foxyola

Latest Posts by foxyola

Second prompt for the first round of @mcyt-soulmate-sweepstakes!!!

I remembered the password from my account...

Attention Jimmy Solidarity fans!

We have noticed a lack of a Jimmy zine around and decided it has to be addressed! So if you are interested in participating in something like this please consider filling in the form for the interest check:

[link]

(Also, we are doing something like this for the first time, so be patient with us, we're still learning a lot of stuff about that)

first prompt for the first round of @mcyt-soulmate-sweepstakes :D Don't go out in the rain without an umbrella!

*thinks up an idea for a silly quick piece* okay haha let's whip something up real quick

*idea gets more complicated*

*idea gets more complicated*

*idea gets more complicated*

*idea gets more complicated*

oh no

while I'm working on a big impossible minecraft piece, have this silly little sketch of a moment from Grian's second ep :з

Birb on birb violence

Brother on brother violence

Speedruned this before the final tomorrow 🔥

Art without text:

Okay, I deffinatly didn't forget to post this art like 2 weeks ago, nope, never happened...

Anyway, my lovely piece for Team Rancher Zine by @galaxygirl171 :з

This place is about to BLOW!

Ngl, I spent on this waaay much more time, than I should have But I like it anyway :)))

Hermittober - week 4: Aggression/Trickery

Well, that's it, now I can go and rest for a couple months :>

Team Rancher Week Day 4: It's Over, Go Home/Letters and Long Distance and Team Rancher Week Day 5: Reunions/AU Fest

I'm a little bit late, sorry, procrastination got to me...

Team Rancher Week Day 3: Genderbent Ranchers/Platonic Ranchers + Hermittober - week 3: Home/Invention

Yes I combine two. Because I pretty much had the same idea for both :p

Team Rancher Week Day 2: Fire and Ice/Cowboys and Ranchers

Did you know that besides being extremely original, I am also very funny :D?

No one should ever let me draw until 7 am....

Team Rancher Week Day 1: Hybrid Love and Courtship/Canary in the Deep Dark ...Or Jimmy in the Decked Out 2

I'm so original with ideas :з

anyway, first day of @teamranchersweek

Hermittober - week 2: Affection/Task

Hermittober - week 1: Beginnings/Abundance

Well, guys, the new season next week 😏?

Hi guys, I remembered the password from my account...

Weekly Hermittober - week 0: Sunlight/moonlight

Let's do a twist and change things a bit this year...

Welcome to #WeeklyHermittober ✨

Inspired by planets, with a couple things changed around

Prompts can have many meanings, feel free to interpret each theme as you please

Pick a theme per week or both if you are feeling like it

All art forms are welcomed

Have fun!

❤️Announcing Team Ranchers Week!💙

We are so excited to introduce our first ever Team Ranchers week appreciation event!

This event will run from October 27th to the 31st!

🌾Important information🌾

This event is inclusive of both platonic and romantic fanworks featuring Jimmy and Tango

Themes and prompts will be dropping Sunday, October 6th! 👀

Any questions or comments can be directed to this blog, or to any of the mods, @hitheeprithee, @canarydarity, @solidaritytek

All fanworks for the event can be submitted under the tag #teamranchersweek

We're so excited to see what you create!!

Dirges in The Dark by WixWrites

Before I start, let me just say: Ranchers! Scarian! Hermits and Life Series and Empires characters! Sheriff Jimmy! Sheriff Scar! Criminal Tango! the Wild West! Treebark and Ethubs!

RANCHERS. THE WILD WEST. CREEPING ELDRITCH HORROR.

Whoo, that was a rush.

I'll be honest; I think this book would have come out much sooner if not for my decision to add-in a whole lot of stuff into the text and pages. It got to the point that the original cover would have been a wanted poster at the front and a sheriff's report at the back!

I had to restrain myself, lest this book would never get finished at all. It's already been 59 days since my last post, and doing the original cover would have stretched the days even further. So I had to follow the mantra: Finished, not perfect. Besides, nothing says I can't make another version in the future...

From the moment I finished this fic, I knew it would become a book. But at 143,412 words, Dirges in The Dark by @twodiamondhoes would stretch my ficbinding skills to the limit and would be the second-ever bind that would reach past 250 pages (the first was an MCYT Sleepy Bois fic that predates this blog that I want to redo).

Eventually, the full typeset took up 520 pages! And as such, I finally decided to use extra support for the entire textblock. From an old pair of pajamas, I backed strips of fabric with glue and paper before cutting it into tapes, forming a crucial support for the various weaves along the spine. I then covered the entire spine in brown wrapping paper for even more strength.

For the title and headings, I scoured for and found several typefaces, dingbats, and vector graphics which really evoked the fic's Western and Gothic vibes. I also took some inspiration from fellow ficbinders in the Renegade Publishing group for the style of layout and formatting throughout the book, such as using faded images in the background of these pre-story pages.

I wanted the reader to be immersed in the Wild West from the get-go, so having such images from the start — before the story even begins — felt very appropriate. I tried to make them thematic to the information presented, like a singing cowboy for the music playlist pages, but I think I made the image too faint to be seen!

As for the chapter openers, I experimented with some layouts before finalizing on what you see: photos taking up one entire page on the left with the chapter titles and opening paragraphs on the right.

Just like my last bind, I want to make the reader feel immersed in the story and also bring out the mood of that particular chapter. This, however, led me to entire days of scouting and scouring stock photo sites just to find the right pictures for 11 different chapters. 4/10 would not recommend for sanity.

