please help me find a meme, I don't remember its exact content but it had the phrase, "not now, baby, mommy has to bully strangers on the internet" in it
The reason for a fancy supper is I value his worth and want to honour it. It will make him feel appreciated and pampered which spot on how I want him to feel at all times. It shows I have the means to take care of him and intend to do so. Bring flowers and a gift along for good measure. We can go to the beach or go for a walk somewhere after, wherever the night takes us it takes us.
okay, my guy, honest hour over here, i think this entire post is pretty much in summary why i'm confident that you, in fact, cannot offer paola better dates than i do. and that's not coming from a holier than thou attitude. but what you seem to fail to understand is that money and grand credit card gestures are not what paola and i are about. that date in the forest? that's my honest suggestion because it's a good time for both of us. i won't go into detail about my reasoning, because that's between my boyfriend and me, but the baseline is that it's about company and knowing what the other cherishes and needs for their soul to be nurtured. if you find a partner who wants to be pampered and needs these gestures in a relationship to be valued, that's, i guess, good for you. but it's a key factor as to why your idea got rejected while mine got embraced. because i know my partner, took and take my time to get to know him on better levels day by day, while you're an anonymous series of ones and zeros.
the bros @mikhailoisbaby and @surviving-maybe tagged for picrew duty, thus i shall comply-
someone dared approach this goblin before his first morning [beverage redacted, the narrator guesses it's coffee]. he's benign, though, trust me.
still keeping the tagging low, unless you need an excuse, then you're tagged, too! - @mishervellous, @lukewarm-chickensoup, @ian-galagher, @babygirlmickey, @crossmydna, @celestialmickey, @heymrspatel, @squidyyy23, @gallawitchxx, @michellemisfit, @shinygalaxyperson, @energievie, @look-i-love-u. voluntary, as per tradition!
What i love about this artist’s depictions of women is even the sexualized ones the woman is always genuinely happy and enjoying herself. Frolicking or making funny faces, she’s living her life and looking sexy while doing it, not sitting in a sexual pose for the audience’s view.
My favorite thing is how Hilda is always doing something and having a BLAST! She’s not posing coyly for anyone, she’s having her own adventures and it’s not about the viewer at all
you awake? coffee drunk? breakfast eaten? breaths taken? ready for an early christmas gift? grab a chair or get your ass on the ground, 'cause i don't guarantee for your physical safety.
that's warning enough, lemme just–
—
dancing after death by squiddy
710pages, hardcover
> sons of anarchy was one of the first fandoms i ever actually considered myself a part of. the only better match up i could think of would be hannibal x shameless (in case you're interested, i wouldn't stop you). anyway, i digress. bottom line's – both soa and shameless mean a lot to me for different reasons, and you, my friend, did both universes incredible justice. the characters you took from each series, the way you've woven the storylines together, how you let mickey and ian's relationship evolve, juice's role specifically? that's top tier talent right there, squids. that's all i can say, and we should actually thank you for sharing it with us.
m8te by gallawitch
197pages, hardcover
> i really don't know where to start for this one. it's hard to put my thoughts in line for something that made me feel and think so much. i laughed with this mickey and ian. i rooted so hard for them. i was on the edge right with mickey when ian pulled his disappearing act. i was relieved with ian when mickey showed up and didn't reject him, despite what ian thought to be his biggest flaw. but most importantly – you made something inside me ring. the way you described mickey's journey specifically, how he finds love and acceptance for himself and in his life in general, for who and what he is? that shit hit too close to home; “what he was daring enough to walk away from, and what he's brave enough to walk towards” will forever be engraved directly on my brain. bottom line's – i will always be a m8te and bee stan first, and a regular human second. well, goblin-human, but. yknow. semantics.
the bottom line to both of these books is – i love the two of you immensely and am entirely swept off my feet by your talent and your characters. thanks for being here, for being you, for sharing your words and your thoughts and your crafts; to both of you.
last but not least, special thanks go out to @mishervellous and my best friend @merlinsilber for bearing with me through this and for providing me with q&a material. without your rooting, this project would've died approximately two seconds after copy-pasting the texts into my documents.
