#I HAVE A WORKAROUND possibly

[astro-b-o-y-d]

My brain, out of nowhere: Hey, that thing you wrote in chapter four? Me: What about it? Brain: So if Ford had that this specific thing the entire time, why wouldn't he try to use it in canon? Me: Me: WAIT SHIT-

[many-gay-magpies]

Collection of the most Charles Rowland lyrics from Manchester Orchestra's "The Silence", because I haven't learned how to edit OR workaround the Netflix screenshot blocker and it's killing me

Just listen to this song and think of Charles I beg of you. Or recommend either way

[bambiraptorx]

steps up to microphone: robots with mobility aids. thank you for your time

[deadwooddross]

Love your art. Can you please get into legend of zelda botw so I can see your takes on the rito, zora, and gorons plz, thanks /hj

Thanks! Depends, would you come to a Commission stream where you throw a certain amount of dollar bills at me and I draw whatever fandom thingy you desire for an hour or so /srs

(But like for real, would that be something people are interested in, if I can get streaming to work….I certainly get enough asks about if I’ll ever draw x)

[destructive-delight]

of all the things youtube has picked up on its way down the cliff into the advertiser friendly algorithm hellscape that it is now, giving creators the option to heart comments is probably the only feature i truly consider an unambiguous improvement that i appreciate from both a commenter and creator perspective. wish more sites would offer that.

[unopenablebox]

in addition to my general apprehension about overpromising with my amateurish new-craft-relationship-energy enthusiasm, i did develop a real middle-of-the-night sadsack conviction last night that i shouldn't/won't be allowed to weave, because i don't spin, and everyone i've ever met or seen who weaves also spins. however 1. i don't even know for sure that that second thing is true and 2. how would they [karmic loom forces] tell. they don't know. maybe im just using up a commercial yarn backlog and will be starting in on the handspun any day now [i will not]

[cornflowershade]

𝙋𝙞𝙥𝙡𝙤𝙮 𝙆𝙖𝙣𝙮𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙩 𝙖𝙨 𝙈𝙖𝙮 | 𝙒𝙚𝙙𝙣𝙚𝙨𝙙𝙖𝙮 𝘾𝙡𝙪𝙗 𝙀𝙥. 𝟲

𝘍𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘦. 𝘊𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦. 𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘮𝘦... o𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘭𝘭 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘯.

[antirepurp]

every day i throw more sticks into the pile that's forming my current oc brainrot project, thus putting me that much closer to making people go 👀 over my ocs. the reckoning will come (eventually (i hope (it better)))

[sorryimlatecapt]

fuuuuuuck this

[platypusisnotonfire]

Something that surprises me on a somewhat cyclical basis is that there are NO fully hacked minimal modern Windows editions.

I mean don’t get me wrong I understand that it’s wildly illegal to modify it and Microsoft has a lot of legal weight to throw around, and that the garbageware is deeply intertwined with the operating system functionality.

But there are plenty of pirated/auto activated/activation patch versions which are ALSO illegal.

And there are SO many extremely intelligent, determined, and petty programmers that take on projects of similar if not larger scale many times just out of spite.

I truely do NOT know why this is not something that exists.

[oh-youknow]

now how where and why the fuck am i supposed to find a polish word with a sound that doesnt exist in english which also contains a syllabic feature not present in english.

[waffle-sorter]

Okay, so. Option one, I somehow keep either of the canon already-friends from showing up, have the MC butt-dial the ship I want, figure out how to get her into the apartment, and deal with the cat issue...

Option two, I diverge at the panic scene, somehow get the MC to a place she shouldn't know about at that point, get her inside and out of danger, then...

No, you know what? Option three. Fudge the mechanics of the Macguffin so it goes off like ten hours later the first time, where it makes sense for the other person to be on the scene. Then I just need to deal with the cat thing. Much better.

[bebsi-cola]

i have to admit that i am the sort of autistic person who walks onto the road. without looking. i have almost been hit by vehicles dozens upon dozens of times. some pretty close calls! ironically having to use crutches made me a bit safer because I'm more visible and have to stop and pause and walk slower.

so pretty much all my friends and loved ones, like anyone who regularly went out with me had the "grab yahya" instinct next to roads (as i like to call it). them grabbing me saved my ass lots of times. but sometimes i don't like being grabbed! it annoys me. i know they can't read my intentions in advance and it's for my safety and has genuinely saved me but yknow. it's okay if things that are done objectively to help you still annoy you, as a disabled person. we're not robots, we can't automatically make ourselves feel only what is appropriate for the circumstances. like it's best to develop some coping mechanisms or workarounds or communication procedure if possible. but either way it's okay to get annoyed. you're not mean or ungrateful for getting annoyed at help you need. you're just human

