#if were to publish it id like to have some like art pages in it. do regular novels do that lol.

[khaoticqueer]

It sucks that I hyper-fixated on a mini-series comic that’s ending in 2 issues. I am going to think about these 4 issues forever me thinks.

Ill probably work on fan art soon lol.

[greenhorn-art]

World Champions | Artwork for World Champions by TheDefenestrator by TheDefenestrator, art by Blurb_brain

Fandom: The King's Avatar | 全职高手

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Category: Gen

Words: 71 944

At the end of season 4 of the Glory Pro Alliance, the government finally receives the information it has been waiting for: The other players have caught up. Or, In which Glory has been a government recruitment ploy for remote-piloted mecha operators all along.

About the Book

FONTS: Mundo Serif, Azonix [dafont], Segoe UI Symbol

IMAGES: Illustration by Blurb_brain [AO3]; cover image by NASA ID: 440611 [Rawpixel]; Planet Earth background ID: 6331593 [Rawpixel]; Circuit lines background ID: 3117935 [Rawpixel]; endpapers' image by Eric Eastman [Unsplash]; Swoksaar, Desert Dust, Lord Grim, Vaccaria, and Cloud Piercer [The King's Avatar Wikia]

MATERIALS: regular printer paper (8.5"x11", 96 bright, 20lb), 80pt bookboard, Iris Bookcloth (colour: Black Pearl), Neenah cardstock (8.5"x11", bright white, 65lb), waxed linen thread (white, 30/3 size), embroidery floss (shades 3750, 350, 3845, 370), leather cording (1.9mm diameter), Reeves’ acrylic paint (Mars Black, Phthalo Blue, Titanum White), Americana acrylic paint (glow in the dark), ph neutral pva glue (Books by Hand)

PROGRAMS USED: Typeset in Affinity Publisher, cover/title page/endpapers designed in Affinity Designer/Photo, QR codes generated with LibreOffice Writer, PDF arranged for printing with Bookbinder-JS

BINDING STYLE: quarto, case bound (slightly rounded, with oxford hollow, forgot to use tapes)

.

Fenes' "Glory's tech isn't handwaved" AU. This was great! Funny and creative, and I'm both amazed and full of admiration for Fenes' ability to juggle so many characters.

I was feeling excited and ambitious with this one. Tried some new fun things (double core endbands, painted edges) and used some new equipment (a lying press).

The Text

TITLE/HEADINGS FONT: Azonix says 'SciFi' to me, it's a bold, non-serif, sleek font.

BODY FONT: Mundo Serif, it's a decent serif body font I haven't used before. Felt like it worked with Azonix.

SCENE BREAKS: a special character in Segoe UI Symbol of a black & white icon of Earth, the globe showing Asia.

TYPESETTING: Finished typesetting the fic, left document open on my laptop, laptop's battery failed, file now crashes immediately upon reopening, issue persists with copied versions of file (；￣Д￣) . Thankfully I had a backup file for the typeset with the barebones of the text, so I didn't have to restart from scratch...

Title Page

My thinking: it takes place in space, the world's at stake, and it's the dawn of a new horizon for Earth. Glory and the titular champions are represented by Swoksaar, Desert Dust, Lord Grim, Vaccaria, and Cloud Piercer – the captains of what I'd call the 'big 5' teams. A circuitry board background element hints at the tech/mecha nature of the story's competition. It may not match Blurb's art, but I hope I was able to convey some of what the story is about.

The circuitry image is used as decoration throughout the book. I only used the avatars of the top five teams' captains because too many silhouettes would lessen their impact and readability. (Removing the backgrounds was tedious, but worth it.)

Here's what it should have looked like. The test prints for this and the BB art were fine, but I think my inkjet started running out of ink just when I printed the final copies and I didn't reprint them. (Too impatient, really wanted to finish up and read the book)

The Cover

World Champions is another Big Bang fic, and once again I based some of my design choices off of the accompanying artwork. The dominant colours of Blurb_brain's illustration are red and blue-green.

COVER PAPER: For the decorative cover material I used NASA's ASTER image of Poyang Lake. NASA has some really interesting photography some of which remind me of marbled paper, thought it could be interesting. I chose this image of Poyang Lake because 1) it's in China, 2) the colours were similar to Blurb's awesome illustration (fate strikes again, dropping matching images and artwork into my lap!), and 3) NASA is tangentially relevant to the fic, which takes place in space.

BOOKCLOTH: Verona bookcloth in the shade Black Pearl, a lovely dark navy blue colour. Thought it suited the cover paper and title page. (Bought it for this fic specifically, but the colour goes well with almost all of my decorative papers so it should see a lot of use in the future!)

Endpapers

The final decision that held this project at a standstill for two months. In the end I drew inspiration from the matchups against the final opponent in the story. The image I used is a little chaotic and a little too unrelated to identify why I picked it without an explanation, but this book is for me and I know why, so there. (Note that I played around with the colours and cropped the photo.)

Endpaper inspiration: the maps for the matches against the Infilhites

"a long bridge through an enormous tube-like hall, where light seem to come from every side through stained glass windows. It was visually confusing, limited lateral motion" "a warehouse, crates stacked on and beside metal racks that went all the way to the ceiling." "a house of mirrors, fully enclosed to be sure the Infhillte couldn’t fly out of it." "like a volcano, rivers of lava moving sluggishly down a slope, occasional vents of overheated air nearby." "a series of overlapping bridges between halls and stairways, level after level layered over an open abyss."

Trimming & Painting the Edges

Going all out, a 2-for1 deal: the opportunity to use my lying press for the first time and learn a new technique!

TRIMMING: Used a paring chisel and lying press.

CHISEL: The 1.25" wide paring chisel I used was form a modern manufacturer. (Vintage paring chisels are very thin, enough so that you can bend/flex the blade. But don't do that.) It's long and wide blade made it easier to register against the surface of the press for consistent cuts. Looks like this one below from Lee Valley.

LYING PRESS: My dad's project. Solid black walnut, hand carved screws and internal threads — he even made the tools to make the threads too! The jaws of the press are each 3 7/8" wide. It's big and heavy (though much smaller than full-sized professional ones omg), but there's enough of a flat surface to register the chisel against. A thicc boi, much like this one below from Bookbinding Supplies.

PAINTED EDGES: The idea was to have dark navy edges, speckled with white stars. I used acrylic from a tube to paint the edges — tutorials recommended it over liquid bottled acrylic, and I had an old set hanging around. Had to water it down because otherwise the paint just flaked off.

My test of trimming and painting went well. Then the trimmed book itself came out slightly crooked, the paint required significantly more watering-down than before, and the white paint did not want to be both opaque and speckle-able. Unfortunate, but still book-shaped! And now I have an idea of what to do differently next time.

Also, did not like the glow-in-the-dark paint. Looked too translucent in the light when compared to the white acrylic, and needed a thicker coat to be visible in the dark. (The thickness combined with the translucence and base colour kinda reminded me of boogers... Ended up scrapping most of it off, so there's not much left to glow.)

Endbands

Still in the mood to have fun and go all-out, I attempted double-core endbands for the first time.

TUTORIAL: YouTube @ BookbindersChronicle: Bookbinding 101 Sewing Headbands Session 2. Also watched @ DAS Bookbinding's Double-Core Endband // Adventures in Bookbinding, but I personally found Chronicle's closeup video easier to follow.

I used embroidery floss from a 100pk of assorted colours off Amazon, wrapped around a core of 1.9mm leather cording from Michaels. I drew from Blurb_brain's art for the general colours, choosing a dark base, with red, blue-green, and gold. The specific shades were picked to go with the cover.

[istherewifiinhell]

okay. heres what were all here for. tell me why the fuck im supposed to suck the dick of these uk comics

[ID: A man holding up an aged looking paper, with a medieval style drawing of a giant metal fire breathing man. He leans forward serious asking his son "... Did it look like this?" END]

marveltf story line, MAN OF IRON, 9-12 in the UK, or.... 33-34 in the us. alright lol do whatever i guess. first published in 1985

new vibe same procedure: Script: Steve Parkouse art: John Ridgeway (9-10) Mike Collins (11-12) Colours: Joise Fermin (9-10) Gina Hart (11-12) Nel Yomtov (US)* Letters: Richard Starkings Editor: Sheila Cranna and these caps are from the UK classics idw book so: Original Series Edits by Shelia Cranna and Ian Rimmer, editorial notes and assistance by James Roberts, Collection Edits by Justin Eisinger and Alonzo Simon, Collection Design by Shawn Lee (<- hey i know his work from turtles!)

*so the uk comics were part in colour and part B&W, to save costs... including the american reissues? printing costs i guess. but when reprinted in collected books, they would get the full colour treatment. whats not clear to me is WHO did those colours, its not listed anywhere i can find. ill simply have to assume its the same artists... and hope im not discrediting anyone....

AND ALSO the last page in this reprint apparently uses the US comic page, and i have a cap of that last page, so. Yomtov's in here too..... tf franchise the way u treat ur sacred texts breaks my turtles fan heart.

and lastly! the keen eyed may notice, we are back to toy accurate art, the character model designs haven't and wont make their way over until much later, I'm told.

well with all that perfectly convoluted business out of the way, lets explore what tfs is like across the pond.

[ID: The same man, Roy, driving as he thinks to himself "What kind of bozo would want to bomb the castle? The Saxon Liberation Front? The mind boggles…" END]

[spluttering laugh] so the humours a little different!

[ID: The boy, Sammy, climbing a tree, hand outstretched reaching for the arrow he lost. Standing, with his in the canopy is Jazz. Sammy yells in fear. END]

OKAY. so the vibes are little different

[ID: Caption Box: And the apparition was fearful, being a Man of Iron of great height and girth, seeming unheedful of quarrel, spear or sword…" The robot from the illustration, clearly transformer, but blockier, more retro scifi, standing in the middle of a medieval battle, men with chain-mail and swords looking at him with trepidation. Caption Box: The Man of Iron forded the stream at Eldric's Cross, making great strides for the abbey… and some brave souls followed, though none dared come too close…" Two of the fighters shown following him, a body shot with an arrow lays at the other side of the river. END]

damn okay. so the vibes are ALOT DIFFERENT

(no 10) sammy dreams

[ID: Sammy stands on a house rooftop, in his PJ's, looking down at the cobble street, where a seeker in alt mode rests. END]

[ID: Dark and moody art, a barely seen figure towers in the shadows over the residential houses. From a higher angle, its shown to be Mirage, he stands taking up the entire street, backlit and casting shadows. END]

WHAT THE FUCK. that is terrifying

(something about beautiful black inked art + toy model makes them so CREATURE)

[ID: Roy speaks to a man in army uniform. Roy: How large? Soldier: Well… ahh…at a rough estimate? About the size of an ocean-going liner. Roy: Whaat? Roy with a hand to his head in dismay: Well, for god's sake what is it? Solider: We don't know. I've called in extra men and we're going to excavate… END]

somethings! buried under the castle... gee well one wonders what it might be

[ID: Close on Jazz's alt mode dashboard, its filled with lights and screen of alien language. Hes saying: But I'm not a stranger, Sammy. Deep down, you know… don't you? You've been wanting an adventure all your life… Besides. I have something to tell you. Sammy looking doubtful. Jazz continues: Something really important. Sammy has a hand on Jazz's open door: Why not just sit for a while in the front seat? Just pretend you're driving… END]

JAZZ THATS KIDNAPPING BUD....

really get a kick outta this note in the printed version

[ID: REMEMBER: NEVER ACCEPT LIFTS FROM STRANGERS! TO BE CONTINUED! END]

(no 11)

[ID: Jazz speaks to Sammy on the road, a blue and white F1 car pulling up. "My name is unpronounceable in your language… so just call me Jazz! And that's Mirage right behind us!" Jazz takes a exit to a low road, a black camper truck driving alongside. "This is where we rendezvous with Trailbreaker. All set Sammy?" All three driving along, Sammy responds "Sure thing Jazz!" END]

[guitar riff] THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN. im so glad all my good friends are here.

