Super General Advice (the thread for advice without making a thread)

Okay, it's up! Going to browse around for a few possible testers and try to find a voice.

 

Does anyone know an app that you can set to beep at you in a relatively non-obnoxious way at specific intervals? I'm under doctors' orders to make a point of looking away from my screen every half hour or so, but my phone's built-in timer app is really annoying when it goes off and I'd have to reset it every time.

 

look up pomodoro timer apps or something similar? one that you can customize the time limits, because those let you set up series of alarms basically and often let you customize the sound it makes

 

blipblip is what i use for pretty much exactly that
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.nadolski.blipblip

 

Is it a good idea to start a writing Patreon or Ko-fi if I mostly write fanfic? If there were going to be legal consequences, how bad would they be? If it's just an order to stop then that wouldn't be a problem, I could just stop if I got one, but I don't want to go to court over it. Does anyone have a Patreon like that?

 

I’ve definitely seen people do fanfic for patreon (at least as part of their offerings), but I have no idea how good of an idea that was legally, nor if they ever ended up in trouble for it.

 

Does anyone know the etiquette, I guess, of making new character tags on ao3? like, if the character doesn't have a canon last name, should i just tag Character Name (Fandom)?

 

Yep, that's the general format! Here's the official AO3 guidelines for character name tags: https://archiveofourown.org/wrangling_guidelines/7#Single_Name

 

@Maya That's how I've seen most people do it! I think you could get by with that, and it's definitely less confusing than sorting through an infinite number of Roses

 

ah! thats what i was thinking but i just wanted to be sure!! thank you guys!!
follow up question: the character technically already has a tag, but as a group with others (the existing tag is "Oda Sakunosuke's Kids" for all 5 characters, but I'm writing about 2 of them) should I also use that tag, or no, since it's not the whole group?

 

personally, i wouldn't, because as someone who uses tags to search for things, i would be... eh, ultimately indifferent, but annoyed in the moment if i clicked on your fic, expecting a story about all x characters, and only got a small number

(opinion brought to you by my irritation at hobbit fics using the tag "thorin's company" and only having like. kili, fili, bofur and dwalin actually make an appearance)

 

that's fair! thank you!!
(side note i just find funny: that tag can either be used to refer to 5 or 15 kids, depending on the verse, and that makes me chuckle)

 

i have seen a few writing patreons/ko-fis. i don’t know about legal consequences; however, something to keep in mind if you do create one is that ao3 doesn’t allow you to directly link patreon/kofi/etc, in your authors notes, profile, etc. i think ao3 doesn’t even want you to mention that a fic was a commission, although i could be wrong on that.

it’s about legal liability for ao3, in any case; they want to be non-commercial because that’s less of a sticky legal area, and they want deniability of anyone making money off of it for legal reasons, which is unfortunate but understandable.

(the one fanfic patreon i saw that seemed successful was for a popular RPF writer, and ao3 told her to remove patreon links from her ao3, so either people will notice & report it, or ao3 will notice on its own.)

i do know that you’re allowed to, say, link to your Tumblr in your authors’ notes, and then have your Tumblr prominently link to your patreon/whatever, but you can’t directly link your patreon on ao3.

 

Oh, I knew about the AO3 thing, I was just wondering if I'd face serious legal consequences for trying.

 

Any recommendations for a hard-to-kill, easy to maintain small plant for my office desk? Fair cop, my desk gets no sunlight, so it has to be a plant that doesn't mind that :B I work four days a week, so it needs to be okay for a two-day stretch of not being watered, too.

 

Mother in law’s tongue aka snake plant is a good no light hardy plant. I usually water mine every other week? I also keep it in a pot with peace lily and when the peace lily wilts I know I should have watered it two days ago, but the peace lily always perks back up the same day I water it.

 

@Key oh! I recognize that plant, my parents have one at their house that's very large, it plus the pot is nearly as tall as I am :B so that considered, would I need to maintain a tiny desk-appropriate one regularly in some way so it doesn't become NOT desk-appropriate size?

 

I think just keeping it in a small pot keeps it from getting very big? Mine has definitely gotten bigger over the years but I’ve also moved it to a larger pot to allow that because I want it to be bigger. When I get back home this evening I can take a picture for you.

 

Spoiler: Nsfw?

Does anyone know how to suppress feeling horny?
Ultimately, its only a distraction for me and doesnt rly make me feel good or happy just jittery and distracted
It's not rly often or a lot but even the bit of horniness is kinda just pointless for me specifically.