#just as a pdf at first but i got Curious

[justicecaballer]

anyway i’ve discovered that downloading fics from ao3 as epubs and reading them that way is awesome

[genderkoolaid]

I don't know if you know, but there's just been a case of a maths teacher being fired after deadnaming and misgendering a transmasc student in the UK. He, of course, couldn't accept this decision and took it to court and luckily, he lost the case (he didn't like that), but I was reading through the judiciary judgement and it's so nauseating and obviously targeted at transmascs in particular.

He refused to use his pronouns, wrote his deadname on the whiteboard, and actually pulled the student aside afterwards to warn them against taking testosterone and it causing irreversible damage. Not only that, but he straight up compared HRT (which he had no evidence the student was even on) to Mengele's experiments in Auschwitz.

The link in case anyone is curious: https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Lister-v-New-College-Swindon.pdf

(cont) It's just nauseating to read the judgement and see the amount of deadnaming, misgendering but also a teacher complete move past the boundary between a student to attempt them to either a) detransition, or b) prevent them from transitioning in the first place. This teacher is essentially attempting both, the first by not respecting his social transition, and the second by in a private conversation pressuring him not to do HRT, and also speaking to HIS FRIEND, and also attempting to pressure her to talk him out of it (pg 13). I struggle to put into words how obvious it is that here and abroad, how people talk about HRT and transition in regards to transmascs and trans men is so overtly misogynistic and controlling, and so deeply rooted in misogyny. These people are furious at losing what they perceive is owed to them, it's obvious that they want emphatically to detransition trans men, and the underlying sentiment is because of an ownership over our bodies.

(The linked pdf)

Yeah, this is a fucking wreck. And it seems like a lot of reporting on this is from transphobes who see this guy like an academic martyr. Also got some hot exorsexism from this article:

“I do say this is breaching the Equality Act because you are encouraging the idea that a non-binary person can come into class and say she is a boy and by the afternoon she can say somewhere between the two,” he said.

Also, not a big fan of how they constantly use "they/them" for the trans student in question, except when it comes directly before/after a quote or sentence that would make it too awkward?

[kirkscarr]

ok so i just finished my book cover for First, Best Destiny - Part 1 by the amazing @ophelia-j !!

admittedly i was going to wait until i actually attached the text block to the cover before i posted this haha, but i was SO excited after making this cover that i decided to just post it and then update with the finished product later!!

this book is absolutely embedded in my soul, and words cannot even describe how gorgeously it’s written. it’s a book that made me realize - hey, the adventure doesn’t end as you grow old.

you can read it here. i promise you won’t regret it!!!

anyways!!! here’s all of my other bookbinding steps for anyone interested.

cam’s somewhat incomplete bookbinding guide

please note that i am an AMATEUR hobbyist. please do not actually use this as a tutorial.

oh also!! bookbinding terminology will have a * by it which will be explained at the end in order to make this flow better. i’ll also link the tutorials i used at the end of this for anyone interested.

1) Formatting the document! I downloaded the original text as a PDF, and then designed a cover page, grabbed some art from the internet (i know, frowned upon, but this is just a personal copy so it is what it is), and then designed a table of contents and chapter icons!!

*side note! i added which episodes each chapter follows to the table of contents (pictured below) as this book was written as an accompaniment to TOS and the movies.

2) Next, I printed out all NINE HUNDRED PAGES??? admittedly i could have done it in less if I’d used a bigger page size, but sending things out to be printed is expensive so we made do. after printing, i folded them into signatures*.

*there’s an additional note about the paper i used at the end

3) punching out holes in all the signatures! although not technically necessary, I honestly don’t think i would’ve been able to sew this behemoth without doing it.

4) sewing the pages into a real!! actual!! book!! this was the part i was most nervous about. i’ve NEVER attempted to sew anywhere near this large of a book before, so i tried out a new method of sewing in hopes of making it a bit more sturdy. we won’t know if it worked until this book endures some wear and tear, but i’m pretty optimistic!

5) next up is glueing the spine! this is where it really hit me that a lot of bookbinding is just…glueing shit together. later i also added cardstock to the spine in hopes of helping it adhere to the cover better, and a book headband* for decoration.

5) now we’re onto the book cover!! they only sell bookboard in minor bulk around here, so we’re not even gonna discuss how much bookboard i now own… anyways! i glued the faux leather onto the bookboard and then let that dry.

6) last up! off to the cricket! a huge thank you to my friend for letting me borrow her cricket AND supplies! anywho, this is where i designed my cover art. i then adhered the design to the cover. after this step, i realized i…definitely need some kind of sealant - so, if any more seasoned bookbinders have suggestions for this i am all ears!!

all in all, this was a super fun project, and a great way to kill some time while i recover from surgery! i absolutely plan to bind the sequel at some point, but that may be a…ways away. i’m a STEM major and school starts back up soon so…time will be in short supply lol!

To be continued...

Terminology

*signature: group of sheets folded in half, to be worked into the binding as a unit.

*book headband: just look up a picture if you’re curious because tumblr says i can't add any more pictures lol.

*about the paper!! i actually got it from a local specialty paper store, but if you want something similar i've heard amazon has some good bookbinding alternatives!

Tutorials

please PLEASE go check out Jess Less on youtube. she's phenomenal. here are her vids and what i used them for.

don't laugh!! i actually stole MOST of my techniques straight from this video.

i used this one to help me format the book correctly! although i still ended up with some goofs haha (see: any pages on the left side have the page number in the margin LMAO).