[ID: An fiery explosion engulfing Trailbreaker with a "Whaamf!". Wheels coming off, glass shattering, the truck top blowing to bits. Trailbreaker veering off road, a trail of fire and parts behind him calls out "Jazz! I'm hit... I'm hit BAD! END]

TRAILBREAKER NOOOO. who could have seen this coming...

[ID: Jazz narrowing swerving a missile. Exploding behind him, and speedlines trail him, and a wreath in flame around him. The colours are almost delicate, and a reflective glow in his paint. END]

wha. this just looks so cool.... what the hell....

[ID: Bluesteak, smiling speaking to comms "Autobot Bluestreak to patrol leader +++ Just brushed something off your tail, Jazz+++ try to be more careful in future, hmmm? Bluestreak out+" END]

being a cunt in the work slack. king

[ID: Jazz in profile, lit under the starry night sky, soft line-less colours defining the planes of his head in blue greys, and pitch black. To Sammy he says "Not really. It's a shuttlecraft… now stand back…" To comms "Autobot Jazz To Autobot leader+++ Approaching shuttle with Surveillance Subject+++ Request permission to board+++" END]

Wuh. Huh. Jazz u look so fucking cool right now?? And handsome.....

okay whats going on back at the castle (no 12)

[ID: The army soldier half sitting on a desk, holding a phone to his ear, the rotary cradle held resting on his leg. He's saying "IT's not just a question of scale, sir. We simply cannot identify it. END]

whys he kinda... apparently this style of uniform is called temperate barrack dress?? that answers none of my questions im just kinda... whyd u draw him like that tho...

[ID: A seeker, drawn in blues, walking between the ruins of the castle. Off panel someone says "It just seemed to appear from nowhere!" END]

bigfooting it up... AT A CASTLE. oh lads. im done for [blah blah he telePORTS and thats skywarps power but hes blue so WHO is it. dont worry abt it man. dont matter. they apparently change in the various times its been coloured, which is objectively funny imho. keep em guessing]

[ID: Moody and still illustrations of a robot identical to the Man of Iron in stasis, plugged into a bed of sorts. The ship around him is dark but for strips of coloured computer like lights in the walls and floor. Caption boxes narrate: Deep beneath the Autobots feet, in a sealed chamber, a special Autobot lay waiting… He was navigator, warrior and guardian of Autobot destiny… In his long, slow, machine world, a million years were as fleeting seconds. Human history had passed over him. Small inter panels. Mid on the Guardian: Locked in his dormant brain was the location of the planet Cybertron. He waited only to be re-activated, re-integrated with his mission… Restored to life. Close on the Guardian: His attendant was no more, the link between them severed. Laying in profile, just barely defined in the pitch black: Alone in the darkness he patiently beamed his signal. The same pattern of impulses… Waiting. END]

What the actual fuck (its even more somberly dramatic than just that)

[ID: Sammy, from a distance, staring at the castle. Caption Box: Autumn came, leaves fell. Sammy was a year older and a year wiser. He never saw Jazz again… Sammy asleep in bed, moonlight pouring through his paneled window. "But on clear, sharp nights, when stars glittered like needles and the night winds rattled his window… Then he slept a fitful, fearful sleep…" Sammy sleeping, with his dreams projected above him. "And the Man of Iron walked once more through his dreams." The End]

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

um well. okay! thats. fucking crazy. and this is the only tf comic this dude ever did. okay... can u tell he was from the dr who comics...... it ALSO means this doesnt actually speak at all for what the rest of tfuk will be like. which is damn funny. LIKE WOW! THAT WAS CRAZY. anyways.

[birindale]

Catra looks into ecoterrorism. Perfuma learns about stranger danger. The Netherlands are canon, I guess.

Transcript/Image ID below the cut

[Image Description: A cover and 14 comic pages from the She-Ra mini-comic, “A Most Unpleasant Present”.

Cover: Starburst She-Ra stands in a fairly small meadow of flowers, smiling at Flutterina as the latter lands. Perfuma stands between them, also smiling. The Princess of Power logo takes its customary place at the top of the page, while the title of the issue breaks from tradition and sits directly below it, reading "A Most Unpleasant Present" in violet, with a whisper of a black border surrounding it. At the foot of the page, on a wavy-striped green strip, the copyright info reads "Illustrations: (copyright symbol) Mattel, Inc. 1985. Hawthorne, CA 90250 U.S.A. PRINTED IN TAIWAN. All Rights Reserved. (registered trademark symbol) and TM designate U.S. trademarks of Mattel, Inc." Which is actually a little weird, because this is issue 8 and was released after Fishy Business. I guess they weren't necessarily produced in the order they were published in but huh. Huh!

Page 1: A pale lilac caption box reads, "Never was a garden in Etheria more lovely than the Laughing Swan Inn's. Perfuma tended her flowerbeds with care. Where a flower had bloomed and faded, she quickly planted another. Dainty lady's slippers and sweet candytufts, bright Dutchman's breeches and soft buttercups—each flower was a lovely work of art." Great, now the Netherlands are canon. 

Perfuma is walking through a garden with a basket of flowers in her arms. The artists don't share in the writer's proclivity for flowers, as they've taken the names literally and drawn literal lady's slippers, a pair of jorts overflowing with flowers like a scarecrow that's been chopped in half, and several flowers full of hard candies and candy canes, which is double stupid because candytufts aren't even named after candy (It's from Candia, former name of Crete's administrative capital). Which isn't to say the writer knows all that much, because those flowers would do pretty poorly if subjected to identical conditions. But perhaps Etheria has some kind of magical ability to filter its sunlight and soil drainage for individual flowers. Behind Perfuma is the Laughing Swan Inn, which is shaped like a giant pink swan. So I guess this is another of those things Mattel and Filmation had distinct designs for. 

End Page 1. 

Page 2: A pink caption box reads, "A bustle in the hedgerow took Perfuma by surprise. Looking up, she found a pretty cat-woman was standing at her side." Perfuma meets eyes with a sly-looking Catra, who's in her Scratchin' Sound Catra outfit, sans mask and gloves. Catra is emerging from a flower bed that might once have been a hedgerow but certainly isn't now.

"My my! Your flowerbeds are beautiful this time of year," says Catra, grinning with a little too much tooth.

"Won't you plant these seeds too? They're a special gift," she says, holding a neatly wrapped present out to a pleased Perfuma. It's wrapped in yellow paper and a blue bow. 

End Page 2.

Page 3: A pink caption box reads, "Perfuma quite unwittingly obliged. In an instant, pigweed and poison ivy sprang up everywhere! She found herself trapped in a tangle of briars with no hope for escape!" A startled Perfuma raises her arms and looks down at more plant names taken literally, with several shrubs sprouting pig heads and skull-and-crossbones blossoms. Poison ivy and pigweed are both used to refer to a series of weeds found primarily in eastern North America, especially further south. They're prickly and tend to snag, and of course poison ivy is an allergenic, irritating the skin and causing rashes, but neither of them has thorns so I wouldn't really use the term 'briar'. Like you're going to be pretty itchy and covered in seeds for a while, but you could simply walk out. 

"Soon all Etheria's gardens shall look like thisss!" says Catra, grinning again. 

End Page 3. 

Page 4: Oh, I see. This and page 3 form a two-page spread. Catra is standing on the other side of a meadow of weeds, arms held out and away from her body as if she's basking in the light of the sun, her face lit up with an exultant smile. There are more skulls and pigs heads around her, plus a few evil-looking fiddleheads that vaguely resemble ram horns. 

"Full of weeds… wonderful weeds!" says Catra, gesturing at her handiwork. Girl it was one seed bomb this is hardly guerilla gardening. 

End Page 4.

Page 5: A pink caption box reads, "Flutterina watched from a second story window at the inn. Spotting Catra, her face darkened. She knew she had to fly to Crystal Castle for help." Flutterina is standing on the world's smallest balcony, like I think as small as one can be before it stops being a windowsill. But it looks OSHA-compliant, so good for Thaymor. Perfuma and Catra are visible in the field of weeds below her. 

"So, Catra's up to her old tricks! I must get help quickly," says Flutterina, flying towards the Crystal Caslte.

End Page 5. 

Page 6: A pale purple caption box reads, "Spotting Flutterina in the air, Butterflyer took wing to meet her. Breathlessly, the young girl revealed Perfuma's plight. Her words echoed through Crystal Courtyard as Princess Adora listened secretly." So Butterflyer (usually called THE Butterflyer) was a carrying case released with Wave 2 of the toys. In-universe she was discovered by She-Ra in 'the beautiful caverns deep beneath Crystal Castle' sleeping in a cocoon and woke her up, whereafter she carried She-Ra and her friends around Etheria.

The illustration shows Adora watching Flutterina land in what's apparently called 'Crystal Courtyard', where Bow and a very green Mermista receive her. Like, her hair is green, her outfit is green, I literally wouldn't know this was Mermista aside from the necklace and seashell bodice. It doesn't help that (the) Butterflyer is nowhere to be seen despite being featured in the caption. 

A pale purple caption box reads, "She knew they would need her help. So she drew her Sword of Protection and said…" Adora holds the hilt of the sword, just in-frame. 

"For the honor of Grayskull…" says Starburst She-Ra, transforming with her arms spread wide, "I am She-Ra!"

End Page 6. 

Page 7: A pale pink caption box reads, "She-Ra leaped between Butterflyer's wings and beckoned her friends to join her. "Quick, everyone! We must help Perfuma stop Catra from ruining the beautiful gardens!" She-Ra said. In an instant they were airborne, heading for the Laughing Swan Inn." Oh good, we're back to quotations in the caption boxes. Bow and Mermista seem to be riding comfortably astride (the) Butterflyer, while She-Ra is like… floating alongside her? Her right hand is resting on her, but her left arm is held out and away from her body, while her legs float in free space. Flutterina flies along behind the Butterflyer. Mermista's hair is closer to teal than green on this page, so we're getting there. The Crystal Castle recedes into the distance behind them, sitting atop a beautiful pink mesa.

The Butterflyer is slightly smaller than her toy, proportionally speaking, being only about twice the size of the figures here. She's all pink, including skin and hair, though it's lighter and darker there, respectively. As a toy, her skin is a pearlescent white almost the same color as She-Ra's outfit, and her wings are a different, more flexible plastic, used as handles to carry the figures around. This picture is slightly off-model, as it shows the Butterflyer with her arms held back against her side aerodynamically, whereas the toy has them clasped in front of her and holding a white butterfly. She also has a different neckline; the toy has a scoop neck with a patterned border and the picture features more of a poorly-defined feather look. It's also sleeveless, instead of the elaborately patterned opera glove/sleeve combo of the toy. We can't even say they were keeping it closer to the Filmation design, because that one doesn't HAVE arms. 

