chubsonthemoon

[chubsonthemoon]

waaaaah replying here as well--I'm so glad you like it!! 🥺 I'm ngl binding fic/comics for them feels a little more cosmic than for other ships, there's just something so fated about them...truly tied together in every sense ❣️

made a quick little home-printed zine of @evercelle's mage!viktor comic that I haven't been able to get out of my mind ever since I saw it :'D

saddle stitch binding with red gutermann silk thread. printed with my Epson EcoTank on matte presentation photo paper. cover is marbled paper I had in stash!

[chubsonthemoon]

Chapter 5: WINTER

“Jayce?” he says when he sees him, shivering and pale and so, so afraid. “Jayce, what’s wrong?” He touches his forehead and finds it burning; Jayce jerks away, his eyes pinched shut, a whimper escaping him. For the first time since they arrived, Viktor feels fear.

my favorite thing ever: whump! (and the subsequent tender caretaking <3)

Read on ao3!

Chapters: 2/7 Fandom: Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Jayce/Viktor (League of Legends) Characters: Jayce (League of Legends), Viktor (League of Legends) Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Jayce and Viktor Live (League of Legends), Hurt/Comfort, Codependency, Suicidal Thoughts, Introspection, Demisexual Viktor (League of Legends), Trans Viktor (League of Legends), Trans Jayce (League of Legends), T4T | Trans for Trans Jayce/Viktor (League of Legends), Jayce Cries During Sex (League of Legends), Top Viktor (League of Legends), Bottom Jayce (League of Legends), Sub Top Jayce (League of Legends), Angst, Sickfic, POV Alternating, their cottage but it’s by the sea instead of a stream, Conversations, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Tenderness, also it’s not super relevant to the plot but jayce is filipino! because i say so heh, Mutual Pining Summary:

It’s perfect, their terminal velocity. What they’re hurtling towards, and what they’re running from, Jayce can’t say.

All he knows is: when they hit the ground, it will hurt.

Jayce and Viktor, through the seasons, by the sea.

post-canon jayvik by the ocean my beloved! spotify playlist here <3

[chubsonthemoon]

made a quick little home-printed zine of @evercelle's mage!viktor comic that I haven't been able to get out of my mind ever since I saw it :'D

saddle stitch binding with red gutermann silk thread. printed with my Epson EcoTank on matte presentation photo paper. cover is marbled paper I had in stash!

[chubsonthemoon]

Chapter 4: FALL

“You didn’t deserve what I did to you,” Jayce says, following Viktor’s line of thought and once again arriving at a different conclusion. “I broke my promise. I—” His voice breaks. “I shot you right through your chest.” “And I told you to do it, because it needed to be done,” Viktor says, waving a hand. “Jayce, we could go in these circles forever—what is it you want me to say? Do you want my forgiveness? You have it.” He puts his hand on the table between them, open. “You had it the moment we met, for anything. For everything.”

it's viktor's turn to get put under the microscope! *slaps his flat butt* this baby can fit so many self-worth issues in him 🤠

Read on ao3!

Chapters: 2/7 Fandom: Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Jayce/Viktor (League of Legends) Characters: Jayce (League of Legends), Viktor (League of Legends) Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Jayce and Viktor Live (League of Legends), Hurt/Comfort, Codependency, Suicidal Thoughts, Introspection, Demisexual Viktor (League of Legends), Trans Viktor (League of Legends), Trans Jayce (League of Legends), T4T | Trans for Trans Jayce/Viktor (League of Legends), Jayce Cries During Sex (League of Legends), Top Viktor (League of Legends), Bottom Jayce (League of Legends), Sub Top Jayce (League of Legends), Angst, Sickfic, POV Alternating, their cottage but it’s by the sea instead of a stream, Conversations, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Tenderness, also it’s not super relevant to the plot but jayce is filipino! because i say so heh, Mutual Pining Summary:

It’s perfect, their terminal velocity. What they’re hurtling towards, and what they’re running from, Jayce can’t say.

All he knows is: when they hit the ground, it will hurt.

Jayce and Viktor, through the seasons, by the sea.

post-canon jayvik by the ocean my beloved! spotify playlist here <3

[chubsonthemoon]

AHHHHH OH MY I had no idea y'all were married!!! What a lovely surprise for me as well, oh gosh this has made my entire week 🥹 I'm so so happy you like it--thank you so much for the kind words, and for sharing your story! I can't wait for y'all to hold it in your hands❣️

Last @fandomtrumpshate book is done! This is Solar Flare, by @heliopauseentertainments. Made as a gift for pretzelbaron's generous donation to the Transgender Education Network of Texas <3

Crafty details! pretzelbaron requested reds/yellows/oranges and a marbled endpaper, and I said "I have JUST the paper in my stash," heh :3 They also described one of the themes of the fic as "dazzling light set against the darkness," which was so evocative I just had to incorporate it into the design of the title page!

Bookcloth is Brillianta in the color black. Title is Siser iron-on HTV. Endbands are double-core French endbands in Trebizond silk thread (I always follow @no-name-publishing's tutorial for these. Thank you Kam I owe you my life). Sun inset is a really gorgeous textured paper I bought in 2021 with members of @renegadeguild <3

This was also my first time trying this style of bradel bind! I really enjoyed it and found it much simpler than the three-piece bradel bind, haha. As always I owe my life to Mr. DAS Bookbinding on YouTube for the wonderful tutorial.

A million thanks to pretzelbaron again for their generous donation! I can't wait for you to receive your book :D

[chubsonthemoon]

Last @fandomtrumpshate book is done! This is Solar Flare, by @heliopauseentertainments. Made as a gift for pretzelbaron's generous donation to the Transgender Education Network of Texas <3

Crafty details! pretzelbaron requested reds/yellows/oranges and a marbled endpaper, and I said "I have JUST the paper in my stash," heh :3 They also described one of the themes of the fic as "dazzling light set against the darkness," which was so evocative I just had to incorporate it into the design of the title page!

