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

https://archiveofourown.org/works/5046274

Tutorial notes that it doesn't work on mobile but I'm on mobile and it worked just fine for me, so ymmv, ask some friends with different phones to test it. Will only work for people who have work skins turned on, but that's most users.

 

Does anyone know if HRT injections prohibit me from donating blood? (note: I do my injections by myself at home)

 

It shouldn't, Moony donated blood when his hema count was too high and that was what his endo suggested--donating blood instead of getting routine blood pulls instead.

 

@sirsparklepants Thanks for the link, that's useful. What I'm looking for is slightly different; is there a way to make text that looks like this ███ except actually has text in there which you can highlight to read?

 

I mean, I know how to do that in html, but I'm pretty sure the parser boots that out. If you look up the CSS for text highlight color and text color and make those the same and apply it to a work skin like the guide above, that should get you the effect you want. Unfortunately CSS is well beyond my knowledge scope so I can't help you there, but ao3 has a work skins tutorial including a resource for that here, so that should give you a place to start.

Edit: did some poking around and the ao3 basic work skin has a spoiler class that should do just that. How the hell you actually use it is is beyond me, I'll be honest, but the tutorial above should help.

 

Okay, thanks for looking. I poked around and I can't find anything about a text highlight function, though - does anyone else know how to do that? If it's impossible the white text will work for what I'm trying to do but the blackout text would work better, so I'd really like to try to get it to work. Thanks for the help anyway!

 

I'm looking for a Kindle version (or PDF if that's the only option) of Modelland by Tyra Banks, because it looks awful and I'd therefore love to liveblog it. The problem is, Amazon no longer has the Kindle edition for sale from the looks of things, and I am not spending 30 bucks on this shit for a physical copy (and I prefer ebooks anyway).

Does anyone either have a digital copy of the book they could send me or a link to where I might purchase one? I'm willing to drop a few bucks if I must, just...not the price of the hardcover.

 

I have no advice, but godspeed, from what I've heard it is indeed hilarious.

 

Does anyone know if turbotax's Free File will let you do a form 1099? it's different from their Free Edition, which I know will not. Free File is supposed to be an IRS-sponsored program that will let you do all your filing for free if you make $33,000 or less, but it keeps telling me to upgrade to the paid version just like Free Edition did.

 

nevermind, I backed out and came back in and it seems to be working fine now. thanks, turbotax, I'm sure you didn't make that deliberately confusing at all

 

I've had similar things happen every single time I try to use Free File. I had to shop through several different sites this year to find one that let me enter the forms I needed while being actually free.

 

hey im not a lawyer but i think i read an article that stated that as of relatively recently having tax stuff like that labelled as "free" without actually being free is illegal

go check with someone who has an actual education in US law about it but it might be a thing

 

This one? And yeah, this year I did not get ambushed by tax prep companies that let you get all the way to the end of something with "Free" in the name prominently linked from the IRS Free File site and then go "Okay now give us $30 :)", which is what kept happening the last few times. But apparently to get around being prevented from doing that some of them have instead resorted to things like "if you have to report income from freelance work you need to upgrade to BUSINESS VERSION for $110 :)".

 

Will textile paint work with faux leather?

 

It should! If you're ever unsure paint a small piece and bend it around a bunch.

 

How do all you peeps who write figure out what you want antagonists to be doing? That's the part I struggle with most.

 

I'm saying this as gently as possible here but: maybe it would help you to first come up with a story you wanna be telling and then worry about the details? From all I've seen of you here, you seem to try and settle on a genre/character archetype/set of tropes first and then try to make the story fit around that, and you keep getting nowhere.

I think perhaps it would help if you told yourself a story YOU want to hear, and then go from there. Just ignore all that formal stuff and do something just for the joy of it, to get the scaffolding down around which you can then refine and grow the story. But as it is, you're trying to espalier a tree onto thin air and wondering why it won't stay up.

 

Yeah, sometimes thinking of characters less as characters, but more as elements of a story exerting pressure on the plot in certain directions, is a way to go. Figuring out something of how the antagonist's going to shape the story, and then coming up with motivations after the fact.

 

No, it's cool, I do know I do that. I know what I want my main characters to be like, but how to exert pressure to make them into those people is hard. What exactly do you mean by "story I want to tell"? That's what I'm struggling to get, and I'm not sure how to figure that out.

 

The way I've heard it told, generally stories are either plot driven or character driven. Either you first come up with characters and go "oh because of their personalities x conflict will happen" and get a plot that way, or you come up with a story first and get characters to fit them (generally the way I operate). For your antagonist, their characteristics are going to depend on the specifics of the conflict you come up with, or their characteristics will DETERMINE the conflict you come up with, depending on which way you tend to develop. But! If your characters produce a conflict that bores you to tears, either you'll never write it or you'll hate it the whole time. I'm not presuming to speak for @TheOwlet but it sounds like she's saying you need to come up with a plot you're excited about. It doesn't have to be revolutionary or anything, just a story and characters you're excited about telling people about.