arduinna

Me: Fandom is home, even when I'm not especially fannish about any one thing. When I am feeling fannish, I write fic, I vid, I write up occasional reviews of various things, I occasionally create resources and tutorials for various things. I live with two fans, four cats, and a dog, and will occasionally post about any or all of them.

Where you can find me:

arduinna (obviously)
arduinna
aka-arduinna (tumblr)
arduinna
aka_arduinna (I rarely use it, though)
Hubzilla
I've also started poking at Discord, but have no idea how to link to myself there

Friending policy

I don't take access/subscription decisions personally, in any way. Add/deny/change/remove at will, no worries.

My give-access-to list is shorter than my subscription list; locked posts are likely to be personal, so if I haven't given you access, we probably don't know each other well enough for me to be telling you about my private life. (If we do know each other that well, feel free to drop me a note; I probably screwed up when I added you.)

Transformative works policy:

You can remix, translate, podfic, or make art for anything I've written - no need to ask. Please credit me as the source, and I'd love a link when you're done if you think of it.

( Directory to my stuff )
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Okay, not really an ode. But a gentle lament in the general direction of all my Chicago Manual of Style peeps.

Starting in a month or so, I'll have to use a house style that's based firmly on AP. :(

For many years, my company's house style was based on a document I helped write, and every iteration of it had serial commas front and center - every time the company got bought or what have you, my little corner of it had either the only house style guide or the most complete one, and even if we were the little fish, it got adopted with just a few changes just because it existed, and that was one of the things we didn't budge on. (And other CMS-based guidelines as well - that was our base overall. But this is a specific lament.)

But we were recently bought by another, bigger company that actually believes inherently in style guides and had a very detailed one. Based on AP.

This was a big purchase, big enough that it's being treated more like a merger in terms of harmonizing processes, so our legacy editing team crossed our fingers and hoped (vainly - we knew it was vainly, but we had to hope!) that the other team would see the light and embrace the serial comma.

Spoiler: there was no embrace.

The new, combined style guide is being rolled out now after months of hashing out by people on both legacy teams, and the serial comma is right out. With the usual caveat of "unless it's necessary" but no acknowledgment that it's always necessary, because why on earth would you make people stop to parse a sentence they didn't have to? Argh.

Anyway. Sigh.

At least overall the two style guides were simpatico, and I like some of the changes that have been introduced. Not all, but some. And some of our legacy style made it in as well.

But our house style, their house style, and other house styles just work better with serial commas, dammit.

I am idly watching an old documentary show that involves some people who had to ditch into the North Sea, and the narrator has just earnestly and intently explained that "for a person in the water, hypothermia can begin when the temperatures of air and water added together is below 50 degrees Centigrade."

...

This is not an American show, and the narrator is definitely not American. So you would think he would have noticed how nonsensical that is.

(He does go on to say, quite accurately, that in the North Sea in winter, the temperature is far below that. I would be willing to go even further and say that the temperature of the North Sea is far below 122F even in the hottest days of summer.)

(hi!)

December 2 (whoops):

princessofgeeks: What got you interested in doing your amazing comprehensive Stargate canon encyclopedia?

I wanted to know what Jack's medals were. ... Seriously, that's what started it. Combined with the fact that I wanted to write SG but was kind of intimidated by the canon, much though I loved it. So I figured hey, slap together a reference page with info I might want to have handy!

And at first it was purely a resource for myself, just bits of info categorized in ways that were useful to me that I couldn't find elsewhere. Which I should clarify: a lot of the information I originally put on it was stuff I found elsewhere, I just wanted to change the categorization, so I could find things like "how many times has Daniel died, anyway" directly, instead of having to hunt through episode information. When I started out, almost all of the info I had came from other sites, just rearranged. (rdanderson.com, which is still going strong, was my go-to place for info.)

After I had some info cobbled together I told a few friends who were writing SG in case they needed to check something, and apparently the word spread from there, as word tends to. :) I discovered it was being used generally by other fans when someone recced it as a resource on a mailing list, and had to decide whether to take it down (because it was not properly sourced or in any way clear that I was getting info from existing places) or take it on as an actual project, tightening things up and expanding what I was doing to be more broadly useful.

By that point I was already doing a lot of my own note-taking and such, and was having a blast, so I revamped everything into my own words/research and kept going for several more years, expanding steadily as I went.

I look back on it and it was kinda bananas? I was basically living and breathing SG all the time, but in a facts way rather than a transformative-fandom way. But it was also SO MUCH FUN. I love being useful, and I love organizing things, and I love SG, and it was a perfect combination. I went a bit overboard with the level of detail I was looking at as time went on, but otoh that level of detail was there if you looked for it, which was so cool.

I never did really wind up writing anything other than a few tiny pieces, after all that; my brain was just too solidly engaged on the affirmation side of things to do much transformative work. But man, it was such a great trip while it lasted. ♥ ♥ ♥

Go here for the full list of prompts and open dates -- more post prompts always welcome!

December 01:

the_shoshanna: I'd love to just hear about how you've been filling your time, what's been interesting you lately (or challenging you, if you want to talk about that), your basic Christmas-letter kind of update, I guess?

What a perfect prompt to start the meme off with! <3

Now let's see if I can think of anything that I've been doing. It's all a blur of just getting through. I'll go with categories to make it easier.

Work

Work has been busy. When I posted in April I said I thought my job was safe but that my boss might be told to take retirement; both those things turned out to be true. Unfortunately, my boss did a fair chunk of our little team's work, and the woman who took over for him, while a good manager, doesn't have the time to do much of the actual editing. So the editing load has gone up on me and my other co-worker, while at the same time I've been tasked with some labor-intensive project work. I like the project work a lot, and it's something I volunteered for, but it does keep me hopping.

