#author policies

[dodgerkedavra]

Ministry of Magic

DodgerKedavra's Fanworks Policies

Binding: My fics are available for personal binds and gifts between friends. Don't sell them for money, or you will be forever cursed.

Podficcing: My fics are available for podficcing projects. Please don't use AI to record them. If you have a question about whether a specific story is already being recorded, message me!

Translations: My fics are available for translations on a case-by-case basis—please message me first. Please don't put them into Google Translate or any AI program for translation, and don't repost to websites other than AO3. Please link to the original work when posting,

Fanart: Please do fan art of my fics. I love it so much. I love it so, so much.

[mangosaurus]

JWCT FANDOM PSA!!! if a transcript and/or images of today's panel come out and you decide to blog about it, please remember to tag your spoilers!! we don't wanna ruin the first episode for people who'd rather wait to watch it themselves!!

[cabinetofotherthings]

i have a historiographical quibble with how the antisemitic campaigns in the soviet union in 1948–1953 are often framed as an extension of the holocaust in the scholarship rather than being fully considered within the context of the soviet nationalities policy. except when i'm applying for funding from institutions that do holocaust studies. then i'm fine with it

[stoicmike]

The more authority you are given the less nice you are allowed to be. -- Michael Lipsey

[1000sunnygo]

Do you ship lawbin?

I don't exactly ship them but I don't hate the ship either.. Just neutral, I guess? It's such a harmless ship but massively hated for no reason lmao.

I discovered it was a thing only after Sawyer7mage talked about them in a chapter review (good reviewer btw! some sarcasms he made here reminded me that he's a professional therapist pfff) Initially I didn't like the idea but some valid points have been raised in favor of the ship by him and others. Law/Robin don't have a lot going together so far, but public opinion can be easily swayed if Oda lets them interact more. Given the recent developments in late Wano, the chance is quite high.

Only problem is that these two seem to be drawn towards the type of people that are opposite of each other. Robin had flirted with larger and older men who aren't "conventionally attractive", and Law's buddies are all silly little fellows with little pride who like to pamper him all the time. But fanarts like this by @/takara_op did a great job convincing me that they'd be pretty fun to follow as a duo 👍🏼

Oda's depiction of Law and love and his character dynamic with women is an entirely different topic and I have a year old draft meta on this,,,,maybe I should post it some day 🫠 doesn't have much Lawbin in it though

[altaneenarts]

"Shrike" Printable PDF

Here you have it, a physical print of "Shrike", the prequel to the wonderful "Passerine"! Ever since the prequel was finished I wanted a copy to go alongside my "Passerine" print. With the author's permission, I made one for myself and now you guys! For those that loved the stories as much as I did, here you go <3

The files included are a 169 page PDF (which has been lightly spellchecked & grammar edited), a summary of the fic, a table of contents, some decorative graphics, and a separate PDF of a book cover (both for Paperback & Hardcover). They're all sized for an 8.5" x 5.5" (Digest Size) book.

Below I've attached printing instructions and the needed files to print your own book. I've also created a Google Drive with other printable fics I've made if you want to check those out too :D To be clear, I am not selling this or any of these books and any price you pay will be strictly printing and shipping costs. These files are for personal use only and if I find anyone selling copies/files I will take them down. I hope you all enjoy!

INSTRUCTIONS:

Create an account on lulu.com

Go to the home page and click on Create > Print Books > Start My Print Book

On the Start My Project page select Print Book for both the Product Type & Select a Goal. For Book Details put whatever you'd like & click Design Project

Upload the interior file PDF (ignore the transparency warning)

For Book Specifications I recommend Black & White Standard > 60# Cream > Paperback or Hardcover (depending on your budget/preference) > Matte

For Book Cover Design, upload the respective Cover PDF (Hardcover or Paperback) > Click Review > Publish

Once published, you can add the book to your cart and buy it :)

FILES:

Interior File PDF

Hardcover Design PDF

Paperback Design PDF

Other printable fics!

[purple-petrichor]

Gero and Scars

MarriageToxin Theory Time: Gero is horribly scarred. Specifically, on his torso.

