. But our brains tend to assume it does. And that can create big problems when scientific evidence collides with political rhetoric. The senator who confidently throws a snowball to prove that winter is cold can be more memorable (and more believable) than the one who takes the podium to carefully explain how we know fossil fuel use is changing climate over decades. “Denialism has an advantage. Absolutely. There’s no question,” said Stephan Lewandowsky, professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol in the UK.

As the U.S. confronts what to do about climate change, human psychology leaves climate-conscious politicians in a tough spot. Political action means convincing both constituents and colleagues that said action has to be taken and that you know the right path forward. But the global climate system, and our understanding of how humans are altering it, is complex and nuanced enough that talking about it can easily involve a stumbled series of “ifs,” “ands” and “buts.” So it’s worth asking: Is the science of rhetoric fundamentally at odds with the science of evidence-based policymaking?

Scientists who study the psychology of storytelling and rhetoric say there are several factors that give climate change denialists an advantage in the political marketplace. Simplicity and smoothness of the message is a big part of it, said Eryn Newman, professor of psychology at the Australian National University. In an email, she told me that the easier it is to process information, the more likely people are to believe it.

In other words, the simpler the words are to understand, the clearer and more consistent the narrative is and the more absolute and concrete the claims, the more likely people are to nod along. Anything that makes us briefly confused or makes our train of thought stumble will make an idea less believable. On the extreme end, this effect can mean that people have a harder time believing experts whose names they can’t pronounce, Newman told me. And in one study, a question asked in a hard-to-read typeface even makes it less believable. Scientists asked participants to read and answer a question that was intentionally flawed — “How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the ark?” When the font was less easily legible, people were more likely to notice that it was Noah, not Moses, who built the biblical boat.

Pretty often, we’re just working off intuition about what seems reasonable, Newman said. And this effect matters to political debates about climate change because scientists and advocates of climate change action often sacrifice smoothness of narrative and ease of processing in favor of nuance and accuracy.

Case in point: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

This is the document that summarizes climate science for politicians and the public. It’s pretty crucial to lay understandings of climate risks and to the crafting of policy meant to address those risks. But a 2015 study showed that the language used in the IPCC report tends to be more cautious, more complex, and less confident than language used by a factually misleading denialist report. The IPCC had more tentative words, more modifiers, more use of passive voice. The other report confidently told a narrative with fewer caveats.

“They have a rhetorical advantage because they don’t have to be scientific. They want to be politically effective. And that makes it very easy to come across as being convincing,” Lewandowsky said.

The trouble, of course, is that nuance and complexity aren’t always optional.

Take, for instance, the data that the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration collects on trends in natural disaster frequency. One metric that’s tracked is events where damage is valued at $1 billion or more. The statistic combines winter storms, wildfires, hurricanes, severe storms, freezing, flooding and drought. Since 1980, these events have become more frequent … and more expensive. There are only eight years that had 10 or more of these billion-dollar disasters, and seven of those years have happened since 2008.

This metric can tell us something about the risks of climate change, said Adam Smith, an applied climatologist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information Center for Weather & Climate. Other research shows that drought, heavy rainfall, and sea levels are all increasing in the United States and those things play a role in increasing the costs associated with fires, floods, and hurricanes. Combined, this is all useful information for politicians and the public to have because it helps us make cost/benefit analyses and decide what risks are too big.

But you also can’t talk about this metric without clarifying that the increase in billion dollar disasters isn’t totally attributable to climate change. As Smith wrote in a NOAA blog, some of it also has to do with increases in wealth, population, and the size and scale of buildings built in high-risk zones. But those caveats don’t mean climate had nothing to do with the cost increases.1 Climate isn’t the whole picture but it is part of the picture. Politicians can certainly simplify this into something less accurate and more sticky. But, by doing that, they also open up a space for another politician to point out the discrepancy and create doubt. The metric is valuable, but can only be explained in ways that tend to make it — psychologically speaking — less believable than an all-or-nothing factoid.

And this is why the political rhetoric of climate change is such a pickle. The very nature of the science means it’s easy for opponents to rebut it with doubt. You can see that at work in the “sound science” movement my colleague Christie Aschwanden wrote about in 2017. Gathering scientific evidence is always a nuanced and complex process. So it’s easy for someone with an agenda to highlight that complexity and make the conclusions seem less trustworthy than they really are. Currently, President Trump’s critics are worried that’s exactly what the Trump administration plans to do with climate science by putting together a panel overseen by an official whose climate denialist organization has distributed misleading data in the past. “A simple sound bite is going to stick really well, and a nuanced, complicated story that is perfectly true but has caveats is much harder to sell. People just don’t remember that,” Lewandowsky said.

But he, and other experts, also offered some reason to be optimistic that politicians are starting to figure out ways around the rhetorical divide. For instance, Newman said, consensus is one of the tools that people use to decide, on a gut level, if something is true. We’re generally more confident in our beliefs if others share them and trust our own memories more if they’re corroborated by others. That probably goes a long way toward explaining why politicians who don’t believe in climate change spend so much time trying to undermine the idea of scientific consensus. But it also means that, when governmental organizations and politicians focus on consensus, they’re making headway. In fact, research has shown that telling people there’s a scientific consensus on climate change makes them more likely to believe in it.

What’s more, lessons from psychology offer some hope of making political headway on climate change in a world where a person’s ideological affiliation seems to determine whether they believe in climate change (rather than the other way around) and where action on climate might need to come from the top down (rather than bottom up). Our gut instinct is more likely to believe a person we know, who shares our identities and ideologies. And that means political leadership matters. So when psychologists see bills like the New Green Deal changing the arguments we’re having about climate change policy or Republican politicians coming out as believing in climate change and opposing denialism — those things look like viable paths forward.

“The entrenchment of attitudes is conditional on what leadership is doing,” Lewandowsky said.

[jasonwentcrazy]

Belief Ain’t Enough

Just because it’s true doesn’t ever mean it’s the truth.

One of the choices you have when faced with a problem is to change your perception of the problem. People sometimes resist altering their perceptions, believing they are right in what they see, hear, and remember. The truth is that your perceptions are often inaccurate, particularly in emotionally charged situations. So one way of being more open to  changing your perceptions is to consider the ways your perceptions may be inaccurate.

How you focus your attention affects your perceptions.  

When you have an idea in your mind you tend to look for evidence that supports that idea and not pay attention to evidence that says the idea isn’t accurate. This is called confirmation bias. If you believe you are lucky whenever you wear your red sweatshirt, you are likely to focus on the times that is true and discount the times you were lucky when you weren’t wearing the shirt and when you weren’t lucky when wearing the shirt.  Democrats will look for evidence they are right and Republicans are wrong and vice versa. You tend to look for and pay attention to evidence that supports your beliefs.

So one way of changing your perception is to check the evidence.  Is the way you see the situation factual?  Find a way to count or otherwise test out your thoughts in a more objective way.  Maybe your brother actually spends as much time talking with you as he does your older sister. Maybe your husband puts his clothes away one out of three times instead of never.

Most people don’t like uncertainty so they classify people and experiences into categories. People also learn to associate outcomes with cues when they may not be related.

If a sexy redhead wearing tight pants and stilettos flirts with your husband and ignores you, you may tend to be suspicious of the next woman you meet who wears high heels.  People tend to believe that when people are similar in one way, they are likely to be similar in other ways and this is often not the case.

