Why On Earth Is The Announcer Now Attached To The Header... Actually I Can't Even Remember Where I Attached

Behold, an angel

some anatomy musings on winged ppl and also clothing furgonomics

The Nürburgring is my House, I swear to fucking god. Is this how Niki felt.

Optimus: where did you get this gun??

Gun, in Megatrons voice: it doesn't matter

Prowl: yeah what he said

Back on my pelagic bullshit, don't ask where the months went

Hello! I apologize if this is a presumptuous question or isn't the right place to ask, but is there a place you share the css code for your AO3 skins? I was very excited about your Hesperus skin, but I couldn't find where you might post about your skins beyond progress posts.

I'm going to be posting the new skin on GitHub in the future.

Unfortunately, Hesperus has been cancelled. There were a lot of issues with it and things I don't like, and then my computer self corrupted its entire storage and I lost pretty much everything, most of Hesperus included.

I still have an older version of it, but that specific backup didn't have any notation, which is how I remember what parts of the CSS do what, and was long before I properly optimised its layout. Not to mention, it has some bugs present that weren't there a year ago.

If you really really want it. Here's a file I just put together with all three parts. And here's all the images it's linked to. Make sure to download them all because if I ever take it down to free up space you'll have to host and re-link them yourselves.

To get the mobile overlay to work, you have to add both the tablet (set as max-width 62em) and mobile (set as max-width 42em) skin as parents to the main skin, (they overlap to get to the correct layout).

And please 🙏 don't bug me about issues with it. There's a lot. I know. Feel free to try and fix them yourselves.

Edit: The fonts used on desktop that you need to install [Josefin] [Open Sans]. Not fully needed since I've set them to default to something else, but probably the best to use since I tested the layout most with them.

hii i was wondering what ur process was for making skins ?? i am trying to make my own but ngl the process is annoying. i have a separate tab open js to see how the changes will look… 💀i need helpp 🙏🏾🙏🏾

Tbh the process is annoying and very fiddly, but there a definitely ways to make the actual writing it part easier!

I use an add-on called Stylus that lets you write CSS in a pretty way, will show you most syntax errors automatically, and will update the site live as you write it. It takes nearly all the difficulty out of actually writing the theme.

I normally split my screen between AO3 and Stylus like this:

(But note that Stylus is an actually well-maintained system, so if you're planning to copy-paste the code back into the AO3, then check your theme regularly, because Stylus will accept it just fine but AO3 may find reason to throw a tantrum.)

The next thing I suggest is uBlock Origin. Its core functionality is as an Ad-Blocker, so I recommend it on that alone lmao. Google recently updated its entire service just to ban Origin on Chromium, so I heavily advise not only Firefox in general, but Firefox for AO3 theme writing.

Origin, using its element picker feature, actually lets you more accurately, well, pick the elements you want to target. It will show exactly what you're selecting, and will let you move up and down the element hierarchy to get what you want. 85% of the time it'll do better than what you'll get with inspect element.

These two together really simplify the process.

Aiiiughm if you want more tips I can give you more but purely process-wise, this be it.

Unanimous

My biggest tip for fanfic writers is this: if you get a character's mannerisms and speech pattern down, you can make them do pretty much whatever you want and it'll feel in character.

Logic: Characters, just like real people, are mallable. There is typically very little that's so truly, heinously out of character that you absolutely cannot make it work under any circumstance. In addition, most fans are also willing to accept characterization stretches if it makes the fic work. Yeah, we all know the villain and the hero wouldn't cuddle for warmth in canon. But if they did do that, how would they do it?

What counts is often not so much 'would the character do this?' and more 'if the character did do this, how would they do it?' If you get 'how' part right, your readers will probably be willing to buy the rest, because it will still feel like their favourite character. But if it doesn't feel like the character anymore, why are they even reading the fic?

Worry less about whether a character would do something, and more about how they'd sound while doing it.

I'm now taking Pixel Art commissions for Flight Rising Dragons!

More Details Here!

"Why can't the freaks on AO3 just go and make a site for all the gross stuff and leave AO3 alone."

Because AO3 is that site. Because AO3 was that site long before you decided AO3 was better than the sites you bullied us off of before, and I can promise you if someone somehow comes up with a fanfic site you like better specifically for the 'gross stuff' you'll try to bully us off that too so you can benefit from it.

AO3's specific core purpose is to preserve fanfiction, yes, but it was also instigated as a host site for the fanfiction that kept getting yeeted off other platforms like Wattpad. Its designed to preserve all fanfiction, not just the fanfiction you, personally, think is 'allowed' to be written.

AO3 is the site for all the gross stuff the freaks make. We've been there just as long as you. We've been funding it just as long as you have. AO3 has specifically said you have a place here. The timeline was literally:

Wattpad/FF.net/LiveJournal purge fanfics > AO3 is born > The people who's fics got purged moved over to AO3 > AO3 gains popularity as the best functioning site > The people who pushed for the fics to be purged off Wattpad move to AO3 > The same people try to push for AO3 to purge fics.

AO3's source coding is open-access. You go make a polished, strict, rigid site where nothing 'icky' is allowed. You go make a site where you can control what is hosted. We already have our space.