A Book, a Torch, a Death

Shona (She/her) || Bi || Bookish child and writer

[cheaphalloweencostume]

I love it when I click on a recipe link because it sounds yummy and instead of a recipe I get a several page dissertation on a food blogger’s boredom with her marriage and lies she was told in childhood

[cheaphalloweencostume]

10 years of crème brûlée brownies and wondering where it all went wrong

[cheaphalloweencostume]

idk how you’re getting Content from “i fee like i dont know how to be a person properly and i dont know how or what to talk to my husband about almost ever” but she’s now happily divorced so she was in fact Not Content

[liobits]

Scrolled through the reblogs and couldn’t find anyone actually posting the recipe HERE, so I dug it up on the Wayback Machine. Behold! Kristan’s lost brownies recipe:

Créme Bruleé Brownies

Prep Time: 40 minutes Cook Time: 30 minutes Total Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes Yield: 15 servings

Ingredients

Brownies:

1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, melted

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 cups granulated sugar

4 large eggs

1 TBS vanilla extract

1 1/3 cups flour

12 oz (ish) jar hot fudge sauce

Créme Bruleé Topping:

¼ cup cornstarch

1 cup white sugar

6 Tablespoons butter, melted

3 ¼ cups half and half cream

2 teaspoons vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste

¼ cup granulated sugar

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350. Line a 9x13 pan with foil and spray thoroughly with nonstick spray; set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the cocoa and melted butter. Stir in sugar until combined. Stir in eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each. Stir in vanilla. Fold in flour JUST until you no longer see flour streaks in the batter. Gently fold in hot fudge sauce.

Spread batter in prepared pan and bake for about 20 minutes, until raw batter no longer appears when a toothpick is inserted in the center. Remove from oven and place pan on a cooling rack.

Prepare topping: In a medium-sized heavy saucepan, whisk together cornstarch and sugar. Whisk in the melted butter and half and half. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is the consistency of a thick pudding. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Pour custard over the brownies, spreading to cover. Sprinkle surface with granulated sugar, then place under the broiler for several minutes until top is golden (may be dark brown is some spots). Alternately, a kitchen torch can be used.

Let brownies cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until chilled. Remove foil, cut into bars and serve.

Enjoy and have a great day!

[raptorcivilization]

There’s a BAFTA-winning, Oscar-nominated documentary that posted Kermit gulag

[raptorcivilization]

Mr Nobody Against Putin is a documentary about a Russian teacher that documents - and attempts to subvert - the state propaganda being used in Russian schools to justify the Ukraine war. The guy secretly recorded a lot of footage and had to be snuck out of Russia for his own safety, and so this could be known. It’s been receiving critical accolades and heaps of praise, including the aforementioned award wins/nominations.

My boyfriend just watched it in a theater and noticed something. At one point the movie references the guy who implemented the gulag system, following up on a comment from a history teacher, and this is the image they picked to represent it.

It’s fucking Kermit gulag. They grayscaled an image of the gulag scene from Muppets Most Wanted and used it to illustrate an actual Soviet gulag, alongside actual historical pictures and footage, in a deathly serious documentary. See for yourself, 32 minutes in. There is no reference or citation to the Muppets/Disney in the credits so this seems like a genuine fuckup in the editing room.

[raptorcivilization]

Update: this movie just won the Oscar for Best Documentary

[violetsandshrikes]

okay so if you need more veggies/fruit, protein or fibre (bc most people do NOT eat enough) in your diet but you struggle to do so, hear me out:

look up recipes (especially snack recipes) that are child/toddler/baby-friendly

i can guarantee there is a woman with a cooking blog out there who has found away to pack a bunch of vegetables into a surprisingly delicious little snack for her kids. this process has never failed me when i feel like i am not eating enough fruits and veggies. my entire flat is eating spinach muffins at the moment, which doesn’t sounding particularly appealing to most people and yet somehow. they’re delicious.

[violetsandshrikes]

putting some of my saved recipes under a read more for people to use as inspiration or a starting point ❤️

Kid Friendly Quinoa Pizza Bites

This healthy, gluten free recipe idea is a kid pleaser!  Quinoa Pizza Bites make a nutritious meal or snack the whole family will love.

Carrot Star Bites - Healthy Little Foodies

Carrot star bites are fantastic for baby-led weaning or as toddler snack. Also great for big kids too - a healthy lunchbox item.