Not only that, but because you have the idea that she is going to behave a certain way, you may be overly sensitive to any actions on her part that support that view (confirmation bias).

In addition, you may have learned to associate attractive redheads with being abandoned or teased. You may or may not be aware of the reason for your immediate fear, dislike and distrust of redheads wearing heels. Either way it will influence your perception of the person.

Be aware that humans tend to group and classify people and interactions in ways that aren’t correct. People can respond emotionally to subtle cues such as the sounds or lights or smells without any awareness of their emotions coloring their thoughts. Mindfulness can help you be aware of your reactions and pause to consider all factors before responding.

Your first perception affects your later perceptions and decisions.  

In some cases, buying a car is a good example of how this works. The sticker price for the car is $25,000 but the salesman gets you a special deal. You can drive off the lot for $20,000.  At this point, $20,000 looks great. What a bargain. This is called the anchoring effect.  Your belief in the car’s value is anchored at $25,000.

If you “anchored” at a reasonable cost that would be okay. But you don’t. A couple of researchers (Ariely) looked at the anchoring effect by having students bid for items in an auction. They held up a bottle of wine, a textbook or a cordless trackball and described how wonderful the item was. Then each student wrote down the last two digits of their social security number. The digits represented the price of the auction items. If the last two digits were 33, then the textbook was $33.  If the last two digits were 15, then the wine was $15.  After writing down the pretend price, the students bid for the items.

The students who had high social security numbers paid up to 346% more than those with low numbers.

When you have negative reactions to situations or to yourself, how much is an anchoring effect influencing your view?  For example, if your first experience with learning or going to therapy was negative, think how that might influence your later experiences. If your first experience with your neighbor was negative, then maybe that has colored your later interactions.  That saying about the power of first impressions seems to have some truth.

If you imagine an event occurring, your view of the likelihood of that event actually occurring increases. 

If you worry and ruminate about awful events, such as your spouse cheating on you, you are also increasing your sense of how likely it is that the awful event will occur. That of course will add to your misery, though it’s only a change in your perception.

Stopping rumination is difficult. If you ruminate, consider that your perception of the likelihood of the dreaded event actually occurring is skewed. Consider letting the ruminating thought pass through.  Perhaps replace it with visualizing yourself behaving effectively with problems that come your way.

You don’t see all that happens right in front of your eyes.  

Would you believe that you could be talking with someone about checking out a video and not notice that a different person brings you the video?  (e.g. http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com) You often don’t notice major details in your environment.  You miss information.  So when you are upset about an interaction or a situation, consider that maybe you don’t have all the facts. It’s at least a possibility.

Sometimes making a decision that you aren’t the kind of person who does something helps you stop doing that behavior. 

Deciding that you aren’t the kind of person who eats sweets or who smokes will help you change your behavior. It’s like changing your perception of who you are helps you make different decisions.

Consider how your view of yourself could affect your perceptions. If you perceive yourself as a caring person, you might discount others’ complaints about you being selfish because that’s not who you are. If you view yourself as an angry person then you may respond with anger in an automatic way without checking to see if that is what you are actually feeling.

Being mindful of your emotions and actions and the effect of your actions on others can be helpful to increasing the accuracy of your perceptions.

When you’re in a negative mood you tend to expect more negative outcomes and see yourself and others more negatively.  

When you are sad or depressed, you are likely to see yourself as having little to be happy about or that you have little to look forward to. You are more attuned to painful events. When your mood changes your view of your future is more optimistic and your see the many reasons you have to be grateful though nothing changed other than your mood.

Keep in mind your perceptions may be mood dependent. Remind yourself that when you are in a different mood your views change.

Sometimes you let myths govern your responses.  

Imagine you’re at work. You see a man with a few tears running down his cheeks. If you believe that tears are a sign of weakness, you’ll perceive the gentleman differently than if you believe that expression of feelings is healthy or a sign of sensitivity. You may have the judgment without even thinking of the reason you are making it.

Consider writing down your beliefs about friendships, the opposite sex, relationships or any area of conflict you might have.  Then consider whether you are behaving according to rules and expectations that are actually myths.

It’s really difficult to have the whole truth. 

The man who cut you off in traffic may be trying to get to the hospital for the birth of a child.  The supervisor who didn’t give raises may have saved the department from layoffs and the friend you believe ignored you may not have seen you.

Sometimes you are upset because you interpret or give assumed meanings to events rather than staying with what you can actually observe to be true.  Sometimes your perceptions, and thus your reactions, are based on assumptions. You can observe that the man cut you off in traffic and you know that you were scared of an accident. You cannot observe that he did so because he is rude or has some other negative personality characteristic.

You reconstruct your memories. 

Your memories of the past can be influenced by interactions and situations that occur after the original event. The language that someone uses to ask you questions about the event can influence your memory. If you have gaps in what you remember, you tend to them in to make the memory “whole.”  And circumstances that occur after the original event affect your memory. For example, if you were best friends with someone at the time of the original event but have an argument that severed your relationship in the years after, then you will not remember being as close as you actually were.

Thus your memory/perception of what happened five years ago might not be as accurate as you think. Consider that others’ memories may have some validity even though their memories are likely flawed as well.

There are many ways our perceptions are actually inaccurate representations of reality. Keeping in mind that your perceptions may be faulty or incomplete may help you be more flexible in your views, giving you more peace and contentment.

[This is from some pasted text I had saved in my documents and I figured I’d post it here to remind me of it. Since it’s important.]

[firstagent]

Fact-Checking Maki

Now that we know Maki’s primary motive in tri., it’s easy to lean one way or another as far as her trustworthiness. But why go off a gut reaction or what other characters are saying about either her or the statements she’s made to the Chosen? Let’s go back to movie 3 and do some fact-checking!

We’re going to focus on Confession because this is the first time she fully conveys information to the Chosen and their partners. Prior to that, the only ones she can potentially deceive are Daigo and the bureau (we don’t hear her conversations with Meiko). Those may become important, but she says so little in movie 1 and isn’t specific enough in movie 2 to warrant a deeper analysis. Yet.

Here are the possible ratings for each of the 32 statements she makes in Confession:

True: Statement is factually correct with no attempt to deceive. Probably True: Statement cannot be fully verified but we have no reason to doubt it at this time. Uncertain: We do not have enough information to properly rate it for accuracy or deception. Possibly Misleading: Statement’s accuracy is hard to question, but there’s a catch in there that makes us doubt her honesty or sincerity. Misleading: Statement isn’t an outright lie, but hides vital information that would affect the recipient. False: Statement is an outright lie.

Daigo: Is Meicoomon causing all of this? Maki: That’s likely.

Analysis: Electrical interference is on the rise following Meicoomon’s outburst at the school and continues until the reboot. Minor, localized electrical inference is also seen connected to Meicoomon in the first and second movie, and the first movie opens with news reports of widespread blackouts in the Kawasaki area.

Rating: Probably True

Daigo: Why didn’t you tell me sooner that the one they were aiming for was Meicoomon? Daigo: If we had heard about Meicoomon, we might have been able to give different support at school! Maki: Our priority now is to discuss countermeasures.

Analysis: Based on actions and reactions in the first two movies, Maki knew Meicoomon was connected to the infections. While it is possible Maki did not expect Meicoomon to be targeted, she fails to justify why she did not share Meicoomon’s relation to the infections when Daigo correctly recognizes that they could have targeted their school patrol better.

