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greenhorn-art · 8 months

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Castles in the Sky by Shadaras @shadaras

Fandom: 全职高手 | The King's Avatar

Rating: General Audiences

Category: Gen

Relationships: Chu Yunxiu/Ye Xiu

Words: 36 613

Here are two truths and a lie: Chu Yunxiu is Misty Rain’s captain. Chu Yunxiu is dating Ye Qiu. Chu Yunxiu is happy to have the Shu twins on her team. Of course, a lie can become true if you believe in it enough… (A Chu Yunxiu character study.)

About the book:

FONTS: Alegreya [Google Fonts], Raleway [Google Fonts], Catchy Mager [purchased from MyFonts], Segoe UI Emoji

IMAGES: Clouds from Rawpixel (ID: 9581058); Misty Rain logo from The King's Avatar Wiki (stretched slightly horizontally and traced)

MATERIALS: Domtar Earthchoice multipurpose copy paper, cream, 11"x17" cut in half to form short-grained letter size paper; Recollections' Gilded Ink paper pad; Cialux bookcloth, black; heat transfer foil, gold; 2mm binder board; waxed linen thread, 30/3 size; wheat paste (this time I used 1:4 flour to water ratio, and heated until conditioner-like consistency. An improvement over last attempt.)

PROGRAMS USED: typeset in LibreOffice Writer; title page mocked-up in Procreate then designed in GIMP; imposed with Renegade's Community Imposer.

I spied this fic towards the top of the kudos and kept it in the back of my mind while trawling for more HanYe fics. Thought, well it's gotta be there for a reason so should be good! ooh look aroace queerplatonic relationship 👀👀 Definitely bumping up to top of Read Next!

The amazing thing I've found about The King's Avatar is that the CP possibilities are endless! The characters are both friends and rivals, there's respect and history and it all mixes and clashes creating more possibilities and chemistries than I've ever seen in a fandom before. The fact that AllYe is so popular (and not just in an NSFW way) is testament to it, and also, in part, what drew me to this fic. Asexual representation is scant, aromantic even more so — especially in fandom (in my experience of it at least).

If I were to add a tag to describe Castles in the Sky it would be 'heartwarming'. Shadaras' writing and characterization is wonderful, and I really enjoyed the both the story and the aroace representation. They took a character with relatively little content (in comparison to others in fandom. I have not read the source material) and gave her a voice, dreams, and made me really care about her. I was touched, and after finishing it I jumped to my laptop and set about turning it into a physical book.

So, onto the details.

The thing that stuck out and stayed with me the most about the story was the aroace aspect (Shadaras fed my smol aroace heart so well), so that's what I focused on design-wise.

The title page features a large black ring, referencing the black ring worn usually on the middle finger of the right hand as a symbol of asexuality. The colours of the asexual pride flag are also represented: the text is purple; the clouds colour the page in shades of white and grey; and the ring is black. For the endpapers/cover backing I chose paper that mixes green, purple, and blue: green for the aromantic pride flag; purple for the ace. I also found the green-blue mix of colours to be rather fitting, inspired by the description of Misty Rain's HQ with the "cool blues and greens of Misty Rain's walls" (chapter 5: Transformations). While I personally find CYX's relationship with YX significant, her relationship with her team is just as important.

When choosing which cover each endpaper goes on, I thought about how the story begins with CYX and YX's relationship, and about how after it's established we see her team and it's future at the forefront of her mind. Following that line of thought I put the paper with more purple on the front cover (purple for aroace CYX), and the more green-blue paper on the back (Misty Rain's colours).

The process of foiling the cover took me 3 hours (the length of the movie RRR — good movie actually, would recommend. Which is surprising because I usually find Oscar movies rather boring). The foiling was done with a heat pen. Three hours is not the norm: first, I had the foil backwards and foiled my template instead of the cover; then, my power banks kept dying, so I had to take charging breaks, and I also went over everything again just to make sure that I didn't miss a spot; and of course I was also watching a movie while working, so that ate up some time too.

I had initially planned to bind it as a casebound book, but I didn't have enough time to do it (I was about to go on vacation and wanted to read the book in my downtime). Instead, I did a Coptic binding. The covers were pulled from the press and foiled leaving me 5 hours of sleep to spare.

I went simple on the outer covers to contrast the fun paper on the inside of the covers. I used black Cialux bookcloth instead of my green-blue 'petrol' Iris bookcloth for the contrast, and because it picks up the black from the title page. The text foiled onto the cover is a simple sans serif (Raleway, the same as used inside), and the image is Misty Rain's logo from the donghua. (Image came from The King's Avatar Wiki. It was stretched slightly horizontally because it seemed a bit squished compared to other versions seen on Google, and then traced). Using the colourful paper inside was a practical choice: I couldn't get two covers out of one sheet of paper, but one sheet would do the inner covers with some material leftover.

The sewing and construction of the book was done while camping — I'd packed up what I needed and brought it with me: the signatures (folded and punched); the finished covers; thread; a needle; and an awl. As for the actual sewing, it's supposed to be Coptic but don't look too closely. This was the second time I've tried Coptic stitching and I didn't have any instructions with me. (My first Coptic binding was a thin 2-signature notebook I did a few weeks ago. It was for taking notes at the event I was at, Pennsic War 50).

