Do you have any insights into the different candidates for the upcoming otw elections?
--
Not as yet.
…good morning.
…goodnight.
…goodbye.
…where it hurts.
…where it doesn’t hurt.
…on a falling tear.
…to shut them up.
…in secrecy.
…in public.
…desperately.
…in joy.
…in grief.
…discreetly.
…casually.
…passionately.
…lazily.
…to distract.
…as encouragement.
…for luck.
…on a scar.
…on a place of insecurity.
…in a rush of adrenaline.
…in relief.
…in danger.
…as a ‘yes’.
…as an apology.
…as a suggestion.
…as a lie.
…as a promise.
…as comfort.
…after a small rejection.
…to wake up.
…forcefully.
…to pretend.
…to gain something.
…to give up control.
…without a motive.
…because they’re running out of time.
…because time’s run out.
…because the world is ending.
…because the world is saved.
…out of pride.
…out of greed.
…out of lust.
…out of anger.
…out of envy or jealousy.
…out of spite.
…out of habit.
…out of necessity.
…out of love.
Hello to the new people! Glad to see you all here. I am making this post to pin so that people know what topics I am currently working on based on things I have been tagged in and asks that I have seen. I also have hyperlinked the essays that I have done so far so that when you ask you can also see what I have already written.
Upcoming
What is Sports PR and What Does it Entail?
Valtteri Bottas Mercedes to Alfa Romeo Analysis
Charles Leclerc Sauber to Ferrari PR Transformation
Ferrari PR and the Driver Personal Brand (Team vs Individual Driver Loyalty)
Why F1 Isn't Pushing Logan Sargeant To Gain Attention in the American Market (Or are they?)
The ways fandoms do and do not influence Sports PR
Written
The root of Max Verstappen's PR problem
RBR PR History and the Brazil 22 missteps
RBR and the use of Daniel Ricciardo
PR if RBR were to Replace Checo with Daniel
Why RBR Has its 1st Driver Setup PR wise
Could Max Adopt a Fernando Type PR Strategy
The Anti-X Driver Strategy Pitfalls
The Silver War PR
Potential Aston Martin PR if Fernando Alonso is a WDC Contender
George Russell and the Complexities of PR Even for Relatively Neutral Figures Part 1 and Part 2
McLaren PR Analysis (History, Daniel Ricciardo, Lando Morris, Oscar Piastri and Likely Tactics for the 2023 Season)
Feel free to keep asking questions, I love reading them and I don't mind revisiting different areas of older topics that we hadn't really discussed nor do I mind getting new questions on new topics! Please do also let me know if you click one of the links and it either doesn't open or shows you the wrong post so that I can fix it.
To summarize: 1. Get uBlock Origin and make sure it's updated to the latest version. 2. Click on the gear icon to get to the dashboard, go to "Filter lists", and make sure that "uBlock filters - Quick fixes" is up to date
Repeat those steps any time you get another popup (google and uBlock are having an arms race right now so it might stop working at any moment), and if you have any more problems, read the reddit thread for troubleshooting advice
I WANT FOR AO3 TO HAVE A FILTER TO TAKE OUT ALL THE FICS I'VE ALREADY READ CUS MAN I'VE READ A LOT
I present to you a - probably quite incomplete, I’m sure I’m missing a lot of speech sounds - reference list and a bit of a guideline for the different ways one can describe the sounds your characters make whilst writing smut. I’ll definitely be referring to it, because I sometimes get stuck on exactly how to describe a particular noise. (aka, “he can’t groan again, he just groaned last paragraph”)
Sounds (noun, both independently and describing speech): breath/breathe, gasp, moan, groan, pant, whimper, whine, shout, yelp, hiss, grunt, cry, scream, shriek, sob, growl, curse, sound, sigh, hum, noise, squeak, snarl, howl, roar, mewl, wail, choke, keen, purr
Sounds (noun, describing speech): rasp, husk, drawl, plea, murmur, whisper, beg
Descriptors (adjective): loud, hushed, quiet, low, high, high-pitched, little, tiny, soft, deep, unrestrained, restrained, strained, breathy, rough, sudden, short, drawn-out, sharp, harsh, hard, thick, smooth, thin, heavy, impassioned, insistent, hungry, passionate, repeated, filthy, debauched, sweet, slow, deliberate, guttural, languid, surprised, husky, distracted, happy, pleased, satisfied, wordless, cut-off, bitten-off, contented, hoarse, extended, long, depraved, aching, choked, strangled, broken, helpless, shuddering, shaky, trembling, urgent, needy, desperate, wanton, shattered, pained, eager
Combine a descriptor and a sound for best effect - for example, “needy moan,” “pleased hum,” or “sudden scream.” You can even use two: “low, rough grunt,” “sweet little cry,” “desperate, filthy noise,” as long as you don’t repeat a word that means the same thing, unless you really want to emphasize it. Avoiding repetition is pretty key here. You don’t usually want to say “hushed, quiet gasp” except on rare occasions when it’s very important how soft the sound was.
