I cannot emphasize enough how much you need to read thoroughly through the terms of any publication before you send your writing to them. It is mandatory that you know and understand what rights you’re giving away when you’re trying to get published.
Just the other day I was emailed by a relatively new indie journal looking for writers. They made it very clear that they did not pay writers for their work, so I figured I’d probably be passing, but I took a look at their Copyright policy out of curiosity and it was a nightmare. They wanted “non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide license and right to use, display, reproduce, distribute, and publish the Work on the internet and on or in any medium” (that’s copy and pasted btw) and that was the first of 10 sections on their Copyright agreement page. Yikes. That’s exactly the type of publishing nightmare you don’t want to be trapped in.
Most journals will ask for “First North American Rights” or a variation on “First Rights” which operate under the assumption that all right revert back to you and they only have the right to be the first publishers of the work. That is what you need to be looking for because you do want to retain all the rights to your work.
You want all rights to revert back to you upon publication in case you, say, want to publish it again in the future or use it for a bookmark or post it on your blog, or anything else you might want to do with the writing you worked hard on. Any time a publisher wants more than that, be very suspicious. Anyone who wants to own your work forever and be able to do whatever they want with it without your permission is not to be trusted. Anyone who wants all that and wants you to sign away your right to ever be paid for your work is running a scam.
Protect your writing. It’s not just your intellectual property, it’s also your baby. You worked hard on it. You need to do the extra research to protect yourself so that a scammer (or even a well meaning start up) doesn’t steal you work right from under you nose and make money off of it.
Exclusive publishing rights have to have a set time frame! Do not agree to anything that doesn’t clearly state “up to five years from signature” or something like that.
What if the publisher goes defunct? What if they get bought by another publisher who doesn’t care to promote or publish your work? You still can’t to anything with it, you don’t own it anymore!
For people with anxiety about filing taxes, here’s what things that happen when you make a mistake on your tax return:
- it gets corrected
- you get a letter in the mail either asking for some additional information or a letter showing the adjustment
- you pay the amount (there’s options for payment plans too!) or get a refund
Things that do nothappen
- you’re “in trouble”
- you are charged with fraud
- you go to jail
I know that most people are probably just joking/exaggerating when they say a mistake on their return means they get thrown in jail but when I worked with the public I always would encounter people who believed that would happen and they would be panicking about it. So I like to put this out there every year because if I can even prevent one person from feeling that way, it’s worth it
Annual reblog of this important information.
The thingy above where you sign your tax form says that you’ve filled it out to the best of your ability. “Sir, I am a dumbass” is 100% a valid defense
when fantasy books describe the cloth of Quant Farmpeople’s clothing as “homespun” or “rough homespun”
“homespun” as opposed to what??? EVERYTHING WAS SPUN AT HOME
they didn’t have fucking spinning factories, your pseudo-medieval farmwife is lucky if she has a fucking spinning wheel, otherwise she’s spinning every single thread her family wears on a drop spindle NO ONE ELSE WAS DOING THE SPINNING unless you go out of your way to establish a certain baseline of industrialization in your fake medieval fantasy land.
and “rough”??? lol just because it’s farm clothes? bitch cloth was valuable as fuck because of the labor involved ain’t no self-respecting woman gonna waste fiber and ALL THAT FUCKING TIME spinning shitty yarn to weave into shitty cloth she’s gonna make GOOD QUALITY SHIT for her family, and considering that women were doing fiber prep/spinning/weaving for like 80% of their waking time up until very recently in world history, literally every woman has the skills necessary to produce some TERRIFYINGLY GOOD QUALITY THREADS
come to think of it i’ve never read a fantasy novel that talks about textile production at all??? like it’s even worse than the “where are all the farms” problem like where are people getting the cloth if no one’s doing the spinning and weaving??? kmart???
THANK U
pro tip: what do you say instead? I gotcha.
In Ye Olde Medieval Fantasy Dayes, everybody’s layer against skin (shirt tunic or shift) is gonna be linen. it’s almost never wool except stockings or hose (like pant legs). Say “undyed cloth” if you wanna make them sound simple and peasanty. Comment on how you can tell it wasn’t made for them (the fit is off) and has had probably eight owners before.
