#I would fuck the serif font if I could

[redflagshipwriter]

Hot Ghouls in your area 7

masterpost

Chapter 7 

…Jason slowly put down the book and turned it cover up, shell-shocked from that interaction. He lifted his phone and took a photo. He sent it to Roy. 

“What do you see?” He typed. Jason bit his lower lip and tried not to scowl while he waited for a response. 

It wasn’t that Jason was unused to conflict. Jason was great at conflict. He won every conflict! (Almost.) But what the hell had this shit been? Why had that guy been so pissy about the book? What the hell was wrong with the book that Jason didn’t see?

“Gibberish?” Roy texted back a few minutes later. “It gives the impression of wonky Cyrillic to me. But it's got a terrible energy to it. The hell is that?”

Jason looked at the cover. To his eyes, there was a serif font declaring it Sense and Sensibility Universe D version 5. 

“Thanks,” he sent, ignoring the question and then the barrage of heart emojis. Shit, okay. 

That answered one question. But it didn't answer enough. What the fuck had that college kid been seeing that was so offensive? 

‘And why'd he think we would meet again?’ 

Jason pushed deep, deep down any awareness that he hoped it was true. That had been weird enough that it would bother him forever if he didn’t get answers.

He sort of hated the idea of getting his nosy family involved, but they would ask different and in some ways, less annoying questions than other groups he could poll. They'd know not to lie to him, at least. So he sent the picture on to the family group chat with the same question and grimly finished his tea. 

The elderly proprietor came out then and noticed that her other customer was gone. She looked confused for a moment, scanning the seat to see if his book bag was still there. She picked up the cash he'd left on the table and then started stacking dishes.

‘He’s a regular,’ Jason guessed, honing in on the opportunity to learn more. He flipped the book open but held the apparently offensive cover down towards the table, out of her line of sight. He needed to know what had gone so wrong. Jason wasn’t normally the kind of person that cute college kids had beef with.

He'd never been in this café before, his intuition had just told him to duck inside.

“I think he forgot something,” Jason offered casually, pretending to just look up from his book. “Ran out real quick in a panic.” 

The lady let out a soft “Ahhh,” of comprehension. “Something for his afternoon class, perhaps,” she agreed, looking a little happier. 

“Yeah, it looked like he was getting ready to settle in for a long study session and then he bolted,” Jason lied, watching her underneath his lashes. He had been paying a little more attention than he ought to when the guy came in. He was Jason’s type, aside from the thing where he’d hated Jason’s face for no apparent reason-

‘No, actually, everyone I’ve ever been into hated me on sight.’

Ouch. As Jason digested that embarrassing truth, the owner continued talking.

“He does that,” she agreed, apparently not thinking it was odd at all for them to talk about the habits of another customer. “Tuesdays and Thursdays. He's a sharp cookie, did you know that?” She continued, and oh, she had halfway adopted this college kid, huh? There was warmth and a hint of pride in her tone.

Jason valiantly swallowed the snort. “He looks familiar, but I don't think we have classes together,” he fished. 

“Mm, he's doing some kind of math and engineering,” the lady helpfully supplied. She gave Jason her full attention as she stood up from the table. “And you?”

“Modern language and literature,” Jason said, and sort of wished it was true. He didn't really have the time. Did he? Spoiler was a full-time student, wasn't she? …Huh.

While he chewed that over, the lady had drifted a couple steps closer.

“...Those are two meaningfully different courses?” 

“Modern language is learning additional languages, I'm doing Russian and Greek right now,” Jason lied easily. He was fluent in both already. “Literature is mostly classics, for my purposes. I'm focusing on Regency Lit.” 

She looked very interested, but she detoured away to deposit the dirty dishes behind the counter. They kept up a light conversation about books as she wiped off the table and reset for the next customer. 

When she left, he finally had the chance to check his messages. There was a full-on fight in the group chat. The last message was from Stephanie. She had tagged him and asked, “Is this an optical illusion??? Like that dress?”

Ah, fuck. Jason felt a rock settle in his stomach at the confirmation that something hinky was going on.

‘I can’t read this in public if it’s saying something I can’t control or even know.’

Fucking hell. Jason scrolled back up and checked. Damian listed the correct title. Dick saw what, ‘I thought was Greek at first.’ Stephanie might have been joking but she argued vigorously that it was pictographs that started with a bird. Drake had sent “You rediscovered Minoan Linear A? Cool.” and then not participated in any follow-up discussions. Duke had sent only a stream of confused and tearful emojis.

Cass had marked it read.

“Fair enough, I guess,” Jason muttered to himself. Resentfully he put the book back in his bag. 

What had that guy seen? If he’d just seen something foreign but illegible he wouldn’t have gotten so pissy about it. And who the hell had he been, anyway? Why was he so special?

Well. That was something to do with his afternoon. Jason paid up his bill and gave Phyllis his well-wishes for her doctor’s appointment tomorrow on the way out. Phyllis was a good contact, he would definitely come back for more of her jasmine tea no matter how mad that guy got at him.

…Jason really needed a name.

And found…

He headed to Gotham University and used the student computers to look up departments and then hack into the registrar. Jason flipped through photos until he found his guy: Danny Fenton, 19, sophomore double-major in the Engineering department. Good grades, no notes on his account about academic dishonesty or conflict.

'Little weird to meet two Dannys in a 24 hour period.'

Jason searched the guy online and found…

He let his mouth drop open in disbelief at the batshit insane website design he had stumbled into. The Fenton family had a website, apparently, and they had maybe let a 7 year old design it in 2008. The colors… The lack of centering… The.. the neon choices.

His eyes watered. It took a while to fight down his aesthetic grief and actually start comprehending the text.

He had expected this to be like, an online family newsletter. And it was! The link he had followed detailed “Danno going to college in the big city!!!” The boy himself looked extremely resigned in the attached photo. Seriously, Jason had seen much less mortified mugshots. The thing was, that on the same page, alongside posts about other kids going college (Jazzypants!) and someone called Alicia recovering from “supergout!” with "her eight favorite toes remaining!!!", there was also a lot of mention of ghosts.

Like, a lot.

Jason scrolled in pained disbelief. There were photos that showed extremely weird and dismayed green people obviously flinching away from a camera. A beautiful green woman with her hair halfway over her face snarled through a flood of smoke under the title “Wishywish Ghostie Interviewed: Learn what drives her generous heart!” and an ugly robot motherfucker was seen fleeing under the caption, “Skalker indicates that spook is a GHOST SLUR!”

….Was it a shit post? Just one long shitpost? It had to be a joke site.

Well. No. Jason buried his face in his hands and came to terms with the horrible fact that not only were ghosts real, he was accidentally married to one and this bombastic midwestern family already knew about it. This was his best lead for getting that 'beyond death do you part' separation.

They had been blasting the existence of ghosts for all the world to read, and it hadn’t been news. The Justice League didn’t know about this whole society. The journalism done by– Jason lifted his head to check– Jack Fenton interviewing clearly very unwilling ghosts was the only primary source that he knew of. 

He took a few deep breaths. He came to terms with grief. He decided to block his family from any further involvement in this shitshow, for what remained of his dignity. And he grimly noted down Jack Fenton’s email.

Jason cleared this history and closed down his tabs, feeling a decade older than he had when he had entered the library. He ignored the sultry ‘come talk to me’ eye contact that the student worker was shooting him from behind the counter as he slouched out. 