[menlove]

now i'm curious .. why do you think john was gay?

disclaimer: this is not bi erasure & if anyone tries to start discourse w me about that i do not careeeee sorry. i care deeply abt bi erasure but he never labeled his own sexuality & as a figure of the past it's more than fair to speculate that when he talked abt his attraction to women it was from the pov of a gay man dealing w comphet. if he were alive today and saying he was bisexual i'd leave it alone but he's not so i'm not. sexuality can absolutely be fluid! and he very well may have been bisexual! this is just my personal theory & interpretation of things he's said through the lens of viewing him as a gay man. MOVING ON.

i need you to imagine all of this to the benny hill theme. let's go

with the beatles by alistair taylor pg. 98 (at least in the pdf copy i have- there's no actual page numbers so it might not match up exactly if you have the print copy)

and from the same book like a paragraph down- this one is not AS crazy bc there's a million explanations but also not being able to get it up for the one woman you've fantasized about forever...... oh brother

in a description of an auctioned off audio tape:

this :|

this from JOOOOAN BAEZ. JOAN BAEZ.

(source)

"It’s a plus, it’s not a minus. The plus is that your best friend, also, can hold you without… I mean, I’m not a homosexual, or we could have had a homosexual relationship and maybe that would have satisfied it, with working with other male artists."

this infamous quote (source from the wonderful @amoralto who is a great resource for beatles archiving)

"He was completely open and uninhibited with her, as she learned to be with him, owning up to his deepest sexual fantasies—like one of making love to a woman in her eighties, or even older, whose veined and wrinkled hands would be covered in diamonds. Over time, she became accustomed to his particular style of backhanded compliment. 'Do you know why I like you?' he remarked on one occasion. 'It’s because you look like a bloke in drag. You’re like a mate.' Yoko laughingly replied that she thought he must be 'a closet fag.'"

john lennon: the life by philip norman (take him w a grain of salt. also the doc i have for this one is html so i truly would have 0 clue on what page number this would be) BUT this is also corroborated by a yoko quote herself in a 1981 new york magazine interview

no, no, no by yoko ono which. what do i even need to say.

"I remember it, vaguely. I was out of me mind with drink – when you get down to the point where you drink all the empty glasses, that drunk. And he was saying, 'Well, come on, John, tell us,' something like that, 'Tell me about you and Brian, we all know,' like that. And obviously, I must have been un– uh, f– frightened of the fag in me to get so angry at that. You know, when you’re twenty-one, you want to be a man, and all that. And for the first time I thought, 'I could kill this guy.' I just saw it, like on a screen, that if I hit him once more, I – that’s gonna be it."

this other infamous quote uploaded in an audio by @amoralto (source)

"John believed in my work as an artist wasn’t accepted in part because I am a woman. He got angry when people said about me, 'She’s not a woman, she’s a female impersonator.' John said to me, 'If I had been gay and gotten together with a guy who was talented like you, after ten years that guy would have become famous as an artist in his own right. Maybe we should come out and say, 'Actually, Yoko is a guy.' Maybe that will do it!' That made him laugh a lot. John learned about women’s oppression from me, but I learned a lot about men’s vulnerability from him. He expressed his vulnerability, unlike a lot of other men. I learned that it’s not just men oppressing women. Men also suffer, they feel fear and guilt. For example, I thought the fact that men buy prostitutes was terrible. It filled me with indignation. But John explained it differently. 'It’s humiliating for a guy to buy a whore,' he told me. 'It’s proof that he’s rejected, he’s just so desperate.' I had never thought of that: for me who go to prostitutes, sex is connected to being rejected and humiliated. I always hated people who committed sex crimes, but through John I tuned in to their pain. John told me that it was unfortunate for the poor guy whose sexual preference was a crime and something to be feared. John’s perspective was, 'I’m lucky I’m normal.'"

yoko interview with jon wiener in come together: john lennon in his time. just..... whatever the hell is going on here.

interview w lisa robinson in hit parader "a conversation with john lennon" 1975

"With his four months’ greater experience, Sheridan was an ideal guide to the Reeperbahn’s more exotic diversions, like the Schwülen laden. Stu Sutcliffe later wrote home in amazement that the transvestites were 'all harmless and very young' and it was actually possible to speak to one 'without shuddering.' Though raised amid the same homophobia as his companions, John seemed totally unshocked by St. Pauli’s abundant drag scene; indeed, he often seemed actively to seek it out. 'There was one particular club he used to like,' Tony Sheridan remembers, 'full of these big guys with hairy hands, deep voices—and breasts. But they used to make an effort to talk English. There was something about the place that seemed to make John feel at home.'"

another from john lennon: the life so take it w a grain of salt

so many excerpts from skywriting by word of mouth

and more!

and thats all i'm hunting down for now but he also like Continuously went on and on and and on and ON about how his relationship w yoko worked bc she was so much like a man/mate/what have you

[sunflowerandstrawberryspice]

CARMEN SANDIEGO? In 2024? It's more likely thank you think! Please excuse the shit quality for some reason I wasn't allowed to upload the normal pdf and I had to upload a fucking screenshot???

So my friend convinced me to watch Carmen Sandiego and since he's watching ALL of Ninjago for me I thought it was the least I could do to watch four season of a show with a pretty decent concept but uh... yeesh, don't get me wrong the show is really fun but lord have mercy does it have problems especially the last two seasons which were just so wildly disappointing to me. It went from a show with an interesting look on morals to pure pro-cop and mostly black and white thinking so quick (that not mentioning the breaking up a found family full of people with abandonment issues) it was honestly just so disappointing so me and the friend who introduced it to me decided to rewrite it! (I will not be animating nor do I plan on doing more than MAYBE a comic or art piece here and there because my chronic pain ridden ass can not handle that much lol)

The main goals are to:

1) Flesh out characters that aren't Carmen and actually give them reactions based on their lived experiences and how they might realistically react instead of what the show needed to move the plot along

