Nocopy is basically the state of a website that doesn't allow the copying and pasting of text. While the Pit had copyable text for a long time, it gained nocopy in October 2013. The newcomer badfic source, the Circle of Lemmings, also disables copy-pasting by anyone but the user who created that particular post.
Because PPC missions (not to mention MSTs, and any other review or spork that wants to quote the original story) need to quote a badfic by necessity, this makes a PPCer's work difficult.
Or rather, would have made our work difficult, if not for some intrepid Boarders who developed work-arounds.
Source Code Method[]
Peering into the page's source.
On her blog, Lily Winterwood shares a way to find a copyable copy of a story by accessing the source code. The password is "circleoflemmings" (no quotation marks):
This has been tested specifically with Google Chrome, but other browsers with a "view source" option should work as well.
JavaScript Add-On[]
Ellipsis Flood created a bit of coding magic to cancel out a page's nocopy status with a press of a button in the favorites bar.
- The code: javascript:%20(function()%20{$('.nocopy').removeClass('nocopy').parent().css({'-moz-user-select':'auto','-webkit-user-select':'auto','user-select':'auto'})})()
This one is designed specifically for Firefox and also works on Chrome. It might work on other browsers, too.
Firefox Add-On[]
If you're using Firefox as your browser, you can get an add-on called RightToClick. It works for the Pit with default settings, and you can get it to work for the Circle by enabling the advanced option "Disable CSS styles". Disabling CSS will make the page look broken, but you'll be able to copy & paste the text.
Up-to-date Firefox versions also have a "Reader View" feature that will convert any page with more than one thousand letters into plain text.
Reader Mode Method[]
Most up-to-date browsers (such as Microsoft Edge, Safari, and others) have a "Reader Mode" that can be enabled. This mode allows the copying of text.
In most cases, this button will be right next to the URL and will look like a page or a book. Clicking it will enable the reader mode. In some cases (such as mobile Safari), the option to enable reader mode will be underneath another icon (in mobile Safari, it will be under the Aa icon).
Chrome does have a reader mode, but it isn't available without enabling it first. To do this (on the desktop version):
- Make sure you have the latest version available.
- Type "chrome://flags/#enable-reader-mode" into the address bar.
- Change the setting from "Default" to "Enabled"
- Click the "Relaunch" button
Once it has relaunched, you should see a "Distill Page" option after clicking on the three dots in the upper right corner of the window.
As of writing, Opera doesn't have a reader mode.
Pit of Voles Mobile Loophole[]
The mobile version of FFN still has copyable text. This loophole can be easily exploited by people doing Pit missions, as it doesn't involve complex amounts of scrolling through source code.
To see the mobile version of a given FFN story, simply:
- Take a URL.
- Delete the 'www.' part.
- Replace the 'www.' part with with 'm.', so you get 'm.fanfiction.net/[the rest of the URL]'.
On small mobile devices, FFN immediately becomes the mobile site. If you aren't sure how to change the URL on your larger device's web browser, open the fic on that and send yourself the link.
Textise.net[]
Copying and pasting a webpage from the Circle of Lemmings or Wattpad into www.textise.net will give you a version of it without the nocopy. It also removes a lot of the page's formatting, so beware of that.