#genie's stuff

[geneeste]

Creating a personal fanfic archive using Calibre, various Calibre plugins, Firefox Reader View, and an e-Reader / BookFusion / Calibre-Web

A few years ago I started getting serious about saving my favorite fic (or just any fic I enjoyed), since the Internet is sadly not actually always forever when it comes to fanfiction. Plus, I wanted a way to access fanfic offline when wifi wasn't available. Enter a personal fanfic archive!

There are lots of ways you can do this, but I thought I'd share my particular workflow in case it helps others get started. Often it's easier to build off someone else's workflow than to create your own!

Please note that this is for building an archive for private use -- always remember that it's bad form to publicly archive someone else's work without their explicit permission.

This is going to be long, so let's add a read more!

How to Build Your Own Personal Fanfic Archive

Step One: Install Calibre

Calibre is an incredibly powerful ebook management software that allows you to do a whole lot of stuff having to do with ebooks, such as convert almost any text-based file into an ebook and (often) vice-versa. It also allows you to easily side-load ebooks onto your personal e-reader of choice and manage the collection of ebooks on the device.

And because it's open source, developers have created a bunch of incredibly useful plugins to use with Calibre (including several we're going to talk about in the next step), which make saving and reading fanfiction super easy and fun.

But before we can do that, you need to download and install it. It's available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, and in a portable version.

Step Two: Download These Plugins

This guide would be about 100 pages long if I went into all of the plugins I love and use with Calibre, so we're just going to focus on the ones I use for saving and reading fanfiction. And since I'm trying to keep this from becoming a novel (lolsob), I'll just link to the documentation for most of these plugins, but if you run into trouble using them, just tag me in the notes or a comment and I'll be happy to write up some steps for using them.

Anyway, now that you've downloaded and installed Calibre, it's time to get some plugins! To do that, go to Preferences > Get plugins to enhance Calibre.

You'll see a pop-up with a table of a huge number of plugins. You can use the Filter by name: field in the upper right to search for the plugins below, one at a time.

Click on each plugin, then click Install. You'll be asked which toolbars to add the plugins to; for these, I keep the suggested locations (in the main toolbar & when a device is connected).

FanFicFare (here's also a great tutorial for using this plugin) EpubMerge (for creating anthologies from fic series) EbubSplit (for if you ever need to break up fic anthologies) Generate Cover (for creating simple artwork for downloaded fic) Manage Series (for managing fic series)

You'll have to restart Calibre for the plugins to run, so I usually wait to restart until I've installed the last plugin I want.

Take some time here to configure these plugins, especially FanFicFare. In the next step, I'll demonstrate a few of its features, but you might be confused if you haven't set it up yet! (Again, highly recommend that linked tutorial!)

Step Three: Get to Know FanFicFare (and to a lesser extent, Generate Cover)

FanFicFare is a free Calibre plugin that allows you to download fic in bulk, including all stories in a series as one work, adding them directly to Calibre so that that you can convert them to other formats or transfer them to your e-reader.

As with Calibre, FanFicFare has a lot of really cool features, but we're just going to focus on a few, since the docs above will show you most of them.

The features I use most often are: Download from URLs, Get Story URLs from Email, and Get Story URLs from Web Page.

Download from URLs let's you add a running list of URLs that you'd like FanFicFare to download and turn into ebooks for you. So, say, you have a bunch of fic from fanfic.net that you want to download. You can do that!

Now, in this case, I've already downloaded these (which FanFicFare detected), so I didn't update my library with the fic.

But I do have some updates to do from email, so let's try getting story URLs from email!

Woohoo, new fic! Calibre will detect when cover art is included in the downloaded file and use that, but at least one of these fic doesn't have cover art (which is the case for most of the fic I download). This is where Generate Cover comes in.

With Generate Cover, I can set the art, font, dimensions, and info content of the covers so that when I'm looking at the fic on my Kindle, I know right away what fic it is, what fandom it's from, and whether or not it's part of a series.

