the first chapter of Moby Dick rewritten in tiresome modern idiom
CHAPTER 1. Loomings.
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - it's none of your business how many - being mostly broke, and bored with the land part of the world, I thought I would sail around a little and look at the watery part of the world. I'm probably the most mentally healthy person you know. Whenever I feel my face getting grim; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself accidentally reading the ads in the window of funeral homes, and following funeral processions through traffic; and especially when I'm hangry, and only my extremely strong moral principles stop me from deliberately going out in public and methodically slapping people's earbuds out - then I know it's high time to get to sea, ASAP. This is my substitute for getting in fights. I'm too mentally healthy to kill myself; I quietly and considerately put myself on a ship and sail myself away instead. There is nothing surprising in this. Everyone feels exactly the same way, and if they don't, they're lying.
You think I'm lying? Exhibit A: a city. Go to your local coastal city. Everyone is looking at the water. They drive over from other neighborhoods just to come to the water. They make a day of it. They're not doing anything, they're just staring at the ocean. Why? Is it because they all work office jobs? No! Here come more of them! They cram themselves up to the edge of the water and stare at it. WHAT DO THEY WANT? WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING AT. Perhaps the ships themselves all packed together, each one with several compasses on it, creates some kind of critical mass - all of the small compass-magnets on all the ships in the harbor combining into one really big magnetic field - and the people get sucked into the field and trapped there. That's science.
Exhibit 2: the countryside with lakes in it. Every path you follow in the countryside brings you to some water, such as a stream. There is magic in it. If you take your standard fool with ADHD dissociating in the middle of a supermarket and put them outside and give them a shove, they'll automatically lead you to water (if there is any nearby) (try it). Another good experiment to try is to get lost in the great American desert in a caravan supplied with a metaphysical professor! Try it in the great American desert at home!
Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are a match made in heaven. Married forever. That's science.
Here's an artist who wants to paint you the dreamiest, most enchanting landscape. What does he put in it? Trees, meadow, cows, a cottage with smoke coming from the chimney, obviously. He will probably put a path in it and make lots of triangular mountains in rows and have them be different shades of blue (naturally.) But there's gotta be a stream in it. Go visit the prairies in June, and wade for forty miles through knee-deep through tiger lilies. What's missing from this picture? Water!
If Niagara Falls was made of sand instead of water, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why would a guy given a handful of cash have trouble deciding whether to buy a coat (which he needed) or go to the beach? Why are all the best, healthiest, sexiest and most mentally healthy people obsessed with the sea? (You get me.) When you were first on a boat, did you not succumb to VIBES? Consider ancient Persia. Consider ancient Greece. They understood about vibes, and also gods.
SURELY ALL OF THIS IS NOT WITHOUT MEANING.
And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all! You get me! You understand it now.
Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I get weird, don't you dare imply that I buy a ticket and get on a boat. I have never had money in my life. How dare you. Anyway I don't go as a passenger - that's bougie, and something boring people do. Passengers never have a good time. And although my C.V. is incredible - I go to sea SO MUCH, you guys, I have lots of experience - I don't go as a boss, or a cook. That sounds like far too much work. Hard work. Disgusting, respectable, bougie, and far too responsible. I can literally only look after myself. Do not ask me to look after ships or shit. In fact, I have only a vague idea of what a ship is. There's so many different kinds of ships - don't get me started and DO NOT GET INVOLVED. Also, I'm allergic to glory.
It's kind of attractive to go as a cook. I mean, I'm allergic to glory and there's some glory attached to the position of the ship's cook, but, like, you're not management-track and so it's still credible. But I don't really want to cook (say) roast chicken. I really fucking love to eat roast chicken. I'm one of the best at doing it actually. I really appreciate when people go out of their way to butter, season, baste and roast a chicken for me. Picture a roast chicken and I am Looking Respectfully at it. Maybe something more, maybe I'm worshipping it. Don't make this weird. If you want to get weird about my relationship with roasted chicken, why aren't you getting weird about the ancient Egyptians? They ate roasted hippos (look it up) and the pyramids were basically pizza ovens. So it's pretty hypocritical to think that I'm being weird about roasted chicken when I've never made mummies out of chickens or built a religious pizza oven dedicated to honoring them: check and mate, haters.
