ehyde

I finished watching the donghua version of Are You OK and I am very pleased with it.

The basic premise is, what if there were just a shitton of transmigrators? What would that do to the world? If you've ever read 1632 by Eric Flint (I realize there may not be a lot of overlap in audience here) it's kind of like that, except that instead of a group getting physically yeeted to, well, 1632, it's transmigration en masse to a fictional wuxia setting.

The main character as much as there is one is Lou Zhu, transmigrator, businessman, in charge of verifying the identity of new transmigrators. Because all transmigrators must be properly registered, of course. The emperor is...very interested in them.

While Are You OK starts out as a comedy, it gets pretty serious by the end, and really does follow through with the implications of what might happen if a wuxia world got access to modern tech. And because the transmigrators aren't the only ones allowed to have grievances against the emperor, we have his brother Prince Yu ad another notable character.

Things I liked about the adaptation: streamlined many of the events from the novel in a way that mostly worked, added some new plot points which tied different sections of the novel together (the novel is actually a series of interconnected short stories). The donghua also added a couple more female characters, one completely donghua original and one a major expansion of a background non-character.

Things I didn't like in the adaptation: a lot of the visual anachronism gags left me confused about how much modern technology Liang was already supposed to have. Prince Yu and Li Ke's relationship felt underdeveloped compared to the novel--although this probably shouldn't surprise me too much. From the donghua, you wouldn't guess that this was originally a danmei, and to be completely fair, it was kind of hard to tell in the novel, too. But Prince Yu and Li Ke were the two I shipped the most and all of that is pretty much gone.

Okay I said that about the anachronism gags but I will never get tired of Lin Kai, leader of the martial alliance, constantly showing up fifteen minutes late with bubble tea.

The donghua is available free to watch on iQiyi. So far there's only one season (which covers somewhere between a third and half the novel, I think) but there's a preview for season 2. The novel is locked on jjwxc and taken down by the translator, but if you're interested, let me know.

This book has made it to its recipient, so now I can share!

Handmade book opened flat, showing the front and back covers. The title "Cut Him Out in Little Stars" is printed in gold on a galaxy print background.

Handmade book opened flat, showing the front and back covers. The title "Cut Him Out in Little Stars" is printed in gold on a galaxy print background.

The fic "Cut Him Out in Little Stars" by ChaoticAndrogynous, in which Wei Wuxian is reborn as a comet, is possibly my favorite fic I've read in the past year. I started typesetting it almost immediately after reading it last summer, but various other projects happened and I didn't finish the binding until now.
( Details and many more pics )

This is my (I think) twentieth bookbinding project, and thirty-somethingth individual book, since I started bookbinding two years ago. Maybe I'll make a stats post/retrospective later!

- My mom's visiting this week and next and helping out with various projects around the house--rather than wanting to do whole family activities all the time, her idea of a visit is "I want to see you, but give me something to do." Highly relatable tbh. Before I knew about terms like "hyperfocus" I'd call that thing where you get really involved in what you're working on "project mode" and my mom does project mode too, and also gets really bored if she doesn't have a project.

-

guess-that-ship seems like a fun tournament blog and submissions for the next round open today. The idea is to describe a ship in anonymized terms and people vote on which ship appeals to them more, without knowing who the characters are. I tried to come up with a good entry for Xi Ping/Zhou Ying but so far I haven't come up with anything that sounds quite right, but I've got a different ship ready to send in.

I'm playing Dragon Age: Origins with my kids (which works like: I play the game, they help pick dialogue options and which quests to do and get super excited whenever there are monsters to fight) and it's fun. They're really attached to Alastair and they always want to bring the dog with us. We're trapped in the Fade right now and I remember this being my least favorite part the first time I played but they're really into it and whenever we stop playing they immediately start running around and pretending to change into spirit/golem/etc while they play-fight.

I feel like I should post about some good things to balance out that last post (and for myself, too. It IS good to remind myself of the good things).

❧ Our tart cherry tree has a really excellent crop this year. We already picked enough for a pie (and made the pie) and there's more still on the tree that'll be ready in a few more days.