End Page 7.

Page 8: Catra swoons extremely dramatically as a huge flower emerges from Perfuma's back and emits a large yellow cloud. A pale purple caption box reads, "Meanwhile, Perfuma had used her magic sleeping power to put Catra in a deep sleep. But she knew her power was only temporary and Catra would be awake soon." The skulls and pig heads are still there. 

"Oh my, I must have dozed off! Your power is strong, Perfuma, but not strong enough!" says Catra, who's awake again, after a single panel.

"Oh no… here comes She-Ra!" says Catra, looking mildly concerned.

End Page 8. 

Page 9: A pale purple caption box reads, "Down, down Butterflyer dived. Perfuma grabbed Bow's arm and off they flew leaving Catra behind in the brambles." Okay but if you just wanted to escape why not do it for the 5 seconds she was unconscious? I thought the idea was to stop her from seed-bombing the whole planet. Bow is floating off the side of the Butterflyer now too, his arm wrapped around Perfuma's waist to lift her to safety. Mermista and She-Ra are beaming at him. She-Ra has her sword raised ineffectually and Catra is seething in the meadow below.

"You butterbrains! Flee before you feel my fireweed at your feet!" says Catra, hurling what appears to be a flaming dandelion after them instead of the pioneer species also known as rosebay willowherb and bombweed. This time it seems not to be intended as a literal reference, at least.

End Page 9. 

Page 10: A pale purple caption box reads, "Mermista quickly put out the fireweed. Caught in the spray, Catra ran for cover. Swooping down, Butterflyer made a perfect landing at the Laughing Swan's front door." The Butterflyer smiles at a small explosion, as Mermista shoots a jet of water from her necklace at the fireweed. Mermista, Perfuma, Bow, and She-Ra are atop the Butterflyer, and there's a pair of butterfly wings behind Perfuma so I think the implication is that Flutterina is now, too? 

"Hurry, everybody! We have no time to waste!" says She-Ra, gesturing for her friends to spring into action now that they're all on the ground.

End Page 10. 

Page 11: A pale pink caption box reads, "She-Ra and her friends worked quickly to save Perfuma's garden. Bow began pulling weeds, but Catra hurled a tumbleweed that sent him sprawling. Waist-deep in tarweed, Mermista was helpless to stop him. Perfuma was certain Catra could not be stopped, but She-Ra had a plan." The princesses look on in mild concern as Catra gleefully throws a gross, fleshy, hollow orb at Bow. Honestly it looks like the mace of a nutmeg, without the nutmeg. There are still pig heads and skulls and such around everyone. The Laughing Swan Inn looms in the background but does help balance the composition a bit.

"It's time to give Catra a taste of her own medicine!" says She-Ra.

End Page 11.

Page 12: A pale purple caption box reads, "She-Ra sent Perfuma inside the Inn. When the girl returned, she held two tiny seeds—one in each hand. She-Ra told Perfuma she must trust the magic of the Sword of Protection and gently waved it over the girl's open palms." Perfuma looks down at her palms, held face up with a seed in each, as She-Ra holds a very short-looking Sword of Protection over them and lifts her other hand as though casting a spell. The sword and Perfuma's hands glow with sparkling purple magic. 

The seeds, about the size of blueberries, are coated in a golden light.

They grow larger, more the size of cherries. "Why, look!" says Perfuma.

They grow larger, now the size of kiwis. "The seeds have tripled in size!"

End Page 12.

Page 13: "Now quickly, Perfuma! Throw the seeds at Catra's feet!" says She-Ra. 

A pale purple caption box reads, "Huge snapdragons and dogwood sprang from the ground—their bark worse than their bite. Catra quickly darted away, quivering with fright." A dog-headed plant barks at Catra, while three 'dragon' plants snap. Catra looks apprehensive, rearing away from them but not yet running. Perfuma and She-Ra watch from the background, smiling wide.

End Page 13. 

Page 14: A pale purple caption box reads, "Perfuma's eyes were full of tears. Catra was gone indeed, but she had left her weeds behind! She-Ra gently spoke to the girl with words both wise and kind. "Catra plays some nasty tricks; but we can help you make your garden pretty again. Perfuma, I think we can all learn a lesson here!"" Is it the lesson that semicolons function as conjunctions and as such you should never follow it with a second? No? Just that you should always take plant names literally? 

She-Ra puts a consoling hand on Perfuma's shoulder. 

"Oh, yes! I know now that it's dangerous to take gifts from strangers," says a crying Perfuma, in the orange-ish red of recent morals.

"Come on everybody and pitch in! We have work to do!" says Bow, holding a hoe. 

End Page 14.

End ID]

[man-i-just-really-like-plants]

History of tarot

Modern tarot decks as we know them were created in Northern Italy in the 1420s and were originally a card game called Trionfi or Trumps though all the earliest references to tarot all date to the 1440s and 1450s though the game itself originated in Germany known as Karnöffel. The word tarot started being used around the late 15th and early 16th centuries.

The oldest tarot deck I could find being the ‘Visconti-Sforza Tarot’ created in 1425 most likely by painter Bonifacio Bembo. The cards were oil painted on heavy paper and also had gold and silver. Only 35 cards remain today and was commissioned by Duke of Milan Filippo Visconti and his son-in-law Francesco Sforza.

[Image id: 3 cards from the Visconti-Sforza Tarot deck]

Soon after the same family commissioned another deck called the ‘Visconti Tarot’ and is dated back to 1428-1447. The deck is similar to the first with 69 [nice] cards remaining that now reside at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Also each suit has a female night and valet [page] in addition to the male ones. This has caused people to suggest that this deck was made for a woman or women of the court. these cards also include the three Theological Virtues: faith, hope and charity.

[Image id: 3 cards from the Visconti Tarot deck]

Other old tarot decks are ‘The Charles VI Tarot’ which was though to have been commissioned in 1392 by King Charles VI though this is not the case and most likely originated in Northern Italy somewhere in the 1400s.

‘The Sola Busca Tarot’ is the oldest know complete tarot set dating back to 1490 in Italy and created by metal engravings with some hand painted. The completed painted deck is in the Brera Museum in Milan, Italy and 35 unpainted cards are located in various museums around Europe. The deck is also illustrated with historical and mythological figures from ancient Rome.

‘The Tarot de Marseille’ isn’t a specific deck but a style of tarot that is thought to originate from 1500s Italy and then migrated to southern France after the French conquered Milan in 1499 where it became popular, the original artist unknown. These cards were woodblock print sometimes colored by hand or by stencil.

The 18th century

The first record of tarot being used for divination [that I could find] dates back to a book called ‘Le Monde Primitif’ by Antoine Court de Gebelin published in 1781. In the book he claimed the symbolism in tarot was from esoteric secrets of Egyptian priests. He also claimed that ancient occult knowledge had been carried to Rome and revealed to the Catholic Church and the popes, who desperately wanted to keep this arcane knowledge secret. He also writes about how the art of tarot connects to various Egyptian gods in the chapter on tarot meanings. There is no historical evidence to back up these claims.

The first tarot deck designed specifically for divinatory purposes was released in 1791 by Jean-Baptiste Alliette, a French occultist. He also released his own book on using tarot for divination called ‘Book of Thoth Etteilla Tarot'.

The Rider Waite tarot

The Raider Wait tarot was created by Arthur Wait, Aleister Crowley and artist Pamela Colman Smith who were all involved in the Order of the Golden Dawn which was a secret society for the study of the occult and metaphysics found in London in 1888.

The Rider Wait deck’s art is inspired by the Sola Busca deck and uses heavy Kabbalistic symbolism. Pamela Colman was the first artist to use characters as representative images in the lower cards instead of showing a cluster of ups, coins, wands or swords.

Source list 🦋 Metropolitan Museum of Art 🦋 Britanica 🦋 Learning religions 🦋 9 oldest tarot decks 🦋 + other sites I forgot about/I closed the tab and forgot about them [i'm a dumbass]

[physalian]

The Woes of Formatting

I am… 22 hours into formatting ENNS for print (now ebook) and am making this post for posterity’s sake to say: Formatting is so. Tedious. I had to start over thanks to Amazon going “ha you didn’t set your margins properly,” and also some last-minute changes to the text. Yesterday (7/24/24) after a full day of work, I worked on Book from 2:30pm to 11:30pm. Today is probably going to be about the same.

My neck hurts from staring at my monitor, my pinkie hurts from the strain of holding a computer mouse in one position since 6am. I have forgotten to cook lunch and dinner, but I did have breakfast.

It doesn’t even feel real yet. I am exhausted. But you know what feels great? Eliminating widows and orphans on the pages to erase the page count only by one. If you don’t know, those are the little hanging words on the bottom line of a paragraph or the top of a page that can be resized to fit on the line above it.

Getting to the last page of the chapter and realizing there’s only 3 or 4 lines of text left eating up an entire piece of paper, and then scrolling back through the chapter like a madwoman to nudge other paragraphs around to eliminate that extra page… I was literally cheering in my room in satisfaction.

For the record it shouldn’t take you this long, but I wanted it to be pretty, and Amazon is incredibly precise with their formatting requirements down to 0.001inches. So I had to reformat the cover art, which took a while. Then I had to fix the margins at least 3 times until no more errors showed up. Then I had to reread the entire book for last-minute changes. Then I had to format the chapter header pages.

Before that, though, I had to make the art for the chapter header pages. And re-learn how to do all of the formatting on InDesign.

So here I am, 22 hours in, finally onto the ebook that will be done tonight goddamn. And I just want to say, if it’s within your power to do as much of the work yourself as you can, fucking do it.

I’d be losing my mind with stress if I was waiting for a cover artist to make adjustments whenever they deigned to find my order a priority. Or the person I’d be paying to format this book. Losing. My. Mind. Maybe after the ridiculous goose chase I have been on with editors for this book has completely murdered my faith in paid beta readers to do shit in a timely manner (ENNS' first draft was written in 31 days, it took from 2/25/24 to 6/10 for my tiny army of betas and the AWOL failed betas to deliver, then 6 weeks for the professional copy edit). Anyway.

Yeah it’s taken me a long ass time, on top of two full corporate-nonsense workdays, but the satisfaction I have felt hammering this project out isn’t comparable to paying someone to do it for me. I got the manuscript back from my copy editor and I wasn’t excited, I was like “I needed this 10 days ago thanks” (in my head) and then got right back to work. Copy editor is necessary, don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely necessary, but the catharsis that I have now was definitely absent then.

So. Yeah. This is rambly and I’m not sorry. Even after the ebook is up for preorder there’s still work to be done and money to be spent. But I’m forcing myself to take a break, pause, breathe, appreciate the work I have already done.

I am hours away from launching my first published novel. Hours.

It doesn’t feel real. August 25th, 2024, Eternal Night of the Northern Sky's official release date. Gahhhhhhh.

—

For anyone curious:

Cover was done in Photoshop (I have the Lightroom student package for $9.99/mo)

Formatting was done in InDesign (%#&%# $35.99/mo after 7 day trial choke on rocks, Adobe)

Formatting did not need to be done in ID, but other one-time fees were either more expensive when I can cancel my subscription after the month is up, or the free versions were too limited and constricting in their capabilities.

I’m far too nitpicky to not have complete creative freedom and control over my work, with all the hours I have put in. So Adobe it is.

