pasteldudgeon

[pasteldudgeon]

Fanfiction Authors: HEADS UP

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.

Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.

In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.

In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.

Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!

[pasteldudgeon]

My 8 Hour Study Schedule

     The following is a schedule I have meticulously built over the span of quarantine so please forgive my lack of consistent posting over a couple of months. The 8 hour study schedule is click-bait, I must confess, as my average amount of study hours happens to be 6 hours a day. I happen to get tired between 3:00 pm to 5:00 p.m and it is usually spent with me enjoying some trash T.V. 

5:00 a.m - 6:00 a.m Intense Exercise  6:00 a.m - 7:00 a.m Walk Kara Enjoy Fresh Air 7:00 a.m - 8:00 a.m Breakfast Leaf Juice Get Ready 8:00 a.m - 10:00 a.m 2 Hr. Study 10 Min. Break  10:00 a.m - 12:00 p.m 2 Hr. Study 10 Min. Break 12:00 p.m - 1:00 p.m Lunch Clean the dishes 1:00 p.m - 3:00 p.m 2 Hr. Study 10 Min. Break 3:00 p.m - 5:00 p.m 2 Hr. Study 10 Min. Break 5:00 p.m - 6:00 p.m Read 6:00 p.m - 7:00 p.m Enjoy Fresh Air  7:00 p.m - 8:00 p.m Dinner Clean the dishes  8:00 p.m - 9:00 p.m Plan Tomorrow Intense Exercise 9:00 p.m - 10:00 p.m Night Yoga Read Sleep 

     I want to note that I always make sure to have breaks throughout the schedule even though it is not listed! Be mindful of your body and know when to take breaks!

      This type of schedule won’t work for everybody and that is valid. Mental health is important and we shouldn’t continue to work like robots! In my case, I spent about 3 months adjusting my sleeping patterns between an average of 9 hours of sleep to 7 hours of sleep and to keep actively focused for 2 hours (which is what I still struggle with even today).

     The important thing is to always forgive yourself when you stray from your schedule and to work on a schedule that works best for you. Experiment! Change! Schedules should not be concrete structures. They should change with you. I happen to be more of a morning person, so this schedule works well for me as I tend to be more unproductive when the sun is heating up my innards (just Philippines things). 

[pasteldudgeon]

Why was there always that one person in revision classes that had no reason to be there? It's like, honey you're passing with flying colours, this space is for stupid people only

[pasteldudgeon]

Indulging in cozy late nights before my evening lectures start again ♡

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[pasteldudgeon]

one day some of you will actually go outside and go to pride and you’re going to meet old black queens who refers to themselves as femme, you’ll meet people from small towns who still use the word transsexual, you’ll see that your local activist organization set up a stall about your local LGBT history that includes leather bar’s history, you’ll see lesbians in groups refer to themselves as “guys” and “boys”, you’ll see someone with breasts and pasties and little else have “he / him” painted on his chest, and you’ll be so caught up with your terminally online attitude that instead of appreciating the wide diversity of people who exist in the LGBT community who are brave enough to share themselves you’ll just be formulating posts and tweets in your head for when get home about how “problematic” it all was and it’s honestly tragic

[pasteldudgeon]

Writing should be fun. Writing should be an adventure. Writing is about connecting with your imagination and listening to her guidance. Let go of the notion of perfection and simply enjoy the process. Your writing is good enough, whether you believe it or not.

[pasteldudgeon]

I've seen people argue that BDSM & kink is bad because of aftercare. "You don't NEED aftercare or safewords for vanilla sex, because it's not harmful!"

Uh, hate to tell you but aftercare and safewords do exist for vanilla sex. It's getting your partner a glass of water after. It's cuddling and compliments. It's asking if they're feeling good during. It's words like stop, no, easy. It's asking if there's anything to make it better next time.

If you really don't practice communicating and aftercare with your partner regardless of how vanilla it is or not, you're just not a good partner.

[pasteldudgeon]

[pasteldudgeon]

aye this one is pretty cool too. but bRUH that first secondary orb charge went NOWHERE 

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[pasteldudgeon]

please remember that it’s okay to use popular tropes and clichés in your writing. just remember to make them your own, and put your own kinda spin on them. 

don’t let yourself be stopped by what other people say you can or can’t do when it comes to writing. you are allowed to write about whatever you want, regardless of how popular it is in mainstream media. 

[pasteldudgeon]

Just remember that sometimes, the way you think about a person isn’t the way they actually are.

— John Green, Paper Towns

[pasteldudgeon]

Susan Sontag’s annotations in her copy of Finnegans Wake.

[pasteldudgeon]

We all have that one song

[pasteldudgeon]