❧ I finally have some concrete book design ideas for You Yao/Are You OK, and I tracked down the untranslated extras (the novel is locked on jjwxc, so it wasn't just a matter of buying them unfortunately).

❧ I took my bike to the shop for a tuneup (storytime: my father in law decided to give me a bike he didn't want to take with him when he was moving, so he left it at our place, only he didn't tell us he was doing that, so I let it sit outside for like two years thinking it was our downstairs neighbor's, and only realized otherwise when he moved and didn't take it with him). The two oldest kids are steady enough on their own bikes that I only have to figure out how to manage biking with the youngest, which sounds--doable!

❧ My mom's visiting soon, which should be mostly good--she's iffy about a few things, but apparently did ultimately come down on the side of being supportive when my sibling came out as nonbinary so she might be better about it this year than she was last summer. (I'm probably never even going to mention my own gender questioning to her tbh, but 4yo is also genderfluid and that's more important).

❧ I recently read Copper Coins, a historical/supernatural danmei featuring a monk with amnesia and a dragon searching for his stolen bones (the two things may be connected). It didn't grab me in a fic-writing way but I did enjoy it enough that I'm starting one of the author's other novels, Cultural Relics Are Not To Be Disturbed, which is an urban fantasy, and I'm not very far along but it's fun so far.

❧ I'm jumping on the bandwagon of moving my fic to a personal archive in addition to ao3 - I don't intend to remove my fic from ao3 at this time, but as a backup and as a different option. I got myself a neocities site back in November when everyone started looking for twitter alternatives, but I hadn't done much with it until now. I'm doing this by a combination of melannen's guide, looking at the code of other neocities pages that look nice, and adapting my defunct personal site from a decade ago. Right now my writing page is the most complete - I'm not completely happy with it but it's going in a direction I like (the links just go to the basic html as downloaded from ao3 - I plan to update that eventually too - and I also need to figure out how to make it work on mobile).

❧ Speaking of everyone looking for twitter alternatives, my partner's brother has been building sift, which is more of a recommendation and content sharing tool (for links posted from anywhere) than a social site, but might be interesting to some people.

❧ And speaking of my partner's brother, we flew to California last weekend for his wedding, which was lovely (outdoors in a park with redwoods). Flying cross country with three small kids is always a challenge but it went a lot better this time than the last time.

❧ Some bookbinding projects since I last posted (wow it's been a while since I last posted): Restoration by Ritualist, Impossible to Stay Away, Impossible to Stay by dragongirlG (alternate version), I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter by Isabel Fall, They All Say I've Met a Ghost by Cyan Wings, and a new version of Pluck the Stars by exoscopy. Of these, I had the most fun making Ghost - modeled after a very haunted notebook bound in human skin, about which our oblivious protagonist only thinks "oh, what a nice heirloom."

❧ Bookbinding discord is doing a Tiny Book Bang, for which I'm taking the opportunity to typeset a couple of shorter fics, and having fun with typography. One I'm doing in imitation of William Morris' Kelmscott Press (I would not have the patience to do this for anything longer than 20k lol) and another I'm doing in the style of Aldus Manutius (Italian Renaissance printer, and it's completely appropriate to the MDZS fic I'm typesetting, I'm technically supposed to keep the fics I'm typesetting for the event secret but if you know you know).

❧ Finally, a fic rec: The Scarlet Lotus by rainbowninja167, a canonverse wangxian Scarlet Pimpernel au. I will admit that my first thought was "why would you make WWX the Scarlet Pimpernel analogue when Nie Huaisang is right there?" but it really works. The author has put a lot of thought into writing the characters in a way that works for the AU but still feels like them. This is a wip but there are only two chapters left and the author seems to be updating weekly.

Apparently Priest announced that Tai Sui will be edited/revised this year or next, which has caused me to rearrange my bookbinding plans a little bit (I mean, I don't know if the translator will do anything with the revisions anyway, but it's at least worth waiting a bit to see). But I wasn't anywhere close to ready to bind it anyway so it's not a big deal. It's good news I think--I loved the book but there were definitely some places where the pacing suffered a bit.