2) Having characters other than Carmen be actually relevant to the plot the main one being Chase Devineaux who we're gonna kind of have as a parallel to Carmen (trust me yall) as kind of a "What if Carmen didn't have her friends/family to ground her and fall back on" but for all the Chase fans out there (gods I hope there's some other than me) he will be getting a happy ending but bro is getting put through the RINGER first

3) Have both A.C.M.E (now standing for Administration for Containing and Monitoring Evil) and V.I.L.E be the bad guys. Also just as an extra bit of fun we're making VILE a full blown cult, they were very cult like in the show so we're just gonna make it one. Both are going to be very morally questionable and while it'll take a bit longer for ACME to show it's true colors don't you worry they definitely will ;)

4) We're doing canonical lgbtq+ rep, I know the show teased a lot of relationships and really only gave yall background gays not to say thats bad but we can do better than just a brief shot of a damn taco truck. I mean like come on in a story about a young woman going against the government for the greater good why not put some rep into it ya know!

5) We're making it light sci-fi, not like SUPER high tech but definitely beyond what we've got currently, as shown with Carmen's prosthetic, and don't worry I'm doing my research as a disabled person I know how it feels to be misrepresented or ignored so I want to make sure I'm being realistic

6) PLAYER ISN'T GOING TO BE A CHILD! I don't know if this bothered anybody else but to me it was really weird that this 16 year old's only friends were in their 20s!

Alright I think that's what I'm gonna say for now, I'd love it if yall tuned in for updates if your curious since this is a passion project for me and my friend and we're having a blast writing it!

As always I am still working on stuff for Ninjago cause I could never abandon my one true love, currently there's a Pixal drawing in progress (it's giving me hell T-T) something for Cole and Geo, and something of Sora MAYBE even Euphrasia if I'm feeling up to it.

Having said that I hope yall have a great day/night and PEACE OUT!

[dyed-indigo]

How many wives did Luo Bingge have?

I see quite a lot of debate over this within the fandom, and this excerpt has been passed around quite a bit:

But I felt like I remembered Bingge being mentioned as having more wives within the text, so I decided to skim the books (CTRL + F on the Internet Archive PDFs worked wonders) to find as many references to Bingge's wife count as I could.

I was right that he was mentioned as having more wives (hundreds to be exact), on the back of the very first book in the series even. However, the backs of books are the domain of the publisher rather than the author, so this isn't really trustworthy info to go off of for canon purposes. Still, it made me curious to see if more wives were mentioned somewhere else within the series.

He is mentioned as theoretically marrying at least 100 women at once here, however this was purely speculation on what would have happened in Proud Immortal Demon Way if Luo Binghe truly aspired for marriage. He did marry many women in PIDW, however it's never made clear whether these marriages were out of love or were political (and for horny reasons, the stallion protagonist can never escape his libido).

613 is also mentioned as a number of wives, and seems oddly specific unless there's some Chinese number symbolism I'm missing here, however this is just an example of something that Madame Meiyin could predict with her fortune telling abilities. Her fortunes are mentioned to typically be about romance, so this could be Shen Qingqiu remembering an actual prediction she made in canon, however even if that were the case (which there doesn't seem to be evidence to support) it could simply be that Luo Binghe never got those wives within the novel, and was just implied to get them afterwards (cue Peerless Cucumber rant about Airplane's lazy writing).

There's mentioned to be dozens of women "barely glimpsed" within the harem, presumably in addition to wives like Ning Yingying and Liu Mingyan who were more significant, but that still doesn't give us an exact count. If the initial harem count is accurate, it does imply that most of the women within it were just written to fluff the numbers a bit.

Bingge is mentioned to have "never refused" any requests to join his harem. RIP Bingge's understanding of boundaries, but, again, we have no clue how many women even asked to join. Demon Emperors are powerful, but also scary, and Shen Qingqiu is... perhaps an unreliable narrator when it comes to any version of Luo Binghe's appeal factor.

Bingge is mentioned multiple times to have had sex with hundreds of women, however, not all of the bedded were wedded. Madame Meiyin, for example, is mentioned as someone that Bingge slept with but never married, and there's no evidence that i could find that she was the sole exception in a sea of wives.

In conclusion, while manwhore Bingge is real, his count of actual wives is more than likely less than 100, as originally specified. (Though I wouldn't blame you if you thought otherwise, the emphasis on the harem size being "innumerable" and "uncountable" in the narration is quite a lot, and historically many Chinese emperors had a larger harem than Bingge.)

At least, he had less than 100 wives in the novel. In the donghua, on the other hand...

Well. That's a fairly definite amount.

[elsa-fogen]

I love your art so much! I also really like your take on the RadioRose dynamic. Especially the "I want to try NOPE NEVERMIND" because its so relatable! Sometimes, you get curious, and then you remember the Horrors/Disgust.

Makes me wonder a bit about how Rosie "tried to rizz the unrizzable for 40 years" reacted intially to Vox also trying to do just that (just being much more pathetic and obsessive about it). Did she try to tell him he's chasing something nonexistent? If she was antagonistic to Mimzy at first, I can't imagine Vox getting more than 1 warning if that much lmao

Finally, a question - do you allow fics to be based off of your work if you are credited? And do you have an AO3 one could gift such works to?

