ehyde

Checking in

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:08:51 GMT

Despite an assortment of kids and adults sick with a bad cold, I managed to make four pies for pi day: pumpkin chiffon (this has meringue mixed in with the pumpkin mixture to make it fluffier, it's the only pumpkin pie I ever make), cherry (we had frozen cherry pie filling already, so this one was easy), chocolate (it's just pudding in a graham cracker crust), and for the first time, lemon meringue. The lemon meringue turned out pretty good except that the meringue topping shrank and pulled away from the crust, so it ended up like a fluffy island on a yellow lake. Still tasted good!

We've now watched up to episode 36 of Guardian. The ancient past episodes were very fun! I'm a little worried about watching the final few episodes because I know it's not going to end well. I'm in theory still reading Record of the Missing Sect Master but tbh I'm considering dropping it. It's very slow moving and feels like at least half (this is an exaggeration) the content is other characters reacting to the couple-ness of the main couple, which. I guess is a trope that some people like (a lot of people like, judging by some of the fanfic out there) but it is not my thing at all. Also it's doing this thing where it feels like at this point, both the mains are on the same page re. a lot of the hidden information, but the author's still holding it back from the reader just ...because? I think if you want to a dramatic reveal later on some things need to be a mystery to the characters who care about it, too. Anyway. A lot of the mysteries and secret identities and such, which should be right up my alley, feel more artificial here than they have in other books. So I should probably just drop it and read something I'll enjoy, instead.

I did manage to work on some projects, too! I modeled/printed some attachments to help build a sewing frame, as well as an adjustable hole-punching template! ~~I even worked on some actual books too.~~ And I got my assignment for this year's cnovel bookbinding exchange, which. I am going to have so much fun with this.

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Two book bindings

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:53:38 GMT

I finished up two projects this week, despite the snow (and despite the kids being home from school due to the snow)

First: Mo Du (Silent Reading) by Priest

This was typeset by @rainsfalling.tumblr for 2024's cnovel bookbinding exchange. I haven't read it yet, so my design choices don't have much to do with the contents (I started with the cat endpapers, found this plaid fabric on the same shopping trip, and designed the book around that combo.

Second: The Tiniest Heipaoshi by @tehfanglyfish.tumblr

This is a very fun fic in which Professor Shen's TA takes on some additional duties. I knew almost immediately after reading it that I wanted it to be a tiny book. It's a sewn-board binding styled after a composition notebook, with the title/initials in a sketched version of a fancier font, sort of inspired by Jiajia's closet cosplay version of Shen Wei's envoy robes in the fic. Happily I had some scrap paper left over from a previous project which matched both the canon vibes and the notebook look!

( Many more pictures under the cut )

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this week

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 21:11:03 GMT

The kids had a week of school vacation which would've been fun except that Eldest was sick with a nasty stomach bug for the first half. Fortunately she was better by Friday so we still took our planned trip to the science museum -- didn't see a lot of new exhibits but the kids had fun with their favorites and the electricity show was fun as always.

On Wednesday, when eldest was still under the weather, we had a movie day and watched Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind which is the kids' first Miyazaki movie! (they haven't actually watched a ton of movies in general). I picked that out for them because Middle has been VERY enthusiastic about "cute bugs" lately (mainly bees and caterpillars, but also the alien bug monsters from Factorio) and I thought he would enjoy the ohmu and seeing a story about a princess who loved bugs (I was right). Afterwards I found an articulated 3d print model of a ohmu and printed one for everyone.

Speaking of cute bugs, our caterpillar (which hitchhiked inside on Eldest's jacket, and which of course we could not put back outside into the snow) is a cocoon now! In theory it will become a moth.

And speaking of snow, we're supposed to get another ~18 inches tomorrow night. So the kids will almost certainly not be going back to school on Monday after all. This has been far too much snow.

I'm still watching Guardian with my husband; we're up to episode 23 now and still enjoying it a lot, although imo the parts set in Dixing have been some of the weakest. Husband has occasionally been asking me "so did this happen in the book?" and I'm usually like "no, not really" or sometimes "that character doesn't even exist in the book" but here I got to be like "actually, something almost like this scene did happen in the book, and you'll never guess why!" (he guessed).