Anyway - I like to go to sea as a manual laborer. A simple sailor. Salt of the earth… er… sea. Yeah, true: as a job it sucks. They make you jump around, order you around, treat you like shit. They expect you to jump around the boat like a grasshopper. And yes, at first, this sucks. It's degrading, especially if you come from a middle-class family. Worse, it's awful if you've already had some kind of professional job before signing on to be the dirt on the boss's boots - like, if you went to college and worked as a teacher and actually got kids to pay attention to you, really feeling this connection to work/teaching/identity or some shit, and now you are just literally the scum on this captain's boots, in the lowest possible job in the world. It hurts! It hurts your dignity. But the hurt, and also the dignity, both wear off in time.
So what if some old bastard sea captain orders me - ME! - to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, compared to the shit in the Bible, compared to the shit in the news, compared to the shit everyone else has to take. Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. We're all just serfs under capitalism, right, so why not just be honest about it: I prefer the honesty. Anyway, however the old sea captains may order me about - slapping and punching of course - I have the satisfaction of knowing that it's the same experience everyone else on Earth has, but more honest. Everyone else in the world is being served the exact same way. Either in a physical or a metaphysical way - sometimes people get the shit beaten out of them in person, sometimes online, sometimes emotionally, it happens to you in EVERY JOB, you sign on to get pushed around and slapped in the teeth: so the point is that when you're a sailor, it's a clean and honest slap. All the workers of the world share the same universal slap to the face that gets passed round, one slap passed all 'round the chain, like paying it forward, but it's a slap; and we should all accept this Universal Slap as the price of living, and then offer each other healing back massages, brother to brother, and slap each other and then kissed the places we slapped, and be happy.
I could examine that but I'm not going to.
Anyway: I always go to sea as a sailor. I've said that already. You're welcome. BUT THE POINT IS, they pay you. If you're a passenger, they don't pay you, at least, not that I've ever heard of [citation needed] (do they pay passengers?? Is there a job I can get where I can be a passenger and get paid?? Look this up.) Yeah so passengers have to pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. (That's Adam and Eve. You get it.) But BEING PAID. GETTING PAID IS THE BEST. NOTHING COMPARES TO GETTING PAID. EVERYONE LOVES THAT SHIT. Which is surprising, since we also apparently believe that money is the root of all evil, and isn't there something in the bible about "no rich people can get into heaven," right? And yet it's universal, literally everyone loves payday. Ah! How cheerfully we send ourselves to hell.
Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor (I've said this already) because it's FRESH AIR AND EXERCISE. Okay so think about ships. Normally, bosses stand on the "bridge" thing, and because we're sailing a boat, the nose is going into the wind and the butt part of the boat is at the back. That's how wind works. But if you think about it, winds usually go in one direction more than other directions (unless the men have been eating beans and farting: it's Pythagoras, look it up) SO if you're a boss standing on the boss-deck, the wind is blowing FROM the sailors TOWARDS you, and YOU ARE ACTUALLY BREATHING THE AIR THAT SAILORS ALREADY BREATHED. The boss THINKS he breathes it first, but he doesn't. He gets the air at the BACK of the boat and sailors get the air at the FRONT. So it's better to be at the front of the boat (sailor) for health reasons. This is a metaphor for life and work, etc.