Thank you so much 💖💖 About relatable - yeah i guess. Thanks to Alastor i'm more sure that I'm ace (and maybe aro as well) ahaha

At first Vox and Alastir were Just Friends, maybe first few years, but then Vox got crush on Al and Alastor suddenly started to feel uncomfortable around him. Rosie noticed that and understood what was happening to Vox (maybe even earlier that him vfdkjfjhdhhkfg) and told him that she and Alastor are married, just to protect Alastor from Vox's unwanted attention (and she still kinda hoped to rizz Alastor and make this lie a reality)

But in the end (when Vox discovered that it was a lie) she let Alastor to deal with Vox himself (i'm sure if Rosie handled that, they wouldn't hate each other now at least)

As for the question, i totally don't mind!! And i'd be really glad to read them!!! But you need to know, if you want me to read it, you need to give it to me anywhere else but AO3 because the damn site doesn't work in my country and using vpn is pain in the ass (it breaks other sites that work fine and makes my internet really slow). You can give me as pdf or in google docs, that's more convenient options i think.

I think i got an account there long time ago?? I'm not sure if it was AO3 tho. but it was inactive all this time anyway. If they don't delete inctive accounts, you can search for different variations of "Elsa Fogen" (like ElsaFogen or Elsa_Fogen) and if there an empty account that hasn't been active in past 6-8 years - that's probably mine djhfhfjdhhdf

(there's also a new site for fanfiction and it works for me but i'm not gonna make you make an account there just for me)

[ranticore]

happy anniversary STBH!! i bought both books while on a week break and read them both in two days voraciously despite my phone failing to decipher the epub files (squinting at a 200x zoomed pdf is a painful way to read but it was so worth it). i am periodically rotating the characters round my mind like the hypothetical apple number 1. Cain especially has been placed in my little mental cabinet of curiosity that i drop by during quiet hours to think about. love that man. number one cain fan. chewing him like an interesting stick. i love every other character as well though theyre all so fascinating and v human

anyway all this ramble to say i love your works and im patiently waiting for the moth release. ur prose is so lovely and i love love love the way you interpret folklore and mythology and your art

question for the stbh gang: what actually are their daemons? i know felix has estibarith the swan but im so curious as to the rest...

omg noo i'm so sorry the epub didn't work! i know you already suffered through it but for anyone else with this issue, i have a recommendation for google books app (if using android) but even if that doesn't work, you can always contact me and we can make something more readable (like a pdf with big font or something) that fits

i'm so happy that cain resonates with people, that old man is a favourite of mine even if i did forget to change his name from the original placeholder (whoops). he's a lil fucked up now but his story is far from over

as for tha daemons..

Islin: i narrowed it down to two potentials?? That i kind of bounce between. I tend to lean more towards a polled bull than anything else - a same-sex daemon which would be the only one in the cast i think, which i tried to parallel in pern story with him being the only one who doesn't match the canon rules for rider sexuality & dragon colour. but regardless the daemon is called Tarannach and the overall symbolism is a massive powerful dominant animal who is nonetheless "de-fanged" in some way (polled cattle naturally lack horns!) and appears more peaceful as a result. Tarannach is wilful and domineering, disagrees with Islin frequently (before Islin has his spine-growing moments), and unapologetically takes up space. would also be a massive inconvenience in day to day life but that's kind of the point. Before settling as a bull, Tarannach went through phases of wanting to be smaller and smaller.

Bowman has a dog daemon. It just has to be that way, there's no getting around it. I joked around that she would be a poodle but actually I would lean more towards a collie instead, a herding type. Something that looks rough and ready but is actually surprisingly high maintenance. Her name is Nell/Nellie. Her personality is irreverent, never takes anything seriously. She turns into a feral animal during the full moon.

We know Estibariz is a swan but some more about her - she wanted to be a lioness, something big and fierce, and Félix insisted that she would probably end up a serpent or a fox, something with connotations of being a sneaky liar, and he felt that when she did settle, it would be an externalisation of some inner ugliness he never wanted anyone else to see. when she did settle she enjoyed a big I Told You So. When he was taken by Puck and spat out again, she returned as a form-shifting daemon again, and had gained the ability to separate from him and travel long distances. She never shapeshifted willingly though. The first person to touch Estibariz aside from Félix was Bowman. The second person was Helena.

Clarion is the only one whose daemon was actually, for real, a horse. His name was Drey and he was a dapple grey draft breed.

Senca is obviously a witch so also had a daemon who could travel far from her. He was a bird, I thought maybe a nightjar or collared dove. Never got that far in the au so didn't pick a name. We'll just call him Namiliyath

Léa's was a thorny devil

Jean's is a ferret and her name is Missy. It looks like it could potentially be an ermine, a symbol of nobility, but no. It's a common hunting animal, white with black eyes.

Erica's is a magpie

Pascal does not have a daemon. There's something there that looks very swanlike, but it speaks with his voice. In a human au, it's a golden eagle.

I don't think I made anything for other characters, again I never got that far writing it

[zoe-oneesama]

Hi Zoe, I saw a few asks before about a physical edition of Scarlet Lady, I'm curious how you are planning to go about it? For now I saw you talk about volume one, are you planning to make one season = one volume? Will there be any changes to the current comics? (Like color, bonuses etc.) thank you in advance!

Yes, the plan is 1 Volume = 1 Season, with Volume 5 having the finale episodes, so, extra thiccccc.

I have edited the pages to fix spelling errors and made a few changes so subtle that I can't even remember them, as well as trying to make old pages more legible. And there are bonus images and commentary to fill in the blank spots left by page bonuses.

^Here's an example bonus pictures I made for "The Pharaoh". It's the picture Alix joked about sharing with the class of Marinette dressed as Scarlet Lady, and Plagg dressed as the Black Cat statues that the group walks past at the end of the episode.

Because mixam (the ones who'll be making these books) needs pages divisible by 4, I do have some full color pages for the Volumes that happened to not fit that number nicely (so far it's just Volume 2), so look forward to that. I think I'll share those pages later this week.

Additionally, the chapters got new "headers" since they're in a new format:

^Ivan finally got his moment!

So, it's not as easy as just throwing it into a PDF and giving it out like that. I want this to be a special gift for anyone who's willing to put down money for my content - they deserve something extra for their interest, which is also why I'm not trying to spoil everything.