He stopped for a moment on top of the stairs to watch campus move. He saw the theatre building and the modern language headquarters from his vantage point, along with about half of the student center. There was just a trickle of foot traffic between buildings along paved paths. A few people were hanging out on blankets in the grass. An old man in a suit was taking a phone call next to a crawling rose garden. 

‘Maybe I should go to school.’

Well. After this shit was sorted out. Obviously he could not go to school before he got divorced. It would be torturous to hang out with cute boys his age and be committed to some hot dead mermaid who didn’t even wanna make out with him sloppy. Loser shit on absolutely every level, goddamn.

Jason shoved his hands in his pockets and jogged down the stairs. He kept an eye out for Danny, but had no luck.  

Not that he cared. It was interesting that he had a lead: Danny clearly had some connection to ghosts, and he had been able to read… 

‘Maybe he realized it was a ghost’s property and he thought I stole it?’ Jason realized in a stroke of inspiration. That made more sense. If he knew enough to recognize it as ghost language or whatever, then he might have felt affronted about Jason having it.

He went through his mental checklist to pick out what he did and didn’t know. Once he felt he had a hang on his priorities, he beelined to his own laptop in his favorite safehouse and started looking into the Fentons in more depth.

It was a great lead. It was suspiciously good, in fact, he thought as he found Jack Fenton’s online family newsletter again. What were the odds that he would run into Danny Fenton in a cafe that Jason had never even been in before? It had been a total fluke that he’d entered. He’d been walking past to a favorite place and then just had the urge to try the dark little family cafe.

‘…Ah, fuck’, Jason sighed. More ghost shit. It had to be. Something about Danny Fenton’s ghost shit had registered to him now that he’d been exposed to ghost central.

[finalfrontierpublishing]

A Great and Gruesome Height by @moku_youbi. 

So this bind was a wild ride, with experimentation galore. It’s my 10th bind (HURRAY) and I started this bind knowing I wanted to play with thread, given I had so much fun with the stab binding. I had some red thread which i had originally purchased for the VTE bind - and just the right shade i was going for so i went for it.  

the original idea i was going for was ‘red thread of fate, but make it MURDER’ and so this tidy little concept was born. half way through the design conceptualization phase i had a little epiphany while watching season 3 of hannibal that blood spatter stringing was ALSO red thread and i just couldn’t resist (yes i know hannibal’s little murder tableaus seldom have blood but the string! MORE STRING!) 

More photos under the cut. 

Statistics: 

115559 words || 426 pages

Body Text: Crimson Text 

Chapter Headers: Cormorant Garamond

I quite like the experimentation with body fonts and trying to divert away from regular Garamond. So far, I’ve only used Baskerville, Garamond, Liberation serif and Cardo, but I do like this one. I lack the typography terminology but it feels fancy and posh and something Hannibal would enjoy. 

I also aggressively rounded this book - boy is it ROUND, perhaps a little too so. i had a difficult time getting the spine piece to be as round as I liked. 

Also, it was my first time putting a quote on the first few pages - i have zero regrets. Also featuring my new imprint page with AN ERROR (IT’S DECEMBER 2022 NOW OOPS). 

I didn’t have enough heat-reactive foil and this fic has 40+ chapters so I could only foil the last couple of chapters which were actually short mini-sequels to this fic which I also added in. I have to say, using a laminator over an iron for heat-reactive foil is MUCH superior. I didn’t have to work myself into a frenzy trying to get an even layer of foil on it. 

Endpapers are a little bunchy because of the thread. But i had to put butterflies because THE CHRYSALIS has hatched (i will never tire of hannibal metaphors).

See below for the conceptualization phase on cricut and er paper. I have zero art skills and have aphantasia so I had to print it out to try and figure out where everything needed to go. 

This bind is also the bind where I won my blood sacrifice badge - don’t use rusty tools guys. The spouse had borrowed my rotary cutter to cut wrapping paper for christmas wrapping and is RIGHT-HANDED. Self is LEFT-HANDED. Tool returned to me as is and I did not check if the blade protector was on the correct side as the tool will get flipped direction wise depending on the handedness of the user. So guess who needs to get a tetanus shot today? :joy:

 All in all, still a successful bind. It is a little busy, and if I had to do it again, I might not put the titling on the spine (always a little crooked, cause I roll that way). The Siser gold and silver metallic HTV for the hands fought me the entire way, and I’d probably not use it for such delicate lines - only part of it adhered and it made me very upset at first but since the bind is for myself it’s fine. 

I’d also use a thinner red thread next time (the thick waxed linen thread for leather work doesn’t fuck around, WILL NOT BUY AGAIN) because as you can see 3-4 rounds around the finger looks like it’s choking it and i had some space limitations at the edges. 

Well, a fun idea, with less than perfect execution but I’ll probably do it again one day if i ever summon up the courage to consider making this again (perhaps for the author if i get over my massive to-bind pile). PROBABLY NOT IN WHITE - gad WHITE IS SO SMUDGEY - nothing to remind you how dirty your hands are than white bookcloth. this is off-white pearl BUT fingerprint smudges!!! 

Resources: Page dividers made by evil-robot-cat here. 

EDIT: THE AUTHOR WANTS A COPY!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  🥳  😱 🫠 yessss AUTHOR COPY!!!! 

[enjoythesilentworld]

Wille's Month - Literature

day 3! @youngroyals-events

“I thought you were a literature student?” “This is literature!” Wille is a very serious literature student, thank you very much.

Read below or on ao3! (cw: implied sexual content)

To the surprise of no one, graduate school turned out to be a little demanding. Still, Wille enjoyed it. He did. For the first time in his life, he felt like he was actually producing something worthwhile. Finally, he had an outlet for all the confusion and turmoil growing up, an explanation for why it’d been so hard to accept himself for who he was. In literature, in tracing lines between characters and plot lines, connecting authors and themes, he found answers. He found common ground and explanations for the world around him. It helped him see beauty in the little, mundane things and simplicity in the big, complicated things. No more was it, why do I feel like this about another boy? It was oh, you felt this, too, and it all turned out okay. The humanity in his readings and the brilliance in discussing it with others, the searching for answers and that spark of joy when he finally connected two pieces together, it kept him going. All that, along with periodic praise from his advisor, plenty of coffee, and, of course, almost more than anything, Simon. 

Simon. Wille knew that he could’ve done the whole thing by himself – he’d enrolled before even meeting Simon, thank you very much – but something about having the man by his side, going through the same slog of self-doubt and fear and exhaustion made it all the more worthwhile. To have each other to go back to at the end of the day meant everything to Wille, and he was pretty sure Simon felt the same. He still didn’t know who to thank at the university for that silly bonding trip, but Wille was eternally grateful to whatever almighty force had brought Simon into his life. That first day, Simon’s shy smile and blushing cheeks, which quickly turned to sassy remarks and teasing smirks, had been a ray of sunlight in Wille’s life. Things had already been fine, even good, but Simon brought something more. Something Wille would never be able to put into words. Wille could read every book ever written and still never find the words to describe it, that thing that brought them together, that tug at his core; come closer, be near me, be with me.