Oatmeal Green Smoothie Muffins

These Green Smoothie Muffins are so easy to make, delicious and kid-approved! Perfectly sweet, soft and packed with healthy greens! Naturall

Carrot Lentil Protein Muffins

These carrot lentil protein muffins are a great kid-friendly snack, filled with sneaky lentils to add healthy protein, fibre and nutrients.

Vegetable Fritters - Healthy Little Foodies

These Vegetable Fritters are perfect for kids of all ages. Packed with veggies for nutrients & eggs and chickpea flour for protein. Gluten f

Curried Lentil Bake - Healthy Little Foodies

This lentil bake is perfect for babies, kids and adults. Made with 4 veggies, lentils, sweet potato and egg. Great for lunch boxes.

Sweet Potato Quinoa Cakes Recipe | Haute & Healthy Living

Quinoa Cakes are an easy way to pack in nutrients! Make in advance for a fun, healthy side or snack during the week! {Gluten Free, Vegan}

[violetsandshrikes]

here’s a few more:

Healthy & Moist Chocolate Zucchini Muffins

Healthy Chocolate Zucchini Muffins are moist, tender, mixed in one bowl, made with whole wheat flour, naturally sweetened with a little mapl

Baked Sweet Potato Zucchini Tots (Paleo + Vegan)

Baked sweet potato zucchini tots made with 3 key ingedients are nut free, vegan and paleo. Healthy baked veggie tots perfect for school lunc

Hidden Veggie Pasta Sauce for Babies and Kids - Baby Led Bliss

This super veggie pasta sauce for babies and toddlers is delicious on top of all kinds of pasta! With over 7 different oven roasted vegetabl

Veggie-Loaded Mini Meatloaves

Flavorful & full of veggies, these mini meatloaves are a great twist on a classic family dinner recipe. Easy to make, perfectly portioned ou

Cottage Cheese Egg Bites - easyfoodflash

Looking for a quick, protein-packed snack or breakfast that’s both delicious and nutritious? These Cottage ... <p class="read-more-container

[callmebliss]

Y’ever read something and have understanding that has eluded you interminably suddenly stop, curl up, and snuggle neatly into a fold in your brain because a new way way opened to it?

[macleod]

I've seen this passed around a few times, and I have one thing to say:

It's online. The book was carefully and wonderfully recreated online by hand. You can find it here. The entire book is this easy.

calculusmadeeasy.org

[callmebliss]

TIL the highest honor is to be consigned to the processing vortex

[slow-burn-sally]

A recent conversation in a discord group reminded me of something important. If you're on the younger side (under 25 or 30) and you haven't seen all the incredible, dark and disturbing fantasy films that came out in the 1980s and late 1970s, then I would strongly encourage you to do so. There was something so dark about that genre during that time that I absolutely adore and that isn't really around in modern films for children and young adults (once they learned that it traumatized a whole generation of us).

My faves in case you need any recommendations. (Some of these are really not appropriate for children, so keep that in mind lol).

The Dark Crystal - 1982 - the Skeksis will give you nightmares. I am honestly very proud of the remake for being just as disturbing if not more so than the original.

Watership Down - 1978- NOT FOR CHILDREN - Jesus Christ why did so many of our parents show us this film at a formative age? It's all about trauma and death and displacement and there's literal blood and murder. Not a G Rated Film. Still, it's very good. Loads better than that CGI remake from a decade ago.

The Secret Of NIMH - 1982 - Incredible movie. Minor disturbing elements. Probably my favorite on the list. It's just a great adventure story with real world issues (animal experimentation, mental health problems, disabilities) and there's even a lovely romance. Highly recommend.

Legend - 1985- This film is just straight up disturbing. Yes, there's a lot of beautiful shots of unicorns and sexy, 20-something year old (insane Scientology wack job) Tom Cruise and gorgeous Mia Sara, but there's also torture, madness and literally the Devil (Tim Curry is the entire reason you should watch this film)

Labyrinth - 1986 - I only really have two words. David. Bowie. My 10 year old self found out about a lot of burgeoning kinks while watching that man prance around in eyeliner and a codpiece. It's a wonderful adventure as well - if you ignore the blatant romantic and sexual tension between Bowie and an underage Jennifer Connelly (none of us could)

The NeverEnding Story - 1984 - Lots of disturbing imagery in this one! The Nothing was fucking terrifying, and the creatures in this world seemed uniformly creepy, but still incredibly well done. Love the adventure of it.

The Princess Bride - 1987 - Not technically a kids film maybe? Lots of adult themes and adult jokes, but safe for kids imo. I adored it and still do. Incredible performances by Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin. R.O.U.S, Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya! (need I say more?)

