Few Words Wednesday

From Cleaving 8.  Spoilers ahead.

Wedding planning had gone remarkably smoothly, all things considered.  It was no doubt a combination of having Helen, a consummate professional, a “flexible” (i.e. as large as it needed to be) budget, and a time constraint that basically forced Zach to let go of details he might have otherwise obsessed over for the better part of a year.  He had every faith that it was going to come together and be beautiful… he just didn’t know all of the details of exactly how  it would be beautiful.  Part of him was irked by that, but a larger part was profoundly relieved, because he knew in his heart of hearts that given the opportunity he could have given any “bridezilla” a run for her money.  With the time limitations, he was forced to take Chris’ more Zen approach. 

The one detail Zach couldn’t seem to let go of, though, was the cake of all things.  It seemed like such an important symbol, but the high-end bakeries in town were booked out, and Zach was mortified by the second-tier bakeries and their butter-cream-rose-infested monstrosities.  And he and Chris both hated buttercream frosting.  In a fit of desperation, after visiting five bakeries and seeing the patience on Helen’s face start to crack, he called an old friend in New York who made what were essentially sculptures out of cake and fondant.  Marco had always said he’d wanted dibs on making Zach’s wedding cake, but that was before Nathan.  And there wasn’t time for one of his works of art, anyway.  And he was booked New Years Eve, Zach learned.  Still, once he’d recovered from his shock that Zach was getting married in four days and was considering getting a box cupcakes with dinosaurs on them, because at least then Nathan would be happy, Marco had sprung into action.

“I’ve worked it out,” he’d said when he called about an hour after Zach’s desperate plea for advice.

“Worked what out?  You found a bakery?”

“I found a pastry chef in Pittsburgh who’s going to bake the cakes for me and let me into his kitchen to construct and decorate.  You have your choice of lemon almond cake or olive-oil rosemary.  He works in an Italian restaurant and those are his specialties.”

Zach had been stunned.  “Those both sound amazing.  Lemon will probably appeal to more people.  How are you going to have time to—”

“What do you know about the naked cake movement?”

“Uh, nothing?  Though I guess maybe I’ve seen things in magazines that could be considered naked cakes… sort of rustic looking?”

“They can be like that, but they can also be quite elegant, especially if just a bit of frosting is used to smooth out the colors and shape.  But the underlying cake shows through a bit, making it reminiscent of wood.  I think it would work with what you’ve described from your wedding, and I can dress it with flowers from your florist.  A cake for 35 made like that, I have time for.  I promise, Zach, it will look exquisite and unique and as masculine as wedding cakes get, and it will not have an ounce of dreaded buttercream frosting.  I just need your florist’s information and your trust.”  

Few Words Weds

suedescripture:

I feel like 90% of what I’ve written in Survival Spirk has been talking around fires.

“If Vulcans are betrothed as children, were you?” Jim asked.

“I was,” Spock steadfastly stared back and Jim waited, the question stretching the silence. It was obviously a personal question, and there had better be more to it, considering Uhura. Finally, Spock relented. “As we grew older, my betrothed preferred another.”

“That…” he muttered, unsure of the protocol here. “That sucks. I guess.”

“No,” Spock said, “It was logical. I did not wish to share a connection with one who clearly did not feel for me.”

Jim let a corner of his mouth rise, “Feelings, Spock?”

Spock ignored that. “I hope now that T’Pring still lives, on New Vulcan. Perhaps she has children, and our race will continue to rebuild and grow.”

“You never checked?” he asked, and Spock shook his head. “You could’ve. I’m sure that data is public record, at least to citizens looking for other survivors. Especially the son of Ambassador Sarek.”

“Perhaps,” Spock allowed. “There is a Terran saying that, in this case, applies. ‘Ignorance is bliss’.”

Jim chuckled, nodding. He had a few exes from way back that counted for as well. He was probably better off not knowing. Speaking of which, Jim considered and then bit the bullet.

“Why didn’t you ever marry Uhura?” Spock’s eyes flickered in the firelight, and Jim squirmed under them. “I… sorry. It’s none of my business. No, it is my business, you’re my friends. Both of you.”

Spock shifted his legs in his meditative position. “It is… complicated.”

“It always is.”

“There are many things that factor into bonding for Vulcans, even more to which a Human must adapt,” Spock said. “I am… deeply fond of Nyota. I am grateful for the depth of understanding she has afforded me.”

Jim nodded to that. “But…”

“Captain?”

“There’s a ‘but’ hanging here.”

Spock lifted both brows, “I am unaware of including an unattended conjunction, Captain. I have often been told my Standard grammar is exceptionally correct.”

Jim laughed, “I just mean, there’s something you’re not saying.”

“Indeed.”

He huffed. “Was it the necklace? I mean that whole thing had the whole damn ship freaking out—”

“Gossiping crew members being amongst things that leadership should not encourage, the necklace was… a considerably minor part of a larger issue. One I would prefer to keep to myself.”

colubrina:

ten-thousand-leaves:

Murphy’s law, applied to fanfics.

– The fic starts out great, nice style, language, captivating summary. It’s unfinished and has been abandoned since 2013.

– The fic is complete, nice style, language, tons of kudos speak for themselves. It’s about your NOTP.

– The fic is about your OTP,  it’s complete, it’s kinky as hell. The plot is absolutely dumbass.

– The plot sounds great, it’s about your OTP, it’s complete. The characters are horribly OOC.