Outer clothing is gonna be either wool, or a blend called Linsey-woolsey, and again you could say Undyed, but dyes are not only common they are CHEAP and relatively easy. (innerwear is often left undyed or bleached to white because it gets washed to heck- like beatenby a wooden stick on a stone by the river- and dye would just fade out a lot so why bother. Ths is also why innerwear has ties, rarely buttons, unless you are so rich you have people doing your washing delicately because they’re hired to do only that. Buttons would get broken in the washing)
A poorer person is often seen in “russet”, a kind of rusty orange-brown color. Purple was famously reserved for royalty in many times and places, but its also just hard to do. We see a lot more magentas and fuschias for nobles or common middle class folks than we ever see of Purple- and not many of those. Deep blue was more likely on very rich people, but a light blue was common for even poorer folks. Yellow was popular with everyone, and so was green, and many shades of reds, including the color we now call orange (they did not- this is why redheads are called redheads and not orangeheads). Your vision of everyone in very drab brown and mud colors is from Hollywood- most medieval-ren folks have clothing with colors. Sometimes garish colors, to the modern eye. Traffic cone Orange and acid green was a popular combo in the 13th century.
Examplemedieval dye colors. Lots of yellows and orangey-browns. Woad gave a range of blues that are basically what we think of as “denim colors.” There were purples - royal purple was a specific color from a specific source - but if you mix wine-dye and woad-dye, you get purpleish dye. (Getting the color to stay that way may be more difficult. Everything worn by peasants fades; they couldn’t afford the really good fixatives.)
Plum, dusty purple, lavender, burgundy, chestnut, blood red
Walnut, chocolate, tan, linen, pale apricot, spice, dark spice
Peasant clothes were often more colorful than the nobility. Nobles could afford bright, clear colors that peasants couldn’t - but one mark of wealth was being able to buy all 4-8 yards of fabric for an outfit at the same time. So nobles would have a full outfit, including hat, stockings, even shoes, of one type of fabric (with ornamentation of a contrasting type, and as many buttons or bits of silver as they could get away with wearing), while peasants would often have a shirt, bodice or jerkin, skirt or pants, stockings, and hat of all different colors.
Dying or re-dying any one piece of clothing was within most of their cost limits - dye itself is cheap; fixatives cost. But boiling your shirt for an hour with onion skins in a copper pot would re-color the fading fabric.
And yet more medieval dye colour samples:
While centered on medieval Europe for the finer points, this is broadly true for any clothing needs
My primary fandom has undergone a lot of changes over the last few years and there is nothing that I mourn more than deleted fic.
A few years ago, I started downloading and archiving a good chunk of the fic that I read so that I could preserve it. I’m up to over 8.5k of fic (which I honestly don’t know whether to be impressed or highly disturbed with myself). Here’s some tricks that I’ve discovered.
DownloadCalibre. It’s a fanfolk’s favorite application for organizing and collecting digital works. Here’s how my library looks:
Calibre makes organization such a breeze. You can create virtual libraries, so each of your fandoms are separate, which makes searching easier. I’ve downloaded all of my purchased books from Amazon into Calibre, for example, using a plugin that inserts my DRM into the ebook and therefore makes them portable, and have a separate library for them. Mobi, Amazon, Epub, PDF, HTML are all supported.
There are a few plug-ins for calibre that makes a fanfolk’s life a dream. The absolute-must-have is Fanficfare. FanFicFare is a tool for downloading fanfiction and original stories from various supported sites into ebook form (epub, mobi, html, txt). Supported sites include Archive Of Our OwnandFanfiction.net, as well as hundreds of other fandom specific fic sites (mugglenetandscarves&coffee for example). Unfortunately, Tumblr, WattPad, deviantART, and Livejournal are NOT supported. FanFicFare also does not support or create PDF.
Fanficfare is extremely easy to use. Simply search for the plugin, download and activate, and follow the directions to configure the default file to convert, save usernames and passwords (helpful for sites which have age restrictions), and click on buttons to tell the program the format to download and how to manage covers and metadata. You can then download stories individually or as an anthology (I have not figured out how to separate an anthology once downloaded, and I decided a few months ago that I much prefer the “series” way of organizing that AO3 uses rather than combining them all). WIPs can be updated and new chapters added with just a simple click.
The second plugin that I use frequently is Generate Cover which allows me to insert any fanart as the cover for epubs/mobi. For PDFs, the cover is there in calibre but not attached to the file.
I used to use Epub Merge/Epub Split to join separate chapters downloaded from LJ as epubs, but since I’ve changed my methods, I don’t use it as much. Still, it’s easy to use.
Of course, Archive Of Our Own has its own download option which makes it one of the easiest sites to preserve stories for personal reading. Simply click on the download button and choose between epub, mobi and PDF formats. I don’t actually like the default format look and from what I can see, the metadata (besides name and author) is not preserved on download, so I download epubs using Fanficfare. YMMV.
