#THE HTML CODING IS SO GOOD i’ve always wanted to do a html coded fic

[saetiate]

sorry to talk about chara x chara stuff on an x reader blog however. has anyone else read that nagireo fic where nagi and reo both ship themselves w the other HAHA and nagi’s an artist and reo’s a writer THATS what i’m thinking of throughout this whole thing. the fic is SO GOOD GENHINELY

[randum-famdoms]

Finally caving and no longer using Google docs (mostly, probably will still copy and paste the first drafts of chapters in there for my beta reader to go over since that’s what she has)

Gonna start writing via ellipsus now (@ellipsus-writes is their tumblr account, if you wanna check it out). The following is gonna basically just me squeeing and how amazing this thing is, as well as a few cons I’ve noticed, and it’s long. So I’m adding a cut for people who don’t care.

I’m so fucking excited to no longer have to manually add in all the html in the ao3 text editor, you have no fucking idea. That step alone takes hours, double that if something glitches. And I can still write on my phone!!!!!

First downside I’ve noticed so far is that it doesn’t include my preferred font for writing (trebuchet ms if anyone is curious). It DOES have a comic sans sibling tho, which I can use for now. If it annoys me over time then I guess I’ll put up with Inter, even tho I hate most mono fonts. And serif fonts. I’m really picky. Serif fonts me flashbacks to grade school 5 paragraph essays in mla style. And mono fonts just… idk they look weird. Not creative at all. Very corporate.

Another bonus I’ve noticed: it includes open dyslexic as a font!!! I don’t personally need it, but having that accessibility is amazing. HUGE props to the creators.

Also love the interface. Very nice, user friendly, intuitive, looks good, 10/10.

There’s a light and dark mode choice on install, and I chose dark of course.

The editor settings are cool, allowing you to turn on and off different features like seeing other editiors’ cursors when typing, avatars when they’re viewing the document (tho it says draft there, maybe it doesn’t work in the main doc and only in drafts? If so, that’s odd), certain formatting things like dashes combining into an emdash, Ellipses (idk what that’s supposed to mean since there’s no elaboration), quotes (again no elaboration), markdown shortcuts (idk what those are, maybe it’s about coding?), viewing the word count automatically in the top bar, the desktop formatting bar, and the theme (light vs dark).

AND STRIKETRHOUGH IS RIGHT THERE! Right next to bold italic and underline. I always forgot the key shortcut to it in Google docs (why is it three keys???? WHY???? It’s so inconvenient!) and you gotta navigate through like three drop downs to reach it in the menu bar. This is so SO much simpler. I use strike through all the time to denote thoughts the pov character is repressing, and considering Akechi is a pov character that’s pretty damn often.

Omg and having an easy button so see all the keyboard shortcuts???? I love the creators so much????? There’s so many I would never have known otherwise, and they’re all so useful!!!! Aaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!

I love the drafts feature, it’s so nice having my notes and outlines and such all right there.

I do wish the spell check feature was better about recognising foreign names, but since I can just turn it on and off I don’t have to deal with constant red lines like with Google! I do wish there was a way to add words to the program’s dictionary, so that it doesn’t flag names, abbreviations, and slang. (For example, it doesn’t like fic, fanfic, lol, dashes like -- or - for some reason, or really any of the character names. the list goes on.) and I can’t just add in Japanese to the accepted languages, because I’d have to choose either that or English and then every single other word would be wrong. It does give options for which regional English variant you want, so I can choose British English! Which is nice. Google does it too, but you never know with beta versions of programs.

You can choose whether text is normal, a header (which subsets if headers), a caption, a quote, etc. I like that, since it’s directly tied to the outline and the different headers show up in there tree-style, but you can’t just have some text within a category be different. For example, say you want some of your paragraph text to be one font and then a different section of paragraph text to be another. You can’t do that.

I also haven’t been able to find a way to change text colour, or to highlight text. Which is annoying. I use highlighting text a lot when editing, so loosing that is a problem. Not the end of the world, but definitely one of my biggest gripes with Ellipsus so far.

There is a commenting system, but it ONLY works in drafts. I do not like that. In fact, I kinda hate it. A lot. And I definitely prefer the way comments work in Google docs, at least its desktop version, where they show up right next to the text instead of you having to click on the text with a comment to see that comment. At the very least, you can see all the comments in order of where the text is in the draft, with any replies, all in one place in the comments tab. However, you can’t just click away from the text to leave that tab. You gotta manually navigate back to where you were in the menu.

So yeah the comment feature kinda sucks.

There is also a chat feature? Idk how to properly review it, since rn I don’t have anyone else to chat with in ellipsus. You can use it in non-drafts, but I don’t think you can use it to point out specific text.

You can see word count!!!! And an estimate for how long it would take to read the whole thing! That’s so useful! And cool! You can also highlight (with a cursor, not actual highlight) sections of text and it will show that section’s word count, but NOT its reading time.

The version history feature is a bit slow, but it functions well. Not too worried about it. You can restore old versions as a new draft, though, which is pretty neat.

You can also download the document as a pdf, markdown, share it, and copy it as html, markdown, and rich text, but best of all, oooooo best of all, you can export DIRECTLY to ao3! And it includes all the html in the document!!!! I never have to manually code in html again!!!!! There are no words to encapsulate just how fucking excited about that I am. None. I am vibrating. I’m ahdnfbshsbdbfbcbhcbcnnsdbdbxnxbdmsnddbbdndbdbdbAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

best. Feature. Ever. More than makes up for all the things I don’t like. Amazing. Wonderful. 10/10. Would die for that.

As of right now, I think that’s everything. Overall, I’d rate ellipsus an 8.5/10, compared to Google docs’s 7/10. I really love what they’ve done so far, but there’s some things they could really improve on.

Overall cons:

I really wish you could comment in the main document, it’s a big deal to me. I wish you could see comments by the text at all times, instead of just in the comments tab. I wish there were more font choices, the current pickings are slim at best. I wish you could change the font of specific sections instead of everything under that text category. I wish you could highlight things (even better if you could have multiple highlight colours). I wish you could change font colour. I wish you could add words to a dictionary so they aren’t flagged by spell check.

However, the vast majority of things ellipsus is doing are great. There are a ton of pros to this program, and it’s still in beta. There’s room for improvement, but that’s the whole point of a beta release. Everything I don’t like are things I can live with and work around, too. That’s better than a lot of completely finished games and programs I’ve come across. And it’s free!!! I’m really excited to see how Ellipsus develops, and definitely recommend it to any writers out there - especially anyone who writes for ao3. Seriously, the export to ao3 feature practically sells this thing by itself.

[lexiepiper]

So quite a few people have messaged me asking how I downloaded my old fics from fanfiction.net since I lost the original files years ago, and I thought I’d make a quick guide.

I know that there’s probably an easier way out there but as different sites and programs have come and go over the years this method has always worked for me.

It’s also a reallllly good idea to do this to your old fics from tumblr and ffn and back them up on ao3, but that’s just my view on the whole fandom archive thing.

So.

First, you need to open the fic you want to download. I’ve picked one of my recent oneshots as an example. Then you right hand click anywhere on the page and choose the ‘view page source’ option in the drop down menu:

You should have a new tab open that’s just a page full of html. Use ctrl+f (or the mac equivalent idk) to search for the term nocopy (the matching word will be highlighted):

The ‘nocopy’ only appears once in all of that code, right before where your story is embedded. You should then be able to see at least the first few words of your fic. Highlight it, and drag down to the next line so that your entire fic is now highlighted. Copy all of this text! Sometimes ctrl+c doesn’t seem to work here so I usually just right click the highlighted part and copy from the dropdown menu:

Okay, so now you have your entire fic/chapter copied to your clipboard! The only problem is that it’s all in html, which makes it a bit difficult to read if you paste it right into a google doc or something. You need a html to rich text converter. My favourite one to use is actually the one on ao3, probably because I’m uploading my downloaded fics there anyway. If you’re doing this for anyone else’s fics then please don’t repost them!

Anyway, I open the ao3 new work page and scroll to the bottom, and paste in my html fic:

The next step is to click that little button in the top corner that says ‘Rich Text’. This will automatically convert the writing in the submission box from html to something that’s actually formatted and easy to read. Please be aware that this sometimes takes a few seconds while the program thinks:

Hooray! You now have your fic downloaded from ffn in rich text. You can either go through the posting process from here to upload it to ao3, or you can copy straight out of here and paste it into a word or google doc:

And that’s it! Good luck saving your old fics, and hopefully some of you are able to archive your works on ao3 for future generations of fandom to enjoy. Please don’t upload other people’s work to ao3 without their express permission, but I guess this could also be used to download old fics from inactive authors that you want to keep in your google drive for your own enjoyment or something idk. Anyway, good luck, and hopefully this helps some people to save their old works before ffn inevitably dies!

