Birds of a Feather Spin Webs Together

It's been decided: You may call me "Slice" if you want. Pronouns: She/Her, Age: 20s, Likes: Marvel, Harry Potter, Avatar: The Last Airbender, along with many other fandoms. Main Ships you'll see here are Drarry and Stucky, though there are other ships I like that you'll see if you look around. I like reading, writing, and watching series and movies (will most likely bingewatch series). Feminist and social justice content will also be posted here. I will most likely talk mainly in my tags rather than potentially ruining someone's post, so if you see what I write and want to post it on the post, feel free to source me; I won't mind. Also, feel free to talk to me; I don't bite! And let me know whether you want me to answer privately with DNP (Do Not Publish) at the beginning of asks; I will respect it. All other asks I'll assume you're fine with me posting publicaly. (Will edit this later.)

[ceasarslegion]

Ouran high school was my favourite anime when I was like 14 which is really funny because thats also the age I basically was in a Haruhi fujioka situation. Not like fully literally but the meat of it was the same

I was the one single middle-class kid in a super high-end rich kid private academy with like pressed uniforms and building wings and everything. I didnt get any sort of scholarship, my dad just got a job as a teacher there and teachers kids got to enroll for free because the tuition was like 30 grand a year and you arent affording that on a teacher salary. So I understand her on a very visceral level and perhaps enjoyed OHSHC so much because she was SOOO me fr. These damn rich people

[ceasarslegion]

One time I convinced my classmates that I had never had sushi before because we were too poor to afford it just so they would pay for my sushi dinner and it worked. They were so out of touch that they thought I didnt have the money for anything more expensive than fast food. I did in fact take advantage of this partially because every teenager is a shithead and I was not exempt from that rule and partially because I knew they had more money than god so it was a totally victimless crime. A classmate once bought 2 copies of The Last Guardian on release just because they thought I "deserved a new game." They thought I couldnt afford a new video game and I said nothing

[ceasarslegion]

This experience also made me utterly immune to the "rich people shit is when [middle class thing]" discourse on this site. Because ive directly experienced rich people shit and its NOT when someone goes to NYU or gets Starbucks on their breaks at the job they have to work to afford their mortgage.

Rich people shit is when I had to yell at my classmates that we are not spending tens of thousands of dollars ON BALLOONS for our prom when we had a DJ to pay and their response to me was "thats only 700 dollars per person."

Rich people shit is when I went to go tutor one of my classmates little brothers who was struggling with history and it took him 10 minutes to go get his tablet from his bedroom and come back to the kitchen table because their house was that big, which was being cleaned by a live-in maid while their private chef made us snacks the entire time I was tutoring him. And then their parents paid me 500 bucks and told me "sorry I seem to have misplaced my other wallet, is this enough? Its not a lot :(("

Rich people shit is when the other teachers kids and I breezed through school with high GPAs because all of our peers had so much money that they never had to care about getting into a good university or having careers or budgeting or anything, so they never tried.

Rich people shit is when youre invited to a little get together on the weekends and get told to bring an overnight bag because their definition of a little get together is an overnight yacht trip. And then you get there and find out that your middle class definition of what's needed for an overnight trip is VERY different from a rich persons definition of the same thing: you have some pajamas, clean underwear, toothpaste, and some soap and face wash, maybe some moisturizer. They bring half their wardrobes and designer personally-commissioned serums that cost more than your house and then tell you that youre "just so quaint."

So much discourse around whos rich and whos not comes from people who have never been in a rich persons reality and so they end up shooting directly above them and calling that rich. But I tell you from personal experience that rich people are uniquely disconnected from reality and anybody who has to work for a living is by definition NOT rich. I dont care if they have a big suburban house and 2 new cars and go on vacations a lot, thats not RICH. Rich is when their kids think 700 dollars is pocket change for prom balloons and have their own personal yacht to take their friends on whenever they want, not when someone goes to fucking NYU.

[doomsday-dj]

There was recently a copyright infringement case in YA and I need everyone to know that the following sentence was in the legal decision:

“Hot, sexy, dangerous boys, central to virtually all young adult romance novels, cannot be copyrighted.”

[kuttithevangu]

“Regarding setting, the court held that both works taking place in Alaska high schools was not protectable because Alaska is a public place and setting a teen novel in a high school is a common genre convention.”

