"How's this for an extra handmaiden duty?" the princess suggested as I was busy making her bed. "Kissing practice." I froze. "What?" "You know, so I won't be a complete wet fish for my future husband." I thought about it. Very briefly.

She never did get that husband in the end.

Toxic love old men

its unreal how all of my favorite characters have exactly the same traits and hobbies and diagnoses as me

oh, have you been tricked into loving yourself?

oh my fucking god is that what just happened

Listen to your elders

So last week I posted abut the importance of downloading your fic. And then three days later AO3 went down for 24 hours. No one was more weirded out by this than I was. But while y’all were acting like the library at Alexandria was on fire I was reading my download fic and editing chapter eight of Buck, Rogers, and the 21st Century. And also thinking about what I could do to be helpful when the crisis was actually over.

So first off, I’m going to repeat that if you’re going to bookmark a fic, you really need to also download the fic and back it up in a safe place. I just do it automatically now and it’s a good habit to get into.

But let’s talk about some other scenarios. Last October I lost power for over a week after hurricane Ian. Apart from not having internet or A/C I did find plenty to do, I collect books so I had plenty to read, but maybe, unlike me, your favorite comfort reads aren’t sitting on a bookshelf. So let’s do something about that, shall we?

In olden times many long years ago around 1995 we printed off a lot of fic. It was mostly SOP to print a fic you planned to reread and stick it in a three ring binder. And that’s totally valid today too, but you can also make a very nice paperback with a minimum amount of skill and materials.

Let’s start with the download; Go to Ao3 and select your fic, we’ll be working with one of mine. This method works best with one shots, long fic tends to need a more complicated approach. Get yourself an HTML download

Open up the HTML download and select all then copy paste into any word processor. Set the page to landscape and two columns, then change the font to something you find easy to read, this is your book, no judgement. This is all you have to do for layout but I like to play a little bit. I move all the meta, summary, notes to the end and pick out a fun font for the title: 

No time like the present to do a quick proofread. Congratulations, you’ve just created your first typeset. On to the fun part.

Now you’re going to need some materials:  8.5x11in paper ruler one sheet of 12x12 medium card stock (60-80lb) scissors pencil pen or fine tip marker sheet of wax paper white glue two binder clips 2 heavy books or 1 brick butter knife

You’ll also need a printer, if you’re in the US there is almost a 100% chance your local library has a printer you can use if you don’t have your own. None of these materials are expensive and you can literally use cheap copy paper and Elmers glue.

Print your text block, one page per side. Fold the first page in half so that the blank side is inside and the printed side out:

use the butter knife to crease the edge. Repeat on all the sheets. When you’ve finished, stack them up with the raw edge on the left and the folded edge on the right. I used standard copy paper, because you’re only printing on one side there’s no bleed to worry about. Take the text block and line everything up. Use the binder clips to hold the raw edge in place.

Wrap the text block in the wax paper so that the raw edge and binder clips are facing out. I’m going to use my home built book press but you don’t need one, a brick or a couple of books or anything else heavy will work fine.

Once the text block is anchored down, take off he binder clips and get out the glue.

You can use a brush but you don’t need one, smear some glue on that raw edge.

Go make a margarita, watch The Mandalorian, call your mother. Don’t come back for at least an hour

In an hour smear some more glue on there and shift your brick forward so that the whole book is covered. This keeps the paper from warping. While glue part 2 is drying we’ll do the cover. Get out your 12x12 cardstock

Mark the cardstock off at 8.5 inches and cut it. Measure in 5.5 inches from the left and put in a score line with the butter knife (the back edge not the sharp edge)

Carefully fold the score line, this is your front cover. You have some options for the cover title, you can use a cutting machine like a cricut if you have one, you can print out a title on the computer and use carbon paper to transfer the text to the cardstock. I was in a mood so I just freehanded that beoch. Pencil first then in pen.

Take your text block out from under your brick. Line it up against the score mark and mark the second score on the other side of the spine

Fold the score and glue the textblock into the cover at the spine. Once the glue dries up mark the back cover with the pencil and then trim the back cover to fit with your scissors.

Voila:

I’m going to put this baby on the shelf next to the Silmarillion.

The whole process, not counting drying time, took less than an hour.

If you want to make a book of a longer fic, I recommend Renegade Publishing, they have a ton of resources for fan-binders. 

You know, it's kinda funny how much of high fantasy centers around kings and nobility and courtly intrigue considering that the archetypal high fantasy, Lord of the Rings, had the rather explicit moral of "saving the world is up to this backwater hick and his gardener because no politician, least of all inherited nobility, would have the ability to see past their own ambition and throw away a weapon". Oh sure, Aragorn is a great king and all, but there's a reason he's over there running a distraction ring while the hobbits do the real work. Sauron loses because he gets distracted by kings and armies and great battles (i.e. typical high fantasy stuff) letting Frodo and Sam sneak through his back door and blow it all to hell.

Just saying, maybe old Jirt knew what he was saying when he said that the small folk doing their best and holding to each other was more powerful than a dozen alliances and superweapons and we should respect him for it.