Note: Since ffn doesn’t have a full text option that I’m aware of, you’ll need to do this for every single chapter of a fic. Sorry.

[warriorteam1924]

tagged on this one by Rachel, thank you i guess it means i’m a fic writer then.... let’s go and check this out. 

i’m in the mood for a bit of explanation here, even if some of you might mind. 

“gets on my knees and apologizes to anyone who speaks [language]” well, yes, my english isn’t perfect, but nothing in this life is, so that’s fine. yes, there are mistakes in what i write, but i hope native language speakers understand it’s not mine and i’m doing my best. 

“no beta, will die like men” well, sometimes, i ask my beta, but she’s busy most of the time so I don’t want to annoy her. I do have an alpha reader though. 

“title in lowercase (and then some)”  not sure what it means honestly. I just give my fics titles that i think fit best. 

“still has to copy paste the code embedding a link” i suppose it’s for AO3? on tumblr, i copy link to get them properly added to my masterlist

“ANGST”, yes please, life is not rainbows and butterflies. I write it to get it out of my chest. 

“this pairing will never be canon, but god i will never cease” well, i just write whoever i feel like writing, i dont care if it’s canon or not. 

“hozier title song”, i do use songs as titles, but surely not hozier since i never heard of their songs. 

“do not and will never understand what work skins are”, true i don’t know what they are. i just write and post stuff. 

“soulmate AU”, no god no, please stop, let’s be inventive and creative and imaginative....

“could not write smut to save their lives”, given how many smut fics ive written this doesn’t apply. 

“learnt html because of  writing fics”, not really. 

“küdos? comments”, yes please, i’m happy to know what you thought of what i wrote. Reblogs without comments or tags are useless, just like for any sort of creation. doesn’t let anyone know what you thought of it. Likes are okay i suppose. last but not least, this works in both ways. don’t expect comments or reblogs or kudos or whatever if you don’t do it yourself for the others. that’s not how it works. 

“I’m filling this instead of working on a WIP”, well there is always a WIP as far as im concerned. and there is always something do to. 

“chapters [49/....], well, yes sometimes i dont know how long a series will be.

“without my beta, this would be unreadable”, hum, i enjoy having a beta honestly, but i suppose unreadable is a bit strong.  

“updated : 2012 - 02 - 01″. hum, yes i left as far as the eye can see a bit behind for several reasons, but im planning on getting back to it real soon. 

“no plot, brain empty”. what’s the point in writing something just to write something? i hope what i write now has sense and that there is a real plot or meaning behind it. 

“has written smut and has no fear”, and i will gladly do it again. maybe less raw now and more in the feelings. but i do enjoy writing smut. and i’m good at it.

“ [updates chapter] [instantly checks inbox]”, ahahaha, no. I don’t expect feedback from anyone. I write for me and I’m happy to share. I’ve learnt that if you expect anyone to like or give feedback you’ll be disappointed. so i don’t do it anymore.  

“tooth rotting fluff”, hell, what could be more boring? i really hate it, even though i get some requests from time to time. 

“ what do you mean *I* have to write the next chapter.”, well, yes this is *my* story, no one else will do it for me. again, it prevents any disappointments. 

“schedule. schmedule” ,no idea what this is. I just write what i want, i have plots and plans in mind, but life happens.... 

“gratuitous googling”, yes, i do use internet a lot, for words mostly. or facts, to make sure what i write is as accurate as possible

“non existent understanding of medicine”, well hopefully no ahah

i was tagged from here (X) if anyone wanted to check this out and get the blank bingo. 

tagging if you’d like (please create a new post, im begging you) @born-to-lose @painandpleasure86 @deakys-chesthair @julescape​  

thanks again for the tag and thanks for reading it if you did

stay safe and take care 💖💜

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with MustangSally

MustangSally has 33 stories at Gossamer. Even if you haven’t read it, you’ve probably heard of at least one of them, Iolokus, since it’s an X-Files fanfic classic. All her fics hit big and are well worth your time. I’ve recced some of my favorites here before, including And Dance by the Light of the Moon, All the Children are Insane, and Iolokus. Big thanks to MustangSally for doing this interview.

What's the story behind your pen name?

I could tell you but then I would have to kill you.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Yes and no. Yes, because life has moved on since the early nineties and the characters and the fans are in vastly different places now. Our current tech would make the premise of the X-Files impossible. No, because of the longevity of some of the Star Trek TOS work (there’s an archive of hard copy fanzines at the University of Iowa). Top-drawer authors started out in TOS fandom.

I’m just greatly saddened that my physical body is showing wear and tear while the fic doesn’t. Fic gets to stay smooth-skinned and muscular, captured at the peak of perfection.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

At the risk of sounding atrociously trite, I think of the friends I made.  I met some very remarkable women that I’ve been able to stay friends with online for over twenty-five years.  We may have moved to Facebook and post entirely too much about our pets and which of our body parts has sagged this week, but we’re friends.  It’s a furiously funny, feminist, and well-educated group of women with jobs in the highest levels of academia, finance, communications, and media.  I’m amused by the fact that if I have a question about how a virus replicates, I can ask a PhD I’ve been drunk with in Las Vegas.

Back in the day, I had a job that sent me traveling around major cities in the US and UK. I could post on a message board and within ten minutes there were people I could go out for dinner and drinks with. We already knew we had something we could talk about for at least a couple of hours. Additionally, most of these people were women so there was an added level of security. Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

Well, it was mostly atxc and the Yahoo! groups mailing lists that spiraled out into Geocities sites and, eventually, LiveJournal. The amusing thing is that getting in on the ground floor of social media and the Internet has helped me get jobs!  When I look at a new piece of software, I think, ‘this is hella easier than uploading to Geocities.’  We had to walk uphill both ways, in the snow, on dial-up, fighting off dinosaurs with our AOL CDs while writing HTML code. What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS.

The past four years in politics have basically been the ugliest online kerfuffle the world has ever seen. I survived the Shipper Wars of ’96 and I thought those were brutal, but that was NOTHING. The only way to win an argument online is to not have the argument at all. Arguing with a troll is like mudwrestling a pig: You both get filthy and only the pig is happy.

Also, READ THE FUCKING TERMS OF SERVICE.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I had the most terrible straight-girl crush on Scully. I wanted to be her best friend, I wanted to BE her.  I wanted to order Chinese food and paint each other’s nails and talk about bones.  Scully and Princess Leia and I could all just hang out poolside with hot and cold running waiters and poolboys, drink margaritas, and bitch about how unfair it all was – if the stupid men would just get OUT OF THE WAY AND LET US DO OUR JOBS, the world would be so much better. What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

This question is really about Iolokus, isn’t it?  You can’t fool me. [Lilydale note: I can neither confirm nor deny the motivation for this question, but I cannot complain about the answer.]

Simply put, I was enraged. The moment it was revealed that Scully’s ova had been used in experimentation, I lost my feminist mind. It was the most obscene defilement imaginable.  Scully wasn’t nearly as angry as I was.  What I thought needed to happen was for Scully to become a fiery force of vengeance against the MEN who had done this to her.  Clearly, I was not going to get that level of satisfaction from the show, as I was imagining Kali-like carnage on a global scale. I emailed RivkaT (whom I did not know well at that point) with a proposition that we work together. Strangely enough, we didn’t meet face to face until we were well into the project, but we did talk on the phone quite a bit. The rules were simple – everyone had to be punished in truly horrific ways, and at some point, we had to see if we could write a car chase (only because that seemed impossible).  Then it basically turned into a very twisted game of chicken to see who could be the most outrageous in terms of killing people off or writing really horrific things that fit within the structure of the narrative.  I did, in the end, write the car chase, but RivkaT one-upped me by throwing in a helicopter (a FOX News helicopter, at that).  

Really, RivkaT?  A helicopter? What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? I am terribly proud of what I wrote, pleased that it brought pain and pleasure in equal amount to people, and, again, thrilled by the people I became friends with. I admit that I stopped watching the show when Scully announced her pregnancy.  I could only see a long jump over a shark tank for the rest of the series. I haven’t watched the new episodes, either.  It is complete in my mind and doesn’t need to be continued.  I wouldn’t say no to having a reunion with some of my fic friends, although we’re still chatting online like everyone does.   Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Rivka and I wrote in the Buffy fandom for a few years, but then we moved on to real adult jobs that left absolutely no time for me to write. I’m in education, and I regularly sweat blood for fear that someone is going to find my old fic. The Buffy people were fun; there was a certain *shininess* to them that I really enjoyed. The X-men authors were just batshit and delightful, and some amazing stuff came out of Marvel fandom, particularly in the Thor/Loki and Steve/Bucky subgenres. I’ve learned to appreciate a good coffee shop AU and one famous Erik/Charles fic where all the main characters are crabs. Seriously, crabs—it’s hysterical. [Lilydale note: Other Crabs Cannot Be Trusted by groovyphilia currently has almost 2,500 kudos at AO3.]