Use your own common sense, as well; some sounds and descriptors don’t generally work well together. “Deliberate shriek” probably wouldn’t work well, and neither would “languid grunt,” but again, this is all very situational - play around! Have fun.
Feel free to add to my lists, use for your reference or pass them around. It would be fun to see a randomized generator made, too, I’m just too lazy to do it myself. ;)
Steve's choices / Bucky's lack thereof
tape casette recorders are compatible with literally every. single. thing. im out here living in 2095.
I've been downloading a lot of fanfic lately for personal archival purposes, and I figured I'd share how I do it in case it's useful to anyone else (and so I have it written down in case I forget!).
There are lots of different ways to save fic, including the file download built into AO3, but I find that this gives me the nicest ebooks in the most efficient way.
(Under a cut cause long.)
Download Calibre: https://calibre-ebook.com/ or (clickable link).
Calibre is about the best ebook management and control program around and it's free. You can get it for windows, mac, and linux or download and run it from a portable storage device (I'm using a windows PC).
Install it and run it. It's gonna ask you where you want to put your library. Dealer's choice on this one. I recommend your internal drive (and then back up to external/cloud), but YMMV.
If you want to keep fanfic separate from the rest of your ebooks, you can create multiple libraries. I do, and my libraries are creatively named 'Books' and 'Fic'.
Customise Calibre
Now you're gonna install some plugins. Go to Preferences on the menu bar (far right), click its little side arrow, then choose 'Get plugins to enhance Calibre'.
At the top right of the box that pops up is 'Filter by name'. The plugins you want to get are:
EpubMerge
FanFicFare
Install them one at a time. It will ask you where you want them. I recommend 'the main bar' and 'the main bar when device is attached' (should be selected by default). When you're done, close and reopen Calibre.
The plugins you just installed should appear on the far right of the toolbar, but if you can't see one or both of them, fear not! Just click Preferences (the button, not the side arrow), then Toolbars and Menus (in the 'Interface' section) then choose the main toolbar from the drop down menu. That will let you add and remove things - I suggest getting rid of Donate, Connect Share, and News. That'll leave you room to add your new plugins to the menu bar.
(Do donate, though, if you can afford it. This is a hell of a program.)
Now you're ready to start saving your fave fanfic!
Saving fanfic
I'll go through both methods I use, but pick whatever makes you happy (and/or works best for what you're downloading).
ETA: if the fics are locked you can't easily use FanFicFare. Skip down to the next section. (It does ask for a username/password if you try and get a locked fic, but it's never worked for me - I had to edit the personal.ini in the configuration options, and even then it skips locked fics in a series.)
Calibre and FanFicFare
You can work from entirely within Calibre using the FanFicFare plugin. Just click its side arrow and pick from the menu. The three main options I use are download from URL, make anthology from a webpage, and update story/anthology.