Media

I have been watching what feels like endless media, mostly tv, mostly not terribly fannishly. It's generally either older procedural-type shows that I can just pay surface attention to, documentaries that are interesting but not research, so again with the mostly surface attention, or fannish shows that do take attention.

therienne,

mollyamory, and I watch an episode or two of something together most nights, most usually one of the procedurals. In the last year or so we've gone through 7 seasons of The Closer, 5 seasons of Major Crimes (which I inevitably call Criminal Minds even though they're nothing alike, because apparently my brain thinks it should be "The Closer and 3-syllable-phrase". idek.), a season and a half of Medium (because the actor who played Joe the husband was in something new and fannish, and identifying him reminded us of Medium right when we needed a new mindless show), a few episodes of Ghost Whisperer when Medium was feeling too grim (but then Ghost Whisperer was too - hmm. it's not that I didn't like it? But it feels like a Lifetime Christmas Movie every episode and I can only take a bit of that at a time), and some other things I'm not thinking of right now. Off in my office on my own later at night I've been watching Saving Hope, Time Team, and documentary movies of various sorts.

Fannishly, I'm still in love with Good Omens, although the pandemic put me right back into fannish stasis again so I haven't actually done that much about it, which is a little annoying. But also, it's the hugest fandom I've ever been in and I'll just be over here in a nice quiet corner by myself, thanks. ahem.

The three of us are watching Mandalorian, which I love -- the original trilogy is my Star Wars, and the show is such a love letter to that. <3 I know I'm missing tons of references by not being up on Clone Wars and SW Rebels and whatnot, but I don't care; I'm enjoying the hell out of it all.

We're also watching Star Trek Discovery, which I was not expecting to love after bailing on first season after the first few eps. But

mollyamory and

therienne stuck with it and I wound up seeing some of second season with them last year then catching up on that whole season, and we're caught up to live right now. That's good stuff.

Oh! And

therienne and I are slowly watching Chicago Typewriter, after I was reminded of it when I was sorting vid downloads and rewatched Our Ghost by ryfkah. I'm not really fannish about it, but I'm enjoying it.

It feels like everyone I know is into Guardian and related shows, but I haven't dipped a toe there yet. I may not be doing much in GO fandom, but it's still my warm fuzzy blanket and I want to just enjoy that for a while before being pulled in another direction. (It seems like a safe bet that I'll fall hard for Guardian.)

We spent Thanksgiving weekend watching the LotR trilogy extended editions, which I haven't done in ages and which was a blast. It's seriously hard to believe it's been 20 years since Fellowship came out. It's been years since I read the books, too, but in RotK when they're in the Houses of Healing a woman walked past and my brain instantly went "oh, Ioreth!" so I think that my many many years of annual re-reads is still in there somewhere. (OTOH she was too young to actually be Ioreth, but still. Go brain.)

We watched Hamilton when it was released in July. 💖💖💖 Still love that so much. They did an amazing job bringing it to film.

Life beyond media

Life has been really fast and really slow all at the same time. I've assembled some storage cabinets; done a whole lot of weeding; done some lopping of small branches (I bought a lopper! so much fun); organized a couple of small sheds; organized all the random cables I could find lying around and separated them into clear plastic drawers with labels on them so we could find what we needed (I bought a labeler! I am turning into my mother at an accelerating pace); organized my vid downloads, tapes, and dvds - you may be sensing a theme. Creating order in a chaotic time is very soothing.

Anyway. That's kind of it? It's just been life in a pandemic, with not enough brain for lots of focus, but plenty to things keep myself occupied, even if it's mostly on autopilot.

And now I'm going to stop typing and go find some string cheese to use to lure the dog in from outside, so I can get to bed at some sort of reasonable-for-me hour...

Go here for the full list of prompts and open dates -- more post prompts always welcome!

I need some sort of prod to get me active again, so December meme it is! (hat-tip to

resonant for mentioning it and reminding me about it)

Ask me questions, give me prompts/ideas for fic or meta or nattering, point me at an article or story or vid you want me to talk about (mine or anyone else's) -- basically whatever you want (although as ever no promises on results...). Pick a specific day if you want, or I'll pick randomly.

December:

01: I'd love to just hear about how you've been filling your time, what's been interesting you lately (or challenging you, if you want to talk about that), your basic Christmas-letter kind of update, I guess? (

the_shoshanna)

02: What got you interested in doing your amazing comprehensive Stargate canon encyclopedia? (

princessofgeeks)

03:

04:

05:

06: Rec some books you enjoyed recently? (

ratcreature)

07:

08: Which Stargate character turned out to stick in your memory the longest and why? (

princessofgeeks)

09: favorite tropes and clichés! With an ODAO of which ones you think fit which fandom. (

torch)

10:

11:

12: I'd like to hear you say a little something about the characters from "Invisible Man", which you have both vidded and written. What is it that makes Darien, Darien, to you, when you're either characterizing him yourself or reading/watching something from someone else? And the same for Bobby Hobbes--what makes him feel like him to you, in your work or others'? What aspects of both characters feel crucial, no matter what genre/approach/circumstances they're in? (

dorinda)

13:

14: What about your day job? What did you learn? (

princessofgeeks)

15:

16: is there a canon that you aren't fannish about and you don't really know why? Or, alternately, one that you ARE fannish about and don't know why? (

resonant)

17:

18:

19: Have you noticed great similarities between the canon/characters that draw you into fandom? If so, is there a canon/characters that would seem to be right up your alley but it just didn't happen. (

corvidology)

20:

21: Why do you think Stargate is such an enduring canon? (

princessofgeeks)

22: And yet it never made it into the pop culture in the same way as Supernatural or other shows? (

princessofgeeks)

23:

24:

25:

26:

27:

28:

29:

30: A fandom you love and would like to squee about to other fen. (We're here, take advantage of this!) (

rhi)

So, interesting times! Yeah.