Reading:
- when I started reading Lie Huo Jiao Chou the translation seemed to be updating at a reasonable pace of 1-2 chapters a month. Since I caught up, it hasn't updated since the end of November, and just as it was getting into some really juicy backstory bits.
- I started another ongoing translation, Married Thrice to Salted Fish, which is a transmigration story from the pov of the transmigrator's love interest. The transmigrator is an unapologetic villainfucker (or, he would like to be, but this is incredibly slow burn) and the pov character is his problematic fave. I LOVE the characters and the unfolding relationship but it doesn't have a plot that really grabs me, so I don't mind taking it slow and waiting for updates.
- My ebook hold for A Memory Called Empire came in and like a fool, I waited till there were only a few days left on the loan to start reading it (I'm not far enough into it to know if it's going to grab me in the "finish it in two days" way or not).

Admiring:
- this William Morris gift wrap paper pack from Pepin Press. They would be great for endpapers in the right book.

Working on:
- Renegade Bindery does "binderary" in February, which is kinda like inktober but in a different month--basically the idea is just, make as much as you can, and also people can give online talks or workshops if they want. I don't know if I'll be able to attend any scheduled events but there's going to be at least one marbling demo so I'm hoping I can make it. Anyway, I just finished a late gift for my dad, and the rest of this month I'm going to spend prepping for hopefully finishing a lot of books in February! I typeset They All Say I've Met a Ghost and I'm finishing up typesets for a few more fics, and I've spent Too Much on supplies and I'm going to start decorating some fabrics for covers.
- Some furniture rearranging at home: we got a bunk bed for 4yo and 2yo and moved them from 4yo's smallish room into me & husband's slightly bigger room. Husband and I are temporarily in the smallish room, we're going to move to the downstairs bedroom eventually but at this point 2yo still wakes up enough at night that I want to be on the same floor as him. I don't know how long 4yo and 2yo are going to want to share a room, but for now they love it.

I finished and sent off the book I made for the Renegade Bindery Exchange! The fic is Thirty-three Lashes by Wingless, as requested by Jenny Linsky. It's a modern reincarnation AU ... sort of? Basically it's immortal LWJ, and WWX who comes back in MXY's body as he does in canon, except that rather than thirteen years later, it's a couple thousand.

The fic isn't a pure horror fic but it has a lot of horror elements and I decided to lean into those in the binding, using rough layered paper cutouts to reflect the scars of LWJ's curse. It's a three piece bradel binding with a dark red leather spine (I learned that if I tape it down to paper, I can run thin leather through my printer! neat!) The endpapers are suminagashi marbling on the same red paper as the innermost layer of the cover.

This one took a while to make, especially since all my kids got colds in the middle of the project and I lost my evening worktime for a week, but I'm really happy with how it came out!

( Pictures under the cut )

Hey, I'm E. Hyde! I've been involved in various fannish hobbies over the years; currently I'm focusing on bookbinding. Mo Dao Zu Shi has been my main fandom for a while, and lately I've been enjoying Priest's novels as well. Before that my main fandom was Yona of the Dawn, and going further back you get the Cosmere, MCU, Star Wars, etc.These days I watch hardly any tv as it's much easier for me to read.

This journal is mostly a personal journal, expect a lot of "what I've been doing this week" posts as well as some crafting updates and commentary on things I've been reading. Most of my posts are public; if I've locked a post it's most likely because I talked about my kids or posted pictures of them.

You can find me elsewhere online at

ehyde

teleportbooks (bookbinding sideblog)

fallenwithstyle

How To Survive As A Villain - this was a fun read! I posted a little bit about it in a miscellaneous post a few weeks back, but to recap: it's a transmigration story that starts out with a similar premise to SVSSS--the protagonist (Xiao Yu'an) transmigrates into the villain of a novel, and has to make nice with the original protagonist (Yan Heqing) in order to survive. It takes this in a different direction, though: less than a quarter into the novel,Xiao Yu'an straight up tells Yan Heqing that he's a transmigrator. This proves not to be a straightforward get-out-of-plot free card, although it does mean that they're on the same team from early on (although various misconceptions and miscommunications keep them from becoming a couple right away).