Every few years, I’ll have a student try to explain to me what fandom is and I just smirk. Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully? No. Not really. Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom? I fell into an X-Men hole a few years back and had a great old time wallowing in the Cherik muck, and there was a flirtation with BBC Sherlock as well. Strangely enough, I became interested in A/B/O fics only because of what they were saying about the role of women in our society. The limitations on the male omegas seem absurd and then you realize those are the same limitations put on women all. the. time.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

RivkaT very nicely formatted everything and put it up on AO3. What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

I will always be stupidly proud of how shocked and horrified people were by Iolokus. The truth of the matter is that Iolokus has Greek drama at its core. Scully is Medea, and the entire story is lousy with “blood on the threshing floor” and Dionysian rites. The everyday is subverted into horror, and wives and daughters will tear men limb from limb like the Maenads. Since I was ultimately disappointed with what Chris Carter did with the entire show, that approach seemed appropriate.

At a certain level, all fic is corrective fic.  Like critic Anne Jamison said, “Irritated fans produce fanfic like irritated oysters produce pearls.”  And because fic has fallen so much into women’s sphere, a pure form of correction is not just the death of the author but the MURDER, a new creation springing up from the spilled blood like Cadmus sowing dragon’s teeth.

Okay, that’s a bit much. Maybe I should just take myself back to the isle of Goth Amazons or something. Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

I had to write a self-evaluation and a reflection on pedagogy today. If that’s not fiction, I don’t know what the fuck is.

All my creativity is caught up in trying to pretend to be a normal middle-aged white woman so no one knows I am really a lizard.

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Keep writing, keep reading, keep fighting the commercialization of narratives. As things grow more and more commodified, all our dreams and desires reduced to tchotchkes made in China, it’s a revolutionary act to separate your work from the marketplace. Be bold, take chances, turn the trope on its ear and kick it in the ass. Take everything the creators have done to make a work palatable to the unwashed masses and set it on fire.

Be subversive.

Be mean.

Have a great fucking time.

(Posted by Lilydale on March 2, 2021)

[melisusthewee]

WIP Wednesday - Let’s Talk Music

Thank you to @cleverblackcat @kittynomsdeplume @noire-pandora and @morganlefaye79 for tagging me!

I don’t have any writing to really offer today.  I’ve been trying to work on that Haven fic but unfortunately Aloysius hasn’t been co-operating with me despite all my best efforts to make him speak.  I may take a break from writing and pivot towards completing some art memes, but Wednesday just sort of crept up on me and here we are.  So instead, I’m sharing something that both is but also isn’t a work in progress?

It’s “in progress” because while I’m happy with where it currently is, I’ve said that about playlists and soundtracks before and later changed them.  I’ve worked hard on this and talked several friends’ ears off about songs I’ve heard or artists that seemed to work and thanks to their feedback I think this is a really good one.  It’s gone through several edits as well, and may potentially even go through more down the road.  So I’m saying this counts for today.

If you give it a listen (and I hope you do because I’m very proud of it so far), I hope you enjoy it and maybe discover an artist you didn’t know before.  It clocks in at around 51 minutes and features 13 tracks which span Quinn Trevelyan’s story and important events of the main game through to Trespasser.

If you are interested, below the cut is a list of tracks and a brief blurb or description about who or what they’re meant to represent.  I was going to go into things in more depth and talk about how I built it, why I picked the songs I did, and the B-Sides that were left on the cutting room floor, but after realizing I had written nearly 4 pages about just as many songs, I realized it was too much for anyone to read.  So below is just a very brief summary and I think that most of the music would speak for itself, but I’m happy to expand more on anything that anyone finds either interesting… or confusing.  (There is also Solas content because I knew a few of you love that.)

You have to click on this sentence to go to the playlist because Tumblr’s coding for “Read More” seems to be conflicting with the HTML code to embed a functional playlist.  Because of course it is.

Quinn’s tarot card is the Wheel of Fortune as his story is a series of unpredictable highs and lows.  What the Maker giveth, He also taketh away.  The playlist follows that trend of highs and lows with upbeat songs followed by darker or more mellow ones.  Whenever I create a playlist, I try to think of a general tone or sound that I want to be carried through the soundtrack.  I want the overall genre or sound to tell the story as much as the individual songs.  Because of that, you’ll see artists repeat a couple of times, and when they do it’s always intentional.  You’ll also notice that most of the vocalists are male.  This was again intentional because this is Quinn’s story, and he’s a man.  They are his songs and I wanted the vocals to reflect that.

The Cult of Dionysus - pre-Conclave Quinn

Quinn at his most basic and stereotypical before any character development happens whatsoever - poppish, upbeat, and maybe just a little obnoxious.  He smokes, he drinks, he fucks, and nothing else matters.

The Sound of Silence - Aloysius’ Theme

I like Aloysius as a more practical view and examination of Quinn and the cult that grows around him.  He affords an opportunity to look at Quinn both as the Herald but also as just a person.  He is stoic and mild-mannered, a dutiful soldier, and an excellent foil for Quinn.  This is also absolutely a reference to an Arrested Development joke.

Isle of Dogs - Quinn’s true theme

Quinn is a walking disaster constantly falling victim to his own hubris.  There’s a morose sort of resentment to the lyrics, of someone who is constantly struggling against the tide.  In a lot of ways, this is basically a reaction or push back to all the crap I have put him through.

Providence - “In Hushed Whispers”

There are no Templars here.  The first few lines relate a lot to the dismissal the fledgling Inquisition receives from what remains of the Chantry, but the rest of the lyrics are very much about the mages and Fiona’s dealings with the Venatori.

Seven Devils - “In Your Heart Shall Burn

No male vocals in this one to symbolize the change in perspective.  This is both a bit of an easy and obvious choice for this story beat.  Female vocals for Corypheus might seem strange, but when I created my Warden’s soundtrack I tended to use powerful choruses and female vocals for anything related to Blight, Archdemons, or the darkspawn.  I carried that idea over to this as Corypheus is one of the seven Magisters.

Caesar - becoming the Inquisitor

This is a softer and quiet interlude in the wake of the loss of Haven and struggle through the snow.  If the previous song marks the end of the first act, this song marks the beginning of the second.

King - “Here Lies the Abyss”

In my written world state, Alistair is both the king and the Grey Warden contact (this goes back to that longform fic I am working on).  I suppose it’s a bit unfair because in the end that has a major impact on why Quinn makes the decision he does at Adamant (a rather threatening letter from the Warden helps too).  Think of this as a duet between Quinn and Hawke.

My Type - the love interest

“Here Lies the Abyss” was completed first, then a romance triggered, then “Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts”.  This is that sort of inbetween interlude and is very much inspired by how I may have flirted with multiple characters a little too much and basically triggered several romances at once.  I also went into Quinn’s playthrough having no idea who I was going to romance and just let him shop around.  And it came down to a coin flip in the end, so “you have a pulse and you are breathing” is pretty much the only standards he has.

Boheme Supreme - party at Halamshiral

All I have to say is that I love techno swing, every single lyric in this song is perfect, and I want you all to picture Quinn Trevelyan walking into the Winter Palace with his Inner Circle entourage around him, dressed up in that outfit I drew with that peacock feathered cap and having a drink in his hand throughout the entire night’s affair.

Hell’s Coming With Me - “Doom Upon All the World”

This is the climax of the main game, the rematch between Quinn and Corypheus which I have to imagine is more impressive in concept than it was in game.  I chose the dialogue option when Corypheus calls Quinn an imposter, “I am the Maker’s chosen” as his final challenge.  Sometimes it’s easy to forget that this main is actually very Andrastian.  But he is, and the lyrics, “I am the righteous hand of God/And I am the Devil that you forgot/And I told you one day will see/I’ll be back I guarantee/And that Hell’s coming with me” are the perfect declaration.

Paradise - Jaws of Hakkon & The Descent

Another interlude song.  If the previous one is triumphant than this one is the beginning of a bad turn.  In the interim between the events of the main game and the Exalted Council, things begin to go wrong in little ways.  His relationship with Cassandra begins to break down, eventually ending in the two of them having frequent spats and going their separate ways after returning from the Frostback Basin.  This song is deceptively sarcastic about how good things are.

I Still Love You, Judas - Solas’ Betrayal

Solas… oh, Solas.  Does this song indicate a very complicated and layered relationship between Quinn and Solas?  Yes! Have I attempted to unpack any of this?  Nope!  Have fun with this one!

