insanitysilver

[insanitysilver]

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[insanitysilver]

“In the war film, a soldier can hold his buddy—as long as his buddy is dying on the battlefield. In the western, Butch Cassidy can wash the Sundance Kid’s naked flesh—as long as it is wounded. In the boxing film, a trainer can rub the well-developed torso and sinewy back of his protege—as long as it is bruised. In the crime film, a mob lieutenant can embrace his boss like a lover—as long as he is riddled with bullets. 

Violence makes the homo-eroticism of many “male” genres invisible; it is a structural mechanism of plausible deniability.”

–Tarantino’s Incarnational Theology: Reservoir Dogs, Crucifixions, and Spectacular Violence. Kent L. Brintnall.

[insanitysilver]

You have just been magically transported into a random ao3 fic!

Spin the wheel of ao3 tags three times to find out what your fic is about. Put in the tags what your fic tags are!

[insanitysilver]

hearing that your characterizations are good is like. the best thing to hear as a fic writer.

[insanitysilver]

editing is just you vs. past-you in a duel of questionable comma placement and emotional instability

[insanitysilver]

I'm struggling writing a fanfic, I'm not sure if this has been asked before but, do you think it's better to write in past tense or present tense?

I personally think it comes down to the author's choice. As long as you're consistent with it and not hopping from present to past and back again, you'll be fine ❤️

(if you're worried about doing that, find someone who can beta read for you to check and make sure)

[insanitysilver]

it is honestly amazing how much of writing and editing is just. logistics. like... do i use a name here or a pronoun? if i move this dialogue tag to the middle of this line and break it in half, does the end of the line hit harder that way? what if i move the tag to the front? what if i remove it entirely? ...wait, whose point of view am i in; can i reasonably say this character is appalled, or must i say they look or seem or sound appalled? is this a deliberate action or a step-removed one; is her hand closing on his shoulder, or is she closing her hand on his shoulder? environment environment environment, we need to break all this dialogue up with some narration, the scene is coming untethered. what! are! they doing! with! the rest of their bodies that are not hands! fuck fuck fuck FUCK i forgot we covered this two chapters ago and now i either need to cut this whole chunk or find a reason to reprise the conversation from earlier. name or pronoun? name or pronoun? name or pronoun? move this clause around in this sentence? oh i'll add this phrase-- nope, never mind, past!me added the same phrase two lines down. okay, if i add too much environmental narration it's going to take away from this bit, but not enough and it won't feel grounded. what if i move this to its own line? where the FUCK are their hands?

[insanitysilver]

if you're writing and find yourself thinking 'this is too weird/gross/offputting/esoteric/ambitious/catered to my specific interests + sure to push away a broader audience' that is the devil speaking and it is a lie. you are already firmly on the right path and you need to double down

[insanitysilver]

i loveeeeeee nonlinear storytelling. show me where we are. now show me how we got here. the end before the beginning. show me how it was inevitable or how many chances we had to change things(nothing was ever going to change). let's meet in the middle as all the puzzle pieces slide into place hell yeah that's the good shit.

[insanitysilver]

Friday Keeps Coming Next by @rattyjol

March 2, 2025 - March 19, 2025

Full cloth case binding with design in heat transfer vinyl.

This was technically not my first fanbinding, but it was the first fanbinding I willing to share with the world. This fic is a groundhog day AU, in which the characters have to relive the same day over and over again. I chose the belltower as the central image to design the cover around because it is A) the setting for a scene that particularly stood out to me and B) representative of the "time" theme without being too on the nose. The white and gold color scheme is appropriate to both the fandom and the setting of the fic. One detail I am particularly proud of: At one point in the fic, a character spends several days in bed in a fit of depression and grief at his circumstances. The author conveys this by using several of the "Day ###" headings that are present throughout the fic, but with no content in between, showing that nothing happened on those days (at least from the narrator's POV). When I saw that I knew I had to do the twilight thing.