All told, the little pieces of Wille’s life fit together well. Most days, he remembered to eat meals at reasonable intervals and got at least a few hours of sleep every night. Sometimes, he even went to the gym. Unfortunately, graduate school didn’t give a fuck if you were happy and in love and generally having a good time. It had a way of pulling apart all those little pieces and scattering them across the room, like an ornery housecat. On this particular day, Wille felt as though someone had stuck a spoon up his nose and scrambled his brain. He’d been reading the same three papers for days now and was making no progress, he had dozens of unread emails sitting in his inbox, and only one line written for his writing workshop assignment (which was due in two days). Needless to say, he was exhausted. There was only one thing he wanted to do: curl up in bed with his boyfriend. Very rudely, Simon was busy with rehearsals, so Wille was cursed to spend the evening alone. 

Sighing dramatically, he fell into bed, then squirmed around in frustration. It made him feel a bit better.

As was typical of a literature student – Wille, ever the cliché – his room was covered in books, haphazardly stacked in precarious piles on every available surface. Most were of respectable nature, if a little promiscuous. A few, however, were of a different breed. Since he had the time to kill, he pulled out a book from the bottom of one of the stacks, huffing when the whole pile toppled over. 

The cover was a swirling array of dark fabric, and nothing more. In simple serif font, the title read: “Velvet Desires: Passion Unleashed". And, so what if Wille liked to read trashy smut novels in his free time? He spent so much time dissecting prose and interpreting symbolism, who could blame him if every once and a while he just wanted to turn his brain off?

Simon found him like that hours later, half reading the book and half dozing. 

“Hi, baby,” Simon purred, crawling into bed and wrapping his arms around Wille’s waist, burying his face there. 

Wille smiled and set the book to the side, then pulled Simon closer. “Hello, my love.”

“Missed you,” Simon said into the fabric of Wille’s shirt, the sound a bit muffled. 

“I missed you, too. Did you have a good rehearsal?”

Simon simply hummed and lifted his head, smiling sleepily. Wille glanced at his book for a moment, and Simon followed his eye line. They both froze, before they each pounced on the book at the same time. Simon was faster. He jumped out of the bed and spun away from Wille’s reach. 

“What’s this?”

“It’s a book,” Wille huffed, grabbing at it. Simon giggled and climbed across the bed, dodging Wille again. 

Simon gasped dramatically as his eyes skimmed over the back cover. He looked up with mock horror on his face. Wille rolled his eyes. 

“I thought you were a literature student?” 

“I am– That is literature!” 

“This is smut, Wille.”

Wille groaned. “Come on, Simon, give it!” 

They chased each other around the room a moment longer, Wille not really upset and Simon not really horrified, before collapsing back onto the bed. 

“Very uncouth,” Simon tsked, poking a finger at Wille’s chest. 

“There’s a lot of good symbolism in there.”

“Oh, is there?” Simon asked, tone low. He rolled and moved to straddle Wille, leaning down to kiss gently at his jaw. “What else is in there?”

“Simon…” he whispered, then brought his hands up and gripped Simon’s hips, before sliding warm fingers up his back, along each vertebrae. 

“Anything fun?” 

Wille hummed, then curled a hand around Simon’s neck and brought their lips together. 

“I can show you.”

[gloriousmonsters]

what is the new book concept?? (if you don’t mind sharing — but if you do mind it’s ok not to reply)

also what is that font you used btw? is there a full alphabet somewhere and if so would you mind sharing the link? i like that it’s a very understated gothic-looking serif. or very calligraphic looking i guess

sure thing!! with the understanding it's a lot more half-baked than most of the ideas I've been talking about, so i'm going to briefly walk you through the few ideas that went into it before explaining (also briefly) what it is so far, lol. Also, the font is Fondamento - it was one of the fonts available in Photopea (free online photoshop-like) which I used to make the cover, but it looks like it's also on Google Fonts. If you want to know how I did the bronze metallic-ink-ish look for the text I can expound on that as well, btw, or you can just enjoy the font :)

So I've been having a resurgence of my Tempest emotions

(for those who are unfamiliar. i would summarize it, but it would take a long time. just. find a summary and read it with a MASSIVE grain of salt that's labeled 'prospero is an asshole and nobody understands Caliban but tumblr user gloriousmonsters and the poet Robert Browning')

and this time reading it was especially having fun with the parallels between Caliban and Miranda's characters and also thinking about how EXTREMELY weird and screwed up their relationship would have been growing up.

Despite interpretations/stories based on it sometimes having it otherwise, in canon neither of them seem to have ever seen or spoken to Ariel (at least in capacity as A Person You Can Talk to; Caliban is more aware of the spirits Prospero commands in abstract, at least). Aside from Prospero, who is notoriously not good at being present for what he's supposed to be looking after, they are the only human being the other one knows. It's serving twisted Eden vibes. It's serving tmg's 'the last man on earth'. it's serving 'not that Prospero would have encouraged it, but to an extent they must have seen each other as family, right? especially in Miranda's case, considering she grew up her entire life with him. the psuedoincest is off the charts'. Then shit goes bad (in whatever way you want to interpret) and now suddenly they're in a place of seeing each other daily, because Caliban does literally everything around the place, but having an uncrossable rift of mutual hurt and betrayal between them* that has little choice but to curdle and get worse because neither of them can do anything to change their situation. Depending on how lines are assigned, they never speak to each other in the play. And they have nobody else to talk to save for cursing out Prospero (Caliban) or trying to get in two words between Prospero's monologues (Miranda). And then the play events happen and they just part ways because Prospero has decided it, after probably expecting they'd be stuck in this forever. And then the next-to-only person you've ever known is on a different landmass and you're probably never going to see them again. it's So fucked.

Anyway I was revolving all of that with quiet awe in my head, and going 'man, I want to write a fucked up Caliban/Miranda book, but I don't have a non-play plot and I don't want to just write a prequel'

Then I encountered Caliban upon Setebos for the first time, and despite the fact i could still nitpick some things it slaps insanely. Only good Tempest fanfiction. It's a long poem consisting of Caliban theorizing about Setebos--a god his mother supposedly got her witch powers from, but that Caliban knows very little about. He theorizes that Setebos is either indifferent or malignant or both--impossible to predict, driven by whim. The only other divine force is 'the Quiet', an even more inhuman and incomprehensible force that doesn't do anything at all; cosmology is cruel, the world a sandbox under the eye of a god with as many arms as a cuttlefish, capricious and sadistic, whom we can only hope will someday grow decrepit and sleep, which is the closest to it being dead we can pray for--

It was about this point I realized Caliban/Browning was inventing the Lovecraft mythos 50ish years ahead of schedule, and got hit by the lightning bolt of 'PUT ELDRITCH BEINGS IN IT' and, five seconds later 'CALIBAN DESERVES TO BE A MAGICIAN' and five seconds after that 'miranda deserves to break out of being her father's Perfect child, let's set it in the future and kill Prospero off'

So Bitter Heart (taken from a line in the poem, 'Caliban/a bitter heart that bides its time') is conceptually a dual perspective novella/short novel focused on how about nine years after the conclusion of The Tempest, Miranda (unmarried, I'll handwave it; Ferdinand bores me so much sorry dude) finds her father dead and surrounded by rambling half-incomprehensible notes, remnants of a type of magic that's far different from his old ways, and a creeping sense of Wrongness that begins to slowly manifest in distortion, mutation and decay of elements of reality. People search for solutions while Miranda tries to find the source of the bizarre power in her father's notes and what hidden books she can unearth from his study, but she hasn't made it very far before a man comes to Milan at the behest of someone who's decided we should throw magic at the magic problem--a man she's heard rumors of as the hot new 'guy you keep in your court for a bit to show him off at parties because he's learned and also Moorish or something, he has this crazy backstory that's probably fake but is a lot of fun, also he does magic probably' in other cities, but never met.