But I have smelled the sea lots of times as a paid sailor and WHY I should decide to go on a whaling expedition - ok so you know how there's an invisible police officer of the Fates who has me under constant surveillance, who secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way? YOU get me. You know him. "The poor FBI agent tasked with reading my search engine history" YOU GET ME. Anyway, "Ishmael, why, after having a perfectly well-reasoned, and very smart of you, part-time job as a spontaneous random sailor, did you decide to escalate that to joining a WHALING EXPEDITION, which is worse in every way?" Well, ask my fucking secret FBI agent, he can answer better than anyone else. Including me. You get me. Also, obviously, this was predestined, part of the Universe's Grand Programme for its talent show, which was all scheduled way before our time. The concept of sending me on the whaling voyage comes in as a kind of interlude or solo between the main performances of the Universe's great talent show. I bet it was advertised llike,
"PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF THE UNITED STATES EMBROILED IN ONGOING LEGAL DISPUTE.
Whaling voyage by some guy called Ishmael.
BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN."
Like a commercial break in between the big acts. A filler episode. Lightens the load for everyone else. Though I can't explain why the stage managers - the Fates - chose such a shitty role for me, a WHALING VOYAGE of all things, when it feels like others were given magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces - it seems a little unreasonable at first. Why doth Ishmael get shat upon, etc. But then I think about all the circumstances, the plot points and motivations that were cunningly presented to me under various disguises - FBI agents, bouts of random hanger, gay awakenings, you get me - and you can see that actually, I was set up. And worse, between them all, these Fates and Circumstances conspired to make me believe it was all my own choice and good judgment. Is Free Will an illusion? Are my decisions bad? We will NEVER know because I, Ishmael, am just a little guy that the Universe plays head games with.
One of the ways the Universe tricked me into starring in this performance and then mocking me for it was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself (whaling expeditions usually contain whales.) Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then of course, if you have a whale, you have the wild and distant seas where the whale rolls around with his body-the-size-of-an-island; the dangers and nameless perils of the whale; whales are also found in interesting places I haven't seen; this all tipped me over the edge. Maybe normal people could've resisted, but I am tormented with an everlasting itch for obscurity. I hate everyone else's oceans. I want the forbidden seas.
You know The Horrors? Of course you do. You might be surprised that I, the most mentally healthy person you've ever met, a person who is self-aware enough to go to sea when they're at their fucking limits, a guy who likes fresh air and manual labor and normal things, is familiar with The Horrors. Well, you'd be surprised. I know what's good, I'm an extrovert. But I'm still quick to perceive The Horrors. And how I deal with the horrors is a very extroverted thing: I'm social with them, if they'll let me. It's smart to be on good terms with The Horrors. You should always be on good terms with your permanent neighbors. That's how extroverts deal with The Horrors, and I recommend it.
I think that's enough explanation for why I welcomed the whaling voyage. The great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild figments of imagination that pushed me into doing it, the whales came marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah. They marched into my innermost soul in endless processions and occupied it, you see, I was quite helpless under this occupation - I consented to the haunting and the whales marched in to haunt me - and amidst them all was one grand shrouded white phantom, like a snowy mountain in the air.
You get it.
You know how it is, with whales.
(read the actual first chapter of Moby Dick here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm)
So due to other Moby-Dick bookbinding reasons I was remembering this post and then I of course also remembered I have the power to do uh. this.
illustrations (including cover) from the Rockwell Kent edition (1930)
the truly important thing to remember when typesetting a tumblr post is matching the seriousness of the text (you get it) and i think Ishmael would approve and MAYBE just maybe when i finally typeset the whole darn brick i'll pick up the vibes from this post and this typeset and just CONTINUE it in the actual text so thank you @elodieunderglass for this beautiful nonsense
I was going more for "the modern influence of the translator superimposed upon the traditional forms of the original" but your interpretation is MUCH funnier
You, a literary sophisticate: the modern influence of the translator superimposed upon the traditional forms of the original
Me, a clown: herman melville LIVES and has invented an elaborate fake backstory to give himself free rein to write the gay horse racing stories he has always dreamed of
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This book has reached its recipient, so I can share pictures now! This is Deadset by @pbaintthetb, an amazing Nie Huaisang fic in which Nie Huaisang is murdered and becomes a tgcf-style ghost.