Let's explore this:

>>Already has a facial scar

Gero is a bit unique among romcom protagonists for having a visible facial scar. And that one looks CHEMICAL. We know that Gero's upbringing was rough--was it due to his harsh poison training? If so, there's no way that treatment didn't leave other lasting marks elsewhere on his body.

>>Clothing as cover

Through the series so far, Gero tends to hide his body. He's shy to begin with, leaping away from nudity (with Kinosaki in chp 1, and with Ushio chp 91). But this also applies to himself as well. Gero is largely conservative about his own clothing.

He wears big, baggy clothes. Never goes anywhere without his coat either (although the character profile notes this is due to his job--lots of poison compounds hiding under there). It's relevant to note that we haven't seen him shirtless yet, despite other male characters (Sound User, Ushio's gym-obsessed uncle) stripping down.

Furthermore, when on the Ocean date with Himekawa, Gero wears a FULL WETSUIT. He really covers as much of his body as possible.

>>Hesitance around physical intimacy

Although this is a smaller point, it could perhaps be relevant. We know that Gero is very anxious about touch. Over the course of lots of character development he's become much more comfortable (such as being on Arashiyama's lap) with it, but in early chapters he used to physically flinch away and duck out of reach (Kinosaki, Ureshino). This could hint at a deeper discomfort with touch and physical intimacy--maybe he's subconsciously afraid of what people might 'discover' if they get too close.

>>All for the family

We have heard Gero speak about his childhood upbringing, and it was not a happy one.

The Poison Clan has no problem abusing their children if it means competent heirs. We see 'sensei' hitting him to the point of internal injury. And we also see him as an older boy, trembling as he works with chemicals.

Furthermore, when it comes to facial scars, his cousin Teruaki has one as well, at one eyebrow. It runs in the family, being a trauma that leaves marks both seen and unseen. Come to think of it, it's a bit strange that his sister Akari doesn't have one? If she does, where is it? I swear to god if that was because of some twisted sexist reason like 'don't ruin the girl's face so we can marry her off' ughhh Either way, in the Gero clan, there's no way you get out unscathed. Literally.

>>Survivor of a death game

This has not been fully elaborated on in-canon, but the implications have been fairly strong. The Poison Clan appears to select (or perfect) their heir by having children go through a set of trials. The survivor (?) becomes the official heir. Gero himself refers to this as essentially a death game.

It would be impossible to get out of this kind of Hunger Games without receiving some nasty injuries. Especially given the kinds of chemical substances that these potential heirs may have played with. Not to mention, the scene with him in kimono is the first appearance of that incredibly suspicious scar around Gero's eye, which I suspect may have a dramatic reveal later on. Really, I wouldn't be surprised if his body is littered with scars and/or other chemical burn marks.

What if Gero takes his shirt off and we just see a battlefield.

EDIT: slightly jossed by this counterpoint:

>>Arms

We do see a bit more skin than usual in his cat cafe date! Arashiyama really has a way of loosening him up. Here, the front of Gero's arms are visible, all the way to the mid-biceps. And....there's no scars. No suspicious chemical burns or missing fingertips. Hmm. Maybe he's a miracle heir and managed to avoid all damage except his eye? Or there are scars, just hidden around where the T-shirt covers instead?

[duckiemimi]

if honesty corner stsg didn't get back together, gojo would be on track to become a billionaire ceo and geto would become a politician.

[harriswalz4usabybr]

Speech Vice President Harris will give in Juneau, AK!

~BR~

[irenespring]

After my latest fic chapter I feel compelled to remind people who have never read the SGE books that Clarissa Dovey (whose ideology and behavior I did not alter) is supposed to be a good guy. She is the benevolent, motherly mentor figure. We are supposed to like her very much.

In related news: The School for Good and Evil is the single largest case of authorial "oh shit I forgot all my world building when it came time to do the story framing" I have ever seen in all of media.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Author pushed against fans, went into a mini rage and missed some good points...

I'm not going to quote what they said word for word to make it harder for you to find it. If you know it, don't make it easier to find it.

The thrust of what they said was that everyone in a particular thread must "hate romance" and that "book twitter " "wasn't real" and then they missed some really good points from the thread.