The Last Unicorn - 1982 - A beautiful film with stunning representations of innocence, good and evil. Just gorgeous really. I should rewatch it as it's been 20 years or so.

[rannulfr]

______________

Adding a couple...

LadyHawk.

A romance / Action film about a knight and a maiden who are cursed. Her to transform into a hawk during the day & him into a wolf at night. Forever keeping them apart.

DragonSlayer

A coming of age tale about a wizard apprentice who must save a village from a dragon & the sacrifice lottery the village has established around it.

(Rare example of 1980s genderfuckery)

Willow

LOTR before we ever thought a LOTR film would ever be possible. You've probably seen this one, but just in case.

The Flight of Dragons

Transplanted into the body of a dragon a scientist must come to terms with magic, even while explaining it.

Krull

Classic adventure story severely undervalued in its time.

Some of the creepiest spider stop motion to ever exist.

[brightlotusmoon]

These are all on my favorite movies list. I find myself humming the Flight Of Dragons song randomly to this day.

[slow-burn-sally]

As an autistic child with ADHD and a burgeoning case of OCPD, I was deeply upset by many moments in many of these movies (particularly The Dark Crystal and The Never Ending Story, which are dark, so you have every right to feel grossed/creeped out by those muppets. They were hella extremely creepy.

[propalahramota]

They should add "On Horseback" option to Google Maps. For writers.

[kotitontunmanaaja]

"Hevoslinja" (Trans-Horse) is a European art project started in 2014 by Finnish artist Eero Yli-Vakkuri - according to his own words 'skilless in riding and afraid of animals' at the start.

The aim of the project was to travel 270 km / 168 miles between Helsinki and Turku in Finland, and to highlight the possibility of horse travel in modern society. Since then they've took to promoting horseback efforts in urban landscapes with several European collaborators and artists.

Yli-Vakkuri and collaborators first spent eight months practicing riding to become safely self-sufficient in saddle, and bought a Finnhorse gelding Toivottu Poika ('Awaited Son'). The route followed, as closely as possible, the old coastal royal country road of the premodern era, Kuninkaantie/Suuri Rantatie, and took 9 days.

Toivottu Poika is a very average example of his breed, standing at some 155 cm / 15.1 hh tall. The Finnhorse is a relative of for example the North-Norwegian Lyngshest breed, the Icelandic horse, the Swedish Gotlandsruss pony and the Estonian landrace horse and Tori horse breed. It is a mid-sized light draught and trotter, a sensibly realistic mediaeval country travel horse equivalent.

For more hardcore short-term treks, looking into competitive endurance riding can be helpful. Mongol Derby might be one of the most intense races, as it recreates the Chinggis Khan era postal system of swapping horses continuously over a 1000 km / 620 mile route.

By only including skilled endurance riders, keeping up a constant fast speed and swapping horses every 40 km / 25 mil, the Mongol Derby route only takes 10 days even though it's several times the length of the Trans-Horse project. This is the speed of highly organised imperial messengers with the supporting cultural infrastructure, professional marathon runners where Yli-Vakkuri and Toivottu poika were leisure hikers.

The Mongolian landrace horse is a very distant relative of the breeds above, but much lighter and smaller than the agriculturally focused modern Finnhorse - typicaly standing at 142 cm / 14 hh at most. (This would've also been common for Finnhorses before the 19th century.) What really differentiates them from Western breeds, however, is the way they're trained and raised in semi-feral herds, and it's said that while the rider may decide where the pair is headed, the horse is the one to decide how to get there.

[drev-the-procrastinator]

also it's not quite google maps, but there is a lovely site called Viabundus!

the last i checked, the map of roads stretches from Calais, France to Moscow, Russia west to east and from Košice, Slovakia to Tornio, Finland south to north. it doesn't cover all of Europe, for example Sweden and Norway are empty at the moment, but it is quite extensive and still being worked on! in addition to showing the old roads, you can calculate the distance and travel time from one city to another, and there are a lot of options:

and that's not all! here's a description from the site itself (emphasis mine):

"Viabundus is a freely accessible online street map of late medieval and early modern northern Europe (1350-1650). Originally conceived as the digitisation of Friedrich Bruns and Hugo Weczerka's Hansische Handelsstraßen (1962) atlas of land roads in the Hanseatic area, the Viabundus map moves beyond that. It includes among others: a database with information about settlements, towns, tolls, staple markets and other information relevant for the pre-modern traveller; a route calculator; a calendar of fairs; and additional land routes as well as water ways."

