Of Fangirling and Fanfic-writing

Misunderstanding: I said the appointment was at 7 and check-in is half an hour early, meaning I had to be there at 6:30, but you thought I meant that the appointment was at 7:30 and I had to be there at 7.

Obfuscation: I said that I have appointments at 4, 7 and 9 today and then a handful more tomorrow, nothing is too important, no worries.

Lack of Communication: I won't tell you when the appointment is, if I've even told you there's an appointment at all.

Lie: I said that the appointment was at 5.

For the fourth year in a row now, it's time for Small Fandom Summer! Join me for Small Fandom Summer! It's real easy to play:

Make a fanwork for something that has fewer than 1000 English-language works on AO3

Post it to AO3

And then you've done it! You've made a thing and you've diversified the fandom ecosystem! You're basically a hero.

Q: The fandom I want to create for has more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but the specific pairing I want to write for has fewer than that. Does that count? A: Yes! Q: What if it has more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but, like, just barely? A: Okay! Q: What if it actually has a lot more than 1000 English-language works on AO3, but it still feels small? A: Sure! Q: What if I don't want to post it to AO3? What if I don't even have an AO3 account? Can I post it somewhere else? A: Wherever! Q: What if-- A: Just do a thing, friend. Make a thing. Share the thing. This is not meant to be restrictive; this is meant to be inspirational. Create the fanworks you want to see in the world. Make a stranger happy by appealing to their niche interests. Bring joy.

And if you want to give yourself some silly little Steam-like achievement badges to commemorate your accomplishments, well, you're in luck! I've made a bunch of them right here! You can grab the ones that apply to your work and paste them wherever you like and feel good about what you've done. Here's a few of my favorites:

So you see? This is meant to be silly and fun.

There's nowhere to sign up. There's nothing to commit to. There's zero pressure. You just do it if you do it, and don't if you don't. But if you do want to play (yay!), tag your stuff with #small fandom summer so we can all swoop in and appreciate everyone else's efforts.

And since some other people have asked: There's no start date for this, nor is this an end date. "Summer" in this context is an extremely arbitrary unit of measurement. I'm starting now because my personal summer runs from about mid-May to mid-August. Yours may vary.

It was actually said best by a Hungarian comic, I'm paraphrasing a bit: If your house is on fire, you can't be like 'well that's not the fireman I imagined'.

I know it's been said a thousand times before, I know everybody is raging against having to vote for a less than ideal candidate, but today has proven that it fucking works. It's the only thing that works. And if the new guy is just a step closer to what you want? That's a fucking win. That's a fucking step in the right direction.

Viscous/vicious – Viscous is generally used to describe the consistency of blood or other thick liquids. Vicious is used to describe something or someone who is violent. 

Piqued/Peaked/Peeked – To pique someone’s interest is to catch or tease their attention. When something peaks, it reaches its total height or intensity. To peek (at) something is to look briefly, or glance. 

Discrete/Discreet – this is a tough one. Discrete means to be separate, or distinct, i.e., two discrete theories. Conversely, when someone is discreet, they are being secretive or cautious to avoid attention. 

Segue/Segway – one is a transition between things, the other is a thing you can ride at the park and definitely fall off of.

Conscious/Conscience/Conscientious – to be conscious is to be awake, i.e., not unconscious, or to be aware of something. Your conscience is the little voice in your head telling you not to eat the entire pint of ice cream. Finally, to be conscientious is to be good, to do things thoroughly, to be ruled by an inner moral code. 

Taunt/Taut - Taunt is a jeer or provocation, taut means to be pulled tight, or not slack

Weary/Wary - weary means tired and wary means cautious

Rogue/Rouge - rogue is a person who has unaffiliated themselves from what they were before (is the general understanding); a person or thing that behaves in an aberrant, faulty, or unpredictable way - rouge is red

Wonton/Wanton - a wonton is a dumpling, wanton is (of a cruel or violent action) deliberate and unprovoked and/or sexually unrestrained

Haphazard/Halfhazard - haphazard means to  have a lack of plan, order, or direction - the other isn’t a word

Corporal/Corporeal - corporal is a lack of plan, order, or direction and corporeal is to have a physical existence: to be tangible: of a person’s body

Peck/Pec - the first is a kiss (peck) and the second is the shortened version of pectoral (pec)

Virile/Viral - to be virile is to have strength, energy, and a strong sex drive (typically said about men) and then this last year (2020) has personally taught us, is how viral a plague can really be, so of the nature of, caused by, or relating to a virus or viruses

Vulnerable/Venerable - vulnerable means being susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm, and if a person is venerable they’re accorded a great deal of respect, especially because of age, wisdom, or character (or if you’re religious, holy)

Loose: the opposite of tight

Lose: to misplace something or the opposite of win.

Advice/Advise - in American English advice is a noun, you can give it to people, and advise is a verb, the act of giving advice

Ball/Bawl - people ball their fists when they are angry and ready to fight; people bawl when they cry loudly like a baby

Bear/Bare - to bear is to carry something physical or figurative like “to bear arms” or “to bear good news;” bare is when something is hairless, naked, or exposed as in the expression “baring your soul”

Hanger/Hangar - clothes go on a hanger in a closet or on a rack; airplanes go in a hangar to keep them safe

Definite/Defiant - when something is a sure thing it is definite; when someone acts out against authority they are defiant

Pour/Pore - you pour drinks or pour out your feelings, but your pores are the tiny holes in your skin that keep it healthy

Palate/Palette/Pallet - palate is the surface of your tongue that allows you to taste (e.g. palatable means “is enjoyable to eat”); a palette is a set of color options for paint or makeup; a pallet is a wooden platform heavy shipments are placed on so forklifts can move them around, or a pallet is a mattress stuffed with straw

One more example that I don’t see misspelled, but do see misused:

Soiled - primarily used to describe clothing or fabric that has been made very dirty with something gross and wet (feces, mud, vomit, food, etc.). It is not just a synonym for “wet,” it is very specific. If your female character has “soiled panties,” she is not sexy she just pooped her pants.

