It’s so great and satisfying when I’m reading a fanfiction and the person who is writing it mentions other fandoms in the story as if the media we have is also a part of the media that exists in the world in which the fanfiction is set.
I read over half of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and was like “this is some trick ass bullshit. I’m like 200 pages in and there is no fucking character development at all. I…I hate all these people….I hate everything about this.” Then I threw the book out the window and it got rained on. Later some squirrels picked it apart and made it into a squirrel nest. And finally, I was pleased.
None of my adult triumphs can best that time when Bruce Bogtrotter ate the whole cake.
You can do it Brucie. You can do it Bruce.
As a writer who creates long texts out of a series of small posts, it was so so important to me that my readers at least have a chance to be able to read them in order.
But because tumblr’s architecture doesn’t have an easy way to support doing this, me and a couple of people have figured out a way, through jumping a series of hoops and running through some red tape, to create a way for people to arrange their posts in chronological order in an easy accessible way for their readers. There are two ways to do this, because some themes don’t support the primary way and this post will go over both:
1. The first thing you need to do is tag every post you want to show up in this chronological list with the same tag. It should be something unique to your blog. For example I use the tag “the beginning” in all of my posts.
2. Now that all your posts have been tagged, you can manually create a link using the term “/chrono” at the end. For example if you used the term “the beginning for your primary tag, the link would look like this:
“http://www.yourblognamehere.tumblr.com/tagged/the_beginning/chrono”
Putting the term “/chrono” at the end of the link will arrange all of your posts with the tag you chose in chronological order. Go ahead, try it and see. If you’d like, you can arrange any tag in chronological order by doing this. Its really fun and can help organize your site a lot, especially if you’re a novelist or using it for a news blog.
3. THIS IS THE HARD PART: making a link for your page.
Every blog theme is slightly different and I have had to deal with a lot of themes that require you to hop several hoops before you can get anything to work the way your want. So. Here goes nothing
4. On the off chance that that didn’t work (which it sometimes doesn’t) there is another way. Most people couldn’t give two shits about their RSS Feed button. No one really uses it. Most people feel similarly about their “Archive button”. So, because no one cares, there is a way to go into the html and replace that link with any link of your choice.
How to do this: You go up to the top of the customize section under the picture that says what theme you’re using and there is a button that says “Edit HTML”. Click that button and the left side will open up into the HTML of your blog. DONT FREAK OUT. I REPEAT DON’T FREAK OUT. YOU DON’T NEED TO KNOW HOW TO WRITE HTML/CSS TO DO THIS. JUST TAKE A DEEP BREATH AND FOLLOW MY INSTRUCTIONS. Press the keys “Ctrl” and “F” at the same time and a word finder will open up. Type the word “archive” into the finder and it should highlight the word “archive” in the CSS. it might take a couple of tries (no more than 3), but you need to find the correct use of archive. It should look like this
{block:ifDisplayarchivebutton}
<div class=”leftbox”><a href=”/archive”>Archive</a></div>
{/block:ifDisplayarchivebutton}
The only parts of this that you need to worry about are in green. I’ve helpfully bolded the parts you will change. What ever is in green between ” ” will be where you put your link. The link you made with “/chrono” at the end. This will be where your blog will redirect people. in the > < area, backspace the word “archive” and put “Read From The Beginning”
So this new configuration should look like this:
{block:ifDisplayarchivebutton}
<div class=”leftbox”><a href=”http://www.yourblognamehere.tumblr.com/tagged/the_beginning/chrono“>Read From The Beginning</a></div>
{/block:ifDisplayarchivebutton}
Basically, what you just did was take a section of your CSS that was dedicated to directing someone to aspect of your website, and force it to direct them to a completely different link: the link you created that has your posts in order.
DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE IN YOUR CSS UNLESS YOU HAVE MAD SKILLS. OTHERWISE TERRIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN.
5. The previous method is the most technical method, so therefore it is also the most fail safe method. The first method is the easiest. But with a lot of custom themes, often you can’t use it. You can also use these methods to create special themed pages or to redirect someone anywhere you want. For example, I created a facebook link on one of my blogs that redirected people to my facebook. or whatever.
Anyway, I hope you guys in the writing community spread this around because so many people seem to want to know how to make this happen and I really wanted to share the knowlege. <3
If anyone has any more questions, feel free to send me an ask.
