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Coming from a state champion baker:

If y’all use a decent box mix and use melted butter instead of vegetable oil, an extra egg, and milk instead of water, no one can tell the difference. I sure as hell can’t. 

Also, if you add a little almond extract to vanilla cake, or a little coffee to chocolate cake, it sends it through the roof. 

This concludes me attempting to be helpful. 

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The entire original discworld audio book catalogue

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Well folks I've been sitting on this little script for ages and finally decided to just go ahead and publish it. What does it do?

you can enter any ao3 link - for example, to your bookmarks or an author's works page - and automatically download all the works and series that are linked from that page in the format of your choice

if your format of choice is epub (sorry, this part doesn't work for other file formats), you can check your fanfic-savin' folder for unfinished fics and automatically update them if there are new chapters

if you're a dinosaur who uses Pinboard, you can back up all the Pinboard bookmarks you have that link to ao3

don't worry about crashing ao3 with this! this baby takes forever to run, guaranteed. anyway ao3 won't let me make more than one request per second even if I wanted to so it's quite safe

I've been working on this for about two years and it's finally in a state where it does everything I want and isn't breaking every two seconds, so I thought it was time to share! I hope y'all get some use out of it.

note: this is a standalone desktop app that DOES NOT DO ANYTHING aside from automate clicking on buttons on the ao3 website. Everything this script does, can be done by hand using ao3's regular features. It is just a utility to facilitate personal backups for offline reading - there's no website or server, I have no access to or indeed interest in the fics other people download using this. No plagiarism is happening here, please don't come after me.

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Had a great time working on @jasontoddiefor ‘s fic ‘Cause Heaven Only Knows for this years @batfam-big-bang ! Head over to https://archiveofourown.org/collections/bbb20 to read this and all the other great fics.

(IDs under the cut, big thanks to @shelbychild for their help with the IDs and the entire bang!)

[IMAGE ID: The scene is dark; Jason is lying on his back with a hand over his face, next to a pile of overturned dirt, in front of a grave reading “Here lies Jason Todd, Beloved Son, August, 16th 2001-April 28th, 2016,” with the feet and a knee of a kneeling stone angel on top. He is wearing a read button-down and a gray blazer, brown pants, and gray loafers, although he is covered in dirt. END ID]

[IMAGE ID: Jason is facing the audience, brows furrowed, face serious, and fist clenched. The background is solid, dark orange. He is wearing a red shirt, layered brown and gray jackets, gray pants and boots. A hand is pressed to his chest, and a staticy speech bubble reads “I can bring him back.” END ID]

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“What does it mean to defend the dead? To tend to the Black dead and dying: to tend to the Black person, to Black people, always living in the push toward our death? It means work. It is work: hard emotional, physical, and intellectual work that demands vigilant attendance to the needs of the dying, to ease their way, and also to the needs of the living.”

— Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being

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my prof sent me this–how he organizes theoretical readings. it looks promising! 

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So this is a bit more serious question from one writer to another: How can you gain more traction on websites like Ao3 and tumblr? Thing is, I've been writing for years now and while I am no longer bothered by the fact that people mostly lurk (and that's ok, commenting can be its own kind of stressful) it's has become almost impossible to get people to notice I even wrote something new or updated. I update a story by 3 chapters in 1 haul, but barely anyone clicks on it or leaves kudos... (1/2)

(2/2) I wonder if it has to do with the fact that I only write gen or because I have very little reblogs on anything I post these days. I've been trying to link and connect my stuff, invited people to come talk with me on tumblr, but it's just me and some kind mutuals who like my stuff but almost never reblog. Is there any way I can let my voice be heard better in this infinite crushing void? Was there anything you actively did that helped you gain more traction on tumblr and Ao3?

I’m sorry you’re feeling disheartened, anon. Here are some tips, I have no idea if they will actually help though. 

Don’t upload multiple chapters at once if you can. I know it sounds like a good idea (more content = more comments, right?), but people are busy. They might not want to consume three updates at once. Also, it might skew your statistics. I know I’ve been hesitant to click on fics that upload multi-chapters at once, but have turned out to be awesome. It’s because I’m used to fics updating one chapter at a time and accruing kudos/comments slowly, so the kudos/chapter ratio seemed off. 