I did a kintsugi-look binding for a different calamity au (ironically, one in which Jin Guangyao was the ghost) but spoilers, this was the fic that I first thought of using it for. And while my first attempt was just a surface design on the cover, I built this into the structure of the book itself. The cover structure is inspired by Ben Elbel's "pixel binding" which is a book cover made of many tiny squares; using irregular pieces here makes it not quite as flexible, but I'm still very happy with the effect.
The individual sections of the cover were glued to a thin, flexible paper, then covered with a decorative paper that I worked down into the spaces between (definitely use paste rather than pva for this). The gold is deco foil, often called toner-reactive foil but it adheres to dry pva as well, so I simply filled the channels with pva and then applied the foil using the head of a pin to apply pressure (you don't need heat when applying it to pva).
For the rounded spine, I used leather pieces so that I could still have the thickness but they would be flexible enough that I wouldn't have to sacrifice the irregular shapes.
The way Ben Elbel builds his pixel binding books is the textblock is wrapped in a suede cover, basically like a paperback but suede, and then the pixel binding cover is glued to the suede at the spine. I'm not sure that duplicating this construction was necessary here, but it worked out well enough. The suede-covered textblock is an interesting look and feel all by itself actually.
And one more bookbinding post! A shorter one. For my brother's wedding, he requested lotr. And I also have another cousin who is recently married and was supposed to he holding a wedding this year, but he and his wife were in a bad car accident that wasn't remotely their fault (rear-ended into incoming traffic), and recovery has been pretty long and gnarly, but I wanted to give them something nice as well. So! Double lotr, all the way across the sky.
I originally planned to mix it up more on the vibes between the two editions (partly so I myself could keep them straight and didn't gift the couples copies with the wrong names), but.... these marble print fabrics are just too powerful, I couldn't say no. I did enough differentiating with the titling and endpapers, it all worked out!
And, naturally, they both needed some edge illustration to take it to the next level!!
So, the green set. I found this gorgeous black and white paper a couple weeks ago at my local art store, and it was SO striking that I grabbed a couple sheets. I was worried at first that it was going to be too busy with the marbled fabric on the cover, but couldn't find anything else that sparked joy, and... i shouldn't have stressed so much, the combo is fantastic. I should trust the maximalist voices in my head! For this one I drew the scene from osgiliath, looking out at minas tirith
After THAT, i was looking to draw something that specifically wasn't More Buildings 😂 I had a pretty magenta paper I've been sitting on that harmonized surprisingly well with the minor colors in the blue fabric. I originally had my eye on a matching leather, but backed away to the same warm navy hide I used for the guestbook, which really gave the whole thing some nice dignity. And the opposite of drawing buildings is drawing CREATURES, so i went absolutely ham on balrog cross-hatching
Both these sets were a ton of fun and came out deliciously! And finished drying two whole days before the wedding! I got PLANY of time 🤣 But truly, I'm not very good at repeating myself, so it means a lot to me that I can be this many lords of the rings deep and still be finding new ways to delight myself. I had a lot of fun with these sets!!
Okay! I have been busy. My god have I been busy. So, my little brother got married this weekend! Naturally, I claimed the right to make the guestbook. And also naturally, I dramatically underestimated how much work this was going to be. I have not known rest for the last month.
So, here's the exterior. Nice and simple and elegant!! Very straightforward!
Then, there's the inside. I was like 'hmmm, well, they met when they were working at a video game store together. And they still game a lot together and it's important to them. I know, I'll draw this thing like an illuminated manuscript!!'
Reader, this is where I lost control of the situation. This is where we come to the fact that I'll have to reblog this multiple times just to attach all the relevant images. I came up with eleven "main" images, eleven simple verso images so people wouldn't sign the wrong spot by mistake, two inhabited initials for the couple, and one demo page not included in the book directly explaining the concept for how the pages were laid out (spot for name + spot for message). I finished that last page uhhhh thursday. For a saturday wedding.