Bookcloth is Brillianta in the color black. Title is Siser iron-on HTV. Endbands are double-core French endbands in Trebizond silk thread (I always follow @no-name-publishing's tutorial for these. Thank you Kam I owe you my life). Sun inset is a really gorgeous textured paper I bought in 2021 with members of @renegadeguild <3

This was also my first time trying this style of bradel bind! I really enjoyed it and found it much simpler than the three-piece bradel bind, haha. As always I owe my life to Mr. DAS Bookbinding on YouTube for the wonderful tutorial.

A million thanks to pretzelbaron again for their generous donation! I can't wait for you to receive your book :D

[chubsonthemoon]

Chapter 3: SUMMER

“It didn’t seem important in the beginning,” Jayce says, by way of explanation. “That we talk about it.” It being: all of it. His promise, his leaving, his betrayal. Jayce choosing to die with him. Viktor letting him. Them, here, somehow, still.

this chapter featuring: very tender loving t4t smut! jayce cries! the codependency gets worse! fun times wahoo :3

Read on ao3!

Chapters: 2/7 Fandom: Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Jayce/Viktor (League of Legends) Characters: Jayce (League of Legends), Viktor (League of Legends) Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Jayce and Viktor Live (League of Legends), Hurt/Comfort, Codependency, Suicidal Thoughts, Introspection, Demisexual Viktor (League of Legends), Trans Viktor (League of Legends), Trans Jayce (League of Legends), T4T | Trans for Trans Jayce/Viktor (League of Legends), Jayce Cries During Sex (League of Legends), Top Viktor (League of Legends), Bottom Jayce (League of Legends), Sub Top Jayce (League of Legends), Angst, Sickfic, POV Alternating, their cottage but it’s by the sea instead of a stream, Conversations, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Tenderness, also it’s not super relevant to the plot but jayce is filipino! because i say so heh, Mutual Pining Summary:

It’s perfect, their terminal velocity. What they’re hurtling towards, and what they’re running from, Jayce can’t say.

All he knows is: when they hit the ground, it will hurt.

Jayce and Viktor, through the seasons, by the sea.

post-canon jayvik by the ocean my beloved! spotify playlist here <3

[chubsonthemoon]

Chapters: 2/7 Fandom: Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Jayce/Viktor (League of Legends) Characters: Jayce (League of Legends), Viktor (League of Legends) Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Jayce and Viktor Live (League of Legends), Hurt/Comfort, Codependency, Suicidal Thoughts, Introspection, Demisexual Viktor (League of Legends), Trans Viktor (League of Legends), Trans Jayce (League of Legends), T4T | Trans for Trans Jayce/Viktor (League of Legends), Jayce Cries During Sex (League of Legends), Top Viktor (League of Legends), Bottom Jayce (League of Legends), Sub Top Jayce (League of Legends), Angst, Sickfic, POV Alternating, their cottage but it's by the sea instead of a stream, Conversations, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Tenderness, also it's not super relevant to the plot but jayce is filipino! because i say so heh, Mutual Pining Summary:

It’s perfect, their terminal velocity. What they’re hurtling towards, and what they’re running from, Jayce can’t say.

All he knows is: when they hit the ground, it will hurt.

Jayce and Viktor, through the seasons, by the sea.

post-canon jayvik by the ocean my beloved! spotify playlist here <3

[chubsonthemoon]

OH gosh gloam these photos are beautiful! hello darling book living in the bright world! that sunlight is the stuff of dreams (heh). and that one shot where it perfectly bisects the title page: mwah mwah. thank you so much for this postcard 🥺

happy spring, dear friends <3

It is done! This is The Death of Translation, originally written in English by @landwriter, translated into Mandarin by @thirrith. Binding is dos-à-dos, with English version on one side and Mandarin on the other. Bookcloth was handwoven by me, on my rigid heddle loom :3

More under the cut!

Typeset: Fanbinders are Liars

Full stop, this typeset would not have been possible without Eth and all their patience, enthusiasm, and willingness to do even more translating! I reached out to them *checks watch* nearly a year ago in July 2023 (lololol), asking if I could use their translation of TDOT in a surprise bind I wanted to send along with Gloam's author copy of Flower King. They were kind enough to say yes, and even kinder to answer my questions when I reached out six months later in January, when I was finally able to start work on the typeset.

We talked about the many delicious things that are bound to come up when discussing translating not just from English to Mandarin, but also from digital space to meatspace. Some topics I had anticipated, like font questions, translating the colophon, etc. But even with the topics I thought I'd prepared for, there were still things that came up that both surprised and delighted: for example, while AO3's website allows for italics in Mandarin--

--my publishing program doesn't (or at least, it doesn't without needing to manually tilt every character by about 10 degrees). So as a workaround, Eth suggested changing these cases of italics to the font 华文楷体:

Through no one's fault but my own, this ended up being only slightly less work than manually tilting every instance of italics--I wanted to be sure that I got all of them, so I ended up doing a lot of double-checking manually anyway, instead of relying solely on the Search function. There was a lot of cross-referencing with the Word document that Eth was kind enough to provide, as well as squinting and general swearing. I also did the same for the uses of Latin script, manually styling each instance as Garamond to keep it consistent with the English edition:

The only other time I've had to do font surgery this intensive is probably for my typeset for Tell Me About the Big Bang, which I had to port over from a PDF. Folks, hell on earth. Do not recommend XD I remember squinting at my monitor as I had to visually confirm every instance of italics, thinking I will never do this again. Welp, four years later, here were are: fanbinders are liars, LMAO. At the very least, using Eth's Word document at least allowed me to search by styles, so it was a little easier on my eyes. 🙏

Is there a script that I might've been able to use if I was more code-savvy? Probably. But I figured going at it sledgehammer style would be the least hair-pulling way to get the job done, weirdly enough. Still, despite my best efforts, there are a few instances of PMingLiU to Garamond and PMingLiU to 华文楷体 that I know I missed, and I know I missed them because I caught them after I'd printed/cut/folded/sewn/glued (cue more swearing), so Gloam and Eth, my apologies >.< please consider them artifacts of a uniquely handmade object ajslkdjfs

In addition to the fonts, there were also some other fun things Eth and I discussed, like how to translate the notes I usually provide on the colophons! In addition to information on fonts, I also usually include some variation of:

This private, limited edition published by chubsthehamster (Moonham Press, imprint of Renegade Publishing) in 2024. This is chubsthehamster's personal copy. Out of three existing copies, this is the first.

