gotta be honest I just fundamentally don't get the concept of hatewatching. like sure I've put a dumb movie on during a get together with friends to get silly entertainment out of it. but whenever another disney live action remake or harry potter thing or whatever comes out and I have to see posts on my dash being like "boycott it! if you REALLY have to see how bad it is at least pirate it!!" I'm always like. bitch you live like this? you watch movies you know you'll hate? you take time out of your day - and you have a limited number of days on this earth - to watch a movie you'll hate, when there are so many great movies in the world that you could love? I'll never understand it.
circle of sleep <3
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.
Can I Please Eat In The Computer Room Tonight? by Nicole Nikolich (2025)
"Hearts not parts!" > everyone else only cares about their partner's genitals, making me more virtuous
"Pansexual means I'm attracted to trans people too!" > no one else could ever love a trans person because they're a special Other category that you need to include instead of just being men and women
"I'm more comfortable with the term pansexual." > I don't give a shit about the history of the term pansexual and I am actively trying to erase bisexual history. I spout transphobic and biphobic bigotry disguised as "wokeness" and I don't even realize it, or if I do, I simply don't care. I value the warm, fuzzy feeling I get more than the history and goals of LGBT people and what they have fought for decades to accomplish.
"I don't see gender." > I am making an effort to ignore something that is pretty integral to a person's identity.
"I need to get to know someone before I have sex with them." > I think I am Unique and Special. I am more pure than those filthy, sex crazed bisexuals who will sleep with anyone. I am incapable of comprehending that most normal people desire emotional connection to a person they're sleeping with.
"I identify as pansexual." > I am no different from someone who is bisexual, except that I'm more special because my internalized biphobia makes me think bisexuals are icky.
"Let people identify however they want!" > I have not thought critically about the impact of this because I don't care about anything beyond my immediate surroundings.
"It's not hurting anyone." > I have likely read many accounts from people who have been hurt by my label, but I am choosing to ignore that because thinking critically about it makes me uncomfortable.
"Pan means all and bi means two." > I'm not clever enough to realize that there are only two kinds of attraction: homo (same as me) and hetero (different than me). I am also actively ignoring the meaning of the purple stripe on the bisexual flag.
while being depressing, this is also sort of fascinating to me bc there’s something so…inauthentic here. what i mean is that if you saw something like this back in say 2001 (which you probably wouldn’t, at least for carl’s jr. but i digress) it would seem tacky but in a “sex sells” sort of way.
seeing this in 2025, it’s clearly purely a political statement and you can tell partially bc the image itself is so oddly sexless. it’s like there’s more titillation in the prospect of “owning the libs” than in the image of the scantily clad blonde white woman itself.
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