A man who, when they meet face to face, turns out to be Caliban, who after about a year of 'finally peace and quiet' realized that living completely alone on an island was going to drive him insane and also he still really wanted revenge on Prospero (and had a lot of ambiguous ideas about what he wanted from Miranda) so he scraped together what Prospero had left behind and taught himself magic for the next few years until he could figure out a way off the island. He's extremely annoyed that after that, and after spending more years building himself up and finding his footing in the outside world, Prospero had the nerve to die RIGHT before he showed up, even if he wasn't promised a reward if he can stop people's arms from turning into fishes and shit he'd find out what did it so he can give it a piece of his mind. Miranda understandably never planned for this scenario and has a really hard time knowing what to feel about it, but she and Caliban form a tentative truce in order to try and figure out wtf Prospero was doing before he croaked.

There'll be intercut flashbacks to their past and the time they spent becoming incredibly codependent and eventually tipping into confused romantic attraction and sexual experimentation, which both of them have tried very hard to convince themselves was a bad idea for one reason or another, it clearly wasn't and will never be good for them, etc; and of course in present day they both immediately resume having bitter gothic sexual tension and trying to ignore the instinct that, now they've met each other again, they're the only two real people in a world of dreams and spirits.

Also they have to find the entrance to an eldritch realm and figure out what's coming through and how to stop it, and have a lot of insanely weird and pretentious thoughts/conversations about God and sin and abuse and vengeance/hatred and so on. So that's the mess Bitter Heart is at the moment :P

*ymmv may vary on how justified on either side depending on the situation, obviously

[punkrockisafulltimejob]

Bwuehehe. Writer questions 1, 15, 28, 32, and 46

1: What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting"

I use either Calibri or Ariel, depending. Basically any sans-serif font thats ADHD/Dyslexia friendly. Love reading/writing, hate when words don't stay put lol

15: Do you write in the margins of your books? Dog-ear your pages? Read in the bath? Why or why not? Do you judge people who do these things? Can we still be friends?

Good lord lmao.

I just recently started being okay with annotating anf highlighting books. I used to consider it sacrilegious to do so, and then I realized who the fuck cares? They're my books, and fuck it, if I'm gonna let someone else read it, they can have fun reading my thoughts while doing so lol. I do not dog ear, only because I have a tendency to either use scrap paper bookmarks, the fancy bookmarks I keep forgetting I own. I LOVE LOVE LOVE reading in the bath. Unfortunately my family hated when I would read in the bath for two hours. Something about there only being one bathroom for six people lol. I do not judge. Again, who the fuck cares lol. I will be friends with anyone, regardelss of how they treat books. Carry them around everywhere, hoard them on bookshelves, tear out pages, blend them into a smoothie, fuck if I care lol.

28: Who is the most delightful character you've ever written? Why?

Oh goodness, I don't know. I'll always have a special fondness for Cam and Maddie, but I think the most fun character to write has actually been Q Tomlin. They're a nonbinary genderfluid teen navigating high school, coming to terms with a lot of structural homophobia/transphobia, and also starring in a Shakespeare play!

32: What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic/etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

What, like in someone else's work?

I guess one of my favorite lines would be from a Dylan Thomas poem.

"Do not go gentle into that good night/ rage, rage against the dying of the light."

It's very much a line about not being complacent. I found it funnily enough in a trilogy I read as a teenager when I found the first book in my summer camp's lost and found. It was the last week of the year and we were encouraged to take things that weren't claimed, so of course I claimed the book lol. I've always been a bit of a rebellious thinker, so can you take a wild stab as to why I fell for that line?

40: Please share a poem with me, I need it.

See above poem, but also, here's one I wrote a while ago that I still can appreciate:

After Life

We walk across trails of light, endlessly winding through the night. A journey to the worlds beyond to find something that lets us bond and become something new, something true, something that we never knew we could be until we tried. Too many tears we have cried, and too many hearts were broken. All these words we left unspoken, a mark upon these hearts, torn apart, if only we had been so smart as to remember who we were together. Now we face the land of forever. Alone now, nowhere near close to that we fear, a different place to call home, our own. Draw me near, this place I roam. I want something as real as this, this glowing land of perpetual bliss. Let this be real, oh gracious god, for I can’t believe that I can trod upon these golden paths to salvation, in desperation, to something great, the blest creation of life in heaven. And now I know and can question how I came to deserve this afterlife, After all the pain and strife I have cause to others, to brothers, and those whose mothers names I cursed in frustration. Can I still receive re-creation of myself when I can’t be bothered to try to just be me?

We travel across these paths of light endlessly winding through the night. I guess I’ll never get it right. So let me fall, in ceaseless flight.

[mikelogan]

9, 24 and 27 for the creator asks!

9: Would you say your style has changed a lot since you first started creating? oh for SURE. regardless of what i consider my start bc i used to gif from like 2015-2017 and then i didn't start up again until april of 2023. this time around, i have learned SO much, and i'm sure part of that is just bc of how much gif styles have changed in the last 6-8 years, but also bc i joined a couple gifmaking networks and have gotten so much help through them, found so many resources, and learned tons! to compare, here's one of the sets i was proudest of from Back In The Day. now, it's definitely not horrible, but the coloring and the slow framerate make me borderline homicidal. this one is marginally better, and i remember thinking i was really Doing Something with that typography 😂 here are some of the sets i made early on in my Return to Gifmaking this past April/May. this was one of the first times i'd ever combined multiple gifs into one and girl. what the fuck happened. why are the framerates Like That? what is this typography? i had no business making early l&o gifs 540px wide bc the quality is bad enough at 268px 💀and i think this one is a good example of i got the spirit! the execution just wasn't quite there. i like the main gif with the overlay of the sky, but i'd do the typography very differently and idk if i'd do it in b&w? i could try and remake it tbh, it's been 9 months since i made and posted it.

24: What’s your step by step? How do you organise your editing process? buckle up 😂

make clips of the scene(s) i want to use if i don't already have them

import video frames to layers

action 1: grouping and timing (groups all layers and sets frame rate to 0.05)

delete any extra frames

crop to whatever dimensions i'm using

action 2: sharpening (two smart sharpen layers) + vivid sharpening (i used this tutorial and i usually keep that folder at 30% but sometimes drop it down to 10-15%)

coloring! it depends on what i'm giffing, but i color everything from scratch at least the first time. i save a LOT of my psds, like there's one psd that i use for almost all my tfothou gifs, a couple for hill house depending on the tint of the scene i'm giffing, one for law & order that sometimes needs to be adjusted just a little, one for the good wife, one or two for satc, etc. but they're all psds that i created myself.

typography (if applicable) which almost always involves scrolling through the entire list of fonts just to use one of my go-tos

action 3: this save action from anyataylorjoy

export > save for web!

upload to hellsite (derogatory) and gifsets always immediately go to my drafts, even if i want to post them right away, just so i can make sure i'm happy with everything and try to catch any last-minute mistakes

as for general organization, i'm organized on my computer to a near-ridiculous standard, but it works for me lmao. my psds, templates, and project psds (where i save an entire finished gif if it's for a larger, complex set and then never get rid of them lmao), and all overlays, textures, icons, graphics, transitions, etc. are meticulously organized. my finished gifs are also organized into their own folders.