(No but seriously OP you’re exactly right)

Hey - if you’re working on a fic and it’s going slower than you planned, if you’re trying to work on a fic but the words just won’t come, if you want to work on a fic but you just have too many other things going on or you can’t get in the right headspace for writing, if you haven’t worked on your fic in a while… it’s okay.

Fanfic is free, and we all do it for fun. You don’t owe it to anyone. You aren’t letting anyone down if you don’t update on time - or at all. Sometimes, the words run out. Sometimes, you abandon the fic. Sometimes, you take a break for months, or even years. It’s okay.

And to anyone out there who thinks it’s okay to demand updates, or leave comments on fics you don’t like about how you don’t like them, or insult, trash-talk, or criticise fanfic writers… it’s not. Fanfic writers don’t owe you updates, or the specific story you want, or anything else. Fanfic writers are fuelled by compliments and positive feedback; they are discouraged by criticism and demands for updates and anything that makes them feel guilty.

So, if you want a writer to update? Support them. Encourage them.

But yeah, seriously, it’s okay not to update on time, or at all. It’s okay to write the story how you want to, even if some randomer on the internet doesn’t like it. Ignore those people. They are rude and their opinions don’t matter.

Also: some days, the muse doesn’t co-operate. Some days you’ll produce nothing but crap. That happens to literally every creative person, so don’t be too hard on yourself, okay? This is supposed to be fun. And you do not, in any way, have to do it if it’s not fun.

Y’know, somehow this post knew EXACTLY when I needed to read it. Bless.

kenergy

It's been a while since the last Hiveswappening, hasn't it? Well, this year @sahcon were lucky enough to get to show off some new screenshots of the upcoming third act, including a new look at the mysterious and popular Fiamet! And to cap it all off, @jamesroachmusic showed up to answer some questions and preview some of the game's new music, and surprised us with some concept art of the equally in-demand Cridea Jeevik.

so i have a mildly popular “reblog and put in in the tags” post going around and its. very clear how many people don’t know how to interact with a tumblr post

so, first of all, tumblr’s culture has changed a lot in the past couple years. there’s a genuine community effort to not start any drama, and ironically a lot of the current hostility is an effort to keep things calm. there’s also a change in how people interact with posts, so if you haven’t been here in a while please skip down to the tags/replies/reblog with text section.

for newcomers: you should be reblogging posts about as liberally as you would like something on twitter. if you only like stuff, people will think you are rude/a bot. you’ve probably heard people talk about “cultivating your dash,” and thats because this platform is 100% centered around your dashboard. trending matters less, unfollowing and blocking in order to shape your dash into it’s best form is widely accepted, the majority of the content you’ll find and interact with will be because of your dash, and the only way to put things on your dash is to reblog them. tumblr users are deeply distrustful of algorithms and have largely turned off the “see posts your friends have liked” function (i recommend you also turn of the various algorithms in settings → general settings → dashboard preferences).

so, once you’ve reblogged a post, there’s three ways to add content to it. the tags, replies, and reblogging with text. all of them have different connotations

the tags: an inside voice. originally they were meant for organizing your blog (and they’re still used for this), but they’ve also morphed into a way to share thoughts that aren’t funny/insightful enough for non-followers to be interested in. when in doubt, put your comment in the tags

replies: basically talking to your friends in class. your followers have no way of finding your replies (they don’t pop up on the dash, nobody gets notified except for the original poster) so chances are, only the person who made the post is gonna see your comment. it’s for quick one-offs that you’re okay with other people overhearing, but really is only made for one person. they’re like a public dm

reblog with text: an outside voice. you’re getting up on a stage in town square and entertaining people. make sure it’s funny or insightful— bottom line, add something new to the conversation. you should use this the least

general rules of thumb: 

Finally real advice for new users. This is a solid guide for how to make the transition from Twitter to Tumblr.

In particular, artists need you to reblog. A reblog helps them get seen. A like doesn’t help them at all.

And I would like to add image descriptions and audio/video transcriptions can really help increase reblogs. Please remember to make your posts as accessible as possible.

most of this is fine but I’m completely sick and tired of people saying you can’t comment on your own blog unless you’re sure it’s something funny or insightful, and if in doubt not to do this and use their ‘inside voice’ instead.

the website is designed for people to reblog and talk to each other. people have invented the whole misuse of the tag system out of some weird repression which is part of the same trend as not reblogging at all.

please, go back to using your outside voice, folks. speak freely on your blogs. don’t feel pressured into mumbling under your breath because the cool kids made you fee like what you have to say wasn’t important enough. this is supposed to be the place where you can be yourself.

the reason people used to be scolded for commenting was because posts used to be indented for each subsequent reblog, eventually turning the post into

||||something

|||||that looked

||||||like

|||||||this

which obviously annoyed the crap out of everyone. posts generally don’t look like that anymore except on certain blog styles, but the stigma against commenting remains because this is the social anxiety site and also because we all like to have strong opinions on who gets to talk.

seriously, comment on everything you want to, especially if you have something nice to say, or more context to add, or a different perspective to share. it can lead to interesting conversations, and all the best posts on here are a collaborative effort. if people don’t like your addition, they can just block you or reblog an earlier version of the post, or make fools of themselves trying to fight with you and then you can block them. it’s completely fine.