[straycalamities]

this is an AU design but i am pretty happy with it so i'll go ahead and post it

so the AU is inspired by the lore of dead by daylight? basically the ark sucked a bunch of people in through the years and no matter where and divided them up into: the ones going through agony & the ones inflicting the agony

survivors and hunters <- distinct from "killers" ok

anyways the ark feeds off people's despair and agony and stuff so it enlists the help of its hunters to help it inflict those on people within its domains (which are kinda like shifting areas in space devoid of a specific place in time) and all the hunters kinda have one they haunt the most, but hunters can wander

the domains themselves usually have a theme of their location like: the woods, the desert, abandoned locations like malls and old factories, etc. and they're kinda alive on their own? infected by the ark and its influence

so basically brian was chosen as a hunter. and he hates this. but the ark rewards hunters for doing their jobs with energy (they dont need to eat or drink otherwise), stamina, strength, resistance to wounds and sickness, and a like dopamine high for inflicting pain. literally encourages them to be terrible. and hey if the hunters don't do their job? then the ark picks off the survivors eventually itself. in the worst, slowest, most painful ways

so brian's workaround this, because he realizes people are gonna die no matter what, is to become as lethal as possible. make it as quick and painless as he can when he can't just...butt in and sabotage the other hunters or the ark. (because there is a sort of puzzle/goal to the survivors being moved around that they must accomplish to "win" aka get out for then and just be placed in down-time until their next game. and if they lose they just respawn to do it again until they lose/win. lol like i said: very dbd inspired)

but yeah! so i changed brian's design to fit his MO in this. so his preferred turf is wooded areas so he's wearing hunter's camo and dark clothes to blend in with the trees and brush. he also has multiple very sharp very long knives so he can reach those lethal areas better and deliver a quick blow to get the job done. preferably with little to no fight because he got the jump on his victim. he also layers very potent poison on his blades in case he misses or something and can't finish the job easily. they're going regardless.

but since brian does things like this. the ark HATES him, and theres like...a ton of lore more because me and some friends are RPing in it (i also am writing Evan and HABIT in it), but ive already said so much so have this

[centaurianthropology]

I’ve really enjoyed that the show is not only complicating the PresAux characters, but Preservation as a whole, and has done both with a lot of respect for the humanity of their situations.

One thing that gets brought up in the books is that Preservation is terraformed, and that by and large terraforming isn’t great. It’s usually half-assed, and done just enough to make a planet livable. One would imagine that Preservation as a society has sunk a lot of their efforts into making it far more than livable, making it the best planet it can be. They are actively trying to make a place where all citizens have their needs met, have enough to chase their dreams without fear of salary or losing health care or food or shelter. They are working toward a utopia.

But they don’t live in a utopia.

Their internal society is moneyless, but the external societies around them are not. And they don’t have everything they need. They don’t have magic replicators that create all their necessary resources from nothing. They are post-money, but not post-scarcity. They are stubbornly holding to their values to keep providing all their people with what they need, because that’s one of the non-negotiable pillars on which their society is built. These folks we’ve met especially are the true believers in Preservation ideals, in working toward building their society.

It would be easy to give in and join the Corporation Rim, and I like that some people want to take the easy way out. Because that’s people, isn’t it? Some people want what they don’t have, they want more or shinier or simply different. Just because your society is trying to build utopia doesn’t mean you’re all going to agree on what that looks like. And even in a communal society, you still have individual people who are going to want other things.

So they’ve come up with a workaround. It’s not perfect, but likely it’s the best way they can figure out to get external resources they can’t yet produce internally, while still holding to as many of their ideals as possible. They send teams out to do scientific work. That work either helps them further their internal goals—getting resources or knowledge that can make them more and more self-sustaining—or that work can be sold, likely in trade for goods or resources Preservation simply cannot provide at this point in time.

Even sending their planetary leader on these missions makes sense from the communal mindset. Of course the leader needs to do that work. They have to see the risks taken, the compromises made, the dirty parts of supporting their society. They have to be down in the dirt with everyone else, never above and able to ignore the realities of what must be done to make their better world.

They don’t have luxury space communism. They are a communal society with limited resources surrounded by corporate sharks. And some of their people want to become sharks, betraying the heart of their society. So they have to fight for their culture and their world through their actions and their decisions. They have to make compromises and work with outside forces they don’t entirely (or even remotely) agree with for the benefit of their people. And even in this group of true believers there’s internal disagreement! Bharadwaj sees this as scientific endeavor for the greater good, and she’s right! Gurathin sees it as selling knowledge to corporate fucks who will likely misuse it, and he’s right!

It’s sticky, it’s less pleasant than perhaps some book readers were hoping for. They wanted perfect luxury space communism with all scarcity problems already fixed and everyone living in harmony. They wanted the utopia rather than the pre-utopian work and compromise and challenges.