Before I get any deeper, i have to give MASSIVE props to the dobie draws 'codex pokemonus' illuminated manuscript zine. I highly recommend checking that link out, because it's a delight. I bought this thing, ohh... I'm not even sure. At LEAST half a decade ago. When i was gathering all my references and resources for this project, this was unquestionably the most helpful one. The influence is most obvious in the venusaur vines the pokemon pages, but it was truly, genuinely a LIFESAVER when it came to references for how hands and feet and faces could be drawn for little Creatures, and I'm so grateful. I would also like to state for the record that i learned medieval notation specifically to transcribe the jigglypuff song and that may be the detail that delights me most in this whole project
And since i have one spare image slot left, I'll also throw in one of my verso images, as a teaser while i line up my next reblog
And an interlude for the rest of the verso images!!! So here, I wanted to draw from VINTAGE video games, to pander to entertain the older generations attending the wedding. I tried to draw from the atari/activision era, where things had some graphics, but aiming to land before 3d really took off. And at first I was like 'huehuehue I'm so clever, all of these character designs will be so much more simple--'
No. I am boo boo the fool, most of these designs were so simple they were plain impossible for my sleep deprived brain to draw 😂 So some of these draw from the games directly, and some are more from the cabinet or box art, whatever i could find with a visual identity to latch on to.
So, for roll call purposes here, in order on the tumblr post, we've got: qbert, pitfall (featuring a beautiful pixel rope), frogger, major havoc, centipede, pac-man (both man and ghost), space invaders, berserk, yar's revenge, annnnnd et!
I think pitfall was what sold me on this idea conceptually, but et is my absolute favorite of the bunch. Look at him. Look at my wonderful hideous son. One thing i learned on this project is that if you're trying to get an illuminated manuscript vibe and it just isn't landing, try drawing the eyes Wrong, and that's very likely to do the trick
I think I can fit everything into one last post!! Okay okay okay, so i hit three of the BIGGEST nostalgic franchises (mario, zelda, pokemon) in the first post. But then there were also five others, where I drew one page each. Donkey kong was actually the first page i started sketching out of the whole bunch, and by the time i got to king k rool, i was like okay. okay. this is going to work.
All of these pages were SO fun. Browsing the kirby wiki for the funnest little Creachurs was a delight. Working on mother brain was one of my favorite parts. The sonic page is my favorite concept out of the whole lot, using the loop as a frame for the message portion. And of course, once I was reminded of the animal crossing wedding couple, they HAD to feature prominently 😂
BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE. My brother and his now-wife play world of warcraft together. He got her into it, and I think that's a cruel thing to do to your partner, but what do i know. And a few of their guildmates were even invited to the wedding! So a couple months back, i asked them for images of their characters, "for reasons." The reasons were to draw them each inhabited initials for the title page of the book :3c
(my brother, at the wedding: 'i thought you just wanted them for inspiration!!!' me, cackling: 'FOOL. when have i ever practiced self-restraint when it comes to crafts?????’)
And then!!!! In chronological order, this is where i paused to draw the eleven verso images in a fever haze and actually printed the book and made it. Fun story, my printer started misprinting images in the middle of this and I had to make a trip to my parents' place and use their printer to get the actual book pages. But once it was assembled and drying (it was a k118, also, which i don't think i mentioned), I staggered back to my tablet and drew a demo page for how i envisioned the signings. My little treat to myself is that it features haggard versions of me, including skeleton me in the corner.
And it all worked! It all worked out really well!! I'm SO glad its over, and I have two sets of lotr that I made concurrently as gifts that i need to scrape together a post for. But this came together better than I could have hoped, and I have learned important lessons about how long art like this takes me 🤣 But I've also learned how to do these pseudo-illuminated pages and the term 'inhabited initial'! I definitely, DEFINITELY plan to use that knowledge for much goofier and more frivolous purposes as soon as I rest up a bit. This was a much bigger project than I expected, but I'm SO happy with it
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This book has reached its recipient, so I can share pictures now! This is Deadset by @pbaintthetb, an amazing Nie Huaisang fic in which Nie Huaisang is murdered and becomes a tgcf-style ghost.
