ehyde

❧ Black Friday deals -- Cricut vs Silhouette -- I've been intending all year to get a cutting machine this holiday season, and now's the time to do it, but I'm still undecided between a Cricut or a Silhouette. Cricut has slightly more functions (although possibly with not quite as much customization?) -- mainly it does embossing/debossing, which I would like to explore for book design. Its downside is needing an internet connection to cut--iffy in my craft room--and potential software shadiness from the company (they planned to go to a paid subscription model, backed off when literally no one supported this, but the threat is there). I think I'm still leaning towards the Cricut? But I'd like to hear what other people think, if you've used either one.

❧ WIP Wednesday -- I've been working on another typeset for @renegadepublishing's exchange, so I can't share details, but I can share fonts! I'm using Newt Serif for the body text (a serif font with a bit of a whimsical, fantastical vibe). I loved this font when I first saw it but it wasn't suitable for the book I was working on then, and I kept it in the back of my mind till now. And I'm using Son of Time by Pia Frauss for the titles--no special reasoning here, but I knew I wanted something handwritten, old-fashioned vibes, but upright, and I recalled this site had some possibilities. I've used the same designer's Tycho's Elegy (based on the handwriting of Tycho Brahe) in a different typeset before.

❧ I've been reading Priest's Lie Huo Jiao Chou (danmei, urban fantasy) and in theory I like it a lot, but I've been kind of bouncing off it, and I can't point to any particular reason why (as opposed to Mr Melancholy Wants To Live A Peaceful Life, which I didn't finish, where I could point out exactly why it wasn't clicking for me). I might just not be in a reading mood; I haven't been reading any fic lately either. I don't think the fact that it's an unfinished translation is helping, either, knowing that I'm going to have to stop somewhere and not binge the whole thing whether I "get into it" or not.

I may be biting off more than I can chew here, but I'm feeling inspired to see if I can manage some handmade gifts again this year. I'm already making a book for my dad, but the kids could all use new hats. 4yo would like a cat-hat: I checked ravelry but I didn't see any cat-eared hats I loved but since I'm going for the style where it's no decreases, seamed straight across at the top, corners pinched into "ears," I think I can wing it. Short rows on the sides to result in pointier ears, maybe? This should be easily doable by Christmas.

6yo didn't request a specific hat but 6yo loves dragons and I found this pattern on ravelry ...which is no longer available but eh, I can make out the chart from project photos and I don't really like the style of the top shaping anyway. But sock yarn...maaaaybe I can finish? I ordered yarn today so I'm at least going to give it a try.

2yo would like a purple hat. I can figure out a purple hat.

On a shelf in the sunroom I still have a set of partially completed juggling balls I'm making for my husband and who knows, maybe I can finish those too.

I've been telling myself "hey, seems like you're moving on from MDZS and you know what, that's fine, you've read some great other books lately even if they have tiny fandoms," and I've been telling myself "yeah it's cool if I haven't been really in the mood to write in the past year, I'm enjoying other hobbies just fine" and while both those things are true...
...apparently I can still get hit by surprise inspiration for a wangxian sea monster au!

I set out writing this as a threadfic but then thought about the state of twitter and thought, let's not. But if I'm going to actually use DW as a fandom space, why not post it here?

( Eventual consentacles, eventual body horror, what I've written so far is pretty tame though )

(I didn't do fandom on LJ "in the old days" and the way some people would have it, no one used to post any hint of a fic until the whole thing was finished. But it's 2022 anyway.)

Wow, the beta version of the create entries page really is a lot better for mobile (if I just want to post plain text, at least).

I've got a couple of sick kids this week who've been taking turns waking up all night and my creative energy feels very low. But maybe I'll come back here later and post about some current projects.

So I'm working on another book project, and what happened was I found some cheap drawing paper at the craft store and said to myself, this feels like an old paperback, I should make a book out of this. And my first thought was something horror ish, because this was about a week before Halloween, so I picked out one of my favorite horror ish fics, and printed it on that paper, and it looked good, and eh whatever if it's not archival quality, it's cool right?

...and then the fic's author (who hasn't seen any of this yet) posted a very intense thread on twitter about how we're losing so much history because of books printed on acidic paper that are literally disintegrating and I therefore reprinted the entire thing .

 I finished (well, almost - the extras aren't quite all translated) You Yao/Are You OK, and oh boy...it started out so funny...

The premise: transmigration is common. Hundreds of people from the early 21st century have died and found themselves in fantasy ancient China. It's a known phenomenon. Some people try to impersonate transmigrators to earn a position in the imperial court. One of our main characters almost succeeds, until he gets found out for not knowing simplified Chinese. 