Okay, last thing from FanFicFare -- say I want to download all of the fic on a page, like in an author's profile on fanfic.net or all of the stories in a series. I can do that too with Get Story URLs from Web Page:

The thing I want to call out here is that I can specify whether the fic at this link are individual works or all part of an anthology, meaning if they're all works in the same series, I can download all stories as a single ebook by choosing For Anthology Epub.

Step Four: Using FireFox Reader View to Download Fic Outside of Archives

This is less common now thanks to AO3, but the elders among us may want to save fanfic that exists outside of archives on personal websites that either still exist or that exist only on the Internet Wayback Machine. FanFicFare is awesome and powerful, but it's not able to download fic from these kinds of sources, so we have to get creative.

I've done this in a couple of ways, none of which are entirely perfect, but the easiest way I've found thus far is by using Firefox's Reader View. Also, I don't think I discovered this -- I think I read about this on Tumblr, actually, although I can longer find the source (if you know it, please tell me so I can credit them!).

At any rate, open the fic in Firefox and then toggle on Reader View:

Toggling on Reader View strips all the HTML formatting from the page and presents the fic in the clean way you see in the preview below, which is more ideal for ebook formats.

To save this, go to the hamburger menu in the upper right of the browser and select Print, then switch to Print to PDF. You'll see the URL and some other stuff at the top and bottom of the pages; to remove that, scroll down until you see something like More settings... and uncheck Print headers and footers.

Click Save to download the resulting PDF, which you can then add to Calibre and convert to whichever format works best for your e-reader or archive method.

Step Five: Archiving (Choose Your Own Adventure)

Here's the really fun part: now that you know how to download your fave fanfics in bulk and hopefully have a nice little cache going, it's time to choose how you want to (privately) archive them!

I'm going to go through each option I've used in order of how easy it is to implement (and whether it costs additional money to use). I won't go too in depth about any of them, but I'm happy to do so in a separate post if anyone is interested.

Option 1: On Your Computer

If you're using Calibre to convert fanfic, then you're basically using your computer as your primary archive. This is a great option, because it carries no additional costs outside the original cost of acquiring your computer. It's also the simplest option, as it really doesn't require any advanced technical knowledge, just a willingness to tinker with Calibre and its plugins or to read how-to docs.

Calibre comes with a built-in e-book viewer that you can use to read the saved fic on your computer (just double-click on the fic in Calibre). You can also import it into your ebook app of choice (in most cases; this can get a little complicated just depending on how many fic you're working with and what OS you're on/app you're using).

If you choose this option, you may want to consider backing the fic up to a secondary location like an external hard drive or cloud storage. This may incur additional expense, but is likely still one of the more affordable options, since storage space is cheap and only getting cheaper, and text files tend to not be that big to begin with, even when there are a lot of them.

Option 2: On Your e-Reader

This is another great option, since this is what Calibre was built for! There are some really great, afforable e-readers out there nowadays, and Calibre supports most of them. Of course, this is a more expensive option because you have to acquire an e-reader in addition to a computer to run Calibre on, but if you already have an e-reader and haven't considered using it to read fanfic, boy are you in for a treat!

Option 3: In BookFusion

This is a really cool option that I discovered while tinkering with Calibre and used for about a year before I moved to a self-hosted option (see Option 4).

BookFusion is a web platform and an app (available on iOS and Android) that allows you to build your own ebook library and access it from anywhere, even when you're offline (it's the offline bit that really sold me). It has a Calibre plugin through which you can manage your ebook library very easily, including sorting your fanfic into easy-to-access bookshelves. You may or may not be able to share ebooks depending on your subscription, but only with family members.

Here's what the iOS app looks like:

The downside to BookFusion is that you'll need a subscription if you want to upload more than 10 ebooks. It's affordable(ish), ranging from $1.99 per month for a decent 5GB storage all the way to $9.99 for 100GB for power users. Yearly subs range from $18.99 to $95.99. (They say this is temporary, early bird pricing, but subscribing now locks you into this pricing forever.)