The thing that came up with this, which still tickles my brain to this day, was how Eth chose how to translate "Moonham Press, imprint of Renegade Publishing." To get a better sense of what word to use for "imprint," they asked what the relationship was between Moonham Press and Renegade Publishing, which got me thinking about the relationship between my lil imprint and the wonderful @renegadeguild:

What's all very funny about all of this is that we are now, in fact, going by the name "Renegade Bookbinding Guild," per our most recently updated Code of Conduct. While this renders the wording I asked for out of date (and thus, the wording that made it into the book out of date :'D), I think it's also a testament to how cool the work @renegadeguild is doing--like any artform, fanbinding is alive, with its own evolving language, communities, and ideas about the craft. And I love it, I love it so much. (Was this also a plug for our new-ish website? Perhaps).

There's more I could say here, but this post is already going to be long enough, so I'll move on for now! If you get anything from this section, it's that @thirrith is amazing and very patient and kind, and I'm so grateful that we got to talk shop together. Thank you so much for all your invaluable help with this, Eth! I hope the typeset, though undoubtedly flawed, does your hard work justice!

Binding: Or, SO Much Math. Like, So Much, Guys. (It was worth it, though!)

Whoo, boy! So math was never my strong suit in school, but when I set out to do this bind last year, that wasn't an issue. At first. The dos-à-dos binding, if anything, just requires a little bit of finagling on the usual case-bound format--a bit more math if you want to do an all-cloth cover, like I planned on doing, but nothing I couldn't work out with some trial and error. (My prototype below!)

Then came February, when I took a weaving class with my friend, and then everything kinda exploded.

My original idea was to use some green Duo bookcloth I had on hand (this color, actually)--for those of you not initiated into the Duo cult, Duo is a Rayon bookcloth with a very devoted fan following in Renegade. It's very pretty; the Rayon weave is one color, and the paper backing is usually complementary color, so it has this cool two-toned effect. Duo is in high demand in Renegade circles because sadly, the company that manufactures it went out of business last year. (Although I've heard rumors recently that there's another company making something similar, but the cloth has a really high purchase requirement and is, like, for businesses only I think).

Anyway, I also wanted to have a gold line around the whole book as a kind of bellyband/obi to further connect the two versions of the story (another reason why I chose the dos-à-dos format to begin with heh), as you can see from my scribbled notes here--

But alas! I knew going in that adhering things to Duo is often Problematic, thanks to one very painful experience trying to get some iron-on foil on another bind (the textured surface of Duo just makes it kinda hard to stick or paint stuff on it). So if I wanted a clean, continuous line, the remaining options were to either paint it on a strip of paper that I'd somehow...adhere to the cloth? Or maybe cut different slices of bookcloth and glue them on. I wasn't satisfied with either of those options, though.

Then--the weaving class. I made a scarf, and I love it and I loved making it. But the whole time, I'll not lie, my thoughts were elsewhere.

In short, my decision to weave my own bookcloth kinda came from a few different factors:

The desire to attempt to recreate Duo, that elusive beauty, the one that got away, etc. (I have several yards in my stash, but still). Others have also attempted to recreate it, and I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring.

My current spiral into the deep hole that is fiber arts (it started with crochet, then knitting, then sewing, then weaving, then spinning, and now I'm eyeing quilting! Please help me).

The gold line. It kept bugging me. And when I found weaving, I just thought there was something very neat about the process of actually making the cloth for a dos-à-dos binding from scratch, and especially for this binding. I wanted to bind a story about translation (or rather, the death of it, and yet still the necessity of it--how we must try to communicate, despite of, or perhaps precisely because of, everything that gets lost in the spaces between people, and the tragedy of that loss, and the beauty of what makes it through, and the love always present in the effort regardless), and also, the translation of that story. Weaving is a very meditative process, and with every pass of the shuttle, back and forth, building slowly but surely the fabric that would hold the story that Gloam had written and that Eth had translated, I thought a lot about translation, and the gaps between people, and how we choose our words not just when translating, but when we speak at all. From a design perspective, I used the same colors I would've used had I chosen the Duo bookcloth--green and gold--so the design wasn't too altered in terms of color scheme. But I think the choice to weave the bookcloth--the thing that bound it all together--made the project take on a completely new meaning for me, both in process and in scope, one that hadn't been there when I started. I saw the warp, perhaps, as the original story, laying the groundwork for the weft, the translation; or maybe it was the other way around, with the translation providing the scaffolding for its own, new meaning, choices that Eth had to make with this word or phrase or another building something new, something translated, and the original a live, moving thing that wove over and under each word turned phrase turned story; or maybe it was both. Maybe it didn't matter which was which, in the end. And as I wove, the thing that connected them, that gold line that had started all of this, slowly formed.

All that to say: Good God, was there a lot of math. So much math. That prototype pictured above was actually made specifically so I could calculate exactly how much I needed to weave, lol, because while I certainly had enough thread, I didn't want to have to warp more than once. I'd learned the basics in my class, but the training wheels came off here. I wanted to make my own custom fabric, which meant calculating things like ends per inch, picks per inch, loom waste, shrinkage after washing, the width of that damn gold line, how much I'd need for the hinge, the turn-ins, the boards--the whole nine yards (I didn't actually weave nine yards tho heh). It was all absolutely worth it in the end--so challenging and so, so rewarding!