(process pictures / q&a below the cut.)
process pictures.
dad broke both my press AND my thickest books – pillars of the earth by ken follet, >1,000pages, but thinner paper & sea of sorrows by ree soesbee, >500pages, approximately same size and thickness of paper.
goblin q&a.
how long did this project take?
as with everything in life – it will heavily depend on your material, the skills you already have, and how big the book is in the end. i started with dancing after death on the 29th of september and officially finished on the 17th of october. with m8te, it didn't even take me half a week, as it's much smaller, i had gotten the hang of it already, and i didn't have to deal with delivery delays on material that i needed but couldn't purchase locally.
for dad i had approximately the following timeline, not mentioned are the times for deliveries–
2 days of printing and folding > pressing overnight > 1 day of actual binding > 1 day of gluing & shaping the spine > letting the glue dry overnight > 1 day of doing the covers and assembling the book.
in my case, sickness and moving got in the way on top of it, which i am still salty about.
what materials / equipment did you use and why?
prefacing by saying i did try to heed advice, but obviously needed to make adjustments. this list is what worked for me, and i'd say i still got decent results.
- 120gsm paper, a4. it's thicker than usual paper, and thus more suitable for the binding. i feared with thinner paper, i'd accidentally tear it apart. which. not ideal. also would've preferred recycled paper, but couldn't acquire any that fit the thickness requirement.
- polycotton thread.
- usual pva glue and textile adhesive. the pva glue is used to glue the spine and then be able to form it, while the textile adhesive is used for. basically everything else. it doesn't quite matter if you actually use textile adhesive, what's essential is, is that your second glue is solvent-based, as it will not cause your paper to warp (as opposed to the pva glue).
- 2000micron greyboard for the covers. it's probably a little overkill, though.
- mull.
- (imitate) leather for the covers.
- metallic book corners.
- superglue to reinforce the knots on the binding and get the metallic corners fixed.
apart from that, you'll need
- printer ink (obviously).
- a sharp knife. i used a carpet knife, but scalpel might be better.
- a press.
- an awl if you can. makes punching the holes easier.
- some sort of cutting board to keep your desk safe. or no regard for your desk, your choice.
- a strong needle.
- maybe pliers. to pull the needle through when it gets stuck. which it did. often.
- a ruler that's long enough for your purposes.
with these, you should be good to go. you can get bookbinder starting kits on amazon, for example, that'll set you up with thread, needles, and an awl, as well as some additional tools. you might still want to buy the items separately to be able to adjust them to your liking.
how much did all of this cost?
it was quite the price-y experience, i won't lie. i don't want to discourage anybody too harshly, hence i won't state a specific cost, but be ready to throw out a hundred bucks and more. that is, if you need to get a lot of the items in anew and/or can't get your hands on more affordable solutions, which i couldn't in. a lot of regards.
what did you use to format the fic in book form? did you use a specific program? did you follow a printing process for the pages to match?
i used open office, font's times new roman, headlines in p12, text in p11. otherwise i just copy-pasted the texts and mostly went with the pre-settings. had to fiddle with the spacing here and there to fit the text to the a5 format, but otherwise my work here was really easy. what was much harder and time consuming was to organise all the pages together so the books would be actually read-able as soon as they were bound. that took a lot more counting than i care for. hence i made these little cheat props–
i did so much back checking, the formatting alone took me like. two days and then some.
how does the pressing process work?
you press the book two times, basically. one time after you printed and folded the signatures, and then another time when you bound the signatures together and formed the spine. for the first pressing you align the signatures in alternating directions, then press the whole stack overnight, before you then go on with the punching of the holes. for the second pressing, you just put the stack into the press as it is, glue the mull on, and leave it overnight, so that the glue can fully dry.
did you go for a saddle stitch or a french link stitch? why?
french link stitch! mainly because the guide i used said so, but after checking saddle stitch, it does seem a lot easier and faster, too, to be honest. so, even if i did “have the choice” i'd probably choose the french stitch.
how did you case the book block?
with greyboard and the aforementioned imitate leather. the greyboard is used as the cover and the back plate, which get connected via a piece of mull. the leather gets wrapped around and glued to it. when all this is done you will glue the first and the very last page of your book to the inside of the cover. hence – count in some more pages that won't have anything printed on them. be smarter than i. i had to reprint some pages because of this.
what were the adjustments you had to make as a last touch (es. trimming, plate-making etc)?