Materials: covers - 2 mm grey board spine stiffener - 2 mm grey board covering material - cream linen bookcloth vinyl - cricut brand gold foil

endpapers - white cardstock with gold foil endbands - bookcloth rolled over twine textblock paper - Hammermill 20lb printer paper, cream, 8.5x11 Typeset: Designed in Microsoft Word. The body font is Baskerville Old Face, headings are in Brotherland Signature, and "handwritten" sections are in Weddingday Revisited. Cover Design: Designed in Photopea. The belltower image came from Alamy. Title font is Brotherland Signature, author name is in Alegreya Sans.

dimensions: 5.5"x8.5"

Fun fact: I actually made 3 copies of this book! The first copy, then an author copy, then I actually remade the first copy a few weeks later to fix a few issues (using bookcloth instead of random cotton, not scorching the cloth when applying the vinyl, using more appropriate font size/margins in the typeset, fixing some problems with the spine dimensions so the book would open properly. Here are the original copy and remake side by side:

[insanitysilver]

Did someone say Automatic Bookbindery Stats Calculator?!🧮

Ever wanted an organized place that after inputting data about the books you've bound, it easily calculates stats such as number of books you've bound per year and total number of books you've bound over the years, or total number of fanfics you've bound? Then look no further, this google sheet is set up to do this for you! Feel free to make a copy and try it out!

🧮 Some stats automatically calculated include🧮:

Number of books made per each year

List of fandoms you've bound for

List of ships you've bound for

List of different books sizes you've bound

Total # of books

Total # of unique books

Total # of copies

Total # of fanfics bound

Total # of words bound

Total # gifted

And many more!

Okay, used cars sales person schtick aside, I personally had already begun this as an easier way to track what I've bound since I find this sort of stuff interesting, and I was already listing the fanfics I had bound in a google sheets to keep track of them... so then why wouldn't I just already start to calculate stats? Except originally it was p broken since I half-assed it, but a little while ago I finally found some time to hammer out all the issues (probably), so I believe now it's all set and ready to go. If you do use it and notice an issue do let me know, and also I do want to note it's been solely set up (so far) to take in already finished bookbinding projects.

[insanitysilver]

maybe this is just me idk

[insanitysilver]

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

[insanitysilver]

the insane experience of missing a fictional character . like you can always go back and reread the book , replay the game , rewatch the show or movie , you can always go back & see them , but you can never experience them & their story for the first time again . its absurd to miss them because they'll always be there , but you'll miss when there were still new things for them to say .

for a small time they were real & growing and changing and you hung onto every new word, but now all they can do is repeat the same story forever&ever & they're not real anymore because you know everything they're going to do. & you miss them. its fucked man...

[insanitysilver]

hey if you're the type of writer that's like me where you tend to write specific scenes first that vaguely weave together into a plot, you might like using obsidian as a writing app.

my frustration with other writing applications is that i will write my scenes out of order and it's hard to move things around and rearrange them on a regular document.

but with obsidian there's this canvas feature where you can just write all your scenes and plot moments on these little cards that you can freely rearrange. you can color code them and connect them too.

here's the canvas i've created for my current multi-chapter fic: (if you zoom in you can see all the text in each card this what it looks like zoomed out)

as you can see, i color code them based off chapters and will group them next to a document card with the working title of the chapter. anything not color-coded are scenes that don't have a proper place quite yet or it's just world building references. this app can also be good for note-taking and collecting research!

best of all, it's FREE!!! the only downside is that if you want your stuff to sync across devices, you do have to pay for that. i constantly hop between my laptop and desktop so i pay for the syncing. but if you write on only one device it's completely free!

i typically use it for organizing my thoughts for a first draft. once i get all the scenes arranged and mostly written out, i will copy and paste them into ellipsus (also free & highly recommended as a google doc alternative) so that they're all in one document that i can edit.

[insanitysilver]

i cannot emphasize how much fandom interactions are important and how i feel deeply grateful for the people who encourage to spread love. i appreciate people who reblog and comment or send asks to their favorite blogs. i am grateful for people who create appreciation blogs (like bouquets-for-fandoms and plushies-for-fandom). i appreciate people who make spotlight posts for underrated creators. see these kind of things are the pillars of the community. it not only gives a shouout to the creator/blog but makes them feel welcomed in the community and encourage them to do more of what they love. so truly, thank you to everyone on this site who makes people feel seen.

[insanitysilver]

kill the imposter syndrome in your head because not only is there someone out there doing it worse than you, they’re also using chat gpt to do it