barbie day

It's a unique type of frustration when you agree that a character is deeply flawed but other people keep missing what's actually wrong with them and assigning them new flaws that they don't even have it's like free my man he did none of that. He did a bunch of other shit tho.

male gaze is not 'when person look sexy' or 'when misogynist make film'

death of the author is not 'miku wrote this'

I don't think you have to read either essay to grasp the basic concepts

death of the author means that once a work is complete, what the author believes it to mean is irrelevant to critical analysis of what's in the text. it means when analysing the meaning of a text you prioritise reader interpretation above author intention, and that an interpretation can hold valid meaning even if it's utterly unintentional on the part of the person who created the thing. it doesn't mean 'i can ignore that the person who made this is a bigot' - it may in fact often mean 'this piece of art holds a lot of bigoted meanings that the author probably wasn't intentionally trying to convey but did anyway, and it's worth addressing that on its own terms regardless of whether the author recognises it's there.' it's important to understand because most artists are not consciously and vocally aware of all the possible meanings of their art, and because art is communal and interpretive. and because what somebody thinks they mean, what you think somebody means, and what a text is saying to you are three entirely different things and it's important to be able to tell the difference.

male gaze is a cinematographic theory on how films construct subjectivity (ie who you identify with and who you look at). it argues that film language assumes that the watcher is a (cis straight white hegemonically normative) man, and treats men as relatable subjects and women as unknowable objects - men as people with interior lives and women as things to be looked at or interacted with but not related to. this includes sexual objectification and voyeurism, but it doesn't mean 'finding a lady sexy' or 'looking with a sexual lens', it means the ways in which visual languages strip women of interiority and encourage us to understand only men as relatable people. it's important to understand this because not all related gaze theories are sexual in nature and if you can't get a grip on male gaze beyond 'sexual imagery', you're really going to struggle with concepts of white or abled or cis subjectivities.

:whispers: also Death of the Author means you have to exercise self-criticism and recognise the bias YOU as the audience bring to interpreting a piece of work. Yes, your reading is valid. But to what extent are you extrapolating from your own experiences, privileges & lacks of privilege, past traumas, etc.? How might this affect your interpretation of the text?

More people need to understand that part, too.

sometimes they spar :3c

Let me tell you, there's a queer club night in the UK called Gal Pals that caters exclusively to queer women and NBs and only plays music by women and when It's Raining Men came on last time you'd have thought the crowd was full of middle aged housewives. A banger is a banger is a banger, you just gotta let the music go innit

this goes both ways btw. i cannot articulate the confusion i felt at my first pride as i watched hundreds of half naked drunk gay men scream-sing along to the lyrics "this woman is my destiny" from shut up and dance by walk the moon

Controversial Character Tournament Round 1: Viren from The Dragon Prince

I love how we got the introduction to TREE LAW a few weeks ago, when that story went viral on Twitter about the person whose neighbor illegally had all of their trees chopped down because they wanted a city view, so that we would understand what was happening when Universal thought it would be funny to deprive strikers of shade by "trimming" city-owned trees to the point of destruction.

This is an excellent example of organically teaching concepts without relying on tedious tutorials or forced, immersion-breaking expository cutscenes.

A++++ game design. 10/10, no notes.

That tree law post a few weeks ago was the morning news playing in the background of the opening scenes of a disaster movie.

Right, here's something new! This is the novel Sacred And Terrible Air by Robert Kurvitz, the writer behind Disco Elysium, set in the same alternate universe. The original is written in Estonian, and there's been talk of licensing a translation, but that was supposed to happen in 2020, and given the time lapse since then and other events, it looks increasingly unlikely. So earlier this year, two fan translations dropped! As the fans involved say, definitely support an official translation if it happens, but if it doesn't happen, at least there's this. One translation is by a hired translator, and one is by Group Ibex as MTL that went through iterative edits. And something that's very interesting to me given how much time I've spent wallowing in the danmei pit, I couldn't identify which one i definitely liked BETTER. So rather than wrestling decision paralysis, here we are!

Dos-a-dos time, babey! I did one of these in VERY small size for binderary, but other than that, I think the only time I've done this is for my sixfold/fourteenfold experiments? It's very pleasing to have one in my hands that's so substantial. There's 350ish pages on either side of this, and I love it a lot!

It does feature one easter egg that's a special treat for me. When I was trying to pull together the front matter and scrounging for info about the original Estonian novel, google translate gave me some... interesting takes on the title, and I took my favorite (holy and terrible smell) and tucked it inside my endpapers. To build on the stack of in-jokes that will be inscrutable to anyone who stumbles on this book later, I scented the spines of the books with perfume, 'the sea foams milk,' both because the scent felt right for this and because the name felt thematically appropriate

I had a very fun time with this! The formatting took more time than I expected, but the actual binding was nice and relaxing. I don't cover many covers with paper, but this paper was so PERFECT for the story, and then I got excited about matching the endpapers to covers, and the bookcloth spine was a flawless color match, and this all came together so nicely! It was a great little project, and I had a great time making it :D