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i still care them

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TOS Spotlight: Non-fanworks

The Policy & Abuse committee is posting a weekly spotlight series explaining some of the most common violations of the #AO3 Terms of Service. This week's spotlight is on non-fanworks. Read more at: https://otw-news.org/2p85b7np

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I can't believe I made that original guide back in 2020. Anyway, it's 2025 now and I have made a new and improved version (the link is still the same). Now including:

Python scripts! Now you can semi-automate page and margin resizing, adding running headers & the text processing before import

New templates with better typography

Advice on Scribus features that didn't exist when I first wrote the guide

A whole separate document on getting oriented in Scribus and the various menu options

A link to my open-source fonts for bookbinding guide

Guide on Typesetting Fics with Scribus

I was recently inspired to try binding my fanfiction by @armoredsuperheavy​‘s guide How to Make a Book. But there was a big roadblock there - I run Linux and don’t have access to Word.

So I spent some time teaching myself how to use the open-source desktop publishing program Scribus.

I was pretty happy with the end result (see below), so I’ve now made an instructional guide for anyone else who wants to typeset a AO3 document for bookbinding using Scribus!

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I think a lot of people are forgetting that on tumblr fandom used to be practiced very differently. now everyone fucks off to their discords or tumblr groups to discuss everything with a select few, making tags be nearly only used for posting some finished fanworks or not at all

a decade ago people didn't have tumblr groups. people didn't even have dms. if you wanted to talk to anyone about anything you had to make a post, or send an ask (which more often than not would get published and thereby become a post in the end too)

so next time you think "I have a fandom thought but I have to find a small group of hyperspecifically like-minded people to share it with in private" remember all the freaks you could be missing out on meeting by keeping the tags dead. use tags, make friends. fuck discord.

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Today is a special day, 17 years ago Neil Banged Out The Tunes

Happy Neil Banging Out The Tune Day y’all 🎶 ✨

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happy neil banging out the tunes day!

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Wyllstarion fairy tale AU in which Astarion was running back late to the Szarr manor. He could not make it in time so he had to run into an abandoned building and hide near an old statue. Little did he know, the statue was actually Wyll, cursed to remain in stone.

I might draw more of this AU,. This just kinda jumped into my mind and I also want to draw a picture book page, so here we are.

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No, I am not 'hoarding craft supplies.' I am sourcing materials for a very big project that will be revealed to me at a later date- perhaps in a dream.

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just saw gideon the ninth called romantasy and grouped with fourth wing and acotar and lemme tell you i was not ready for that one

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I can’t wait for the fic that I’m going to write after this fic I’m not writing because I still have to finish another fic (which I can’t seem to focus on).

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hobbies include: close reading the Redwall series to answer my most burning questions. such as:

- can I replicate any of these delicious-sounding foodstuffs and would they in fact be delicious if I was able to

- corollary to the above: are we just supposed to read “oat cream” and “nut cheese” every time we see the words “cream” and “cheese”? I think so. bc if not, what tha hell are their livestock animals

- what is Society like? I don’t think we ever see a Mouse City or even Mouse Town though we do see castles and obviously an abbey. are we supposed to believe that most creatures are either in wandering bands or these societies based around a single structure (castle/abbey?)

- they appear to have an idea of what currency is (the bad guys always want treasure — maybe just to have, not to sell? but less ambiguous is some dialogue I just read, “acorn for your thoughts?” “you can have them for free”) but again, we never see anyone using money or making goods for the market. is this after the fall of Mouse Capitalism? are the bad guys (the idea of rat pirates gives me a headache, vis a vis the political/economic systems needed to power piracy) raiding preindustrial mouse societies for treasure/meat?

- corollary to the above: the abbey creatures have oats and wheat but we don’t see anybody farming or trading for farm goods on a large enough scale. is the abbey “orchard” really a like an indigenous forest farm of mixed foodstuffs? is that possible if you live in the same place the whole year or only if you travel each season? I have to do some googling

- both the lack of mixed-species families and the idea of mixed-species families give me a headache. has a squirrel never fallen for a handsome otter? what is the culture shock like if you marry into a subterranean mole family?