I watched the first episode of How Dare You and I really want to keep going, but that will probably have to wait till the kids are back in school. I hear it (...unlike Guardian) is very faithful to the novel, and there are some scenes & characters I'm really looking forward to seeing on screen. It's billed as a comedy and starts out as a comedy but uh. That is a clever ruse, to lure you to your doom (the author did this with You Yao, too).

I haven't been reading much, except I read ahead in The Dragon With a Chocolate Heart which was fun. I probably would've reread that book so many times had it existed when I was in middle school. And now I'm better prepped for a dramatic read-aloud. I will probably get back to Record of the Missing Sect Master next.

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personal website-ing

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 04:28:02 GMT

Today I poked around a bit and updated my fanbinding website, which I had hastily cloned from my fanbinding+fic website last summer, after realizing that there were several people who I would like to share my books with but not my fic. I ended up deciding that it made more sense to just work on the bookbinding part of the website so that's the version I've updated now. It now has pictures of nearly all my completed books, although most of them still click through to my writeups on tumblr, I'm working on making individual pages for them on neocities too (a few have them but they're not in order). And I started putting together a list of resources, didn't get super far there yet. Eventually I'm hoping to write up some tutorials of my own (for things like the bamboo strip spine binding).

I tried out the Villainous Imposer Program, which is a different imposer than I usually use, because it has a really neat feature that the other doesn't, which is using only a selection of pages from the original pdf. Today I wanted to print a single chapter of chess puzzles from an enormous book to make into a pamphlet (because my second grader is suddenly very into chess) and it worked perfectly!

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binderary adventures

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 22:13:37 GMT

February is Renegade Bindery's "encourage everyone to make a lot of books and learn new things" month and while I'm not going as all-out as some people, and haven't managed to watch any of the presentations yet, I am doing a bit more bookbinding work than I have in the past few months!

The main project I'm working on is for Fandom Trumps Hate from last year, and I will admit I procrastinated on it because I was honestly intimidated with how much my recipient donated. But I'm now at a point where I think I can safely say I'll finish in the next day or two!

I also finished up my own copy of How Dare You?! being prompted by the drama's release (I bound it for last year's Cnovel bookbinding exchange, and my own copy has been sitting half finished since the summer). I've typeset two small books since the start of the month--first, the script for the War of the Worlds audiodrama, and second, a short Guardian fic that I read and immediately went "this needs to be a tiny book!" I have been neglecting working on my dad's late Christmas present, which honestly also doesn't need a lot more work, but what it does need is maps and I'm putting that off (it's a binding of my great great grandfather's civil war diary). Another project I'll probably finish up soon is Mo Du, which someone else typeset for last year's exchange, so I've printed and sewn their typeset but haven't made the covers yet. There are a lot of good typesets from past cnovel exchanges, some other I want to bind are Guardian, Lord Seventh, Kaleidoscope of Death, and Purely By Accident.

(...yes. Bookbinding is very much an "eyes bigger than stomach" hobby. I have a few fanfics typeset and ready to print/bind, too).

Recently read and would recommend: I, Your Emperor, Have Been Wronged! and I will put the same promo I wrote up on tumblr under the cut

( Read more... )

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3d printing! and other life stuff

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 17:55:50 GMT

The fun development at our house recently is that we got a 3d printer for Christmas! We had been thinking of getting the kids a Nintendo Switch because there are a few games they've been interested in that aren't available for PC but Jeff and I were not ... excited ... about the prospect of litigating turn-taking between three kids and one device. At pretty much the last minute I was thinking about how eldest really likes playing with the 3d printed dragons her friend made her and idly wondered how much printers go for these days and lo and behold, there are models that cost less than a nintendo switch! So we pivoted to that plan and it's been great. So many articulated dragons. Jeff's been printing minis to play some combat games with the kids and I've been printing some bookbinding tools too. Along with various just, helpful gadgets! I have a lamp with a switch that's really hard to turn in a circle so I designed a cap for it that sticks out wider on the sides and it just snapped right on and works great! I'm still figuring out various 3d modeling software, I've tried OpenSCAD, Autocad Fusion, and TinkerCad (I'm also learning Blender against my will because Eldest is interested in some more artistic sculpting and it's a tricky program for a 9yo to figure out on her own). Not sure which I like best yet but I am having a lot of fun.