it's quite neat and also free! i hope someone else finds it as fascinating and cool as i did :)

[queersona]

therapist: cunt dracula is not real and cannot fuck you.

cunt dracula:

[queersona]

[jojo pose] count dracula. [different jojo pose] nice to meet you. [jojo walk cycle] alexa, turn down the music! [the obnoxious music doesn't change volume] mr harker

[virtualgirladvance]

Cuntula

[mysticalalleycat]

[thesweetpianowritingdownmylife]

Guess which slime tutorial has just dropped

[reallyreallyreallytrying]

my new book YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THIS IF YOU WANT TO LIVE is out now. it has 45 short stories, including some of my favourites from the last four years of INFINITE GOSSIP, and unreleased ones. it has sick cover art from rory blank. when i asked him to draw a nasty little guy eating leaves by a river he said "that's very much the kind of thing i draw to begin with, lol". and that's why it pops. the ebook is also out now if you prefer to read on da computer

[reallyreallyreallytrying]

a perfect score.. a perfect book

[reallyreallyreallytrying]

in celebration of taylor swift's new album "the life of a showgirl" i have released a new edition. high collectible & essential for "swifties"

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Nothing makes me feel like more of an absolute fucking idiot than cooking.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

An Assyrian guy put a rice recipe up here awhile back and it was the best rice I've ever eaten. The recipe? Half-cook the rice and then bake it in butter. It had somehow never occurred to me that you could do that. Of course you can do that. Did I just think the rice was allergic to the oven or something.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I cooked rice like this and had some left over so I used it to bulk out my sad pathetic watery homemade vegetable soup. To my huge surprise it turned it into the best soup I'd ever eaten. Magically gave it real body, made it textured and nurturing, held heat better, added massive depth of flavour.

Hey guys did you. Did you know that butter. Did you know that if you put fat in food it makes it more satisfying and adds textural depth. Hey did you know that some flavours aren't very soluble in water and are instead soluble in fats, so if you add some fat to your watery soup then. Then the flavours. Hey guys did you know that butter is a fat.

Mind blown super surprising in my late thirties hey guys did you know that sad watery soup can be improved with some fat? Just like sauce or meat or basically any other food which I already knew about? Did you know it works for soup as well? Did you know that some flavours are more soluble in

I have a chemistry background.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#if you make rice pudding you also need to add fat. butter or coconut oil are really good

The sad thing is that I have made rice pudding. In the oven. Simply did not occur to me that I could put rice in the oven for other meals.

[beanstroni]

Okay but are there amounts in Assyrian man's rice recipe? Plz? For those of us who murder rice EVERY TIME?

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Recipe:

💬 60  🔁 13607  ❤️ 16007 · >:(

[supertoga]

Now that this project has been delivered to its recipient, I can brag about it online a little.

I made this Elizabethan petal hussif for a friend who received an award for her historical costuming work. Hussifs were often used as sewing kits with spots for all of the notions you need for a project. Wives would send them with their husbands to war with extra uniform buttons and repair supplies. This one has an inner pouch area that can fit a small project or pieces thereof.

My friend likes owls, pomegranates, blurple, and starlight. Hopefully this mashup harmonizes nicely. I worked almost entirely from scraps already in my stash.

I self drafted the pattern, but it's approximated from this write up and Sheila Marshall's book "Elizabethan Needlework Accessories". My library didn't have the book, so I relied on Google images.

This little owl friend is a needle minder by greennerddesigns on Etsy. I chopped up a pin and stuck a magnet on there.

The lucette braided cord nearly thwarted me, but we got there in the end. I opted for fancy silk ribbon for the inner pouch instead. I swear lucette gave me arthritis.

I'm still pretty new to embroidery, so this was a real level up project for me. I used wool felt for the leaves and pomegranates to give them a little dimensionality (and to better hide any satin stitch sins) TIL, embroidering velveteen sucks.

The pomegranates are so crunchy! I fondled them frequently throughout the making of this. But the lattice stitch with tiny gold details is my favorite part.

The laurels are a symbol of the award she's receiving. I don't love how they turned out, but they hold up okay from a distance.

Blue beads are from my local embroidery shop, Country Crafts. Silver loops came from my stash. Owl scissors from onethriftystitcher on Etsy. Wool pieces are from my local wool store Black Sheep Wool.

Overall, I have some improvements to make if I ever do another one, but after some 100 hours of work poured into this little guy, I couldn't be more proud of myself. I hope she loves it and uses it until it falls apart.

