#jay tma

[azurajay]

sections of mag79 that make me feel bonkers bananas:

Martin's Entire outburst section - it's the sweetheart "pushover" character who's finally been pushed far enough and now gets to turn around and go No. You listen to Me for once. and i loveeeeeee him for it </3 plus his neverending love for these people despite everything, he rly just wants the best for everyone and it makes me so inconsolable ☹️

THIS BC I KNOW FOR A FACTTT TIM PUT HIMSELF IN FRONT OF MARTIN IN ONE WAY OR ANOTHER I KNOWWW IT

This one speaks for itself. Jon risking his entire life just to get the real sasha's name out of not!sasha's filthy mouth - THE FACT ohh the fact that he didnt say a Thing through all it said about him, but the Second sasha's suffering is brought into it he cant hold back the need to shut it right the fuck up and ouuyyghhhhggg

NEED I SAY ANYTHING ABT THIS ONE. JUST OW.

[iseeyoujon]

Being in a household where multiple people listen to TMA means occasionally hearing muffled Jon screams from somebody's headphones. This is a normal part of my life.

[pelinthehay]

i am not immune to mean lesbian gwendolyn bouchard (+ saw people joking about how she’s gonna brutal pipe murder lena and honestly she deserves to have her moment!)

[citruslllad]

friends who beat the shit out of cops together

[bluejayblueskies]

ten thousand flowers in spring | bluejayblueskies

[ID: Three photos of a hand-bound book from different angles that show the front, side, and back respectively. The book has dark green bookcloth, a decorative red and gold ribbon along the front cover and a black ribbon along the back cover, and a gold painted cherry blossom design on the front and back covers. The title and author name are also in gold on the front cover and spine and read, "Ten Thousand Flowers in Spring" and "bluejayblueskies." /End ID]

Last November, I got a Silhouette cutting machine for Black Friday. This weekend, I finally got the chance to use it for a bookbinding project! I bound my fic ten thousand flowers in spring as part of one of my Fandom Trumps Hate typesetting gifts, and I had a lot of fun going all-out with the flower iconography.

[ID: Two photos of the interior of the book. The first is the title page spread of the book, showing a pastel-colored painting of a cherry blossom-scattered hill with sheep and a shepherd that spans both pages. On the right page, there is the title "Ten Thousand Flowers in Spring" and the author name "bluejayblueskies" in a sans serif font. The second is the colophon (left) and table of contents (right) of the book. The colophon has details about the binder, the original fic, and the fonts and image sources used in the book. The table of contents has each chapter title and corresponding page number listed in a grid format with flower icons above each chapter title. /End ID]

Each chapter is titled after a flower that has a specific meaning that ties into the chapter content. I decided to style this bind after old botany books. Along with the cover, which is inspired by the covers of old botany books, each chapter header has an image of the titular flower pulled from public domain botany book scans, along with the flower's name and meaning below it.

[ID: The inside of the book, showing a page of text on the left and the chapter header on the right. The chapter header has an old-style image of blue salvia on it, with the name "blue salvia" and the meaning "friendship, family, thoughtful gestures, thinking of you" beneath it. /End ID]

Each chapter also begins with a faux-excerpt from the book Jon is writing throughout the fic:

[ID: The inside of the book, showing the introductory faux book excerpt on the left and the beginning chapter text on the right. The faux book text has an image of a flower beneath it; the beginning chapter text has a drop cap with a floral design at the beginning of it. /End ID]

Some more notes and pictures on process are below the cut!

The binding style of this fic is sewn boards binding, which I like for thinner books as the spine is much less fiddly to work with. It's also a really nice binding style in general because it eliminates my least-favorite part of the binding process: casing in. When casing in a regular case-bound book, you construct the entire case separately from the text block and then attach the case to the text block via the endpapers. Inevitably, I always end up just a little bit crooked, and because my brain currently refuses to let me try using paste instead of PVA, it's very hard to fix once the endpapers are pasted down.

With sewn boards binding, the boards are attached to the text block via an extra signature of folded cardstock on the ends of the text block. The case is then constructed directly onto the text block, and glueing the endpapers down is very, very easy and near-impossible to mess up.

The ends of the boards do end up exposed with this binding style. The first time I did it, I covered them with paper. This time, I painted them gold to match the cover:

[ID: A side view of the book, showing off the exposed boards near the spine which are painted gold. The front cover of the book can also be seen at an angle. /End ID]

I plan to experiment more in the future with potentially adding endbands to this binding style, as that's one thing I wish this book had that it does not.