As for the status of everything: - Volume 1: Final Walk-through. I've gone through one draft and added a few things to match changes I made to other volumes, so after I complete a few commissions I'll be ordering in another (hopefully final!) draft. One book costs me about $60 to order, but that's because I'm not ordering in bulk. But it does mean I take plenty of time between ordering draft. - Volume 2: 2nd Draft. Volume 1 had very few errors in its first draft but Volume 2 had quite a lot, starting with the cover being so dark it was basically a black blob with green eyes (the covers are the different heroes). So I've been editing saturation on the cover and need to print just the cover locally to find the right balance. Additionally, there were a handful that accidentally got cut off, so I needed to fix those. The cover is really the biggest thing holding things up. - Volume 3: Ready for it's 1st Draft. Again, these are expensive, and after the debacle with Volume 2 I want to test print Volume 3's cover to make sure it doesn't have the same problem since it also has a lot of black. - Volume 4: Only the pages have been edited. That means I need to do chapter covers, extras, chibis, and page fillers, as well as the cover. - Volume 5: Same as Volume 4, as well as not being done with the season.

Additionally, I'm not out here trying to get sued, so I need an original product to sell with the book being a "freebie". I don't do a lot of original content, so any suggestions would be appreciated. A print? Charm? Bookmark? Stickers?...pencil?

Then there's obviously the store to use, launching a page, creating marketing materials~ All super fun -_-

[fconvicted]

you NEED to tell me more about your au

(you don’t have to but i’m curious)

yeah! i'd love to share (im assuming this is about Airlock AU but you can always message me back if its in regard to a different au)- im hoping in january time i'll have more formal pieces to show case and a proper summary of what's going on.

i wanna start off by saying that the illustrations ive been posting are really just luring everyone into a false sense of security 'cause the actual plot of "Airlock" is kindda wild. before continuing, id HIGHLY suggest reading my "Eye of the Storm" PDF (at least the "Story So Far" pages), Airlock is in continuation of that specific arc.

ANYWAYS

what is Airlock?

it's approximately 5-6 years after the events of canon Overwatch 2. two major things have happened in Siebren's life at this point:

Siebren was put on trial for his association with Talon but got acquitted. The UN still didn't trust Siebren to walk as a free man with the powers he possessed. They offered him the options of being monitored by Overwatch when using his powers or don't use his powers at all. He agreed to no longer use his powers (to an extent)

Oscar de Kuiper was born; he was the genetically augmented child of Siebren and Kaori, hosting the same abilities as his father. For many reasons, including his birth, Siebren and Kaori decided to live in a small town close to Numbani that shared very similar ideology as the city.

With restricted abilities and a family to look after, Siebren did his best to continue living quietly. He purchased an observatory that was damaged back during the Omnic Crisis. He hired a brilliant young engineer by the name of Obiora to tend to the telescope and help up keep the observatory.

The political climate of the world at this time was very strained. Ramattra and his forces have been defeated, but it seemed like God AI's were stirring. There's no direct evidence of them completely waking up, but one thing was for certain: the Earth was running out of its natural resources at a fast rate. Pollution was rising high and the climate was fluctuating badly. People were speculating Omniums were being created in isolated areas, whether it was underground or under seas. Because of these lacking resources, Omnics and those with cybernetic augmentations were finding it both harder and more expensive to get their hands on new parts or resources to fix their bodies. Humans were often prioritized for repairs and Omnics were more or less ignored.

That was until Siebren discovered that Obiora had been working on a concept for a machine that would mine asteroids.

And so "Airlock" begins.

There was a little more to it: staff was hired and a decommissioned Omium restored to operate as their Earth base. Illari and Sloan were the first to be hired to fly out into the asteroid belt with Siebren, "corral" an asteroid, break it down into shipable pieces and begin the process of making the "Asteroid Farming Machine".

But what about Juno?

Overwatch had been kind enough to send supplies that would sustain the people on Mars. It was easier to ship things one way. Some plans were set up to get the Red Promise team back but it was a long process. It's through Efi that Juno found out a team was planning to set course for the asteroid belt. If they had a ship intended to go back and forth, then surely her family could hitch a ride back to Earth!

And so the Orbital Team was made! Siebren as the leader, Illari second in command, Sloan as lead mining expert and Juno as medic!

But little did the team know, someone else had a very similar plan set in the asteroid belt a little over 25 years ago.

Or more...

Something else.

[centrally-unplanned]

River's Edge & The Flat Battle? Field: Deep Diving a Single Word

So the 1993 manga River's Edge, by Kyoko Okazaki, was finally officially released in English last week. It's a problematic fave of mine, and (as I discussed in my review of it many moons ago), the peak of its edgy angst is this poem, standing alone on a field of black, near the end of the book:

"The flat battlefield" is a phrase that has really stuck with me since I read it, and anything that has that level of sticking power is a meaningful piece of art. My opinion of the manga has grown over time.

So when I got to this section in the official translation and I saw:

I was a bit bummed, "flat field" really just lacks the impact "battlefield" ha-

-wait what?

Reprinted by Permission of SSL/Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. Copyright by William Gibson, originally published in "Robert Longo"

Okazaki didn't write this, William Gibson did?? The American cyberpunk fiction author? He...writes poetry? Turns out by the way this attribution is in the original manga, it just didn't survive the scanlation process.