Rating: Misleading

Maki: Now 13 places within the city and 52 places country-wide are having trouble with electrical devices. This is causing considerable communication issues. However, he biggest problem is that is also occurs around the airport which affects the planes that take off and land. There were four emergency landings at Haneda airport alone. In one case an airplane nearly collided with another. It’s under investigation with certain air lanes closed.

Analysis: There is no reason to doubt the accuracy of Maki’s statements. Furthermore, the increased attention and severity of the situation would only serve to disrupt her intentions by adding more government and civilian scrutiny to the situation.

Rating: Probably True

Mochizuki: Just before all this occurred, there was a report of an unconfirmed Digimon at Tsukishima High School. Boss: Do you think that is related to the crisis? Mochizuki: I can’t say conclusively for now. But in light of these escalations, it’s possible they may be related.

Analysis: Maki is silent here, despite confirming with Daigo earlier that “it is likely” they are connected. This may be either a deliberate effort to keep Mochizuki/the bureau in the dark or meeting protocol and hierarchy that would prevent her from speaking. It’s ambiguous whether the “unconfirmed Digimon” refers to Meicoomon, Imperialdramon or even the Mysterious Man. Given the amount of resources the bureau has at its disposal, it’s unlikely they would rely on Maki’s testimony alone. At the very least, it’s unknown if both Maki and Daigo gave reports on this incident (Daigo would presumably be thorough in his testimony). We also have to consider the possibility Mochizuki is withholding information from the bureau.

Rating: Uncertain

Daigo: This is more dire than expected. Maki: At this rate, it’ll happen again. There’ll be victims again. Daigo: I don’t want them to have that harsh experience. Maki: Yeah.

Analysis: If we assume they are referring to their experiences as original Chosen, this remains a curious statement. Their “harsh experience” had nothing to do with electrical interference or infected Digimon in the real world, and they’re aware the current Chosen have overcome more dire situations than this in the past. Maki clearly considers herself a victim in losing Bakumon, but the current situation would not be a repeat of her loss. In addition, Daigo does not know about the reboot, yet seemingly knows what Maki means by “it” and the “harsh experience” awaiting the current Chosen. There is more going on here. At the same time, Maki appears sympathetic towards the current Chosen- an important observation.

Rating: Uncertain

Yamato: I need to know more. We’re in a tough situation so I need as much information as possible. Please. Maki: All right. You’re also involved. You have a right to know, to some extent.

Analysis: Whether an effort to solidify their trust or a sincere effort to provide information, Maki makes it clear she will lend the Chosen information to a limited degree.

Rating: True

Maki: You saw what occurred in the shadow of the school festival, right? This is the result. We haven’t reported it to the media. And we don’t intend to. Sooner or later, it’ll become an uproar though.

Analysis: Maki is showing Yamato a prepared internal report. Since they have not reported it to the media, it is for bureau eyes only and is peeling back the curtain for Yamato. The report likely omits details about Meicoomon’s history with the infection (which would be helpful for the Chosen), but nothing Maki says here is a lie.

Rating: Possibly Misleading

Yamato: What about Ken Ichijouji? Maki: We’re always checking the welfare of the digidestined. Don’t worry. Yamato: I was worried because I couldn’t contact him. Maki: Go tell everyone the Meicoomon investigation will begin ASAP and we will cooperate as much as possible.

Analysis: While factually correct, Maki is clearly hiding the fact that the bureau knows that Ken’s whereabouts are unknown. Again, she is withholding key suspicions about Meicoomon.

Rating: Misleading

Maki: I’ll tell you as soon as anything new comes up. We’re okay, right?

Analysis: Maki fails to inform the children about Meicoomon’s link to the infection, Meiko’s awareness of Meicoomon’s infection, the reboot, or a way to stop it.

Rating: False

Daigo: Himekawa-san! You went overboard! Maki: How so? Daigo: By deceiving the kids! Maki: Should I have been honest about everything? Daigo: Well...

Maki: I can’t, right? To say that those people are all missing? I don’t want to burden those kids anymore. It’s part of our duty to deceive them well.

Analysis: She is openly admitting to Daigo that she didn’t tell Yamato the whole story. Knowing how sensitive Maki is about her partner, it is entirely possible she is sincere in not wanting to give the Chosen any more grief in their current situation.  However, we cannot confirm this is her true motive for doing so.

Rating: Uncertain

Daigo: What about the fact that Meicoomon caused all this? Maki: If we tell them, what will it do to Meiko and their relationship? They’ll know sooner or later. No need to tell them. Koshiro Izumi will figure it out.

Analysis: Same situation, although knowing Meicoomon’s role in initiating the reboot makes this more likely to be a deliberate cover. However, her (correct) assumption that Koshiro will put it together makes it unclear if she thinks the Chosen have any way to prevent the reboot. While she doesn’t help them, she does nothing to stop them from discovering the truth or countering it.

Rating: Possibly Misleading

Daigo: But still! Why keep things from me too? Am I that untrustworthy? Maki: Some things are better off not knowing.

Analysis: Maki is more or less confirming that she’s hiding information from him too. Given the consequences of the reboot plan, she should have run this by him to make sure she wasn’t crazy. She’s lying to herself here more than Daigo, but it’s still a lie.

Rating: False

Maki: It’s okay. She just blacked out. Tailmon: It’s not okay! What on Earth happened to Hikari?! Maki: I’m not exactly sure, but it seems like someone else borrowed her body to speak with her.

Analysis: Maki was also once possessed by Homeostasis and is using that experience to hypothesize that Hikari just went through the same thing. She can’t be completely sure since she doesn’t have a first-hand recollection of the event.

Rating: True

Gabumon: What did they mean by “a great sacrifice?!” Maki: Probably... a reboot.

Analysis: This gets murky. The simplest explanation here is that Homeostasis is the only one who can initiate a reboot. If Yggdrasil or Maki could have done it themselves, they would not have needed to raise the threat of mass infection (and the additional scrutiny from the bureau, Homeostasis, and the Chosen). While it could still prove differently, Maki is probably right in saying Homeostasis is suggesting a reboot is the only answer.

Rating: Probably True

Maki: The Digital World is one of the possible worlds that exist side-by-side with ours. As long as our world remains, it’s possible to start over. That’s “rebooting.”

Analysis: The clues about other possible worlds existing have been vague, so there’s no way of knowing for sure. However, Maki is explaining clearly what a reboot entails and it’s hard to see how fudging an explanation helps her cause.

Rating: Probably True

Maki: Infected Digimon didn’t originally exist in the Digital World. So they would disappear by rebooting.

Analysis: This clearly turned out not to be the case, but there’s no way we can tell if Maki knew this would happen going in. She may have hypothesized this or Yggdrasil may have told her this. As the existence of a post-reboot Meicoomon doesn’t affect Maki’s goal, we can’t shoot the messenger.

Rating: Uncertain

Patamon: Then... then why haven’t you done that?! Maki: Rebooting is the last resort. Digimon: The last resort? Maki: The quantum sea has created other worlds besides the Digital World. The quantum sea is different from our world and any possible world. It is the primordial world. Carelessly rebooting could produce gaps in phases causing the Digital World to be engulfed in the quantum sea.