A couple of weeks ago we got a massive amount of snow and it hasn't really gotten above freezing since, so we still have a massive amount of snow. The kids got two whole snow days out of it and they're using "by the time the snow melts" as a timeline for their current computer gaming goal (getting into space in Factorio). I am enjoying the snow a little less (my boots have holes. Any recs for not-too-expensive snow boots for wide feet?)

I mentioned before that I had picked up the Guardian drama again, well, I convinced Jeff to watch it with me (apparently "it's a bit cheesy and kind of reminds me of early seasons of BTVS" was a convincing rec) so we re-started from the beginning. Forgot to mention it was based on a danmei but he figured that out for himself at episode 8. We're now up to episode 12 which is *almost* where I left off.

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Books in 2025

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 02:21:26 GMT

I didn't keep good track of what I read in 2025, so I might be missing some things here.

23 books, about a 50/50 split between cnovels and non-cnovels
Enjoyed most of them! Looking over my list, there were two that I finished but should have dropped: Evil Weapon's Self-Cultivation (Cyan Wings' so-far only miss for me, it was way too much 'watch this guy be awesome at the expense of everyone else') and Daughter of the Moon Goddess (I think I was not the right audience for this book).
The winners of the cnovel bracket: Guardian and How Dare You, they're completely different but both of them grabbed me and didn't want to let me go.
Winners of the non-cnovels: Spiderlight (Adrian Tchaikovsky) and HMS Surprise (Patrick O'Brian) series. I did not start the Aubrey/Maturin series this year and still don't intend to read them all at once but I'm definitely going to continue, and I'm going to read more by Adrian Tchaikovsky as well.

I don't really feel a need to read any more than I've been reading, but looking ahead to 2026, I do want to keep better track of my reading. I picked out a notebook for this purpose and have jotted down a few reactions to what I'm reading now (Record of the Missing Sect Master).

As for books I bound in 2025, my favorites are the couple of bamboo-strip-spine sets I made: The Imperial Uncle and Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know. The first was done as an experiment and I liked the result enough to do it again!

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Recent things

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 19:07:18 GMT

Evil Weapon's Self-Cultivation, Bees in Space, and more!

( Read more... )

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Binderary

Fri, 07 Mar 2025 22:42:16 GMT

Binderary is February's bookbinding-intensive month, run by Renegade Bindery on discord. There are workshops and some people attempt to bind a frankly unhinged number of books.

I bound six during the month, which is a pretty nice increase over my usual pacing! All but one were nonstandard bindings, with less total amount of work, but they were experimental techniques so I think it evens out!

( The books )

Speaking of bookbinding, I'm also offering a bound fanfic for the Fandom Trumps Hate crafts bazaar! The bidding has gotten intimidatingly high (this is a good thing! but I'm gonna be under so much pressure) but it's open till the 10th!

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Books Read 2024

Fri, 10 Jan 2025 03:29:25 GMT

I didn't keep a complete list of everything I read in 2024, but here's a partial list and a probably short comment about the ones I remember.

If Found Return to Hell

A fun premise that was kind of an awkward length. I think maybe it should've been either a short story or a full novel; the novella length had me going "wait, how'd we get to 'found family' this quick?" But if you enjoy bodysharing via demon princes who just want normal lives: yep.

Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know

Another by Cyan Wings, so I expected to enjoy it and indeed I did. I was more into the characters and themes than the story itself--had a little bit of a "when's it going to get exciting?" [get to the end] "ah, it was the friends we made all along" moment with this one I guess? But yeah it was good!

We Live in Nanjing

This was one of the novels that probably should have been nominated for a Hugo award but wasn't because [racist worldcon fuckery]. I read it via mtl, only intending to check out the beginning, but got intrigued enough to keep going, and I would love to read it properly translated.