- this is the least “important” question but this read through I’ve been desperately trying to figure out What Size Everything Else Is. i’ve come to the conclusion that everything other than animals are at mouse scale, given that they can make seaworthy vessels their own size (a mouse sized vessel with real-world-sized waves seems impossible) and pick and eat apples and plums. but so far it seems like they’ve avoided mentioning how tall trees are — like a person compared to a tree or a mouse compared to a tree?

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"you can't pick and choose what you like from canon" common misconception! yes you can

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my father does that to me in real life. You say something, he nods and then 30 seconds later says "And that's why [THING YOU JUST SAID, SOMETIMES NEARLY WORD FOR WORD]"

often people will reblog my multi-paragraph posts and add a comment like “also: [thing I explicitly said in the post]” thus revealing not even a lack of reading comprehension but that they didn’t even read the entire post in the first place before reblogging it with their input and somehow that’s so funny to me bc it’s like we invented a way to interrupt someone without even being in an active conversation.

someone does that and i’m like yeah give me a second i was getting to that (already got to ‘that’ a week ago when i made the post)

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AUCTIONS ARE CLOSED!

It will take a while to actually close all auction forms - bids that are registered after 8:00:05 EST WILL NOT BE COUNTED.

Everyone, creators and bidders alike, please sit tight and await an email from us before doing anything - we'll update you on next steps soon!

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thinking about new Daredevil makes me feel so old. I remember being a teenager and reading daredevil and just eating all that angst up and loving all the angst. And now I'm like "but what if they didn't suffer horribly for another season? what if they got to be competent lawyers and do some law stuff for a few episodes?"

i want to preemptively write the fluffiest nonsense before the new dd season comes out because the trailers are BRUTAL. i know the whole show is basically just matt murdock having a really bad time but, like, lay off, let him take a nap, cuddle under a blanket, have gay sex, etc.

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Please drop the name of the book that got tea preparation wrong. I'm a big tea lover but drives me up the wall when people get the details wrong too lol. It's not just a cutesy detail to include for the #aesthetic, there's lots of interesting details about the best ways to make different types of tea!

it was A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, a book which I fully admit I was reading with overinflated expectations after like 6 people had told me it was their favorite book that year. I loathed that book.

I've quite liked some of her other books but once I go into hunting dog "ripping apart the worldbuilding" mode there's no hope.

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book where the main character's main thing was being a professional preparer of fancy & herbal teas and they both:

kept brewing all of their teas by boiling water to boiling and then steeping the leaves immediately

grew enough tea to feed large numbers of people in window boxes

On one hand, I am a firm believer in "just start writing a fictional story without hard research if that's what it takes to get the first draft down, mistakes can be fixed in future drafts". On the other hand, I am also a firm believer in cultivating the reflex of "hang on, I don't really know what that means, let me at least go skim the Wikipedia page right now to make sure I'm headed in the right direction here".

Sometimes, especially with original fiction that's presumably been professionally edited, obvious mistakes that are harmful can be infuriating, but I'm usually just amused whenever I encounter an author who clearly hasn't done research for the industry or skill that plays a central role in their story. If one of your main characters is an athlete, you should probably know the rules of that sport??? How its professional leagues work??? Maybe???

"Character A is a chef in a 5-star Michelin restaurant!" <- Michelin stars only go up to 3, bud. "Character B is a famous Michelin food critic!" <- Michelin reviewers are also famously anonymous, bud.

The easy fix for the above example is to just invent a fake food guide company for your story, with known reviewers and a system that goes up to 5 stars. Michelin Guides came out of a tire company and they're not infallible; they've received plenty of reasonable criticism over the years. If you know what Michelin stars actually are and where they came from, they can be modified and replaced in your fictional world's alternate universe to suit your purpose. Instead of you being very obviously misinformed about, uh, the basic facts of your setting in your own summary.

Does anyone have any memorable examples of "that's not how that works" experiences with fiction that have stuck with them?