Tagging for this week: @kita-lavellan @silvanils @nivenor-krosis @drag-on-age @rosella-writes @inquisitoracorn

Battle Cries - Quinn and Cassandra

I saved this one for the very end because it is a story within a story.  It is sad and bittersweet, but also not.  This entire thing feels to me like a duet between Quinn and Cass on what was good, what could never last, and that it’s all over now but that’s okay.  Because “this isn’t a breakup, dear heart, it’s a season finale.”  Does this mean that Quinn sounds like Joey Batey when he sings?  Sure, why not.

[sephhaa]

How To Customize Your Tumblr Blog!

Alright! Here is the long-awaited blog post I’ve been meaning to make for a long time now. When I was trying to customize my tumblr blog, I found it extremely difficult(especially because the first time I got on tumblr I didn’t customize my own page at all) So hopefully, this will help you try to create a masterlist, how to navigate features and implement a theme for your blog! Also I hope this can answer some questions people have if they’ve come to an error when creating your blog.

I’ll also be making a AO3 guide(mainly how to customize your writing on the HTML page on ao3) so if you’re looking for that go here.

I’ll also be making a potential youtube video for these two guides. Since I don’t have a lot of time today, I’ll be making a video on these two guides the next time I decide to revamp my blog and I’ll be sure to link those.

Alright! Let’s start!

Alright! So starting in your homepage we’d be focusing on choosing, implementing and setting up a theme for your blog. 

But before we do that, I highly—HIGHLY suggest you go through your blog and delete the clutter on your page. By clutter I mean—reblogs. Or at least delete MOST of them. Reason being—if you are a fic writer(like myself) and you publish your stories on your tumblr blog, your masterlist etc; and you want to link your chapters on your masterlist or you want to locate your masterlist(the original post NOT the reblog) it’s hard to do that with all the reblogs cluttering your page. This is crucial for later when we create our masterlist. If you are a fic writer and you’ve been uploading your chapters and you already have a masterlist—locate them, copy their link addresses(which I will teach you how to get copy link addresses in this guide) and paste them on a google doc or a notes of some sort. It’d save you so much time later when creating/revamping your masterlist.

If you absolutely refuse to de-clutter your blog and/or you’ve never published on tumblr but you plan to so you don’t necessarily need to scroll so much to find your original masterlist post/story post/chapters etc; then ignore this step. 

But if you are a fic writer or writer in general and you have a masterlist and/or story posts/chapters published on your tumblr blog—go ahead and scroll to find those original posts(NOT the reblog) and get their copy link addresses and paste those links in a separate google doc, notes etc. You can refer to this doc/notes when creating/revamping your masterlist/story post without having to delete any of your reblogs. I must warn you tho, it WILL take you a lot of time. Especially if you reblog A LOT. Happy scrolling!

TUMBLR THEME:

Okay—moving on—THEME! Alright so you need to find a theme for your blog. What is a theme?

A theme is a decorative set up for your blog.

But before you go looking for/implementing a theme, here is some things you need to know:

1-  Many of these themes are made by fellow tumblr creators who have spent SO MUCH time creating the codes for these themes. In saying that, when you do select a theme by a creator, READ THEIR RULES! It’s very important that we’re following the rules that these creators put for some of these themes.

2 - The general rules for themes if you plan on using one:

*Do not change/steal the themes and/or use them as a base to implement a different theme.

3 - If you want to change something, look at the rules and see what you are allowed to change and what you’re not allowed to change. If its not listed, reach out to the creator to see if making these changes are okay. Generally, these creators are good at listing their rules and/or do’s/don’ts for their themes.

4 - Reblog the theme you chose! Not only does this let the creator know you’re using their theme, it also lets other people check out their page in search of themes. 

Now that’s out the way—I’m going to list a couple of theme pages I frequent:

·  https://maziekeen.tumblr.com/

·  https://glenthemes.tumblr.com/

·  https://raiidens.tumblr.com/

·  https://amboise.tumblr.com/

·  https://kosmique.tumblr.com/tagged/t:recs

·  https://magnusthemes.tumblr.com/

·  https://seyche.tumblr.com/tagged/%26themes

·  https://egg.design/tagged/egg%20theme

·  https://lemonfawn.tumblr.com/

·  https://yeolithm.com/portfolio

·  https://xuethms.tumblr.com/tagged/codes-by-xue

·  https://warugaki-themes.tumblr.com/tagged/warutemas

·  https://www.floralcodes.com/page/2

If you find that you don’t like any of the themes I’ve listed here, you could always search on tumblr, “tumblr themes” and a whole list of pages come up.

Once you’ve found your theme, let’s head on over to “Edit Theme.”

Once you’ve located “Edit Theme” in your settings, click on it and it’d open up to a new tab where you’d be implementing your new theme.

Today I’ll be using a theme from @maziekeen​ !

Once you have opened your “Edit Theme” page, you’d see that theres a bunch of functions to your right. This is where we will be implementing our new theme, specifically this bar:

Now, you’re going to click, “Edit HTML,” this will open a window that will look like this:

It will open up a window with a bunch of coding, here we will be deleting that code to replace it with a new code that is our new theme. To quickly delete this old code you’d press down on keys:

SHIFT+CMD+A(MAC)

SHIFT+ALT+A(Windows)

This will select all the code:

Now as you can see, all of that code is highlighted. You’re going to go ahead and delete it by clicking:

delete(MAC) 

or 

backspace(Windows)

Once all of it is empty we’re going to head on over to our new code theme.

On your creators theme page(or the theme post, whichever is fine) Many creators have different verbiage for getting codes. Sometimes it’d say, “CODE”, “GET CODE”, “Download,” etc. Either way,(and in my case) you’d click “Get Code,” which will redirect you to a website to download the code.

Many creators use Pastebin as a way to paste these VERY long codes. If there’s an option, you’re going to find and click “download.” If you can’t find a download option, it’s likely that you have to click “RAW” to download the code. In my case, the download option is available for me so it’d just click download and it’d open in a separate document. I find that if you download on raw, it will open to a new tab with a long list of code. Either one is fine.

I also want to mention that—some themes you might come across are priced. VERY affordable and if you have some money to spare, def buy a theme and support the creator!

Once you’ve downloaded your theme’s code it will open in a separate doc(or open in a separate tab) with a long list of code. Here you will select all the code:

SHIFT+CMD+A(MAC)

SHIFT+ALT+A(Windows)

This will select all the code, copy the code:

CMD+C(MAC)

ALT+C(Windows)

Go back to your Edit Theme page. You’re going to go ahead and paste your new code onto the empty HTML space:

Now with your new code, you will click on “Update Preview” Once it loads, your entire page will change to that new theme’s layout:

Now click save!

Alright! Now, let’s say you don’t really like the colors, or you want your profile icon to appear on said theme layout(sometimes your avatar icon won’t appear at all or you won’t have that option. If you want that option it’s likely you’re going to have to search for another theme where it’s obvious you can put your profile picture in one of the icons.) You’re going to go to the sidebar, scroll until you see all of these functions:

Here on the sidebar you can change the colors to your theme! You can also change the theme’s background, and in this case(photo icon) in the sidebar feature. You can also scroll down a bit where it says “links” and add names and links to things people can click on.

That’s all for adding your theme!!

COPY ADDRESS LINK:

Now, here is where de-cluttering your blog comes in handy. Here, we’re going to locate our chapters, story post, masterlist etc(if you publish all your written posts on your tumblr) or if you’ve already published all of your story posts/chapters onto your masterlist here on Tumblr then we need to locate the original master post.

The reason we need to locate the original master post is so that when people/readers click your masterlist—it won’t be a reblogged version of it with a bunch of writing you have previously posted on that reblog. The original, 9 times out of 10 looks a lot more organized etc.

Once you have located your masterlist—go on ahead and follow these steps:

*Hover your mouse on the very top, right hand corner of your masterlist.

*A flap animation is going to appear(like the above photo)

*Once it appears, right click it

*A little window will appear, it’d look like this:

Here you’re going to click, “Copy Link Address.”

Once you have copied the link address you can place this link on your Edit Theme bio so people can click your link to your Masterlist. You can also use this to copy link addresses for all your chapters/story posts when you’re trying to link your chapters within your masterlist. I’ll explain how to do that later in this guide. 

MASTERLIST:

Okay! Moving on to creating/revamping your masterlist!

If you already have a masterlist then completely ignore this step and go on over to how to put your masterlist on your bio/any errors you might have come across when trying to put your masterlist on your bio.