Back to work!

[this-week-in-rust]

This Week in Rust 544

Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust! Rust is a programming language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software. This is a weekly summary of its progress and community. Want something mentioned? Tag us at @ThisWeekInRust on Twitter or @ThisWeekinRust on mastodon.social, or send us a pull request. Want to get involved? We love contributions.

This Week in Rust is openly developed on GitHub and archives can be viewed at this-week-in-rust.org. If you find any errors in this week's issue, please submit a PR.

Updates from Rust Community

Foundation

Guest Blog: Attending CISA’s Open Source Software Security Summit

Newsletters

This Month in Rust OSDev: March 2024

Project/Tooling Updates

lilos v1.0 released

medium-to-markdown v0.1.1 : Convert your medium blogs easily into markdown files

Fluvio v0.11.6 release and project updates

venndb 0.4.0 - custom validators

Tantivy 0.22: Performance improvements, new aggregations and stability fixes

Announcing r3bl_terminal_async - build async interactive CLIs in Rust

[video] Demo + architecture overview of Ferrostar, a cross-platform turn-by-turn navigation SDK with a Rust core

Observations/Thoughts

The Rust Calling Convention We Deserve

Sized, DynSized, and Unsized

Coroutines and effects

Porting a cross-platform GUI application to Rust

Adventures In Rust: Bringing Exchange Support To Thunderbird

Rust Walkthroughs

Why SQLite Performance Tuning made Bencher 1200x Faster

drop, the destructor of Rust structs

Building with AWS S3 using Rust

Rust tokio task cancellation patterns

[video] Build with Naz - Published crate r3bl_terminal_async for building async interactive CLIs in Rust

[video] Trent Billington - Bevy ECS - Power tool for data oriented applications

[video] Building a procedural art generator

[audio] Isograph with Robert Balicki

Research

A Study of Undefined Behavior Across Foreign Function Boundaries in Rust Libraries

Rust Digger: Does size matter? The biggest crate is 450MB; More than 100 crates are over 50MB

Miscellaneous

GitHub Sponsor Rust developer David Tolnay

Learn how to write TCP servers using Rust's std::net module

RustFest Zürich 🇨 Talks announced

Crate of the Week

This week's crate is scandir, a high-performance file tree scanner.

Thanks to Marty B. for the self-suggestion!

Please submit your suggestions and votes for next week!

Call for Testing

An important step for RFC implementation is for people to experiment with the implementation and give feedback, especially before stabilization. The following RFCs would benefit from user testing before moving forward:

No calls for testing were issued this week.

If you are a feature implementer and would like your RFC to appear on the above list, add the new call-for-testing label to your RFC along with a comment providing testing instructions and/or guidance on which aspect(s) of the feature need testing.

Call for Participation; projects and speakers

CFP - Projects

Always wanted to contribute to open-source projects but did not know where to start? Every week we highlight some tasks from the Rust community for you to pick and get started!

Some of these tasks may also have mentors available, visit the task page for more information.

awesome-alternatives-in-rust - Add dqy alternative to dig

fluvio - When a topic is deleted, connected clients should have their connection closed

fluvio - MQTT Connector: Prefix auto generated Client ID to prevent connection drops

fluvio - Remove localhost from fluvio in favor of 127.0.0.1

If you are a Rust project owner and are looking for contributors, please submit tasks here.

CFP - Speakers

Are you a new or experienced speaker looking for a place to share something cool? This section highlights events that are being planned and are accepting submissions to join their event as a speaker.

RustConf 2024 | Closes 2024-04-25 | Montreal, Canada | Event date: 2024-09-10

RustLab 2024 | Closes 2024-05-01 | Florence, Italy | Event date: 2024-11-09 - 2024-11-11

EuroRust 2024| Closes 2024-06-03 | Vienna, Austria & online | Event date: 2024-10-10

Scientific Computing in Rust 2024| Closes 2024-06-14 | online | Event date: 2024-07-17 - 2024-07-19

Conf42 Rustlang 2024 | Closes 2024-07-22 | online | Event date: 2024-08-22

If you are an event organizer hoping to expand the reach of your event, please submit a link to the submission website through a PR to TWiR.

Updates from the Rust Project

432 pull requests were merged in the last week

add simple async drop glue generation

llvm backend: Prevent creating the same Instance::mono multiple times

static_mut_refs: use raw pointers to remove the remaining FIXME

add a lower bound check to unicode-table-generator output

add an opt-in to store incoming edges in VecGraph + misc

add llvm-bitcode-linker to build manifest

allow workproducts without object files

at debuginfo=0, don't inline debuginfo when inlining

correctly change type when adding adjustments on top of NeverToAny

coverage: branch coverage tests for lazy boolean operators

coverage: prepare for improved branch coverage

delay interning errors to after validation

delay span bug when Self kw resolves to DefKind::{Mod,Trait}

don't ICE for kind mismatches during error rendering

don't ascend into parent bodies when collecting stmts for possible return suggestion

don't error on subtyping of equal types

don't inline integer literals when they overflow - new attempt

don't repeatedly duplicate TAIT lifetimes for each subsequently nested TAIT

fix ICE in eval_body_using_ecx

fix ICE when there is a non-Unicode entry in the incremental crate directory

fix capturing duplicated lifetimes via parent in precise_captures (impl use<'...>)

fix normalizing in different ParamEnvs with the same InferCtxt

fix trait solver overflow with non_local_definitions lint

flip spans for precise capturing syntax not capturing a ty/const param, and for implicit captures of lifetime params

give a name to each distinct manipulation of pretty-printer FixupContext

ignore -C strip on MSVC

implement Modified Condition/Decision Coverage

implement PROBLEMATIC_CONSTS generalization

implement syntax for impl Trait to specify its captures explicitly (feature(precise_capturing))

improve ICE message for forbidden dep-graph reads

interpret: pass MemoryKind to adjust_alloc_base_pointer

interpret: pass MemoryKind to before_memory_deallocation

interpret: use ScalarInt for bin-ops; avoid PartialOrd for ScalarInt

introduce perma-unstable wasm-c-abi flag

let inherent associated types constrain opaque types during projection

make suggest_deref_closure_return more idiomatic/easier to understand

make thir_tree and thir_flat into hooks

make the comments for ReturnDest variants doc comments

match ergonomics 2024: Implement eat-one-layer

match ergonomics 2024: mut doesn't reset binding mode

match hyphen in multi-revision comment matchers

opaque types have no namespace

outline default query and hook provider function implementations

prefer identity equality over equating types during coercion

print note with closure signature on type mismatch

properly handle emojis as literal prefix in macros

remove default_hidden_visibility: false from wasm targets

remove uneeded clones now that TrustedStep implies Copy

silence some follow-up errors on trait impls in case the trait has conflicting or otherwise incoherent impls

simplify shallow resolver to just fold ty/consts

stop taking ParamTy/ParamConst/EarlyParamRegion/AliasTy by ref

subtype predicates only exist on inference types, so we can allow them to register opaque types within them

tell LLVM Vec::len is invariant across growth

use raw-dylib for Windows synchronization functions

refactor clippy in bootstrap

when suggesting RUST_BACKTRACE=1, add a special note for Miri's env var isolation

miri: data_race: make the release/acquire API more clear

miri: no_std works on Windows now

miri: add localtime_r shim

miri: address reuse improvements and fixes

miri: deadlock: show backtrace for all threads

miri: directly call handle_alloc_error

miri: implement support for __rust_alloc_error_handler

miri: make realloc with a size of zero fail

miri: move read_byte_slice to general helpers file, next to read_c_str

miri: threads: keep track of why we are blocked, and sanity-check that when waking up

Box::into_raw: make Miri understand that this is a box-to-raw cast

PatRangeBoundary::compare_with: also add a fast-path for signed integers

codegen ZSTs without an allocation

stabilize Wasm target features that are in phase 4 and 5

stabilize const_io_structs

stabilize checking of cfgs at compile-time: --check-cfg option

stabilize generic NonZero

make checked ops emit unchecked LLVM operations where feasible

improve std::fs::Metadata Debug representation

fix negating f16 and f128 constants

force exhaustion in iter::ArrayChunks::into_remainder

checked_ilog: improve performance

add an intrinsic for ptr::from_raw_parts(_mut)

fix: make str::from_raw_parts_mut mut

use queue-based RwLock on more platforms

add support for Arm64EC to the standard library

codegen_gcc: fix PassMode::Indirect with params

codegen_gcc: fix check for main function already declared

codegen_gcc: fix panic when calling get_fn for a variable

codegen_gcc: fix passing custom CG_RUSTFLAGS when building sysroot

codegen_gcc: implement more type kinds

cargo install: including Locking message

cargo resolver: add default Edition2024 to resolver v3

cargo resolver: add v3 resolver for MSRV-aware resolving

cargo credential: trim newlines in tokens from stdin

cargo msrv: error, rather than panic, on rust-version 'x'

cargo msrv: put MSRV-aware resolver behind a config

cargo toml: don't crash on parse errors that point to multi-byte character

cargo toml: disallow source-less dependencies

cargo toml: error on [project] in Edition 2024

cargo toml: report _fied variants (e.g. dev_dependencies) as deprecated

cargo: fix 'cargo build' fails when list_files() with gix is triggered

rustdoc: always display stability version even if it's the same as the containing item

rustdoc: fix copy path button

rustdoc: support type '/' to search

rustdoc-search: fix description on aliases in results

rustdoc-search: single result for items with multiple paths

clippy: threadlocal_initializer_can_be_made_const will not trigger for unreachable initializers

clippy: arithmetic_side_effects fix false negative on +=

clippy: ptr_as_ptr: fix duplicate diagnostics

clippy: emit the needless_pass_by_ref_mut lint on self arguments as well

clippy: fix is_test_module_or_function

clippy: reduce single_char_pattern to only lint on ascii chars

clippy: rework interior mutability detection

clippy: the multiple_unsafe_ops_per_block test needs asm!

rust-analyzer: cargo script mvp

rust-analyzer: add convert From to TryFrom assist

rust-analyzer: allow rust files to be used linkedProjects

rust-analyzer: VFS should not walk circular symlinks

rust-analyzer: handle escaped chars in doc comments

rust-analyzer: replace Just the variable name in Unused Variable Diagnostic Fix

rust-analyzer: implement BeginPanic handling in const eval

rust-analyzer: make test harness arguments configurable and not --nocapture

rust-analyzer: render matched macro arm on hover of macro calls

rust-analyzer: try to generate more meaningful names in json converter

Rust Compiler Performance Triage

A week dominated by small mixed changes to perf with improvements slightly outweighing regressions. There were no pure regressions, and many of the mixed perf results were deemed worth it for their potential improvements to runtime performance through further optimization from LLVM.

Triage done by @rylev. Revision range: ccfcd950..a77f76e2

Summary:

(instructions:u) mean range count Regressions ❌ (primary) 0.4% [0.2%, 1.8%] 57 Regressions ❌ (secondary) 0.4% [0.2%, 1.9%] 26 Improvements ✅ (primary) -0.8% [-3.4%, -0.2%] 50 Improvements ✅ (secondary) -0.6% [-1.9%, -0.1%] 32 All ❌✅ (primary) -0.2% [-3.4%, 1.8%] 107

0 Regressions, 5 Improvements, 6 Mixed; 2 of them in rollups 62 artifact comparisons made in total

Full report here

Call for Testing

An important step for RFC implementation is for people to experiment with the implementation and give feedback, especially before stabilization. The following RFCs would benefit from user testing before moving forward:

No calls for testing were issued this week.