Freeman v. Deebs-Elkenaney | Loeb & Loeb LLP

Freeman v. Deebs-Elkenaney | Loeb & Loeb LLP

[kogiopsis]

I've read the entire decision (skimming over the purely legal precedent/definitions bit) and here are some of my favorite bits:

[rylandsgrace]

[samgirard]

hudson williams saying closeted pro hockey players and other athletes are reaching out to them and rachel reid, that they're playing in the highest leagues and they have to reach out and this is their story makes me incredibly heartsick like there is one (1) out professional hockey player in all of north america there are none in the nhl this sport took one step forward and was wrenched two steps back and there are boys watching this show and seeing themselves and they want to tell someone so badly even if they can't put their names on it it makes me it's heartbreaking. these boys deserve better. these boys deserve sunshine.

[sliceosunshine]

Heated Rivalry may be fun and fiery, but its impact reaches far beyond the screen. Hear more of Hudson Williams' interview on Andy Cohen Live at the link in the comments. #HeatedRivalry #HudsonWilliams #AndyCohen #SiriusXM

A link to the clip in question.

[annabelle--cane]

harrow the ninth asks the question "what is the first impulse of a genius necromancer when trying to retain any shred of coherency in a river bubble?" and gives the unambiguous answer "write fanfiction"

[annabelle--cane]

to be clear I am talking both about palamedes "the necromancer's marriage season... 2!!!!" sextus and harrowhark "role swap au" "ballroom au" "coffee shop au" nonagesimus. tamsyn muir said that in 100% of case studies the last frantic attempt of a prodigy to avoid entering a final psychological death spiral is writing tropey fanfic.

[annabelle--cane]

ortus I'm so sorry I forgot about you and your matthias nonius rpf. you may not be a necromancer but you were still fucking it up in a river bubble. unequivocally harrow the ninth boldly states that fanfiction saves lives.

[ratinthevoid]

???? in WHAT

[theprofessional-amateur]

Do we count this as a passive rickroll?

link to post

[swordofwit]

A very important addition from Rian Johnson himself

[zarla-s]

Back up your LJs!

I know this post is for a very small audience here on Tumblr but some of my oldest friends I met on LiveJournal are still here, so I'm making it anyway just in case.

But there have been some changes at LJ recently that do not bode well at all. Rahaeli made a thread about it on bsky with some more worrying details. For a bit of background on this, LJ is surprisingly big in Russia. Like way more than on the western side, and it's been owned by a Russian company for a long time now (it wasn't always - there was a big controversy when LJ got sold to the Russians back in the day).

The Russian side of LJ dropped a very big change on Dec 29th without warning on their users, essentially making it so they'd have to register their ID or bank info with LJ to post or comment. Any posts from people outside of Russia, or without Cyrillic services turned on, are invisible and can't be interacted with by people inside Russia. It's nearly impossible to turn Cyrillic services on if you're not in Russia either, so there's a big wall now between both sets of users. Rahaeli speculates that this could mean the Russian company that owns LJ could be considering selling off or just shutting down the western side of LJ soon, thus why they're sectioning it off. There's been no mention of this on the western LJ news comms or anything which is also worrying.

Fandom's moved on from LJ now, but that doesn't mean that a large chunk of old fandom didn't take place there before, and if LJ does go down then tons of fic, fanart, meta, communities, kinkmemes, discussions, rp, goes down with it. Everything up in smoke! I think people underestimate sometimes just how much stuff went on there. LJ being dead is much different than LJ being gone... the thought of it really disappearing after all this time breaks my heart. I've spent so much of my life there, even after everyone else left. ;_;

But how to do your backups? Dreamwidth is an easy answer as an LJ clone, with an automated importer that'll snag all your stuff and move it over for you. Another tool I've been using is ljArchive, specifically this fork of it which will also save comments and communities, although it won't get userpics. There's also LJ Archivr, although that one costs money, and I think some others are mentioned in the bsky thread. Whatever you pick, I'd do it sooner than later.

[smol-ackerman]

HAPPY OCTOBER 3RD!!

鋼の錬金術師 BROTHERHOOD: Ep. 11

MEAN GIRLS (2004)

[jewfrogs]

this is so mean but sometimes i see published writing and suddenly no longer feel insecure about my own writing ability. like well okay that got published so im guessing i dont have much to worry about

[naamahdarling]

I have a friend who is an editor, and gets submissions of mostly poetry and short stories.

I have had a glimpse into her slush pile, and let me tell you, the contents were unbelievable and immediately disabused me of the notion that reading through submissions is in any way glamorous. People have the nerve to submit unhinged paranoid ramblings, fetish porn, and a seemingly endless supply of poems about masturbation.