In a bit of "wow, sometimes the timing is just really good" news, I discovered a couple of months ago that the house I had lived in for 25 years caught fire in the fall, and while no one was hurt and there was no real fire damage, there was TONS of smoke and water damage, so no one was living there and it was undergoing unreal amounts of repair/renovation.

Kinda glad I moved out on my own the year before that happened, me!

( cutting for general 'living in a pandemic but not ill' stuff )

Other stuff that's been happening:

I finally read Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser, a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder that had been on my vague list for several years. It was fascinating, not just for the background on Wilder but for the general history of it all, and especially the way it followed her entire life. Which, I know, biography, duh, but I read the books as a child in the early 70s and then watched the tv show not much later, and they were about Totally Olden Times and a generation long, long gone - but turns out not actually so much, really. Wilder died just a few years before I was born, during my oldest brother's actual lifetime. That is somehow a lot closer in time than my brain had ever parsed us as being before this. The early parts of her biography still felt like forever ago, but then it was also about things my parents lived through and talked about. It was weirdly hard to wrap my head around Half-Pint having electricity and a phone, but even more weirdly, it made it easier to grok the fictionalized-history aspect of the books. (Which Fraser addresses throughout, and it's clear that on some level Wilder was basically all about truthiness, which is just sort of mind-breaking. Stories were true even if they didn't really happen, or happened to different people in different ways, because they felt true emotionally.)

Anyway. The book is really interesting and I highly recommend it, although not if you're not prepared to see some serious feet of clay on Wilder about certain things, even though the biography is thoroughly sympathetic to her. The more personalized look at the history overall struck a ton of chords in me, with modern parallels that are just frustrating and fascinating. This has been sticking in my head a lot more than I expected it to. I don't want to turn this into a book report, but yeah. Highly recommend.

Other good nonfiction: A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry: A look at the history of battle in popular culture, a blog by military historian Bret Devereaux. Someone on Metafilter linked to this back in December for its series on The Siege of Gondor in Peter Jackson's Return of the King, which I didn't actually go read at the time, and still have queued up to read next. ~~I suspect I'm going to be sucked right down the rabbit hole, so am holding off till I get this written up.~~ (The danger of linking like that is that the tab is then open right there for reading, whoops. I am now 2 posts in to the series.)

But! A week or two back, someone in the comments on a totally different topic linked to a different "collection" of posts by Devereaux, This. Isn't. Sparta., talking about all the ways pop culture gets Sparta wrong, particularly as seen through the lens of the movie 300. I started reading on a whim, figuring I'd see what the first few paragraphs were like, and then just didn't stop reading. It's engaging and well-written and interesting, and I wish he'd been writing the blog for five years instead of just one so I'd have more of an archive to catch up on. Good, good stuff. Also highly recommended!

Randomly: My decades-old degree in English has paid off once again, in that I was idly doing Washington Post crosswords the other night and as soon as I saw that I'd filled in "ode-n------a--" realized it had to be Ode on a Grecian (x), because of a paper I wrote 30-odd years ago.

The daffodils are blooming (see icon), but then the other day out on a walk with the dog it randomly started to hail very intensely. Ah, April.

Poor snow dog, so betrayed. <3

/end random post

This past week flew by, and I completely missed that the

chocolatebox collection was revealed Friday, whoops.

I wrote a tiny little Good Omens story for

cupidsbow that I'm really pleased with; it's been a while since I played around with short fic, and I thought it was exactly the right length for what it was. It was also my first real foray into writing GO, other than a quick fill on

rthestewart's Three Sentence Ficathon.

Just Right (307 words) by Arduinna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Good Omens (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens)
Additional Tags: Holding Hands, Scene: The Bus Ride (Good Omens)
Summary:

"Don't be a ninny, Crowley," Aziraphale said firmly.

I also lucked out with two gifts, one in Hair and one a treat for Person of Interest! They're both about that shift from friendship to something more, perfectly suiting their respective canons, and they make me really happy. ♥ ♥ ♥

you who are on the road (1859 words) by evewithanapple
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hair (1979)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: George Berger/Claude Bukowski
Characters: George Berger, Claude Bukowski
Summary:

Claude and Berger, crossing the border.

chance of rain (532 words) by ArgylePirateWD
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Person of Interest (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Harold Finch/John Reese
Characters: Harold Finch, John Reese
Additional Tags: First Kiss, Getting Together, Fluff, Rain
Summary:

He is, at times, a spectacularly foolish man.

You should read them, if you're so inclined!

My company made donations to FRNSW and RSPCA this week, and has also offered to match any donations employees make to any group dealing with the bushfires. I'm not going to pass up something like that, and would be happy to direct my donation(s) to local places if you guys have anything specific to point me at.

Apologies for being so late with this letter /o\

Thank you so much! The thought of a story or art in any of these fandoms is already making me happy. These prompts probably lean toward fic, just because that's how my brain is wired, but I also asked for fanart for everything because art is awesome.

I love all of these fandoms unreservedly, so if you have a yen to explore the universe, or bring in additional characters I didn't list, it's all good.