I was curious about both how and when this translation shift occurred (if it ever did), and the origin of this poem - which was really hard to find! "Robert Longo" is not a book, he's a person - an American artist and filmmaker who directed the 1995 movie Johnny Mnemonic, which William Gibson wrote the screenplay for (and wrote the short story it is an adaptation of). When you search books by the two of them nothing really turns up - at least on the western side of things. In America they never really did publish a book. But in Japan they published a few actually - some too late for 1993's River's Edge, but in 1991: 

Publisher Kyoto Shion's Art RANDOM series, vol. 71, featuring the collected art of Robert Longo, edited by Kyoichi Tsuzuki...and featuring inset poetry by William Gibson. Funnily enough one of the listings (Fukkan) actually notes:

現代美術コレクターだけでなく、ウィリアム・ギブスンのファン、岡崎京子のファン共々気になる作品集だと思います。 This is a work that will be of interest not only to contemporary art collectors, but also to fans of William Gibson and Kyoko Okazaki.

The poem from this book - which is called "The Beloved: Voices for Three Heads" - is way more famous as a reference by Okazaki than as a work by Gibson. Which turned out to be a problem when I wanted to dig deeper and find the actual poem and its context; when you google it you get...almost entirely Japanese results discussing River's Edge! Which means I couldn’t actually find the poem, just Japanese translations of it. And I am pretty sure the poem was not originally in Japanese - the bookseller listings note that the book is bilingual in both Japanese & English, the Gibson poems would be the obvious English candidates. 

However, buried beneath piles of mid-2000’s Japanese Okazaki fandom blog posts, I found the work of academic Gary Westfahl. He wrote a deep dive book in 2013 on the works of William Gibson, and in the abstract header for Chapter Five:

It also considers Gibson's poems such as “The Beloved: Voices for Three Heads,” his ventures into writing song lyrics, and the approach he used in some of his later nonfiction works

Ba-bam - and with a quick trip to LibGen pulling up a pdf version of the book, here we go: 

Gibson's first literary publications, in 1963, were poems, and he obviously remained interested in the form, since in the 1980s and 1990s, when artists approached him about collaborative projects, he usually provided poetry. To date, Gibson has published three poems, not counting fanzine efforts, along with two other poems available only as excerpts.  Asked to contribute to Robert Longo's 1989 performance piece Dream Jumbo, Gibson wrote a poem, "The Beloved: Voices for Three Heads," later included in a book, Robert Longo: Art Random, largely devoted to documenting that show

Gary fucking Westfahl, coming through in the clutch!! I was curious why this combination art book/poetry existed, but now it makes sense; the poem and the art were already a packaged deal as part of a performance art exhibit. And this also explains why the poem was so hard to find - as of 2013 Gibson only ever published 3 poems in his career! I am curious how this play got over to Japan - Dream Jumbo premiered in LA in 1989, but additionally in 1989 Longo had a titular "Robert Longo" art exhibit at the Seibu Contemporary Art Gallery in Tokyo, which had its own art book published - its fair to say he was "big in Japan" and so the success of Dream Jumbo made its way over. He would actually run a sort of gallery-version of the performance in Tokyo in 1995, for which he gave an interview that taught me that the name "dream jumbo" is pulled from the name of a popular Japanese lottery; perhaps it was always destined for Japan and also Robert Longo is a bit of a weeb.

ANYWAY the actual text of the poem: 

Our love knew The flat field

Yeah, it was originally ‘field’. Westfahl also confirms that this poem was only ever published in print in Japan, making it virtually unknown outside of it. Which, and this is kind of cool, means that the publishing of the translation of the Japanese manga River's Edge is the first time Gibson's "The Beloved: Voices for Three Heads" has ever been published in the West. 

Knowing that the original is ‘field’, I checked the original Japanese page for River's Edge and:

戦場 - Battlefield

The first kanji is literally 'war', this is not ambiguous, there is no other read here. River's Edge changed the word from "field" to "battlefield" - assuming that the original art book did not have its own Japanese translation of the poem. On reflection, it probably did; it's not like Okazaki herself is a translator, and in the manga the poem’s translation is credited to translator Hisashi Kuromaru, who had previously translated Gibson’s novel Neuromancer. However, it’s not like I have a copy to check, so I can’t say for sure.

…or so I thought! But when looking around for Kuromaru’s translation credits, I stumbled on the most precious resource one can find; a blog post from an Okazaki-otaku a decade+ after the fact who was obsessed with the poem and hunted down a copy of the original Art RANDOM artbook to see it for themselves. In their post they give a line by line comparison of the poem and its translation…credited to Kuromaru, confirming that this book is where the translation comes from. And lo and behold:

Kuromaru is the source of our creative twist. Chad of chads, “Tach” from 2005.

What is funny is that this is not like a tiny little quirk I am interested in - I mean, okay, it's mainly that. But "the battlefield" is actually a small part of Okazaki's brand as an artist. Here is a sketch she sold titled "Girl's Life on the Battlefield" (It uses the same kanji)

Here is a link to an exhibit of her work in Japan that was titled:

(Her art is incredibly on point btw).

Here is an entire book by art critic Noi Sawagari investigating How we survive on a flat battlefield - Kyoko Okazaki's theory! The one Amazon review says its content is "thin” and it was “tiring to read”, 2 stars, ouch.

But you get what I'm saying- Okazaki leaned into this phrase. I'm actually a little let down, when I read River’s Edge and was so taken with this specific moment I thought it was a ‘me’ thing; turns out the entire country of Japan was equally smitten and it became the tagline for the manga. Real loss of hipster points for me on this one! Still, I really think “battlefield” is way more impactful - this elevation of the phrase would not have happened if it was just ‘field’, I feel confident on that. And I am not calling the translation ‘wrong’, or anything. It is just one of those tiny contingencies, this liberal translation and odd series of events, art crossing from LA to Japan, led to a brand for an up-and-coming josei manga author that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. And in fact, I am willing to say that the translation just published by Kodansha of River’s Edge is… not right. It doesn’t matter what Gibson wrote - this is Okazaki’s poem now. She wrote a manga about the battlefield, all of her fans agree, and a truly faithful translation would build on that.