RFCs

Rust

If you are a feature implementer and would like your RFC to appear on the above list, add the new call-for-testing label to your RFC along with a comment providing testing instructions and/or guidance on which aspect(s) of the feature need testing.

Approved RFCs

Changes to Rust follow the Rust RFC (request for comments) process. These are the RFCs that were approved for implementation this week:

No RFCs were approved this week.

Final Comment Period

Every week, the team announces the 'final comment period' for RFCs and key PRs which are reaching a decision. Express your opinions now.

RFCs

[disposition: merge] experimental project goal program for 2024 H2

Tracking Issues & PRs

Rust

[disposition: merge] Tracking Issue for std::path::absolute

[disposition: merge] Tracking Issue for convenience methods on NonNull

[disposition: merge] Inline more svg images into CSS

[disposition: merge] Edition 2024: Make ! fall back to !

[disposition: merge] static_mut_refs: Should the lint cover hidden references?

Cargo

[disposition: merge] fix(toml): Warn, rather than fail publish, if a target is excluded

New and Updated RFCs

[new] experimental project goal program for 2024 H2

Upcoming Events

Rusty Events between 2024-04-24 - 2024-05-22 🦀

Virtual

2024-04-24 | Virtual + In Person (Prague, CZ) | Rust Czech Republic

#2: Making Safe Rust Safer (Pavel Šimerda)

2024-04-25 | Virtual (Berlin, DE) | OpenTechSchool Berlin + Rust Berlin

Rust Hack and Learn | Mirror: Rust Hack n Learn Meetup

2024-04-30 | Virtual (Dallas, TX, US) | Dallas Rust

Last Tuesday

2024-05-01 | Virtual (Cardiff, UK) | Rust and C++ Cardiff

Rust for Rustaceans Book Club: Chapter 5 - Project Structure

2024-05-01 | Virtual (Indianapolis, IN, US) | Indy Rust

Indy.rs - with Social Distancing

2024-05-02 | Virtual (Charlottesville, NC, US) | Charlottesville Rust Meetup

Crafting Interpreters in Rust Collaboratively

2024-05-07 | Virtual (Buffalo, NY) | Buffalo Rust Meetup

Buffalo Rust User Group

2024-05-09 | Virtual (Berlin, DE) | OpenTechSchool Berlin + Rust Berlin

Rust Hack and Learn | Mirror: Rust Hack n Learn Meetup

2024-05-09 | Virtual (Israel) | Rust in Israel

Rust at Microsoft, Tel Aviv - Are we embedded yet?

2024-05-09 | Virtual (Nuremberg/Nürnberg, DE) | Rust Nuremberg

Rust Nürnberg online

2024-05-14 | Virtual (Dallas, TX, US) | Dallas Rust

Second Tuesday

2024-05-14 | Virtual (Halifax, NS, CA) | Rust Halifax

Rust&Tell - Halifax

2024-05-14 | Virtual + In-Person (München/Munich, DE) | Rust Munich

Rust Munich 2024 / 1 - hybrid (Rescheduled)

2024-05-15 | Virtual (Vancouver, BC, CA) | Vancouver Rust

Rust Study/Hack/Hang-out

2024-05-16 | Virtual (Charlottesville, VA, US) | Charlottesville Rust Meetup

Crafting Interpreters in Rust Collaboratively

2024-05-21 | Virtual (Washington, DC, US) | Rust DC

Mid-month Rustful—forensic parsing via Artemis

Africa

2024-05-04 | Kampala, UG | Rust Circle Kampala

Rust Circle Meetup

Asia

2024-05-11 | Bangalore, IN | Rust Bangalore

May 2024 Rustacean meetup

Europe

2024-04-24 | Virtual + In Person (Prague, CZ) | Rust Czech Republic

#2: Making Safe Rust Safer (Pavel Šimerda)

2024-04-25 | Aarhus, DK | Rust Aarhus

Talk Night at MFT Energy

2024-04-25 | Berlin, DE | Rust Berlin

Rust and Tell - TBD

2024-04-25 | København/Copenhagen, DK | Copenhagen Rust Community

Rust meetup #46 sponsored by Nine A/S

2024-04-25 | Vienna, AT | Rust Vienna

Rust Vienna x Python User Group - April

2024-04-27 | Basel, CH | Rust Basel

Fullstack Rust - Workshop #2 (Register by 23 April)

2024-04-27 | Stockholm, SE | Stockholm Rust

Ferris' Fika Forum #2

2024-04-30 | Budapest, HU | Budapest Rust Meetup Group

Rust Meetup Budapest 2

2024-04-30 | Salzburg, AT | Rust Salzburg

[Rust Salzburg meetup]: 6:30pm - CCC Salzburg, 1. OG, ArgeKultur, Ulrike-Gschwandtner-Straße 5, 5020 Salzburg

2024-05-01 | Köln/Cologne, DE | Rust Cologne

This Month in Rust, May

2024-05-01 | Utrecht, NL | NL-RSE Community

NL-RSE RUST meetup

2024-05-06 | Delft, NL | GOSIM

GOSIM Europe 2024

2024-05-07 & 2024-05-08 | Delft, NL | RustNL

RustNL 2024

2024-05-08 | Cambridge, UK | Cambridge Rust Meetup

Monthly Rust Meetup

2024-05-09 | Gdańsk, PL | Rust Gdansk

Rust Gdansk Meetup #2

2024-05-14 | Virtual + In-Person (München/Munich, DE) | Rust Munich

Rust Munich 2024 / 1 - hybrid (Rescheduled)

2024-05-14 | Prague, CZ | Rust Prague

Rust Meetup Prague (May 2024)

2024-05-21 | Aarhus, DK | Rust Aarhus

Hack Night

2024-05-21 | Zurich, CH | Rust Zurich

Save the date - Mai Meetup

North America

2024-04-24 | Austin, TX, US | Rust ATX

Rust Lunch - Fareground

2024-04-25 | Nashville, TN, US | Music City Rust Developers

Music City Rust Developers - Async Rust on Embedded

2024-04-26 | Boston, MA, US | Boston Rust Meetup

North End Rust Lunch, Apr 26

2024-05-04 | Cambridge, MA, US | Boston Rust Meetup

Kendall Rust Lunch, May 4

2024-05-09 | Spokane, WA, US | Spokane Rust

Monthly Meetup: Topic TBD!

2024-05-12 | Brookline, MA, US | Boston Rust Meetup

Coolidge Corner Brookline Rust Lunch, May 12

2024-05-16 | Seattle, WA, US | Seattle Rust User Group

Seattle Rust User Group Meetup

2024-05-20 | Somerville, MA, US | Boston Rust Meetup

Ball Square Rust Lunch, May 20

2024-05-21 | San Francisco, CA, US | San Francisco Rust Study Group

Rust Hacking in Person

2024-05-22 | Austin, TX, US | Rust ATX

Rust Lunch - Fareground

Oceania

2024-04-30 | Auckland, NZ | Rust AKL

Rust AKL: Why Rust? Convince Me!

2024-04-30 | Canberra, ACT, AU | Canberra Rust User Group

CRUG April Meetup: Generics and Traits

If you are running a Rust event please add it to the calendar to get it mentioned here. Please remember to add a link to the event too. Email the Rust Community Team for access.

Jobs

Please see the latest Who's Hiring thread on r/rust

Quote of the Week

The learning curve for Rust is relatively steep compared to other languages, but once you climb it you'll never look down.

– BD103 on Mastodon

Thanks to BD103 for the self-suggestion!

Please submit quotes and vote for next week!

This Week in Rust is edited by: nellshamrell, llogiq, cdmistman, ericseppanen, extrawurst, andrewpollack, U007D, kolharsam, joelmarcey, mariannegoldin, bennyvasquez.

Email list hosting is sponsored by The Rust Foundation

Discuss on r/rust

[fantasyfantasygames]

HellBlaster

HellBlaster, Black Dog Games, 2009

HellBlaster is a blasphemous game of Satan worship and demon-summoning that will scare your parents and make your pastor faint. It is Totally Metal and evil as fuck. At least, that's what it tells you.

HellBlaster combines some generic devil imagery, LaVeyan Satanism, the games of id software, the more notorious parts of AD&D1e, and a big dose of Judas Priest and Manowar lyrics. Your characters "fight evil with evil". Examples given include burning down a house to kill a serial killer, and summoning a demon just to murder it. There are no real sample scenarios or "here's how you get your band together", it's just assumed that you're all there to kick Satan's ass in the name of Satan or something.

It's class-and-level-based, uses exclusively 6-sided dice, and has stats and skills that are both on the 3-18 range. Stats are Might, Speed, Power, Wisdom, and Cool. Classes include the Demon Summoner, Face Eater, Pyro, and Doom Reaper. Spells and level-based abilities are almost entirely focused around the game's janky combat, and the rules are too. To their credit they slimmed down the rules compared to AD&D1e - no weapon speed factors or encumbrance - but you roll both attack and defense, you roll both damage and damage reduction from armor, you roll both psychic power and magic resistance, etc. It all has twice as many rolls as it needs while still lacking any real tactics. It has detailed critical hits. Explicitly detailed.

The art is... um... evocative of its subject matter. I can't say it's badly drawn, but I can say that I would rather not look at a lot of it. I do like that the interior uses a 2-color process: white paper, black text, day-glow green accenting. It's reminiscent of the green used in DC Comics' Underworld Unleashed crossover, where they had a normal 4-color process but also this really vibrant, fluorescent green.

The spells are described at length. Each one of them is at least half a page, so there are only maybe 80, but you'll know exactly what your character is writing, chanting, and burning while they cast. There are no in-the-moment combat spells; instead you sacrifice something earlier in the day so that you can throw fireballs or call a Razor Demon later on. Everyone gets magic. Some classes are better at it than others, both in terms of power level and breadth. Balance seems ok.

I had a real hard time figuring out whether this game is in on the joke. I knew a fair number of people back in the day who were semi-serious about evil-metal-satan stuff and who would now find this book hilarious, but the book itself has no feeling of tongue-in-cheek. It's all delivered as if it were completely serious about getting you, the reader, into someone's misguided idea of the occult. I'm still not honestly sure how self-aware the book or its author are. I guess it's up to your play group to decide whether you can keep a straight face while having your black-leather-clad Exotormentor cast Devil Scream at a slasher with a demonic conjoined twin.

HellBlaster has two supplements. Devastation of the Lamb is a scenario, and Damnation Highway is a more-demons-and-spells book. If you're looking for any of them, luckily this was published well after the Satanic Panic. A lot of Black Dog Games' work is out of print, but this had a reprint recently enough that you can probably find copies around.