If you want more information about my requests, read on - but please don't worry if your ideas go in a different direction. I would much rather enjoy what you wanted to create than think you felt obligated to do something just because of something I said. As long as it's for one of these relationships, I'll be happy. \o/

( My fanwork tastes )

Why I love these fandoms

(Alphabetical, not ranked by preference! I love them all. :)

( Burn Notice )

( Good Omens )

( Hair )

( Person of Interest )

( Wiseguy )

I adore all these fandoms, and will be happy with absolutely anything you write, as long as you enjoy writing it.

And thank you, again!!

Ye gods, it's December already. This year has just vanished, mostly eaten by an endless reno.

But also eaten by a new dog that one of my roommates got this summer! She'd applied for three different rescue dogs before this one that had all fallen through for one reason or another, but this turned out to be the perfect dog and the perfect timing all around.

When we got her, she was about a year old and had just (like, that day) finished weaning her six puppies. She was maybe a little skinny, but was a solid dog, around 55 pounds, and super sweet.

( cut for first-day pics )

She's still super sweet, and super smart, and also super stubborn. So big huge yay for the sweetness. *g*

She's also rather more solid than she was, after a few months of being able to use her food intake for her own nutrition instead of her puppies'.

( cut for month-three pics from October )

She put on about 10 pounds in three months flat, and has gone from having a harsh, close coat to having thick fur and a ruff so soft and ruff-y her face looks fat.

She is a very good girl. <3

brightknightie posted: Milestones in FK fanfic archival totals (Could this be FK's last Yuletide?)

I blinked a little at "fannish housekeeping" as the first challenge for

sunshine_challenge, but I have to admit, it was a good one for me. I hadn't properly updated my profile in ages, and had never put together a sticky post that collated all my stuff. So yay, now I'm feeling all tidy. ish. Curious to see what the next one will be!

I know it's very much not the case everywhere, but my area seems to have finally decided that it's spring for real, and we're having a brief, glorious day in the low 70s (~20C-ish), warm enough to sit outside in sandals and shorts and a tank top, which is exactly what I'm doing. Blissssss. Tonight there will be burgers on the grill, even.

I've been consuming tons of fannish media and just not writing about it, because it's been so fast. Saw Captain Marvel and enjoyed the hell out of it; saw Aguaman and not so much; watched most of the existing MCU repeatedly as

mollyamory flings herself headfirst back into her deep, abiding love of Tony Stark. It's been really nice doing such a deep dive into canon; it's been a long time since I did that for any fandom, and I'd forgotten how much fun it is spotting all the little tiny things that you miss when you're not obsessing. It's a little odd in that I'm not actually obsessing like

mollyamory, so I'm less invested than I'd expect for something I'm watching so closely, but that's it's own kind of interesting.

We even sat through the 2003 Incredible Hulk, which was worse than Aquaman. And yet unlike Aquaman, we watched the entire thing. I can appreciate the style Ang Lee was going for, but oh my god that was a boring movie. And if you're going to have that many Science Montages, either speed them way the hell up or find more interesting science. Also maybe find an emotional throughline somewhere. Maybe.

All the MCU led to other Marvel universe stuff, and we rewatched Deadpool. I remembered liking it, but I hadn't remembered how much. It shouldn't work for me; it's too violent and gory. And yet! They pulled it off with the style and the humor. Then on to Deadpool 2, which no one in the household had seen, and which hooked us right in with the opening and the credits. I am totally on board for Deadpool 3 if it ever comes out.

This ramble brought to you by fresh air and sunshine.

I'm still reveling in my sudden ability to be fannish again, and poking at all the things. There are a bunch of new(-to-me) tools out there for spiffying up the AO3 experience on desktop browsers, so I figured I'd share what I've found, plus a couple of old favorites I last mentioned in 2013.

These are a combination of bookmarklets and userscripts. The bookmarklets just need to be dragged to your bookmarks bar. The userscripts require the Tampermonkey extension to be added to whatever browser(s) you use. Once you've added the extension, going to a userscript's page will show you an Install button; click that to install the script in Tampermonkey. The script will run automatically on any page it applies to.

All of these tools are browser-specific. If you use more than one browser, you'll need to install everything you want on all of them, and customize them if needed.

Finding fanworks

The AO3's built-in search and filters have gotten even better (yaaaaay excludes!), but that's no reason not to customize things even more. With the add-ons I'm using, going to a fandom's works page (or any search-results page) gives me a list of results where:
Find favorite things
Particular tags that I really like are highlighted in different colors, so I can zoom in on them without having to read every tag (Fangirlishness's "AO3: highlight tags" userscript)
Jump to instructions on customizing this

Skip over unwanted things
Incomplete works are faded out, for easy skipping-over (Flamebyrd's "Incomplete Works" userscript)
This script also makes the stats line on the fanwork larger and pink, so if I'm linked to an incomplete work, I still have an instant visual clue that it's not complete.

Works that contain particular tags that I really don't like are collapsed with an explanation of why they're collapsed (they could also just vanish entirely, but I like the option of being able to click in if I'm in the mood) (Schegge's "AO3: Fic's Style, Blacklist, Bookmarks" userscript)
Jump to instructions on customizing your blacklist here.

If you want just a blacklist without the added styling and bookmark functions, try tuff's ao3 savior

Streamline search
Works that I've already marked as seen (using a button that appears at the bottom of each work) and/or already kudosed are visibly marked on the results page, so I know what I can skip at a glance. (Min's "AO3: Kudosed and seen history" userscript

Works with a zillion tags appear with some of those tags hidden and a 'show tags' button for if I want to see them; if not, I'm not having to scroll past giant blocks of text. (You can set your own limit on how many is too many.) (Vannius's "AO3: Tag Hider" userscript)
Jump to instructions on customizing this

Recs (sort of)
This is on individual work pages, not searches/listings.
At the bottom of every fanwork page, I have a "You might also like this" button. (GetRec'd, links to Chrome and Firefox extensions)
If there's enough data for a match, it pops up a list of works that might appeal, each with a plus sign next to it. I can click straight onto a link to dive right in, or click the plus sign, which adds the work to a reading list stored on the browser's extensions bar.

