ehyde

- 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.

I keep forgetting that this site exists, so here's a bit of an update of what's been going on the past month or so.

I posted the zombie!Jin Zixuan fic! I tagged it "not quite a fix-it" because it's not exactly a happy ending, but still, a few more people are alive than in canon (Jiang Yanli and Wen Qing, specifically). It's interesting what people latch onto, though--I gave Mo Xuanyu a very minor appearance in the coda, and he does not get a happier ending, and so many of the comments were people feeling sad for him, specifically.

And I told myself that after finishing that fic, it was time to set writing aside until my cosplay was finished, but it's hard to turn off one's writer-brain. Last year in akayona fandom, clockworkspider introduced me to the concept of Hanahaki disease with this Suwon&Hak fic. I didn't really get into the trope at the time because while I find the aesthetics and body horror aspect super appealing, the sort of angsty romance that it usually inspires is less my thing. However, it was brought to the forefront of my imagination again, and I played around with it a bit with some mdzs ideas (I altered the rules a bit, but it's not like it's a real illness, after all).

1. Supposing that a) falling out of love does not cure the disease and b) the surgery to remove the flowers takes away not only your memories of the person, but also your ability to feel any strong emotions toward them -- Nie Huaisang fell for Jin Guangyao before Nie Mingjue died, and is left coughing flowers for him even after learning that Jin Guangyao murdered his brother. He dare not have them removed before his revenge is complete, but cutting them out after it's over will mean that everthing that gave his life meaning for the last ten years is gone. 
2. Besides hope the other person loves you back and cutting the flowers out, there's a third option--cut them out without killing them and transplant them to a new host. As long as the plant doesn't die, your feelings won't either--and they'll be duplicated in the new host. Wen Ruohan uses this as a form of torture--enemies have died in agony all the while desperately in love with him. He also, as in the case of Meng Yao, has been known to use it as a test of loyalty.

In the midst of these somewhat darker ideas the only thing I was able to actually write was fluff, so here's a little short of toddler A-Yuan playing with a funny paper doll he found (aka WWX testing out the paperman spell).

As far as cosplay goes, it's progressing slowly. I'm making Wen Qing's outfit in a slightly-more-historically-accurate design simply because that means more straight seams, but baby has been waking up a lot at night and I'm lucky to be able to sew more than one or two seams a day. Still, I'm not giving up on it yet!