27: What’s your favourite font to use? in general, monsterrat. i use it for everything in google docs, and it's my fave sans serif to go with serif or script fonts. when i'm using it for giffing, i usually use semibold.

[miekasa]

hey mie!!! hope you’ve been doing good ily

do you see eren as a comp sci major or like an econ/business major? i’m like sooo into comp sci eren with nerdy glasses and always has eye bags bc he never sleeps and works so hard ❤️ and y/n would have to yell at him bc sleeping at 5am every night is not the norm HUT I ALSO LOVE ECON EREN UGH he would def be in a frat his first year to just try it out and connect with ppl but he would hate it smmmm he’d only somewhat enjoy the parties. it’d be so fun to fuck with him and be like “so why can’t we print more money eren” and he’d be like 😐 UGHDGVDHDH I LOVE HIM. it’s ridiculous

Try… not to envision Eren in any setting where men like to play devil’s advocate LMFAOOO so idk if econ is best for him, but he would be fun with mess with <33

Comp sci could be so cute for him, he’s just a little dude making little websites on his computer. The first time he Makes something it’s definitely ass—ugly ass colors, three different serif fonts in wonky sizes, grainy ass text—but he looks so damn proud of it, you just have to support him 😭😭 he does get better, even tho he consistently complains about his codes not compiling and spends many nights just yelling at his computer, he’s doing his best <3

[mallowstep]

1, 3, 40!

1. What font do you write in?

Typically, Alegreya. I find it a very comforting font to look at. If I’m using monospace (as I do for some things), Fira Code. (While rare, if I need to use sans serif font, I use Fira Sans.) Jauría is another font I love, but I use it in my flash cards, so writing in it would be strange.

While my preferred font has changed over the years (I used to use Georgia, and before that others I don’t remember), it is deliberately chosen. I consider myself a bit of a typography nerd, but moreover, I hate Ariel and TNR with a passion. I couldn’t stand to write in either. If you’ve ever worked on a shared document with me, I have changed the font.

3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed?

I’ve been informed quite reliably that my notebook system is cursed.

On a more explainable level, I think the way I end up writing the same scene for like five fics. What I mean is — let’s say I’m writing a scene for reuniting after torture. I’m kind of in a groove, and I have another fic that needs that scene, so I just keep writing. The cursed part is I end up using very similar dialogue.

Also, my general attention to detail. I don’t typically get to flex it when I write for warriors, because there’s only so much to know, but typically I end up downloading at least one paper per fic. These vary from psychology to malacology (the study of mollusks!) to released protocols of an FBI special unit. (Those three are all relevant examples.) I might take it a little far but there’s something soothing for me in it. (Also, anyone who follows my main will likely not be surprised by this, but I go a little insane for thinking out details.)

40. Share a poem

Aside from what I have on my main, hm. It’s been a long time since I’ve kept poetry on my phone. I’ll offer this, which is technically a text message, but a poem as well

I say “hypothetically wouldn’t it be fucked up if someone’s parents treated them this way” and they say “here is a complete tour of the hospital” and I say “I am going to tell you about how much of a nerd I am” and they say “I want you to braid my hair” and I say “I think love is supposed to be angry” and they say “I hope not” and i say “is it fucked up that I was relieved that it was just an allergic reaction?” and they say “I want my brother to give you a tour of my city” and neither of us say I love you because we know that would destroy me right now, but we mean it

Also, a list of some poems I’ve loved enough to memorize (apologies for the lack of authors, I’ve never been good at that part):

the envoy of mr cogito (English translation)

[i carry your heart with me]

Heartbeats (I need to add on this one, it’s worth reading out loud. Also, because of the steadiness of it, I used to mutter it under my breath when I was focusing, and my boyfriend had to alert me that saying “Today? Tonight. / it waits. For me.” was creepy and I should maybe not)

About the weather (another one with a note, I like this one so much I wrote an essay analyzing it)

I sing the body electric, especially when my power’s out

Crossing the bar

Do not go gentle

Queen mab speech (Romeo and Juliet)

I also really adore Walt whitman’s “I sing the body electric” but it would be…difficult to memorize, to say the least. I’ve considered adding it tho. And from Andrea Gibson, “Alaska says sun”, “good light”, “fight for love”, “boomerang valentine”, “I do,” and “say yes” are all some favorites. I wanted to single this out, though — “how it ends” is probably one of my favorites of hers.

I could probably keep going with poetry — if you can’t tell, I’m a fan. I’ve used poetry to keep the world stable under my feet since I was a child, and I’ve got some favorites.

<3

[stocious]

Hey Kaka ! How are you darling? I started a little challenge if you feel like it (:

Headcanon challenge:

1. Besides “Mick” and “Mickey”, what’s Ian nickname for Mickey? From all the nicknames Mickey calls him , what’s Ian’s favorite?

2. What’s the story behind Mickey’s knuckle tattoos? (When / how / by who) When Ian gets a tattoo for Mickey, what is it / on what occasion?

3. Random turn-on for Mickey and a random turn-on for Ian? (Bonus: something that really shouldn’t be a turn on but is)

4. What’s their Instagram @ ? When did they start following each other?

5. If they get a pet, is it a dog (who walks it more often?) or a cat (who cuddles with it more often) ? 

good morning anon xx! i’m doing alright, i hope you have a great day today! i tend to get a little long winded whenever i’m asked things like this so imma put a cut here somewhere for everyone’s sake. 😅

1. i think ian tends to go for more classic nicknames like baby, hubby, sweetie etc. mickey acts like he hates it all the time but he really doesnt. mickey as we know tends to put a more unique flare to his but ian’s favorites out of them all are ’lover’ and ’husband’ (not hubby, husband). it just hits different.

2. i'm really hung up on idea that the knuckle tats being a Milkovich Rite of Passage™. so all the boy milkoviches got em when they were around ~15 to show that they're men now, ya know? i think someone within the family does them so that's kind of why they look like shit, maybe an uncle or a cousin or something. and then it's a big, rowdy milkovich party to celebrate. not like a birthday party, just a fucking party. i really want ian to get something matching to mickey's chest tattoo, so in my head he does. probably something simple like 'mickey' over his heart in a serif font. maybe he'll add some stargazer lilies to it at a later point to make it more unique. i don't think ian would make a big fuzz over it, mickey would of course call him a fucking sap but you can bet your ass he's touching it all the time when they're cuddling in bed.

3. i think one big thing for mickey about ian is how fucking big he is compared to mickey himself. tall, big hands, long fucking limbs, the whole shebang. he likes that ian is able to manhandle him around. one big thing for ian is mickey's bratty attitude in bed. how he's able to make him go from a demanding little asshole to begging and needy, just taking everything he's given. and ian's the only one who can do that to him, turn him into that.

