I regret almost nothing.
Last updated 8 August 2023; newest works in bold. Anything not yet archived can be found under my fic tag, and fragments can be found under the WIP tag.
My AO3 works are locked to registered users only due to AI scraping. If you need an account, please feel free to hit me up for an invite code while I have them to spare.
Your daily dose of cat memes
The Pallas’s cat has the densest fur of any cat in the world, and also the shortest legs relative to its body size.
BBC Earth
Do you ever write out a multi-paragraph rebuttal to something and then think "actually I do not want to get involved in this" and close it
Great news everyone. There was a kitten wandering in the drive thru at work and my inner warrior cats kid tried to be a hero and capture him.
I have now suffered multiple puncture wounds and have to go to the emergency room.
Me: I shall become his mother and gain his trust
Me talking to an animal control officer five minutes later: he is a nasty horrid little boy and I am bleeding heavily
Animal control officer on the phone: So he’s in your car with you?
Me: Um. It’s his car now and he’s very mad at me.
Second animal control officer: oh you captured him and got him in your car? He’s friendly?
Me, my right hand completely wrapped in paper towels: wouldn’t say that
Urgent Care Nurse: Wow it’s strange he managed to get you so many times.
Me: I uh. Did not let go.
You vibe as someone prone to toxic relationships
People on tumblr will just say anything huh.
Oh cmon, "he hurt me a lot cause i couldn't let go" absolutely has double interpretation.
Me, holding a cat (of unknown gender) as it repeatedly digs its little teeth deep into my flesh: Is this… too… yuri?
This website is free
@Fanfic writers:
My friend send me this link, is a series on a profile on Ao3 (tumblr) that has different tutorials to insert things to fanfics via html code, I thought I would share bc it’s really cool
Lists of tutorials:
This is a tutorial/live example on how to make large images fit on mobile browsers but remain normal size on desktop browsers.
This is a tutorial/live example on how to mimic the look of letters, fliers, and stationery (as well as other forms of written media) without using images. For all your epistolary fic needs.
This is a tutorial/live example on how to create a "Choose Your Own Adventure" fic. While this has been explained before (see here), this particular tutorial shows you how to use a work skin to hide the next parts from the reader until they click through to get to them.
This is a live example of how an author can create linked footnotes in their work with only a little bit of HTML and no workskins required. This is best viewed by clicking "Entire Work". While I've included the actual coding in bold and italic once you click "Hide Creator's Style", there's a more detailed explanation here.
This a tutorial/live example on how to have text change or appear once a cursor is hovering over it. Helpful for pop-up spoilers, language translations, quick author's notes, etc.
Anonymous on tumblr: do you have a skin that would mimic the author’s notes and review/kudos buttons section from the end of a fic? the desired effect being that the fic could go on after the “end” of the fic, so after the author’s notes and review/kudos buttons
Here's a tutorial/live example to do just that, with some of the buttons actually functioning. I'll explain more inside!
This is a tutorial/live example on how to align images to the left or right of the screen and have text wrap around them.
This is a tutorial/live example on how to mimic email windows on AO3 without the need to use images.
This is a tutorial/live example on how to mimic iOS text messages on AO3 without the need to use images. There's also a chapter on how to have emojis displayed on AO3 as well.
Bored with the default page dividers? This is a tutorial/live example on how customize your page dividers with no images needed (though I do show you how you could use images if you wanted to do such a thing).
This is a live example how to make invisible text that can only be seen by highlighting the text. Tutorial is included in text, and you can always leave comments about questions you may have.
MOBILE USERS: Sadly, this probably won't work for you, since highlighting in a mobile browser is different than web. I've tried correcting this, but have yet to find a solution.
Original coding and design is from layouttest. I make no claims for it, just tweaked it so it will work on AO3.
This is a live example of my AO3 skin that allows the author to recreate the look of lined notebook paper in their work. To learn more about it, you can find the tutorial here.
This is a live example of my AO3 skin that allows the author to recreate the look of sticky notes (aka Post-Its) in their fic. To learn more about it, you can find the tutorial here.
This is a live example of my AO3 skin that allows the author to recreate the look of Deadpool's thinking boxes in their fic. To learn more about it, you can find the tutorial here.
This is a live example of my AO3 skin that allows the author to recreate the look of a newspaper article in their work. To learn more about it, you can find the tutorial here.
This is really useful and I'll always reblog it.
I wish my cat had a phone so I could text him while I’m at work and tell him I love him and I miss him and he could send back blurry pictures of random things, incomprehensible gibber texts, and audio recordings of his crinkle ball
ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1951) Dir. Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson And Hamilton Luske
topics can be about a character, relationship, show, season, episode, movie, books…whatever you want!
so some news about AI. It seems Discord is apparently just. going to unconsentually add Clyde AI to servers in a slow roll out. The way they are doing this is rather than how we initially suspected he would show up as an option via the integrations tab on server settings, it appears that he is apparently being added into servers as a user who is part of the server that the admin would have to manually kick. He cannot be banned, but we can kick him repeatedly. The issue is it's unclear if there will be a greeting message for when Clyde arrives into servers and he will attempt to infiltrate again and again. Small servers this is easy to spot, big servers this is an obvious issue of sifting through who is in your server.
if you see this man in your server kill him
Important to note this has only been seen so far in a friend server and I have only seen it in one server so far. Community servers might be different it is simply something we do not know yet.
Here is an article from Discord about this thag updated about an hour ago
Aside from that I was able to go into permissions and make it so nobody in my server could interact with Clyde. I still do not know what information Clyde and by extension OpenAI has from what it might have taken from my server to “make Clyde better” there was no warning and no message despite how discord had pitched this. It says in this article that it will notify users but Discord did not do that at all.