(And my final reason for weaving the bookcloth? Not gonna lie, It was because I just wanted to see if I could do it LOL. I love trying at least one new thing with each of my binds, and this was it for this project. While I've been bookbinding for a few years now, I'm still very much a beginner weaver, and I'm so excited to continue to learn and experiment! Also, here's a video of me unwinding the cloth from the loom, heh. I used 10/2 Perle cotton in gold and green colors :3)

Also, turns out, you can back handmade cloth the same way you can any other cloth! I backed it using my usual heat-n-bond method, and with some Unryu Tissue in the color Forest. Since the cloth itself is a bit transparent, there are a bunch of really fun fibers you can see when it's held up to the light, but which aren't visible when the cloth is glued down to the boards. Still, knowing they're there still makes me happy :D

Finally, capping all this off, is one final, small detail I really liked: ginkgo leaf endpapers :3 this one's for me and Eth and Gloam specifically <3

Aaaand that's all from me for today, folks! Thus ends (several months late XD) my last Binderary project for the year. This was probably my most ambitious bind to date, and gosh it was so, so much fun.

And, of course, thank you so much to Gloam for sharing your story, and Eth for translating it. I can't wait for y'all to receive your copies soon!

All my love! <3

[chubsonthemoon]

carved myself a little stamp of my bindery logo! 🥹

[chubsonthemoon]

Ahhh I'm so pleased you like it!! And oh gosh, I'm so glad that it gets to be part of your growing book family (also WOW 1000+ books is amazing! what an impressive library eee). What a wonderful collection to be a part of!

Thank you so much again--so excited for you to hold your writing in your hands! <333

A @fandomtrumpshate gift, completed! This is Untangled, a Detective Conan Tangled AU written by @dragonsorceress22! Made as a gift for their generous donation to the Freedom to Read Foundation <3

Crafty details! Legal quarto size, with self-ended rose-gold foil endpapers and matching foil detailing for the cover/spine. I had a lot of fun finding a Tangled-themed font for the title (Blackadder ITC) and the drop-cap (Heavy Rain). Bookcloth is Duo Purple Berry (it did NOT like the foil iron-on, but I made do :'D).

Thanks so much again for your generous donation, dragonsorceress! It's been pleasure making your book <3

[chubsonthemoon]

A @fandomtrumpshate gift, completed! This is Untangled, a Detective Conan Tangled AU written by @dragonsorceress22! Made as a gift for their generous donation to the Freedom to Read Foundation <3

Crafty details! Legal quarto size, with self-ended rose-gold foil endpapers and matching foil detailing for the cover/spine. I had a lot of fun finding a Tangled-themed font for the title (Blackadder ITC) and the drop-cap (Heavy Rain). Bookcloth is Duo Purple Berry (it did NOT like the foil iron-on, but I made do :'D).

Thanks so much again for your generous donation, dragonsorceress! It's been pleasure making your book <3

[chubsonthemoon]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Arcane: League of Legends (Cartoon 2021) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Jayce/Viktor (League of Legends) Characters: Viktor (League of Legends), Jayce (League of Legends) Additional Tags: Character Study, Post-Canon, kind of?, Viktor-centric (League of Legends), Philosophy, the fallout from godhood, Jayce is technically here but he shows up at the end lol, Introspection, Reunions, Asexual Viktor (League of Legends), Stream of Consciousness Summary:

When Viktor comes to, he is standing on the beach.

my fics for these two continue to get weirder! I’ve decided to be brave and post them anyway. here’s jayvik meets To the Lighthouse and Gigi Perez’s new album At the Beach, In Every Life/song by the same name <3

[chubsonthemoon]

I’m sure I must be missing an FAQ somewhere, but scrolling through your binding tag, I didn’t see much about the book blocks themselves? If you don’t mind my asking, what sort of paper do you use and how is it printed? (Last time I bound a book was college and I had access to a digital press and a guillotine cutter 😭)

Hi hi! No worries at all--you haven't missed an FAQ! Happy to answer :D

I use short-grain, 20lb Hammermill paper in the color cream! It's basically an off-white, lightweight printer paper. These days, I buy from Church Paper--they do all the cutting for you so everything's short-grain (you generally want your paper/board to be folded in the direction of the grain so the paper lies flat when you open the book). I know some people also like to use Mohawk Superfine or Mohawk Via, which is thicker and a little pricier.

I format my signatures using the @renegadeguild Community Imposer. It's super versatile and lets you format all kinds of cool paper sizes, but I just use it for letter/legal sizes (usually folio letter and quarto legal, but I'll sometimes go for a quarto letter, depending on the length of the fic).

If this is a lot of gobbledygook, I highly recommend Renegade's Resource page, which has a lot of great info on where to start, basic terminology, and even some typesets of public domain stories/journals for practice! For your question specifically I think katethereader's How to Prepare a Book for Printing might be the most useful (and of course, @armoredsuperheavy's How to Make a Book, the seminal text/manifesto/guide on fanbinding haha).

I hope this helps! <3

[chubsonthemoon]

Another jayvik book!!! This is the incredible divine alchemy of the self, by r0sie_p0sies.

This fic was recommended to me by dear friend @ilgaksu and holyyyyy shit. It was written pre-s2 and yet somehow ends up in the exact same emotional place as the finale; the similarities range from larger scene beats all the way down to certain dialogue choices. Rosie just gets these characters, through and through!

As usual, process chatter under the cut!

It's fitting for a jayvik book that this first attempt was chock-full of experiments and new techniques! This is my first hardcover quarto Legal size, which I really loved doing. I also finally have a proper finishing press, so I was able to properly round and back a book for the first time! The shoulders are a little weak, so I'm hoping to improve when I make Rosie's author copy. I also used my foil pen for the first time and handwrote the little blurb on the back.