Analysis: For someone so bent on engineering a reboot to get Bakumon back, this is foreboding stuff to be telling the Digimon. It’s hard to fathom her warning against the dangers of careless rebooting while being so cavalier in making it happen unless it were true. She knows the risks, and later is seen waiting to make sure this fate does not befall the Digital World.

Rating: True

Tailmon: Are we out of time? Maki: Yes. All the worlds will be destroyed if we just stand by and watch. So we’ll reboot before we lose the chance.

Analysis: She’s telling them the reboot is going to happen, and the risks involved with not doing it. Homeostasis confirmed the danger of the current situation and the reboot does occur.

Rating: True

Gabumon: If we reboot, will this world... will Yamato’s and everyone’s world be okay? Maki: If all traces of the infection are totally gone from this world, it shouldn’t affect anything here.

Analysis: The reboot did eliminate the infection from the real world and the electrical disruptions immediately ceased. Life in the real world continued normally.

Rating: True

Tailmon: How do you know this? Maki: Because I’m a high-level person at the bureau.

Analysis: Maki is shown researching the reboot well before she joined the bureau. It appeared to be something of a pet project of hers. We’re given no information as to whether other high-level officials at the bureau are aware of the implications of reboot.

Rating: Misleading

Gabumon: In short, “a great sacrifice” means that time turns back in the Digital World? Maki: Well... that sums it up.

Analysis: While it appears that Maki isn’t aware of all of the implications of a reboot (primarily memory loss), she does know that Digimon who die without becoming a digiegg are restored. It may not be pertinent to the Digimon’s present concerns, but it is a major detail she is aware of and withholds. It would be interesting to know how some of them (Tailmon in particular) would react to hearing this.

Rating: Possibly Misleading

Piyomon: How does a reboot occur? Maki: I don’t know. Whether to invoke a reboot depends on the will of Homeostasis, who desires universal stability.

Analysis: It’s hard to question this. While Maki knows a reboot is about to be triggered, understanding the mechanics of how Homeostasis does it may be out of her reach. She just knows it’s imminent.

Rating: Probably True

Tailmon: Homeostasis? Maki: Probably the one who spoke using Hikari-chan’s mouth. Would you get it if I said it was the God of the Digital World? Gabumon: The one who decides whether to reboot? Maki: Considering the situation now, the next time Meicoomon appears it may bring a reboot on.

Analysis: Once again, Yggdrasil and Maki have no reason to time their own reboot in order to pin the blame on Meicoomon. Homeostasis’ possession of Hikari is consistent with its possessions in the past and Meicoomon’s next appearance does trigger the reboot.

Rating: Probably True

Maki: That’s a relief. You’re just a little anemic. Hikari: Um... what was I doing? I remember being in the school hallway, then I ended up on a hospital bed. Maki: Not sure. I’d found you after you’d already collapsed. Maybe you’re tired from all that’s been happening recently? And, it’s hot.

Analysis: Maki is inventing reasons for Hikari to have passed out without acknowledging her possession by Homeostasis.

Rating: False

Maki: A sign of the distortion. The data pool density is exponentially increasing. It’s coming.

Analysis: Maki is just doing her job in reporting the distortion to Daigo, but in doing so allows Daigo to witness the reboot first-hand and possibly assist the Chosen trying to prevent it.

Rating: True

Maki: It’s been a week. The quantum sea still hasn’t materialized in the Digital World as of now.

Analysis: Maki may be eager to jump in after her partner, but she is still aware of the risks of reboot and is waiting to make sure the coast is clear. There is no evidence of the Digital World sinking into the quantum sea in the next movie.

Rating: True

Daigo: There was a massive trade-off... Maki: I know. Those kids just have to move on. Move forward.

Analysis: Given how bad Maki was at moving on from the loss of Bakumon, it’s incredibly unfair for her to just expect the Chosen to cope. There’s probably no deception going on here, but it’s such a hypocritical statement that it should raise eyebrows.

Rating: Possibly Misleading

Maki: In the blink of an eye, new buildings will be up within six months, and Odaiba will be just like before. In a year, everyone will forget what happened there.

Analysis: Somehow, this has been the case historically. The Chosen forgot about Hikarigaoka even after being reintroduced to Digimon. Despite the incidents in 1999 and 2002, many civilians were confused and upset by the emergence of Digimon in 2005. These people have short memories.

Rating: Probably True

Maki: No one in the world will even mention Digimon anymore. Daigo: Those kids, too? Maki: That’s a part of becoming an adult.

Analysis: Once again, Maki is ignoring her own feelings. Again, it’s hard to see the deception here, but she should know better. At the same time, this would be the ideal opportunity to sell Daigo on the idea of helping the kids enter the Digital World. She doesn’t, she waits for Koshiro to propose it to her, and Daigo objects to it throughout.

Rating: Possibly Misleading

Maki: You’re serious, right? Taichi: Yeah. Maki: We have just one chance. Even if we open the gate, it’ll be unstable. There’s no guarantee you can come back. Daigo: The risk is too great! Guys, you should discuss this more first. Yamato: I’m going.

Analysis: It’s uncertain what she means by having only one chance, but she is clear about the warnings and risks. If her plan requires them to enter the Digital World, she not only waits for them to contact her, but she does try to talk them out of it.

Rating: Probably True

Maki: I’ll go prepare. Go wait where the reboot occurred. Daigo: Himekawa-san! Maki: Nishijima-kun, please take them there. I’ll contact security and pull them away.

Analysis: Maki successfully engineers a way to take them to the Digital World despite Daigo’s objections.

Rating: True

Hikari: D3? Maki: We independently proceeded with the analysis. Though the analysis still isn’t complete, if D3 can synchronize with your power, the gate can probably open. Sora: Our power? Maki: Using the power of your Crests.

Analysis: While there are tons of questions about how Maki came into the possession of the D3, what is true is that the Chosen using their Crest power was able to finally get the thing to work. It enables the Chosen to get to the Digital World (and only the Chosen; the Mysterious Man probably pulled Maki in), even if it’s certainly suspicious that she has it in the first place.

Rating: True

Final Total/Analysis:

True: 9 Probably True: 8 Uncertain: 4 Possibly Misleading: 5 Misleading: 3 False: 3

She’s certainly not the most trustworthy character, with a number of lies and deceptions, but it’s not as bad as people may think. She is very forthcoming about the reboot to the Digimon (it’s important to note she does not suggest that it can be stopped nor that it erases memories), and if there is an ulterior motive in helping the kids enter the Digital World, she’s not pressuring anybody into making it happen. At the same time, she does hide information from Daigo, Yamato, and probably the entire bureau in order to ensure the crisis escalates to a point where a reboot is necessary. While that may be enough of a crime on its own, so far that appears to be her only one.

[guttermagazine]

Exclusive Jules Valera Interview

I had the chance to sit down with Jules Valera, autobiographical comic artist, caricaturist, illustrator, animation student, writer, event sketcher and all around good egg. I’d been itching for an interview for a while as I find their work deeply inspiring and admire the way that they’re able to work in a wide variety of styles using a plethora of different media.

Hold onto your hats, chaps, this’ll be a good read!

Rebecca

Hey, Jules! Thanks for taking the time to speak to me. So let’s do this. First question! As a comic artist, how do you feel that you are perceived by the people in your life, the general public and other artists?