I would recommend this option if you have some cash to spare and you're really comfortable using Calibre or you're a nerd for making apps like BookFusion work. It works really well and is incredibly convenient once you get it set up (especially when you want to read on your phone or tablet offline), but even I, someone who works in tech support for a living, had some trouble with the initial sync and ended up duplicating every ebook in my BookFusion library, making for a very tedious cleanup session.

Option 4: On a Self-Hosted Server Using Calibre-Web

Do you enjoy unending confusion and frustration? Are you okay with throwing fistfuls of money down a well? Do you like putting in an incredible amount of work for something only you and maybe a few other people will ever actually use? If so, self-hosting Calibre-Web on your own personal server might be a good fit for you!

To be fair, this is likely an experience unique to me, because I am just technical enough to be a danger to myself. I can give a brief summary of how I did this, but I don't know nearly enough to explain to you how to do it.

Calibre-Web is a web app that works on top of Calibre, offering "a clean and intuitive interface for browsing, reading, and downloading eBooks."

I have a network-attached storage (NAS) server on which I run an instance of Calibre and Calibre-Web (through the miracle that is Docker). After the initial work of downloading all the fic I wanted to save and transferring it to the server, I'm now able to download all new fic pretty much via email thanks to FanFicFare, so updating my fic archive is mostly automated at this point.

If you're curious, this is what it looks like:

Pros: The interface is clean and intuitive, the ebook reader is fantastic. The Discover feature, in which you are given random books / fic to read, has turned out to be one feature worth all the irritation of setting up Calibre-Web. I can access, read, and download ebooks on any device, and I can even convert ebooks into another format using this interface. As I mentioned above, updating it with fic (and keeping the Docker container itself up to date) is relatively automated and easy now.

Cons: The server, in whichever form you choose, costs money. It is not cheap. If you're not extremely careful (and sometimes even if you are, like me) and a hard drive goes bad, you could lose data (and then you have to spend more money to replace said hard drive and time replacing said data). It is not easy to set up. You may, at various points in this journey, wish you could launch the server into the sun, Calibre-Webb into the sun, or yourself into the sun.

Step Six: Profit!

That's it! I hope this was enough to get you moving towards archiving your favorite fanfic. Again, if there's anything here you'd like me to expand on, let me know! Obviously I'm a huge nerd about this stuff, and love talking about it.

#genie's stuff #calibre #calibre-web #bookfusion #personal fanfic archive #archiving fanfic #saving fanfic

[hometoursandotherstuff]

#genies #wishes #other stuff

[liebelesbe]

was sich liebt, das lesbt sich

Das Lesben ist kein Ponyhof!

#anon du bist ein Genie #schreibt das auf meinen Grabstein falls ich jemals sterben sollte #also den Ask. nicht 'anon du bist ein Genie'. #ask #german stuff #es sollte mehr Sprichwörter über/mit Lesben geben tbh

[ninjasmudge]

[puts my hand on your shoulder] bro the 'is the lamb amab or afab' question is so stupid dude, canonically the answer is neither. in that world, anyone can have kids with anyone, these characters very clearly arent from a species with two sexes, there is no male or female in here, gender is entirely separate from biology in this world dude. this is not an either/or situation, all the followers are both bro, theyre hermaphroditic, can you hear me?

