As we sit on the cusp of changes to the Internet, after your other activities to support Internet freedom, archive your
fandom stuff.
Save the electronic files of your favorite online fandom works. Consider print-outs of your favorite online
material. And save paper
ephemera from fandom events.
Why save? Because you put the effort into a fanwork. Because you may be surprised when a fandom stays alive for years, or gets revived, or when an academic asks to cite your work. Because it’s stupidly hard to find items on Tumblr. Because, lo, in ages past, many fandom archives have risen and fallen, taking favorite fics off the ‘Net. Because it made you happy, makes you remember. Because you never know.
What can
you save?
Fanart
Stories you wrote
Epic comments on stories you wrote
Stories you love that other people wrote
Meta and meta-related discussions
Translations others did of your works
Physical items: paper ephemera, clothing, accessories, art prints and drawings.
Behind the cut…saving from Tumblr and AO3, delving into lost web sites, how to save computer files for the long term, and why I’m glad I saved physical fandom items from 10+ years ago.
I made this post a year and a half ago. Please read the many comments in the reblogs from archivists and long-term fans!
Signal boost.
Time for this post again!
I beg you, if you love something, some fic, some art, for God’s sake, SAVE IT! In Starsky and Hutch we have 40+ year old zines we’re still saving and photocopying and sharing around, archiving when we can find the writers and get permission. In Star Trek, they have even older ones. They’re precious. The fics that have disappeared from the net can be lost forever. The Wayback is great but it doesn’t get everything. SAVE THE FICS. SAVE THE ARTS. Trust me. You’ll be glad you did.
john marston in red dead redemption: feminist icon. chad. funny. huge brain. big dick. good father. just a genuinely nice man
john marston in red dead redemption 2: greasy. deadbeat dad who doesnt pay child support. hasnt bathed in months and refuses to do so even when arthur begs him. canonically farts. doesnt eat abigails pussy. lights cigarettes near dynamite
Here’s an easy resolution: This stuff is all free as long as you have access to a computer, and the skills you learn will be invaluable in your career, and/or life in general.
1. Become awesome at Excel.
Chandoo is one of many gracious Excel experts who wants to share their knowledge with the world. Excel excellence is one of those skills that will improve your chances of getting a good job instantly, and it will continue to prove invaluable over the course of your career. What are you waiting for?
Perhaps no other skill you can learn for free online has as much potential to lead to a lucrative career. Want to build a site for your startup? Want to build the next big app? Want to get hired at a place like BuzzFeed? You should learn to code. There are a lot of places that offer free or cheap online coding tutorials, but I recommend Code Academy for their breadth and innovative program. If you want to try a more traditional route, Harvard offers its excellent Introduction to Computer Science course online for free.
3. Make a dynamic website.
You could use a pre-existing template or blogging service, or you could learn Ruby on Rails and probably change your life forever. Here’s an extremely helpful long list of free Ruby learning tools that includes everything from Rails for Zombies to Learn Ruby The Hard Way. Go! Ruby! Some basic programming experience, like one of the courses above, might be helpful (but not necessarily required if you’re patient with yourself).
4. Learn to make a mobile game.
If you’re not interested in coding anything other than fun game apps, you could trythis course from the University of Reading. It promises to teach you how to build a game in Java, even if you don’t have programming experience! If you want to make a truly great game, you might want to read/listen up on Game Theory first.
5. Start reading faster.
Spreeder is a free online program that will improve your reading skill and comprehension no matter how old you are. With enough practice, you could learn to double, triple, or even quadruple the speed at which you read passages currently, which is basically like adding years to your life.
6. Learn a language!
With Duolingo, you can learn Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, or English (from any of the above or more). There’s a mobile app and a website, and the extensive courses are completely free.
Full disclosure: BuzzFeed and other websites are in a partnership with DuoLingo, but they did not pay or ask for this placement.
7. Pickle your own vegetables.
Tired of your farmer’s market haul going bad before you use it all? Or do you just love tangy pickled veggies? You too can pickle like a pro thanks to SkillShare and Travis Grillo.
8. Improve your public speaking skills.
You can take the University of Washington’s Intro to Public Speaking for free online. Once you learn a few tricks of the trade, you’ll be able to go into situations like being asked to present at a company meeting or giving a presentation in class without nearly as much fear and loathing.
9. Get a basic handle of statistics.
UC Berkeley put a stats intro class on iTunes. Once you know how to understand the numbers yourself, you’ll never read a biased “news” article the same way again — 100% of authors of this post agree!
10. Understand basic psychology.
Knowing the basics of psych will bring context to your understanding of yourself, the dynamics of your family and friendships, what’s really going on with your coworkers, and the woes and wonders of society in general. Yale University has its Intro to Psychology lectures online for free.
11. Make your own music.
Step one: Learn how to play guitar: Justin Guitar is a fine and free place to start learning chords and the basic skills you’ll need to be able to play guitar — from there, it’s up to you, but once you know the basics, just looking up tabs for your favorite songs and learning them on your own is how many young guitar players get their start (plus it’s an excellent party trick).
Step two: A delightful free voice lesson from Berklee College Of Music.
Step three: Have you always thought you had an inner TSwift? Berklee College of Music offers an Introduction to Songwriting course completely for free online. The course is six weeks long, and by the end of the lesson you’ll have at least one completed song.