It's written as a series of short stories, rather than a single continuous novel, which I really liked. The first three focus on different sets of characters, after that, they begin interweaving, and that's when it becomes clear that this isn't just a comedy/genre parody. The author goes all in on the implications of what a world of transmigrators would mean, there are conspiracies, political intrigue, revenge plots, things that you thought were one-off jokes coming back in the worst way, knowledge of the future not being an easy solution, some really interesting characters... it's listed as a danmei but there's barely any focus on romance (in a way that's like - these characters are intended to be shipped, but that's not what we're here for today - and I guess that danmei label is doing a lot of work there, when the shippable moments aren't really more than you get for some noncanon slash pairings in some western media? Anyway.)

So yes, I do recommend this! The main story is fully translated, there's one extra that isn't translated yet. Don't go into this expecting everything to wrap up nicely in a happy ending, though it's not what I'd call a bad ending, either. It's complicated, which kind of feels like the point of the story.

https://www.novelupdates.com/series/are-you-ok/

 Very belatedly, posting this here.



I saw a post about fandom bookbinding (fanbinding) and I thought, oh, neat! I could do that! It's not that I wasn't aware of the concept of making pretty, physical copies of fanfics--tarrlok and clockworkspider made me gorgeous printed copies of two of my fics. But this was the first time I'd seen it with traditional bookbinding, cloth covered hardbacks, that kind of thing. (I also thought hey, I could actually make my own print copy of MDZS, which is less relevant now).

The fanbinding discord is neat, too. Many people with strong opinions about archiving and preserving fic. I think I'm in it less for that cause and more as a type of fanart? But yeah.

Anyway though I decided to make a blank book first, as a tutorial project, which is what's pictured here. I'm already working on a book with words in it though and it's nearing completion.

 ...was yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to post this before going to bed. 

I won this fountain pen in an online auction. Not my first vintage pen, but the first I bought online.



What happened was: I was bemoaning that while I had a Chenqing pen to go with my WWX notebook, I still didn't have a great pen to match my LWJ notebook. @tunalaq.twitter suggested looking for something that echoed the look of his guqin, to follow the theme, so I typed in "pinstripe fountain pen" to see what would come up. This...obviously isn't what I was going for, but I thought it was really neat.

Arnold pens were apparently the cheap knockoff of their day, so I wasn't expecting anything in perfect condition. Almost surprisingly, the sac appears to be intact. But the feed doesn't really work--it doesn't bring the ink to the nib. The nib itself is great, though! It's a flex nib, and I've been wanting to have one of those for a while, and so far, it seems to work fine in my Moonman pen. I'd be pretty happy with this purchase if the nib was the only thing I got out of it.



But I'm not going to stop there--look at this:



Those two sections look the same size...I wonder if I could make a frankenpen?

Like, I assume, many, I have Acquired Houseplants during the pandemic. I held off till September, when I picked up two tiny free succulent propagations from a "free plants" box set by the side of the bike path. I'm not sure exactly what they are, but they're still growing! I then bought a few plants at Trader Joe's, and they're doing good too (although the fern still looks...interesting). But then I got interested in bonsai. And, well, it was not the right season to do anything with bonsai, but I watched a lot of videos (Peter Chan's youtube channel is both informative and relaxing, I recommend it). I mentioned my interest in the weeks before Christmas, and my mother in law showed up with five baby trees she'd dug up from her yard. It wasn't really the best time to dig them up and only one survived into the spring, but one is better than none. There's another young tree growing too close to our house, I think white mulberry, that I want to try to uproot and cut the top off of and see if I can keep it growing in a pot. Possible in theory and rapidly approaching the right time of year to try. I'm actually very excited about this one, although I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much--where it's growing means getting enough of the roots out, undamaged, may be very tricky. I still haven't quite figured out how to manage outdoor yardwork and watching kids at the same time, but this year I should be able to get a little more done than last year, at least. With that in mind we started a tray of vegetable seeds, and bought some flower bulbs and two raspberry bushes. Tomorrow's supposed to be good weather, so we'll try to get those in the ground.

 30 Days of The Untamed 2 -- favorite episode
Oh jeez, I'm expected to remember what happened in which episode now? It's all a blur~
*one quick trip to wikipedia later* 
26! Wei Wuxian going after Wen Ning, Wei Wuxian terrorizing the Jin sect, Wei Wuxian leading the Wen remnants to saftey through the pouring rain...look, I too want to protect Wen Ning and I love a powerful and terrifying Yiling Patriarch and I love when the series shows its creepy side and I also love painful looks of longing in the rain (though that one might've been in the next episode, I don't recall precisely where the break was)

A discord server I'm in has a weekly writing event with short prompt fills, here's what I wrote last night. It's the setup to an AU where Mo Ziyuan (Mo Xuanyu's cousin) wasn't an awful person (but the rest of his family still was). Novel-verse, but that's only relevant here for the specifics of the body-sacrifice ritual. Content warnings for suicide, blood.

( Read more... )

(I am not sure how to make things I copied from google docs have the same font/size)