Jules

People in my life have responded pretty positively to my work as a comic artist. Comics are pretty cool at the moment and most people have some kind of relationship with them in some form.

I think people generally seem to think it’s cool that you can ‘get away’ with doing comics. The downside seems to be that the prevailing perception of comics is still superhero-exclusive.

Other artists I know seem to have a deep respect and hunger for comics. It’s the perfect fusion of things that artists generally love— story and drawings. Most artists I know, even non-comic artists, seem to get a lot of satisfaction out of comics and respect them as a medium.

Rebecca

So how and why did you end up making comics rather than something else?

Jules

I was a big fan of manga when I was growing up, and I’ve always found comics a very natural way of expressing ideas. A friend who happened to be studying comics studies uncovered some of my comics diaries early in my first year of uni and encouraged me to see the merit in continuing. Through him, I developed an interest in comic studies and particularly in graphic medicine (the overlap of comics and the medical humanities) which had a significant influence on my work.

Rebecca

How did your family react when you told them that you were pursuing comics?

Jules

My parents have both always been interested in comics and graphic novels— my mum read Bretécher cartoons as a child, and my dad is a big fan of Joe Sacco (Palestine, Footnotes in Gaza.) They were both supportive and interested from the get-go and have been ever since.

Rebecca

As an artist, do you ever feel apprehensive about sharing your autobio comics with others?

Jules

No— it can be a powerful means of expressing things that are incredibly difficult to communicate otherwise. The spectacle of it- framing real-life events as a narrative with characters- gives both the artist and reader a degree of distance, while the format- using your own words and pictures- allows you to express yourself without restraint, and allows the reader to fully empathise without feeling the need to ‘say the right thing’ or respond appropriately. In creating and sharing an autobiographical comic, you’re saying, “I’m in control of this story, these events, and how I feel about them, and I’m letting you see into my world.”

Rebecca

Do you feel that you have to exaggerate or slightly twist the events in your autobio comics to draw an audience to your work?

Jules

When I make comics based on true events, I try to focus on my own perspective, feelings, and memories, rather than one hundred percent accuracy and objectivity. In the same way as when retelling a good anecdote, I think some things naturally get edited down so that the timing is a little better or a little more convenient. What you end up remembering and recounting is whatever was important at the time.

Rebecca 

Do you feel that comics have to be funny/happy for them to appeal to an audience?

Jules

There’s definitely a market for misery, but I think more than anything else what draws an audience to a comic is relatability. People want to be able to see themselves in comic situations— whether it’s inserting themselves into a superhero narrative, laughing at themselves in a cartoon, or seeing some of their own experiences reflected genuinely in autobio.

Rebecca 

Does the way that you feel about the events depicted in your comic before you draw differ from how you feel after you’ve made and shared the comic?

Jules

Often I find that the process of drawing a comic helps provide some objectivity and perspective on my own feelings. Transforming an event into a narrative problem to be solved has always let me see myself a little better— helps me to understand how I actually felt at the time, and how I feel now.

Rebecca

Do you find making autobio comics therapeutic in any way?

Jules

For me, most of my autobio happens very urgently. The immediacy of drawing a comic often replaces a more self-destructive compulsion, and the emotion that then goes into those drawings and words is often something that I wouldn’t be able to express any other way. I think therapeutic might be the wrong word. If I don’t do the work unravelling issues and coming to terms with them with the help of a therapist then I know I can’t produce anything much of worth (if anything at all)— but comics provide me with context and allow me to see my own feelings objectively, transforming events and emotions into narrative problems to be resolved and presented to an audience in some way.

Rebecca 

In making comics that people are able to relate to and engage with, do you feel as if you’re part of a community?

Jules

I think community can be a bit of a double edged sword. There’s the very immediate satisfaction and sense of validation that comes from people sharing your experiences and relating to your work, which I think is a very good and necessary thing. It comes with the burden of other people’s expectations, however, and I think the particular danger of your work being relatable to many people, especially when you do autobio, is that you become very available to them. I’ve been approached by strangers who felt like they knew me through my work and started very personal, overly familiar conversations with me because of it.

Rebecca 

Autobio comics have been criticised for being too self-indulgent and as being of less worth than a fictional story such as those depicted in graphic novels. What are your thoughts on this?

Jules

I feel strongly that good stories, factual or fictional, always thrive on authenticity, and I believe that authenticity comes from people’s ability to transform their own experiences into a narrative. You don’t need to look far into autobiographical comics to find this happening- for example, in the works of Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel, Marjane Satrapi, where a life story becomes a deeply intriguing story in its own right.

Rebecca 

Do you think that autobio comics are important for not only a reader but also the artist creating them?

Jules

I think there’s great importance in letting people narrate their own experiences. It’s often the case that when someone is experiencing illness, trauma, grief, any number of life experiences, they’re forced to abdicate some control over to other people— in my case, writing about mental health, control of my life and experiences were often handed over to my family, my doctors, and anyone else with an opinion. Writing about it put me back in control over my own history and gave me an outlet to work out what I felt and experienced without having to put anyone else first.

Rebecca

Has reading a comic (be it autobio or not) ever helped you get through a difficult time?

Jules

Definitely. I had a friend who could provide a comic for almost any event or occasion, and he gave me Glyn Dillon’s The Nao of Brown, which was a big help to me when I was struggling with obsessive compulsive disorder (the comic is fictional but loosely based on Dillon’s wife’s experience with OCD.) Darryl Cunningham’s Psychiatric Tales, a frank, straightforward, and kindly graphic novel about experiences of working as a psychiatric nurse, was also a great comfort when I was unwell. Saki Hiwatari’s Please Save My Earth was incredibly formative in giving me a story to relate to as a teenager experiencing dysphoria, as the manga deals with themes of identity, gender, and sexuality through the story vector of reincarnation.

Rebecca

Do you feel that the impact left on its audience by a comic differs to that of a novel, film or other form of art?

Jules

Comics are still considered, to some degree, to be a ‘junk’ art form. I think this can be a very good thing for comics, though— I appreciate that there’s still a sort of unpretentiousness to the reading of comics, and I think this allows readers to be moved and affected by them almost unconsciously in a way that’s different to the more lofty experiences of reading a novel or watching a film.

 Rebecca

What are a couple of your favourite comics that you would recommend to readers, and do they differ from comics that you would recommend to aspiring comic artists?

Jules

For readers and artists alike, I would recommend anything by Chris Ware (particularly his ACME Novelty Library series, as well as the massive Building Stories) as he really does push the boundaries of what a ‘comic’ can be. Glyn Dillon’s The Nao of Brown is another favourite, with a more conventional structure, beautiful art, and a powerful, loving story. Lynda Barry’s cartoons are excellent (What It Is is a good one), and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi should be required reading for most comics enthusiasts. I also love anything by Michael DeForge (Ant Colony). For aspiring comic artists, I’d say just read whatever appeals to you, art-wise or story-wise. New artists are constantly reinventing the medium.

Rebecca 

What is your outlook on what it will be like to be a professional artist after leaving art school?

Jules

I ask my Magic 8 Ball this question all the time.

Rebecca

As an artist, do you worry about financial security?

Jules

Constantly.

Rebecca

Do/will you have to rely on other forms of income such as Patreon or a part-time job to be able to create comics?