Download from URL: pick Download from URL (or just click the FanFicFare button) and paste the fic's URL into the box (if you've copied it to your clipboard, it will be there automatically). You can do more than one fic at a time - just paste the URLs in one after the other (each on a new line). When you're done, make sure you have the output format you want and then go.
Make Anthology Epub From Web Page: if you want a whole series as a single ebook, pick Anthology Options, then Make Anthology Epub From Webpage. Paste the series URL into the box (if you've copied it to your clipboard, it will be there automatically), click okay when it displays the story URLs, check your output format and go.
Update series/anthology: if you downloaded an unfinished fic or series and the author updates, you can automatically add the update to your ebook. Just click on the ebook in Calibre, open the FanFicFare menu using its side arrow, and select either Update Existing FanFic Books or Anthology Options, Update Anthology epub. Okay the URLs and/or the output format, then go.
Any fic downloaded using FanFicFare will be given an automatically generated Calibre cover. You can change the cover and the metadata by right clicking on the title and picking edit metadata. You can do it individually, to change the cover or anything else specific to that ebook, or in bulk, which is great for adding a tag or series name to multiple fics. Make sure you generate a new cover if you change the metadata.
Browser plugins, Calibre, and EpubMerge
You can also use a browser addon/plugin to download from AO3. I use FicLab (Firefox/Chrome), but I believe there's others. FicLab: https://www.ficlab.com/ (clickable link).
FicLab puts a 'Save' button next to fic when you're looking at a list of fics, eg search results, series page, author's work list etc. Just click the 'Save' button, adjust the settings, and download the fic. You can also use it from within the fic by clicking the toolbar icon and running it.
FicLab is great if you're reading and come across a fic you want to save. It also generates a much nicer (IMO) cover than Calibre.
You can add the downloaded fic to Calibre (just drag and drop) or save it wherever. The advantage to dropping it into Calibre is that all your fic stays nicely organised, you can adjust the metadata, and you can easily combine fics.
Combining fics
You can combine multiple fics into an anthology using EpubMerge. This is great if you want a single ebook of an author's short fics, or their AUs, or their fics in a specific ship that aren't part of a series. (It only works on epubs, so if you've saved as some other format, you'll need to convert using Calibre's Convert books button.)
Select the ones you want to combine, click EpubMerge, adjust the order if necessary, and go.
The cover of the merged epubs will be the cover of the first fic in the merge list. You can add a new cover by editing the metadata and generating a new cover.
Combing with FanFicFare
You can also combine nonseries fics using FanFicFare's Make Anthology ePub from URLs option by pasting the individual fic URLs into the box.
Where there's more than a few fics, I find it easier to download them with FicLab and combine them with EpubMerge, and I prefer keeping both the combined and the individual versions of fic, but again YMMV.
Reconverting and Converting
Once I'm done fussing, I reconvert the ebook to the same format, to ensure everything is embedded in the file. Is this necessary? YMMV, but it's a quick and easy step that does zero harm.
If you don't want your final ebook to be an epub, just convert it to whatever format you like.
Disclaimers
Save fanfic for your own personal enjoyment/offline reading/safeguarding against the future. If it's not your fic, don't distribute it, or upload it to other sites, or otherwise be a dick. Especially if the author deletes it. Respect their wishes and their rights.
This may work on other fanfic sites, eg FFN, but I've never tried so I don't know.
If you download a fic, do leave the author a kudo or a comment; you'll make them so happy.
This is how I save fic. I'm not pretending it's the only way, or even the best way! This is just the way that works for me.
So if you lived in a society where you had to secure your communication in order to be yourself around others, here are the apps that could help you do that.
I wish that ao3 had an option to filter warnings (and tbh certain authors) out like I will never ever want to read it and just seeing it puts me off so much that often I end up closing my browser because that content upsets me so much lmao
A side blog dedicated to all those cool info posts i find
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