Downloading ebooks from AO3 or using Fanficfare will probably save 80-90% fic, but you’ll probably run into fic on unsupported sites, particularly from livejournal or tumblr. Here’s some of my techniques for getting those fic.
My current method is to use Safari as my browser and use “Reader View.” I then print to save as a PDF. If there are multiple parts, I then use Preview on my Mac to combine all of the parts into one pdf.
Option 2 uses two chrome extensions: Boom! which removes extra forms - including comments, headers or random graphics, leaving just the text. I then use EasyReader to format it, and then save it as a PDF. I had problems with the italics and bold getting removed from the PDF and couldn’t fix it, so I’ve switched to the Safari method above.
Other methods that may or may not work for you.
Instapaper is a simple tool for grabbing pages of the internet and saving them to an account for online reading. It also allows for downloading multiple pages as one epub. Unfortunately, it can have problems handling LJ and tumblr themes, leading to wonky borders. It’s biggest limitation is that you can’t rearrange your links, and so therefore must save and move each chapter in order - which can be frustrating for a long story. I’m having an easier time of downloading as a PDF as above and merging.
iReader. Another chrome extension to enhance the readability. When you print it, it added on a footer with the URL and title. Unfortunately, for me, it has a tendency to split sentences across pages and therefore renders them unreadable, but I know several people who use this plug-in who don’t have that issue.
JustRead. Chrome extension. Removes styling, comments and ads. Also adds a date and an author field (which can be helpful when downloading fic from a community). Unfortunately, it also tends to be the buggiest and the most unpredictable in its output.
dotEPUB. Converts any webpage into an epub or mobi format with just a click of the plugin. It’s clean and functional, although it tends not to be pretty and the website adds a standard (ugly) cover to every ebook (I hear you can change this; I haven’t figured out how). For multichapter fic, it has to be used with a plug-in like EPubMerge.
I forgot about FicSave.xyz, which is a website where you can enter in the URL and it converts it to ePUB or Text, which I’ve used several times, but I overall like FanFicFare plugin better. It is slow and tedious with multiple chapters and tends to stall out, but it can be used with livejournal. I’ve had much less success with tumblr.
Squee!book still works? Most of the time it stalls out for me, but if you can get it to work, it’ll combine multiple pages into one story and you can add cover art. It was designed specifically to work on LJ, so there’s a plus.
Other tips:
The only method that I’ve found that works for comment fic (such as kink memes) is the Boom! extension to remove all of the surrounding styling and just a lot of coping/pasting. It’s so tedious though.
I love working with epub because of how easy it is to add cover art and how easily it converts to other formats. PDF has a lovely end product in terms of standard readability but is a beast to convert to epub or mobi and it creates a larger file than the epub.
Other tricks and tips that you have?
This is super useful information. I’m a Calibre user, too. Over the years, I’ve perfected my use of FanFicFare, and I’m on a first names basis with the developer. The Anthology options are useful if you want to download a bunch of stories from a single author. You have the option to download them separately, or have the combined in an anthology (useful for those Advent fics).
There is a “Count Pages” Calibre plug-in that counts pages as well as word. I have this set up so that it automatically runs after the FanFicFare plug in.
For multi-chapter LiveJournal and Tumblr fics, I use good old Google Docs. I use the “Reader View” in Safari to copy and paste into a Google Doc. There is a Download As option in the File Menu that includes Epub and PDF formats. I noticed that with Epubs it’s smart enough to generate a table of contents based upon the chapters.
Thank you! This is very helpful! Also, maybe I misunderstood your comment about about changing cover art, but to change the cover art of a fic/book in Calibre is very simple. Right click the book, and select Edit metadata individually:
Then, as long as you have the art saved on your computer, you can change the cover art to whatever you want. Click Browse, then locate the art, select it, and click OK. That’s it, you’re done.
Thank you!
You are right that adding cover art to calibre is as easy as you outline above, BUT that doesn’t actually add it to the EPUB (or MOBI or PDF) file itself.
My current project is downloading all of the Big Bang and Reversebang fics with their artwork. Photobucket has suddenly decided that it’s putting watermarks on all of the linked art, so I’ve had to fix several stories.
nintendo is taking down the 3ds and wii u eshops next year
and they had this lovingly made totally not taunting message to leave about their virtual console legacy they’re destroying
(that they’ve, fun fact, taken down from their site now :])
this pisses me off so much because nintendo is AWARE we want their legacy of games put on their best selling system (literally, outside of the combined sales of every nintendo DS, lite, DSi, and XL, and the GB and GBC’s combined sales, the switch is at the top)
and yet they still do not care. it’s not about them not having this content either because 1 the wii u vc and 3ds vc. exist. and 2, even for stuff that isnt on the virtual console yet, we’ve been given internal proof from previous big nintendo leaks (namely the gigaleak) that nintendo does not mess around when it comes to keeping backups of their older content. its not a lack of money either, nintendo is literally one of the richest companies in japan. it’s just. a lack of caring
last thing im gonna say about this is that the 3DSandWii Uboth have excellent, actively updated guides for softmodding them to run homebrew. the WiiandDSi do as well!
on top of that the emulation general wiki is an amazing resource for emulators for pretty much every generation of game system, including emulators for non game systems like arcade hardware, PCs, and mobile phones, along with emulators on game systems! so check the wiki out if you’re interested!