4. i just finished a reread of all of grayola's works and i really like how she kept ian's handles simple, and i think that's what ian would do. so something like @ian_g and maybe finish it off with some random numbers. mickey keeps his simple as well but less obvious. something like @m.mvich, you'd know it's him if you know him but it's not shouting his name out to the world. i think they were both kinda late to the game? i mean the gallaghers barely had working phones and i remember my first smart phone was too shitty to handle instagram so i think ian had an account for a long time but didn't get to use it much. mickey got his more recently after ian told him to get on there so he could see all the cute family pictures the gallaghers would post without ian having to show him himself all the time. now mickey's quite active on there, much to everyone's surprise. 5. mickey wants a dog. he wants a cool fucking bully breed dog and he'd name it bazooka or something like that and he's told ian about this sooo many times. mickey's CONVINCED he's more of a dog person than a cat person, so they need a dog at one point or another. ian gently talks him out of it for the time being, saying a cat is more independent and would fit them better right now, but they can maybe get a dog later, in a few years? mickey acts like he doesn't like the cat they get from a shelter but ian walks in on them sleeping on the couch together a few days later so he knows mickey's full of shit. mickey does get his dog later though. it's the most harmless couch potato of a dog and it's scared shitless of their now senior cat and regularly falls over thin air. mickey loves him to death even though he's not the vicious killing machine that he said he wanted. the cat always favored mickey over ian for some reason even though mickey acted like he didn't like it in the beginning. the dog likes them both equally but ian walks it more often because he goes for runs every day anyway.

[lovethesequelbaybee]

me & kurt.

10 Famous People With Scoliosis. That's how it started. I don't often admit that my obsession with Nirvana and Kurt Cobain as a 14-year-old in 2008 came from some ugly html website meant to make kids feel more at ease with their spinal deformities.

It was always cooler to explicate a more cinematic moment; the first time someone puts on "Smells Like Teen Spirit" for you, the first time you see that yellow squiggle subversion of the smiley face adjoined to the serif-font NIRVANA t-shirt on some doomy mall goth, the first time the local classic rock station in town injects "Come As You Are" into your earlobes.

But the truth is though I was abstractly aware of the magic in those melodies and production, I didn't really feel and understand the music until I learned more about the person's life who'd written them.

Seeing Kurt as the only cool, shaggy-haired, and haphazardly-dressed person on the list (also the only dead person), my pre-teen raised-as-a-boy brain was firing and I began watching YouTube docs on his life, his drawings, his art, his lamentations, his sarcastic quips, his gravely low drawl affixed to his dry humor, his blue eyes that burst so lively even in black and white photographs.

Like this dude, I was a skinny blonde depressive, friends with the theatre kids and music kids and newspaper kids and ridiculed with homophobic slurs by the jock breeds. I also lived in a small, lame town that was frequently cold and whose only hangout was a single coffee shop and whose only excitement could be found via vandalism, cursing, Apatow-era comedies, and loud music.

The chronic pain in my spine and my weak frame didn't feel so brittle when I could blast through Nevermind and In Utero in between watching and rewatching live performances, interviews, and eventually reading three different biographies of the man (which, surprisingly, I all rented from my Christian-ass high school library, known to not carry certain books that may have been too edgy or subversive. Fuck, in that town, Pepperjack Cheese was subversive).

I ripped holes in my jeans and grew my hair long and washed it less. I got droopier sweaters with bigger stripes and exclusively wore sneakers.

I don't know that I would've been cognizant of or able to articulate this then, but I had never before seen an artist be so capable of humor and melancholy simultaneously. Around my friends, I was jocular and amiable and the facilitator for hangout or party logistics. Internally and corporeally, I was in pain, deep, constant, chronic pain. Walking, sitting, standing, sleeping, it all hurt. It made me resent the things around me, the people I loved, the books I had to carry.

Every chance I got to implement Kurt or Nirvana into an English paper or journalistic endeavor for the school paper, I would. Knowing the band's impact and lifespan were so immense yet so limited made me crave every single detail, even though so many of them were yarns by Kurt himself. I related, often embellishing my own personal stories and dreams into something resembling a caricature of myself.

I may have been a lithe, witty kid to everyone around me, lustless and harmless to boys and girls who felt no pain and were fortunate enough to experience that "immortal" feeling so consistently and often inappropriately affixed to teenagers.

I was very aware I was mortal, I couldn't think from all the misery my body was inflicting on me. I wanted to die.

But at the same time I felt like if this emaciated and misunderstood kid across the country in some other shitty frigid town could make a big impact on the world and art, maybe I could too. Maybe I could do it and not die. I mean, at the time I honestly was young enough to believe the conspiracy theories about his death. I, like many people used to and many still do, considered suicide weakness, a failure, something someone I loved who was so dead could and would not succumb to doing.

So in the minutiae of Kurt's short life, I would cling to the similarities: On freezing bus trips to neighboring towns for improv and other speech/theatre-related meets or competitions, I would look out the window and reread Heavier Than Heaven and find solace in Krist describing he and Kurt befriending some kids in Iowa on the road while waiting in line for Taco Bell, I would wonder which Iowa town and if my school bus was passing by it on the way to my performance and I would feel an almost spiritual kinship to thinking it might have been that town right there. If I had been the right age and the universe had been kind I might have met him. I wore converse and Levi's because he did, bought "grandma sweaters" as my girlfriend at the time would call them because he did. I drowned myself with all the influences he indicated he was inspired by or straight up "copying": Pixies, REM, The Vaselines, etc. etc. etc.

And though this obsession would fade as I got into other music and issues and as my back surgery in late 2008 quelled a lot of my physical ailments, the flame would fail to burn out over the years. And, perhaps due to my back surgery or all the stress and pain pills I'd had to take over the years, my stomach soon mimicked many of Kurt's stomach issues, IBS a blanket term for what doctors gave up on learning about (according to both Kurt and me now, at 30, having just had a colonoscopy and still not having many answers on why my stomach can handle less and less types of food every year).

It's comical how much of a poser I felt like for getting so into Nirvana in the mid-to-late 2000's, as if it was my fault I was born too late to see them live. Now in 2022 I'll see comments on YouTube videos of Gen Z folks typing about how much they love Kurt and Nirvana unabashedly, praising his prescient feminist, genderqueer, and anti-racist and capitalist tendencies, alongside his knack for high-powered, heavy pop and rock melodies with lyrics that could be stupid and sagacious all at once.

I felt wrong for the false nostalgia I had held onto, felt like I was disrespecting what real grunge kids in the 90's had really experienced. This was before I understood that nostalgia doesn't always have to be one's own; the kids playing teens on That 70's Show were making a living off of other people's nostalgia for god's sake.

And now I'm nostalgic for that nostalgia. For 2008. For the moments in between class where I was smartphoneless and rereading the same passages about the Reading Festival or SNL performance. For my stomach's previous durability and the simple existence of completing homework without a job or taxes or the knowledge of true intimacy with another person.

Being a teen is one of the most miserable times in your life, especially if you're chronically ill, furtively queer, and so full of emotions and creativity that seems to have no vehicle for existence. And I miss it dearly.

"Teenage angst has paid off well, now I'm bored and old" Kurt sang. And I'm happy to know more of who I am now. Grateful to have lived longer than Kurt. But I do miss the spark of that intense emotion sometimes. I have to focus more to try to access it now. Trying to access it is like trying to write when you don't feel like it, it simply can't happen. The "psychodelic angel" from Conor Oberst's "Landlocked Blues" is not always "tugging on your hand." You need a breakup or song or film or conversation to ignite the embers of youth, of intense hormones, of that particular throb.

Part of what he was looking for and trying to explore is what has kept me alive. Part of him lives in me, or so it feels like it. That's an amazing thing for art that was written off as depressing junk by a lot of my parents' generation to do.

