iloveschiaparelli

[iloveschiaparelli]

Testing out CSP 4.0 features

[iloveschiaparelli]

like okay i get that we figured out that we can inject estrogen into you to make you grow boobs and we can inject testosterone into you to make you grow more facial hair and shit but like why stop there? we should invent random hormones and inject them into ourselves for fun until we find the ones that turn us into majestic and ancient beasts capable of destroying entire cities. i for one think it would be a fun bonding experience

[iloveschiaparelli]

at a conference I attended recently, a researcher pointed to the difficulty of finding material in archives because so much depends on the metadata and the terminology used to describe things changes over time. "it would be so helpful," the researcher said, "if I typed 'lesbian' into the library of congress database, it would also show me results that were categorised in the 50s, when the materials were interpreted as 'intimate female friendships'"

which is what tag wrangles at Archive Of Our Own do incredibly effectively: searching for "omegaverse" also leads to "alpha/beta/omega dynamics" and "alternate universe: a/b/o" and so on. but ao3 achieves this frankly incredible categorisation and indexing system by the power of countless volunteers putting in hours and hours of unpaid and unthanked free time, and it's completely understandable that most archives do not have that kind of infrastructure, but also how incredible that a fan-run website has better searchability, classification, and accessibility than the library of congress

[iloveschiaparelli]

okayyyyyy ❤️

[iloveschiaparelli]

A Master Guide to the Three Main Forms of Publishing

There are many ways to get published nowadays, but traditional, self, and hybrid are the three most popular, so here’s the gist of what you need to know for each:

Traditional Publishing

This type of publishing goes through a publishing house who often have their own editors, artists, marketing team, etc. to launch your book. They will make your cover for you, format and edit your book, nominate your book for awards and may organize events like a launch party, book signings, speaker roles at festivals etc. They are your book’s team!

Some publishing houses accept cold queries (pitches for your unpublished manuscript) from you, but many only accept queries from agents. Agents are not necessary for traditional publishing, but they can definitely help get you in front of some of the bigger publishing houses. In my opinion, I would recommend an agent for if you want writing to be your career, but would not recommend one if you’re just looking to publish one or two books.

To get an agent, you go through essentially the same process as you would trying to get a publishing house, except you’re sending your query to different agents instead. Querying is very, very difficult, tends to take a lot of time, and will force you to face many rejections. It’s important to be prepared for when you don’t encounter instant success.

If an agent likes your query letter, they may request your full manuscript, and if they like that, they may sign you on as a client. From here, the agent will take over all the work of sending your manuscript to publishing houses. They will also act as your representative to the publishing house, and will protect you from getting scammed or not getting the deal you deserve.

Most important to remember! You never have to pay for any of these services. The money works like this: You write a book, an agent believes in the book so they sell it to a publishing house—the agent takes a cut of those profits and you get the rest (this is called an advance). The publishing house then sells the book to the public, and any profit they make after your advance, they get a cut of, your agent gets a cut of, and then you get whatever is left.

Essentially: these people make money by selling your book, not from you. If you have to pay them for any reason, you are being scammed.

Pros of Trad Publishing:

You are not held liable for a large part of the work—marketing, cover art, formatting, etc.

You are more likely to see your book in large resellers (think Chapters or Barnes and Noble), and have it reach a wider audience

You are also more likely to be given further opportunities like events, interviews, or speaker roles at festivals, and you’re more likely to win awards.

You have legitimacy and credibility as an author, especially if you have an agent, to do more books in the future and perhaps move into bigger publishing houses and make larger advances. The longer you’re in the business, the more money you make.

Cons of Trad Publishing:

It is difficult as a first-time author, and takes a long time

Some of your creative control is taken from you (you may not be able to choose your own cover or your title, etc.)

Your book must be easily marketable for them to take a chance on you

You will likely not see very much money starting out

Self Publishing

Self publishing puts all of the work that a traditional publishing house does on your shoulders. You are responsible for the editing, the formatting, designing a cover, doing your own marketing, applying for awards (if you desire), etc. This means that all creative decisions are entirely up to you, but also, that any mistakes or poor choices reflect entirely on you.

There are many ways to self publish, but lately Amazon’s publishing service seems to be the easiest for authors. In other cases, you may want to design everything and then go to a printer in your area to print off copies to then sell on your website, or try to entice resellers to pick up.

In self publishing, you may have to pay upfront for everything (especially if you hire outside services to do some of the work for you), which can make it an expensive and risky endeavor. However, you also get all of the money from sales.

Pros of Self publishing:

You are fully in control of the final product

You can publish a book that others may not have seen potential in

You don’t have to share your profit with anyone, you may see more money starting off than a trad author

It takes less time

Cons of Self Publishing:

Your reach to audience is as much as you are able to market yourself (if you have a high social media following, you will sell more than if you don’t)

All of the work is up to you, which can be difficult and frustrating, especially in getting resellers

You may not be given the same sort of opportunities as trad authors

On that note, if you ever want to make the jump to trad publishing, self published manuscripts are sometimes not seen as incredibly legitimate or credible unless they sell amazingly well

Hybrid Publishing

This form of publishing takes the idea of self publishing, but hires out some of the work. For example, you may hire a publicity company to do your marketing for you, a graphic designer to make your cover, and an editor to do a proofread, and handle the rest of it yourself. If you desire, you can technically hire out basically every service needed. This can be somewhat of the best of both worlds between trad/self publishing, however, it’s also the most expensive.