When I was a child, my mom provided me with the best library that she possibly could. Made sure I was surrounded by books of quality, with strong characters from around the world. I want to provide the same thing for my children in the future, so I started this list called “Project Library”. I know I’m young and unattached and childless, but its best to start these things early…
The way it works: The list is designed to collect recommendations from people who are already in their late teens/early adulthood of books that they remember from their childhoods that made an impact on them. Books that changed something in them, taught them something important, or were very dear to them. The reasoning behind this is that only the most influential books will stand out in their memories from the many other books read in their early life.
These are the books that I will be (and have been) purchasing and collecting for my personal home library in preparation for raising a child who loves to read.
The Current List:
Pippi Longstocking
The Borrowers
Where the Sidewalk Ends
The Grey king
Charlie bone
Exit to Eden
Spindle’s End ( sleeping beauty)
Sirena
The Thief lord,
The City of Ember
The Golden Compass (series)
Sabriel ( series),
Pendragon ( series),
The name of this book is secret (series),
Harry Potter ( series),
The series of unfortunate events,
Nate the great,
Diary of a Wimpy kid (series)
Where the sidewalk ends,
The Magic Tree house ( series),
Goose bumps,
Pretties/Uglies,
Catherine Called Birdy,
The Midwife’s Apprentice,’
The Giver,
The Giving Tree,
Love you forever,
Keys to the Kingdom ( series),
What my mother doesn’t know,
Kissing Doorknobs,
Inkheart,
The mixed up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,
Little House on the Prarie ( series),
Feed,
Little sister/ Heavenward path,
Night,
The Bracelet,
Time Machine,
Eragorn,
The Alchmist,
A Great and Terrible Beauty
Lord of the Rings
The Phantom Tollbooth
Stargirl
Holes
Bunnicula
The Devil’s arithmetic
Wild and Wooly
Tuck Everlasting
The Redwall (series)
The Hunger Games
Animorphs
Amelia bedelia
Speak
Thirsty
Looking for Alaska
The Handmaids Tale
An Abundance of Katherines
The True Confession of Charlotte Doyle
Master and Margarita
Life of an Artist
Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking glass
Number the stars
Ender’s game
Junie B. Jones
The Egypt Game
Charlie and the Chocolate factory/Charlie and the great glass elevator
Lord of the Flies
The Outsiders
My side of the mountain
The Wizard of Oz Series
The Darkangel
Switchers / Midnight’s choice/ Wild blood
Tuck Everlasting
A Wrinkle in Time
Holes
The Whipping Boy
Hollow Kingdom
Harriet the spy
The Little Prince
++++++
The ariboolies*
If you give a mouse a cookie
The Chronicals of Narnia
Where the Wild things Are
The bearnstein bears
Judy Blume*
The boxcar children
Nancy Drew
Dr. Dog
Eloise
What Katy Did
Skellig*
Watership Down
Jane Eyre
Huckleberry Fin/Tom Sawyer
The nutcracker
The rough Faced Girl
Bunnicula
Barabar (The Elephant)
The Paper Bag Princess
I would like to turn this project out to tumblr and collect as many more recommendations as I can. The books on this list should be geared towards these specific age groups:
baby-7th grade. (ie: From Goodnight Moon to Harry Potter)
Recommendations will be accepted as comments, replies, asks and submissions I will be re-posting an updated version of this list monthly.
Please Signal boost/reblog!
What books made an impact on you?
I’ve always loved that kind of format, but never considered doing it myself until now.
I really like the idea of bouncing back and forth between the past and the present, particularly in this story. Because the reader is being narrated the story by August from the mental hospital where the two main characters eventually wind up.
So, not only do readers get to have a story-line of how they got there, as their world turns from bright and sunny to dark and stifling knowing exactly where they will end up. But readers also get the story-line of August and Jack languishing in the Mental institution as August’s separation from Jack kills him slowly.
Between reading about Jack and August frolicking in the woods and going to school dances and generally being carefree teenagers, they also read about August hiding his sedative medication under his tongue, breaking into Jack’s room and being put in solitary.
It creates motion within the novel. And a sensation of inevitability that stabilizes the tale.