You’re going to go to your homepage and create a new post:

Here you’re going to title your masterlist, add images etc. Here are some features I find that a lot of people don’t know about/where to locate these features:

The, “Keep Reading” feature is a feature I find more than often a lot of people don’t know how to locate/add to their posts. The read more option is especially great if you have a really long chapter or a long post(such as this one) It’s especially helpful if you have a very long masterlist. I’m going to use my masterlist as a example to add the read more feature:

On your masterlist post, you can add the “Keep reading” feature by simply clicking the little three dots icon:

By clicking it—it immediately creates a page break saying, “Keep reading”

Another feature I find people not knowing how to do is linking their stories(story posts) on their masterlist. Here’s how to do it:

Here’s my fic, “Here’s to Forgetting 1974″ and I’m trying to add it to my masterlist. We’re going to copy the address link on this post(make sure if you’re going to add a story to your masterlist that it is the original post) once we have the link let’s go back to our Masterlist:

First we need to set up a title or some sort of text for this feature to work. I simply just titled, “Here’s to Forgetting 1974″ as my text. You’re going to highlight your title—immediately, a set of features will appear:

Here we’re going to click on this icon:

This will open to a smaller window to paste a link in:

Here we will paste our copy link address from our story post onto this small window link. Once you’ve done that, click “Done.”

Immediately your title is underlined and if you hover your mouse over it and/or click it, it’d redirect you to your story from your masterlist post.

This process is similar if you want to link your chapters onto your story posts.

Here’s my story, “The Case of 1979″ and lets say I published a new chapter for this fic and I want to put the chapter link onto my story post. 

*Go copy the copy address link of your new chapter

*Locate your story post:

Let’s say I’m adding a surprise chapter 12(lol) 

Type your text, “Chapter 1.” “1, 2, 3″ any type of text. Here I’m just going to title my text, “Chapter 12,”:

And follow the same steps as before:

*Highlight the text

*Click on the link icon

*Paste the copy link address of your published chapter onto the https:// window

*Click done

Once you do that, hover your mouse above the chapter text/click it and it’d  redirect you to the chapter from your story post.

Now that your masterlist is set up, here is the very long, and complicated process of adding your masterlist(or any link in general) to your bio. 

Head on over to the “Edit Theme,” page.

Here, we will be paying extra attention to the “Description” bar. 

Now, there is a bit of coding you’d have to do here and how you write the code MATTERS:

The coding is:

<a href=“

that is:

<a SPACE href= QUOTATION MARK ( “ )

Now. You cannot—CANNOT copy and paste this code in/copy and paste your links on your bio(in case you want to go ahead and copy everything in your bio and save it on a separate doc to save for later) I love copy and paste—less time consuming etc—but unfortunately, the description bar DOES NOT like it so we gotta deal with it lol.

Now you’re going to go ahead and locate your original masterlist post, copy the address link and start setting up the format:

After you have pasted your link and ended it with a quotation mark( “ ) at the end. We need to set up some kind of text so that the entire link doesn’t show up on your bio. I’ll title my text: “ | M.List. | ” You can write any title, as long as its within this coding:

</a> (Beginning)

</a> (End)

</a> TEXT </a> 

(of course, all together, no spaces. For the sake of this example I just want to separate the text from the code so you can clearly see what you’d have to do.)

You’re going to put your text in between this coding:

Your link should look like this and it’d appear like this on your theme layout:

You should be able to click these links even in the theme layout. 

And that’s how you set up your links in your bio!

Here is a common problem that happens when you add links to your bio. Let’s say you go ahead, go to settings and decide to change your “Edit Appearance,” to your blog:

Alright, you change your page’s coloring, the background, your profile picture—cool! Not so cool for your links! 

Almost immediately, you’d find that your links will cease to work if you change your profile’s appearance. Why? because when you change it, your links are in that bio where the coloring is—those links are also being changed since they’re there.

You’d need to go back to, “Edit Theme” go to the description bar and TYPE out your entire code/text again. You can just copy and paste your copy address link of your masterlist but you’d have to type out the coding and text all over again.

And you’d have to do this every time you decide to change your Tumblr blog’s appearance. 

Alright! That is all for this guide! I hope you’ve found this useful! I’ll be uploading an ao3 guide under my “guides” link on my bio where I’ll share how to navigate ao3 and all it’s weird functions. I’ll also teach you guys how to customize your writing(indenting, images, fonts(bold, underlined etc) on the HTML format in the case you don’t like the the other writing format that ao3 has to offer(it’s real ugly lowkey lol) also I’ll be providing some tips and tricks to make posting your ao3 chapters on HTML more simpler. 

If you’re interested in me or my stories, I write both BTS content and Anime content( Currently it’s Voltron but I do plan on writing a fic for Death Note and Inyuasha(cuz there isn’t enough Sango and Miroku content and that’s a CRIME) follow me and give my stories a read!

Until my next guide!

[birlcholtz]

Okay, I'll bite. How and why did you learn to code?

HI LIN thanks for biting this is a story that tells you quite a lot about me as a person

so some background: my parents are both in compsci. they're the late 80s, early 90s silicon valley crowd, they've both had their fair share of established companies and startup-hopping, and my brother and i grew up here

my brother is about 5 years older than me and took to coding like a fish to water (like a duck to water??) which is to say he started programming on scratch at the tender age of.... i don't even know, honestly, maybe 9? too young for me to really remember, and he's been a compsci prodigy ever since

but then. then there was me.

now i do love scratch. when i was little i always copied my brother (not in like a cute way, in a 'if he can do that i can do it too' mindset that meant my third grade teacher REALLY struggled to find book recommendations for me that i hadn't already read. since my brother was above his grade's reading level, and i would read whatever my brother read. yeah that's the kind of kid i was/am)

so naturally i did what he did. i programmed on scratch, i did advanced math courses, i was in CHESS CLUB (i am so bad at chess by the way. i am not good at it. let's establish that. i think i beat my dad once and i genuinely don't know if he let me win or not. i never beat my brother so in that respect i failed. but i'm better than my mom so there's that)

HOWEVER. around fourth or fifth grade i was like hey. maybe i want to like... forge my own identity. and not just turn my life into 'do whatever elder brother does BUT BETTER.'

and thus began my campaign to NEVER DO ANY CODING EVER FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE AND WHILE I'M AT IT FUCK MATH

this gets long so there’s more under the cut sjflsghf

there are two problems with this. the first problem is my inherent pride and the fact that, despite my best efforts, i am actually decent at math and too proud to intentionally fuck it up. so i wound up in honors math. that made part 2 of my independence campaign a little difficult.

the second problem is that my parents were just as determined for me to learn to code as i was to avoid anything to do with coding for the rest of my life

(the third problem was actually a serious problem for this goal. and that was that in seventh grade, when i had a required compsci class where we learned basic, i found myself... enjoying it. HORROR OF HORRORS.)

so i was quite vocal about my anti-math stance and my determination to explore other avenues of life, to which my parents responded by listening with bat-ears whenever i talked about my compsci class and/or my love of spreadsheets so that they could jump on it and say 'YOU KNOW, COMPUTER PROGRAMMING IS JUST LIKE THAT, I THINK YOU WOULD REALLY ENJOY IT' whenever i said something remotely applicable

and to which i responded, of course, by plunging ever deeper into performing arts because fuck compsci, except when it's basic, because then i understand everything because of messing around w scratch when i was little and it's easy and i'm ahead of the rest of the class and can stare into space while the rest of them struggle with closing their parentheses (which is not to say i never messed up my parentheses. i totally did)

now, my brother, because he's a nerd, went to compsci summer camps where you'd spend a week or two learning some program or language. he did things like java and c++ and then would come home and use this knowledge for robotics club. like i said. nerd.

but my parents sensed a golden opportunity. namely, 'if we can get birl to go to these camps, she will actually learn programming things (not just being ahead of the class and spacing out in basic), and we'll probably get her to agree since it's only a week and she can do cost benefit analysis'

and, because i CAN do cost benefit analysis, i agreed to that deal. i'd go to a few of these camps, and then we'd agree that i was done with my parentally mandated computer science requirement. i learned some 3-d modeling, i learned to use unity (which involved some c+ as well), and i learned some java, and all was well. the camps were like 5 days long. we mostly worked on self-directed projects so i could do whatever the hell i wanted (and i made some pretty cool maze games if i do say so myself-- one of them in unity and one of them as a text-based game in java)

and.... horror of horrors....... i didn't hate it.