Jules

I freelance doing commissions and bits and pieces of design work currently, which is more or less sustaining me for the time being, but after graduation I’ll most likely need a part-time job of some description. I hope to have a Patreon for comics and art up and running in the next year!

Rebecca

How has the ability to use the internet to share your work affected your career as a comic artist?

Jules

The ability to use the internet has been absolutely crucial in my career as a comic artist. The vast majority of acquaintances, friends, and collaborators I’ve met in comics, I’ve primarily met through Twitter initially. I think the internet, for better or for worse, puts artists all on a somewhat level playing field— it doesn’t cost anything more than the price of an internet connection to publish your work, advertise yourself, network with other artists, gain an audience, and sell things, all online. The value of internet relationships is massive for providing everything from support and resources to literal couches in countries across the world.

Rebecca 

Would you ever want to work for a publisher or would you rather self-publish your work?

Jules

I think both have their merits, but I don’t have any experience with either so I’m unsure of the benefits and downsides of both. I have friends who’ve started their own small press imprints, which interests me a lot.

Rebecca 

Have you ever taken part in a collective comic anthology? Do you feel like you gained anything from working with others?

Jules

I’ve been published in anthologies a few times— local comics collectives and fanzines mostly. The pressure of a deadline and the thrill of seeing your work published as well as the social aspect of going to launches and promoting the work are all good things I think. I would love to do more practical collaborative work with other artists in the future.

Rebecca

What is your opinion on manga – is it the same as reading a Western comic?

Jules

I think manga follows a different set of rules based on an entirely different history and storytelling tradition from Western comics. Personally, I was drawn to manga when I was growing up because the artwork appealed to me more, but also because the stories in shōjo manga felt more contemplative, with thoughtful pauses visualised in consecutive black pages, empty speech bubbles, metaphorical flowers blooming, et cetera. There was an emotional focus that I found Western mainstream comics largely lacked. My experience of reading manga was, and still is, very different because of that sense of emotional timing.

Rebecca

Thanks so much for your time!

You can find Jules’ work online on their twitter and portfolio site

https://twitter.com/lieabed https://www.julesvalera.daportfolio.com

[nancyedimick]

When ‘there is serious reason to doubt’ rumors and allegations, is it libelous to publish them?

(Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

BuzzFeed, as everyone now knows, has published unverified allegations about Russia having “compromising material and information on [Donald] Trump’s personal life and finances”; the allegations had been apparently included in a “classified report delivered to President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump.” This raises all sorts of important questions about national security, journalistic ethics and more. I will set those aside under Mr. Ed’s Law, since I don’t have anything helpful to add about them.

But it also raises one question that a reader asked me about, and on which I actually know something: When a publisher knows “there is serious reason to doubt” certain allegations (which BuzzFeed’s top editor expressly said), is it libelous for the publisher to pass along those allegations (assuming they ultimately prove to be factually false)? Or is the publisher free to publish them on the theory that it is accurately reporting what has been alleged, even if the allegations are not accurate? It’s unlikely that Trump, despite his talk about libel law, will actually sue BuzzFeed over this, but these questions come up often with regard to reports about accusations about lower-level public figures. And the answer is, “It’s complicated.”

1. The republication rule: Say that Alan writes, “Betty alleges Charlie committed armed robbery.” Alan’s statement is literally true: Betty did make the allegation. But the statement Alan is reporting on (Betty’s statement) is false. American libel law has long adopted the “republication rule,” under which Alan is potentially liable for defamation — if Betty’s allegation actually proves to be false — even if he expressly attributes the statement to Betty. (See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 578.)

And this is true even if Alan distances himself from the allegation, for instance by saying that Charlie has denied the statement, or that Betty has reason to lie. The principle is that “Tale bearers are as bad as the tale makers.”

2. The “absence of malice” / absence of negligence defense: Of course, Alan (like Betty) would still have the benefit of the First Amendment defamation defenses that the Supreme Court has crafted. For instance, if Charlie is a public official or a public figure, Alan is immune from liability unless he spoke knowing that the statement was false, or at least having “serious doubts as to the truth of” the allegation. (That’s the famous “actual malice” standard, though that term is confusing, because it doesn’t actually mean “malice.”) If Charlie is a private figure, Alan would be immune from liability if he reasonably believed the allegations.

Very often, people who are passing along such allegations do sincerely believe them, even if they are unwise to do so. If that’s true, and Charlie is a public figure or public official, then Alan is off the hook. But assume, as in the BuzzFeed situation, that Alan does indeed know that “there is serious reason to doubt” the accuracy of Betty’s charges. The “absence of malice” defense thus falls away, and we get to the really interesting stuff.

3. The fair report privilege: The republication rule can’t be the whole story, though. Say a reporter is covering a trial, in which witnesses are making assertions that the reporter knows are false, or knows are likely false; or say a reporter is reporting on some official government report. The law has long recognized that such coverage must be immune from liability, under the so-called “fair report privilege,” at least when the coverage is substantially accurate and evenhandedly summarizes the testimony. In many states, this is an absolute privilege, applicable even when the reporter knows that the statements within those proceedings are likely to be false.

The fair report privilege also generally extends beyond reports of court proceedings, to include reports of public meetings of government bodies, including legislative and executive bodies. But most cases don’t extend it to reports of nonpublic government discussions. A report of allegations included in a secret government briefing, for instance, wouldn’t qualify for this privilege (though maybe they would qualify for others).

4. The possible neutral reportage privilege: But what if the statement is outside a government proceeding? Consider this incident, from Norton v. Glenn, a 2004 Pennsylvania Supreme Court case: William T. Glenn Sr., a city councilman, claimed that council president James B. Norton III and mayor Alan M. Wolfe were gay, implied that they were child molesters and claimed “that Norton had made homosexual advances toward Glenn which escalated to Norton grabbing Glenn’s penis.” A newspaper published an article accurately describing the charges and quoting Norton’s unequivocal denial; the newspaper didn’t endorse Glenn’s statements. Norton and Wolfe sued both the newspaper and Glenn, and the jury found that the statements were false.

Some courts would hold that the newspaper would be protected in such a case under a First Amendment “neutral reportage” privilege, because the charges themselves were newsworthy even if they were false. (Among other things, for instance, Glenn’s charges against Norton and Wolfe could be important to the public because they reflected on Glenn’s fitness for office.) Some courts have held that, “when a responsible, prominent organization … makes serious charges against a public figure, the First Amendment protects the accurate and disinterested reporting of those charges,” even when the reporter has serious doubts about the accuracy of the charges. (That’s from Edwards v. National Audubon Society (2d Cir. 1977).) And some other courts have extended this to certain charges on matters of public concern against private figures, and to statements made not just by responsible, prominent organizations but by any public figure, or even by any non-anonymous source.

There’s much to be said, I think, for the neutral reportage doctrine. The theory behind the First Amendment exception for defamation is that “there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact,” because such statements do not “materially advance[] society’s interest in ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’ debate on public issues.” But sometimes the very existence of an allegation or a rumor is indeed of importance to public issues, for instance because it could affect the behavior of public officials. (If various allegations about Trump and Russia are floating around, that might lead some other leaders to be wary of Trump’s actions toward Russia, or might pressure Trump to act in particular ways just to rebut those allegations — knowing about the allegations could thus help citizens understand these reactions.) And it seems bad in a democracy when elite insiders know what rumors are swirling around, but ordinary voters are denied access to those rumors.