Pros of Hybrid:

You still have a majority of creative control given you are paying the companies to do what you want

A professional can take on some of the tasks that you are not as confident or skilled in

Cons of Hybrid:

It is expensive—unlike trad publishing, these companies will expect you to pay them upfront for their services, so you are risking not making back the money when your book is ready to sell

You may have to manage a lot of different people and companies—it requires intense organization and deadlines!

On that note, it is also up to you to determine if a company is credible and does good work—just getting any professional is not a guarantee that the work will be high quality

If you have any more questions about publishing, feel free to leave them in my inbox! :-)

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[iloveschiaparelli]

unrestrained summer fun

[iloveschiaparelli]

[agreeing with op] It doesn't even ruin the flow of social interaction if you really think about it, either. It depends on the friendship but often what happens when consent is normalized is, at some point of getting to know a new person, you ask if it's OK to touch them, and how. If you want to give them a hug you ask the one time if they're okay with hugs, and then you know for the future too. What people are okay with in day-to-day interactions varies but it generally stays the same and you should ALWAYS get consent before touching a stranger. Most interactions you have are going to be with people you know at least on a cursory level and it will not impact your relationships or social flow or whatever very much to just become cognizant of each others comfortability with touch!!

People do not get what it is like to have sensory issues with being touched in the place that is seen as pretty much the most neutral place to touch. I don't just dislike having my shoulders touched, it feels viscerally, physically uncomfortable and the feeling lingers long after the touch has stopped. It makes it hard to think and talk. And it's deeply alienating to feel this way, because for most people they seem to barely even think about it. They seem to do it on instinct when trying to comfort people. But then when you try to talk about how it should be normalised to ask for consent even with these things people see as neutral, so many people get defensive and say you're going too far or it would ruin the flow of social interaction or whatever. You don't necessarily know if that random stranger is like me. Why is it always us trying to override our natural feelings and cope with intense overstimulation instead of "normal" people dealing with the slightest in inconvenience?

[iloveschiaparelli]

we were talking about the criminalization of homosexuality in class and my professor (who as far as i know isn't in any way queer) said something i quite enjoyed in that. well the exchange was more or less this: a student asked a question (doesn't really matter what exactly just know that i was rolling my eyes So hard internally) and the prof looked at the student and was like (i'm paraphrasing here this conversation was not in english) Do you have any queer friends? and the student went Uhhhh in a manner that made it clear the answer was probably no and the prof said Actually statistically speaking you most likely do. If I had to divide this room into two groups the way to do it would not be "people with queer friends" and "people without queer friends" it would be "people whose queer friends are out to them" and "people whose queer friends aren't". And if you're in the latter category you should consider why that is--if maybe your behavior is indicating to the queer people around you that you're not safe to come out to. to come back to your question if you really want to know about queerness there's a very simple way of doing that: you make yourself a person queer people feel comfortable talking to about their experiences and then you fucking listen to them when they do (the fuck is not paraphrased) (there was a fuck involved) (frankly king shit)

[iloveschiaparelli]

Maximum Ride is so funny to me because the books got so bad that it's completely possible it wither had multiple ghostwriter and that's why everything got so inconsistent after Angel, or it was just James Patterson thw whole time fhwnakakw

[iloveschiaparelli]

with you

[iloveschiaparelli]

February 2025

San Francisco, CA

CineStill color

[iloveschiaparelli]

i don’t usually make these kinds of posts but in the tags tell me what symbolic imagery you associate yourself with i’m curious. personally i associate myself with dogs, eyes, the color red, and wings.

[iloveschiaparelli]

You know what I've never really seen realistically depicted in fiction? The way that people in places that get a huge amount of snow deal with said snow. Specifically in the cities. I get that it's probably not exactly an intuitive thing to think about if you've never lived in a place that gets a lot of snow, and even if you do, you probably figure that they must have some really sophisticated infrastructure systems specifically for this purpose. It's not like they'll just scoop the snow off the streets and gather it into huge piles, and then just climb over the progressively larger and larger snow piles every single year for months while waiting for the piles to melt in the spring.

We do. There's no point in planning more sophisticated systems to get rid of something that'll eventually just go away on its own. So they just pile the snow into randomly designated spaces that cars or people aren't supposed to go through, and let it pile up. There's significantly less street parking available in the winter because some spots where you could otherwise park a car are currently the parking spot of a snow pile three times taller than a car.

You get used to it. And if you grow up around here, it never even occurs to you to think of it as something strange in the first place.

[iloveschiaparelli]

mikusagi01

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crapple wine completed

[iloveschiaparelli]

Happy pride month specifically to folks on the asexual and aromantic spectrum who oftentimes feel isolated and left out of the conversation. You belong here as much as the rest of us and I hope that you are all loved in a way that is comforting to you.