#they should all have both sets of geni tals can you hear me??? there is no afab amab!! it doesnt exist how else would the matin g tent work #THEYRE NOT GONOCHORIC PLEASE #i also think that genetically they have to all be one or a few species with an incredible amount of viable hybridisation due to #like the similarities in what they can eat and do and stuff on account of theyre all the same interchangable follower model #which is a step too far in overthinking it but like. ppl really got me stumped wondering why theyd ask a question like is the lamb afab #especially coming up to other ppl and asking and making it uncomfortale having to explain what u think and why #cotl #sozo reproduces asexually why did we decide to add this division to a game that doesnt have it #thays like arguing over minecraft cows #idk it just comes across a little weird to ask so often i need nb characters it doesnt matter abt their bio sex anyway

[bonkalore]

This is the Aladdin AU I had going for a bit (not the Bleeding Magic one, but still adjacent to that storyline a bit lol)! I didn't have everything figured out with it, but did like the thought of him being both a missing prince AND a human turned genie and that Shak, the young princess left behind, might not realize that finding the genie lamp would also mean finding her long lost brother in one go and get her wish. She attempted to sneak out to do this and ran into Daniel and Hoagie then. She was unsuccessful then, but realized he could help her and also her help him in the process to both get what they want. In this AU, Jayce was a young prince looking for a power source to help his people, and his royal vizier, Viktor, didn't think it was wise. He brought him to the source and Jayce unwittingly fell trap to becoming a genie and getting trapped into the lamp. Viktor is blamed for his disappearance/assumed death and is killed. Camilla takes over as royal vizier, as well as most of the kingdom in absence of an old enough heir and is keen in staying in power. Lucy is her top guard. At this point in the story, it'd be similar to the live action version of the vizier doubting Jayce's legitimacy as the missing prince, but mostly wanting to get her hands on the lamp herself having learned of its power. He and Lucy had already started to fall for each other in that time and she's torn on who to have loyalty then when she's commanded to push him out of the tower tied up into the sea. He's pushed anyway and Lucy goes after him to save him, but comes to the shock of her life lol He isn't going to let her die trying to save him however, and would reveal his true form in order to do so.

#Daniel Spellbound #Jayce Chinda #Lucy Santana #Jacy #giant tiny #size difference #G/t #genie #aladdin AU #DS Aladdin AU #guess I'll tag it as that #tho the bit with Viktor betraying Jayce and being a close mentor is definitely more from my Bleeding Magic AU tbh #I would like to do more of this AU sometime tho tbh... was a lot of good stuff to work with #and I'm CERTAIN Daniel himself was already largely inspired by Disney Aladdin lol

[ravinoforre]

Michael and Leaf Pokemon but they've suddenly been isekai'd to Sylvarant oops

The template @frayed-symphony, @ciryze and I collectively put together.

...also uh 👉👈

there's this

#the stats aren't super specific tbh #i just kinda based them off of Genis and Colette from my various saves at that point and just tweaking where i felt like it #and i know this template was more or less made for ToS OCs but since i don't have any... #...and uh.. may as well admit that this specific scenario is something i've thought about for well over a decade by this point... #uuagh just allow me to indulge in my bullshit for a moment #this applies to myself too btw #like it's perfectly ok to do stuff like this right #so why does *this* feel scarier than me posting any other kind of art? #whatever don't think about it #it's there now and it was fun to make and it took far too long to not dump it /somewhere/ for the public to gawk at #still too nervous to put this on my twitter right now though god fuck #maybe after a sleep i'm exhausted #ok proper tags time #trainer michael #trainer leaf #pokemon xd #pokemon frlg #tales of symphonia #ravinoforre

[4lph4kidz]

i was thinking about your dirk and hal poll and i want to mention that i think your concept for ink and iron where dirk creates hal from his reflection by enchanting a mirror is so cool 😌

thank you! hal's predicament and purpose within the canon narrative is so fascinating and i felt it was really important to find a way to explore what i find most interesting with him. i can't take full credit for the concept though i took inspiration from a few placees (one of my friends pitched the idea of the mirror accidentally dumping him onto jake's doorstop for example) but overall i think the idea is very fun and i'm really excited to write more hal stuff!!! also i'm going to take the opportunity to share this oldish doodle i found:

the mispelling of angel as angle was NOT intentional (<- dyslexia haver) but it probably explains a lot. he's pointy