Nonetheless, a majority (though not an overwhelming majority) of courts that have considered the matter have rejected the neutral reportage privilege, because of the harm that false allegations — including ones passed along, rather than created in the first place, by the defendant — can cause to people’s reputations. In Norton v. Glenn, for instance, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that Norton’s and Wolfe’s lawsuit against the paper could go forward, and the paper could be held liable if it published Glenn’s statements knowing that they were likely false; the case eventually settled for an undisclosed amount. The New York high court has also rejected the neutral reportage privilege, as have several others. And to my knowledge no court has accepted the privilege for allegations made by unnamed sources, such as in the BuzzFeed incident.

5. 47 U.S.C. § 230: But BuzzFeed and other online publishers could have another source of immunity here — the federal 47 U.S.C. § 230 statute. That statute (enacted in 1996 as part of the Communications Decency Act) is famous for protecting online publications from being held liable for user comments. If you write unsubstantiated rumors in the comments to this post (and please don’t!), The Post and I aren’t going to be liable; Congress chose to provide such protection because it worried that otherwise online-service providers — such as America Online, back in the day — would simply refuse to host user posts or user comments.

But the statute has generally been read quite broadly, including to online publishers’ deliberate decisions to forward particular materials. Thus, in Batzel v. Smith (9th Cir. 2003), Ton Cremers ran an email newsletter about allegedly stolen art; Robert Smith submitted an item that alleged that Ellen Batzel possessed a painting that had been stolen by the Nazis from its rightful owner; and Cremers deliberately chose to include the item in his newsletter and on his site. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that this too was protected by § 230, because that statute broadly provides that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Cremers was a “user of an interactive computer service”; Smith was an “information content provider”; Cremers was therefore immune from liability for distributing Smith’s email.

Likewise, in Barrett v. Rosenthal (Cal. 2006), Ilena Rosenthal forwarded an email that she received from someone else; that email contained charges against Stephen Barrett. Barrett sued Rosenthal as well as the original sender, but the California Supreme Court held that Rosenthal was immune under § 230. The court acknowledged that this immunity was very broad (paragraph break added):

We share the concerns of those who have expressed reservations about … [such a] broad interpretation of section 230 immunity. The prospect of blanket immunity for those who intentionally redistribute defamatory statements on the Internet has disturbing implications.

Nevertheless, by its terms section 230 exempts Internet intermediaries from defamation liability for republication. The statutory immunity serves to protect online freedom of expression and to encourage self-regulation, as Congress intended. Section 230 has been interpreted literally. It does not permit Internet service providers or users to be sued as “distributors,” nor does it expose “active users” to liability.

So if BuzzFeed got the dossier by email, and the dossier was originally distributed by its author by email, then BuzzFeed might well be protected by § 230. BuzzFeed got material from someone else, and chose to forward it, but that’s what Cremers and Rosenthal did, and they were found to be immune. If The Post decided to print the material in its paper edition (those things still exist, right?), it wouldn’t get such immunity, since § 230 only covers online publications. But online sites get this extra statutory protection.

On the other hand, many courts might find this result quite unappealing: Not only does it completely gut the republication rule for online publications, but it gives online media outlets a huge advantage over offline media outlets, within the core of the media’s traditional function — what a publication chooses to distribute to its readers — and not just as to comments. A court might thus refuse to accept Batzel or Barrett (which are binding precedent only in 9th Circuit federal courts and in California state courts).

Also, § 230 might be inapplicable if the material came to BuzzFeed on paper rather than by email, because § 230 only applies to material “provided by another information content provider,” defined as “any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service.” That would be a weird distinction, but statutes draw weird distinctions sometimes. Indeed, § 230 might be inapplicable so long as the material was first delivered by its author to others on paper, even if it was later forwarded by email, because then (one might argue) the person “responsible … for the creation or development” of the material didn’t provide it through an “interactive computer service.”

But at the very least, § 230 would be a possible defense that BuzzFeed and other sites could use when they’re passing along a wide range of rumor or allegations, however unsubstantiated — like it or not, the Batzel and Barrett precedents so suggest.

6. The bottom line: I told you it was complicated! That just shows how ridiculously over-complicated our legal system has become, some might say. No, others might say, it just reflects the crooked timber of humanity and the inherent complexity needed in rules that deal with a complex world. I don’t make the law, I just report on it. And here the legal result would turn heavily on (at least) two contested questions — whether the jurisdiction recognizes the neutral reportage privilege and would apply it to this situation, and whether § 230 is read broadly when applied to a news site’s publishing particular material that it itself has deliberately chosen.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/01/13/when-there-is-serious-reason-to-doubt-rumors-and-allegations-is-it-libelous-to-publish-them/

[wolfandpravato]

When ‘there is serious reason to doubt’ rumors and allegations, is it libelous to publish them?

(Nicholas Kamm/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

BuzzFeed, as everyone now knows, has published unverified allegations about Russia having “compromising material and information on [Donald] Trump’s personal life and finances”; the allegations had been apparently included in a “classified report delivered to President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump.” This raises all sorts of important questions about national security, journalistic ethics and more. I will set those aside under Mr. Ed’s Law, since I don’t have anything helpful to add about them.

But it also raises one question that a reader asked me about, and on which I actually know something: When a publisher knows “there is serious reason to doubt” certain allegations (which BuzzFeed’s top editor expressly said), is it libelous for the publisher to pass along those allegations (assuming they ultimately prove to be factually false)? Or is the publisher free to publish them on the theory that it is accurately reporting what has been alleged, even if the allegations are not accurate? It’s unlikely that Trump, despite his talk about libel law, will actually sue BuzzFeed over this, but these questions come up often with regard to reports about accusations about lower-level public figures. And the answer is, “It’s complicated.”

1. The republication rule: Say that Alan writes, “Betty alleges Charlie committed armed robbery.” Alan’s statement is literally true: Betty did make the allegation. But the statement Alan is reporting on (Betty’s statement) is false. American libel law has long adopted the “republication rule,” under which Alan is potentially liable for defamation — if Betty’s allegation actually proves to be false — even if he expressly attributes the statement to Betty. (See Restatement (Second) of Torts § 578.)

And this is true even if Alan distances himself from the allegation, for instance by saying that Charlie has denied the statement, or that Betty has reason to lie. The principle is that “Tale bearers are as bad as the tale makers.”

2. The “absence of malice” / absence of negligence defense: Of course, Alan (like Betty) would still have the benefit of the First Amendment defamation defenses that the Supreme Court has crafted. For instance, if Charlie is a public official or a public figure, Alan is immune from liability unless he spoke knowing that the statement was false, or at least having “serious doubts as to the truth of” the allegation. (That’s the famous “actual malice” standard, though that term is confusing, because it doesn’t actually mean “malice.”) If Charlie is a private figure, Alan would be immune from liability if he reasonably believed the allegations.

Very often, people who are passing along such allegations do sincerely believe them, even if they are unwise to do so. If that’s true, and Charlie is a public figure or public official, then Alan is off the hook. But assume, as in the BuzzFeed situation, that Alan does indeed know that “there is serious reason to doubt” the accuracy of Betty’s charges. The “absence of malice” defense thus falls away, and we get to the really interesting stuff.