If you go looking for userscripts, you may find the userscript version of GetRec'd. Don't use it; the creator has deprecated it and is focusing on the two browser extensions instead. The userscript version won't work.

That's before I even touch the filters - literally just on loading a page. Once the page is up, I can fine-tune the search/filters to a pretty amazing degree.

Add more filters
I can filter on additional fields beyond the one AO3 defaults to: creator, hits, kudos, comments, and bookmarks. (Flamebyrd's "AO3 Additional Filters" userscript)
These are also all possible to do on AO3's more complete Works Search page, but having them available in the filters makes things a little faster. I'm not likely to go all the way to the Works search to add "only works with more than 1000 kudos", but with the filter box there I can just add >1000 to the kudos filter and boom.

Save filter terms
I can set up persistent include or exclude tags, globally or by fandom, so I don't have to keep checking the same box in the filter list every time. (tuff''s "ao3 saved filters" userscript)
Need kittens in everything you read? Add 'kittens' to the global box, and you'll get kittens every time you use the filters anywhere.
Hate kittens? Add -kittens to the global box, and poof, never any kittens ever again (unless someone didn't tag their kittens, always a risk).
Love vampire AUs everywhere except one particular fandom? Go to that fandom's works page and add (-"Alternate Universe - Vampires") to the fandom box, and it'll be filtered out any time you're looking for things in that fandom.
Want all the angst, all the time, in your main fandom, but not necessarily anywhere else? Go to that fandom's works page and add angst to the fandom box.

Save entire searches
When I have a search set up that I like, I can click a "Track This" button on the works page, and it will be saved to a "Tracked" box. (Min's "AO3 Tracking" userscript)
I can click on that box anytime, from anywhere on the archive, and see a list of the tracked searches (up to 25) that I've saved. I can either click on the name to go to the latest search results, or click "Check for new" to see if anything's been posted since the last time I checked.
You can track any works page/listing, whether you've run a search or not.
Right now I'm testing this on a collection someone out there is keeping of their favorite fics for [trope], as a way of finding some specific recs for that trope. This button has many possibilities, is what I'm saying.

Organizing/storing/saving fanworks

From the search results/works page:
Every listed work on a search/filter page has a button on it for downloading directly, without clicking in to the work. (tuff's "ao3 download buttons" userscript)
This basically clones the archive's own download button, so it brings up all the usual format choices.

Every listed work on a search page has a button on it for a fast, customized bookmark on Pinboard, without having to go into the work (Flamebyrd's "AO3 → Pinboard Bookmarklet Generator" - the page includes an option for the button, if you want to install the userscript version)
Every listed work on a search page has a button on it for fast "mark for later", without having to go into the work (Flamebyrd's "Read Later Buttons" userscript)

From the page for any given work:
A bookmarklet in my browser's bookmarks bar lets me create a fast, customized Pinboard bookmark. (Flamebyrd's "AO3 → Pinboard Bookmarklet Generator")

Reading/commenting on/kudosing fanworks

There are tons of ways to customize your reading experience. I wanted a few specific things: page-margin control, font control, a way to mark where I stopped reading if I need to come back to something, ability to see at the end of a fanwork if I'd already kudosed it, and an easy way to quote things in a comment without losing my place. I use three userscripts for all of that:
Schegge's "AO3: Fic's Style, Blacklist, Bookmarks" userscript
Fic's Style: Every fanwork has a small menu button at the bottom right of the screen.
Clicking that gives me options to
change fonts
change font size
change margin width
change the background color of the fanwork (not the entire browser page)
or reset back to defaults

Whatever you set will be remembered the next time you go into a fanwork, but with the controls right there on the page it's easy to adjust on the fly.
The userscript includes a handful of default fonts and colors for switching through; if you're comfortable in code, you should be able to change these or add more. But the basic set provides a good array. This script is NOT designed to be tweaked by casual users.

Mark your place: I also get a button at the top of the page that says "Full screen".
Clicking that pulls up a semi-full-screen page (the browser controls are still there, but things like the header tags are gone), with an Exit button at the top and two small controls added at the bottom left: a caret (^) and a plus (+) sign.
The caret is a "go to top" link; the plus sign adds a 'bookmark' for whatever spot you're at when you click it.
You can only have one bookmark per fanwork, which also means you can mark your place as you go if you're worried about crashes or interruptions. The bookmark will update itself to the new position every time you click the plus sign.
Once you have a bookmark or two, you can click on the Bookmarks link in the nav menu across the top (next to Fandoms | Browse | Search | About), and it will show you a list of the works you've created bookmarks for.
Click on one, and it will open the work in the full-screen view;
Click on the "Go to Bookmark" button and it will take you right back to where you were

Meludame's "AO3 Kudos tools" userscript, which I thought was lost forever, and which I'm so happy to have found a copy of.
This script needs to be edited a bit, but is pretty straightforward. You add your own username where it tells you to, and if you've kudosed a work, it turns the Kudos button green and adds a green background to your name in the kudos list.
You can also edit it to highlight other people's names in the kudos list, if there are people whose tastes you trust and you want a quick glance in advance to see if they liked a thing.
Jump to instructions on customizing this.

rav's "AO3 Review + Last Chapter Shortcut + Kudos-sortable Bookmarks" userscript.
AKA "the floaty review box" userscript. You may have seen this one mentioned around recently, which is how I found it.
With this installed, any time you open a fanwork you'll get an addition to the row of buttons across the top, saying "Floaty Review Box".
Click the button and a semi-transparent box appears, floating at the top-right of the page.
This is movable! I tend to slide it further to the right (under/behind the right border of the browser) so only a bit of it is showing, so it doesn't overlap with the text on the page at all.