Most exciting, this was the first time I tried an inset! I used some of my favorite blue Momi marbled paper; rectangle placement is heavily inspired by one of @pleasantboatpress's gorgeous binds. Loveee me a good rectangle, heh. I thought an inset was fitting for this story; as you can probably tell from the title, the fic is all about transforming oneself--through grief, through illness, through love. I wanted this to be a book of contrasts--stark white for a kind of blank canvas (also a nod to Viktor's hexcorized dolls in s2), blue and gold for magic/hextech. Here's an abridged version of what I sent Rosie while chatting about design (please picture me as that It's Always Sunny conspiracy meme, but in DMs):

The framework of the fic being alchemy, creation, a literal step-by-step guide for how to create something divine, is something I really want to explore! I really like the idea of this kind of blank canvas casing + swirling paper inset. All the love and life and messy tendrils of illness surrounded by this...blank divinity. That divinity as a medium, a container, for the complicated human experience. But also the inverse--the blankness of the canvas drawing attention to the brilliant blue/gold of the inset. The bright light shining through the windows of their living room in the ending scene juxtaposed with the moment of their (possible? wonderfully ambiguous?) deaths; those two moments being, in many ways, the same. A window into their lives loving each other, seen from both the outside and within. *insert lots of keyboard smashing*

Interiority and vulnerability were also two themes I wanted to convey. So with that theme in mind, I tried something very, very new to me, and thought, fuck it, let's try to use paper vellum for the endpapers:

You're not really supposed to use paper vellum for endpapers because 1) it wrinkles and curls like all hell and 2) since it's translucent, it means you can see the inside of the boards and the tapes. But for this bind, I decided to lean into that effect--I scribbled the four stages of the alchemical process (the framework of the fic's chapters) onto the boards so you could see them when you opened the book (I wanted to evoke jayvik's "mad scientists" vibe lol); I cut the supporting linen tapes into points (a nod to the rune Viktor carves into his leg brace) and painted them gold so they'd stand out more (they reminded me of Vik's spine brace; I mean hell, they're literally sewn into the spine of the book for extra support. It felt criminal to not incorporate them in some way!); I tried to be more intentional with the glue brushstrokes while casing in to give the paste-down a more painted effect; and finally, probably the thing that was hardest to let go (and which I'm still a little unsure about, to be honest), I let the damn endpapers wrinkle, for more ~texture.~

The overall effect is something I'm still mulling over, even as I write this--it kind of goes against everything I've learned as a bookbinder, and almost makes me feel (or rather, the book feel lol) naked. These are the parts of the book you aren't normally supposed to see, put on display the moment you open it. But! I think that even if it's not the strongest from a design perspective, I think thematically, it works. Reading this fic made me feel like I was being carved open, so I wanted the experience of reading the book to be a little vulnerable, too. Also: beauty in imperfections, right? :3

Aaand that's all for today! A million thanks again to Rosie for letting me bind her wonderful work <3

And once more for the road: you can read divine alchemy of the self on ao3!

[chubsonthemoon]

Coda: On Dante’s Inferno, Hozier’s Psychopomp (Abstract), and Jayvik

Okay!!! So at the beginning of the month I was listening to Hozier’s Psychopomp (Abstract) late at night, as I am wont to do. Unreal Unearth is one of my favorite albums ever, with some of my favorite songs ever, so I’ve listened to it many times. HOWEVER, as one often does with art they love, I discovered something new. When I got to the bridge of Abstract (Psychopomp), I heard a specific line that went through me like a fucking bullet. I immediately thought wait a fucking second, rewound the track, and re-listened to it with my jayvik goggles on.

Plagued by these visions, I then proceeded to feverishly construct an AMV entirely in my mind as I lay there, facing my shadowed ceiling, feeling like I was receiving divine revelation. I’m talking—exact shots, beat for beat transitions, word for word scene associations. I woke up the next morning, downloaded Davinci Resolve, and over the course of a few sleepless nights, painstakingly transferred my Visions to video. Now, even after posting, I STILL have thoughts. Many of them actually came after I’d watched the thing on YouTube, pretending it was something I was seeing for the first time instead of something I’d stared at so long I got eyestrain.

So here we are. Welcome to the kind of essay I wished I could've written in college, complete with swearing and emojis and links to Reddit posts. Buckle up; I have no idea if this is going to cohere, but by God am I going to try (I still feel like I’m possessed, btw.)

(CW: animal death; discussions of death, depression, and suicidal ideation; brief mention of torture)

(also on ao3!)

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, and Hozier’s 2023 album Unreal Unearth

I wanna preface this by saying I am by no means a Dante scholar—I just read the Divine Comedy in undergrad and thought, generally, that it was neat and cool and I wrote a few essays on it and then moved on. HOWEVER. When Hozier released his Inferno concept album Unreal Unearth in 2023, good golly was I glad to have actually read it, because then I could understand. I had nerd street cred! I too could say, with full confidence, that I understood what Mr. Hozier meant when he sung about love and loss feeling like undergoing a soul-transforming journey through hell itself. Me too, Andrew, me too. (Jokes aside though, the album really is amazing—it deals not only with love, but loss, genocide, cycles of abuse, isolation, death, and other such topics. I highly recommend it, and even though I’m using this one specific song to talk about my blorbos, the album, and Hozier’s entire body of work, encompasses much, much more than what I’m going to touch on here, and more than what I think the common conception of his music is, i.e. sad bog man singing about love).

