Name is Justine. I write. Sometimes I dabble in other arts. Mostly Tolkien, The Witcher, inspirational stuff for my writing and ramblings. Make yourself at home!
So very pleased with how this project is coming along - after last weekend I know what I need to alter slightly and what pieces I still need/want to make... or remake. So that Myra would be able to fully come into existence.
So basically, last weekend I modeled for a photography class and the results are slowly trickling in. Here is the first glimpse.
In all honesty - I thought I would be more intimidated by 15 people taking pictures of me, but it was fun. Except for the absolute downpour on Saturday ^^'
Outfit and make up by me (except for weapons - I didn't go that far yet)
And as you can see - Myra finally has her scar ^^. It was not added in photoshop later.
Im really happy you're putting yourself first and that you've finally caught your break in getting out of that workplace. Change is good and so is being in charge of yourself. Even if it takes a while to get there you're proof to keep at it until you do. Just made my day seeing someone life change around for the better 👍
Anon, your message the faith in this place or in the anon messages to be exact :*
For my part I can only try to encourage everyone who might currnetly be in a rough spot - change is scary. It feels ovewhelming. It takes A LOT of work and sometimes a professional help - I never hid the fact that I am attending theraphy and it goes into years now. Because some things are not an easy fix - you are not going to switch the way your brain is working overnight... hell despit me being so very proud of myself for my recent actions there is still this tiny voice inside me head being all like "you left a secure job for the unknown? what if they're not going to like you? what if you fail" or "oh you told them you are not going to play that character any more? you ruined game for other players and now they will not take you for the next run" Nevermind that both of those situation left me in tears more than once.... the doubt didn't go away... but it's now a whisper that I know is untrue instead of a fog horn, impossible to ignore.
Keep rowing that boat guys. It's hard, but so so worth it in the end.
First - the LARP wasn't fun - I had my doubts about the character for a while and then stuff happened that made me feel even worse. But instead of "pushing through" I decided that I'm not gonna suffer in order to not "ruin" the fun for other players. So I went to the org team and told them flat out that I'm out. I can recount the tale in more details if you wish, but the bottom line is - I put myself and my comfort first in I don't know how long.
Than there is the fact that this is my last day working for the current company - I start in the new place next week. And me being me I should be paralyzed with fear and anxiety. I mean I do feel anticipation and maybe the stress will catch up over the weekend, but I don't fell like I am unable to function bacause of it. Quite the contrary - I fell that, finally I am ready for that change.
Giveaway piece for Fannd over on X of her OC Reseith. I am so glad I finally managed to finish all the overdue art that I owed people. Now I can start working with more order again... though I know that might be in vain ;)
FFWAD 24 - Sins of the Father by @selfproclaimedunicorn
For my first foray into this yearly celebration with @renegadeguild, I picked the brilliant and fantastic story, Sins of the Father by @selfproclaimedunicorn. Misa has taken the fantastic AU premise 'What if Daemon Targaryen and Rhea Royce had kids?' and has run with it in the most delicious and satisfying way. The story isn't complete, but the first 'arc' has a good stopping point at a whopping 160k words, which made for the chonkiest book you could imagine.
This was the twelth book I've bound (both fic and rebinds of old favorites) and I tried several new techniques for it including rounding and backing the spine. I also stretched my legs in the formatting department and went all in with the interior. That meant ordering some special springhill paper to do these fantastic maps for the endpages. Full details behind the cut!
Typesetting: Normally I've kept my settings pretty minimal as I got used to the ins and outs of InDesign (during this, I did purchase Affinity Publisher and might end up moving to that, but I'm finally getting the hang of ID and you can pry it from my cold hands). I really wanted to mimic some of the interior of Fire & Blood for this, so I hunted down the fonts used and took an image of the decorative banner you see on the sides to use for the chapter openers. I also wanted to include timelines and family trees in true historically inspired fantasy tradition.
The family tree was created based off of the author's spreadsheet in Google Drawing, which I found to be the easiest thing to use when it comes to creating chaotic family trees like this (In the past I'd used lucid chart for a printable version, but google worked better here).
the timeline is honestly my favorite thing and I learned how to use tables in ID for the first time. I'm incredibly pleased with it. The formatting is based upon the line of kings in the source. The timeline covers the events of the first arc as printed in this particular story.
The chapter openers are some of my favorite! As the children are proud to be House Royce, I wanted to reflect that. The runes you see behind the Chapter number and title are the Floki font and name the character whose the POV for each chapter.
Since there's plenty of High Valyrian spoken and the author doesn't include the translations within narrative, it was the perfect moment to set up footnotes. I'll absolutely be doing this for my own story when I bind it!
Rounding and Backing: So this was a total adventure, but I really wanted the old book feel. I made the mistake of pressing the book for too long and lost a lot of the swell in the spine to round but it worked out AND I managed to back it a little bit. Since I wasn't doing cord tapes for the spine (this was a version of the three piece bradel), I had to troubleshoot. I ended up cutting strips of the leather cord I bought from michaels and laminating those pieces together and placing them on the oxford hollow on the spine (given how thick the book is, I wanted to give it as much structural strength as possible). The 'leather' covering you see is actually the craft leather (polyester) from Dollar Tree and it's pretty awesome but definitely has difficulties staying put with glue. I followed the normal procedure and slathered both sides up and used twine to compress the bookcloth along those leather pieces. there's a little gaping in some places which I think would help if I'm able to properly apply backing paper to the polyester.
HTV do's and don'ts: Hi! don't be me and forget to apply your teflon sheets before applying the HTV because then you fuck with the polyester but it's not too bad. The other pro-tip is to gently apply the iron to the cover so it's warm before applying the HTV so it can start to stick. I had to apply the front cover in three pieces and do the title twice. Also, it's really difficult to apply HTV to a rounded spine so I'll have to figure out how to set up the spine and cover before applying (since there's a certain amount of stretching the bookcloth over the spine). The spine might end up having to be regular adhesive vinyl for that. Also, it's stupidly hard to find metallic HTV in bronze.
Front matter and final thoughts: The bronze dragon was a lucky find through an extensive google search, and the runes surrounding it are 'we remember with fire and blood', a combination of House Royce and House Targaryen's words. Seems fitting four Yorick, Ella, and Aemon! The copyright page is mimicked off the source's style, including the AO3 information, the creative commons and fair use information, the guild stamp, a QR code to the AO3 page, and my own press stamp! The summary is pulled from AO3 as well.
All in all, I made this book twice and I loved it and learned so much every time.
I'm so happy with this project and I'm so excited to do the next arc! Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful story, Misa!
Work in progress... cape for the upcoming larp - I'm still waiting for the proper clasp to come in the mail, but I'm overall very pleased with the result.
I am even tempted to add fur all around the egdes, but nobility or no, this would be a bit too much, I think.
Looks like I will ascend into my final form - a giant hornet - because boy this is so much more yellow in the pictures than it is in person.
Jokes aside - I have 6 weeks left to the Sword of Kings larp and I can't fucking wait, but I'm also like in terrible time costume wise 😅 Here is to hoping I will manage to finish everything
i dont care how corny iris by the goo goo dolls is bc i love iris by the goo goo dolls and i will continue screaming iris by the goo goo dolls from the top of my lungs every time i hear iris by the goo goo dolls for the rest of my miserable life