[carchariascarcharodon]

was thinking about robert shaw again today, and i wanted to do some archival digging to see if i could find some interviews he'd done in the past other than his appearances on the dick cavett show & the new england our way documentary (which honestly seem to be the only filmed interviews he's ever done).

i found over a dozen eighteen(!) articles, but there was one published in the guardian on july 16, 1971 that i found especially interesting! while he does talk about the usual things discussed in his interviews (his children, his work, his love of writing over acting) he does also speak (albeit briefly) about his being a socialist - which is really *not* what i would have expected robert shaw's political alignment to be ALKDGNSDKLGN it's so cool !! he was so cool.

it's a horrible, horrible scan though, & looks something like this:

so i've just gone ahead and transcribed everything to the best of my ability below. i've also made some slight changes to punctuation for the sake of readability. there were a lot of strange run-on sentences in the original article.

i'd happily share the link to the original document, but i found it via proquest and my university's name is directly attached to any generated permalinks :( issn is 02613077 and doc id is 185459069 though! interviewer/author of the article was terry philpott.

“Most people, you see, think that actors are stupid,” says Robert Shaw, stage, film, and television actor, playwright, and novelist (“The Sun Doctor” won the Hawthornden Prize). It is likely that most people think that there are two Robert Shaws. People who read novels think that there is a novelist called Robert Shaw, who has nothing to do with that dreadful actor who they occasionally see on television, or they think that he is the son of the son of George Bernard Shaw, and are too ignorant to know that he didn’t have a son. The popular image of Shaw shows him starring in films like “From Russia with Love,” “The Valiant,” “The Battle of the Bulge,” “Custer of the West,” and “The Battle of Britain.” He was a memorable Henry VIII to Paul Scofield’s More in “A Man for All Seasons,” [?] fewer people know him in the [?] adaptations of Pinter or as a stage actor. Shaw too is an intensely physical character, the man of the media who offers tips in drinking, the sportsman, the father of eight children, and the owner of four cats, who delights to drive at high speed. Even his novels, serious as they are, contain this intense physical aspect of their author. His priest in “The Flag” was a former miner, a man of great physical energies who harboured doubts about [?] and his faith. Halliday, the sun doctor, found his moral conflicts besetting him in the African jungle, and in between their philosophizing and perhaps [?], Slattery and Lewis in “A Card From Morocco” drink and rage. Yet in Shaw, the intellectual and physical seem in [?] compatibly at one moment, he is eagerly discussing sport; at the next, art; a discussion of politics with reference to Lord Liverpool’s ministries takes up as much time as a discussion on driving; he discloses his Socialist convictions with an angry gusto; makes what appears to be a thoughtful remark, but laughs suddenly and says that he was only joking. The challenge, egotism, sharpness of thought and quickness of word are not Shaw acting public Shaw, but the essence and reality. “I genuinely love to shock my readership into something,” says Shaw the writer, “But I am always thinking of how I can get their attention, of how I can shock them out of their smug, middle-class ways. I want to shock them out of their stupor, to shock them into awareness, to make them think. Everybody is shocking them sexually, but I am like the Jesuit priest, and I want to make the boy [thud?]” “There is so much sensationalism, now. How can you do that? I have got to get at them after they take my books off the library or book shop shelves. I know how Edna O’Brien does it, but the first pages of my novel aren’t those of the popular novels. I am a political pamphleteer.” Shaw believes very much in early formative [influences?], and perhaps his character can be explained by his upbringing. Born in Lancashire, he was eldest of the five children of a doctor, who committed suicide when his son was 11. “My mother was the total influence. She is an extremely strong woman, a puritan in the true sense of the word. We were thought of as a family of some social standing, the family to know in the village. While my mother used to tell me not to play with the ‘common children,’ from her I learnt also real humanity.”

Although his childhood was spent mainly in the Orkneys and Cornwall, the family lived near Bolton through some of the Depression, a period of lasting influence on his political leanings. His interests in writing and acting grew simultaneously at school. At 21, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon for two years, following them with a year at the Old Vic. As late as 1960 he was still known mainly for his role in “The Buccaneers,” although his first novel, “The Hiding Place” had appeared in 1959, and the year before that he acted in his own play, “Off the Mainland,” at the Arts Theatre, London. He supplemented his income by journalism, writing feature articles for “Queen” and [chairing?] television’s [lone essay?] at a regular literary programme, “The Bookman.” There he introduced to the television public a young novelist named Edna O’Brien, whose first novel, “The Country Girls,” had just appeared. “I write, first, because I have a childish desire for immortality,” Shaw says, “I don’t know why it is, but I have noticed that other people have it, too, although in an essay Adler wrote that it was not a desire strong in women. Secondly, I am a political writer. I feel very radically about some things, but only in a certain kind of way, not in a square-on political party way. I would like to influence people to a hard and tough radicalism. That is why I admire Orwell so much and I admire him even at his worst. We are surrounded by second-rate, trashy writers who are taken up and praised. It isn’t that I think Harold Pinter is the greatest playwright of the century, but even at his worst he is an intelligent writer.” Acting offers few compensations. “Films are a business and seldom an art form. It is a director’s medium. For obvious reasons, there are no good screen writers, because anyone with any sense doesn’t want to be one. The only films that I have been in that have made money have been the bad ones, so you’ll see what I mean.” He is currently playing Lord Randolph Churchill in the making of “Young Winston,” the Richard Attenborough-Carl Foreman film adaptation of Churchill’s “My Early Life.” Here there are some satisfactions. “It is one of the last big budget pictures. I have the best part, with the possible exception of Anne Bancroft as Lady Jennie Churchill. Hardly anyone knows anything about Randolph, so I’ll have to be bad not to be able to do something with the part. While he wasn’t the equal of his son, he was a very remarkable man. It is pleasant to be playing an intelligent man for a change. I have also got my best wardrobe since Henry VIII, so that is my vanity satisfied. Few are working in the industry at the moment, so even to be working is some feat.” Filming can occasionally offer deeper rewards. “There are some occasions when you are working with someone really good, like Joe Losey, and filming can become art and takes on something special. It is a sort of religious moment when you feel that you are really communicating something. It is probably an illusion, but you can also feel it when you write. It has only happened to me rarely with acting.”

He and his wife Mary Ure may go to Broadway in Pinter’s “Old Times,” but even stage acting Shaw finds of dubious interest. “There is an English mystique about the theatre, thus stage actors are knighted and film actors are not. I get bored by any stage play in about four weeks, but you also have an audience to respond to you. The great difference is that in the theatre you can dominate the audience, whereas in the cinema you can woo them.” For these and other reasons he would not leave acting. “I would like to say that. I was going to stop acting completely, but I can’t. Apart from the other reasons, there is, first, this childlike side in me that loves acting, and although I curse it at times, I think that acting is under-rated. It is certainly better than many professions; being a politician, for instance. Secondly, I can’t afford to be just a writer. I could afford it if I were prepared to live in a poorer manner, but now I am used to living in a certain way. Anyway, I rarely go out or buy clothes or spend much on myself, but I have a lot of dependents.” Acting, too, allows him to subsidise his writing: the National Theatre have just paid him £100 for his new play, “Cato Street,” which he worked on for two years, and he has another novel, “Flesh and Blood,” planned for publication next year. He is working at the moment on the second volume of “The Cure of Souls,” his trilogy, the first of which was “The Flag.” It will be set during the Spanish Civil War, a period and event of enduring fascination for him. But he does not see the trilogy as the work for which he might be remembered. “I keep getting little ideas which are more relevant, contemporary, and will be in the end more important. Conrad kept breaking off his larger works like ‘Lord Jim’ to write other works like ‘The Heart of Darkness.’ I am trying to achieve that kind of book.” Shaw enjoys his wealth. “It gives me power, but more than that, if you are proud and poor in modern society, it isn’t very pleasant. I was always willing to be sacked by a director. I can afford to be now, but I believe that every actor, whatever his material position, should be willing to be, too. Money also offers me freedom and space.” It is providing him with a large house in Ireland where he will indulge again his desire for immortality by creating a great garden. Shaw admits to some incongruity in a Socialist enjoying the comforts of the Savoy and talking about his wealth. He says it is a dilemma that has confronted him for some time, but he has reconciled himself to it in the knowledge that he is an autocrat, and does not know a talented person who is not. “Here I am living like a capitalist, and yet I believe that if there were a real chance of equality[,?] of opportunity, of real socialism, then I would give up all the money. It would all go. Definitely, definitely, definitely. That I really feel.”

[eirian]

so i was thinking about how i kinda wanted to make comics for a living (this could be a temporary desire still lol) and i was thinking about my career as a whole and how it would go. if i dont have a long-running comic that i work on for years and years, basically my whole career, then id have to make new stories to keep me on my feet. unfortunately with mirrors, at least as it is now, i dont feel comfortable enough publishing it for money just yet until it gets some major rewriting done. so if i were to go into comics id have to put my energy into some other stories i have.

what worried me for a while was that id just..run out of content to produce? run out of stories to work on, and thus run out of work to keep me afloat (i dont know how popular any of my stories would get, so i dont know how much income id have from royalties and such). but then i listed out all my potential stories and i was like..damn maybe i'll be ok with just these lol. b/c if i publish all of these i could maybe get enough income to make a living off of them, and id have enough stories to keep myself occupied

to list the original stories i could produce:

underdark

alien love

step

villain + school

the shadow of doubt

hellish compromise

when death smiled

multiplicity (maybe)

to list the stories that are iffy due to heavy influence from other stories but i could probably work them out differently:

mirrors

facets

new light

see this is a lot of shit!!! even if i finish them ALL, i think by then id be pretty set. idk. i guess we'll see

with stories i havent already started drawing (so besides mirrors and villain + school) id probably take a black & white approach to their art styles to keep myself sane (with a few colored pages thrown in there of course). but yeah i guess we'll see how things go

[lasclcitizen]

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[greenhorn-art]

Keep Your Head Up to the Sky (As Your Day Unfolds) by alphera [Twitter]

Illustrated by Shirou_UOHS @shirou-oh-sakura

Fandom: 全职高手 | The King's Avatar

Rating: General Audiences

Category: M/M

Words: 9 270

Time is rarely kind, and impossible to escape. At the ripe old age of 30, Han Wenqing retires from the Glory Professional Alliance and moves forward the only way he knows how: fearlessly and without hesitation.

About the Book

FONTS: Coelacanth, Segoe UI Emoji

IMAGES: Illustrations by Shirou; pastel sky ID: 7007221 from Rawpixel; dark blue sky ID: 7044483 from Rawpixel; Han Wenqing & Desert Dust image from The King's Avatar Wikia; Ye Xiu & Lord Grim image also from TKA Wikia; Glory card png also made by Shirou via Discord

MATERIALS: regular ol' printer paper (8.5"x11", 20lb, 96 bright); ~1.5mm chipboard; Neenah cardstock (8.5"x11", 65lb, bright white); Iris bookcloth (Madeira colour); paper from Gilded Ink paper pad by Recollections; waxed linen thread (30/3 size, white); wheat paste (1:4 flour:water)

PROGRAMS USED: typeset in Affinity Publisher 2; endpapers designed with Affinity Designer 2 and Affinity Photo 2; imposed with Renegade's Community Imposer (settings: Quarto, snug against binding edge, signatures of 2 sheets).

Text & QR codes printed with colour laser printer (duplex, flip long edge), images printed with inkjet printer (HP Envy 5055; one sheet at a time, single sided, place facedown in tray)

BINDING: quarto (quarter-letter) size, sewn board binding with french link stitch and breakaway spine.

.

Absolutely LOVED this story! I've reread this one a number of times, and keep going back for more. Alphera's writing is so good! Ye Xiu is the series protagonist so things usually follow him, which makes it refreshing to see a story through Han Wenqing's eyes. And the author does it SO WELL! AHHH!