I did a kintsugi-look binding for a different calamity au (ironically, one in which Jin Guangyao was the ghost) but spoilers, this was the fic that I first thought of using it for. And while my first attempt was just a surface design on the cover, I built this into the structure of the book itself. The cover structure is inspired by Ben Elbel's "pixel binding" which is a book cover made of many tiny squares; using irregular pieces here makes it not quite as flexible, but I'm still very happy with the effect.
The individual sections of the cover were glued to a thin, flexible paper, then covered with a decorative paper that I worked down into the spaces between (definitely use paste rather than pva for this). The gold is deco foil, often called toner-reactive foil but it adheres to dry pva as well, so I simply filled the channels with pva and then applied the foil using the head of a pin to apply pressure (you don't need heat when applying it to pva).
For the rounded spine, I used leather pieces so that I could still have the thickness but they would be flexible enough that I wouldn't have to sacrifice the irregular shapes.
The way Ben Elbel builds his pixel binding books is the textblock is wrapped in a suede cover, basically like a paperback but suede, and then the pixel binding cover is glued to the suede at the spine. I'm not sure that duplicating this construction was necessary here, but it worked out well enough. The suede-covered textblock is an interesting look and feel all by itself actually.
As is my way now it would seem, I started this one in September. The line in the typeset is the approximate shape of I-10, with LA chapter titles being on the west side and El Paso chapters being on the east side.
The cover was harder: I always thought of this fic as sort of a yellow, which didn't really seem right for a cover. I asked Cly for a description and they said "a warm window at night. so kind of cool blue grey purple evening and then also the warmth of a lamp. that’s so unhelpful my god" but it was, in fact, very helpful. And then this whole book proceeded to be a comedy of errors because:
I had what I thought was the perfect fabric, a sort of two-toned blue/black. I had exactly enough for the cover (thanks, Fitz!) and then proceeded to fuck it up (RIP) by first: gluing the cover (which is made of two thin pieces of board glued together, one of which has a rectangle cut in it) on upside down, so the window was on the bottom half, and then: leaving too much space around the spine.
So I made a new one with the blue moire, of which I have...plenty. Cover went fine. Got the paper window in perfectly. Did a practice run with the stamping machine (known hereonout as The Machine, to keep with my Princess Bride equipment name theme.) Measured it, then, like Icarus, though I could make a measurement adjustment on the fly and have it come out correctly. Reader, it did not:
I spent like ten minutes trying to convince myself that it was fine. But. It wasn't fine. So I started over.
Anyway. Covers 3 and 4 are what you see in the final versions. I eventually figured out that if I taped a few layers of watercolor paper on top of the cover to test the location in The Machine, I could make sure to line it up exactly correct. I also figured out that I could do this by adjusting the placement just slightly between stamps:
So maybe I'll try and do that on purpose at some point, though I'm sure that's when it'd ultimately fail me.
Anyway, the punchline of all of this is that after all of this, over the course of a few months, I made an error that was a first for me, and everyone I showed it to. The endpaper curled when I put paste on it, and I didn't notice. You kind of have to laugh:
I don't ENTIRELY hate it because there's no board showing and it gives an interesting page turn effect. but that was NOT the intended outcome. RIP. I sent the author the successful one.
Alright gentlefolks, you know I had to do it, so I present to you @gallusrostromegalus's Family Lore Story About The 1969 Easter Mass Incident aka the Bread Jesus Story because my brain generated an idea weeks ago and I was compelled to bring it to life with a hardcover 2-section pamphlet/booklet (also this was a challenge to try a new book binding style that's not a Bradel yet again:
Scoured the Internet Archive for something pretty I could use in the typesetting and found these gorgeous Mucha illustrated frames (see 4th image for name of the book), and yes I picked the one that depicted the crucifixion scene, haha.