Happy Doomsday

It's presented as "scientist wakes up in post-apocalyptic dystopia" and gradually you realize just how much of a dystopia the world he left behind was, too (a lot of the dystopian stuff has to do with ableism, just as a warning). Artificial intelligence! Enemies to enemies-with-benefits! (they get to lovers eventually). Blood drinking! (for the healing factor that's the only reason nothing else going on here).

C Language Cultivation

It's unfortunate that "programmer trying to get his AI startup off the ground" has become a completely unappealing character trait due to no fault of the author but I beg you to look past that. At first I thought the romance was 'meh, character type I'm just not into' and I was mainly here for the modern-day cultivation aspects, but then! The romance became a terrifying rollercoaster that had me actually in tears (happy ending tears).

the Last Binding trilogy

A fun series, but I think it either needed to be more about the Threat to the Very Nature of English Magic, or less about it. Where it ended up felt a little bit "okay, and?"

Mist

I like wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stories, so I expected to like this one more than I actually did. The main couple was not for me.

Master and Commander

I've seen the movie and that did not in any way prepare me for how slice-of-life (positive) this would be. Really enjoyed it, planning to come back for more. If you read this having mostly read danmei for the past year-plus you will just assume it's setting up Aubrey/Maturin as canon.

The Smiling, Proud Wanderer

I know where so many tropes come from now.

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Recent things

Fri, 06 Dec 2024 20:29:51 GMT

1. I finished a couple of bookbinding projects! "The Other Mountain" by nirejseki, which was a commission (but a fic I loved regardless), and then I used some of the leftover materials from that and from an older project to make a tiny binding of my own fic "The Disappearance of Madam Wen." (links go to my tumblr for pics of the bindings, and the tumblr posts link to the fics)

2. I've been reading The Smiling, Proud Wanderer and I'm about halfway through! It's the first Jin Yong novel I've read and part of why I picked this over Condor Heroes was everything I'd heard about the baffling name translation choices there. The Smiling, Proud Wanderer is a fan translation so I thought that might be safer but, guess what... It's not super prevalent, and at first it seemed to be based on whether it was important to know the meaning of a name--like, I get that it's important to know that some guy's out there calling himself Invincible! Could've gone in a footnote, but I get it. I do not get why they've translated the name Blue Phoenix.

The other reason I picked up this novel was some comments a while back in cnovels about how WWX had reminded some people of Linghu Chong, and I can see where that's coming from! Not identical characters, but there is a resemblance to be sure (and didn't Xiao Zhan play him in a video game ad once? I should track that down).

3. Of course I've decided to pick up a knitting project after it got cold, rather than ahead of time. But I can probably finish before spring! I'm making a balaclava/ski mask to wear while biking, and since I need to wear it under a bike helmet that ruled out any quick knits with chunky yarn. I opted for this pattern but I'm planning to swap out the colorwork for something different--yes I know the intended use case makes the colorwork hardly relevant but I'll be bored if there's nothing going on at all.

4. More bookbinding plans -- I think for most of my projects going forward, at least the ones where I do the typesetting myself, I want to work on binding novel translations rather than fanfic. I'm in the middle of binding Evil As Humans as a series of 80s-style paperbacks, which were begun as part of an exchange but I was only able to get some of the volumes finished for that and I'm still finishing them up. I've also got most of the design done for a Tai Sui binding (inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement, for Reasons), but I'm not sure if I'll dive into that project next or if I'll do something shorter first.

5. Halloween was fun! The kids dressed up as Team Rocket, with the older two as Jessie and James and the youngest as Meowth. Easier costumes than some years, Jessie and James didn't need anything sewn from scratch except for Jessie's skirt. I used Simplicity 9842 for Meowth and compared to animal costumes I've made in the past, this one seems like it was actually designed with the materials in mind -- elastic casings made with applied bias tape instead of directly from the same fake fur as the rest of the costume, for example. In the process of Halloween sewing, I fixed a couple of minor annoyances with my sewing machine, and then mended some pants (frayed/holes in the inner thighs) too. It's nice to be able to say no, I don't need to buy new pants, I can still wear these! (I hate shopping for pants in particular).

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I live!