Very very basic premise: the Divine Comedy is, as it is often joked around here (tumblr, popular acafan quotes), Dante’s self-insert epic poem, wherein he takes a grand tour of the Christian afterlife: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. Inferno always was and continues to be my favorite, mostly because Dante will specifically take the time to put mfs he hates in specific circles of hell, and also because I think the punishments he comes up with for each of the nine circles and their corresponding sins are super interesting and morbid. What I’m going focus on here is his relationship with Virgil (guy who wrote the Aeneid), who acts as his guide through Hell and Purgatory (ik Beatrice comes up later, but for the purposes of this meta we’re just gonna focus on Virgil’s role), and specifically the eighth circle, also called Malebolge. This circle punishes the fraudulent and is divided into ten…pockets? That’s what my translation calls them, anyway. (For reference for anyone interested: all quotes I pull are from Anthony Esolen’s translation!) Each of these pockets punishes a specific kind of fraud (I honestly did not know there were so many until I read Inferno, haha).

Abstract (Psychopomp) (from here on out I will just call the track A/P) is listed as correlating with the second half of these pockets, which, in order, punish: 5) bribe takers 6) hypocrites 7) thieves 8) evil counselors (fun fact: Odysseus is here!) 9) schismatics (sowers of discord) and 10) falsifiers. I honestly think that A/P is more of a loose interpretation of the theme of fraud in the eighth circle than anything super granular down to the pocket level (Anything But, the song that precedes it, is basically one big “fuck off/fuck you.” BIG divorce energy), but I still think it’s interesting to think about in this context (also, from an Arcane perspective, “bribe takers/hypocrites/thieves/evil counselors/falsifiers” is a very funny set of words that I think many Zaunites might use to describe the Piltovian leadership, lol.) Notably, I think each subsequent pocket punishes a “worse” kind of fraud than the pocket before, and it’s interesting that A/P is set in the second half with the naughtier frauds (or roughly, I’m assuming—again, I don’t think every song is really a one-to-one comparison, but more in the spirit of what that circle is about/punishes).

With that very shoddy background (you can read the Divine Comedy for free on Project Gutenberg, here), here are the actual lyrics for the song, because I can’t talk about the rest of this without you, dear reader, having read them, heh:

Sometimes it returns like rain that you slept through That washed off the world, the streets looking brand new I will not be great, but I'm grateful to get through The feeling came late, I'm still glad I met you The memory hurts, but does me no harm Your hand in my pocket to keep us both warm The poor thing in the road, its eye still glistening The cold wet of your nose, the earth from a distance See how it shines See how it shines See how it shines See how it shines Sometimes there's a thought, like you choose what you're doing But it comes to naught when I look back through it I remember the view, streetlights in the dark blue The moment I knew I'd no choice but to love you The speed that you moved, the screech of the cars The creature still moving, that slowed in your arms The fear in its eyes, gone out in an instant Your tear caught the light, the earth from a distance See how it shines See how it shines See how it shines See how it shines Darling, there's a part of me I'm afraid will always be Trapped within an abstract from a moment of my life The weeds up through the concrete The traffic picking up speed All my love and terror balanced there between those eyes See how it shines See how it shines

(I find that Hozier’s lyrics are more than strong enough to stand on their own as poems, so I often like to read them without the music. For extra psychic damage, I also really recommend listening to the song while reading along. You can find a recording here!)

Very literally speaking, the song is about the narrator and his lover/loved one getting out of a car to watch an animal die on the side of the road. Whether the narrator/lover were the ones who hit the animal is left ambiguous. Hozier’s gone on record saying that the events of the song are actually based on a handful of memories, one of which is indeed a memory of him as a child watching an animal getting hit by a car. Truly, no one is doing it like him.

There are a few interpretations of this song and about its placement in the eighth circle of hell. Here’s a link to a Reddit thread with some I really like. Of these, one of my favorites is the one of the ones OP mentions, here, which posits that the song says that the fraud being committed is our own existence; our fleeting lives tied inextricably (inextricably bound, anyone?) with the objective reality of our deaths. Before I dive into what this interpretation means for my purposes, though—the reason I love this song, and why it continues to be one of my favorites, both on this album and out of Hozier’s entire discography, really, is because it’s a song with a strong narrative arc. The song is a reflection; the narrator is looking back on an experience, recounting it (Sometimes it returns and The memory hurts/but does me no harm). This is also why I felt like Mr. Hozier, and by extension Dante himself, were reaching directly into my soul that night, because the song maps perfectly onto another narrative that I absolutely love, that of Jayce and Viktor’s. More on that later.

Back to fraud, though: I think the great lie of our lives can be most easily seen just in the moment before death. That’s what See how it shines and Your tear caught the light, the earth from a distance mean to me—it’s an old adage that your life flashes before your eyes right before you’re going to die, but I think this song takes that literally. The flash, the shine, the glimmer of life in this animal’s eyes fading away—all my love and terror balanced there between those eyes. Faced with death like this, high above (the earth from a distance) the curtain is, even for the briefest of moments, ripped away. It’s only here that the great lie is revealed, to the narrator, to us—we are, all of us, going to die, just like this. The brilliance of your whole life against the oblivion of death; we’ve all had that moment a la The Good Place, where Michael contemplates not existing for more than a second and immediately has a mental breakdown. All of this, this revelation, this existential dread, conveyed back to the narrator in a memory, an abstract. An abstract, as in: something intangible, something metaphorical, something standing in for something else, the ‘something else’ being a thing we can’t bear to think about for too long, otherwise how would we go through life? How do you wake up every day with the full knowledge you’re going to die? You, briefly, forget. You lie to yourself. An abstract, as in: a summary at the beginning of an academic paper, telling you the highlights, the key points, the ending. An abstract as in: containing everything we will ever know, but not everything that is, has been, or will be. A brief stand-in for the truth. The truth being, again: We are all going to die. (Fun!)