It stays put while you scroll through the story, so you can easily add commentary as you go.
It even has an Insert box: select the text you want to quote and click the Insert box, and it pastes in surrounded by italics markers. You can then hit return a couple of times to add your reaction. You can do this as many times as you want.

Everything you add to the floaty review box is instantly mirrored in the comment box at the end of the fanwork, so when you're done you can either tweak it or post it.
One caveat: If you start typing in the regular comment box, and then switch to the floaty review box, your review-box text will not be mirrored in the comment field. You'll have to copy-paste at the end.

I was going to put instructions for customizing the things that could be customized in the post, but it got seriously unwieldy, so instead I'm going to put the instructions in comments~~, and then fix the links in the post~~.

Where to find these things and more:

flamebyrd's AO3 Bookmarklets and Scripts page, with many useful things, including things I didn't mention above.

Greasy Fork's AO3 user scripts, lots more than I mentioned here, including ao3-savior, a more fine-grained blacklist (and whitelist) userscript than the Blacklist I mentioned above.

get-recd's Get Rec'd tumblr, with updates and info.

Meludame's "AO3 Kudos tools" userscript, saved on the static mirror of the late, lamented userscripts.org.

Spiffy html cut-tags courtesy aka_vamp, who posted how to do it a few weeks back. Blockquotes not included. :)

I've been on vacation this week, and had intended to spend it playing around in layouts and webpages over on Hubzilla and basically trying to catch up over there. Instead I've been poking at AO3 customizations, and dusting off my old pinboard, and have spent most of the last two days sorting pinboard tags into bundles. This is ridiculous, and yet has made me so happy. \o/ I do not currently have so much as a single unbundled tag!

Which will change as soon as I finish sorting out the AO3 stuff (in this case in particular, a bookmarklet to post to pinboard directly from AO3), because the eventual plan is to have redundant copies of fanworks bookmarks & recs, which means there's an unholy amount of copying back and forth in my future. But they will be all tidy and organized, yessss.

I lucked out and got two stories, which was unexpected and entirely lovely. ♥♥♥

Angles and Curves (536 words) by SLWalker
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: due South
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Vecchio
Characters: Benton Fraser, Ray Vecchio
Additional Tags: Slice of Life, idyll, Yearning, Gen or Pre-Slash
Summary:
On a cold Chicago day, Fraser reflects on both of the worlds he knows.

And

Lower Your Voice (678 words) by dragons_and_angels
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: MASH (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: "Trapper" John McIntyre/Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Characters: "Trapper" John McIntyre, Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce
Additional Tags: Voice Kink, Episode Tag, Germ Warfare, Treat Fic, Chocolate Box Exchange, Infidelity Mention
Summary:
Hawkeye persuades Frank to drink the beer in 'Germ Warfare' but across the tent, Trapper is getting other ideas.

And I wrote one:

Peace even in the storm (2000 words) by Arduinna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Dead Zone (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Bruce Lewis/Walt Bannerman
Characters: Bruce Lewis, Walt Bannerman
Additional Tags: Snowed In, Huddling For Warmth, First Kiss, First Time
Summary:
"Strip," Walt said, turning back to the wood and sorting out a few pieces that he hoped would catch quickly.

"'Scuse me?"

"I said strip." Walt looked at him again. "Look, there's no way this wood gets this cabin warm enough to dry out you and your clothes at the same time. The only way you're getting warm again is without wet clothes on. So strip."

This is a rarepair that had never even occurred to me, which usually means there's no way I'll sign up to write a thing, but I had a little headtilt moment when I saw it in the tagset and thought I'd risk it. I had a lot of fun revisiting canon, and turns out these two are a lot of fun to write together. <3

In summary: Chocolate Box was a lot of fun! Glad I played, will play again.

Oooh, the signal-boost thing works for AO3 collections, too. I edited this a bit to get rid of the "profile" and "join" links that got included because I also wanted the collection icon, but other than that, totally straightforward.

Wayback Exchange 2019 | Archive of Our Own

Wayback Exchange 2019

The Wayback Exchange is a fanfiction exchange for all those old canons you loved back in the day. Nostalgia's trendy now! Get with it!
This gift exchange is focused only on canons that are more than 10 years old. That means that for the 2019 round, the only canons eligible will be ones with no new material published or released after December 31, 2009.
https://waybackexchange.dreamwidth.org/

(Closed, Moderated, Unrevealed, Anonymous, Gift Exchange Challenge)

ljwrites posted: Signal Boost bookmarklet with user name tags for more sites

This is an update to the update to

astolat's bookmarklet for signal-boosting posts. It always allowed you to signal-boost from any page anywhere, not just DW, but

ljwrites has added user name tags for almost every site DW has tags for - so AO3, pinboard, LJ, JF, IJ, DJ, DeviantArt, Etsy, Blogger, Ravelry, Wordpress, and a few more.

I have no idea if I can pull this off, but we shall see! Signups close today, so if you want a card, now is the time. :)

fluffbingo
( Hm, cut-tagging this because the preview is showing tons of white space )

fluffbingo posted: Friendly Reminder

Tomorrow is the last day to sign up for Fluff Bingo. I will be closing the sign up post by 9 p.m. EST.