And I’m also trying to see if I can get something going with this other ridiculously talented writer where we have a series of maybe 30 poems from Jack’s crazy person POV going BACKWARDS (as well as appearing upside down in the final print form) through the story.
That way the reader has the past coming towards them and the present going away from them and the madness descending upon them from above to create a thoroughly dark and complex reading experience that invokes feelings of confusion, anguish and instability from the format alone.
I swear it will have a happy ending though.
I swear.
They get free.
(x)
The nights were bad without him.
Red always faced His bunk, looking at the folded white sheets and wondering when someone new would come to fill them.
When they finally did, he slept with his back to them, facing the wall.
Some nights it was cold and Red curled up inside himself, dry eyed and miserable.
Warm nights were worse.
They were nights where his skin was hot and sensitive and he reached out for Rat, but nothing was there. Where his mouth felt empty and his tongue, swollen.
And he wanted and wanted and wanted and wanted.
The strings and horns sang out in his head.
He clutched the sheets sweating, weeping
at how much
he wanted to touch
His fingers itched for the want of gold
and he was lost without Her
Without an anchor
So, Red shut his eyes against his loneliness
And clamped his hand against his mouth to hold in his screams.
I’m sorry for taking a break from all my projects but but but
ARMY slash.
hot, one sided, ARMY slash.
scrabbling in the desert and and and and.
okay. I’ll post it so you know what I’m talking about.
Breathe
Jet liked hand to hand combat. He was fond of guns, but he had knives as well.
He’d sooner slit someone’s throat or break their neck or stab them in the back, in the chest, in the face than shoot them.
Everyone frowned upon it.
Especially Red, who thought it was repulsive and well as an unnecessary risk.
And the creepiest thing about it was that after Jet made a particularly brutal kill, he’d look blissed out and loose boned and satisfied, like he’d just gotten a hit of something really good.
Red had asked him about it one day, as Jet leaned against a chain link fence; eyes half mast, fingernails clotted with blood.
“Everyone has their vices, Edwin.” He drawled. “Leave me to mine.”
Ride
“What do you have waiting for you back home?” Jet asked
Red shrugged tiredly and kept marching. “Work. Destiny. The bomb -who is really the bomb by the way.”
“What’s her real name?”
“Sarah. What about you?”
Jet looked up at the stars. “Home for me is just a place. Its just where I keep my stuff. I bought a couple of horses right before I left and I haven’t yet ridden them. I’m looking forward to it. Also, I’m building a hot springs, but construction has been halted until my return. I miss it all, of course, but this is fun too. Kind of like an extended camping trip. Or going hunting. I’m rather glad I came.”
“You’re fucking crazy, Jet.”“Guilty as charged.”
Then, Jet smiled the first smile Red had ever seen him make that wasn’t flinty and terrifying.It was warm and familiar and private.
Red turned away.
And I would really love it if some people could message me about their experiences being a part of a fandom and how fan fiction has impacted them.
For example, a lot of people have said that reading and writing fan fiction has improved their writing. Or that exploring slash fiction has changed their views on sexuality and helped them get in touch with their own sexuality. Some people talk about the community aspect of being a part of a fandom. You know, stuff like that.
- I will be presenting this project at my university in front of a great deal of people.
- You will be quoted (by your username or real name if you prefer) and used as primary research.
I am trying to speak about fan fiction as a legitimate genre of literature and create more validation for our art, so this is kind of important.
If you want to participate you can submit your story here: SUBMIT
Please signal boost. I really need sources for this if it will be taken seriously.
*I’d love it if you guys would talk about your opinions of slash vs. het fiction.
And I would really love it if some people could message me about their experiences being a part of a fandom and how fan fiction has impacted them.
For example, a lot of people have said that reading and writing fan fiction has improved their writing. Or that exploring slash fiction has changed their views on sexuality and helped them get in touch with their own sexuality. Some people talk about the community aspect of being a part of a fandom. You know, stuff like that.
- I will be presenting this project at my university in front of a great deal of people.
- You will be quoted (by your username or real name if you prefer) and used as primary research.
I am trying to speak about fan fiction as a legitimate genre of literature and create more validation for our art, so this is kind of important.
If you want to participate you can submit your story here: SUBMIT
Please signal boost. I really need sources for this if it will be taken seriously.
*I’d love it if you guys would talk about your opinions of slash vs. het fiction.