For the cover design, I first cut out the stencils using my Silhouette:

[ID: A cutting mat with white vinyl stuck to it that has been cut and weeded to expose the backlit cherry blossom design. The title "Ten Thousand Flowers in Spring" and author name "bluejayblueskies" can be seen in the designs for the front cover and spine. /End ID]

I'd heard a lot of things about weeding, positive and negative, but I actually enjoyed doing the weeding on this 😂 it was like doing a puzzle in a way. I think I would like it less if I had to keep all of the tiny little pieces and make sure they looked nice, but as it was, all I had to do was remove them and it didn't matter if they got bent in the process.

The fabric paint I have dries very quickly, so I got very little bleed on my stencil and was able to remove it almost right away:

[ID: The back cover of the book with the vinyl stencil stuck to it, painted over somewhat messily with gold fabric paint. /End ID]

Overall, I was very happy with the stenciling process and will probably continue to do stencils as opposed to heat transfer vinyl unless I want to do some bigger, blockier designs in the future.

[cardentist]

there's something to be said about the way fandoms treat paranoia in horror protagonists.

if their paranoia leads them to do the Right thing in the right moment then it's all roses. but if they make any mistakes then suddenly that paranoia is being judged as if it were being done in the real world under normal circumstances.

oh you hurt someone's feelings? you were a stalker, you were mean, you were irrational? you should've just been better than that, I would've been better than that.

even if the paranoid person is Right, even if there Are monsters and murderers and things beyond anything the real world could hurt us with, even when the Audience knows it, they're still judged and hated as if being scared and wanting to survive a horror story is wrong.

[inkbagel]

I think the administration in ninjago is a manifestation of the vast. Giant office building with millions of workers who do basically nothing and drive themselves insane working there. Seems pretty vast coded to me.

On top of that, I think Jay lost his memory by being forced to work there and slowly losing himself in the boring corporate office job. I think that’s funnier and angstier than just oops he hit his head and works here now bc he doesn’t remember anything about his previous life.

Imagine him falling there and being forced to work for the administration “bc he trespassed” or something, and he tries to find a way to escape, or at the very least remember his friends, but just slowly loses his mind in the insignificance of his boring office job. That’d be pretty crazy.

[fishymom-art]

please please oh my fod. draw masky / hoodie slash Brian / Tim as TMA characters / avatars / whatever you call them

Drew Jay too, because of that Magnus Archives/Marble Hornets AU idea o3o

(also I remember that @b1rdbr41n wanted me to tag them so here we are)

[voids-ideas]

"How can you love them, they did horrible things!"

Have you never seen a cat?

[oneinchfrog]

scribbled some dndads tma au thoughts instead of doing my spanish work. me when the hyperfixations converge

[thewhoreinthian]

“The Eye watches, the Stranger conceals, but me? I lie, Archivist.”

Wanted to try out a surrealist piece of everyone’s fave Spiral boi

[azurajay]

the magnus archives is a podcast what the FUCK was that at the end of mag47

I'm torn between 'I never want to ever hear from it ever again' and 'ohhmygod please show up in another episode IMMEDIATELYYY' - the distortion on the audio was so creepy and so well done, the way it spoke too was sooo aauughh it was so very creepy /pos

I've got so many questions tho - to me, this ,, creature?? entity??? feels like along the lines of a god-like figure?? and it's choosing to interact with mortals, particularly those headlining one side of a particular oncoming,,, storm of sorts (jon mentioned a war?) in order to aid them? in some way? But by the sounds of it it cant overstep and intervene too much at risk of upsetting some sort of balance - i don't know, there's a Lot to be picked apart in that end conversation, and I'm Very excited to see what's coming next.

Sasha update: i still miss her, what the hell is going on

Martin update: 💞💞💞💞martin💞💞💞💞💞 (am i worried theres smth going on with him? a little bit, actually. do i believe this is more of a red herring and jon's paranoia getting to me? mostly, yes. did i find it increasingly funny that jon listed martin being attentive and caring towards him following the traumatic event they all just shared as something to be suspicious about? 1000%.)

Tim update: tim

WAIT I JUST REMEMBERED the entity saying "dont you know they're lying to you?" or something along those lines,,, implying perhaps they're All lying to him, in some way or another? Idk listen man i trust martin with my life, anything he's doing is obviously correct so theres nothing to worry about there -- theres the obvious case of sasha, and ik elias is sus af, but tim? what could He be lying about?

Or perhaps the "they" is the institute itself? as in elias and etc, the higherups? but idk, it showed up right after not sasha left, so i dont trust that it Wasnt talking abt the four.