It's been a while since my first read-through, but I'm pretty sure this was the first TKA fic that I actually downloaded and started typesetting. Absolutely chuffed to have it finished! (Love me some growth-- the typeset looks a LOT better than my earlier attempts!)

RAMBLES

Another sewn board binding and breakaway spine! Since this isn't my first go at it, the construction of the book was considerably faster and smoother than my last one. It's just as well, because I ran into a speed bump that stretched out how long it took to typeset and print.

The culprit: (very pretty) illustrations. My laser's colour printing capabilities are shot to hell, so I used my inkjet for the artwork. This involved creating 3 copies of my typeset: 1) the completed typeset; 2) just the text, images hidden; 3) just the images, text hidden/white. Then I ran them through the imposer and printed the text version. The real issue was figuring out how to feed the sheets through my inkjet printer to print the images where I want them. Had to go one page at a time, single-sided. (Just need to place sheet facedown in the tray. So flip along vertical axis.) It took a while, but I got there in the end. And the results were SO worth it! 😊

For the scene breaks I left them as written. I had tried inserting images of the Glory Logo and account card, or using crossed swords emojis ⚔️, but nothing I tried worked as well as what the author did. (It's really neat! Different characters were used to indicate the direction of the timeskip: >>>> for a jump forward in time; <<<< for a flash into the past; and ==== for regular scene breaks, a 'next' rather than 'before' or 'later/after'.)

The cover and endpapers were based off of Shirou's fantastic cover illustration of HQW and YX walking hand-in-hand down a beach at sunset. The art itself is phenomenal so I had it stand alone as a frontispiece and didn't do anything fancy with the title page. For the covers, I looked through my decorative paper stash for something red or black to represent HWQ or Team Tyranny. What I found was paper with pinks, oranges, and purples similar to that illustration -- and that was that. I liked how the colours matched the art, and the gold splashed across it. (Gold for victory, gold for wedding rings and a happy golden future together.)

(Sidenote: I love how the beginning of the end of HWQ's career as an e-sports player "starts with a tingle in his ring finger", leading him and YX to taking the next steps in their relationship and eventually getting married 💍🖐)

I went with a red bookcloth for the spine because it's a common team colour for Tyranny, Excellent Era, and Happy. It also represents good fortune, courage, passion, and love -- things that come to mind when I think about YX, HWQ, and HanYe. The particular shade of red I used is Madeira. It's darker than Ruby Red and leans a little cooler, which suits the decorative paper more.

The endpapers use two background images (overlayed, adjusted, using multiple blending modes) and some images of HWQ and YX from The King's Avatar Wikia.

The background images are from Rawpixel -- I was just minding my own business looking for images of clouds and maybe some mountains to represent overcoming challenges/glory/looking up to the sky, when I found some clouds with the same sunset colours of Shirou's art. Figured it was too perfect, and if I'm going to lean into that design-wise, I might as well go whole hog and full-ass it. Then I found a starry night sky to add some darker blues and stars to it to match. After that it was a matter of overlapping them and positioning them to fit. I also grabbed some images of HWQ and YX from the King's Avatar Wikia and added them to it because HanYe. (After removing the backgrounds).

[istherewifiinhell]

personal pet enjoyment. just some things from the letters and ad space from mirage 8 i thought were funny. (literally just text. okay. and 2 outside images but just for joke purposes)

first not including the whole thing but just the use of the phrase comics fandom. in 1986. NEAT!

Bade Biker #1: Jim Lawson returns with a "prequel" to the Bade Biker story which appeared in TMNT #7. In this 30-page story, you'll discover the origin of Orson the frog, and see how he met up with the drifter, Bade Biker… and how they together confronted the evil Moto-Man! Art and story by Jim Lawson. Shipping September 15, 1986.

sorry for never having read bade biker but now just thinking the phrase "origin of orson the frog" issss so funny. (asss... mentioned. the version of issue 7 i read didnt have ANY side stories so /shrug)

Grunts #1: In every war, there are the foot-soldiers, those valiant trench-sloggers -- the 'grunts'. Now. Mirage Studios presents an anthology-style comic with stories by various artists and writers, featuring the exploits of these unsung heroes, with a twist all of the characters are anthropomorphics ('funny animals', for the uninitiated)! Thirty- two pages, black and white, hopefully bimonthly. First issue shipping in mid-1987.

literally just. 'funny animals' yeah man. yeah....

...Keep it coming! I love it! I think I've figured out who's who: Raphael's the crazy brawler. Michaelangelo's the warm, sensitive type, Leonardo seems to be the leader (aside from Splinter), and Donatello's the one with the mechanically-inclined mind! Am I right? (Spot-on, pal!--Peter) 'Til Fugitoid transforms into a truck, MAKE MINE MIRAGE!

Rob Sturma

Lindenhurst, IL

this is 1986 👍🏻 i say once again why do ppl act like the cartoon invented turtle personality. and being a comedy. that saaaaidd.....

The turtles are best in the city fighting thugs, killers, muggers in the alleys, rooftops, streets and sewers. This space stuff sucks -- Star Wars is dead! After the Cerebus issue, please get back to the basics, strong story and plot, and please start and finish the story in one issue. TMNT seems to work better that way. I'll be glad to see this space opera end. Also it is very violent. - "taking off heads"? Kids read this, you know. "Kick ass"? "Damn" all the time. You guys are an influence. Please consider that.

Despite all of that, I'll wait and see what #9 brings before I drop/continue collecting. Color would help the turtles.

Larry Mindy Chicago, IL

yes im gonna blast a rando from 1986... well e&l did it first (i never know whats weirder sending hate mail. or publishing it in ur comic). again. pre cartoon era here (tho coming soon). take the turtles back to basics. Oh you mean like issue 1 where THEY KILLED SOMEONE?? incredible. wild shit. turtles are making the kids violent the gift that literally never stopped giving. (pretty sure they say worse than 'damn' in these books)

anyway.

[ID from alt: 1. the turtlepedia advisory warning "You're not on Nicktoons anymore!" that says "Some TMNT stuff really isn't for little kids." 2. the next level up advisory "Hey, Kid, you're a long way from Nicktoons" that say "Some TMNT stuff was always meant for grownups. END ID]

[princetonuniversitypress]

This month’s Office Hours comes with an exciting announcement: We are welcoming three new editors to the Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology! Clayton Childress, Angèle Christin, and Iddo Tavory join current editors Paul DiMaggio, Michèle Lamont, and Viviana A. Zelizer. We are delighted to add their expertise to the series, which aims to publish works by the most promising and prominent scholars in cultural sociology. Get to know these new editors a bit better below as they share some terrific book recommendations and thoughtful career advice.

We hope to see you all at ASA in Philadelphia—please do stop by the Princeton University Press booth (#409)!

—Meagan Levinson, Executive Editor

What book are you reading now?

AC: Like many people, I first got into academia because I loved reading books. To keep this love going, I created a Feminist STS Book Club at Stanford with graduate students and postdocs, where we each nominate books—scholarly books as well as fiction—and discuss them together. The two books we read most recently were a blast.

The first one was Timothy Mitchell’s The Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (University of California Press), which starts with this unforgettable sentence describing the arrival of malarial mosquitos during World War II: “In the summer of 1942 two forces invaded Egypt, and each provoked a decisive battle. Only one of the two was human, so only that one is remembered, although the casualties in the other battle were greater.” I mean… does academic writing get any better than this?

The second was Michael Kimmel’s Manhood in America: A Cultural History (Oxford University Press), a classic in gender studies. Kimmel introduces the concept of “hegemonic masculinity,” and has some pretty amazing pictures that kept us going for a long time (I won’t say more but encourage everybody to take a look). This one was particularly relevant for my research, since part of my current book project on influencers focuses on the case of “dad influencers” and how they articulate masculinity on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.

CC: Right now I’m reading Hajar Yazdiha’s The Struggle for the People’s King (Princeton University Press), which I got a couple days before I wrote this, and which I’m loving so far. Other books I’ve recently read and admired are Derron Wallace’s The Culture Trap (Oxford University Press), Larissa Buchholz’s The Global Rules of Art (Princeton University Press), and Frank Dobbin and Alexanda Kalev’s Getting to Diversity (Harvard University Press). Next on my list is Kusha Sefat’s Revolution of Things (Princeton University Press). The two forthcoming books I’m most excited about are not sociology;  Jesse David Fox’s Comedy Book (FSG) and Kliph Nesteroff’s Outrageous (Abrams).

IT: One of the things I realized when I got a job is that, suddenly, I had to trick myself into reading books. Academic life is full of so many tasks with actual deadlines, that reading a book becomes something you have to make a real effort to get to. I trick myself into reading books by putting myself on award committees, sitting on editorial boards (!) and running a theory reading-group with students and colleagues at my department. 

Two books that I have been spending time with over the past weeks are Karen Cerulo and Janet Ruane’s Dreams of a Lifetime (Princeton University Press), and Annie Ernaux’s Shame (Seven Stories Press). The first is a wonderful sociological book that shows the patterns of fantasy that America Dreams follow; The second is a fiction book in which seemingly very little happens. The author spends the entire book trying to understand the background conditions that led to her experiencing a particular childhood trauma described on the first couple of pages. Both sociological books, though in different ways…

What book has had the most impact on your career?

AC: That’s a hard one. I was first trained in France, where I came of age with the holy trifecta of Pierre Bourdieu-Luc Boltanski-Bruno Latour, so it’s been hard to break away from this training, and in all honesty I should probably cite a book from each of them.

That said, if I were to choose a book that recently made me reconsider everything I thought and how I could write, I would pick Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto,” first published in 1985 as an essay in the Socialist Review, later published as part of Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (Routledge). It changed everything I thought I knew about technology, feminism, and embodiment. More personally, it transformed how I thought of myself in relation to technological and medical artefacts. It’s such an energetic, powerful, free kind of text—it’s creative in a way that encourages everyone to play with disciplinary norms.

CC: Josh Gamson’s Freaks Talk Back (Chicago University Press) is why I wanted to become a sociologist. It’s empirically rich, important but not self-important, and contrarian in a way that I think much of good sociology should be. It has a home base in culture while also integrating across subfields  (movements, sexualities) in such an exciting way. And it’s unabashedly a fun read. I love it.

IT: Perhaps the book that made the most impact on me was G. H. Mead’s Mind Self and Society (University of Chicago). I was a Master’s student in Tel Aviv University, and some friends and I started a theory “book club.” We would meet at my place to read 5-10 pages of the book, slowly working through the ideas over months, trying to think what it means for a self to emerge socially, and what it means to focus on action. A lot of my interactionist and pragmatist leanings were cemented there, in the back and forth of these conversation

What is the best career advice you ever received?

AC: My postdoc mentor danah boyd once said in passing, “you need to find out what recharges your battery.” I don’t think she was giving career advice, but this sentence has stayed with me ever since. Academic careers are long and arduous. The job is wonderful but exhausting and relentless, so after a while, for me the question became: how do you keep on going? danah’s answer was another question: what brings you joy? Is it immersing yourself in books and articles and learning about a topic you know nothing about? Is it writing first drafts and figuring out what you’re trying to say about something? Is it doing in-depth fieldwork? Is it fostering intellectual community and see how other people think about hard questions? Is it curling up on a sofa with hot tea and reading romance novels? (of course, it can be all the above). When I feel depleted and exhausted, I try to go back to what brings me joy, I seek to protect it and put clear boundaries around it. It doesn’t always work, but I like to think that I’m getting better at it! 