Just a friendly reminder that on this godforsaken website you can and should do the following few things that involve going into your settings:
1: Under Dashboard, disable Best Stuff First, Include Stuff In Your Orbit and Based On Your Likes. The former ruins the how the timeline works here, the middle violates the sanctity of anonymity if people you follow don’t want you to see their likes, the latter is a crapshoot and annoying and inaccurate because the likes algorithm is fucked.
2: Under Account, turn off letting people finding your blog through your email address, your email should not be just out there like that.
3: Under Notifications, turn off news because nobody knows what the hell is popular or gaining traction at any given moment. Posts from 6 years ago will randomly gain a resurgence of popularity for no good reason. Also just turn off the stuff that gives you immediate info about notes or updates or notices it’s just so fucking annoying and useless.
Under Appearance, you can choose to make who you follow private and what you’ve Liked private. I recommend doing both of those things. The old days of dumbass slapfights and following discourse are long gone but not yet over. Defend your mental health by just not letting folks know what you’re following or what you like, do what the Bird Site never ever let you do. From here you can also choose to turn anonymous asks off and that’s a good way to learn who you need to block if they’re being a shit to you, which to that I say block early and block often.
This website is different than the Bird Site in that 1: it will not tell you who to follow and 2: Likes do nothing, Reblogs are what matters. Likes are nice but Reblogs keep the blood pumping and posts/works by artists circulating. You can even choose to reblog your own stuff. This site is a massive sea of islands that have boats parked around them and bridges between them. There are, regrettably, Nazis and TERFs and tradcaths on this site. I have never seen them except for when they decide to pick fights with people I follow. You should also make it abundantly clear those people are not welcome to interact with you. You can threaten them with death here. It tends to work. Tell the fascists to die, recirculate the blood of content, treat this site well and keep it healthy and it will keep your mind healthy in turn.
This site allows a shocking amount of anonymity in the modern age. You don’t have to share personal information if you don’t want to. I don’t recommend you do. People can and have used DNI criteria and trigger/content warnings to dunk on people or upset them. Keep yourself and your data safe, you don’t have to have a carrd in your header or a list of kinks or a laundry list of things you believe in. Keep strangers at an arm’s length and moderate what you tell other people about yourself. I know this used to be the internet’s #1 naked picture dump and so many people courted parasocial relationships with folks here. Those times have changed. Don’t be weird and don’t let people be weird to you based on what they know about you.
By many standards on this website, I am an old-timer, even though I’ve been here steadily since 2015 with an initial reg date of 2013. I know the old stories, of the Oncelor, of Dashcon, the Kickstarter scams, the doxxing. I only qualify as an old-timer due to the fact that I stayed through the porn ban of 2018 and kept circulating content. This site…it’s not good, but it iswhat you make of it. Curate your content, even though the tagging system doesn’t work. Find what you like, even though the search function sucks ass. If you’re here for popularity you generally won’t find it because the algorithm straight up does not work, but also if you were forged in the fires of the Bird Site you likely knew this would not be the case. My advice is to find a handful of people who provide a feed like I do and if any specific names you see a lot interest you, skim their own blogs, follow them if you like, let your network spread, never be afraid to prune who you follow. Also your follower count doesn’t mean shit, it doesn’t really dictate who can see what you’re putting out there, your marketing and self-promotion is more or less tied 1:1 to using the tag system and your own hustle.
My other advice is to be as queer as you want, support queer people, and most importantly to tell the fascists to die as creatively as you’d like.
Hey kids! This is your reminder to clean your shotgun magazine tubes and change your magazine springs.
Bottom: used 9 shot Mossberg 590a1 magazine spring.
Middle: used 8 shot Mossberg 500a magazine spring
Top: Wolff spring 8/9 magazine spring.
Things to keep in mind as you change your magazine spring:
Some Mossberg shotguns use a spring retainer clip to hold the magazine spring in the magazine tube whenever your field stripping the gun. Looks like this:
Be very careful when removing this, the best way is too gently pry it out with a flat head screwdriver being very careful to not touch the sidewalls of the magazine tube and also not to get your face in the way.