Anyway, ramble over, I'm sure I'll reblog this at some point down the line when I know more, but !! for now, I shall sleep <3

[iseeyoujon]

My husband is at a thrift store and

I love this man

Edit: I added alt text, and I'm going to add the bonus from my own reblog into the original post:

Update: He bought the second one and wants me to name it. Current top vote is for the full name "Jonathan Sims, not to be confused with Jonathan Sims or Jonathan Sims"

[pelinthehay]

they’re having a diva off

[eldritchcryptids]

marble hornets & tma crossover drawing bc i’m normal about both of them

[bluejayblueskies]

the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the world | phynoma

[ID: Two pictures of two hand-bound books, the first of which shows their front covers and the second of which shows their spines and part of their front covers at an angle. The leftmost book is bound in yellow bookcloth and has a hand-embroidered smiling mouth with bloody teeth on the bottom portion of the front and back cover. The title, "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the world" is in the top right corner in black as well as the words "volume one" in maroon. The rightmost book is bound in red bookcloth and has a hand-embroidered ribcage on the lefthand side of the front cover and the righthand side of the back cover. The title, "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the world" is in the top right corner in black as well as the words "volume two" in white. Both volumes have stitching across the spine that joins the embroidery on the front and back covers so that the design stretches across the spine. /End ID]

It's finally time to share the books I made for the 2023 Rusty Quill Big Bang, hosted by @pilesofnonsense! This year, I was paired with the wonderful @phynoma, who wrote a post-circus AU entitled the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the ambition of the world where Jon is marked by an entity known as the Consuming that feeds off hunger and desire and focuses, in Jon's case, around sexual hunger and desire. It's a truly spectacular fic with excellent worldbuilding, spot-on characterization, and a wide variety of sexual encounters of all flavors, and I highly recommend it!

As this fic is written in transcript format, I wanted to go with an open-spine binding style that would have the advantage of both lying extremely flat when opened and giving the fic a more screenplay-like appearance. Also as a consequence of the transcript format, the final page count ended up being large enough that I split the fic into two volumes, the first of which covers season three and the second of which covers seasons four and five.

[ID: Two pictures of the same hand-bound books, the first of which shows volume one and the second of which shows volume two. Both books are fully open to display their front and back covers touching. We can see that the embroidered design, half of which is on the front cover and half of which is on the back, forms a complete picture when the book is fully open. /End ID]

Each volume has hand-embroidered front and back covers, with titles done in black, white, and maroon gel pen. The covers were designed so that when the book is fully open, the front and back cover designs come together to form one single cohesive image. Additionally, when the book is closed, the spine stitching was done so that the design stretches across the spine, thus making the full design complete whether the book is fully open or fully closed. I'm really proud of how these covers turned out, and even though the embroidery took much longer than I anticipated it taking, it's definitely something I would do again!

More description and pictures of the interior of the books are below the cut:

I went with a visually simple yet technically complex design for the typeset of this fic. Microsoft Word's styles were very much my friend, as well as its advanced find-and-replace feature, to automate a lot of the formatting for this fic. The most complex bits were the group chat excerpts and making sure all the profile pictures were positioned correctly, as well as the email chain excerpts in volume one. The text messages were done separately in an HTML workspace and then included via screenshots, and because I had an HTML/CSS text message code already sitting around from a previous project, those were relatively simple to format!

[ID: Eight pictures of the interior of the hand-bound books from previous photos. The first picture shows the title page of volume one, which has the title and author name in black and "volume one" in red, as well as a picture of a ginko tree. The second picture shows the title page of volume two, which has the title and author name in black and "volume two" in red, as well as a picture of a cherry blossom tree. The third picture shows the colophon and table of contents for volume two, highlighting the binder logos--a bluejay and a bookpress--and the faux-label table of contents title. The fourth picture shows the chapter header page for the chapter "voyeurism" in volume one, featuring brackets around the notes, content warnings, and pairings for the chapter as well as a quote from the confessions of augustine, which is separated from the warnings with an open eye graphic. The fifth picture shows the beginning of the chapter "hunger in the garden" in volume two, displaying the transcript formatting of the text as well as the faux-label chapter name on the top left. The sixth picture shows text messages in volume two, which are formatted the same as text messages on an iOS system with blue and gray bubbles and a name header that says "Jonathan Sims." The seventh picture shows some chapter text as well as a faux-office memo, done in a sans serif font, written from Elias Bouchard to the Archives team. The eighth picture shows on the left page faux emails, done in an iOS style with profile pictures for each email, and on the right page a faux-group message with profile pictures for each member and a header that labels the groupchat as the Snarkivists. /End ID]

The fonts used for this typeset were chosen based on those used for the unofficial Magnus Archives transcripts--DejaVu Sans Mono for the chapter intro pages and Libre Baskerville for the body text. I'm not 100% sure that those are the actual fonts used for the unofficial transcripts, but based on the reverse font search I did, those seem to be a close match for it.

This was a big project for me, and I'm so happy to finally see it to completion! Once again, a big thanks to Phynoma for being such a wonderful partner to work with--I'm excited to send you these books so you can see them in person 💜