[dangerphd]

❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

[captainragtag]

Can we include darebee.com with ao3 and wikipedia on our list of really good nonprofits with excellent services that we stan?

It's a free, no sign-up, no ads fitness resource created by professionals who view this as activism (fitness should be accessible to everyone), and it's very thoughtful and thorough.

Features I really like:

- all instructions for workout routines are diagrammed on single pages with a clean, easy to read layout

- there's 30 or 60 day programs you can follow if you, like me, don't know what to do. they take you through a rotation of workouts so you're working different muscle groups on different day for a specific purpose

- there's so much variety and there's a filter so you can find the level and your goals and type of workout you wanna do

- you don't need any equipment

- some of the programs are RPGs or adventure stories! How's that for motivation. There's also badges and achievements or something but I haven't looked that closely at how that works yet

- they're nerds. they name workouts after D&D classes. There's a Lannistrr workout, a batcave workout, a witcher workout

- I've only scratched the surface

I'm doing this really easy one to start out

Darebee, darebee, fitness, visual workouts, workouts, fitness challenges, fitness motivation, training tips, recipes, nutrition

[bisexualshakespeare]

If you don't understand from the picture they have an Exercise Library playlist in YouTube so you can see what all the moves look like in motion!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQSMS0J6JbrKdSOSbyJXaQ_zN_HSSp7zZ

Exercise Library - YouTube

[jartita-me-teneis]

[wyrd-woman]

What magic is this....

[the-punforgiven]

Show up at work like hi boss sorry I'm late my I was helping my mother track down one specific 90s dungeon crawler for the purposes of obtaining a muffin recipe the developer hid in the files

[the-punforgiven]

Anyway shoutout to Stonekeep (1995)

[mushroomsandteeth]

I'M MAKING THE MUFFINS

[mushroomsandteeth]

Burnt my hand picking it up to show. Gonna wait to taste.

[mushroomsandteeth]

Taste review: Make the video game muffins oh my GOD.

[knightjockey]

These are DELICIOUS! I substituted chocolate chips for pecans because its what i had on hand.

It tastes like a pumpkin gingerbread cake! Great treat for fall and winter!

Definitely make these!

[sadhoc]

Text from recipe

Tim Cain's Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins -- They're the shadow king's favorite!

1 and 2/3 cup flour

2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp cloves

1/4 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

1 cup chocolate chips

1 cup sugar

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup pumpkin (half of a 16 oz can)

1/2 cup (one stick) butter, melted

preheat oven to 350. grease muffin tins (one dozen regular size) or use baking cups. mix flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Break eggs into another bowl. add pumpkin and butter and whisk until blended. stir in chocolate chips. pour over dry ingredients and stir until just blended. do NOT overstir! scoop batter into tins and bake 20-25 minutes. after cooling, keep muffins wrapped in plastic to avoid drying.

[coquette-club]

heres some of my fav video essays for smart hot girls

The Nymphet Femme Fatale (As Popularized by Misreadings of Lolita)

we need to talk about Lolita | Lola Sebastian

A Deep Dive into Black Femininity and Class | Shanspeare

pinterest aesthetics, fatphobia & whitewashing

Femininity and the Intersection of Race and Class

The Eras of an Icon: Britney Spears

Monstrous Menstruations: the dehumanising treatment of women in horror

Why the Curtains are Blue: The Implications of Being Uncritical

in defense of the femme fatale 🚬

Lana Del Rey: the pitfalls of having a persona

tiktok is kind of bad for fashion

When Shakespeare Got Cool

“Re-imagining Lolita”… Poorly (Roger Fishbite BITES, Adapting Lolita #2) | Lola Sebastian

Class + Wes Anderson’s Aesthetic - THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS + FANTASTIC MR. FOX

Are “black girls less innocent”? Adultification explained | Khadija Mbowe

[blogsguide]

Nantucket Cranberry Pie from Laurie Colwin

I am happy to share this recipe for Nantucket Cranberry Pie, which originally appeared in the November, 1993, issue of Gourmet. It appeared in an article written by Laurie Colwin. It’s quick, easy and delicious, and I made it that year for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I hadn’t thought about the pie for many years. Last week, I remembered it, but couldn’t recall when it appeared in the magazine or who created it.  When I couldn’t find the recipe in my files or on Epicurious.com, I wrote a little post on my own blog, wondering how I’d find it.  I also contacted some of my former colleagues at Gourmet to see if they could pinpoint it. We were all stumped.