I know this sounds totally contradictory to my last point, but try longer word counts per chapter. People really love long chapters.

Uploading during peak-traffic hours. I don’t actually know when this is, which is terrible of me. This person seems to know? Not sure how accurate they are. Might need to have a quick search for this answer, but it’s a good thing to consider!

Write for big fandoms. Write things that big fandoms love. For example, my two biggest fandoms on ao3 were Marvel and BNHA, which are huge fandoms. My kudos count for my smaller fandoms are much, much lower. Pay attention to fandom trends too. You can’t go wrong with the classic, fandom favourites - eg. Dadzawa - but if you see a rise in a certain trend, or you see people on tumblr getting excited about an idea but there’s no one writing for it, then try your hand at it. Don’t force yourself to write something you don’t want. Write things you love. But if your loves overlap with popular fandoms and ideas, then steer yourself towards those. 

Tighten up your summary. If it’s too long or not long enough and doesn’t actually hook your reader, then no one will click the fic. Also try not to add unnecessary sentences that will deter readers. For example, writing, “Summaries are hard, just read it” will probably make people steer clear. We all want to write that, but we shouldn’t. 

Hopefully some of this helps?? Here’s a post that suggests some more advice.

I really hope you aren’t deterred from writing, anon! Feedback shouldn’t drive us as writers, but I know how disheartening it can be when you feel as though you’re not appreciated.

And a reminder to all the readers out there: Leave kudos and comments.

A good rule of thumb: if you’ve gotten to the end of a fic and you didn’t hate it, kudos it. You took the time to read it, you can take 0.2 seconds to tell the writer you were there, even if you don’t want to comment.

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Coming from a state champion baker:

If y’all use a decent box mix and use melted butter instead of vegetable oil, an extra egg, and milk instead of water, no one can tell the difference. I sure as hell can’t. 

Also, if you add a little almond extract to vanilla cake, or a little coffee to chocolate cake, it sends it through the roof. 

This concludes me attempting to be helpful. 

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Coming from a state champion baker:

If y’all use a decent box mix and use melted butter instead of vegetable oil, an extra egg, and milk instead of water, no one can tell the difference. I sure as hell can’t. 

Also, if you add a little almond extract to vanilla cake, or a little coffee to chocolate cake, it sends it through the roof. 

This concludes me attempting to be helpful. 

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YA literature? You mean books about Super Special White Girl and Her Mysterious Brooding Boyfriend?

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black literature, part 1 🌻

12 books by black authors to read this year:

1. their eyes were watching God by zora neale hurston

2. song of solomon by toni morrison

3. go tell it on the mountain by james baldwin

4. invisible man by ralph ellison

5. brown girl, brownstones by paule marshall

6. beloved by toni morrison

7. the souls of black folk by w.e.b. du bois

8. there is confusion by jessie redmon fauset

9. killing the black body by dorothy roberts

10. i know why the caged bird sings by maya angelou

11. moses, man of the mountain by zora neale hurston

12. native son by richard wright

note: some of these novels are very emotionally intense and mature in content. know your sensitivity level, and read at your will.

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Spotlight on James Baldwin

Over the course of the 1960s, the FBI amassed almost two thousand documents in an investigation into one of America’s most celebrated minds. The subject of this inquiry was a writer named James Baldwin. At the time, the FBI investigated many artists and thinkers, but most of their files were a fraction the size of Baldwin’s. During the years when the FBI hounded him, he became one of the best-selling Black authors in the world. So what made James Baldwin loom so large in the imaginations of both the public and the authorities?

Born in Harlem in 1924, he was the oldest of nine children. At age fourteen, he began to work as a preacher. By delivering sermons, he developed his voice as a writer, but also grew conflicted about the Church’s stance on racial inequality and homosexuality.

After high school, he began writing novels and essays while taking a series of odd jobs. But the issues that had driven him away from the Church were still inescapable in his daily life. Constantly confronted with racism and homophobia, he was angry and disillusioned, and yearned for a less restricted life. So in 1948, at the age of 24, he moved to Paris on a writing fellowship.