So I’m sticking with “battlefield” and y’all should too.

[madsmilfelsen]

Hello! I'm really curious, what books/authors would you recommend to someone who's new to writing horror?

Hi! Here is what I have on hand (minus my loaned out copies of my favorite book ever Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones and Never Whistle At Night: an indigenous anthology of dark fiction which made me cry on an airplane and made the person next to me very uncomfortable, like she was just trying to build a cart at banana republic, apologies to seat 17B)

God’s Cruel Joke Lit Mag because I’m in them and will be in issue 4, too :) published either mid-January or February 2024– @labyrinthphanlivingafacade is in issue 3 with a great short story that I won’t spoil ***right now the magazines are available to purchase in physical copies but I was told all issues will be free to download as pdfs pretty soon!

Severance by Ling Ma (body horror but not in the way you think, the real horror is repetition and loneliness)

Wilder Girls by Rory Power (body horror)

The Female of the Species by Mindy McGinnis (adjacent the horror genre but a hell of a read)

ANYTHING BY STEPHAN GRAHAM JONES ANYTHING

We Have Always Lived in a Castle by Shirely Jackson (I read this for the first time last spring boy howdy, I also included The Lottery for its suspense)

Dean Koontz because my husband suggested it for the list— this was just the first title I grabbed, I think he said Patrician Crowell too but I was busy looking for Mongrels

A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans (I didn’t finish this because depression set in shortly after I started but the first chapter plays with second pov which I really liked, I’m determined to read it this year)

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (I really enjoyed HBO’s adaptation)

The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey (likely the only zombie stories that made me weep uncontrollably)

Girls & Sex by Peggy Orenstein (non-fiction: explores modern young women navigating sexuality and because I have a thing for loss of autonomy— it’s been a few years since I read it but there is discussion of sexual assault, but I appreciate the expanse of her research and even included a conversation with someone who is asexual)

Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James (got a chill just typing this out— the audio book is exquisite)

You’ll notice some nonfiction because, as a historian undergrad, nothing scares me more than man. The battles of Leningrad and Stalingrad are particularly stomach churning. America’s Reconstruction Era is full of acted out malice and under taught in my opinion.

An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The 900 Days, The Siege of Leningrad by Harrison E. Salisbury

Enemy at the Gates by William Craig

(On the other side of WW2 I have a book of the experiences of German solider’s left over from a paper I wrote on the inadequacy of Nazi uniforms and how it expedited their failure in Russia, Frontsoldaten by Stephen G. Fritz)

Stony the Road by Henry Louis Gates, Jr (one of my favorite authors, try finding “How Reconstruction Still Shapes American Racism” Time Magazine, April 2, 2019, I used it as a source for a paper on the history of voting rights)

Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers— folk tales of Canadians, Lumberjacks & Indians by Richard M. Dorson (published around 1952 but content collected from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the 40’s)

Raven Tells Stories: An Anthology of Alaskan Native Writing (I’m Alutiiq and the museum on Kodiak has a lot of stories recorded under Alutiiq Museum Podcast— my kids and I listen on Spotify)

I think the genre of horror is really mastering tension and playing on peoples fears which is why I included old school folk stories (An Underground Education had a great write up on the Grimm Brothers and the original fairy tales from around the world such as the Chinese and Egyptian Cinderella, as well as several different sections of funny tales, torture techniques, absolute weirdos etc etc) in this vein of thought The Uses of Enchanment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Bruno Bettelheim could prove to be useful

If you’re writing a character with Bad Parents— Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and Toxic Parents (it has a longer subtitle but I don’t see my copy anywhere) might be able to help you shape character traits

I reached out to @littleredwritingcat who has a mind plentiful in sources who recommended

The Gathering Dark: an anthology of folk horror (I will be picking this one up asap)

Toll by Cherie Priest (southern gothic)

Anything by Jennifer MacMahon

The Elementals by Michael McDowell

[that-butch-archivist]

Hey there! Are you in school for this topic? I am so I was just wondering if you were too? Love your work and I deeply care about saving and discussing lesbian history specifically butch-fem as a butch as well.💛

Hey, I know we've connected elsewhere but I just wanted to (finally) answer your lovely ask. I am sadly not in school for this subject but man that'd be so cool if I was--super glad you are!! I didn't even realize schools out there had this as an option for study, that's amazing!

I got into looking for books like this after I accidentally picked up my first LGBTQ+ anthology at a used book sale (Lavender Culture, edited by Karla Jay), and it was so wonderful and enriching to read that it sent me on a quest for more. I got curious! Tumblr blogs that post pictures and excerpts from LGBTQ+ literature were a great reference for me, they helped me find more books & gave me access to PDFs of others I couldn't find. So I guess I've come full circle, lol! I just want to give back. (And find the very-hard-to-find.)

Thank you for your kind ask, it's a pleasure to meet another nerdy butch. :)

[queerdailywire-rpfwriter]

Basically, just a request from Tumblr I've got from anon - To rewrite Ben Shapiro's book he tried to scrub off from Amazon. Three short stories that I'll write in three chapters when I can. It would be ideal to post first his story, then my version, but I don't think it can pass as a fair use. So, if you have serious internet brainrott like I do, and are a curious masochist, google it and read it yourself in pdf, then come back to read my story. At least my interpretation of what I strived to achieve with it.