The magazine tube is actually pretty fragile towards the end and you will mangle your threads. Replacing Mossberg magazine tubes is a bitch and this little mf'r can shoot out with some speed. I would know.
With the wolf springs you do not reinsert this. I do not reinsert this as a matter of policy because I hate it.
With the Mossberg 500 series as well as Maverick 88, I suggest taking it to a gunsmith or armorer and having them remove the magazine tube for the first time. Somebody told Mossberg assembly technicians about Loctite, and they haven’t stopped since. I have scars from removing things from Mossberg shotguns that have excessive Loctite. If you’re a cheapskate and you don’t want to pay a gunsmith or armorer to do it for you, there are ways to do it at home with minimal risk. You’re going to need the biggest ass strap wrench and the nastiest solvents you can find. (Okay- acetone works fine.) Just soak the threads for 10-15 minutes then try to take it off. If it doesn’t budge, give it another 10-15, keeping it wet.
OR
A blowtorch/heatgun. You’ll need to get it up to about 350-450° f then it’ll come off.
It is utterly imperative that you read this, you can soak it with solvents or you can use heat. I shouldn’t have to tell you that after you put solvents on the threads you should not apply heat and you should not apply solvents to a hot workpiece.
Another thing- Wolff springs won’t work with this style follower:
PSA for peeps that have Mossy scatterguns.
You need to replace the springs in 870’s too
I really need to get around to this. I’ve had my 500 for about a decade and it’s had pretty regular use this whole time.
Do you think blue loctite is appropriate when you replace the tube?
I use purple or none. If you use blue, use very little
US SUICIDE PREVENTION HOTLINE IS CHANGING ITS NUMBER
Taking effect July 2022, the US Suicide Prevention Hotline will change from 800-273-8255 to the three digit code of 988. Especially with families and communities reeling from back to back tragedies, it is super important to share this information!
Repeat: Starting July 2022, the US Suicide Prevention Hotline will be 988
Important add-ons, though, as someone who’s done policy work on this:
It’sJuly 16, not just the start of July.
988 can not only be used as the suicide hotline, but for anysort of mental health or substance use crisis situation. As opposed to 911, the goal of 988 is that when dispatch is necessary, you’ll be met with a trained crisis response team rather than the police. The police will only be involved if there is an immediate threat to safety, which has almost never occurred in pilot programs - in one of the most well-known, Denver STAR, (which a lot of y’all seem to be familiar with) the police has actually neverbeen called for backup. We’re hoping that this is going to get more individuals directed towards help rather than a prison cell.
Uhm yeah I’ll add more stuff if I can think of anything.
Thank you for the added information. Reblog this version as well, folkz.
Further information from news source verifying this:
psqqa said: Do we have any notion of when Javert was born? If we have a date we could figure out what saint’s day it was, which would probably be a fair bet for Christian name also. Were foundlings baptized? France feels like it would have required baptism. Or maybe not because baptism means paying the church for its services and who cares if poor people’s kids go to purgatory? I feel like it could go both ways. Anyway, my ultimate point here is that if they required baptism, Javert would have a first name. Although to be fair, it would probably just be Jean.
As to the first thing, we do have a pretty good idea of when he was born! His badge at the barricades says that he’s 55, so 1832-55 = Probably 1777?
“Before 1831 (that’s Javert) he received a single new name that served as his surname—a deliberate severance of ties, intended to prevent the natural parents from “abandoning” a child to be raised at the state’s expense and then simply finding him again afterwards by means of his name. (After 1831, a foundling received two first-names, one of which became his first name and the other his last name.) Each foundling was given a necklace with his registration number, to prevent trafficking in children; and when the doctor judged the child capable of travel, he was placed with a nurse or foster family.”
So the government wouldn’t have given Javert any name but “Javert” ; if his foster family/guardian decided to give him another name/ baptize him, that was up to them. But I’m not sure what “old enough to travel” would consist of, or whether the people taking him as a charge would have bothered?
(also relevant here; born in 1777, Javert would be about 12 in 1789– the start of the Revolution. and after that the relationship between the French government and the Catholic church changed a lot, and very quickly. So I’m not sure how that would affect things like foundling baptisms, and it probably varied wildly as the revolution went on!)
If anyone knows more about this please chime in!
I don’t have anything substantive to add except that the ages are slightly off–Javert’s ID says he’s 52 in 1832, so he was likely born around 1780, and would have been only 9 at the start of the Revolution.
