Brigits Flame Entry - September Week 2 - The Journey Doesn't End Here - All About the Arte 1/2

[starriheavens]

brigits_flame Entry - September Week 2
Word count: ~9000 words
Warnings: some name-calling, forums, boybands, girlgroups, etc.
Pre-reading notes: This is also what I call the Tsuou-verse Boyband!AU. Actually, that's exactly what I call this story.

Comments

[keppiehed]

Wow! How did you do that?! *is amazed at your ingenuity*

[starriheavens]

TABLES. LOTS OF TABLES. /sobs forever.

each forum post is a table of 1-column with set width (and a certain color xD), and I adjust the cell-padding (on the left) by hand by a certain amount (25px) each time I need to increase the thread. It took me about 8 hours to code in full--thank god for copy-paste. LJ doesn't support CSS styles within a post, so I had to do everything the long-hard way instead of making a style, which is also why I didn't try to make the forums a little bit prettier with things like "reply/link" at the bottom of each comment/post. The banners are pannytheangel's work; I asked her to make them in photoshop after giving her several rough sketches. xDD They turned out a lot better than my original designs!

If I had more time, I would have liked to experiment to try to create fake "sidebars" in the forums and other fanciness, but @_@ too hard. xD

[keppiehed]

I'm just like ... OMG. You are some kind of wizard! I found out the hard way about the lack of cooperation that LJ has for CSS when I was co-mod for a site, and all I had to deal with was a plain table with black-line borders! The whole thing was coded in HTML, but it was enough hard work to make me wince when I saw the effort you must have put in for this. You completely knocked my socks off. Wow. Amazing job, really. And a really unique concept, too!

[starriheavens]

thanks :D

haha, yeah, I realized about 10 minutes into writing the story that coding would be horrible, but I am amazingly stubborn at times, and I was all: "I WILL WRITE A STORY TOLD THROUGH FORUM POSTS EVEN IF IT KILLS ME!" and kept writing. @_@ Oh, and selkath was a horrid enabler and every time I was like, "Trell, I should change my story" she was all: "NO, YOU MUST KEEP WRITING IT!"

and it was fun to write forums--I haven't been active in a lot of fandoms (and I haven't been following boybands for a while) so it was fun to go back to where I really started to develop my writing and just remember what it was like. xD

[starriheavens]

:D yay! I'm shiny! :D

I didn't really sleep last week because of this fic xD. Even so, I barely managed to get it in on time (I got about 3 hours of sleep the last day because I was coding and panicking), and I didn't have time to find gifs and upload them and embed them into the fic proper, so every time there was a heart it would be a MOVING HEART AND SPARKLE OMG, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN AMAZING.

but i like my use of the lj-spoiler tag. xD It was a last minute decision, because I didn't want so much irrelevant detail being thrust at people (even though the tracklist and different versions of tru kis' single were so fun to write) and it is a nice way to allude to lj-cuts! I like that. I am fond of things like that. I think I should have more lj-spoiler tags in this fic, because it is a fun thing to use.

[starriheavens]

:DDDDD /sparkle icon. (also boyband icon, lololol xD)

fandom is special ♥ I have this love-hate relationship with it where I swing between going: "Fandom! I love being part of fandom!" and "omg, what is fandom doing now!?!?! @_@ alskjdflsf!!" I haven't actually been in fandom for a while, not since a year ago when I was dabbling in BBC!Sherlock, and I haven't been in boyband fandom since, idk, 2.5 years ago? so it was really fun to re-visit it. I went and dug out my old boyband CDs and DVDs and looked up videos and generally embraced my inner pre-teen. IT WAS FANTASTIC. ♥

[silverflight8]

OMG NO WONDER YOU WERE HATING CODING THIS IS AMAZING

[starriheavens]

IT KINDA IS ISN'T IT. NO MORE TABLES FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.