starryvoid

Made this post about 15 minutes after the repair guy who fixed the pump on my dishwasher packed up his tools and left, as the dishwasher was whirring along doing my dishes from that morning.

1. Fist: Make a fist around the epi-pen, don’t place your thumb/fingers over either end

2. Flick the blue cap off

3. Fire. Press down into the outer thigh (the big muscle in there), hold for 10 seconds before removing (the orange cap will cover the needle). Bare skin is best but the epi-pen will go through clothing. Avoid pockets and seams. 

It doesn’t hurt much at all to use this needle. The first time I used mine, I didn’t even feel it. But be sure to stab it IN THE OUTER THIGH. Do not stick it anywhere else or you could seriously hurt or kill someone. Just right to the outside of the thigh and then call the ambulance - even if your friend starts doing better, they could have a biphasic reaction, meaning a reaction that comes back (or they may need a second dose, be on the look out). If your friend has an epipen, then they have an epipen trainer that doesn’t have a needle and you can try it out just to be sure you know how to use the real thing if you have to. I’d also advise holding it a few more seconds then 10, maybe go for 14 just to be sure all the medicine is administered and that you didn’t count too fast - that’s what I did.

Here’s a graphic of where to stick it:

this and also the only difference between fanfic writers and writers who sell their own original works as careers is that fanfics aren’t monetized. that’s all.

being a “professional” writer doesn’t mean your works are inherently better than fanfics. I’ve read so many fics that are more professionally written than some published books.

the Four Simple Tools Which Have Most Improved My AO3 Experience (on the computer, at least):

FIRST, for writers: the AO3 posting script google doc.

if you take nothing else from this post, let it be this. let the blessed light of the ao3 posting doc shine upon you.

okay so you know how if you copy your doc into the rich text editor on AO3, it will fuck up your formatting? just a little. like, if a word is italicized at the end of a sentence, but the full stop isn't italicized, there'll be a space between them and it looks weird? or it'll insert extra line breaks between paragraphs?

that's because the rich text editor takes what's copied into it and converts it to HTML, and I guess weird stuff can happen in that process, e.g. the rich text editor interpreting every line break as a new paragraph, including blank ones, thus the weird extra line breaks.

thankfully, there's a way to convert your doc directly to HTML that doesn't run into all those problems! it's the AO3 posting script. you make a copy of that google doc for yourself, so you have editing privileges. then you copy your fic into it, hit "post to AO3" -> "prepare for pasting into HTML editor" and boom, it will do the damn thing for you. it has saved me so much time and energy and annoyance. lots of people know about this, but every time I bring it up I find someone I know has not yet heard the good news, so: now you know!

okay, for the rest of these you need a userscript manager for your browser, like greasemonkey or tampermonkey. a userscript manager is a browser extension that lets you run a userscript (a little program, usually written in JavaScript) to modify particular webpages. I use firefox, so I use the greasemonkey browser extension linked above, but there are others out there! they should have their own installation instructions.

SECOND, for readers: the floating comment box.

wish you could write up comments while you read instead of waiting until you get to the end of the fic/chapter? this script creates a way a, well, floating comment box that you can access while you read! you access it by clicking this little "O" button in the upper left-hand corner of the brower.

when you do that, a floating box pops up, into which you can type your thoughts in as you read! you can also highlight text and click "insert selection," and that text will show up in the box, italicized, for you to tell the author what your favorite lines were!

hitting "add to comment box" will make the contents of the comment box at the bottom of the page match the contents of the floating box.

THIRD, for readers: ao3 savior and ao3 savior config.

is there shit you just never want to see again? say, for instance, you'd love to never see a harry potter fanfiction again. ao3 savior can help!

the way this one works is that you install the 'ao3 savior' script and the 'ao3 savior config' script separately. then when you want to add something to your blocklist, you go to your userscript manager extension (e.g. greasemonkey), go to the ao3 savior config script, and hit edit.

there are some default/example tags included to show the various ways to blacklist or whitelist works, but, for instance, here I've added "Harry Potter*" to the list of tags to exclude. (the * is a wildcard, so it will include "Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling" AND "Harry Potter - Fandom" AND any other tags that start with "Harry Potter".)

now, if I'm looking through fics and there's a Harry Potter crossover in the list, it will be hidden, and I'll be able to see why! and if I look at the tag itself...

ah! what bliss.

and FOURTH, for readers: ao3 tweak formatting.

finally: say there's a fic posted by someone who has not yet seen the blessed light of the ao3 posting script doc, and you want to read it, but the extra paragraph breaks really annoy you. or they learned to type in 1931 and so they double-space between sentences. or... various other common typing quirks! this script creates a handly little dropdown that will remove those quirks, just after the notes, after the beginning notes and before the chapter title.

click on "remove line breaks" or whatever, and poof! the extra line breaks are gone.

it's like magic.

I know installing scripts might seem a little daunting if you've never done it before! but it's actually really easy and handy. I know there are other, more in-depth tutorials for installing/using these scripts out there, too, if this is confusing. and probably there are other great tools out there that I don't even know about! I'm just writing this up quickly while I was thinking about it, so I can go to dinner.

-ancient roman posca: water, red or white wine vinegar, honey, salt, herbs (coriander, mint, thyme)

-switchel: water, ginger, vinegar, sweetener, lemon, salt

-ayran: yogurt, water, salt, mint

-sees the reports of the heatwave in Europe-

If you don't already know you have issues doing so, squat down real quick. Bend your knees all the way and touch the floor. Just make sure you can do it. Okay? For me? And then stand up all the way and make sure you can balance on one foot.

If there was ever a tumblr post worth sending to your mom, it's this one.