The novel takes a sharp turn from comedy to tragedy (I'd tag it angst with a happy ending) and ultimately, I felt like there was a tone mismatch between the writing style and the subject matter--the writing worked really well for the comedic parts of the novel, but when darker and heavier stuff started happening it felt...idk, almost superficial? This may have been partially the fault of the translation (I'm saying this because my friend who read it in chinese seems to have gotten more out of the novel than I did, but then again, maybe we just had different opinions about it!).

I'd rec it if you're looking for something overall fun and not too deep. I enjoyed it, but I'm not going to be dwelling on it much now that I'm done.

The local bubble tea shop's seasonal offering is green tea with honey, ginger, and citron, and when I ordered it last week I missed the part of the description saying it was a "seasonal hot tea" and ordered it iced. I liked it enough that I wanted to try it as intended, so today I ordered it hot, and I think I like it better iced. I hope it stays on the menu for a while!

6yo has been sick this week so I haven't done as much as I'd wanted to, but we did still manage to pick up a dresser I found on craigslist--a kids' wooden dresser that the previous owner had painted purple, teal, and what I thought in the picture was brown but turned out to be a dark green. It has greenish-purple crystal knobs, too. It's a welcome change from furniture painted gray, and 6yo loves it.
( bookbinding thoughts )

stolen from

dragongirlg, ask me about tropes!

Give me a fanfiction trope and I’ll grade it:

A: Love it. Spend my time combing AO3 for it.
B: Like it. Not one of my bigger cravings, but it can scratch a certain itch if I’m in the right mood.
C: Neutral. A good author might be able to sell it, but a bad one will kill it deader than dead.
D: Not my favorite. I avoid it if I can, but it won’t necessarily put me off reading something.
F: Hate it. Will immediately make me nope out of a fic.

I went ahead and deleted twitter from my phone, which means I'm spending very little time there now. It's nice actually. I'm not planning on deleting my account and I'm still checking in from time to time on my computer but now it's not this thing I automatically look at when I think "now, what was I looking for?" anymore and I think training my brain out of doing that is good, actually.

It probably helps that all this is happening at a time when I'm moving on, a bit, from MDZS fandom, and not really feeling deep in any fandom at the moment. (I mean, I would be deep in Tai Sui fandom if there was a bigger fandom, sigh). I mean I'm not actively trying to distance myself from MDZS fandom like I know some people have done--I still think it's great--it's just that it's not catching my imagination as much as it used to. But I'm pretty sure it's always going to be one of those back-of-my-mind favorites.

So yeah, I've made a mastodon account (

ehyde@wandering.shop) but I'm not really spending much time there and I don't know if I will start. I think I'm better off without twitter-style social media.

I finally picked up and read Network Effect, which I've had since it came out but never read, and I enjoyed it so much that I went back and read three of the first Murderbot novellas and also read Fugitive Telemetry. Fandom brain is going "SecUnit should meet [crossover character from x canon]" quickly followed by "come on now, SecUnit doesn't want to be forced to socialize with new people!" (it's Wen Ning. the person I want him to meet is Wen Ning).

Now I'm reading "How to Survive as a Villain" which was recommended to me a couple of years ago, back when the english translation wasn't very far along. I wasn't up for reading an ongoing translation then but I remembered it was a thing and checked back and it's fully translated now. On the surface it has a similar premise to Scum Villain: the main character transmigrates into the villain of a novel and has to make nice with the male lead to avoid getting brutally killed. But it feels pretty different. The comedic aspects are almost slapstick and the main character really doesn't give a shit about preserving the original storyline, aside from the romance between the male and female lead (his OTP) (guess how well that's going). I'm less than a quarter into the book and he's already told the male lead that he's a transmigrator, so I'm excited to see where that goes.

6yo's friend's girl scout troop had a cookie booth at the skating rink today (6yo may be joining said friend's troop soon) so we decided to go skating and get cookies. I'm pretty wobbly on ice skates and I think after a few more afternoons like this, 6yo will be better at it than I am. Still had fun though! 4yo had to hold hands the whole time he was on the ice but he had fun too. 2yo was excited about the whole concept but alas, they didn't have any rental skates small enough for him. He had fun going for a lap in my arms but kept asking if he could be on the ice "with my feet".