Sometimes I'm depressing junk. Sometimes I'm attempting to be the life of the party. I'll probably always be skinny and blonde and physically feeble. But when I'm doing standup or writing a song or editing a script or drawing a picture, nobody can stop me from needing to endure those processes and the catharsis they provide. Nobody can pilfer what I feel.

[katarh-mest]

Also, thinking about the "grunt work" of design. Layouts. Layers. Fonts. Client feedback.

If a client hires someone who produces an AI prompt for their commission, say for a drawing of a birthday cake with balloons and "Happy Birthday [NAME]" above it, and the commissioned AI prompt artist is DUMB and does it as an all in one....

..... the client might then say: "Oh hey this is pretty cool, but could you make that font have serifs to be more elegant? And make it like.... metallic? Also I want the balloon to be on the other side of the table, and I want the birthday candles to be lit."

For a real artist who did that digital drawing in Illustrator, that's about 2 seconds of work rearranging the balloon, and maybe another hour or so changing the font layer and adding a flame layer. Happy client, happy (paid) artist.

But the "AI prompt artist" that didn't create the image as separate layers to begin with (most of them don't know that they should do this, it seems, or why) has either got to admit they have no fucking clue what they're doing art wise, or get a crash course in Photoshop to actually do what the client requested. It's going to take a lot longer than an hour. Generating a new prompt with all those attributes is.... going to make a different image.

(A smarter, more experienced "AI prompt artist" would have known to make the cake layer by itself, then a separate balloon layer, then the separate text font layer in Photoshop. But at that point, they're just an artist that is using AI generated assets, and doing functional layout work like any other layout artist.)

I still say FUCK AI, but I also say this as an eye roll and a cautionary tale to any business out there that thinks they can just get an AI to do their design work.

You can't, because AI is just a fancy new name for Big Data, and Big Data is not an artist or a designer. It cannot design or write something truly new - it can only mimic what it has seen others do, and it does that with mixed results.

Some positivity in these turbulent AI times

*This does not minimize the crisis at hand, but is aimed at easing any anxieties.

With every social media selling our data to AI companies now, there is very little way to avoid being scraped. The sad thing is many of us still NEED social media to advertise ourselves and get seen by clients. I can't help but feeling that we as artists are not at risk of losing our livelihoods, here is why:

Just because your data is available does not mean that AI companies will/want to use it. Your work may never end up being scraped at all.

The possibility of someone who uses AI art prompts can replace you (if your work is scraped) is very unlikely. Art Directors and clients HAVE to work with people, the person using AI art cannot back up what a machine made. Their final product for a client will never be substantial since AI prompts cannot be consistent with use and edits requested will be impossible.

AI creators will NEVER be able to make a move unless us artists make a move first. They will always be behind in the industry.

AI creators lack the fundamental skills of art and therefore cannot detect when something looks off in a composition. Many professional artists like me get hired repeatedly for a reason! WE as artists know what we're doing.

The art community is close-knit and can fund itself. Look at furry commissions, Patreon, art conventions, Hollywood. Real art will always be able to make money and find an audience because it's how we communicate as a species.

AI creators lack the passion and ambition to make a career out of AI prompts. Not that they couldn't start drawing at any time, but these tend to be the people who don't enjoy creating art to begin with.

There is no story or personal experience that can be shared about AI prompts so paying customers will lose interest quickly.

Art is needed to help advance society along, history says so. To do that, companies will need to hire artists (music, architecture, photography, design, etc). The best way for us artists to keep fighting for our voice to be heard right now is staying visible. Do not hide or give in! That is what they want. Continue posting online and/or in person and sharing your art with the world. It takes a community and we need you!

[runningout-of-words]

A logo symbol is called a logomark, i.e. the Target bullseye, the Nike swoosh.

a typographic logo is called a logotype. Think Google, Vogue, IBM.

When you combine a logomark and a logotype it is called a lockup. That's what PayPal had before, with the "PP" mark next to its name.

So to answer ur question, PayPal's new logo is 100% still a logo - it's just a logotype. (A really boring one.)

Lol thank you for your response! I did go and look it up afterward and tbh it was still a little vague so I appreciate your input. I guess I just feel like at least Google and IBM have a tiny bit more visual interest and/or recognition, even if that’s just that each letter is a different color. Like even if you just put some colored squares next to each other with the right colors, you’d be able to tell it’s Google related. They have a defined color scheme. Whereas PayPal has decided to forgo their recognizable blue and yellow for plain solid color text (looked like just black?) on a solid color background, and I guess I just don’t understand why they would do that. It’s like one degree of freedom from typing “PayPal” in a standard boring sans serif font and printing it out on some blue printer paper. Like I don’t think I could recreate the Google or IBM logos in a basic text editor, y’know? Almost feels like they didn’t want to have to spend money on a designer and so told an intern to pick out a decent, clean font and a nice shade of blue. Idk. Not really sure why I’m rambling so much on this. But thank you for your message and I wholeheartedly agree, even if it does qualify as a logo, it sure is boring as fuck. 😂

[finalfrontierpublishing]

Happy Star Wars day!

MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU! bound this little sneaky cheeky bind just in time for Star Wars day.

Yet another blind bind - leftover from Binderary. This bind is Remedial Jedi Theology by MarbleGlove.

Beautiful typeset was made by Aether from Renegade for the Bind Renegade Exchange last year.

Statistics:

51,336 words || 155 pages

Cover titling font: Tw Cen MT Condensed

I still haven't read this fic, though I kind of skimmed it enough to get a sense of the point of view. Exasperated Obi-Wan Kenobi seemed to be a prime feature, so despite not knowing very much about lightsaber designs in general, I decided to find the closest image vector I could find to Obi-Wan's lightsaber, which i wanted to use as a focal point of this bind.

This which i absolutely fucked within 5 minutes of applying HTV because I IRONED IT ON THE WRONG WAY AROUND - contemplated leaving it but I could not do it (I know enough hardcore Star Wars fans and they would definitely notice). Fast forward to 3 hours later where me and a tweezer had an intensely hot date where I flipped my book a million times while trying to get a grip on the last dastardly bits of HTV that were really hard to get off. I mostly succeeded, and here we are.

LESSON LEARNT - DO NOT IRON ON HTV WHEN TIRED.

I loved the half-title page designed by Aether, and I wanted a strong counterpoint to it for the cover titling, with a bold dramatic (but relatively simple) font and hence decided in the end to stick with something sans serif. I love this particular holographic HTV, it is absolutely one of my favourites, other than the metallics.

Endbands are yet again, me trying my best to practice my french double core with silk. They are getting better, slowly. I frequently never remember but I think this bookcloth is Hollanders Japanese bookcloth in wine. Lastly endpapers are from my stash from Renato Crepaldi.

Noun project icons from Vectors Market and Joe Wisneski.

Now that we are in May proper, my plan is to finally target all the author binds I've been meaning to do, as well as finish a couple of important projects I need to get done by end July. Am very excited for an event that's coming up soon!

[internetgiraffekid1673]

A Hate Letter to Sans Serif Fonts: l and I

This is a long overdue rant that nobody asked for!

You may notice that in the title of this hate letter, the two characters I am supposedly griping about are the same. This is incorrect. I have typed a lowercase "L" and a capital "i."