I no longer feel like my fiction is somehow an imposition on the people who read it. It may be forgettable, but at least it isn't typeset to look like sperm.

Do not be afraid to submit your work. Your competition is not only worse than you think, it's worse than you ever imagined.

[silverhand]

Do these three things to get to the top of the slush pile:

The place has a style sheet. Use it. They say they want your MS in 16.5 point Papyrus italic with 0.8 inch margins all around, guess what you're doing before you send it off? Save As, reformat, send it. In the absence of a specific guide: Courier 12 pt (Times New Roman if you must), double spaced, align left, tab 0.5 at each new paragraph.

Check the word count. Don't submit novellas to 2500 word short story venues. BTW, you format the MS in that old style above because the question isn't literal words. Courier 12pt double spaced gives you 250 words per page for typesetting purposes. 2500 words is 10 ms pages, 5000 is 20 pages, etc.

Don't send your romance to Analog or your war story to Harlequin. If it's a cross-genre story, be sure there's enough of what the publication is focused on to interest them, but breaking through is hard if that's not something they usually do.

That's basically what every single editors' panel at every con I've ever been to has boiled down to. And invariably, someone tries to get up and argue with them, not realizing it's not a discussion.

Bonus tip: Don't be in any way cute in your cover letter. Just the facts/Luke Skywalker's message to Jabba the Hut in ROTJ.

Enclosed/attached is my story <Title> for your publication <Magazine>. It is x (rounded to the nearest 500) words. I can be reached at <email> (that you check regularly and isn't likely to dump things into spam) and <phone>.

(If submitting a hard copy: The manuscript is disposable. A SASE is enclosed for your response./A SASE is included for return of the manuscript and your response.)

Thank you for your consideration.

If submitting a novella length piece or greater, a brief and complete summary is appropriate.

In the midst of an interstellar revolt against an evil galactic Empire, vital weapon plans fall into the hands of a farm boy on the edges of the galaxy. With the help of an aging warrior from the Old Republic, and a smuggler with a dark past and his imposing alien copilot, the four set out to deliver them to the rebel forces but are instead flung into a rescue mission to save the beautiful princess who stole the plans as worlds are destroyed by the might of the Empire's weapon, the Death Star.

Captured by the Death Star on route to deliver the plans, they manage to escape the base with the princess, the old warrior sacrificing himself to make this possible. As the Death Star approaches the rebel base, they use the captured plans to stage a desperate final stand. In a fierce space battle of single-pilot ships over the surface of the moon-sized weapon, the farm boy manages to make the critical shot with an unexpected assist from the smuggler, destroying it.

Never under any circumstance put a cliffhanger into a query letter summary. There is no faster way to get the entire MS binned than doing that.

Happy writing.

PS "Top of the slush pile" means into the top 25% of manuscripts received. Three quarters of the submissions don't take the trouble to do even those three basic steps.

Now, that still means 25/100 submissions or 250/1000 submissions, but it still improves your odds and forms the basis for starting a relationship with the publisher for the next piece you send them.

PPS This is obviously about prose. Poetry certainly has its own submission rules, and I know none of them. If you're writing poetry, find out what they are.

[ariaste]

This goes for query letters to agents as well.

Also, that emphasis on the submission guidelines (or style sheet) and formatting things EXACTLY the way they requested it? Yeah, that's so that they know at a glance whether you have a brain in your head and can fucking read. Didn't follow the guidelines? They can discard your submission in an instant rather than wasting the two minutes it takes to read your cover letter.

FOLLOW THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES!!!!! THIS IS STEP ONE OF "PROVING YOU'RE A PROFESSIONAL AKA SOMEONE WHO SHOULD BE PAID MONEY FOR THEIR WORK". FOLLOW! THE! SUBMISSION! GUIDELINES!

Wait hang on there's still a couple of you who are not internalizing Follow The Submission Guidelines. I will tell you a story.

Couple years ago, I taught a college course on Writing & Publishing Scifi/Fantasy. Towards the end of the 8-week workshop, I told the class that they were going to learn what it is like to be a literary agent. I asked them to tell me a few things about what their dream novel would be if they were an agent (genre, themes, etc) and then I went and wrote fake a fake query letter for each of them. Then I scraped together a bunch of other query letters from Queryshark, and then I wrote some unhinged ones. Printed them all out, put them in a box, walked into class on the day, said "The first person to find their Dream Client in the slush pile wins Twenty Real Human Dollars." The air in the room suddenly became *FERAL*. RABID. College students will literally kill a man for $20. I dumped the box on the floor, screamed "GO!" and watched them throw themselves into it.