Notes:

This is what RationalWili.Org says about it: What's Fair: And Other Short Stories - What's Fair: And Other Short Stories is a series of three short stories by Ben Shapiro and, to be fair, it is poor. It was an Amazon Kindle only publication of 37 pages, released in 2015.[1] It seems to have been withdrawn from Amazon, perhaps because Shapiro couldn't stomach the onslaught of bad reviews.[2] One would think that getting a BA degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a JD degree from Harvard University would give someone the ability to write well, or at least the judgment to not write bad fiction, but this is not the case. What's Fair is made up of three short stories, and although they are all bad in different ways, all their issues come down to one very basic flaw: Shapiro is not good at writing fiction. This is not because he is a conservative — Orson Scott Card has views "that verge on neo-conservative", as one Salon writer put it,[3] but his writing is nowhere near as bad as Shapiro's. Even the fact that Shapiro is openly conservative, and writes specifically conservative stories does not make the stories bad on their own. What makes this bad is that Shapiro, among things, lacks any form of subtlety or an ability to create a compelling narrative. (source: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/What%27s_Fair:_And_Other_Short_Stories )

[donnyclaws]

hi there ! i’m getting into making zines and have mostly done short ones (aka the 8-page mini zine), but i wanna learn to make longer ones. i was curious if you had any recommendations for programs to use ? hopefully something user-ish friendly for digital collaging, but really any recommendations help ! ty 🥰

I'm gonna be real my zine process is super unwell and hinged LMAO. I do everything in clip studio paint, including the text which I would not recommend but I am dedicated to it at this point. I also have zero regard for page count because I've been making these as pdfs vs physical prints. Which has made printing my zines so far a NIGHTMAREEEEE. Collages I just feel out, clips about as good for it as any other program is ect.

There's this little zine maker on itch.io, I haven't played with it too much but it's really cute and cool so it's worth checking out

https://alienmelon.itch.io/electric-zine-maker

I literally got so confused with how I've been laying out print documents that I sat down and made multiple mock up books in multiple formats and page counts yesterday just so I can understand it like. Spatially. Idk double side printing kicks me in the developmental delay sore spot. I'm gonna be doing my first table for zine selling soon so I'm trying to pull it together.

Anyway tangenting.

Here's a tumblr post that has a breakdown of some stuff too

I don't think I'm much help on this front but the good thing about zines is there's not really a wrong way to do it. It's very much part of the vibe to just kinda slap them together with what you've got with very little formality or technicality.

[java-dragon]

Bookbinding for Beginners by a Beginner part 4- Quarto Edition

SO QUARTOS! I've mentioned them a few times between 1 - 3 posts. So let me just jump into Quarto before I get into "Now I have this neat-o type faced document that I have split off... so what do I do now o' gremlin writing these posts???

I believe in being a tease sometimes, plus if I don't do it now while I'm remembering shit I won't do it.

ONWARD!

SO What is a quarto?

Well a Folio is 4 pages per one sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper.

A Quarto is 8 pages per one sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper.

And these things will BREAK you if you don't pay attention. Tiny, mighty and o-so-sweet looking.

Behold a text block I have finished up with end pages tacked on but this is 8.5 x 5x5 on the bottom... on the top? THAT is a quarto... about 5.5 x 4.5

SO what do you do? HOW do you get a quarto?

I will mention again- that this is for fics 50K or less. The sweet spot for me seems to be somewhere around 20-30k or less. But that's just me.

Well like previous go through your formatting as you usually would but for the text body itself the font size will need to be increased. Not unless you enjoy squinting or using Sherlock Holmes' magnifying glass to read. I think you might need serious help but do you boo-boo.

I set my font size for folio around 11 or 12 depending upon my mood. For Quarto? I set the font size to 26 and that's just so it's legible.

I will keep all of the fic info at a smaller font size but that would be 11 or 12 now instead of a font size of 8 or so depending upon how much I'm using from the tags.

But it will be a lot of "See the previous post" for formatting.

The trick is going back to Bookbinder JS if you want to format word to spit out Quarto size- be my guest. I cheat. I choose the path of least resistance and less math you have to deal with.

There will be more mathing involved.

But back to Bookbinder JS:

Paper size and Duplex remains the same.

Page Layout section? Hit "Quarto" and upload your pdf file.

Going down to the signature you can do perfect bound (again paperback) or signatures (for stitched books). I keep to stitched books because honestly it's nice to not rely only on glue to keep your book together. But once again follow your happiness. I'm merely stating opinion. Don't take anything as gospel all I want to do is help people break into bookbinding and fan binding cause once you get the basics down I find it very relaxing.

With that aside out of the way, fiddle with the signature size- the more the signatures the more you're going to have to sew. But if you keep everything together it won't lay nice and neat and look rather bulky. So strike a middle ground.

NOW after you do your print off... you're going to have to fold each page... one by one... twice. You're going to have to play "Line the numbers up with each individual page" for the entirety of that signature. I suggest having the pdf open while you're doing this so you can jigsaw puzzle your way into a text block.

But fold down first, then fold that in half.

By the way I hope you have some sort of cutting mat and ruler and cutting hobby knives by this point cause you're going to have to shave the tops off of the pages so you can open it up and read it like a normal book.

I would only do this if you're like me, and have a fondness for smaller fics that you'd like on your shelf and also have a special breed of self inflicted masochism.

I'm a multi-tool of reasons as to why I've done this. One- I got curious as to how to do this. Two- it's now a hyper fixation and weekender hobby. Three- The sea has called me home and having copies of my favourite stories just sounds like making a boat a home to me. Four- I was born with the "Fuck it how hard can it be?" Gene. Five- that gene is a double edged sword but I'm at least spreading what little I know around for anyone that may wish to teach themselves how to do this.

Once you have everything folded, and trimmed, it's time to put that tiny precious stack of paper into your book press, and you compress it down like it owes you money and think of it as you getting your own back for having to do so much fucking math and folding.

NOW I can start getting into how to make loose pages of folded paper into something resembling a book.