Now. Who on this FORSAKEN PLANET decides that it would be a good idea to make the ENTIRE family of DEFAULT TYPEFACE have two commonly used characters be INDISTINGUISHABLE! Because I need to introduce this person's face to a hot date, also known as a SHOVEL!

"But Giraffe," I hear my dear, unreasonable, insomniacs cry! "You can always just tell by the context! Capital letters are only used in such specific contexts, that you'll always know!"

I would like to inform these people that not everybody who is forced to read in sans serif typefaces understands the rules of capitalization. I have been reading since well before I was supposed to (learning to spell some words at 3 and 4), and did not fully grasp the concept of proper nouns until around 7 or 8.

This meant that for years on end I thought that the state of Iowa was actually the state of Lowa and could not comprehend why it seemed to be the only state with inconsistent capitalization, and also didn't understand what the heck this "iowa" was.

When I read the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, I was convinced that the android named Iko/iko was actually named lko/Lko, and that this was pronounced el-ko because it wasn't unreasonable to me that a literal robot could have an uncapitalized name.

I did not have the slightest clue how you were supposed to pronounce Ikea. I thought it was maybe an internet slang or an acronym for something, or maybe an incomprehensible word created for logo purposes.

This is not even broaching that it causes me to terribly misread words even when I KNOW the context and the proper capitalization.

Prime example, the word "I'll." I cannot look at this word in a sans serif font without intense confusion and having my immersion and reading comprehension momentarily disrupted. Anytime those two stupid characters appear next to each other, I have this issue. Pardon my improper capitalization for this demonstration, but keep in mind that any word that starts with an I may be at the beginning of a sentence.

"I'll move to the state of Illinois, where I'll become a senator and I'll make Illegible sans serif fonts totally Illegal and Illuminate the Illness that such an Illegitimate form of communication can cause. I'll back up this Illogical approach with Illiteracy statistics and I'll quote the Illustrious Iliad to really Illustrate my point!"

Seriously, why does the typeface that is most commonly used on computers and is the current default typeface for basically anything digital have such a glaring oversite that caused smol me to be humiliated and confused out of my mind so many times!? It is one of my biggest pet peeves that bothers nobody else, and I will not stand for it any longer. My voice must be heard! I will make my opinion known!

To whoever thought this would be a good idea:

I hope you die a slow and painful death while realizing the error of your ways and being powerless to stop the truly horrible crime you have set in motion, and that your afterlife is haunted with the agonizing knowledge that you are beyond redemption. Fuck you, and have a lovely day.

Everybody else, take a nap/go to bed, take a shower, eat some food, remember your medications, squish your face into a pillow, and have sweet dreams of sans serif fonts with indistinguishable characters burning in Hell. Goodbye.

-Giraffe

[grazhir]

Testing Shit

Duplicated my generic work skin at AO3 to a new name so I could tinker with it and toss in a testing page (saved as a draft in the end, as well as in a Test folder of Dreamweaver) to see how my tinkering would affect it. You know, trying to fix any issues with the changes.

[I'm not even thinking about edge cases right now, though I really should unify the half dozen work skins I have into a single skin, if possible.]

And then I applied that work skin to my current WIP. I mean, it mostly looks okay. The biggest change is the first-in-line font. I've always used Georgia, mainly because it's a core font/web-safe, and it's serif. I like my elegant letters/numbers/symbols and curly quotes.

The new skin has Times New Roman as first-in-line. It's sharper? I've never been a fan of TNR simply because it's kinda small at 100% (I bumped it to 120%), but it does look all right in my test cases (again, the draft Testing "fic" and Samsara: Welcome to 4546B), so I'll just sit on this for a while to see how I feel about it in a week.

I only started fucking with it because I noticed that my copy of Under That Sky on Google Play Books is apparently using Times New Roman as the default, whereas Samsara: Welcome to 4546B is using Georgia?

[Clearly, I need to use the CSS from UTS for further compiles to ebook format.]

I messed with the font settings to swap it back and forth (Verdana was ugly, as per usual). Kindle defaults to Bookerly, but they can do that, cause it's their font. The rest of us have to use what's available (and AO3 does NOT allow for the use of Google's font library, the bastards).

[purpleandsilver]

Using StimuWrite: First Impressions

Wherein I typed up this post on the app, exported the .txt file to my OneDrive, and formatted it on Tumblr whilst laying in bed.

First I downloaded it from the official source. Then I explored the other themes. I settled on buying and downloadig one of te extra theme packs in order to have the Clear Crystal theme. I'm running into the problem that the background I want to use- Galaxy Spiral- is making it hard to read text as I type closer to the center of the spiral. I changed to the Outline theme and it seems to help but I wish there was a background that was slightly grey and transulucent. The emojis are cool but mushrooms don't go with the theme. Oh well. I think mushrooms are cute. Hm. Text is getting hard to read because the galaxy spiral is darker towards the bottom. Let me see..... Okay so I switched backgrounds. Dark works okay with Clear Crystal. I just noticed that the emojis isn't just mushrooms like I wanted. I don't like the thumbs up emote randomly showing up. Wait where'd the mushies go. 😟I like the mushies. 😟 Okay so I turned off Emoji Feedback thinking it would get rid of the thumbs up. I don't think it did but I did turn on the lots option. I don't like the hand clapping emoji either. I just want the mushies. Anways, the writing part works fine. Let's explore the fonts.

Right now I'm using Courier Prime. Let's see what else we have. Roboto Sans is basic AF but someone likes it lol. Noto Serif is very in your face serif. I understand why Open Dyslexic was added- for acessability- but omg my ADHD brain hates this font. But I'm glad it's avaible for people who need it. Short Stack is interesting in that I don't know how to describe it. It's... short and handwritingish? Ish. Marckscript are for people who cosplay William Shakespeare characters. It's cursvie so there's a huge generation that doesn't know how to write it. Illegible is definitely for people who want nothing but chaos. I don't and I hate this font with a passion lol. Okay I'm back to my favorite font of all time. Courier Prime really is the number one font ever. It is just so good and I personally believe it pairs well with the keyboard or typewriter sounds.

Speaking of sounds let's try those out. Right now I'm on Typewriter. Now I'm on Bubble. Absoulutely the fuck not. No. Omg I hate this sound. My brain is screaming. And now I'm on Bloop which sounds like a fire alarm and is giving me flashbacks from school days. NO. And here we have keyboard which is like Typewriter but lighter because it's modern. Oh there's one called Ah. OMFG I HATE IT. Just turned on Scribble and I'd rather listen to nails on a chalkboard. Plastic Rustle reminds me of my cat Maximus and how he likes to eat plastic. I see the appeal but no for me. Now I'm on Bubble Wrap. I'm having mixed feelings right now. I don't hate it but I like it. And finally, Drum. No. Just no. And I'm back to Typewriter because it's the best. Most of the sounds are a no for me, but I'm not the only one using them. They're cool but imma stick with Typewriter or Keyboard. Okay now I'm going to close and reopen the program to see if it saves me work. Gonna copy it beforehand though.

Okay it does save your work in a way. I had to change my theme again on start and recovery my session. Interesting. Anyways ratings are arbitary but I think this app is a 10/10 for what it does because I'm almost at 650 words. I wonder if I can get there just by typing mindlessly. I bet I could. This feels very stimulating. I need four more words. Oh hey I'm over 650 words. Nice.