Given that the story uses a number of foreign words, old slang, and specific Wild West-era terms, I added a plethora of footnotes at the bottom of some pages for extra context and meaning.

I also wanted to be playful and make certain story parts, such as characters receiving letters and notes, really look like they're a part of the story. So I cropped old paper textures and fished out old fonts from the past to make them look as if they're actually there, pasted against the paragraphs!

More importantly, there were some specific parts of the fic that felt super important and I wanted to highlight these passages, especially the Deals made by the characters throughout their arcs. Given DiTD has a certain affinity with eldritch darkness, I decided to highlight such paragraphs by backlighting them against a band of pure black. Besides being thematic as hell, I made the bands have curved edges and decorative lines to add a certain western-gothic touch!

It was from this that I begin to think "what if I can color entire pages to convey the mood and setting?"

...Which led to the madness in these pages. I can't reveal too much because of spoilers, but there are certain times when the characters end up in situations where the very light turns to dark. Or they end up in hellish situations. Or the eldritch creatures began to speak.

It took some creative brainstorming to figure out how to show the mood of such scenes in printed pages, but I eventually figured out that I need find the right fonts, change their colors from black to white, and then change their backgrounds from white to dark to highlight them all! The power of formatting!

There's a lot more pages where I went wild with such shades and fonts, but I ain't revealing in public because spoilers!

But undoubtedly, this is the biggest experiment I have made with this bind. There is a certain part where Grian and Pearl spoke in eldritch R'lyehian / Cthuvian, and I want to convey the sheer strangeness of the speech and it's meaning. Something outside the box.

Luckily, I have an inspiration in fellow fanbinder @mythrilthread, who made an amazing fanbind that used vellum overlays to showcase the speaking of alien languages and what they mean in English. AND IT LOOKS SICK AS FUCK. When I finished reading Dirges, I knew I had to emulate this form of language translation, so I printed the eldritch speech, cut it, and pasted it onto the spine to give a similar effect of strangeness, and IT LOOKS SO COOL!!!

And lastly, I just had to include some of the amazing fanart made by readers into the book! All of these are placed by their corresponding text and chapters, and they all look so cool!

So I want to give a special thanks to @azzayofchaos, @leafdoodles, @hybbart, and @foxyola for granting their permission for me to include their incredible works into this bind! The dark shades and page formatting is one thing, but these works truly make this book feel so much more alive!

All in all, this bind was an odyssey in the making. I experimented with page formatting, layout wizardry, and bookmaking methods that I haven't tried before. While I know I could do better, I am beyond happy to see this work finished!

And once again, a thousand thanks to @twodiamondhoes / WixWrites for crafting an amazing story!

It's a new episode of silly life :D!

WAKE UP BABY, IT'S NEW SILLY LIFE EPISODE :D

New season of silly life has begun :D!

My piece of art for @chemdisaster's fic "Прости меня, моя любовь" (Forgive me, my love) as part of @mcytmultilingualbb :)))

I haven't posted anything for a while, have this silly art

Arts without text:

My last piece for @hermitshippingbigbang, art for @twodiamondhoes's fic Dirges in the Dark (specifically for chapter 10) That was a fun event to be part of, can't wait to get involved in more stuff like this :D!!!

Another piece of art, this time for @masque-of-plague's fic Anchor & Tide as part of the @hermitshippingbigbang :D!

It was the biggest piece I've done in a while, will never do this again (I'm lying, I will probably do that again)

Time Won't Give Me Time

Can't believe today is actually my posting day for the @hermitshippingbigbang! I had the pleasure of working with a great team of artists (@zeebee823 and @foxyola) and an awesome beta reader (raindr.plets) on this, and it really was a collaborative effort with their feedback improving the story immensely.

Fic info: Title: Time Won't Give Me Time Fandom: Life Series SMP, Hermitcraft SMP, New Life SMP (with references to Evo SMP and Empires SMP) Pairing: Jimmy Solidarity/Tango Tek Rating: Teen Summary: Jimmy thinks he and Tango (and the other Double Life soulmates) are in danger of being used against each other in the next Life game, so he warns Tango they need to stay apart. Whether that's going to do any good is another question. Warnings: No Major Archive Warnings Apply, canon-typical Life Series deaths, watcher/listener lore Other tags: canary hybrid Jimmy, blaze hybrid Tango

Art posts:

From @zeebee823: here

From @foxyola: here

I hope you enjoy the story and their amazing art!

My first art for @firefly124's fic "Time Won't Give Me Time" as part of the @hermitshippingbigbang :D!!! That was a fun thing to draw, I enjoyed working with this team so much!!

"stay safe out there in valentines, aromantics" no, no honey, you're wrong, it's stay safe out there allos, cause i'm out there too, remember, i'm aro, i'm ace, and i'm a threat

Hello. I don't know if you two still work on it, but I wanted to thank you both for making, "The Death in His Smile".

Hello, thanks for your message! It's nice to know that even though we haven't worked a lot with tdihs for a long time, people still enjoy it :)))

The fic is currently on an indefinite hiatus due to both of us having a lot of irl stuff. I'm specifically graduating from uni this year.

I can't say that we abandoned this fic, it's our baby and we love it. But we don't know when we come back. But it's a pleasure to know that someone is still waiting :))) I hope you gonna stay with us until we start to post again

Peace and love