If you need 3 page critiques in order to understand criticisms from buyers, then you didn't get enough critiquers on your work. You should 100% understand all of the criticisms that are going to come your way.

So the opening tweet said that the book was the worst, but the later tweets went onto explain.

The person specifically doesn't particularly care for white straight cis het romance (as in all of those things combined). But they are a book reviewer, so felt obligated. They mostly read YA, in general. Book reviewers often have to read books they don't like. It's part of the job. Raging at them for reading a book they didn't like isn't going to help.

The author 100% missed that fact by not scrolling down the thread and seeing *gasp* Romance recommendations which were filled to the brim with straight PoC romance. Queer romance, etc. Diverse book choices. Does this mean the author is required to write those things? No. But it's something to note and keep in mind when someone is criticizing you for being the worst.

The reviewer also thought that the enemies to lovers was lukewarm and it was trying to be "trendy" but also pointed out that the cover was a rebranding from an earlier work.

They thought enemies to lovers only works in fantasy and stated as much.

And this seemed to be a criticism the commenters agreed with. It's a valid specific criticism of the premise.

The reviewer did bother to correct some people on misconceptions of the book, so it's clear they read it, despite what the author said.

But the author held that the majority of the criticism was about the cover (see above, not true)

The author didn't bother to read the thread to see *what* was said about the cover.

This divided into two parts.

One was that people didn't like the cursive on the blurb.

And, BTW, this is a valid concern. The reasons for this (dusting off my typography) are:

Cursive is harder to read at smaller type which makes it much less friendly to websites and digital marketing. (yadda yadda about negative space which makes the positive space more readable which I said about typography many times before)

Cursive is not disability accessible. It's particularly bad for dyslexia as the shape of the letters gets often distorted, which makes everything worse. None of the cursive fonts show up on the list of fonts good for people who are dyslexic.

People were CURIOUS about the creepy crawly on the cover

Be sure to sort the emotion behind the thought when regular fan, not your critiquers, are commenting on your work or your partner's work (i.e. the book cover artist).

The cover artist didn't go into a rage like the author did, but the author went into a rage about the fact they commented on the cover. Any work that wasn't yours DON'T comment with all that negativity. Shut up.

Some people didn't like how the blurb was written and thought it gave away too much or didn't draw out the tension enough to argue enemies to lovers.

That is a specific critique, isn't it? Write your blurbs better or ask your publisher to take note of what the public wants.

The author 100% missed the positive reviews in the thread about the book and threw also those people as "negative" because they said the whole of the thread was negative.

There were some genuinely positive reviews. Some mediocre reviews where they said they read the book a "long time ago." With the negative reviews, some people said they were curious to read it (but it was middle of the week.) But the author saw the criticisms, and didn't actually read the thread, or selectively chose the negative reviews and saw all of the likes and failed to see the context, thus threw out all of the positive reviews and commenters. This was prior to the author commenting.

Again, have someone cold sort your reviews and *get better critiquers* By the time of publication, you need to know what the critiques of your book are going to be. If you're up shouting because you haven't heard it before, then you need better critiquers to lay it out for you. Know the downsides of your story in advance so you know your market.

In addition, the author gave them all less than ONE day to translate that into sales before throwing their fit.

When I looked up the "questionable" tweet it had been less than one day and the author had made a comment already.

The comment was made in the middle of the week. Most people don't get paid until Friday. Do the math and hold your tongue. Not everyone is rich, especially if your target demographic is teenagers and college students.

Defense of the author by others

But all reviewers need to be helpful

Everything must be self-contained into one tweet.

But the critique was so mean

they are clearly anti-romance

*blaming the reviewer for the state of what the whole internet does*

After your work is "out there" past the publishing doors, no, reviewers have no obligation to be helpful. They are average readers who don't have a deep understanding of say the story theory you put behind it.

And no, one Twitter, no, you do not have to self-contain reviews. Read the thread. If you're arguing facebook or another platform with longer writing space, yes.

The critique wasn't nice enough? Tough luck.

People didn't read the thread. They were anti a specific type of romance, the mediocre lukewarm enemies to lovers. How does that translate into "all romance is horrible forever and for all time"? The reviewer gave a specific type of romance.