If you know anyone who would like to sign up, there is still time!

fluffbingo

I've never actually done an icon meme, I don't think. So what the heck!

torch picked these three for me to talk about:

Keywords: Snooch in the groove
Description: Snooch (of Eben and Snooch fame) rocking out on a couch in a fab hat

I didn't realize I hadn't included the name of the webcomic in the description, whoops. It's from Two Lumps: The Adventures of Ebenezer and Snooch. I used to follow it compulsively, although I drifted away a few years ago. I made the icon because I just love the feel of it; Snooch is not the brightest of cats, but he's earnest and good-hearted and he's having such a good time in his awesome hat there. So basically, a mood icon, I guess?

Keywords: beanies
Comment: made by cynicatlantis!
Description: beanie versions of John and Rodney from SGA

This icon makes me so happy. ♥ It's art that

cynicatlantis made for an SGA story I wrote, Candygram. Art for a story I wrote!! It's been almost 13 years, and it still makes me beam. It was a wonderful little round-robin of inspiration;

mmmchelle wrote a story about beanie Atlantis (Inanimate), which cynicatlantis drew art for, which inspired me to write Candygram, which inspired even more beanie art, of which this icon is one piece. It's my John/Rodney and also general SGA icon, and I love that it's such a perfect symbol of the energy and glee of SGA fandom in the mid-00s.

Keywords: crusoe
Comment: icon by fraught
Description: Friday and Crusoe, head to head

This is just beautiful - warm and glowing and intimate, and a perfect capture of their relationship. I'm immensely sappy about this show and this pairing, and this icon makes me all *happy sigh* all over the place. They love each other SO MUCH. I use this one for talking about Crusoe (or used to, anyway), and for general aw-they-love-each-other things that I don't have more specific icons for.

And one bonus icon, that

torch knows all about because she made it for me:

Keywords: hermit
Comment: torch made this!
Description: a tarot-card version of Linus from Peanuts, carrying a lamp as The Hermit

This has been my default icon since the day torch made it, which was a really long time ago. It's perfect for me. ♥

Ask in the comments, and I'll pick three of yours.

I'd seen a few posts about this whole federated fandom idea and thought it sounded interesting, if weird, and I was looking forward to seeing what shook out when other folks got further along and things were ready for using.

I actually told people, straight up, that I wasn't going to do any poking at it; this is too techy for me, I need a finished product, wtf is an instance, anyway.

Then I signed up for Mastodon (a twitter-like microblogging system), which I'd at least heard of, but the default interface was terrible for me and drove me right off. So then I clicked a link in

cesperanza's comments and signed up for what seems to be the current fannish-testing-ground on Hubzilla, fandom.stopthatimp.net.

... Seriously, I had NO INTENTION. But here I've been for the last few days, and I gotta say, I'm pulling for Hubzilla to be the next big thing. I'll leave the technical stuff to other people, and just tell you why I'm liking the system as a user.

Customize your view
- You can set your stream to sort in three different ways:
  - by "Commented date", which bundles posts and comments together and pops any post that's been interacted with to the top of your stream;
  - by "Posted date", which bundles posts and comments together and leaves things in chronological order by post (newest at top), regardless of if someone adds a comment;
  - or by "Date Unthreaded", which gives you a chronological order of everything without bundling comments to their posts. In this view, everything has a "view in context" link on it so you can click through to see what it's connected to if it looks interesting.

You can also set your homepage and stream posts to show with comments expanded in place (this is the default), or toggle the "blog style" layout where comments are hidden and you have to click through to see them.

Sorting by "Date unthreaded" ignores "blog style" layout and just gives you a raw stream of everything individually as it gets posted.

Write any length post you want

At least, so far I haven't seen any indication that there's a character limit on posts, or on comments for that matter.

Privacy settings

You pick the type of blog you want, and the system applies automatic privacy settings for that level of blog
- You can choose "Social - Federated" to have your posts show up on other services (if fandom's going federated, this is probably the one you want)
- You can choose "Social - Mostly Public" which is roughly the equivalent of a public blog on LJ/DW/Tumblr, where anyone can go see it
- Or you can choose to lock it down further, to access-list-only but people can see that you exist in the directory ("Social - Restricted"), or to access-list only and not visible in the directory ("Social - Private").

You can install an "Affinity Tool" that gives you a slider that you can apply to each of your connections, giving them a general closeness level to you. When you post something, you pick the general affinity level that it should go out to.

You can install a "Privacy Groups" app that lets you create specific groups of people, like DW's access & subscription filters. This gives you total control over who's seeing your posts, and whose posts you see, much more precisely than the Affinity slider.

When making a post, you can also set an on-the-fly custom privacy setting, where you pick right then who can see a particular post, without having to create a new Privacy Group. You can choose as many people as you want here.

This also lets you you pick people to exclude from seeing your post on an on-the-fly basis, so if you're doing something like planning a birthday surprise for one person in your Friends group, you'd go to the custom setting, pick "Show Friends", and also pick "Don't Show [birthday person]". Again, you can pick as many people as you want to either Show or Don't Show.

Lots of other stuff: you have individual control over all kinds of things for each of your connections, including whether people can administer your channel, upload or edit files/photos to your channel, post on your channel (like posting on someone's wall on Facebook), etc. The system sets defaults based on the kind of channel you create (which honestly will be just fine for most people most of the time!), but within that there's a lot of granularity if you want it.

Image galleries

There are galleries for images! You can upload photos and arrange them however you want!
- The amount of storage available will probably vary depending on what server you're on, but the capability is there.