From France, he published his first novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain, in 1953. Set in Harlem, the book explores the Church as a source of both repression and hope. It was popular with both black and white readers. As he earned acclaim for his fiction, Baldwin gathered his thoughts on race, class, culture and exile in his 1955 extended essay, Notes of a Native Son.

Meanwhile, the Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum in America. Black Americans were making incremental gains at registering to vote and voting, but were still denied basic dignities in schools, on buses, in the work force, and in the armed services. Though he lived primarily in France for the rest of his life, Baldwin was deeply invested in the movement, and keenly aware of his country’s unfulfilled promise. 

He had seen family, friends, and neighbors spiral into addiction, incarceration and suicide.He believed their fates originated from the constraints of a segregated society.In 1963, he published The Fire Next Time, an arresting portrait of racial strife in which he held white America accountable, but he also went further, arguing that racism hurt white people too.In his view, everyone was inextricably enmeshed in the same social fabric. He had long believedthat “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.”

Baldwin’s role in the Civil Rights movement went beyond observing and reporting. He also traveled through the American South attending rallies giving lectures of his own.   He debated both white politicians and black activists, including Malcolm X, and served as a liaison between black activists and intellectuals and white establishment leaders like Robert Kennedy. 

Because of Baldwin’s unique ability to articulate the causes of social turbulence in a way that white audiences were willing to hear, Kennedy and others tended to see him as an ambassador for black Americans—a label Baldwin rejected. And at the same time, his faculty with words led the FBI to view him as a threat. Even within the Civil Rights movement, Baldwin could sometimes feel like an outsider for his choice to live abroadas well as his sexuality, which he explored openly in his writing at a time when homophobia ran rampant.

Throughout his life, Baldwin considered it his role to bear witness. Unlike many of his peers, he lived to see some of the victories of the Civil Rights movement, but the continuing racial inequalities in the United States weighed heavily on him. 

Though he may have felt trapped in his moment in history, his words have made generations of people feel known, while guiding them toward a more nuanced understanding of society’s most complex issues.

This month, TED-Ed is celebrating Black History Month, or National African American History Month, an annual celebration of achievements by black Americans and a time for recognizing the central role of African Americans in U.S. history.

From the TED-Ed Lesson Notes of a native son: the world according to James Baldwin - Christina Greer

Animation by Gibbons Studio

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A few literary suggestions for Black History Month

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Maybe you know Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from when Beyoncé sampled her TEDx talk, “We should all be feminists,” or maybe you’ve been following her emergence as one of the most prominent voices of African literature over the last two decades. Her latest novel, Americanah, was selected by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2013.

Edna Lewis

Edna Lewis had a hell of a career. She worked her way up as a seamstress, eventually fashioning a dress for Marilyn Monroe. Then she became the first African-American celebrity chef. Then she broke her leg, so she wrote a cookbook. The Taste of Country Cooking was interspersed with personal stories of growing up in a freed-slave settled town in Virginia, and redefined what many thought of Southern food.  

Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay (@roxanegay), famed author of Bad Feminist, is a Tumblr favorite, and not just because you can follow her. She writes about what it means to be a woman of color. She’s the first Black woman to write for Marvel, and she’s writing queer WOC into their storylines. She pulled her unreleased book from publishers Simon & Schuster after their deal with Milo Yiannopoulos was announced. It’s easy to admire her actions as much as her writing. 

Follow these too:

Afro Editions (@afroeditions) posts and reblogs all things Black lit, including this bell hooks Valentine’s Day card and these suggestions for Black sci-fi.

The Center for African-American Poetry and Poetics (@caapoetryandpoetics) highlights exactly what you think it will.

Bonus: We highlighted it last year, but Black Children’s Books and Authors (@blackchildrensbooksandauthors) deserves a spotlight on it again. 

Don’t miss our upcoming BHM Answer Times. This week and next week, we have:

2/21—Angelica Ross (@missrosscreative), transgender rights advocate.

2/22—Actress Amandla Stenberg (@amandla)

2/23—Comedian and actor Andrew Bachelor, better known as King Bach (@kingbach).

2/24—Washington Post (@washingtonpost) editorial board member and MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capehart.