#obviously an AU is going to be different from canon #but i like AUs specifically *because* i have a lot of fun trying to translate canon ideas into another setting or genre in general #in this case its a riff on the fairy tale magic mirror #hal is still an experiment gone wrong/artificial being created to serve a purpose trapped in a non-physical form and denied personhood #as well as being an extension of dirk's selfhood and very literal expression of his self image #this time with extra gender problems as per my original intentions for the fic. which now feel more than a bit heavy handed but whatever #point is hal gets to play up the trapped demon/spirit/almost genie-esque angle isntead of the artificial intelligence schtick in canon #which i am having a lot of fun writing! #he is also a very important plot device. multitalented 💕 #for anyone wondering i&i is NOT an abandoned project its just huge and whipping it into shape is slow going #i've taken breaks to work on other stuff too #ink and iron #i guess that's a tag i should start using #even though i'm not too happy with the title still. lmao

[thebramblewood]

The Vatores Present... A Decennial Vampire Bash: Part IX

Featuring Veronica by @moonfromearth, Enyo and Xander by @melancholicsimmer, Stella and Lila by @sammyshuno, Nissa by @deathtulips, Marcella by @sueniia, Dawn by @sprout-sims, and Esther and Sergio by @madebycoffee.

Previous / Next

Helena: So I was talking to Caleb at the bar, and he told me-

Lilith: Rookie mistake. I love him, but he's such a killjoy. You shouldn't put stock into a word he says.

Helena: But-

Lilith: It's gotten awfully dull up here. Time to hit the dance floor!

#ts4 #sims 4 #sims 4 story #ts4 story #simblr #story: hzid #drinking tw #hmm this has been a little too tame so far huh?... #(i tried some editing stuff to make the last one look slightly sinister but idk if it worked) #bramblewoodvamps #lilith vatore #helena zhao #dj batty #drea sandoval #genie hart #mo livingston

[mcqraw]

#i wanna carry him around too

#what we do in the shadows #wwdits #nandor the relentless #djinn wwdits #kayvan novak #anoop desai #genie my love i miss you every day 🖤 #this scene was a highlight of the finale for me #my stuff

[somnimagus]

Bunny ears

#tales of symphonia #tales of #raine sage #genis sage #fan art #my art #from 2021 #his hair makes him look like a lop eared bunny #old stuff repost queue

[moldwood]

okay google fastest way to get $4000

#i need a new pc + monitor soon because these ones are struggling #even basic stuff in blender it is having a very hard time #and im fine being patient and saving up 2 dollars a month and getting it in years. but dawntrail is soon. so if there is a $4000 genie out #there please hook me up #not that i need a $4k computer. that's just the cost of a build with my dream case that looks like stained glass

[geneeste]

20 questions for fic writers

Tagged by @mrv3000 like, last year, but we'll just pretend that isn't true!

1. how many works do you have on Ao3? 53

2. what’s your total Ao3 word count?

It's about to be higher, but currently 236,415 (89k of that is co-written with @machawicket, though, so I can't claim it all!)

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Arrow, Stargate SG-1, Bones, Timeless, Pitch, and a few others that are sort of incidental to the main ones.

4. what are your top five fics by kudos?

I'm pretty sure all of these are going to end up being Arrow fics (Genie's note: ha! I was right!):

Our Version of Events falling in reverse Chips and Dip (With a Side of Sparkle) Cabin in the Woods The Male Prostitute in the Club With His (Word Redacted Due to Content)

5. do you respond to comments?

I try really hard to!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I was going to say Forfeit (SG-1), but honestly I think it's a toss up between that and time's right but the clock's wrong (Arrow).

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

This one's tough, because my angst to happy ratio can be pretty hight in my fics, but in terms of, like, purest fluff, probably How the Day Sounds (Arrow).

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I have, especially in the Arrow fandom because it's probably the biggest (and therefor has the most potential for toxicity), but it disappears fast.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

LOL yep! I do write explicit smut, but even that is pretty vanilla (which is not to say that's bad, and maybe one day I'll write kink, but I haven't yet).