(of course i didn't want to go BACK any more than i had to but i also didn't hate every moment of those weeks)

so we were out of the woods right?

except no. we weren't.

because here's the thing. my high school ALSO had a computer science requirement. we had to take at least a semester. there were 3 levels offered: AP compsci, normal compsci, and then easy compsci (not its actual name) for the people who did not give a single shit

obviously i wanted to take the last one. my parents really wanted me to take AP but were willing to settle for normal. you will notice there was no overlap

i wrangled my way out of taking AP because that was a year-long course and i didn't have space in my schedule (my parents are wonderful in the sense that they didn't want to infringe on my actual interests to force me to do compsci which meant i had LEVERAGE)

but we literally wound up discussing it with the dean of students who was like 'well if you're capable of AP and just not taking it for schedule reasons then easy compsci would probably be boring for you!' which was an unhelpful take, thanks EVAN

but i did get my way by virtue of volunteering with a progressive tech organization in lieu of taking regular compsci, so i took easy compsci (in which i used scratch again, yay nostalgia, and also briefly flirted with html) and also wound up learning to use squarespace which is criminally easy but you can make it look like you're an expert

and all this while i was getting better and better with spreadsheets due to my own individual love for spreadsheets that near as i can tell, nobody in my family shares (my dad does have a lot of spreadsheets but his aren't as detailed as mine and he doesn't include data validation so HA)

all of which (plus my ap calc and stats classes) combines to mean that while i would not be able to just sit down and write you some code, if you give me access to stack overflow and tell me what language it's supposed to be in i can probably figure it out. especially now that i've become familiar with python by accident (well, more by my desire to write fic)

and because now i'm stuck in a rut, my current internship is with another civic tech company and that's probably what i'll wind up doing next summer as well. i don't actually work on software but i do comms which means i need to be able to have conversations with the engineers so i've been learning on the job. i know so much help

SO. with regards to my fic, my parents would both be thrilled because i taught myself some of a new programming language (python) and disappointed because i taught myself some of a new programming language with just stack overflow and some time and all i'm using it for is fic.

but near as i can tell we finished that battle long ago. it was a resounding victory for birl and i continue to expand my technical talents into areas like photo/video editing and CRM tools.

thank you very much *bows*

[mysticalmuddle]

Hi! Love your writing. Curious to know if it’s a passtime or a career. What is your process? The last one was heart breaking and i can’t wait for the update of EICPF Thanks!!

Sorry it took so long to answer this! I’ve been putting out fires in real life these past couple of days, and meanwhile mulling over what to say.

I’m flattered you think I could be in the big leagues, but I’m definitely a hobbyist writer! There’s a lot of stuff I do to develop my writing on my own though, and it always means a lot to mean to hear people like my stuff <3333

My writing process isn’t really complicated, but it does involve a lot of drafts and editing, much more than actual time writing raw stuff. For a one-shot, it goes something like this:

Get an idea, usually a couple lines of dialogue or a bit of description I want to see. Almost always happens when I’m trying to sleep, or washing my hair, or something that means I can’t scramble away and write it down immediately

Write the idea down. This is a taster spoon, just long enough to see if I can make a bigger idea from this, or if it goes to sit in the slushpile. If it does go in the slushpile, I usually recycle it for other fics. Lots of ideas die here. The slushpile just for ASOIAF is--extensive. I checked just now for fun and eek! 82k words

Sit on this blurb for a couple days--sometimes I’ll think about it on my own, or spitball with like-minded friends

Write an outline, as strict or loose as I feel like the idea needs. I have a bad memory, so this is a huuuuuuge important thing for me

Write the first draft. This is where the emotional stuff, good dialogue, and really brilliant bits of metaphor, etc come out. The rest is pretty trashy and bare-bones

After a couple days, edit the first draft. This includes drafting in all the stuff--scenery, transitions, description--that I skipped in draft one.

Write draft two

Edit draft two/write draft three/etc. (This might go on for a while. A couple chapters of even iron have definitely been five-draft affairs)

When I think it’s solid, I run that sucker through grammarly and google docs for grammar edits. If I have a beta, this is when they get it. Occasionally they see the first draft if I need major plot/characterization help

Code all the html for AO3 by hand--close reading the fic as I go along--then slap it into a draft doc on the site

Close-read again on AO3 for coding errors and general SPaG errors. The font change is very important, imo, to pick up those last stragglers. Sometimes I skip this step and do it a few weeks after posting, depends on how tired and fed-up I am with editing at the moment

Add a summary and necessary tags

Dither. Possibly go seek moral support

Post!

Endlessly refresh my stats page

Thanks for the ask! Like most writers, I always have fun talking about writing itself, and especially editing. Hands-down writing is my favorite hobby, and I’ve almost always got a Word doc or two open in the background. <3333

[tacitwhisky]

Hi! Any tips for making a fic known by many people? Thank you!

I can only speak to what I do; unfortunately there’s not a lot of analytics on this (I work SEO in the real world so that’s endlessly frustrating to me). Neither tumblr or AO3 have great tools for figuring out what works, but here’s a few things to try.

Obviously try and get your work on as many platforms as possible. I publish not just on here, but also AO3 and FF.NET.

Create a tumblr and use it to get your fic out there. You want it to be easy for people to reblog your fic if they like it. I always link back to my tumblr in the end notes of AO3 to make it as convenient as possible for readers to reblog or like it if they want (it’s very, very easy to make it a hyperlink, just google the html code). Also if you have a tumblr don’t be shy about rebloging your own post. You can always delete the reblogs later, and not all of your followers are online at the same time.

Create some kind of visual for your fic if you do post it on tumblr. Studies have shown that posts with graphics of some kind tend to get rebloged more than those that don’t. I like to create full photosets for my fics, but yours don’t have to be anything fancy. Just something to catch the eye

Break your fic into smaller chapters. Don’t go overboard with this (no one likes a spammer), but your fic bounces up to the top of your fandom’s or ship’s listing on AO3 and FF.NET each time a new chapter is added. This means it behooves you to have more shorter chapters than fewer longer ones. I’ve seen oneshots that are close to 20k in length: if cut into chapters of 3k, that’s nearly 7 times it could’ve shot up to the top of the list and had a chance of finding new readers.

Shamelessly self promote. For example: follow me @tacitwhisky for meta and fic recs or check out my fic on AO3. I’m pretty good at writing.

[maxattack-powell]

21 Questions

Tagged by the wonderful @aworldoffandoms @queen-among-writers @elbenmond @eadanga @brchoicesbr and @onesuntowngirl! You guys are amazing 💗

Rules: Answer 21 questions and then tag 21 people who you want to get to know better. (I only see 20... someone must have removed one along the way)

Nickname: Max, Maxwell and Splunker in high school. Don’t ask 🙄😆

Zodiac: Capricorn! The Cap theme is strong heh 

Height: 5'10/11ish 

Last movie I saw: Bird Box. Yep. Finally decided to see what all the hype was about. The Haunting of Hill House is way better.

Last thing googled: Um… I think lyrics for my last fic post? Oh no! It was HTML codes… @coldcollectornight08 😏

Favorite musician: Impossible for me to answer. I like an insane amount of music and have a ridiculous library to prove it. Hard pass lol.

Song stuck on my head: Girls Like You – Maroon5. I’ve been listening to a lot of stuff but that one must have played recently and held on. O_o

Other blogs: Just this one and the @chrispowellappreciation blog 😁

Do I get asks?: Sometimes. Usually its about Chris Powell, The Freshman Chronicles, or other Choices related stuffs… today I got quite a few wishing me a happy birthday 💖

Following: Uh… I don’t remember where to see that lmao. *searches and fails* wtf…

Amount of sleep: I often refer to myself as a vampire also. @kennaxval gives me the “dad talk” often because I don’t sleep much thanks to genetics and life events that decided to alter my schedule. On a good day 4-6 hours, on an average day 2-3. Yeeeeeah… I need more haha.

Lucky number: Um, I don’t really have a lot of luck hahahahaha… but I think 7 is pretty, and 5 and 2 are great mathematically.

What I’m wearing: Dude, if I’m at home… its all about comfort. Hell its usually about comfort when I’m not too. But uh, at home I tend to wear mostly fuzzy PJ pants, sleep shorts, leggings and whatever top type to keep me comfortable. 🤷‍♀️

Dream Job: Hmm. I had plans to start my own animation company when I was younger. I love anything to do with video games, art (all kinds), animals and reading/writing… probably should have been a book editor or architect. 

Dream Trip: Japan. 🗾 But also many, many other places… Japan is a “need to” though. Germany would be great - I have a lot of family there I’ve never met. 

Favorite food: If were talking generally, not like a specific place… tacos. Yeah, I think tacos…🌮

Play any instruments: I taught myself how to play some piano when I was a kid, and had a bass guitar that I didn’t get super far with… but that’s it. Always wanted to learn the violin. 🎻

Language: First language - English, but I took German and Japanese in high school and college, so I can sometimes keep up okay depending on the speaker/subject.

Random fact: Hmm… this could go so many ways lol. Some quick ones are, I’m a pretty good gamer - video games (first person shooters) especially. I’ve drawn since I could hold a pencil/crayon. I have a birthmark that looks like the Disney castle (for reals) and I’m just about impossible to scare. Everyone who tries to is always disappointed when it fails lol.

Describe yourself as an aesthetic things:

This was kinda hard...

