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

How to buy gift? For sister???

I've finally hit the last person on my Christmas list and she's near impossible to buy for YoY
Okay, that's exaggerating, but still! Her likes basically amount to hard to follow music tastes, weed and weed paraphernalia, and ranch hand stuff like tools and... Idk, cows? I still don't understand her job and I really want to but I just can't grok the technical stuff :(
Buying range is 40 dollars tops and I know that's not a lot but I just want to make her smile please help

 

Are you close at all?? I know it's sappy and vulnerable but i've honestly had it go really good to just give cash and a heartfelt card-- specifically, my sister gave me straight cash a few years back when i was just out of college and tight on money, and this year i know was hard on her so i returned the favor and wrote in the card how much it meant to me that she just gave me cash when that's the main things i needed... so obviously that's a personal circumstance that's not super transferrable but.. y'know, drawing on that good good relationship history and shared experience is always good if that's something that exists between you-- gift giving is a way, in the end, to let people know that you think about and appreciate them and like... people just like knowing that they matter to you in the end

 

That's a good idea! I think I'll draw her something and buy a related gift, she has seemed to like art from me in the past and that way I can express something more heartfelt

She can be hard to get close to and so can I, and despite living in the same house communication or even simple contact is few and far between. I think she'll like the reminder that I still think of her maybe

 

So I’m moving at some point in the not-too-distant future. I don’t know the exact dimensions of the apartment off the top of my head, but it’s a fairly small studio.

Does anyone have advice re: furniture and storage—stuff I’m likely to want, where to find a good deal, etc.?

 

I'd recommend checking if there's a Habitat for Humanity ReStore anywhere nearby. They sell donated used furniture that's usually decent-quality and in okay shape, which you can't always say for stuff you find at thrift stores.

(Also, when I first moved out, it didn't occur to me that "furnished apartment" didn't include "shower curtain," so make sure you've got the easily-forgettable stuff like that. Or like. Clothes hangers.)

 

My experience having just moved to an unfurnished bedroom for the first time was just last week... if you're looking cheap, for-now solutions the little plastic wire assemble-yourself boxes like you see people using for their art displays at a con artist alley have been my savior for storage. easy to fold up and down, will hold your clothes that don't hang in a pinch

also, i'm currently living the floor mattress life and unless you really have trouble with standing in the morning it's not bad. mattress is essential, bedframe can wait a week or two. I also have a folding plastic picnic table in place of a desk while I wait for my desk to arrive, also perfectly functional and easy to move around

don't forget your towels!!! I always forget towels until the first day I go to take a shower in a new place. I forgot my towels in my last two moves, and one of those was international

 

Take a look on Facebook to see if there's a Buy Nothing group in the area, people put up things that are usable that they don't want anymore, sometimes a good way to get good stuff)

 

It's also good to remember that you don't have to get everything all at the same time. It's perfectly okay to only be half furnished for a while.

What personally helped me was asking family members if they had anything going spare. They gave me some really cool stuff they didn't want any more.

 

It can technically wait while other furnishings are done, but a big problem for me when moving is lighting. Assess what kind of bulbs you may need for existing lighting, and consider some cheap lamps for whatever area you end up using most. You'll avoid a lot of (literal sometimes) headaches

 

Oh, and unless you've got access to a free laundry washer and dryer, something that can be made fun is picking out a fun quarter jar, and other laundry supplies! Look for safe laundry soaps, maybe a cute portable hamper, dryer balls, stuff like that. Also a shower caddy or one of those hang-over-the-spigot shower shelves if you haven't already got any for your bathroom. Oh, and trash cans! Trash cans are your friend

 

Does anyone know anything about best practices for painting/generally renovating a room? I need to repaint my bathroom, but the building I'm in wasn't exactly well-built in the first place and also hasn't been particularly well maintained- e.g. when I tried to remove the old caulk around the shower so I could redo it, it turned out to have been painted over so many times that when I pulled it off it took the bottom edge of the paint off the wall with it. It's a rental, so it's not my responsibility to fix everything, but I'd like to do the best job I reasonably can since I have to live with it (and right now I can certainly tell stuff like that whoever painted it last didn't use painter's tape around the shower, painted over the baseboards, and didn't bother painting behind the toilet tank). Tips? Advice on how to make sure it's not obvious that there was a ring of damaged paint on the wall just above the top of the shower that someone painted over? General suggestions to avoid creating more things that I will extremely notice forever?

 

If it's had as many layers as it sounds like to be peeling off in layers, you'll want to sand down at least the edges of the damage ring-- if not the entire wall, so this doesn't happen again. (And obviously if you find water damage anywhere, that should be dealt with before any paint goes overtop-- paint will not save structural faults.)

 

I'm getting an error message when I try to reblog from a specific Tumblr. It's not the same as the "this post cannot be reblogged" message that happens when I'm blocked by the user, but the helpdesk page isn't actually very helpful. It looks like this.

Does anyone know what's going on?

 

What does one do about plagiarism of fanfic? Should I call it out or just ignore it?

 

I hate to tell you this, but i don't think fanfic plagiarism is a thing since for fanfic, you inherently do not own the right to things

also like. even if someone made off with your idea, and that idea happened to be enterily unique, you can just write it too. There's 5 million coffee shop AUs out there and that's never stopped people.
Something you write will always be different than something someone else writes, because the viewpoint is inherently different even if you both start from the same box of characters, base premise, and idea.

 

Well, whatever it's called. Someone I tried to welcome into my writing group spent some time there, then abruptly blocked us all and posted fanfics with concepts obviously copied from the group fic. I know there isn't any official recourse or anything, but do I point it out to our readers or just ignore it?

 

ignore it. like, a 'callout' about that is going to look supremely weird and petty. Like, was it a dick move? yeah probably. Is there anything you can do about it? Not really, no. Is there anything you expect other people to do with the context? Because that'd be the only reason to actually do some sort of info post about it.
And if the answer is 'no, not really' then what is the purpose of making an info post?

 

Well, them not reading her work would be preferred. Also, she hasn't blocked some of the other cowriters and you can't block people on AO3. I know I shouldn't fight with her in her fic comments, but should I ask one of the people she hasn't blocked to tell her to stop?

 

I'll be real: people reading a callout post is likely to give the fic *more publicity* which is the opposite of your stated goal.

But yes fighting her on AO3 is going to at best make her mute your there/mute your comments, or worst case: get your ass banned for harassement. And like. what are the chances of her actually stopping what she's doing?

 

I have no intention of bothering her on AO3, I'm just wondering if I should ask one of my cowriters who she's not replying to but hasn't blocked to ask her to quit it via private message.