Thu, 19 Sep 2024 22:57:35 GMT

It's been a while since I've posted here! I'm getting to be more active on the site as a while with the cnovels community, so I figured maybe I should actually make a post once in a while.

What have I been doing recently?

Bookbinding: I participated in a cnovel bookbinding exchange, where participants made hand-bound copies of novels. Wanting a copy of MDZS that I could hold in my hands was what inspired me to learn bookbinding in the first place, but I set that project on the back burner once it was licensed (although I have made personal copies of a couple of other translations). For this one, I bound the first four arcs of Evil As Humans in the style of 1980s horror paperbacks, which was a fun design prompt that got me to brush off my neglected drawing/painting skills as well as learn a new binding style.

Games: I started playing Flight Rising (because my daughter started playing it) and re-started playing Pokemon GO (because all the kids are very into Pokemon right now). I'd be happy to friend people in either game!

Shows: husband and I were watching Nirvana in Fire, but we've stopped after one of the episodes near the end was pretty triggering for him re. chronic illness stuff. I've read the book so I don't feel like I've been left hanging, but I'd like to get back to it and finish eventually (husband wants to, too, but he's not ready yet).

Reading: aside from what I've mentioned in the cnovels comm, I recently read the Last Binding trilogy by Freya Marske, which did a lot of things I enjoyed but ultimately kind of let me down, I think mostly because it was more interested in the ships and I was more interested in the big magic worldbuilding. The magic stuff culminated in (highlight for spoilers)*the whole of England's magic system being rewritten to change from hereditary bloodline magic, to something theoretically accessible to everyone--something I have been hoping to see since my HP fandom days--and yet it felt almost like an afterthought.*

4yo is in preschool five days a week this year and I've been trying to put some more time into the wfh data training site I've been doing work for, but there hasn't been a lot of work available lately. I picked up another bookbinding commission which, if you go by hourly rate, is a worse deal, but otoh, it is going to be beautiful.

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Bookbinding Roundup

Sat, 11 May 2024 17:01:41 GMT

It's been a while since I posted any bookbinding photos here! I keep feeling like I'm not getting as many projects done as I'd like, but looking back, I've made a pretty decent number this past year. I'm not going to post full writeups or full photosets here, but brief descriptions + one photo each under the cut, and links to their tumblr posts if you'd like to read more details.

( Read more... )

For my birthday I got a folding light tent for taking book photos -- I used it on the most recent book. It's a little smaller than I expected so I may eventually take the LED ring from it and build into a larger box. For now, with a little photoshop around the edges it's fine.

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Novel Rec: "Evil As Humans" by Nian Zhong

Tue, 19 Dec 2023 02:32:52 GMT

I recently finished reading the novel “Evil As Humans” by Nian Zhong and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve been posting some comments on fedi and tumblr as I read, and I want to build off those to make a longer rec post here.

The premise is that Yin Ren, some sort of eldritch being (the novel never actually uses the word “eldritch” but it’s definitely appropriate) has been freed from his thousand-years seal. He would very much like to just blend into the human world, go unnoticed, and have a chance to relax. But instead, he gets roped into the local paranormal agency, along with Zhong Chengshuo, one of the first people he met after re-entering the human world (and they were roommates). But hey, he’s good at this stuff and the agency has a great cafeteria, so as long as he can keep up his human guise, maybe it won’t be so bad.

The novel follows a case of the week format, with everything building up towards an overarching plot. And while it’s labeled horror, and definitely is horror in terms of the amount of gore and body horror going on, jjwxc will of course tell you straight off the bat that there’s a happy ending for the main couple, and I will tell you that the overall conclusion is satisfying for nearly everyone involved. So it doesn’t really feel quite like horror in that sense (actually, it reminded me a lot of the things I loved about BtVS—an adventure with a lot of horror flavor). It’s also really funny! The humor is more concentrated towards the front half, and mostly goes away as it gets more plotty, but it still shows up here and there.

( Cut for length )

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Vorkosigan & Vectors

Fri, 10 Nov 2023 17:04:27 GMT

Because of a bookbinding project, I read Vorkosigan saga fanfic for the first time (I liked the books but never sought out the fandom) and then roped myself into a partial series reread. I'm having fun but boy does Barrayar hit differently after experiencing both pregnancy and pregnancy loss.