I just spent the past two days catching up on the past two years of Akatsuki no Yona/Yona of the Dawn, which was my main fandom before MDZS showed up and ate my life. For reference, I have 55 MDZS fics on my ao3, and 52 AnY fics--but my Yona fics include a multichapter ficlet collection, which I've stopped doing now.

The current arc's main villain, Cha-gol, feels more like a final boss than any other villains so far. I mean, (highlight for spoilers) he burned Hiryuu Castle! And stole something that made Zeno very worried! And like. His whole deal with Mei Nyan. Who is turning out to be not nearly as delightfully unhinged as she was at her first appearance, alas.

That said I still assume that fate and/or the dragon gods are going to be the actual final boss, especially since Zeno confirmed that Yona's presence won't have any effect on the dragons' short lifespans.

For a while there, one of the translation teams kept inserting Soo-won hate in the margins of their translations. I'm glad someone else took over, but also, it's just funny because after four years of being a Jin Guangyao fan I find it very difficult to find anything objectionable about Soo-won.

Dec. 5: @galadhir asked do you have a fandom type? (Like you always go for the noble characters, or the villains etc?)

...masterminds who seem cold and calculating but actually have deeply suppressed feelings about it, probably. Often villains but they don't have to be!

Dec. 7: @lingeringdust asked if I have a comfort food for when you're sick or feeling under the weather!

I don't know if this quite counts as a comfort food but when I was a kid my mom would always buy us the candy "hot tamales" (cinnamon gummies with a candy shell, kind of like jelly beans) when we had a cold, she said they helped sore throats, and you know what, I don't think she was wrong. I still buy a box for myself whenever I've got a sore throat. Honestly not sure why cinnamon isn't a more common cough drop flavor.

I'm posting this on December 9 and someone did ask me a question for the ninth, but it's one that's going to take a bit more thought, so I'll post these for now so I don't fall even further behind.

I can't say I'm surprised I'm doing a lot of catch-up days here

December 4:

rhysiana asked "What's the most satisfyingly self-indulgent fandom project you've ever done?" and I think it's gotta be a fic series I wrote back in Yona of the Dawn fandom: the Alien Larp AU. It was born somewhat out of spite: someone who was less of a fan of the enigmatic "villain" as I was suggested that, for all the insight we had into his motivations, he might as well be a robot from outer space. I said "sounds good to me!" and outlined some notes wherein Soowon was, indeed, an AI from outer space (and the rest of the cast, or most of them, retained their pseudo-historical fantasy canon selves). Blending a scifi AU with a fantasy canon is SO FUN okay and of course I had to write it and it eventually grew to a series of 8 works including what was at the time the longest fic I'd written.

clockworkspider typeset and printed a collection of them and this was, I think, my first encounter with fanfiction as a book and you can see where that got me.
(The "Larp" in the series title is from the fact that the AI is supposed to enable the planet to play host to alien tourists. Sort of like a Dark Lord of Derkholm thing. Many times I asked myself "should I give this series a more serious title?" and answered "nope!" so there we are.)

Also December 4:

megan_moonlight asked for my top 3 Wen Ning scenes! These aren't in order but a) in the drama, when Jiang Yanli gives him soup! b) in the novel, when he sees the ghosts of the other Wen remnants, and c) when he first wakes up as a conscious fierce corpse. But to be honest every Wen Ning scene is a good one! ~~except for the one with Jin Zixuan~~

I should go to bed so I will catch up on Dec 5 tomorrow!

December 2: @asrabkin asked about my favorite place I have lived, and why

To start with, Not Tennessee
Hmmm but other than that...actually where we are now, probably. Don't get me wrong I have Much Nostalgia for growing up in rural Oregon, being able to see the stars at night and all that, but I like being able to walk places. I like public transit (even if I haven't used it much in the past few years). I like being able to go places without having to plan my entire day around it. And I don't actually like yard work!

December 3: @coffeeontherocks asked what is my least read genre and why?

~~We're going to pretend like my most read genre isn't currently "fanfiction"~~

...mystery, I guess? As for why...well actually I like plenty of stories where there's some sort of mystery to be solved so it's not that I object to solving a case as the central plot, I think it's just that plausibly realistic crime...is not something I find interesting (and a Really Cool Detective isn't gonna be enough of a favorite character type to outweigh that). There are probably mysteries I would like a lot but you'd have to sell them to me individually.