(I want to add a disclaimer that this is not an argument that everything we do is futile. Rather, I think the song explores that uncomfortable emotional space everyone inevitably finds themselves in at some point in their lives; the confrontation of our own mortality, the near-hilarity of it. I’m very much in the camp of “nothing matters! so you must make it matter yourself.” It’s the move from “we are all going to die.” to “we’re all gonna die 🤠”)

Another thing, related not so much to fraud but to the parenthetical of the song: Psychopomp. In Inferno, Virgil (and eventually Beatrice) are psychopomps for Dante, leading him to and through the afterlife. In A/P, the narrator and his lover are the psychopomps for the dead animal on the side of the road. They are the ones who witness this death; they’re the ones who escort it to its afterlife, in a way. If I ever meet Hozier and only got to ask him one question, it’d be: why did you put “Psychopomp” in parentheses? Did you feel like the abstract—the fleeting nature of that moment—was more important, and should come first? As someone who has witnessed death, perhaps even felt like a psychopomp yourself, did you yourself feel like a parenthetical beside the vast, endless face of oblivion? I would also ask him what kind of conditioner he uses for his hair, and if he’d ever consider cosplaying as Viktor, but I realize that’s more than one question, so perhaps not.

Anyway. That was a lot. What the hell does all of this have to do with Jayvik?

WHAT THE HELL IT HAS TO DO WITH JAYVIK

So, Jayce is the psychopomp. Viktor is the dying creature. Here’s my proof. Written out: Jayce watches Viktor die. The speed that you moved (Jayce running down the hall). The screech of the cars (Jinx’s bomb). The creature still moving (Viktor on the lab table). That slowed in your arms (Jayce’s arms wrenching the Hexcore towards him vs. his arms holding the hammer that will kill Viktor). The fear in its eyes (Viktor looking at him. Asking why?). Gone out in an instant (HE DED). Your tear caught the light (Jayce crying.) The earth from a distance (there were a few contenders for this one, but I eventually went with the establishing shot the camera jumps to right after Jayce shoots him). And so on and so forth. Easy, right?

BUT. And this was my revelation that night: Viktor is actually the psychopomp, too. Actually, I’d argue Viktor is the original psychopomp, Arcane’s first and final. One, because he literally watches the entire world die—multiple worlds, even, as is implied in his in all timelines, in all possibilities spiel. He also, when he’s in the commune, literally gains the power to see people’s entire lives with a single touch—their whole past, absorbed into him, passing through him (The memory hurts, but does me no harm). He’s also the psychopomp because TWO, when he saves baby Jayce, he literally leads him from death into another dimension. But, crucially—and this is where we diverge a bit from the original meaning of the song—Viktor also saves Jayce’s life. For the time being. Once again, the great lie is at work, here: Jayce was always going to die. That feels like a bit of a cop-out to say, since everyone in Arcane is presumably mortal, or at least capable of dying (well, except for Yordles I guess, but I think within the Arcane universe at least, the average non-augmented human being has a fixed lifespan and grows old etc. etc.). So I can prove that Jayce is special here, in my Viktor-as-psychopomp interpretation; that Viktor was lying to himself, that he was just prolonging the inevitable, that he saw the entirety of Jayce's life spread out before him, past, present future, and that Jayce is also the dying-soon-to-be-dead animal on the side of the road—I mean, c’mon:

What if the psychopomp didn’t want you to die? What if they weren’t just a passive observer to your death—what if they said, No. What if they told themselves the worst, most egregious lie of all—that they could save you? What if they did terrible things in the name of that lie? What if they destroyed entire worlds just to prove that they could? What circle of hell would befit them, then?

So maybe they’re both the psychopomp and the dying animal. Maybe they’re both sinners. But I think there’s actually one true psychopomp; one true narrator looking down at the earth from a distance, recalling the streetlights in the dark blue, remembering the moment knew he had no choice but to love the person he loves. Which leads me to my second divine revelation, the one that hit me when I listened to the bridge that fateful night:

Abstract (Psychopomp) is a song about Mage!Viktor, specifically.

Here are the lines that went through me like a fucking bullet:

Darling, there's a part of me I'm afraid will always be Trapped within an abstract from a moment of my life

Psychopomp Mage!Viktor trapped within an abstract (Abstract) from a moment of his life. Over and over again, that moment. Over and over again—baby Jayce, the blizzard, the field. Over and over and over again, handing him a rune, hoping one day Jayce will give it back and save them all. The memory hurts but does me no harm—buddy, what if the memory did hurt and did do you harm? What if it hurt because you kept literally returning to it? What if it was your own fault it hurt? What if you kept trying anyway? What if you lived the same moment over and over again in the hope that this time, this iteration, this timeline, things would end differently?

We arrive, once more, to the time loop. Ah, yes, I have written about her before, in my interactive time loop fic! But consider: the time loop as a coping mechanism; the lie Viktor tells himself. His sin of fraud; he’s selling something he doesn’t have to get something he wants. He can save him. He will save him. There is no other way this story will end. He won’t allow it. He’s played God before and he’ll do it again. (I wrote another fic about this here). Tragedy enjoyers rise; you know the drill. Which brings me to:

Sometimes there's a thought, like you choose what you're doing But it comes to naught when I look back through it I remember the view, streetlights in the dark blue The moment I knew I'd no choice but to love you

“There is always a choice” vs. “choice is false.” Viktor says both at different points in the series/his transformation. So which is true? Well: Arcane starts with Jayce’s encounter with the mage which instills in him a lifelong love for magic. He meets Viktor. Together, they invent Hextech. It goes wrong. Viktor gets necromanced and leaves; Jayce gets yeeted to Mage!Viktor’s timeline and spends a few months eating lizards. Jayce sees the future. Jayce learns Viktor was the mage. Mage!Viktor knows Jayce is the only one who can stop himself, so he sends him back to finish the job. Does Jayce succeed? Depends. I personally subscribe to the interpretation (or at least a version of it) that all the Jayces that fan out while he’s shooting Viktor in the chest are “failed” timelines where he either didn’t take the shot or missed, thus dooming the world and himself to an unlife of Glorious Evolution, etc. etc. Presumably while all of this is happening, Mage!Viktor is still fiddling with the timelines, testing which rune combinations might fix everything. Every time, Jayce falls in love with magic. Every time, Viktor gets his Arcane powers because Jayce does necromancy on him, which Jayce is only able to do because they invented Hextech, which they’re only able to do because Jayce believed he could recreate magic, which he only believed because Viktor also saved Jayce’s life when he was a kid, which Viktor is only able to do because he has Arcane powers, which he only has because Jayce did necromancy on him. The circle is complete. In other words, Jayce falls in love with magic because of Viktor, who fell in love with Jayce because of their shared dream for magic, and it’s their love for each other/magic (I’d argue that by the end they’re the same thing anyway*) that both destroys and/or saves the world, depending on where you’re standing in the loop. Rinse and repeat. Doomed yaoi. You know the drill. (A lot of this is informed by this fantastic meta by @fuckyeahisawthat; genuinely one of my favorite Viktor interpretations ever, and much more coherently written than this!)