Reblogging/sharing

You can reblog/share almost anything, including individual comments to any post. !! It doesn't seem to be possible to reblog the commentary someone else has added to a post, but I might just be missing something so far. If you hit Share on a shared post, it shares the original post. There's a clear description of who wrote the original and a link to view the original, so it's easy to see the conversation.
- On the one hand, you lose the fun of reblogs that go off in their own direction with great commentary. On the other hand, you can leave actual comments, so the converstaion can happen in one place, without people only being able to see one small thread of it.

Cut tags/read more tags

You can do a single level of cut tag - I haven't found a way to nest them, or to have more than one on a post yet. But it's really easy to do the one level. You put the informational text you want people to see above the cut between [summary] and [/summary] tags, and that text will show up as regular text with a link below to "View article".
- So I would write the above like this: [summary]You put the informational text you want people to see above the cut between (summary) and (/summary) tags, and that text will show up as regular text with a link below to "View article" [/summary]

Calendar

It comes with a calendar - actually, two calendars. I'm poking at this with a few other people, and it has some huge possibilities. Like, say, a fest forum that puts its dates up in its events calendar for its members to see and copy to their own calendars if they want more direct reminders.

And so forth. It's a sort of composite of LJ/DW, Facebook, and Tumblr, with solid default settings and hugely customizable individual settings if you like to be that granular. If you like journal-based fandom, it's going to be a pretty painless shift.

Which is not to say it's ready for fandom to shift over whole-hog; it still needs some hammering out, and fandom is going to want a lot more themes, and variations within the themes themselves, and how-tos on how to do everything.

But it has a lot of promise, and you really can talk effortlessly with people on some other systems (like Mastodon). You really can just pick up stakes and move to a different Hubzilla server ("instance") without losing your contacts. You can't track a tag per se like on tumblr, but you can search for something and see posts that mention it, whether in the body or the tags.

I'm really, really liking this, is what I'm saying. :)

You can find me on Hubzilla at https://fandom.stopthatimp.net/channel/arduinna :)

Also on Mastodon at https://fandom.ink/@arduinna, although I'm not using that one at the moment.

morgandawn posted: Media Cannibals Vids On AO3*

It was forty-four years ago today
Vidders taught themselves to play
They've been going in and out of style
But they're guaranteed to raise a smile
So may I introduce to you .....
The act you've known for all these years?
Media Cannibals Lonely Hearts Club Band

*Some of these vids have appeared online before as downloads. This is not the entire collection of fanvids but it does include some from the VCR-era of vidding.

\o/

Click through to

morgandawn's post for the link!

(It isn't bunnies.)

I've been reading some of the posts about money and fandom that are making the rounds, and in the comments to

fairestcat's post, people touch on the source of much of the weirdness in fandom re fanworks and money: old-school SFF fandom.

It's always been bizarre to me that fanartists could make money off their fanart, when fanfic writers were expected not to. (I should add here: I love the fannish gift economy, and thought it should encompass all fanworks, not just fic.) I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and eventually came up with what I think might be the answer. Or an answer, anyway.

So here's what I think happened: back in the day (mid-20th century), if you were an SFF fan going to conventions, there were three "paths" to participating. (Someone's going to come and argue that. I'm generalizing wildly here for simplicity. I know there were many ways to participate.) If you wrote fiction, you could submit it to magazines or book publishers, and go pro, and create content for people to talk about. If you drew art, you could submit it to magazines or book publishers, and also sell it directly to buyers at art shows at conventions, which were basically fandom's galleries.

If you didn't want to be a "pro" creating more content, but wanted to talk about fandom in general or the content that already existed, you contributed ("tribbed") to zines (APAzines, letterzines). Tribbers got copies, and other people could buy copies (of the letterzines) for the price of copying and mailing, basically. (Again, generalizing wildly, just to provide a sense of a common approach. Don't @ me *g*.)

Star Trek fandom branched off from SF fandom, and took a lot of SF fandom's terminology and culture with it, including zines. They were created along the old familiar lines: people who wanted to tribbed to zines, and got "paid" with a copy of the zine, and people who hadn't tribbed could buy it for cost and shipping. But in ST fandom and its descendants, zines were as likely to be full of fanfic and fan poetry as meta or analysis.

Artists could get their work out by tribbing to zines, or making zine covers, but art reproduction was harder than mimeographing or photocopying text, so artists also tended to show their work at conventions, which also got set up along the old familiar lines: an art show that allowed for sale or auction of the art.

And then that got embedded in the culture. Fanfic was part of the conversation, like meta, and you didn't pay for it beyond the cost of physically receiving a copy. Fanart that was in zines was also part of the conversation, and ditto.

Fanfic writers who wanted to be paid filed off the serial numbers and went pro if they could, just like in SF fandom. Fan artists didn't have as clear a path to a pro life, but could sell their art at cons. Even as fandom moved online, it was hard to show art, so art stayed outside the general conversation.

These days, art is a huge part of the conversation, and for the most part is free the way fanfic and meta are; you can browse around DA or tumblr (or you could, anyway, sigh) and see all sorts of visual takes on things. But because it was outside the conversation for so long, and treated as a sort of pro content, it's still much more acceptable in fannish culture to take art commissions, or sell art.

It's a bizarre difference in approach when you only see the existing conversation among all the creative forms of output. But I really think it goes back to those early days of creating something slightly different out of SF fandom's culture, and the translation just not being perfect.

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Signal Boost: Wayback Exchange 2019 | Archive of Our Own

Wayback Exchange 2019

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federated fandom

Signal Boost: Media Cannibals Vids On AO3*

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