Funnily enough, Mrs. Finch, a longtime friend of my mother in law, took my plight to heart and found the recipe by pecking around online. Someone somewhere had scanned the article for posterity. 

I chuckled when I saw that the recipe was from Laurie Colwin and now appears in her book, More Home Cooking, A Writer Returns to the Kitchen (HarperCollins, 1993).  Colwin died in 1992, but her writing surpasses time. In a wonderfully chatty and humane way, she artfully wove culinary conversation with universal topics such as friendships, family life, and everyday chaos. She was remarkably perceptive and understood that a harried home cook’s culinary agenda was easily sidetracked by curious children, haphazard filing systems, and idiosyncratic house guests. I’ve always found it easy to relate to  Laurie Colwin’s cooking.

While rereading the book's chapter, “Waiting for Dessert”,  I smiled when I read these paragraphs introducing Nantucket Cranberry Pie: 

“I like a cake that takes about four seconds to put together and gives an ambrosial result. Fortunately, there are such cakes, and usually you get them at the homes of others. You then purloin the recipe…and serve it to others, who then serve it to others. This is the way in which nations are unified and friendships made solid.   

My candidate for an easy, spectacular dessert is something called Nantucket Cranberry Pie, which is not a pie, but a cake, and was served to me in the country by my friend Ann Gold, who lives on a dairy farm and  got this recipe from her mother, who can no longer remember where it came from. It is a Gold family staple, and the buck stops there.” 

Here’s the deliciously easy recipe, reprinted with permission from HarperCollins and presented in Colwin’s unique recipe-writing style:

Nantucket Cranberry Pie

1. Chop enough cranberries to make 2 cups and enough walnuts to make ½ cup. 2. In the bottom of a 10-inch pie plate or springform pan, place chopped cranberries, chopped walnuts, and ½ cup sugar. 3. Mix 2 eggs, ¾ cup melted butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup flour, and 1 teaspoon almond extract. Stir till smooth. 4. Pour over cranberry walnut mixture and bake for 40 minutes at 350 F.

–Melissa A. Trainer

[the-eccentric-eclectic]

Hey kid, look at me.

I want you to T-pose. Turn your right thumb up and your left thumb doen and look at your right thumb. Move your arms up and down a bit until you feel a nerve running from your armpit to your palm. Now turn your right thumb down and your left thumb up, and look at your left thumb. Keep your chest facing forward and your shoulders back. Move your arms again until you feel that nerve again. Keep alternating between these two for a minute, or look at each thumb thirty times each.

Now sit down. Put your left hand firmly under your left buttock, palm down. Keep your shoulders back and put your right hand over the crown of your head, very gently pulling it to the right. Do this for thirty seconds, then do it again but with your right hand under your right buttock.

These are stretches for the nerves in your arms, and are very good for people who sit behind a computer a lot, or fibre artists, or you name it. Do them daily. They will hurt in the beginning, but keep doing them, even after the pain has gone, or it will return and you'll have to start all over.

[starblightbindery]

My personal goal is to try and make fanfic binding as accessible to everyone as possible, so here are some resources on how to make a fanfic hardcover for under $25.

This is a barebones bind for the broke college students and such. Happy to field questions, too!

Here's a proposed budget breakdown:

Loosely organized thoughts:

Fanfic bookbinders often share typesets amongst each other. Never pay for a typeset for a fanfic.

You'll hear a lot about grain direction for your printer paper, but as a newbie on a budget without your own printer, settle for some nice 92 bright paper. If you like the hobby, splurge after but expect to pay at least 2-3x more for short grain paper.

Printing is a pain because some copy shops won't let you print intellectual property smut, and it's very expensive. You are better off bartering instead or looking for a free printer on Buy Nothing.

You know the thick paper wrapping that comes with online orders? It's a good weight for endpapers if you need to scrounge. Paper grocery bags or gift bags (birthday presents) might work, too.

Ask your local library to give you covers from books they are throwing out. Ask for outdated textbooks (those covers are built like tanks) or three-ring binders that are too busted to be binders anymore.

Obtain a used book that was mass produced (so your destruction of it does not impede anyone's access) and maybe even become a little vindictive with it.

If you can afford it, I recommend the Olfa SVR knife (~$10)

If you can afford it, upgrade your ruler to a t-square.

I really hope this resource is helpful! I want to stress how possible this is and encourage people to cherish what they love through art.

If you are interested in fanfic binding and have a little more disposable income, I have an affordable Fan Fiction Bookbinding Starter Pack that I carry on my site. I pack them myself and drop them 1x/month on the 15th.