CC: When I was a graduate student my advisor, John Mohr, warned me that he thought a lot of things could (and likely would) go wrong with my dissertation, but not to worry, because none of them would prevent me from ultimately having a dissertation. It was a warning and a reassurance at the same time, which is the package that those types of warnings should always come in. As John predicted, many things did go wrong in my dissertation. The gift of that conversation was John was giving me permission to be comfortable with my reach exceeding my grasp, and to take risks, and to try stuff out.

IT: Not quite advice, but a form of training… I was a journalist before I decided to get into academia. I used to work in the foreign desk editor at Ha’aretz, an Israeli newspaper. Every day I would come at 4pm and get my pages and some guidance from my chief editor, and every night, at around 12am, give or take, the pages I received would be full, double-checked and copy-edited. There was something reassuring about knowing that, whatever happens, the pages will be filled in the 8 hours between my arrival and going home. Approaching academic work in this way has been incredibly helpful. Writing is not a matter of inspiration. Inspiration may hit in the act, but sitting and writing—filling the page—is a form of labor. I think it saved me from a lot of angst both in graduate school, and later on in my career.

Clayton Childress is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto.

Angèle Christin is assistant professor of communication and, by courtesy, of sociology at Stanford University. Website www.angelechristin.com Twitter @AngeleChristin

Iddo Tavory is associate professor of sociology at New York University.

[printandmatter]

Session 2: People and Publishing

This week, Rosalie and Sadie kicked off the Print and Matter Talks Series with a very generous and inspiring presentation of their work. They discussed how they met, the types of projects they've done together and separately, how their approaches have evolved and also stayed the same over the years and what role publishing played in their work. The Talk Series is open to the public so it was very nice to be joined by about 7 people from outside Print and Matter. The talk was serious but silly and everyone had lots of questions at the end. Some comments that stood out to me were 'You're creating bubbles of freedom where people and not being judged' and 'It's so wonderful that you're making people happy'. Rosalie and Sadie both have a joyful, energetic and yet deeply thoughtful approach to making art and working with people. We could all see the value that play and testing things had in building people's confidence, I particularly liked the idea of Sadie and Ben's Bad Drawing Club where members have to take on a new identity (complete with ID card) when entering the club to make their art.

In the afternoon, we went around and discussed what projects/ideas we'd each like to develop during the course of Print and Matter. I loved hearing from everyone, I think we all did, there were so many different ideas and approaches and everyone made room for each other but people were also keen to chime in and give advice/insights where relevant. Developing ideas can be so challenging so it's reassuring that we're all in a similar position where we have a lot of ideas but can begin to identify where we might need support.

In the afternoon we learned how to make a book using an unconventional and playful book format. The assignment was to do some visual research exploring the questions 'what was The Old Print Works used for and what is the currently used for?' There will be some time to print these next session for anyone who wants to do that. It would be great to see what everyone did and how each person approached the task.

Towards the end of the session, we went in groups to my studio and I showed everyone how to riso print their rules from the pervious session. I think some of the pages came out a bit too light but it was all part of the induction so hopefully everyone can see how their original artworks translate to riso and how they might adjust their artwork in the future to get better results. One of the rules were in Urdu and I couldn't read it all so I need to find out what it says next session. I really like the rule book, I read it today, I think it's a lovely collection! Let's see what everyone else's feedback is next session inshAllah...

[young-dumb-and-vaccinated]

The Cult Girl (Hannibal x Female!Reader) pt. 3

So I picked option 2 cause I just had more ideas around it. I could probably still do 1 and 3 sometime but this is the direction we're going now. Y/n gets a call from her horrible grandmother who is expecting a visit.

Trigger warning: discussions of emotional and mental abuse, gaslighting

That night at his dining table was the start of something wonderful. You made a point to apply a bit of perfume to your neck before you left your apartment. Your three slightly judgmental but overall supportive roommates even donated a few drops of their own fragrances from time to time. 

You didn’t like the sound of the sentence “Hannibal is my boyfriend”. It just didn’t hit your ear right. ‘Boyfriend’ was too childish of a title for him. By extension, he found something very diminutive about referring to you as his girlfriend. You were, of course, a grown woman. He remedied this right away, resigning to call you his ‘darling’. You, however, had to use ‘partner’ as a placeholder until a more suitable pet name presented itself. Although the titles were never stated outright, after a while, you knew it was more than just a passionate affair. Hannibal (and you were calling him Hannibal, now) saw potential in you. He nurtured you and had been since day one. 

Finally, things were starting to go your way. You were in classes you loved, had wonderful, supportive friends and a fulfilling relationship. It took over twenty years, but better late than never. 

But, if there was one thing you learned from your short stint as a student of physics, it was that what goes up must come down. Your long-awaited bliss was about to be tested by an equal and opposite force bearing the name “Beatrice [L/N]” on the caller ID. 

Not only did she call, but she called three times in the middle of your meal. And that was followed by multiple texts, several of which containing words like “emergency” in all caps. You were just trying to enjoy another one of Hannibal’s culinary works of art, but the old bitch was persistent. 

You apologetically excused yourself from the table and retreated to the office with your phone. 

Grandma, you had better be on your fucking deathbed. You thought to yourself before sliding the green answer icon across the screen.

“[F/N]!” Came her shrill voice. “You finally answered. I was beginning to worry.” 

“What do you want, grandma?” You groan. 

“I wanted to ask you what you were wearing to Anna’s wedding next weekend.” She explained, calmly as ever. “The color scheme is seafoam and coral and she wants to make sure everyone adheres to it for pictures.” 

You covered the speaker with your hand and pulled your phone away from your ear so she couldn’t hear you bite back a scream. It physically pained you to return the phone to your ear. “Yeah, I RSVPed no to Anna’s wedding.”

“[F/N],” Your grandmother said in that scolding tone you knew all too well. “Your cousin expects you to be there. I expect you to be there. I invested so much money into this wedding, I will take it as a personal affront if you don’t attend.” 

You take everything as a personal affront. You thought.  

“It doesn’t matter, I already said no. She’s not going to have a chair or food for me.” You explained, hoping that you found some way out of this conversation. 

“No, she will.” Your grandma corrected. “I won’t have any child of mine absent from another’s wedding. I put in all the work to pull this event together.” 

For a moment, you almost felt bad for Anna. Having to endure your grandmother’s micromanaging was a circle of hell even Dante refused to tread.

"Of course, heaven forbid someone in your life show an ounce of autonomy." You finally snapped.

"I don't know why you're acting so rude, but it stops now." Grandma ordered. "I raised you as my own daughter. You should be more grateful for the luxuries I can extend to you. I didn't have to take you in, you know..."

It pained you to stay quiet when all you wanted to say was "I wish you hadn't".

"Your emotional manipulation isn't going to work on me anymore." You informed her.

“So, naturally, I’ve seen to it that you are expected." She continued her own conversation without even acknowledging yours. "You and a plus one, of course.”

You hadn’t even considered the possibility of attending the wedding with Hannibal. The two points never once intersected. And they never would. You vowed that Hannibal would never meet your grandmother or cousins. At that moment, that was the hill you were willing to die on. 

“If I come at all, I’m coming alone.” You snap. “You can punish me all you want but I am not letting you get him involved.” 

“Him?” Your grandma repeated. “So there is someone?” 

“Someone you are keeping me from.” You said, thoroughly frustrated and now panicked at the idea that your grandmother knew Hannibal existed. “Goodbye.” 

You didn't want to rejoin Hannibal in such a sour mood, but you didn't want to keep him waiting either. You returned even more apologetically than you left and took your seat.

"Everything alright, love?" He asked. You could tell he was raring to psychoanalyze you.

You shook your head. "It was my grandma."

"I could tell that much." He admitted, beginning to cut into his steak. "What with all the frustration you're trying so desperately to hide. What did she want?"

"She called to tell me she expects me at my cousin's wedding next Saturday." You rolled your eyes. "I'd already declined the invitation, but she didn't like that, apparently."

"Which cousin is this?" He probed. "The one that works as an engineer for Halliburton?

"No, that's Theresa." You shook your head. "And she works for Halliburton, but she's not an engineer. She's a PR executive."

"Right." Hannibal nodded, taking a bite of steak between his teeth. "She took after your grandmother and turned gaslighting into a career."

You smiled a bit. "Right."

"So, it's Anna, then?" He concluded. "You haven't told me much about her. Perhaps she is the benign tumor of the family?"

"More or less." You shrugged. "She works at a publishing agency. Only got the job because her boyfriend's uncle's the CFO. She didn't even make it to the interview. It was pure nepotism."

"And now she's marrying the boyfriend, I presume?"

"Yeah." You felt a grin cross your face thinking about what you were going to say next. "She wasn't even dating him at the time. She was dating someone else and cheating on him with the guy she's marrying now."

Hannibal grinned. "You like knowing this? Having information that could potentially ruin her life?"

You knew there was no use in lying. The look on your face said it all. "Absolutely I do. When you're the black sheep of the family, you've gotta take power where you can get it. Mine just so happens to be potential blackmail."

"I'm quite delighted to be privy to this side of you, love." He smiled. "We're a bit vindictive, now are we?"

"Are you kidding?" You snicker. "These are the girls that psychologically tormented me growing up. Of course I'm vindictive."

"So about this wedding." He didn't look up from his plate. "Do they expect you to bring a date?"

"They do." You nod, your eyes wandering off. "But I can't let them meet you. They're just so unspeakably rude all the time."

For some reason, you felt that this didn't deter him. Perhaps it even compelled him a little. "Oh?"

"They take this really strange pride in making scenes everywhere they go." You explained. "They've already ruined so much of my life. I can't even give them the opportunity to ruin this too."

"Darling," Hannibal leaned in. "Is there a part of you that wants to attend this event?"

You held your tongue before you said anything you both know to be untrue. "...maybe a small part."

"That small part of you that wants power. That wants justice." He nodded. "Indulge it for a moment. What does this wedding look like to you?"

Trying to keep up the illusion that you hadn't thought of this before, you paused for a moment. "...we would show up--you and I--and I'd be wearing a stunning gown that doesn't fit the stupid color scheme at all. And there's just an unspoken knowledge that I could absolutely ruin Anna's entire day. Anna and Theresa and Grandma are all being nice to me because if I so much as mention the name of that boyfriend she cheated on, I'd ruin her life and possibly her career. So finally I hold all the cards."

Hannibal looked proud. He took a sip of his wine. "You want to be powerful, but with just enough restraint so they know you're the bigger person."

"Exactly." You agreed.

"Perhaps my fondness for you is clouding my professional judgment, darling." He put his wine glass down. "The thought of you in an evening gown, commanding attention and reverence... that's just something I have to see."

"...something you have to see?" You met eyes with him, realizing you were on the same page.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket again. This time, you didn't feel the need to step out.

"Hey [F/N], care to explain why my sister is crying?" Theresa snapped through the receiver.

"Is someone cutting onions nearby?" You offered. "That usually makes me tear up."

"Fucking hell, for once in your meaningless life can you care about someone other than yourself?!" Theresa yelled. "Grandma told us you're not coming to the wedding."

You looked back at Hannibal, who gave you a nod. "Actually, I am. We are."