Tagging a few who I think might want to do this... if they haven't already haha (I’m usually one of the last ones it seems). Please feel free to ignore or join in even if you're not listed. :)

@coldcollectornight08 @katurrade @mfackenthal @kennaxval @darley1101 @regrettingnathan @syltti78 @thatspicegirlssong @littlegreenmoo @kinkykingliam @flowerpowell @endlessflame @drakesroyalromance @underestimatemethatwillbefun @christopherpowelllover @imafictosexual @lostinthe-pines @sunflowergirl-25 @cordonianduchess @toglidethroughlife @lolablackwrites @choicesfannatalie @mysteli @boneandfur @lizeboredom @tmarie82 @whendolphinscry @gardeningourmet @bobasheebaby

[radialarch]

Hey, I read US v Barnes years ago and fell head over heels for that social media style, it seriously deserves its fandom classic status. I'm now trying my own writing but the workskin stuff is a bit of a learning curve. I found the pastebin you made for fallen son workskins (thank you so much for that!!) and was wondering whether you'd mind doing the same for US v Barnes? Or even just for tweets and columned text? I'm sorry if I've missed you being asked this before.

omg anon i am EXTREMELY SORRY for the delay in answering, i’m basically only on tumblr on mobile these days and the app is. not good at asks.

anyway, thanks for the love. as for the code, i do want to preface this with the caveat that if i were coding this today, i think i would probably rework a lot of this fic -- i was new to this and didn’t always follow best practice, including thinking about downloads or mobile support. but i’ve put the workskin for us v barnes up here and the html for chapter 1 here for you to look at, and you can always hit up my ask box if you have specific questions about how to achieve a certain effect! best of luck

[thorkizilla]

so like. i guess how do you manage fic recs? what's your process? and how do you decide how to summarize them and stuff? that's p broad, i guess, but i just wondered.

Sorry for the late reply, @fel-as-in-tumbld​ and probably too late to be of any help, but OH WELL I’M GONNA BE SELF INDULGENT ANYWAY.  :DMy process for recs is a little more complicated than it has to be but has worked for me really well:

I have a WordPad file that I write the fic recs in!

I have a blank “template” (the HTML and coding I’ll need for c&’ping later) that I just plug all the info into!

Mine looks like this:          ✦ ,                                 I put the link in the HREF tag, put the title & author in the text spot, then the summary between the italics tags, then my rec just in front of the final breaks.  I’m going to use tumblr’s HTML option because I will want to save my coded recs for later archiving on a website and it’s easier just to do it right from the beginning.

I quote the summary on AO3 for the summary part, rarely more than a line or two (some summaries get long, so I pick out the part that seems to summarize it best) or, if there is no summary, a sentence or two from near the beginning works!

My recs are written to be read by someone who hasn’t read the fic yet, so I try to avoid any major spoilers, but things like porn positions or little moments I really loved in a conversation or an emotional beat, something I feel would be a good hook to go, “Here’s why you should read this, it had this really awesome moment.” without ruining the whole fic for them.  This can double as a way to be good feedback to authors if they want it!  I LOVE WHEN THAT HAPPENS!  But my primary focus is a place for me to scream about feelings + go HEY READ THIS HERE’S WHY.  (Occasionally, if I really love a fic, I just go full spoilers, but then I put a bolded tag at the beginning of the rec, so people can skip it if they want to remain unspoiled.)

Once I have enough (minimum of 13 for a post for me, but lately I’ve been saving up until I have about ~30 or so) then I post to tumblr using the HTML option (instead of the Rich Text option).

Once that’s done, I paste the recs from my Recs In Progress document to my Post These To The Website document.

Every so often, when I’m feeling like some soothing monotonous work, I’ll start pasting the recs from the Post These To The Website document into the various categories I have on my website (like human AUs or Jotunn AUs or PWP fic or Pregnant!Loki categories, etc.), since they’re already coded, it’s just literally cutting and pasting.  :D

The process of writing the rec is a little more nebulous than just “pick out a moment that I liked and talk about that!” but that’s essentially it.  I always ask, “What would make me want to read a fic?” and that can be a huge variety of things.  Sometimes it’s that there’s a single moment I loved that made it worthwhile, sometimes it’s a theme that I thought worked really well with canon themes, sometimes a fic just hit me in the feelings place, sometimes a fic just made me feel happy and fizzy, sometimes it made me laugh, sometimes it had a good take on a character I liked!I will sometimes mention things that didn’t quite work for me, but I always, always try to put it in the light of, “This isn’t about giving the fic crap about it, but that I genuinely want to give readers a heads up because they might peace out of a fic--like I might have!--and I think it’s worth reading beyond that.”  Like, I generally skip right over evil!Odin fic, it’s not my bag, so if a rec mentioned, “This has some Worst Dad Ever!Odin, but there’s this really great moment between him and Thor.” I would be much more likely to pick it back up.  It’s not about saying the fic is omg sooooo wroooooong but that some people are here for different things and my recs are tailored to those who like/are here for the same things I am!  It’s never a value judgement, just that some people don’t read death fic (another thing I might warn for, but that doesn’t make that a value judgement, either! ♥) and I might want to gently encourage them and say, “I found it really worth the read, even if it wasn’t my usual thing.”And always I try to make a rec at least 70% positive, because otherwise if I don’t hit at least that much enjoyment out of it, I’m not going to rec it.  Half because I have ~standards~ about my recs (ie, I rec only things I really like) and half because I want to be honest without being an asshole.My taste in fic can get super iddy at times, which I sometimes write a rec towards, but they’re always ones I genuinely enjoyed and think other people who have similar tastes would enjoy, too!  Basically, sometimes I just REALLY LIKE PORN and don’t feel I have to put qualifiers on that.  XDBasically, how I write a rec comes down to:  How would I tell a friend about this fic?  How would I describe it to them, to make them want to read it?  How would I want a fic described to me, to make me want to read it?  And then I write according to that.  Talk about how it made me feel, talk about the overall tone, find a hook to lure them in, etc.HOPEFULLY THAT WAS AT LEAST REASONABLY INTERESTING. ♥

[feoplepeel]

Give AO3 a Chance

Back in January, Odylism put out this call to fanfic writers in the community she writes for (the Campaign Podcast--go check it out guys). The TLDR message was: Please archive on AO3.  Tumblr is ephemeral. AO3 is a bit more permanent. The rest of her message is below:

What is AO3?

AO3 is the Archive of Our Own. It is the big pan-fandom fan controlled fan fiction archive. Essentially, anyone can go and post fanfic there for others to read and enjoy. It is controlled by a non-profit, the Organization for Transformative Works.

Why are you begging me?

Because I love fandom and fic. Anyone who’s been in fandom a while can tell you of the great amounts of fic that have been lost over the years. Fanfic archives have evaporated. LJ has blacked out content they didn’t like. Geocities came tumbling down. Tumblr is what we’re on now, but anyone who’s tried to go back and search for something six months later can tell you that tumblr is hard to pin down. If you don’t have something bookmarked, it can be impossible to find again. Even if you did bookmark it, you have to pray that person didn’t change their URL.

AO3 was established with the purpose of having a central repository for fanfic that’s stable. It’s been the major repository of fanfic for a while now.

Why should I archive? It’s just dumb/less than 100 words/totally silly/terribly written.

Fanfic is important. Your fanfic is important. I couldn’t begin to describe all of the silly junk I’ve written or read over the years. Not everything has to be perfect serious canon longfic. Each fic, from epic to drabble, paints a picture of the fandom at the time when it was written. AO3 helps us capture that history. I want to be able to go back and read fic (both the serious stuff and the silly AUs) long after Tumblr has gone the way of the dodos. AO3 also has the benefit of being searchable. If I’m in the mood for a certain story, I can go on AO3 and search for exactly that.

What do I need to do to archive on AO3?

For those who want serious instructions, AO3 has an official FAQ that’s helpful.

First, you need to register for an account. If you’re a chameleon person who changes their handle with every new moon, that’s okay. You can add additional pseudonyms after you register. You can go here to register. It does require an invitation code, but they send those out fairly quickly. If you’re not willing to wait, you can usually find someone on here who has one laying around.

Next, you need to post your fic on AO3. When posting a story to AO3, you have to pick a title and tags. Some tags are obvious (characters, relationships, warnings). If one of those tags is missing from the archive, you can add it. The additional tags can take some nuance, but are great for indicating tropes or trigger warnings. AO3 allows users to format their stories using HTML or a rich text editor. I’m an old and always just put together my HTML myself, so I can’t speak to how good/bad the rich text editor is. Once you’ve formatted, you will be shown a preview of the story before you post so you can check everything one last time.

Last, you wait. People can give feedback on AO3 in two ways: kudos and comments. Kudos are a little button people can press at the end of a chapter or story to signal that they enjoyed the work. Comments are when people leave actual written comments on your story. AO3 doesn’t have a great comment culture, but it isn’t any worse than tumblr.