i didn't do a lot of adjustments in the end. i'm sort of a perfectionist, so i will fiddle around with the step i'm currently at until i deem it ready for me to go on to the next. the one i worked on most thoroughly, though, is probably the covers, especially working with the leather, because i didn't want to waste any more than i needed to. needless to say, i had gotten so far without fucking it up, i didn't want to face-plant two metres in front of the finish line.
what was the most satisfying part?
literally stabbing the paper. if you can't get through, try to concentrate all your existential anger and go for it.
what was the most annoying part?
thread knotting (you can make jokes about it for m8te, i even expect it) especially while working on dad (estimated sixty-eight metres of thread might do that, who would've thought), and waiting for the supplies to arrive. lot of thumb twiddling going on there. also, finding a solvent-based glue. “it could be bad for your health” my ass.
what was the hardest part about it?
the anxiety, hands down. did i do this right? what if the glue still warps the paper? did i buy enough material? what if this henchman solution actually does more damage? what if this doesn't work out at all and i spent all that money in vain?
most pressingly, though– will squids and bee behead me for doing this or will i accidentally kill them with a heart attack?
why did you do it?
that might actually be the hardest question to answer.
first off – probably hubris. the “i could do this, easy” and then five minutes in you realise that shit, it's much harder than you thought, but then you can't go back because your stubbornness and pride forbid it.
secondly – there was a post way. way. back when i came into the fandom. about little books crafted as keychains. and i thought to myself, “hey, now imagine if those were actually fanfictions that you could pull out at your convenience and just start to read, how sick would that be?” i think i even had a (tag-based) conversation about it with squids? maybe i just dreamt the whole ordeal. either way, a monster had been awoken, and it didn't stop growling until i got to work.
thirdly, and most importantly – i wanted to show these two absolute mvps my adoration. for their work, but also for them. simple and clean.
would you do it again? what would you do differently next time? would you recommend book binding?
for the right people and the right work, in a heartbeat. as exhausting as it got in parts, it was still so rewarding to hold the finished book in hand. also, 10/10 gift, i'd say.
i'd definitely get longer screws. dad was way too big for my press; maybe i'd think about dividing it into two parts, too. also, no waxed thread. it's supposed to make the process easier, and it did, in a way, but damn. the mess on my table. i felt as if it just served to attract more dirt onto the project. which isn't bad per se, but also not very pleasant.
whether i recommend bookbinding would depend on the person asking. i had a lot of fun, and the whole process worked wonders in terms of focusing and being able to shut the world out for a moment. also, if you like to work with your hands and want to get to know how the whole process works, then, absolutely, go for it! but if you get frustrated easily, or are uncomfortable with making adjustments that stray from you tutorial or guide, you might want to reconsider.
more goblin wisdom.
- take breaks. i know, it sounds obvious, but for real. as soon as you get upset or fed up in this project (especially with a beast like dad), just take a fucking break. ten minutes, half an hour, three days; really doesn't matter. just allow yourself to rest whenever you feel like it.
- wash. your. hands. trust me.
- don't do this at night, or at least make sure you have proper lighting. you will NOT see the impacts of printer ink until the morning.
- if you don't have a press, don't worry, albeit tricky, you should be okay with two wooden boards and something heavy. i recommend an old pc and an old monitor. (not even joking. it worked for me, it'll work for you.)
- for real, though, a press will make your life a lot easier.
- if you think you don't need a mallet- yes. yes, you do. your hands will thank me.
- overbuying is better than having to improvise, but you won't need three kilograms of glue.
- two metres of fabric are. a lot.
- a sharp knife will make your life a lot easier. as does white chalk if you work with dark fabric.
- if you can't draw but really want to, go for trashy chique. not even trying for straight lines on the cover art saved me so. many. brain cells.
- i know it might be hard to get your hands on certain supplies (small town life is nice and all until you realise the next fabric store is 2hrs away by car – and you don't have a car. and the next public transport doesn't arrive until christmas). try to work out what works for you. some of what i used is not ideal but what i could acquire within my budget and possibilities. please don't start an argument with me about this, thanks.
now, if you still want to torture yourself, i prompt you towards vic on tiktok or instagram. their tutorials were what inspired me for this project (or. projects plural.), plus- look at their work. it's amazing and one of my favourite accounts to visit. needless to say, they list the actual products you should use for best results.
andulkaphoto
areudirty
discoholicmusic
janainaart
kianamaiart
kaledo-art
gummygunk