And then the printer bugged out on me while I was reprinting a fixed version that was supposed to be black and white (the fucking Magenta ink tank is clogged clogged) so I decided to lean into the green and got out the jewel toned cardstock and the fancy American scrapbook prints (ouch import prices but worth it). The spine is just black bookcloth I made.
A couple of process and practice photos:
So it turns out when the conservation style 2-section pamphlet guide says you need to sew onto a strip of bookcloth hinge, it wasn't a suggestion because aw fuck, it was structurally important to not have a loose connection despite how much pulling and tightening you do (as seen in final photo between the practice typoed sections and the actual set). Lesson learned. Also, I definitely sewed on the bookcloth hinge backasswards but with enough PVA glue, everything will hold lol.
Typesetting this was fun though. Lots of evil cackling.
Am thrilled to once again co-cheerlead with Lark [Frog Eye Press] @renegadeguild's annual curation of bad ideas edible "Books"! The only rules are (1) it has to vaaaaguely be "book"ish in nature and (2) you have to take a bite out of it
And my entry, for which I conveniently timed a delightful Renegade meetup in order to inflict it upon others. I remain impressed with how fun hanging out with these folks proves to be.
Shout out to Lark who continues to provide our super-rad prizes. I remain a corrupting influence on the server as this is the one "competition"/"competitive" event amongst the selection of other collaborative, gifting, educational, and/or generous activities put on year round.
{ you can find the slide deck of entries w/ link to vote here }
Remember, the @renegadeguild is a very serious bookbinding server
Typeset by the amazing @sammialex! Fantastic art by @albymangroves and @jayjay-thejet-plane.
Amazon fabric, matte gold HTV, endpaper from Hollander's, vine ribbon from Michael's, printed on Church short-grain warm white (opaque vanilla) paper, except for the art which is on warm white cardstock.
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I made a book out of the 1938 War of the Worlds radio drama!
(which you can listen to here on archive.org)
This is my first time doing a buttonhole stitch binding. Most examples I saw were blank notebooks, and had decorative sheets wrapped fully around the outside of each section of paper, but I didn't want to interrupt the flow of the text, so I just pasted a thin strip of the marbled paper down to the outer fold edge of each section.
Very pleased with how this turned out! Tarnished Gold by @primtheamazing is a fave reread of mine, and i have been wanting to give it physical form on my shelf for a while! I tried some new things with layers on the covers, and leather with faux endbands on the spine, with stenciled leather paint. I also tried leaving the edges untrimmed and speckling them, and it worked out really well!
I jacked up the stencils on the covers MULTIPLE times, but I kept redoing them until they were, if not perfect, at least better than round 1 (and 2, and 3....)
I am really happy with how this came out! This is my first rounded spine book, and the spine decorations really please me. Excellend addition to my fic shelf :)
As requested (albeit several months late) I have finally put together a video on my gauffering process!
Please take this video with a grain of salt– I am a complete beginner, and this method is far from traditional. It is simply what I was able to accomplish at my current skill level with the materials I had on hand.
For more in depth videos on sanding and edge painting, please check out @duran-binding and @copticcowgirl . They taught me everything I know!
There is so little instructional information about gauffering available online, particularly with budget materials. The amount of trial and error it took to establish a method that yielded fairly consistent results was frankly maddening, so I sincerely hope that this look into my process is useful to someone.
A fun fan binding project. This is An Ever-Fixed Mark by ninepiecesofcrait. It is very much rooted in nature, so I wanted to honor that vibe. Recently I have been really inspired by vintage covers! I found this gorgeous cover and wanted to replicate it.
I wanted to be very technical with this bind and so I worked closely with my friend @copticcowgirl , who is training with master book binder Mark Kirchner. She taught me how to make a hollow and build the case on the textblock. I did round and back this bind and used silk thread for true double core end bands (using a tutorial from @duran-binding). I splattered ink on my edges.