Relatedly I have learned to warp text and I figured out probably not the most efficient way of outlining a block of text (rather than outlining individual letters), but a way of doing it, at least. I had to get the free trial of Affinity Designer 2 to do warped text, but I'm going to see if Inkscape can do it. I don't do enough vector drawing to need a program I have to pay for (and I don't see myself making that many Baen Books style title pages, either).

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fountain pen day

Sat, 04 Nov 2023 03:04:34 GMT

Text reads,

It's fountain pen day, so I'm finally remembering to follow momijizukamori's lead and make a pen post.

Pen: Moonman M2 with vintage 14k nib
Ink: blue ink from Studio KAZE (not part of their MDZS series)

This pen holds so much ink! Sometimes I avoid using it because I can't swap colors as often as I'd like. I suppose I could just not fill it all the way.

I think this nib is not a perfect fit for the pen, but it works fine, doesn't leak or anything, and it has just a bit of flex, which is fun sometimes.

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Qi Ye so far

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 17:18:31 GMT

I'm slowly working my way through Qi Ye by Priest, although I'm not super far along yet. Pretty much all I knew for a long time was "it has some of the same characters as TYK" or possibly even "it's a prequel to TYK" and "people who only watched WOH don't know about Literal Toddler Murderer Zhou Zishu" and well, I bounced off of Word of Honor, and child death is one of my major nopes, so I had this filed away as not interested for a while. But then I learned a bit more about the actual plot of this novel, and saw it recced with a "if you want political intrigue" note (I did; I'd just finished A Memory Called Empire and thoroughly enjoyed it after bouncing off some Hunt For Red October fic that smoothed out the politics too much) and so, after asking for some clarification about the child death thing, I picked it up.

The premise is it's a time travel fix-it, but with a twist: the main character, Jing Beiyuan, experienced not just one life that went badly, but the following five reincarnations as well, reincarnating alongside the same person each time. Instead of jumping at the chance to make things right between them (as you'd expect in a time travel fix it fic) he's...well he's not quite at "man, fuck this guy" but more "I don't have any feelings for you whatsoever." However, he still needs to make sure he ends up on the throne, that's just good sense...and meanwhile there's this new guy who wasn't there in his first life.

Things I like so far: the twist on the genre. The fact that Jing Beiyuan doesn't even try to act like a realistic child. And I just like him a lot in general.
Things I like less: it feels a bit slow paced so far, and I think that's contributing to my own slow pace reading. I'm also kinda sideeyeing Priest's fantasy foreign culture because this is three for three of her books I've read where she's had a culture with a "noble savage" feel to it and while the characters themselves are fine the vibes are. Yeah.

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so many projects...

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 18:16:17 GMT

'tis the season of biting off more than I can chew, apparently. The first, and most time sensitive, is Halloween costumes for the kids Every year I think "maybe next year we'll just buy costumes" and this year 5yo even wanted to dress as something readily available to buy. But I took at all the little kid batman costumes, costumer brain kicked in, and I went "I can do better than that!"

I also (against my better judgement) signed up for the Renegade Bindery exchange again, because of some sort of fomo and also I went "actually I have several books where I have design ideas for the case but no inspiration for the typesetting" so I requested those for that exchange... and this isn't really going to be too much work it's just if I do it next year I'm gonna just limit my matchups to MDZS only (or whatever I'm into then). Aaand I also picked up a commission, mostly as a "let's just see if I could do this regularly" test, and I think maybe the answer is no, but it's a fun project.

Idk though... "once I finish these things I can make the things I really want to make" isn't the best project space to be in and I keep ending up there.

