“How Can You Not Be Angry?”

Guys I know we all love AO3 for hosting our fanfiction, and the OTW for defending our right to create it. But please remember that they can only do so as long as the fanfiction is shared for free.

I know a lot of writers (and artists) will do fic commissions or submissions to fanzines (free and paid). But you cannot mention the fic was paid for on Ao3. This includes for charity drives where the writers don't keep anything! Ao3 staff has stated this explicitly in the past.

And please, please, do not run a charity drive or zine where the recipient of the proceeds is Ao3/OTW. You are publicly exposing them to legal attack for funding them by selling fanworks! You can't even mention that you do that on Ao3, do not then make a paper trail right to them!

And keep any mention of your paid work off your Ao3. No links to commissions or patreons or ko-fis or notes that the work was commissioned, or even links to author stores of unrelated books. All of these are prohibited by Ao3 itself in order to protect fan creators and their works.

Fanworks for profit is a sticky legal place, don't make the OTW's job of defending us harder or even impossible by paying them with fanwork proceeds.

my cat died from lilies years ago so I will always share this stuff

Wishing all of you a very merry "I suddenly have the motivation and time to write a minimum 10k fic"... please

“This site unusable when you dont care about the new joke” that’s great honestly. I like when people here suffer over inane stuff, it’s funnier than the original joke, let’s keep it going

i am shrunken down and brought to the gnome world and when i attempt to assimilate to their culture I use an acorn cap as a hat and they all laugh cheerfully at my silly mistake of wearing what they use as a bowl like a cap and though this is a transgression that would have humiliated me in my human life I am instead laughing alongside them at my humorous misunderstanding

Patty cake patty cake

(Source)

Love local coffee shops. your “refugees are welcome here” sign goes really well with the one that says “bathrooms are for paying customers only”

PSA to all historical fiction/fantasy writers:

A SEAMSTRESS, in a historical sense, is someone whose job is sewing. Just sewing. The main skill involved here is going to be putting the needle into an out of the fabric. They’re usually considered unskilled workers, because everyone can sew, right? (Note: yes, just about everyone could sew historically. And I mean everyone.) They’re usually going to be making either clothes that aren’t fitted (like shirts or shifts or petticoats) or things more along the lines of linens (bedsheets, handkerchiefs, napkins, ect.). Now, a decent number of people would make these things at home, especially in more rural areas, since they don’t take a ton of practice, but they’re also often available ready-made so it’s not an uncommon job. Nowadays it just means someone whose job is to sew things in general, but this was not the case historically. Calling a dressmaker a seamstress would be like asking a portrait painter to paint your house

A DRESSMAKER (or mantua maker before the early 1800s) makes clothing though the skill of draping (which is when you don’t use as many patterns and more drape the fabric over the person’s body to fit it and pin from there (although they did start using more patterns in the early 19th century). They’re usually going to work exclusively for women, since menswear is rarely made through this method (could be different in a fantasy world though). Sometimes you also see them called “gown makers”, especially if they were men (like tailors advertising that that could do both. Mantua-maker was a very feminized term, like seamstress. You wouldn’t really call a man that historically). This is a pretty new trade; it only really sprung up in the later 1600s, when the mantua dress came into fashion (hence the name).

TAILORS make clothing by using the method of patterning: they take measurements and use those measurements to draw out a 2D pattern that is then sewed up into the 3D item of clothing (unlike the dressmakers, who drape the item as a 3D piece of clothing originally). They usually did menswear, but also plenty of pieces of womenswear, especially things made similarly to menswear: riding habits, overcoats, the like. Before the dressmaking trade split off (for very interesting reason I suggest looking into. Basically new fashion required new methods that tailors thought were beneath them), tailors made everyone’s clothes. And also it was not uncommon for them to alter clothes (dressmakers did this too). Staymakers are a sort of subsect of tailors that made corsets or stays (which are made with tailoring methods but most of the time in urban areas a staymaker could find enough work so just do stays, although most tailors could and would make them).

Tailors and dressmakers are both skilled workers. Those aren’t skills that most people could do at home. Fitted things like dresses and jackets and things would probably be made professionally and for the wearer even by the working class (with some exceptions of course). Making all clothes at home didn’t really become a thing until the mid Victorian era.

And then of course there are other trades that involve the skill of sewing, such as millinery (not just hats, historically they did all kinds of women’s accessories), trimming for hatmaking (putting on the hat and and binding and things), glovemaking (self explanatory) and such.

TLDR: seamstress, dressmaker, and tailor are three very different jobs with different skills and levels of prestige. Don’t use them interchangeably and for the love of all that is holy please don’t call someone a seamstress when they’re a dressmaker

It should 100% be illegal for companies to make you give them your payment information when you sign up for a free trial version of their product. It is not necessary and there is no good fucking reason for them to do it. It’s blatantly just so they can steal forgetful customers’ money.