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I imagine a lot of crossovers, but I rarely write them. The only one I've done (to my recollection) that didn't involve characters from different shows but still in roughly the same universe was The Male Prostitute in the Club With His (Word Redacted Due to Content) (Arrow), in which Oliver Queen met his doppelganger, Jason from Hung. It was ridiculous, and fittingly, my first fic in that fandom.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of. Honestly, for the most part my fic is too short for most people to bother with, I think.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? 

I wish!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Absolutely! There's obviously Our Version of Events with @machawicket, and I wrote a few SG-1 fic with @danveresque back in the day. I really enjoy co-writing, although I'm almost always the one slowing us down.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Sam/Jack from Stargate SG-1. It was my first love and the only one I come back to over and over.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I am reserving my 5th amendment right not to incriminate myself.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I like to think I'm pretty good at characterization and nailing a character's voice. I also enjoy writing dialogue, although I don't know that that makes me good at it. I'm also pretty good at hitting the emotions I want to hit in a scene and also writing emotional complexity.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Writing consistently and to completion is a big weakness -- a result of poor executive function skills and high perfectionism, ha. I'm also great at coming up with big sweeping plots and terrible at executing the details of them. And, until recently, I clung a little too much to thinking fic needs to be realistic and grounded -- now I understand that fic can be as ridiculous as I want, because what matters is how much fun I have writing it and whether it gives me the serotonin I'm seeking (as @mrv3000 put it).

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I'm incredibly impressed by folks who might be polyglots who can do this. I, sadly, cannot.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I honestly don't remember! I have a notoriously bad memory of my childhood and I got into fandom very early. But the first fandom I published a fic in was Stargate SG-1.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

This is like asking who my favorite child is. I don't think I can answer with just one! Favorite funny fic is probably Cabin in the Woods (Arrow). Favorite fic where I just slid easily into the character's voices? Probably the devil's right there in the details (Timeless). Favorite (and only) remix? reclaim (the destiny rules remix) (Stargate SG-1). Favorite angsty fic (of which there are maaaany), probably god himself would call it justice (Arrow).

I'm trying to remember who recently I know has been writing -- I'm going to zero-pressure tag these just a few people, but if you're writing, consider yourself tagged! @annerbhp @mylittleredgirl @sharim28 @joracwyn @starrybouquet @anretc @tielan

#fic memes #fic #my fic #genie's stuff

[mistress-light]

I don't know why, but Cuff reminds me of genie from Aladdin, and I can't stop laughing. It's so true.

#forspoken #i just #i hate my brain #i'm off playing some more dlc stuff #mistress plays forspoken #a more sinister genie though #also i'm tipsy

[ants-personal]

last puppet post but i just wish that ryan got ... stabbed just a little bit a cut maybe so we could have had ryan disheveled and just a lil bloody for the girlys

#like ryan is a final girl/horror king now bUT we deserved the look sweaty heaving bloodied ryan #also him sitting there with the geni after would have been funnier bloodied and bruised #puppet history #watcher network #the watcher network #shane madej #ryan bergara #ant posts stuff

[metal-harbor]

“Since you were so kind to release me, my Master… I will grant you one wish…”

#bro this is the first time I’ve tried drawing like this and it took forever but I’m happy with it!!!! #genie ass shadow #sonic the hedgehog #sonic #shadow the hedgehog #shadow #sega #sonic adventure 2 #sonic adventure 2 battle #sa2 #sa2b #metal-harbor #blackfaker stuff

[dreamlandcreations]

OUATIW Cyrus Scenes 1/?

#cyrus ouatiw #cyrus #oautiw cyrus #once upon a time #once upon a time in wonderland #ouat gifs #ouatiw gifs #cyrus gifs #genie cyrus #ouat #ouatiw cyrus gifs #my stuff #my gifs