3. The fair report privilege: The republication rule can’t be the whole story, though. Say a reporter is covering a trial, in which witnesses are making assertions that the reporter knows are false, or knows are likely false; or say a reporter is reporting on some official government report. The law has long recognized that such coverage must be immune from liability, under the so-called “fair report privilege,” at least when the coverage is substantially accurate and evenhandedly summarizes the testimony. In many states, this is an absolute privilege, applicable even when the reporter knows that the statements within those proceedings are likely to be false.

The fair report privilege also generally extends beyond reports of court proceedings, to include reports of public meetings of government bodies, including legislative and executive bodies. But most cases don’t extend it to reports of nonpublic government discussions. A report of allegations included in a secret government briefing, for instance, wouldn’t qualify for this privilege (though maybe they would qualify for others).

4. The possible neutral reportage privilege: But what if the statement is outside a government proceeding? Consider this incident, from Norton v. Glenn, a 2004 Pennsylvania Supreme Court case: William T. Glenn Sr., a city councilman, claimed that council president James B. Norton III and mayor Alan M. Wolfe were gay, implied that they were child molesters and claimed “that Norton had made homosexual advances toward Glenn which escalated to Norton grabbing Glenn’s penis.” A newspaper published an article accurately describing the charges and quoting Norton’s unequivocal denial; the newspaper didn’t endorse Glenn’s statements. Norton and Wolfe sued both the newspaper and Glenn, and the jury found that the statements were false.

Some courts would hold that the newspaper would be protected in such a case under a First Amendment “neutral reportage” privilege, because the charges themselves were newsworthy even if they were false. (Among other things, for instance, Glenn’s charges against Norton and Wolfe could be important to the public because they reflected on Glenn’s fitness for office.) Some courts have held that, “when a responsible, prominent organization … makes serious charges against a public figure, the First Amendment protects the accurate and disinterested reporting of those charges,” even when the reporter has serious doubts about the accuracy of the charges. (That’s from Edwards v. National Audubon Society (2d Cir. 1977).) And some other courts have extended this to certain charges on matters of public concern against private figures, and to statements made not just by responsible, prominent organizations but by any public figure, or even by any non-anonymous source.

There’s much to be said, I think, for the neutral reportage doctrine. The theory behind the First Amendment exception for defamation is that “there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact,” because such statements do not “materially advance[] society’s interest in ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’ debate on public issues.” But sometimes the very existence of an allegation or a rumor is indeed of importance to public issues, for instance because it could affect the behavior of public officials. (If various allegations about Trump and Russia are floating around, that might lead some other leaders to be wary of Trump’s actions toward Russia, or might pressure Trump to act in particular ways just to rebut those allegations — knowing about the allegations could thus help citizens understand these reactions.) And it seems bad in a democracy when elite insiders know what rumors are swirling around, but ordinary voters are denied access to those rumors.

Nonetheless, a majority (though not an overwhelming majority) of courts that have considered the matter have rejected the neutral reportage privilege, because of the harm that false allegations — including ones passed along, rather than created in the first place, by the defendant — can cause to people’s reputations. In Norton v. Glenn, for instance, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held that Norton’s and Wolfe’s lawsuit against the paper could go forward, and the paper could be held liable if it published Glenn’s statements knowing that they were likely false; the case eventually settled for an undisclosed amount. The New York high court has also rejected the neutral reportage privilege, as have several others. And to my knowledge no court has accepted the privilege for allegations made by unnamed sources, such as in the BuzzFeed incident.

5. 47 U.S.C. § 230: But BuzzFeed and other online publishers could have another source of immunity here — the federal 47 U.S.C. § 230 statute. That statute (enacted in 1996 as part of the Communications Decency Act) is famous for protecting online publications from being held liable for user comments. If you write unsubstantiated rumors in the comments to this post (and please don’t!), The Post and I aren’t going to be liable; Congress chose to provide such protection because it worried that otherwise online-service providers — such as America Online, back in the day — would simply refuse to host user posts or user comments.

But the statute has generally been read quite broadly, including to online publishers’ deliberate decisions to forward particular materials. Thus, in Batzel v. Smith (9th Cir. 2003), Ton Cremers ran an email newsletter about allegedly stolen art; Robert Smith submitted an item that alleged that Ellen Batzel possessed a painting that had been stolen by the Nazis from its rightful owner; and Cremers deliberately chose to include the item in his newsletter and on his site. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that this too was protected by § 230, because that statute broadly provides that “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” Cremers was a “user of an interactive computer service”; Smith was an “information content provider”; Cremers was therefore immune from liability for distributing Smith’s email.

Likewise, in Barrett v. Rosenthal (Cal. 2006), Ilena Rosenthal forwarded an email that she received from someone else; that email contained charges against Stephen Barrett. Barrett sued Rosenthal as well as the original sender, but the California Supreme Court held that Rosenthal was immune under § 230. The court acknowledged that this immunity was very broad (paragraph break added):

We share the concerns of those who have expressed reservations about … [such a] broad interpretation of section 230 immunity. The prospect of blanket immunity for those who intentionally redistribute defamatory statements on the Internet has disturbing implications.

Nevertheless, by its terms section 230 exempts Internet intermediaries from defamation liability for republication. The statutory immunity serves to protect online freedom of expression and to encourage self-regulation, as Congress intended. Section 230 has been interpreted literally. It does not permit Internet service providers or users to be sued as “distributors,” nor does it expose “active users” to liability.

So if BuzzFeed got the dossier by email, and the dossier was originally distributed by its author by email, then BuzzFeed might well be protected by § 230. BuzzFeed got material from someone else, and chose to forward it, but that’s what Cremers and Rosenthal did, and they were found to be immune. If The Post decided to print the material in its paper edition (those things still exist, right?), it wouldn’t get such immunity, since § 230 only covers online publications. But online sites get this extra statutory protection.

On the other hand, many courts might find this result quite unappealing: Not only does it completely gut the republication rule for online publications, but it gives online media outlets a huge advantage over offline media outlets, within the core of the media’s traditional function — what a publication chooses to distribute to its readers — and not just as to comments. A court might thus refuse to accept Batzel or Barrett (which are binding precedent only in 9th Circuit federal courts and in California state courts).

Also, § 230 might be inapplicable if the material came to BuzzFeed on paper rather than by email, because § 230 only applies to material “provided by another information content provider,” defined as “any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service.” That would be a weird distinction, but statutes draw weird distinctions sometimes. Indeed, § 230 might be inapplicable so long as the material was first delivered by its author to others on paper, even if it was later forwarded by email, because then (one might argue) the person “responsible … for the creation or development” of the material didn’t provide it through an “interactive computer service.”

But at the very least, § 230 would be a possible defense that BuzzFeed and other sites could use when they’re passing along a wide range of rumor or allegations, however unsubstantiated — like it or not, the Batzel and Barrett precedents so suggest.

6. The bottom line: I told you it was complicated! That just shows how ridiculously over-complicated our legal system has become, some might say. No, others might say, it just reflects the crooked timber of humanity and the inherent complexity needed in rules that deal with a complex world. I don’t make the law, I just report on it. And here the legal result would turn heavily on (at least) two contested questions — whether the jurisdiction recognizes the neutral reportage privilege and would apply it to this situation, and whether § 230 is read broadly when applied to a news site’s publishing particular material that it itself has deliberately chosen.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/01/13/when-there-is-serious-reason-to-doubt-rumors-and-allegations-is-it-libelous-to-publish-them/