Book is primarily set in Alegreya. It's currently my favourite body font, and has a matching sans serif family. The fonts used in the title page are Raleway and Catchy Mager. Raleway is also used for titles, headings, etc. Segoe UI Emoji was used for any emojis that cropped up throughout the text (Pretty sure they're the same emojis as seen while reading on my phone and laptop). Catchy Mager was purchased from MyFont. (The first and only font I have ever bought, but I saw it used in a fic's title art and fell in love.)

Lastly, onto The Comedy of Errors, or: When-You-Finally-See-All-the-Typos-and-Mistakes-Once-You're-Done-and-Can-Only-Laugh-While-You-Cry-Inside.

Appendix's footer says 'Epilogue', so I must have missed something with the paragraph style for the Appendix heading.

Forgot about using Segoe UI Emoji font and did not include it in the About the Book.

Missed fixing the archive info for gnomen in the Author's Notes — the copy/paste of metadata into Notebook to remove formatting also removed the commas and spaces between tags.

Because I hadn't planned cover materials/design before printing, there isn't a section for that in the About the Book. Also the reason why the artwork on the cover is not credited in it, as I had not planned to use it.

#bookbinding #fanbinding #Castles in the Sky #Shadaras #qzgs #tka #the king's avatar #hopefully the video works.#first my computer cant view videos taken on my phone. then adding the video to the post from my phone removed allll the text in the post #and it's quality also went down :/#almost feels like just trying to POST this should be on my Comedy of Errors section lol #ALSO #so much rambling in this post because i had more downtime than planned and i reread it all and highlighted stuff and was FULL OF FEELS #sidenote: it was a bit windy out when i filmed that so its nice that the pages weren't flipping in the wind! (that wasn't the 1st take lmao

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azazel-dreams · 3 months

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Castles in the Sky

Rating: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

#Castles in the Sky #films #film recommendation #film reviews

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sunshineandgranola · 1 year

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Loveland Castle

#mine #ohio #castles in the sky

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artbykla · 10 months

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Castles EP by sublunis

Album art by KLA.GustFlo

Another collaboration with the amazing ambient/synth/piano/soundtrack/songs-for-deep-thinkies artist sublunis! The new EP takes the music in a different direction than the previous two albums, while still maintaining a signature style that makes the artist so recognizable. I attempted to work that in with the art - another alcohol ink work like for Sublunar, but a different subject and composition, plus a font style not typically associated with ambient electronic music.

The EP is out now - may it deliver you inspiration.

#album art #album cover #album release #ep release #ambient electronic #sublunis #castles #artist and musician collaboration #art commission #everything under the moon #castles in the sky #rooted to the ground #alcohol ink #surreal art #fairy ring #moon reflection #tree stump #Spotify

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saintflint · 9 months

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https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM2xU8TPE/

watch that if you really wanna cry about your inner child 🥺👉👈

wow…………………. ok i have no words except thank you. i needed this so bad i had no idea. i’ve been looking at my past self as lost or dead but they’re right here, they’re in my arms, i get to protect them now. i get to carry them with me into my future, full of their joy & their hope. they’re with me & they believe in us & neither of us are alone anymore.

#asks #castles in the sky

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stroebe2 · 1 year

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#ian van dahl #castles in the sky #dj lucid #union trancce mission

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sp00ky-p00ky · 2 years

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🌤🏰💕

#ian van dahl #marsha #castles in the sky #extended mix #trance #techno #music #Spotify

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robertalpascal · 2 years

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i just want to stand naked before bunch of art students and have them sculpt me. and then have one guy who sculpted me too intently ask me out. is it too much to ask?

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monstermonger · 1 month

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Dance 🐉

#old oneee #referenced a screenshot from castle in the sky for the scenery #dragons #fantasy art #dragon #fantasy creatures #inks #sunset

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azertyrobaz · 4 months

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風の谷のナウシカ (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind), 1984

天空の城ラピュタ (Castle in the Sky), 1986

となりのトトロ (My Neighbor Totoro), 1988

千と千尋の神隠し (Spirited Away), 2001

ハウルの動く城 (Howl's Moving Castle), 2004

崖の上のポニョ (Ponyo), 2008

風立ちぬ (The Wind Rises), 2013

君たちはどう生きるか (The Boy and the Heron), 2023

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ericapixie · 6 months

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Day 14 of Inktober and the prompt is "castle". I love the song Castles in the Sky by Ian Van Dahl, which was the inspiration for this piece.

#Inktober #my art #drawing #pen and ink #inktober 2023 #ink drawing #castle #castles in the sky

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goffjames · 9 months

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Poetry - Senryū - Castles in the Sky - A Poem by Goff James

Poem Attribution – Goff James – Castles in the Sky Copyright (c) 2023 Goff James – All Rights Reserved View more senryū poems by Goff James Thank you for your visit goffjamesart.wordpress.com Art Music Photography Poetry Quotations