I don’t know, man, I just really like seeing a communal society of space hippies get portrayed with such care and respect for their humanity and their struggles. I like that they get to be people. I like that we get to see them doing the work and living by their ideals even when (especially when) it’s hard.

[chubsonthemoon]

It is done! This is The Death of Translation, originally written in English by @landwriter, translated into Mandarin by @thirrith. Binding is dos-à-dos, with English version on one side and Mandarin on the other. Bookcloth was handwoven by me, on my rigid heddle loom :3

More under the cut!

Typeset: Fanbinders are Liars

Full stop, this typeset would not have been possible without Eth and all their patience, enthusiasm, and willingness to do even more translating! I reached out to them *checks watch* nearly a year ago in July 2023 (lololol), asking if I could use their translation of TDOT in a surprise bind I wanted to send along with Gloam's author copy of Flower King. They were kind enough to say yes, and even kinder to answer my questions when I reached out six months later in January, when I was finally able to start work on the typeset.

We talked about the many delicious things that are bound to come up when discussing translating not just from English to Mandarin, but also from digital space to meatspace. Some topics I had anticipated, like font questions, translating the colophon, etc. But even with the topics I thought I'd prepared for, there were still things that came up that both surprised and delighted: for example, while AO3's website allows for italics in Mandarin--

--my publishing program doesn't (or at least, it doesn't without needing to manually tilt every character by about 10 degrees). So as a workaround, Eth suggested changing these cases of italics to the font 华文楷体:

Through no one's fault but my own, this ended up being only slightly less work than manually tilting every instance of italics--I wanted to be sure that I got all of them, so I ended up doing a lot of double-checking manually anyway, instead of relying solely on the Search function. There was a lot of cross-referencing with the Word document that Eth was kind enough to provide, as well as squinting and general swearing. I also did the same for the uses of Latin script, manually styling each instance as Garamond to keep it consistent with the English edition:

The only other time I've had to do font surgery this intensive is probably for my typeset for Tell Me About the Big Bang, which I had to port over from a PDF. Folks, hell on earth. Do not recommend XD I remember squinting at my monitor as I had to visually confirm every instance of italics, thinking I will never do this again. Welp, four years later, here were are: fanbinders are liars, LMAO. At the very least, using Eth's Word document at least allowed me to search by styles, so it was a little easier on my eyes. 🙏

Is there a script that I might've been able to use if I was more code-savvy? Probably. But I figured going at it sledgehammer style would be the least hair-pulling way to get the job done, weirdly enough. Still, despite my best efforts, there are a few instances of PMingLiU to Garamond and PMingLiU to 华文楷体 that I know I missed, and I know I missed them because I caught them after I'd printed/cut/folded/sewn/glued (cue more swearing), so Gloam and Eth, my apologies >.< please consider them artifacts of a uniquely handmade object ajslkdjfs

In addition to the fonts, there were also some other fun things Eth and I discussed, like how to translate the notes I usually provide on the colophons! In addition to information on fonts, I also usually include some variation of:

This private, limited edition published by chubsthehamster (Moonham Press, imprint of Renegade Publishing) in 2024. This is chubsthehamster's personal copy. Out of three existing copies, this is the first.

The thing that came up with this, which still tickles my brain to this day, was how Eth chose how to translate "Moonham Press, imprint of Renegade Publishing." To get a better sense of what word to use for "imprint," they asked what the relationship was between Moonham Press and Renegade Publishing, which got me thinking about the relationship between my lil imprint and the wonderful @renegadeguild:

What's all very funny about all of this is that we are now, in fact, going by the name "Renegade Bookbinding Guild," per our most recently updated Code of Conduct. While this renders the wording I asked for out of date (and thus, the wording that made it into the book out of date :'D), I think it's also a testament to how cool the work @renegadeguild is doing--like any artform, fanbinding is alive, with its own evolving language, communities, and ideas about the craft. And I love it, I love it so much. (Was this also a plug for our new-ish website? Perhaps).

There's more I could say here, but this post is already going to be long enough, so I'll move on for now! If you get anything from this section, it's that @thirrith is amazing and very patient and kind, and I'm so grateful that we got to talk shop together. Thank you so much for all your invaluable help with this, Eth! I hope the typeset, though undoubtedly flawed, does your hard work justice!

Binding: Or, SO Much Math. Like, So Much, Guys. (It was worth it, though!)

Whoo, boy! So math was never my strong suit in school, but when I set out to do this bind last year, that wasn't an issue. At first. The dos-à-dos binding, if anything, just requires a little bit of finagling on the usual case-bound format--a bit more math if you want to do an all-cloth cover, like I planned on doing, but nothing I couldn't work out with some trial and error. (My prototype below!)

Then came February, when I took a weaving class with my friend, and then everything kinda exploded.

