willag42

[willag42]

reddie but its that narumitsu molars drawing

[willag42]

Something at the Door by Pip

This is one of my all-time favourite horror fics in the MDZS fandom. I'm a sucker for a good ghost story, and I love the worldbuilding and creeping unreality and unreliable narrator-ness of it all, the gradual reveal of how everyone got to where they and how it echoes but doesn't exactly match canon, and the solid ghost story backing it all up.

I am also still amazed that the cover turned out, because those were some VERY thin lines to stencil on. This fic by @varterrall, art by verdaenoir, was a 2021 MXTX Big Bang fic, and such a great combo of story and art!

I just keep coming back to red and black for the colour scheme whenever I bind a horror fic (there's one more in my emotional support textblock stack right now) but hey, it works especially well for WWX.

Endpapers are mulberry fibre lokta paper, the cover and spine are acrylic paint with a Cricut stencil (and a whole lot of swearing and holding my breath for the lines on that door) and endbands are a mix of perle cotton and embroidery thread.

More red and black in the typeset, and you can't go wrong with creepy trees, especially when there's a pivotal scene or two in a forest. The bind exceeded my expectations and I'm really happy at how the whole thing came together!

[willag42]

Your regular reminder that trickle-down economics is a cruel joke designed by the wealthy.

[willag42]

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

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

As usual, process chatter under the cut!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[willag42]

wedding pictures

[willag42]

Look man, I don't know. There are a lot of fascist fuckwits trying their best to ruin everything for everyone right now. There have often been a lot of fascist fuckwits trying to ruin everything for everyone. Not to downplay the pain and trauma we're all feeling at having to struggle through this particular go-round when the future looks especially dark, but it's not exactly a new thing in human history. Alas.

There are still many, many people telling the fascist fuckwits to eat shit. There are still long green spring evenings and slow golden summer afternoons and winter nights and autumn leaves. There are still coffee shops and weird little bookstores and small businesses on sidewalks lined with flowered trees. There are still sunrises and sunsets and blue skies and ocean shores and mountains. Oh yes, there are still mountains, which I have an especial fondness for. High up there in thin air, you can see forever.

There are still Gay People In Your Phone and texts and in-jokes. There are your blorbos. There is still fic and fanart. There are still books and music and games and art. There is a lot of art. Even with the AI beast trying to gobble and commercialize everything, there's still art! There are still people who think using your own brain to do things is important! There are still universities and publishing houses and other places where it's our job to think about things that matter!

There is still work that feels fulfilling to do. There are still constant little moments of quiet and beauty and rest. There are still jaw-dropping pictures of nebulae and galaxies and the great immensity of space, as we continue to learn things we never knew before. And amid all those stars, there is still a tiny, beautiful, and vulnerable blue planet which we only get to live on for a very short time, and there are still kids who are counting on us to make sure they get to inherit it in some kind of recognizable form. There is still the weird fact that when you give someone a hug and sit with them for a while and tell them over and over that it will be okay, it actually feels like it might be okay. I think that all means something.

Doomerism is really easy right now. I get it. I honestly 100% do. But I also don't see any point whatsoever in throwing up our hands and letting said fascist fuckwits gleefully terrify us into submission and make us live in fear and act like they're the Actual Meaning of the World (they are not). They suck so incredibly hard, but they're also so small and so stupid and so ultimately insignificant. They will not define this particular moment if we don't let them, and if we stick around to make sure they don't. Fuck 'em. I believe in you.

Courage, etc.

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This paints such a beautiful picture

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surprise!!

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kissing

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Aziraphale thought Crowley might need a little help with handling a gun, but things didn’t go quite as planned

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So I had a funny dream the other night.

It involved a very gay witch.

[willag42]

Fanbinding: Midshipman's Malady by Swiftsure

Bind #14

Midshipman’s Malady by Swiftsure (@swiftly-surely)

Date Completed: 02/07/2025

Size: Quarto.  19,837 words, 151 pages.

Copies: 1

5th book of Binderary

This is a Horatio Hornblower story with a really interesting magic system and some unconventional world building.  Since it was an Age of Sail setting it was the perfect excuse to use some fun materials.  I used mystery paper from the local creative reuse store for the textblock and untrimmed edges for a rustic look.  The cover is a bit of printed marble paper I’ve been hoarding for "something good" for 10+ years.  I’m not sure why I thought the gold HTV would have enough contrast with the brown bookcloth for the spine title, but it is readable from certain angles.

Garamond for the body since it’s a historic font, and IM Fell for the titles since it looks aged, plus a cursive font I can't recall.  The margins are a bit wide since I originally planned to trim the edges, but they give it rather luxurious proportions (plenty of room for marginalia and rebinding if it was a period book).  I couldn’t decide between two mock-ups for the title page, so included both - a super simple one for the regular title and over-the-top following the introduction.

[willag42]

ficbinding: a sailor moon tete-beche

so here's the thing:

my first love? my first fandom? sailor moon, 1995. it's horrifically old-fashioned now to admit this (there are so many, many, many interpretations of the various relationships and potential love stories 30 years later) but i was obsessed with the reincarnated love story of it all and i lost my damn mind when i saw that, because of a series of drawings done by the manga artist, it is technically canon that the sailor senshi also had forbidden lovers in another life.

i was 13. it really stuck with me. it still does.

these stories are a matched set--one from the past (the silver millennium) and one set in the future (crystal tokyo). they are from 2011 and i found them in a time when i was Going Through It and needed to return to that first love and it was that impulse that drove me to finally bind them. well, that and the @renegadeguild annual binderary. we had an excellent workshop and session on using macros in word to simplify typesetting and i just went on a slightly unhinged spree, grabbing everything i could and running it through to have on standby.

these fics were slightly more complicated--originally posted on FF.net, not AO3, and had been deleted by the author in the intervening years (so i will not be linking them here). fortunately i was able to track it down and make this bind by adapting the macro workflow and incorporating the .txt files from the internet archive. the cover art is from mimiclothing on deviant art as highlighted by the senshi/shitennou appreciation blog.

the bind

legal quarto faux 3-pc bradel bind, with cutouts

art from mimiclothing and printed on semi-lustre moab paper

dubletta and verona bookcloth

churchpaper bookbinder's special 24# warm white

italian marbled endpapers from mulberry paper

sewn headbands (not pictured)

graphical elements are allusions to the alchemical symbols for mars and for fire, given that sailor mars is a fire senshi

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[willag42]

Cudjo Lewis, the last surviving captive of the last slave ship to bring Africans to the U.S. 

https://www.history.com/news/zora-neale-hurston-barracoon-slave-clotilda-survivor?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#link_time=1525373347

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