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articles and essays I keep coming back to:

“joy” by zadie smith (about, well, joy)

“roaming the greenwood” by colm tóibín (ostensibly a book review of the history of gay literature but actually just very incisive thoughts on…the history of gay literature)

“the murder of leo tolstoy” by elif batuman (about exactly what it says in the title)

“the love that dare not squeak its name” by david rakoff (about, i swear to god, stuart little)

“a room of one’s own” by virginia woolf (I mean, you know)

the entire lingua franca archive but in particular “bio hazard” by fred kaplan (about writing a biography of gore vidal) and “the stand” by daniel mendelsohn (about the role of a philosopher (martha nussbaum love of my life) in a colorado gay rights case in the 90s)

“the professor of parody” by martha nussbaum (about judith butler)

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100 Non-Fiction Books by Women on Women

The links redirect to OpenLibrary, for the books that are available to be read there.

Language, Writing, Reading

Women and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century, Linda R. Anderson

Women and Writing, Virginia Woolf

Women in the Language and Society of Japan: The Linguistic Roots of Bias, Naoko Takemaru (also: Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women, Cherry Kittredge)

Man-Made Language, Dale Spender

Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers and Social Change, Gaye Tuchman

Women’s Reading in Britain, 1750-1835, Jacqueline Pearson

Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition, Joanne Braxton

Diaries and Journals of Literary Women from Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf, Judy Simons

Between Ourselves: Letters Between Mothers & Daughters, Karen Payne

How to Suppress Women’s Writing, Joanna Russ

Chloe plus Olivia : an anthology of lesbian literature from the 17th century to the present, Lillian Faderman

Reading Women’s Worlds from Christine de Pizan to Doris Lessing: A Guide to Six Centuries of Women Writers Imagining Rooms of Their Own, Sharon L. Jansen

The Hidden Writer, Alexandra Johnson

Women in Chains: The Legacy of Slavery in Black Women’s Fiction, Venetria K. Patton

Embodied Shame: Uncovering Female Shame in Contemporary Women’s Writings, J. Brooks Bouson

The World Split Open: Four Centuries of Women Poets, ed. Louise Bernikow

History

Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction of the Witch in Early Modern Germany, Sigrid Bauner

Women, the Family and Peasant Revolution in China, Kay Ann Johnson

A Quiet Revolution: The resurgence of the Veil in the Middle East and America, Leila Ahmed

The Encyclopedia of Amazons: Women Warriors from Antiquity to the Modern Era, Jessica Salmonson

Hearts And Minds: The Untold Story of the Great Pilgrimage and How Women Won the Vote, Jane Robinson

Memoirs of Victorian Working-Class Women, Florence S. Boos

Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights / Black Power Movement, Bettye Collier-Thomas

Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times, Elizabeth Wayland Barber

Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII, Karen Lindsey

A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France, Caroline Moorehead

‘Criminals, Idiots, Women, and Minors’: Victorian Writing by Women on Women, Susan Hamilton

The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy, Gerda Lerner

Women’s Work: An Anthology of African-American Women’s Historical Writings from Antebellum America to the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp and Kathryn Lofton

The Girl With 7 Names: A North Korean’s Defector Story, Hyeonseo Lee

Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe, Anneke Mulder-Bakker

To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done For America - A History, Lillian Faderman,

Women in the Holocaust: A Feminist History, Zoë Waxman

The Undaunted Women of Nanking: The Wartime Diaries of Minnie Vautrin and Tsen Shui-fang, ed. Hua-ling Hu and Zhang Lian-hong

Gentlemen and Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861-1900, Cynthia Eller

Modern, Contemporary

Women’s Lifeworlds: Women’s narratives on shaping their realities, ed. Edith Sizoo

Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories, Lila Abu-Lughod

Femicide in Global Perspective, ed. Diana Russell

Silenced No More: Voices of Comfort Women, S.J. Friedman

Practicing Feminism in South Korea: The women’s movement against sexual violence, Kyungja Jung

Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues, Catharine MacKinnon

Women’s Voices from the Rainforest, Janet Townsend

Women, Resistance and Revolution: A History of Women and Revolution in the Modern World, Sheila Rowbotham

Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women through the Ages, ed. Anne Commire and Deborah Klezmer