Step four: Lifehacker’s basics of music production will help you put it all together once you have the skills down! You’ll be recording your own music, ready to share with your valentine or the entire world, in no time!
12. Learn to negotiate.
Let Stanford’s Stan Christensen explain how to negotiate in business and your personal life, managing relationships for your personal gain and not letting yourself be steamrolled. There are a lot of football metaphors and it’s great.
13. Stop hating math.
If you struggled with math throughout school and now have trouble applying it in real-world situations when it crops up, try Saylor.org’s Real World Math course. It will reteach you basic math skills as they apply IRL. Very helpful!
14. Start drawing!
All kids draw — so why do we become so afraid of it as adults? Everyone should feel comfortable with a sketchbook and pencil, and sketching is a wonderful way to express your creativity. DrawSpace is a great place to start. (I also highly recommend the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain if you can drop a few dollars for a used copy.)
Have you never really “gotten” jazz? If you want to be able to participate in conversations at fancy parties and/or just add some context to your appreciation of all music, try this free online course from UT Austin.
Another invaluable skill that will get you places in your career, learning Photoshop can be as fun as watching the hilarious videos on You Suck At Photoshop or as serious as this extensive Udemy training course (focused on photo retouching).
Instructables has a great course by a woman who is herself an online-taught knitter. You’ll be making baby hats and cute scarves before this winter’s over!
21. Get started with investing in stocks.
If you are lucky enough to have a regular income, you should start learning about savings and investment now. Investopedia has a ton of online resources, including this free stocks basics course. Invest away!
Most cities have free community classes (try just searching Google or inquiring at your local yoga studio), or if you’re more comfortable trying yoga at home, YogaGlohas a great 15-day trial and Yome is a compendium of 100% free yoga videos. If you’re already familiar with basic yoga positions but you need an easy way to practice at home, I recommend YogaTailor’s free trial as well.
24. Tie your shoelaces more efficiently.
It’s simple and just imagine the minutes of your life you’ll save!
wonder what our new bot overlords will think of the weird mannequin I saw this weekend
ok the shittiest part about christmastime is the fact people keep skipping over the forth verse of “we three kings” like… we get it. y’all are white protestants who can’t even think about mortality for one single second.
also people who skip the third verse of “o holy night” are reactionary cowards
ok but these lyrics are so powerful and amazing. im so pissed.
We Three Kings (4):
Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume Breathes a life of gathering gloom; Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, Sealed in the stone cold tomb.
O Holy Night (3):
Truly He taught us to love one another, His law is love and His gospel is peace. Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother. And in his name all oppression shall cease. Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we, With all our hearts we praise His holy name. Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we, His power and glory ever more proclaim! His power and glory ever more proclaim!
Important context on O Holy Night: The English lyrics by John Sullivan Dwight are from 1855, a full decade before the abolition of slavery in the United States. In fact, abolition was still a VERY fringe position. Pro-slavery advocates, meanwhile, were arguing that slavery was God’s gift to white civilization. In that year, six years before the Civil War began, Americans were already shooting each other over whether slavery should expand out in Kansas.
Dwight–unsurprisingly, a Unitarian minister–put the most inflammatory possible political statement of the day into his Christmas carol.
Not gonna lie, verse four of We Three Kings is my favorite and I ALWAYS made everyone sing all the verses when we sang it anywhere- and I was in a show choir, and one of the song leaders in my childhood church for a while. The feel of those words in your mouth as you sing them, they’re GLORIOUS.
I’m a die-hard “ALL THE VERSES, ALL THE TIME” sort of friend; the person who wrote the song INTENDED FOR IT TO BE SUNG, we’re not doing right by the song to ignore it because it’s ~too dark~ or ~too grim~ for Christmas.
Gee, wasn’t this baby y’all are going nuts about doomed to die an extremely painful death as an adult? DON’T BE A COWARD. The Three Kings brought three gifts: gold because his parents are flat broke and is an immediate need, frankincense because you burn that shit for gods, and pretty sure the son of god counts, he’ll do that shit during his life, and myrrh because that’s how you prepare a body and my boy Jesus will be one pretty damn soon.
Hold on, people in the US skip the Myrrh verse? lmao we were singing that shit from ages 4 and up here in the UK guys
Seriously. The only time I’ve ever heard it sung was when my Sunday school class sang it for a Christmas show.
I got to solo the myrrh verse.
Myrrh verse is best verse.
This makes me feel even better about O Holy Night being one of my favorite Christmas songs tbh
what’s the word for the thing where you see something you want at a store you don’t visit often and you want to buy it but can’t justify it to yourself right now, and you think you’ll go back for it later, because there are several of whatever in stock and it’s probably not going to sell out, and then you call them or go back a week or two later and the thing did in fact sell out
there has to be a word for that
in other news, I still can’t decide if I want to be responsible after work and run errands that are actually necessary (buy dog food, pick up clinic records, maybe go to Planet Fitness), or go to Target and see if maybe the employee just wasn’t looking hard enough for that Marvel Rising Gwen Stacy doll
what’s the word for the thing where you see something you want at a store you don’t visit often and you want to buy it but can’t justify it to yourself right now, and you think you’ll go back for it later, because there are several of whatever in stock and it’s probably not going to sell out, and then you call them or go back a week or two later and the thing did in fact sell out
I'm a defeatist but I don't have to be 