My original idea was to use some green Duo bookcloth I had on hand (this color, actually)--for those of you not initiated into the Duo cult, Duo is a Rayon bookcloth with a very devoted fan following in Renegade. It's very pretty; the Rayon weave is one color, and the paper backing is usually complementary color, so it has this cool two-toned effect. Duo is in high demand in Renegade circles because sadly, the company that manufactures it went out of business last year. (Although I've heard rumors recently that there's another company making something similar, but the cloth has a really high purchase requirement and is, like, for businesses only I think).

Anyway, I also wanted to have a gold line around the whole book as a kind of bellyband/obi to further connect the two versions of the story (another reason why I chose the dos-à-dos format to begin with heh), as you can see from my scribbled notes here--

But alas! I knew going in that adhering things to Duo is often Problematic, thanks to one very painful experience trying to get some iron-on foil on another bind (the textured surface of Duo just makes it kinda hard to stick or paint stuff on it). So if I wanted a clean, continuous line, the remaining options were to either paint it on a strip of paper that I'd somehow...adhere to the cloth? Or maybe cut different slices of bookcloth and glue them on. I wasn't satisfied with either of those options, though.

Then--the weaving class. I made a scarf, and I love it and I loved making it. But the whole time, I'll not lie, my thoughts were elsewhere.

In short, my decision to weave my own bookcloth kinda came from a few different factors:

The desire to attempt to recreate Duo, that elusive beauty, the one that got away, etc. (I have several yards in my stash, but still). Others have also attempted to recreate it, and I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring.

My current spiral into the deep hole that is fiber arts (it started with crochet, then knitting, then sewing, then weaving, then spinning, and now I'm eyeing quilting! Please help me).

The gold line. It kept bugging me. And when I found weaving, I just thought there was something very neat about the process of actually making the cloth for a dos-à-dos binding from scratch, and especially for this binding. I wanted to bind a story about translation (or rather, the death of it, and yet still the necessity of it--how we must try to communicate, despite of, or perhaps precisely because of, everything that gets lost in the spaces between people, and the tragedy of that loss, and the beauty of what makes it through, and the love always present in the effort regardless), and also, the translation of that story. Weaving is a very meditative process, and with every pass of the shuttle, back and forth, building slowly but surely the fabric that would hold the story that Gloam had written and that Eth had translated, I thought a lot about translation, and the gaps between people, and how we choose our words not just when translating, but when we speak at all. From a design perspective, I used the same colors I would've used had I chosen the Duo bookcloth--green and gold--so the design wasn't too altered in terms of color scheme. But I think the choice to weave the bookcloth--the thing that bound it all together--made the project take on a completely new meaning for me, both in process and in scope, one that hadn't been there when I started. I saw the warp, perhaps, as the original story, laying the groundwork for the weft, the translation; or maybe it was the other way around, with the translation providing the scaffolding for its own, new meaning, choices that Eth had to make with this word or phrase or another building something new, something translated, and the original a live, moving thing that wove over and under each word turned phrase turned story; or maybe it was both. Maybe it didn't matter which was which, in the end. And as I wove, the thing that connected them, that gold line that had started all of this, slowly formed.

All that to say: Good God, was there a lot of math. So much math. That prototype pictured above was actually made specifically so I could calculate exactly how much I needed to weave, lol, because while I certainly had enough thread, I didn't want to have to warp more than once. I'd learned the basics in my class, but the training wheels came off here. I wanted to make my own custom fabric, which meant calculating things like ends per inch, picks per inch, loom waste, shrinkage after washing, the width of that damn gold line, how much I'd need for the hinge, the turn-ins, the boards--the whole nine yards (I didn't actually weave nine yards tho heh). It was all absolutely worth it in the end--so challenging and so, so rewarding!

(And my final reason for weaving the bookcloth? Not gonna lie, It was because I just wanted to see if I could do it LOL. I love trying at least one new thing with each of my binds, and this was it for this project. While I've been bookbinding for a few years now, I'm still very much a beginner weaver, and I'm so excited to continue to learn and experiment! Also, here's a video of me unwinding the cloth from the loom, heh. I used 10/2 Perle cotton in gold and green colors :3)

Also, turns out, you can back handmade cloth the same way you can any other cloth! I backed it using my usual heat-n-bond method, and with some Unryu Tissue in the color Forest. Since the cloth itself is a bit transparent, there are a bunch of really fun fibers you can see when it's held up to the light, but which aren't visible when the cloth is glued down to the boards. Still, knowing they're there still makes me happy :D

Finally, capping all this off, is one final, small detail I really liked: ginkgo leaf endpapers :3 this one's for me and Eth and Gloam specifically <3

Aaaand that's all from me for today, folks! Thus ends (several months late XD) my last Binderary project for the year. This was probably my most ambitious bind to date, and gosh it was so, so much fun.

And, of course, thank you so much to Gloam for sharing your story, and Eth for translating it. I can't wait for y'all to receive your copies soon!

All my love! <3