Conclusion

The reason I didn't name the author is because I am not out here trying to hate on a particular author or send people after them. What I'm trying to say is that all writers need to consider various things before they get published:

Reading reviews can make you blind to the positive, especially if you were told it's all negative. You feel under attack and then are likely to exaggerate what was said.

If negative reviews of your works sends you into fight mode, you might want to give the policy: "Please do not ever send me any of my reader's reviews no matter what, that includes all critiquers."

If you can't handle it, ask someone else, like an agent to handle it and have one of their lackeys handle it.

If your critiquers missed a critique, then you need to get better critiquers so you know your audience.

If you *do* decide to handle your own reviews, etc, grow thicker skin, don't read them, or learn how to cold sort like I did above. "Ah, they wanted something queer because of the lack of queer rep in the market. Maybe I can do something with my marketing in my other books to do something like that". "This negative tweet is popular, how do I make myself look better through this." (An example for this specific book would to say "Yup, the creepy crawly might be the worst, but you'll find out why it's on the cover if you read my book!") If you can't twist negative reviews into actual sales, then you can't handle it and give it to someone else who can. Pushing back on people never goes well. 100% I get that one might feel attacked, when they are receiving critiques. But as with above, you might miss the positive with the negative. And if you start attacking "all of Twitter" and all of "tiktok" and start saying everyone in a thread was "negative" then you might want to reconsider your policies as an author or before you are an author. Especially, especially if you are demanding that criticisms translates into sales in the middle of the weekday and you aren't thinking "Huh? Who is my target demographic and when will they likely have money?" on a book that's getting a new cover.

There were people who genuinely were curious and hoping that the creepy crawly on the cover translated to a critical thing in the book, but if you blast them blindly are they going to feel warm and fuzzy about buying your book? Nope. So throwing them out isn't going to help your cause–it alienated potential buyers who wanted to know if the book itself was "that bad". It's better to change your policy and shut up. The author wasn't even on twitter and the reviewer didn't send the critique directly to the author, which means it's in the reader's domain. Saying one has to confine their reviews to only Goodreads is ridiculous. Change your policy so that no reviews are sent to you.

This is a lesson, you are a marketer after your book is published. Put that hat on and think about how best market your book. Sometimes negative reviews do translate to sales. So approach it well.

And for everyone else out there–it's generally bad policy to send reviews to your favorite authors. If they weren't at-ed, or otherwise directly informed, it's a bad idea to do it. They might have a policy like above or they don't have good emotion regulation or whatever. So don't do it. If you feel like the "whole genre is being attacked" and you need to absolutely send it. Don't. Really? In less than 24 hours you're doing it? You didn't sit down and think about it.

[unganseylike]

couldnt decide if i hated or liked a concept from an author so im reading another book by her to get more data😳

[timcurry-imgoinghomedotmp4]

.

[im-a-goat-in-disguise]

it's not pandering "a little", it's putting trans children in danger. you're no ally to queer people if you're willing to throw our most vulnerability members undee the bus like this.

When I wrote those tags I hadn't looked extremely hard into the guidance but having looked into the situation a bit there's not much labour could've actually done. The department of Education released a report, not a special committee or parliament. Labour has no say on the guidance and whether it was published or not and couldn't control what it said. If they get into government, it's entirely possible they amend the guidance or just straight up replace or revoke it. I haven't seen any hard and fast motif that they're happy with it or plan to leave it alone if they get their hands on it.

I don't think we should let the guidance slide as something we should ignore, but treating "Labour is not the government" as "Labour actively wants to kill trans people" is ridiculous.

I agree my wording there was very poor. It's not pandering, but it isn't really anything; there's not a "Don't implement the guidance" button that labour could've pressed. I'll look into this more probably after the holidays when I'm less busy but honestly I don't really know what alternative action people want Labour to take. Equating them as being as bad as the Tories because the Tories wrote something and Labour isn't in a position to stop them writing it isn't really sensible, in my opinion.

[novemberthewriter]

I'm several days late w this creative writing final bc I've had to revise it like 5 fucking times but now I think I've got something I'm proud of + think ppl will enjoy reading

[moleshow]