I don’t write fan fiction, but I want to comment/leave kudos/bookmark stories.

Great! You can comment and leave kudos without an account, but I really recommend getting one. Some users don’t allow anon comments or restrict their stories to only logged in users. Bookmarking is only available to registered users.

This is a lot.

I’m sorry about that. Obviously, I have a lot of feelings about fic and the preservation of fandom. Being on AO3 is a great way to preserve fic and make it searchable.

If you have questions or need help, please let me know. I’m happy to walk anyone through the process. You can contact me through tumblr or on twitter.

I’ve been seeing a lot of small fics for Stranger Things not being crossposted to AO3 and I don’t know if that’s for lack of an account or disinterest in posting. I appreciate all the amazing fic that I’ve had the privilege to read on Tumblr, but Tumblr doesn’t allow for bookmarking, save my personal bookmarks (and I know I’m not the only person who has experienced the sinking feeling of clicking on a blog after someone’s changed their url or deleted their blog). In an addition to the original post, “Tumblr is a good way to meet friends and spread the word about new things, but a terrible terrible way to post and archive fanfic. Who knows if tumblr will even be here in a few years, being sold to new companies and subject to new corporate mandates.”

Thanks for reading. Again, feel free to ask me anything <3

[hils79]

Happy Birthday, Buffy

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is 20 years old today!

There’s been a thousand posts about this already but twenty years later I still have a lot of Buffy feels so I wanted to lay them out. Don’t expect anything intelligent or coherent here. I just need to flail.

To set the scene: Twenty years ago I was 17 years old (yes, I have just outed myself as An Old) and studying for my A-Levels in a small town in northern England. 

Living in a small town, especially one where there was little or no entertainment to be found (there were a lot of pubs and the cinema got turned into a church 2 years after we moved there) our fun was mostly found through bands (on the radio because there were no gigs in my town) and movies/TV shows.

My friend and I watched a movie called Buffy the Vampire Slayer which we loved because it was cheesy but funny and we fancied ourselves goths which meant we watched anything with vampires in. LOL. Oh, the 90s...

Anyway, a year or so after we watched the Buffy movie we heard there was a TV show about to start so we were all over that. We would get together regularly to watch it 

And that went on until we went to uni.

And this is why the show hit me and stuck with me when I drifted away from a lot of other sci-fi fantasy shows that were around at the same time (X-Files, Roswell etc). Buffy was a show about a teenage girl. I was a teenage girl. It may have been about fighting demons and vampires but it was also about life for teenage kids in the 90s. The problems Buffy faced, I faced too. When she went to college, I went to uni. When she was struggling to find a job and earn money I was working my first full-time low-wage job. Somehow it just made things a little better. If Buffy could deal with what life threw at her then so could I.

Personal stuff aside Buffy was also my introduction to online fandom. I’ve always been a fannish person, it’s just before Buffy it was contained to sticking posters on my wall and writing self-insert fanfic with my one geeky friend. We didn’t even know it was fanfic at the time. They were just stories we wrote to amuse ourselves during our classes. 

I still remember, clear as day, when I was at uni I decided to join a couple of Buffy mailing lists (Yahoo Groups as they are now, ONEList as they were back in the day). I did a little intro post and someone asked me if I wrote fanfic.

“What’s fanfic?” Innocent newbie me replied. Next thing I know I’m on fanfiction.net (this was before The Great Purge when all the good stuff was still there) and it was like the Heavens had opened and warm fannish light was shining down upon me. 

There were people, like me, who wrote stories about their favourite characters! This was something I could do and share with other people. I think it took me less than a month to get my first fic posted and after that I couldn’t stop. I haven’t stopped. I posted fic on ff.net, then Livejournal and now AO3. Back then I didn’t have my own computer or regular access to the internet so all my fics were written by hand and then typed up when I could.

Posting fic was a joy in itself, but I made friends in the fandom. People who liked the same characters and ships that I did. We laughed, we shared fic, episode recaps, weird RP where we all had our own clone!Spike and they all had different names and personalities. It was weird and it was fun and I’m not sure I’ve ever been that happy.

Eventually our fandom group decided we should all meet up, which resulted in me flying to the US by myself to meet a bunch of people I had never met in person before so we could all attend a Buffy con. I was 24 years old when I made the trip and not scared in the slightest. To me I wasn’t flying thousands of miles to meet strangers, I was flying thousands of miles so meet my best friends. 

So much of my time in the Buffy fandom shaped who I am today. I got my current job because of my skills as a writer, which I never would have developed were it not for writing dozens upon dozens of Buffy fics. I taught myself HTML so I could code my own Buffy website. It was terrible and a lovely person in the fandom helped me make it better but the basic skills were there. My first Buffy con gave me such a sense of belonging that I made regular trips to the US after that to attend cons and hang out with fandom people.

I don’t use the term ‘life-changing’ lightly but for me Buffy really was. And the thing is it’s still great. I rewatched it all recently and the only real difference is that I like Riley more and Xander less than I did the first time around. Seriously, Riley is the voice of reason for so much of his time on the show. Why did I hate him?

Wow, this has ended up being way longer than I intended. Thanks for sticking with me. 

[jellojolteon]

Protips about engineering school from an engineer

I love love love seeing writers include this stuff in fics, so I hope this info will help y'all out! Thanks for writing us technically-inclined folks in. -Not the same as arts and science schools. Usually entirely different requirements. -Math is very front heavy since the material is required for most everything else one hopes to accomplish. Same of physics and chemistry and sometimes coding. -ABET (the general standard for engineering education) accreditation requires a certain number of humanity and social science courses which roughly translates to 6 semesters with one humanity each. Schools may or may not overlap this with a secondary requirement. Mine doesn’t really so I can’t be sure. -Freshman engineers are probably taking Calc 1-3, physics 1 and 2, and chem 1 and 2, depending on what requirements have already been satisfied in high school courses. Anything that doesn't get taken care of first year mathematically is probably done sophomore year e.g. I took Calc 3 2nd semester of sophomore year after a semester taking both linear algebra and differential equations simultaneously. -Some engineering concentrations do not require all of the math. I had to take all of the math, relatively speaking. -There is probably a coding course requirement of some sort for everyone which is thus probably offered freshman year. Bonus points if your fictional course references Matlab, Excel, C, Java, unix, html or any other prevalent coding language. -In my school also, declaration of concentration did not happen until 2nd semester, so one technically isn’t in major until sophomore year. -this said, sophomore year is mostly devoted to major basics. Junior year finishes most requirements, and then becomes a free reign type thing heading into senior year. They’re may be some final capstone requirement such as a design course. -it’s all pretty structured where I’m at, which makes engineers with minors or certificates an uncommon sight unless they’re engineering minors. Many requirements overlap. Double major engineers do exist but are quite rare. -don't get me wrong, there are a lot of socially awkward engineers who are just out and out weird people. But a LOT of engineers go absolutely hard as hell when it comes to partying and getting drunk. I myself don't have a social life to speak of, but I think that others do it to try to forget the rest of the week. -engineering in general is suffering and I think a lot of us hate ourselves for it. -generally isolated from non engineers due to separation of school and having a set of go-to buildings for classes. -Some say engineering school is less about teaching you knowledge and more about teaching you to think like an engineer. I believe it. -There is an invisible hierarchy of engineering concentrations and usually industrial and civil engineering end up getting the shaft in that pecking order. Especially Industrial. Likely related, there are a lot of females in these fields, though the hierarchy thing seems to extend before female engineers were much of a thing. -The m:f ratio is still quite fucked and depends on concentration. Far more females do bio civil and the like, far fewer do electrical and computer. My school's not very ethnically diverse so anything I might have to say about minorities is an outsider's opinion that doesn't carry much weight. -I said this once upon a time as a general note, but things almost always go wrong when one is trying to get them to work. And it will probably be stupid shit, like a wrong resistor or an incorrect chemical or some other weird thing one might take for common sense. It's actually kind of a wonder we don't accidentally kill ourselves more. -I don't know if I have ever had an engineering class in my life where we did not start lecture material on the first day. Going over the syllabus doesn't ever take as long as one wants it to. -"Finding a guy in engineering: the odds are good but the goods are odd." -if one is taking two labs at a time they are dead on the inside -for those unaware, there are more labs than just chem and physics labs! I take circuits labs where I learn to build basic computer and electrical components, and I have a lab right now where I mess around with signals, like adding noise to an audio clip. -There is still a lot of opportunity for study abroad and predictably, interships/co-ops/work-studies. It feels like being spoiled to be in demand as an undergrad. Most companies hiring engineering interns pay them; I don't know any that don't, but I would guess there might be a few somewhere that ride prestige and can get away with it. I hope this actually serves as functional reference and helps!! If there's anything I've forgotten I'd love to help as much as I can. Happy writing!