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book report

Sun, 13 Aug 2023 13:48:38 GMT

I ended up giving up on Lie Huo Jiao Chou (Drowning Sorrows in Raging Fire, by priest). I think a lot of it had to do with the translation quality but ehh... not all of it. It just felt--disjointed? Stuff kept happening, but not the stuff that I cared about, nor the stuff that felt important? Something just wasn't clicking. And to be completely honest the main couple was not doing it for me. Well. Actually their backstory was *excellent* but then--anyway it was frustrating, I wanted to care about the characters and the book a lot more than I actually did. If the other translation (that stopped around ch70) ever picks it up again (or if it turns out they stopped because they're working on the official, or something) then I miiight pick it up again but until then, probably not. It's annoying because this is the second priest novel I read and Tai Sui was so good and I think I just kept--expecting there to be more here than there was. Anyway, I was going to read SPL next, but I decided to take a break and read some other stuff first.

I figured out how to, uh, copy library ebooks, so now there's no due date guilt hanging over me! I browsed their currently available sff and read "Light from Uncommon Stars" by Ryka Aoki, which was engaging and enjoyable, although it felt like it was trying very hard to be Popular on Tumblr in that like, hopepunk way, which could get a little too much at times. The story centers around Katrina, a young violinist who has run away from her transphobic family, and the teacher who takes her in--who has made a deal with hell to offer up the souls of seven students in exchange for her own freedom, and Katrina is the seventh. There are also aliens.

After that I picked back up a different cnovel that I had put down for a while, Mr Melancholy Wants to Live a Peaceful Life, which is a double secret identity story where one half of the married couple is secretly a transmigrator who has defeated thousands of worlds, stolen power from the System, and just wants to have a quiet retirement, and the other half of the couple works for a secret organization that keeps transmigrators from wreaking havoc on their world. There were a lot of things I liked here, and several things I didn't like. Mostly, the one-sided reveal--where one knew the other's identity, but the other didn't know his--lasted way too long. And I honestly wasn't really enjoying the main couple's dynamics, although that greatly improved once they both knew each others' identities (I really really don't like jealousy plots, and there was some of that there). But I did really enjoy the plot (the System, transmigrators, saving not just one but several worlds). There were no female characters. Zero. None at all. Which was strange because I think Cyan Wings can write female characters just fine? idk, it was weird. The first two extras were also weird and fatphobic and added nothing. I realize I'm not doing very much to sell this book but I do want to say that the parts I liked, I liked a lot.

Anyway, now I have promised my sister I will read at least one Dorothy Sayers.

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Tue, 11 Jul 2023 04:02:37 GMT

- I got my bike tuned up and bought a trailer for it on craigslist--next year I can take Youngest to preschool biking instead of walking with a stroller! I'd have done this earlier if I realized it's not really any harder to tow two kids than one, but at any rate, it's never too late to start. I did however make the unfortunate (or maybe fortunate?) discovery that while biking is, yes, faster than walking, it also uses muscles whose existence I haven't acknowledged in several years. Probably worth it.

- I'm typsetting You Yao / Are You OK? for my next bookbinding project and I have reached the point where I have to decide if I want to stop at the main story, or include mtl extras. At this point I want to at least figure out what the extras are about so I'll probably end up including them? But I'll be annoyed at them the whole time.

I've also reached the point in the design process where I'm truly excited about what the physical book will be like once I finalize the typeset and print. My initial design self-prompt was "play with anachronisms" and from there I went "what if some variation of a stab binding?" but I quickly concluded two things: a) while You Yao is short for a cnovel, it is far too long for a stab binding and b) any pseudo/mock stab binding isn't going to look like "playing with a concept" it's just going to look like a cop-out. So, if I want a stab binding, split it up into multiple volumes, and do it for real.

But at that point it's just a straight historic style. What then?

Splitting into multiple volumes is simple, You Yao is 10 interconnected short stories, 2 per book is a good length. Then I thought, make it reversible! Two stories that start at either end and meet in the middle. I don't know if it's quite "anachronism" but it's fun and feels in line with the story.

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media: Are You OK (You Yao)

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 21:23:30 GMT

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.

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Ficbinding: Cut Him Out in Little Stars

Sun, 02 Jul 2023 19:05:39 GMT

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

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!

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Sat, 01 Jul 2023 12:31:33 GMT

- 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.

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something fun

Wed, 21 Jun 2023 20:01:53 GMT

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.

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better things

Sun, 18 Jun 2023 22:42:13 GMT

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.

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