You Ever Think About The Intricacies Of Smoke & Stack's Dynamic And Go Fucking Crazy?

LOONA ♡ ‘ FLIP THAT ’ MV

Fanbinding(ish): Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir

Leather on bookboard, with hot foil stamping on the spine. The endpapers are a Japanese wave design, partially as a reference to Canaan House being on the water, and is also a reference to the fact that this book was a birthday present for @eebeesee, who is a giant weeb. (Fun fact: I bought that paper in 2012 and have been waiting uh, 11 years, to find the perfect project for it.)

Process under the cut.

Remember two months ago when I said I wasn't wild about doing another paperback-to-hardback conversion? Well. More fool me. (I did try and find a sewn hardback to take apart, but apparently this book was not sold as a sturdy hardback. Cue rant.)

I've tried debossing with leather before, so obviously, for embossing, I decided I'd just pick the most complicated design possible. I had to modify the skull a bit--taking out the IX, which did NOT cut well, and I had to make the lines around the glasses thicker.

After several hours of cricut cutting and experimentation, here is the cover pre-leather. (I also had to floss the skull's teeth with an awl to get some fuzz out, which I found very funny.)

Then, leather:

As you can see, I lose a lot of details in the teeth there, so I went around the edges with a heated brass stylus.

I bought a special skull stamp for the spine: it definitely wasn't made for heat, because while it did serve the purpose, it also came with a metal handle which made handling it awkward. (Oven mitts did not give me the necessary amount of dexterity. I ended up sort of wrapping a paper towel around the handle. My cousin has since informed me that we do own fire resistant gloves, but I did not remember this at the time.)

The stamp was also a pain to get even: it had to be at juuuuust the right temperature and pressure, or you'd either get too much or too little, as shown. It was also pretty picky about foil, but the brass color matched the endband cloth and insides best anyway, so that worked out. (White was a definite no.)

The other fun bit of this was doing the edges: I did them with black foil, but as we established in my earlier foiling experiments, that's not the most reliable. I think I got the best results so far on the top, but kept getting flakes on the others. I ended up painting the outside edge with ink, and then foiling on top of that. The bleed onto the pages ended up looking pretty neat, but since I hadn't done it on the top, I didn't do it on the bottom so that it wouldn't look weird on the inside. I'm not sure the foil added as much gloss as I was hoping for so next time I might just do the ink.

It did mean that I had to separate all the pages twice; I ended up bringing this to my girlfriend's haircut appointment and working on it in the corner. I hope it was the most strangely specific thing the stylist had seen someone doing when they tagged along.

did i do it? did i do the meme right?

LOONA ♡

go ahead atheists... would you hit him out of the park for a million dollars?

how life feels after a salad and 64 oz of water

The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch, 1490 - 1500

Feel My Rhythm MV, Red Velvet, 2022

I feel like SAWTOWNE’s “Confessions of a Rotten Girl” is so good partially because of how it makes even people who may dislike fujoshis sympathize with Miku, and it’s interesting that it’s not actually done by painting her as “one of the good ones”. Everything that’s despised about fujoshi culture, Miku explicitly is portrayed as doing.

Disliking female characters on the basis of them “getting in the way” (and being quite misogynistic about it to boot), sexualizing and shipping men in real life (the men portrayed in the song are her teachers), and even the yaoi paddle known for being used to sexually harass cosplayers…

… all these aspects are there. Hell, one of the most disliked part about fujoshi culture from a social justice standpoint — the language of describing queer relationships as “sinful” — is the whole basis behind the song.

However, SAWTOWNE, instead of lessening that toxic trait, “yes, and”s it. “Yes, she calls queer relationships sinful, as a (presumably) heterosexual woman who finds their relationship gratifying. AND, the reason she does that is because she is a sexually repressed Christian who feels guilty about having any sexual desire whatsoever.”

I think that one (very clever!) addendum makes it so any discomforting aspects to the song takes a backseat. Instead of being a song about trying to resist an interest in yaoi / The Gays specifically, it more so becomes a song about trying to resist any “abnormal” sexual desires, which makes it very easy to like this version of Miku, even as someone who very much dislikes the aspects of fujoshi culture she represents.

Plus we need more gooner girl rep anyway, lol. (As a comment on the video said: close enough! Welcome back Plus Boy!)

I think a fundamental difference between book Dracula and Nosferatu is how the protagonists work as a collective. In Dracula, they are the Scooby Gang (trusting, collaborative, polyamorous). In Nosferatu, they are the teens from an 80s slasher (suspicious, deceitful, jealous). The count can be defeated, but only the power of friendship can save Mina.

Let’s go on vacation to eat a ton of good food and have hot hotel sex