❧ @jin-guangyao asked me "What's your default 'picking-up-a-cat' technique?" and you know, I was pretty sure I could just write it down and I'd be remembering correctly, but I had to check to be sure. Thanks, Banshee!

head skritches
one hand on chest, just in back of forelegs
up!
other hand supports back legs
bring towards my chest

❧ last summer one of my siblings introduced me to therapyshoppe.com which sells stim devices, among other things. I have a couple of squishy balls with various textures including this one (filled with gel beads).

Anyway I think they should make a version that's just filled with the black ones and has a colored milky liquid and market it as a boba tea themed stim toy, that would be pretty cute

❧ Watched the first episode of the Drowning Sorrows in Raging Fire donghua (based on the book I've been not-reading). It jumps much faster into the action, unsurprisingly, and seems fun. I'll keep watching. Amusingly it (for a very brief moment) had an animation of someone knitting that was more accurate than most live-action knitting I've seen (although, mirrored), which I probably only noticed because I was knitting while watching.
(The knitting isn't plot-relevant. Somewhat character-relevant, for a side character.)

❧ There's a local hawk! It came down to the bike path yesterday, and today I saw it circling in the sky (and now I have the song "Oklahoma" from the musical stuck in my head because of one line)

I caught a pic of the hawk flying away--under a cut because it's carrying something dead, although you can't make out details ( pic here )

So it looks like this is a thing!

December posting meme

I'm soliciting questions for this year's December posting meme - surely you have an interesting (or boring - I don't judge), impertinent, or unusual question for me? Can be about a fannish opinion or headcanon, about me, a top 5, or my thoughts on anything that strikes your fancy. Please pick a day and give me a topic!

Claim a day:

Dec 1 - What's your default "picking-up-a-cat-technique"? @jin-guangyao

Dec 2 - favorite place you have lived, and why. @asrabkin

Dec 3 - what is your least read genre and why? @coffeeontherocks

Dec 4 - What's the most satisfyingly self-indulgent fandom project you've ever done? @rhysiana and Top 3 Wen Ning scenes (be it the web series, animation, books, anything) @megan_moonlight

Dec 5 - do you have a fandom type? (Like you always go for the noble characters, or the villains etc?) @galadhir

Dec 6 -

Dec 7 - comfort food for when you're sick or feeling under the weather! @lingeringdust

Dec 8 -

Dec 9 - Tell me about a piece of fic that impacted the way you think about fandom, or writing, or your own aspirations. @stultiloquentia

Dec 10 - What do your oldest and newest fandom have in common? @solo

Dec 11 -

Dec 12 - Top 5 favourite books @megan_moonlight

Dec 13 -

Dec 14 -

Dec 15 - most influential story (book, show, or movie) from your childhood? @kimboo_york

Dec 16 - favourite book binding method of those you've tried so far? @cinnamonandpancakes

Dec 17 - back-button triggers for fanfic (can limit to MDZS if you like!) @dragongirlg

Dec 18 - Favorite fried foods @forestofglory

Dec 19 -

Dec 20 -

Dec 21 - If space travel AND time travel was a thing, would you choose to time travel or space travel, and where would you go? @coffeeontherocks

Dec 22 - Favorite hot beverage and your preparation technique(s) @libitina

Dec 23 - do you think the gift economy influences the way we create in fandom and how? @xmarksthespotwhereistand

Dec 24 -

Dec 25 -

Dec 26 - Top 5 fonts to use for titles? @sunshine304

Dec 27 -

Dec 28 - If you had to pick only one creative hobby to be your hobby for the rest of your life, what would you pick? @screechfox

Dec 29 -

Dec 30 - Which of your fanbinding/bookbinding projects are you the proudest of and why? @sunshine304

Dec 31 - do you have a favorite comfort read? (fic or original work) @elvenjaneite

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media: Are You OK (You Yao)

Ficbinding: Cut Him Out in Little Stars

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December posting meme - Dec. 5 and 7

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