 – Everything is perfect in this fic, starting from the first letter and ending with the last full stop. It’s exactly 800 words long.

– The fic’s word count is a six-figure number, it’s about your OTP, characters are compliant with your head-canon. It’s dull and boring as seven hells.

– The beginning is enthralling, everything’s great, the plot, the style, it’s long and it’s even about your OTP. It features something that makes you close the tab as soon as you open it, like father/daughter incest or mpreg or some other squicky thing. 

– Everything is perfect in this fic, the length, the characters, the language, the style, you forget you’re reading fanfic, thinking it’s a masterpiece of true literature, you cry tears of joy and write a huge review full of gushing love and then rush to the author’s profile to read every other thing they’ve written. It’s their only work.

from the other perspective

– You pour your heart into writing a fic.  Three people comment. One of them says it’s boring.

– One percent of readers review.  Three of them demand an update, one complains about a typo, one abuses you for writing the clearly marked pairing.

– It has been three weeks since you’ve updated.  You get a comment complaining you’ve abandoned the fic.

– A reader PMs you asking for a gift fic.  You oblige.  She then tells you you should be more considerate of your readers and not say you like reviews.  Another reader asks for a gift fic. You say you’d be happy to write her a drabble. She tells you a drabble isn’t good enough so don’t bother.

– Someone PMS to ask you when a fic will be done because they don’t like to read works in progress.

– No one has commented on your update.  You assume reader interest in the fic has disappeared and move on to other projects.  A year later you find a post abusing you for abandoning the story from someone who never reviewed.

– Someone comments your fic was a waste of her time. People act shocked you admit that hurt your feelings and tell you to learn to accept constructive criticism and not be such a drama queen.

cardassiansunrise:

suedescripture replied to your post “cinnarey
replied to your post “help”

…”

if you are adding the <p></p> into your original doc yourself before you copy and paste, you don’t need to do that. Ao3 adds them for you wherever you make a return, which is why people get double spaces.

suedescripture replied to your post “cinnarey replied to your post “help” …”

if you’re not, then I don’t know. I copy and paste directly from Pages (Apple) with no problem.

suedescripture replied to your post “cinnarey replied to your post “help” …”

PS when I copy and paste into Ao3, I initially DO NOT see the <p></p> added in, it’s only after I preview and go back to edit that they appear.

@ato-the-bean had reblogged and said:

I post from docs, and there’s a special script for preventing this from happening (downloadable from AO3). Maybe a work around would be pasting into gdocs first.

Alternatively, don’t add spaces between paragraphs in Word, but format the paragraph to have space after so it looks like you did (and you can read it)

I don’t add coding for paragraph breaks beforehand. I don’t add anything. I just type normally into google docs, and then copy/paste to ao3, who likes to fuck everything up. The intial copy/paste looks like the resulting html formatting after I remove the extra shit.

I don’t know if gdocs has some weird coding thing in their program bc let’s be real they’re incompatible with literally everything.

Honestly, this is just a load of bs and I’m tired.

Oh good!  I know how to help you.

Yes, it does exactly that.  You aren’t crazy.  Gdocs uses a different kind of coding to indicate when there’s a paragraph break, bold, italics, etc. than normal html used by AO3, and AO3 doesn’t interpret it properly.  But there is a fix!

From http://archiveofourown.org/faq/unofficial-browser-tools?language_id=en#posttools:

           What tools can help me when posting to the Archive?
         
         

If you use Google Drive to work on text-based fanworks, you
might have run into formatting issues when copying from Google Drive to
our Rich Text Editor. In particular, italics and bold text do not carry
over correctly when copy-pasting text. To solve this problem, OTW
Translation volunteer Min has created a script for Google Drive that
will take your finished work and convert all basic formatting into HTML
for you. You can find it in this example document for posting to AO3.

Look for the “Make a copy…” option in the File menu, which will put
a private copy of the document into your own Google Drive account. Then
just delete the sample text and use the blank document for your own
writing. When you’re done, use the “Post to AO3” menu to prepare the
whole thing for pasting into the HTML editor. HTML tags will be added
for you! In most cases, this will be much more reliable than using the
Rich Text Editor. If you’re posting on a mobile device, you will need to
open Google Drive in your browser and view it as the desktop version in
order for the script to work.

I use this all the time, and it prevents those extra lines after paragraphs, spaces after italics, etc.  After you’ve run the script on your text, paste it into the HTML editor for the “add chater” page of AO3, and after it’s there you can switch to the Rich Text editor and it should look fine.  I’ve been using it for almost 2 years and have only had it glitch on my once, and I just repasted into the script document and pushed the button again and all was well.

I know it’s a weird step to have to take, but it really works and is much less frustrating than the brute force method.

Hope it works for you too!

cardassiansunrise:

cinnarey
replied to your post “help”

my work has the <p> </p> in the html and it looks fine. are there any breaks (</br> or <br />) in the code?

rabidchild67 replied to your post “help”

this never happens to me – are you coding it first or just pasting from your doc? FTR, when i post, I cut and paste from Word, using the ‘plain text with limited html’ option (the default)

Long post below, includes pictures!

Keep reading

I post from docs, and there’s a special script for preventing this from happening (downloadable from AO3). Maybe a work around would be pasting into gdocs first.

Alternatively, don’t add spaces between paragraphs in Word, but format the paragraph to have space after so it looks like you did (and you can read it)