Sodden - a close synonym to “soaked,” except it normally has a negative meaning whereas soaked is neutral. You use sodden for objects that have been made soggy or ruined by too much liquid. It is not often used for buildings, cars, or other normally solid objects. Unless the building is made of straw or the car has a fabric interior and was flooded, neither will be described as sodden.

via @discipleofkleio

TO EVERYONE ELSE:

A series of ten reblogs is about to follow, since you can only have one poll per reblog. Please answer all ten polls. If you don't see them all, check the notes (this shouldn't take me long so if it's more than like, fifteen minutes since I posted this one they should all be there.)

a) Caesar was a well liked leader among the common people. he distributed food to the populace, land to his soldiers, and it looked to them like he protected the borders in Gaul. the average person in Rome didn't really care if they were ruled by a senate or a dictator, so long as their lives were tolerable. the senate didn't kill Caesar for the people, they did it for themselves. it was just about putting the power back in the hands of many autocrats, rather than one.

b) Caesar's assassination directly led to TWO civil wars, with Augustus, who inherited Caesar's name, money and soldiers, coming out on top becoming the first emperor. all the damage that was done by subsequent power-mad emperors was his legacy. but if Caesar had just grown old and died in his bed, the republic probably would have reformed in his wake.

in conclusion, if you're gonna violently kill a bad politician, i support you, but please keep the energy up after that and make sure society as a whole gets better, instead of just letting someone else step in to fill the vacuum and continue their shitty legacy.

For everything we do here, please be sure to be careful with what you edit, and restart your computer to lock things in. If you don't have access to the Group editor, (likely to happen if you're on base windows) you can do this as well by opening your Registry Editor app, then inputting this after your 'computer' or whatever the initial segment is. (Mine is computer. If I just try and paste the below string it gets SO mad at me)

\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsCopilot

Navigating to your "turnoffwindowscopilot", hit modify, and set the value data to 1.

If done correctly, it'll look like this.

While we're at it, you can also get rid of the integrated search, (or that thing where it searches the web when you search anything, whether or not you want it to) and such through regedit as well.

Integrated search will have you going to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

Navigate to your "DisableSearchBoxSuggestions" bit, if you don't see it, you can make it by right clicking and creating a new registry D-Word key of that exact name. Edit the key, set it to 1. It'll look like this if you do it right!

To get rid of Windows Spotlight, (The thing where it pulls up ten billion pages on windows start page, shoving ads in your face and cluttering everything) we go to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DesktopSpotlight\Settings

And set "Enabled State" To 0. If you do it right, it'll look like this!

Disabling edge on startup will also help a fair deal with processing speed and the like. This you can do in all sorts of ways, the easiest being turning it off entirely on startup through settings in the like.

If you want to kill it *entirely*, though? :)

In regedit, run along to Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft

Navigate to your MicrosoftEdge key subcategory. If you don't see it, you can make one! Note, this is a KEY, not a d-word. *inside* that subcategory, we want to either make or find the D-Word key of PreventLaunchEdge and set that to 1 in the same way as all the others. It'll look like this.

Aaaand while we're here, I'd HIGHLY recommend shanking Killer Networking Services. It's just bloatware. (Ostensibly it's supposed to monitor your network bandwidth and even things out, but that really means it's constantly monitoring and pinging things, which eats up the bandwidth you DO get, and also chunks your computer's processing power.) Getting rid of it entirely is borderline impossible, since it's set to redownload on regular updates and intel is very pushy with its updates.

This you can do by opening your Services.msc, which basically shows you all the background stuff that Windows does. Find Anything with Killer in the name, right click it, go to properties, and disable startup. It should look like this, if done successfully. It will probably reenable itself in time/in later updates for windows, but it's a quick fix. I'd also check your TaskScheduler app to make sure that nothing's scheduled to open up there, either.

If you CAN completely kill Killer services through uninstalling and the like, I would warn that at very least for my computer, the only ethernet/lan support applications that are available ARE Killer's. When you download updates, you really do have to do it manually and ONLY download the ethernet services, or just be cool with not having Lan functionality.

One last thing, not a shit application but is a shit service. If your computer's constantly overheating or just warm, you likely have Turboboost enabled. (Default setting that you can't change) If you want to be able to turn it off and drop your temps by like 40 degrees, in Regedit go to

Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00\be337238-0d82-4146-a960-4f3749d470c7

(Note- This isn't the string copy paste from the reddit thread, this is mine that does the same thing. If my string doesn't work for you, check the reddit thread string. If that doesn't work either, you can follow the path and find it pretty easily. Probably has like, one letter of difference somewhere. The bits all start the same, though, so it's easy to find.)

and go to "attributes". Set the value from 1 to 2, and now in your advanced Power Plan settings in control panel, you'll be able to *see* turbo boost and turn it off.

It'll look like this, and in power options, a successful disabling of boost should look like this.

Turning off quick startup's also a good call, since that basically stops your restarts from actually shutting things down properly.

There's well over a hundred settings, here's just a few of them:

(sorry the classic taskbar option no longer works with current windows 11 version)

Fair warning: This is a powerful tool which means it can also do some damage if you don't know what you're doing, but every setting comes with an extensive explanation, as you can see in the Ads and unwanted apps screenshot.