(*There’s another meta here about jayvik potentially being the ideal Platonic Good of friendship according to Aristotle, true friends of virtue in that they are both in shared pursuit of the Good, but this is already getting long enough as it is, so! Maybe another time. Also lowkey I think they work better as toxic codependent “I’m doing this for you, not the good of the world,” rather than the more idealistic kind of friendship Aristotle writes about in Nicomachean Ethics, but anyway.)

So that’s the loop. Choice or not-choice; which is true? Maybe both at once, honestly. But on another level, I think the paradox of choice speaks to something very real that many of us experience at some point in our lives (esp if you’ve suffered from depression and/or suicidal ideation the way I think both Jayce and Viktor do at different parts of the story). I think when you get stuck in a loop like that—both a literal time loop and also a loop of destructive, self-immolating thinking, the line between choice and not-choice does feel blurred. Sometimes it does feel like you don’t have a choice—that you have to do this, that you have to be here, that you deserve this. Because the alternative is unimaginable. Call it what you will—fate, destiny (a horse) (the final, glorious evolution?)—but the question of choice and not-choice is one of the oldest questions we’ve ever asked. “There is always a choice” / “Choice is false” – I ask again; which is the truth? I confess I’m a bit biased towards the choice end of the spectrum; I think people are sometimes just offered only bad choices. I think Viktor and Jayce make a lot of bad choices, yes. I think there were also simply no good ones to make in the moment. But still, they chose to make them, and still, they have to live with the consequences.

Still, when you mess so badly with reality that you and your partner’s timelines start to look less like two separate lines intersecting and more like an ouroboros, I think you earn the right to be able to have two conflicting things be true at once. I think you get to commit a little fraud, as a treat.

This is also why I chose the quote from Canto 20 as the opening quote for my lil movie! I’ve copy/pasted it here:

Here pity lives the best when it is dead.           Who is more wicked than the man who lons           To make God’s judgment yield to human force?                                                                    (20.28-30)

Right before this, Dante is basically looking around at all the poor bastards in this particular pocket and crying his eyes out, because holy shit. This pocket’s punishment really sucks, even by hell’s standards—the sinners have their heads twisted on backwards and are crying tears down their back and into their asses. It’s. Rough. This is not the first time Dante cries about how much everyone is suffering, either. And every time before this, and now here again, Virgil says: Hey. None of that now. These people deserve to be here, because they tried to play God. They thought they knew better.

Which is grim! However. I don’t think this necessarily means jayvik deserve to be punished for being insane and codependent and doing nonconsensual necromancy/timeline-altering theatrics on each other, etc. I think we should cry for them. I think it’s natural and right to feel empathy for their situations. But what really gets me about this quote is that it’s a reminder that, even though Hell sucks absolutely donkey balls for everyone getting punished—the lesson that Virgil is trying to teach Dante is that Hell, too, is fundamentally good. It’s literally written on the front door (right before the line everyone knows, ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE):

JUSTICE CAUSED MY HIGH ARCHITECT TO MOVE: DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE CREATED ME, THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE.                                                           (3.4-6)

Dante, through Virgil, is saying: Hell is a place created out of love. YMMV on the real-world implications this line has had on…well, a lot of human history, but for the purposes of this analysis, I think it’s fitting to view hell this way—perhaps the time loop is Mage!Viktor’s own personal hell. Hell is a place that never changes. It’s stagnant, it’s eternal, everyone is suffering all the time, and its their own fault. Even so, despite everything, Hell was still created out of divine love. Viktor is in hell, a hell he helped create, because he is a man in love. Hozier says: what if falling in love felt like ascending through hell? What if you cried, feeling the weight of it? What if falling in love wasn’t a choice at all? Dante says: You shouldn’t cry. They did this to themselves. They made their choice.

And maybe jayvik do deserve to die; I’m not really interested in that line of questioning, though. I’m interested in why still we cry, for them, for us—I mean, how could we not? I think we cry because Jayce and Viktor’s ending is, ultimately, a release. That’s why those final few scenes are so satisfying, from both a narrative and an emotional perspective—in those last moments, they finally escape the loop. They leave hell; they ascend. They break free from their abstracts, from their ever-looping series of moments that constitute the lives they’ve both tried to lead, and the lives of one another that they’ve directly, literally pulled from the brink of death, several times, both verbally and physically, and in various moral shadings. The truth is revealed, the lie stripped away; their eyes opened. A dazzling brightness consumes them. They both finally face the truth of it, the light of their lives being—always having been—the love they carry for one another, together (Together!).

And it’s brilliant; it’s blinding; it’s divine. You can still see it, even now, glistening; something tear-shaped, a tear, catching the light. See how it shines.

JAYVIK AMV || ABSTRACT (PSYCHOPOMP) EIGHTH CIRCLE OF HELL - MALEBOLGE, OR FRAUD on ao3 | on YouTube | lyrics

[chubsonthemoon]

JAYVIK AMV || ABSTRACT (PSYCHOPOMP) EIGHTH CIRCLE OF HELL - MALEBOLGE, OR FRAUD on ao3 | on YouTube | lyrics