You know what happened? Almost instantaneously they developed a sense of "UGH FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES." They were ruthlessly throwing things aside simply because it did not include a "Dear [your name]," salutation. They were crying, "NO!" when they got a query letter for a short story instead of a novel. When confronted with a pile of garbage with a couple gems in it, they figured out in nanoseconds that the #1 red flag for garbage is "did not follow the submission guidelines."

FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES!!!!!!

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

mitigate!

[endlessdeuce]

Y'ALL THE HOUSE IS STILL IN PLAY REMEMBER HOW BIG A DEAL IT WAS TO WIN THE HOUSE IN 2018 IT'S STILL POSSIBLE

[lingonberry24]

Of the seven swing states, five allow ballots to be cured in at least some circumstances:

Arizona: In Arizona, ballots can be tossed out if an election official determines that the signature on the envelope containing the ballot doesn’t match the signature in a voter’s registration record. State law, however, requires election officials to “make reasonable efforts to contact the voter, advise the voter of the inconsistent signature and allow the voter to correct.” The voter has until the fifth business day after the election to correct the signature.

Georgia: In Georgia, a ballot can be rejected for a number of reasons, including if the voter incorrectly writes their driver’s license number when they submit their ballot. If a ballot is rejected, state law says election officials “shall promptly notify the elector of such rejection.” The voter then has three days to cure the ballot, although what they are required to do to cure it varies depending on what caused the ballot to be rejected.

Michigan: In Michigan, ballots can also be rejected due to a signature matching problem. To cure the ballot, the voter must fill out a cure form and return it by 5 pm on the third day after the election.

Nevada: Nevada also can reject ballots because of signature-matching problems. According to state law, if that happens, “the clerk shall contact the voter” and inform them of what they need to do to cure the ballot. The voter then must cure the ballot by 5 pm on the sixth day following the election.

North Carolina: North Carolina ballots can be rejected for a variety of clerical errors. Should that happen, state law says “the county board of elections shall promptly notify the voter of the deficiency and the manner in which the voter may cure the deficiency.”

Source:

How do I fix my ballot if it is tossed out?

Ballot curing, explained.

[docgold13]

Polling Place Locator - Vote.org

Wondering where you vote on Election Day? Use our polling place locator to find out.

[cleolinda]

Additionally:

Yes, if you are in line before the polls close, you have a legal right to vote

You can’t be turned away if the voting location closes after you get in line.

[king-shit-thembo]

Everyone rn:

[spacemancharisma]

wanted to share my favorite tiktok

[headspace-hotel]

this has a very Vine energy and I like it

[residentwhatever]

[Video ID:

There is a poster on a store wall that says ‘Halloween is here,’ but there is a line break separating ‘Halloween’ to ‘Hallo’ and ‘Ween.’

Man behind camera: Hallo! Ween is here!

The camera pans to another man who strums a small string instrument.

Other man: I am Ween

End ID]

[vrumblr]

What’s the description leaves out is that “Hallo! Ween is here!” Is said in a very silly, perky German accent.

[modern-politics111]

Because I remember disinformation being spread around the last few elections and I’m sure assholes will bring it back:

YOU CAN’T VOTE ONLINE.

YOU CAN’T VOTE FROM YOUR PHONE.

IN MANY STATES THERE ARE LEGAL CONSEQUENCES FOR PHOTOGRAPHING YOUR BALLOT.

DO NOT WEAR CAMPAIGN GEAR TO THE POLLS.

DO NOT TRY TO PERSUADE PEOPLE TO VOTE FOR A CANDIDATE AT THE POLLS.

DO NOT ENGAGE IN ANY KIND OF POLITICAL DISCOURSE AT THE POLLS.

NO ELECTION IS EVER A SURE THING, EVEN IF YOU’RE IN THE BLUEST OR REDDEST OF STATES.  IF SOMEONE TRIES TO TELL YOU THAT YOU CAN SIT THIS ONE OUT, THEY ARE EITHER IGNORANT OR MALICIOUS.

VOTE.

[orteil42]

hey just want to remind my american followers that the US is still one of the most influential nations in the world and that one fascist in power makes everything worse everywhere for a long time. please don't fuck this up for the rest of us

[not-safe-for-democracy]

via michelleobama/IG

[msilverstar]

US voting registration deadlines