To create the design, I traced a vintage cover I loved in procreate and then cut the design in cricut.
The book cloth is duo Herb Garden and the over marbled paper is from Minnesota Center for Book Arts. The nature of duo cloth and metallic HTV made this difficult to photograph!
I also made the chapter notes into a little companion quarto because they were full of wonderful images and fun facts.
This project was a labor of love and one of my favorite projects to date!
So I just finished a batch of some of my favorite fics by @tawnyontumblr, which I’ll be posting separately.
First up is New Messages, because Tawny requested that one specifically. It’s a marvelous human au featuring Aziraphale who writes fanfic and Crowley who draws fan art and their collaboration. Which is over Discord and of course leads to romance.
I tried to give it a discord sort of look, but I’m only on there for bookbinding, so hopefully this works.
Also included is a pamphlet bind one shot of All Fired Up, which is about the in universe show Crowley and Aziraphale are fans of. I used @quona’s beautiful art for the cover.
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This was a collaborative project between @sits-bound and myself. We knew we wanted to create something special for Phoenix, one of our dearest friends. Pam created this incredible typeset. The stag plays an important role, so we did lean into this theme throughout the typeset and physical binding. The story also features Harry as a journalist, so each chapter header is designed like a newspaper!
The dust jacket features art by the incredible @amomorii and depicts Draco and Harry entering Le Cerf from the muggle world and wizarding world, respectively. If you wanna know why they enter that way, and why the restaurant has two entrances, you need to read the story! We chose to put the title on the spine only because we didn’t want to cover all of the amazing details that the artist included.
The case is a split board case which allows the bind to open beautifully. DAS shows how to make this case on his YOUTUBE channel. The physical cover was made using mudbath duo cloth, a two tone cloth that I LOVE. We kept the design simple because the dust jacket art is really the shining star here. End pages were marbled by Maleeka.
Pam and Maleeka believe that one amazing part of fandom is the gift giving philosophy and we were honored to make this copy for the author. Keep fandom free and be kind, always.
This was such a fun collaboration and I’m so lucky to have my typeset bound but such a talented binder. Mally’s attention to detail is unmatched. Her endbands HER ENDBANDS and the marbled paper she made, it’s all exquisite. Sam’s art is, as usual, gorgeous and perfect and unbelievably detailed and beautiful.
Thanks to our lovely friend @phoenixortheflame for inspiring us to create this for you!
Transmigrating into the stallion novel he hates most is bad enough, but why did it have to be into the body of one of the protagonist's wives? Shen Yuan spends exactly two months dealing with harem intrigues, sullen maids and his husband utterly ignoring him before he decides to go on an extended holiday. Very extended. Surely no one will care if he just forgets about being married and becomes a cultivator, right?
I made this book for @waterloggedowl for the @renegadeguild annual exchange! It was very fun getting to return to Scum Villain fandom for this! When I started fanbinding I was deep in danmei fandoms, but I've been off in Star Wars for the last few years.
I was blessed to be able to use the chapter art by @sunshine-dies . Their work is on the dust jacket, and I got to do a couple of fun spreads like these.
Beneath the dust jacket the book is bound in colibri bookcloth, with crepaldi marble paper inset for the fan and foiled with silver.
The same marbled paper is also the endpapers! I diverged from the standard SY color scheme here for two reasons: 1) sunshine-dies' art is in a lovely blue hue, and 2) Shen Yuan is never Shen Qingqiu in this fic, so a color change in the theme feels appropriate. The endbands are done in my asymmetrical style to match, and I painted the edge a polarized blue on black.
Back to the inside - since LBH is the emperor in this fic and inner court drama plays a large role, I created a vector pattern based on one of the wood lattice screen designs in the Forbidden City. More traditionally speaking this would be within a rectangular frame, but I kinda like the rough edges.
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