The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture, Bonnie J. Morris

Contested Voices: Women Immigrants in Today’s World, Mariane Githens

The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World, Nawal El Saadawi

Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera, Alicia Gaspar de Alba

Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism, Uma Narayan

Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women, Martha Ackelsberg

With All Our Strength: The Revolutionary Association of the Women in Afghanistan, Anne Brodsky

Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China, Leta Hong Fincher

Religion, Spirituality, Myth

Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages, Frances Beer

The Wisdom of the Beguines: The Forgotten Story of a Medieval Women’s Movement, Laura Swan

Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, Leila Ahmed

Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women as Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages, Leigh Ann Craig

Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives, Nancy Auer Falk

Women and Indigenous Religions, ed. Sylvia Marcos

Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, Kathryn Joyce

Beyond God the Father, Mary Daly

Convent Chronicles: Women Writing About Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages, Anne Winston-Allen

Immortality and Reincarnation: Wisdom from the Forbidden Journey, Alexandra David-Néel

The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology, ed. Irena Klepfisz and Melanie Kaye Kantrowitz

Women Living Zen: Japanese Soto Buddhist Nuns, Paula Kane Robinson Arai

Spiders & Spinsters: Women and Mythology, Marta Weigle

The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance, Elizabeth Wayland Barber

The Female Mystic: Great Women Thinkers of the Middle Ages, Andrea Dickens

Science, Medicine

Blazing the Trail: Essays by Leading Women in Science, ed. Emma Ideal & Rhiannon Meharchand

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, Margot Lee Shetterly

Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor, Hali Felt

Complexities: Women in Mathematics, Bettye Anne Case

The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight, Martha Ackmann

Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, Brenda Maddox

The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science, Julie Des Jardins

Women and Madness, Phyllis Chesler

The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World, Shelley Emling (for a fictionalised version: Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures)

Women in Science: Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century, Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie

Feminism & Bioethics, Susan M. Wolf

Chrysalis: Maria Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, Kim Todd

Lifting the Veil: The feminine face of science, Linda J. Shepherd

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, Kate Moore

Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind, Kathryn A. Neeley

Pandora’s Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment, Patricia Fara

Economics, Politics

Women and Economics, Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Political Economy of Violence against Women, Jacqui True

Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Economics, Drucilla Barker (also her Liberating Economics: Feminist Perspectives on Families, Work, and Globalization)

Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World, Hester Eisenstein

The Poverty of Life-Affirming Work: Motherwork, Education, and Social Change, Mechthild U. Hart

Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Cynthia Enloe

Visionary Women: How Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall, and Alice Waters Changed Our World, Andrea Barnet

Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism, Melissa W. Wright

Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?: A Story of Women and Economics, Katrine Marçal

The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience, Kirstin Downey

If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics, Marilyn Waring (also her Counting For Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth)

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, Silvia Federici

A lot of the books that aren’t available on OpenLibrary can be found here, if you have no morals and don’t mind piracy.

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Resources for Mending Clothes

We toss out over 80 pounds of textiles each year. These textiles are often made of plastic materials (polyester, nylon), made in unethical conditions, dyed with harsh dyes that often get put into the rivers, etc. Even a single cotton shirt releases carbon emissions and uses tons of water. 

So the best thing to prevent the unsustainable growth of the fashion industry is to make sure that your clothing lasts as long as possible. To do so, mending clothing is a must. So here are some resources to help you learn how to do various things, such as sewing a button, to tailoring clothes, or even upcycling old clothing into new styles. 

* How to sew on three different types of button

* How to hand sew on a patch on a torn pair of jeans

* How to sew up a hole in an old shirt

* How to sew a simple T-shirt

* How to upcycle old clothing into new clothing

* More upcycle and sewing techniques

* How to repair a damaged sock

* How to do an invisible stitch

* 3 different stitches to work with for different results

* How to make a T-shirt smaller so it fits you better

* How to make repairs to your shoes

These are just a few of the things that you can do in order to make sure that your clothing lasts for a long time. Nobody wants to keep buying new clothing, as it is expensive and wasteful. 

So making alterations to your clothing, or fixing small holes hen you see them can be hugely beneficial to your wallet, to garment workers, and to the environment in the long term. 

***

If you like what I write, consider buying from:

My Etsy shop for upcycled bags, jewelry, and crafting supplies.

Or

My poshmark for reclaimed clothing.