Fuck AI
Another update! You can only kick Clyde in mobile if you are a server mod and you have to go through server settings and then members and click on clyde and then block!
If you want to let Discord know how bad this is, go to their feedback page and post a topic.
This has to violate some privacy laws- and definitely some copyright laws if the bot learns from writers- not to mention EULA laws.
Regardless, go yell at Discord to not do something that opens them up to a wide range of lawsuits.
The workaround for banning the bot doesn't work anymore, but thanks to a reddit user, banning it via number ID DOES work, and I tested it myself to be sure!
Happy Bot Hunting, everyone!
My favorite thing about Eliot Spencer is how invested he gets in whatever job/role he’s doing for the con. He has to play a caterer? He will give you a gourmet menu and poach some pears for dessert. He has to play a minor league baseball player? He will hit a home run and he will be excited when the local deli names a sandwich after him. He has to play a police officer? He will make Hardison respond to a call that’s nearby because there might be kids in that house. Eliot commits.
that’s so interesting because he is ALWAYS freaking out at how deeply Hardison commits to his characters.
I think there are key differences in how Eliot and Hardison over-invest in their roles, which is why Eliot fusses at Hardison about it without equating it to what he does himself. (Note: I’m focusing on original series only here.)
Eliot gets over-absorbed because he gets really into what his character does (chef, baseball player, etc.) and loses focus on what the con is trying to accomplish, which isn’t helpful but tends to add authenticity to his individual role. Eliot’s main risk is getting so immersed that he forgets it’s just a con and tries to be that persona rather than doing just enough to fool the mark. He may have some broad-strokes backstory in his head in case someone asks, but his main way to sell his character is just to play the role to the hilt in the current moment. (Prior to the team, he didn’t have a hacker or do long cons, so his main grifting option was to keep things simple, play the role, improv as needed, and hope no one asked too many questions before he finished the job. And be prepared to punch his way out if they did.)
Hardison doesn’t forget he’s playing a role. The part he overdoes is building an “interesting” (often meaning complicated) role and tending to over-act, which tends reduce the authenticity of his performance. The obvious example is “The Ice Man Job,” but it’s the same thing with the overall con in “The Gold Job”–he’s thought out every backstory detail and how to deliver it to the mark, but he lays on the perfectly constructed backstory too hard without reading when to dial back the complexity or exposition. (Prior to the team, it’s implied that he did most of his criminal activity on-line rather than in-person, so the exhaustive planning and documentation was his practical grifting approach.)
If you assign Eliot to be a chef, he’s gonna be a chef. He’ll get distracted from the con by the fact that they’re running out of onions and he just can’t get the flavor of this sauce quite right, but everyone around him will believe he’s a chef. If you ask him where he went to culinary school, he’ll glare at you and maybe throw out some sparse details (trusting Hardison to back it up if anyone tries to check it)–dig too far, and he’s probably gonna be relying on dodging questions or having Hardison in his ear feeding him backstory details.
If you assign Hardison to be a chef, he’s going to have thought out and documented every detail of his backstory, researched his character’s favorite recipes so he can discuss them in detail, etc. You ask him something–anything–about his character and he’ll answer in such detail that your head will spin. But if you tell him the kitchen’s down to its last onion and ask what he wants you to do about that, he’ll be caught completely by surprise and flummoxed about what to do (unless Eliot is in his ear telling him who to send on a supply run to and what menu items to scratch in the meantime).
@onyxbird, I love this distinction, thank you!! What I’m hearing from your lovely meta is that Eliot gets so stressed about Hardison overcompensating. if you want to lie, stick as close to the truth as possible, don’t give out too many explanations, and act casual. BE casual. But Hardison has to constantly prove how smart he is, how prepared he is, how well he fits in–so he automatically stands out. Online you need receipts all the time, but in real life you can trust non verbal cues.
Can I point out?
Oh no
The difference is Hardison is just making up characters. It’s fiction to him, here’s what a millionaire diamond smuggler would be like, here’s a fun adventure story to tell.
But Eliot is discovering different people he could have been. In another life he could have been the minor league baseball star, the country singer, the chef, the gym teacher. And just for a little whole he gets to be that other person, maybe a better person, maybe a happier person. Of course he gets wrapped up in it, and of course it’s hard for him to have to stop being that version of himself. What if things had been different. What if he hadn’t done what he’d done. What if he could just be this instead.
boy math is when men think women making up 30% of a group means women are the majority
"I cannot tell you about the mushrooms"
"So which one of you is the ballgown and which one of you is the fractal"
There also needs to be a button for “this is the 5000th time I’ve read your fic because I’m having a horrible day and this is the only thing in the world that always brings me happiness.”
good news: there is!
Support the folks posting work on comment-ebabled sites!
I love when people leave comments on my old stuff.
Its like passive income but it actually works to make me happy.
Honestly though, comments like that are gold to me. I love to write and a comment telling me that something I’ve done has improved someone’s life even in a small way? That’s impact. We live in societies that tell us over and over we have no value and nothing we do is ever good enough. So for someone to post a comment telling us that we improved their lives with our stories? That tells us our effort had value. We writers set out to improve the world in tiny ways, offering random acts of kindness in the form of a few minutes’ entertainment, and comments tell us we’ve achieved that little goal.
You can totally come back and leave a comment under that comment a year later! I’m glad to know you are still enjoying it and want to know if you’re doing okay.
There is no higher compliment than a re-read. The longer the time that has passed, the higher it is. It means a story resonated and stayed with someone.
