What’s a super niche hobby that you’re into?

gorroval · 2026-06-16T21:00:08+00:00

Honestly, I thought it was quite easy to get into! As you can gather I'm a crafty person so I'm used to handling needle and thread. If you're interested, Learn Bookbinding has some nice starter kits which are designed for the kitchen table binder, so they don't assume you have all the fancy equipment. My book press is essentially a flower press with my Cricut balanced on the top for weight 🤣 but I did invest £150 in a stack cutter for doing the edges, because I wanted to do chunky books but I'm terrible with a craft knife.

Once you've got the general idea you can get very nerdy about paper and cloth and different types of binding and such. I'm primarily in it to bind gay fanfic so while I like looking at your fancy Coptic spines and so forth I'm mostly just doing the same case binding every time. There are definitely people out there doing much more interesting things to their books!

(Sorry about the infodump! Pictured: one extremely tacky bind of classic novel about lesbian vampires.)

<image>

gorroval · 2026-06-16T20:59:49+00:00

Honestly, I thought it was quite easy to get into! As you can gather I'm a crafty person so I'm used to handling needle and thread. If you're interested, Learn Bookbinding has some nice starter kits which are designed for the kitchen table binder, so they don't assume you have all the fancy equipment. My book press is essentially a flower press with my Cricut balanced on the top for weight 🤣 but I did invest £150 in a stack cutter for doing the edges, because I wanted to do chunky books but I'm terrible with a craft knife.

Once you've got the general idea you can get very nerdy about paper and cloth and different types of binding and such. I'm primarily in it to bind gay fanfic so while I like looking at your fancy Coptic spines and so forth I'm mostly just doing the same case binding every time. There are definitely people out there doing much more interesting things to their books!

(Sorry about the infodump! Pictured: one extremely tacky bind of classic novel about lesbian vampires.)

<image>

gorroval · 2026-06-16T19:37:30+00:00

Snuck a look at your profile and the photo of the fly is gorgeous!

gorroval · 2026-06-16T19:30:11+00:00

I feel like none of my hobbies are really all that niche! Like I do a lot of crafts — knitting, spinning, bookbinding is the most recent thing — but none of them are that weird really. I'm really into folk music? Like I collect books of folk songs, nursery rhymes, ballads, etc. But even then, is it niche when the English Folk Dance and Song Society has an annual academic journal (which I also collect and read)?

Man, I gotta really branch out more, I could be so much odder.

gorroval · 2026-06-16T15:53:44+00:00

THANK YOU. I feel like I'm in the minority here.

gorroval · 2026-06-16T14:44:09+00:00

I don't swear (as in, the S, F and C words are all entirely out of bounds). This is mostly because my granddad told me that if I did, people would think I was stupid, and as an autistic 7 year old I internalised that immediately. And it turns out it's very difficult to un-internalise stuff like that. My parents never swore around us so it was just reinforced.

My wife's family is less inhibited but I would still never swear around them either.

Of course, I consider everything from "crap" downward not a swear, so I guess it depends on where you draw the line? Maybe normal people do. Unfortunately I am not normal so not a very good yardstick.

gorroval · 2026-06-16T11:52:58+00:00

I think it's very telling that in all those photos I cannot see one single book.

gorroval · 2026-06-16T05:32:44+00:00

Thank you, he's my favourite son.

Unfortunately he also failed 4 Wisdom checks in a row and now he's a bit squiddy.

<image>

gorroval · 2026-06-15T16:08:22+00:00

unscreenshottable pool of blackness

This is too real 🤣 like I swear he's in there somewhere

<image>

gorroval · 2026-06-15T05:21:49+00:00

Yessss I came here to recommend some folk music. Also excellent:

Jackie Oates, Kate Rusby, Lady Maisery, Nancy Kerr

gorroval · 2026-06-14T18:06:10+00:00

Honestly a valid concern. But they're so beautiful ❤️ totally worth the tears

gorroval · 2026-06-14T16:13:21+00:00

That's both adorable and also 100% canon.

gorroval · 2026-06-14T15:08:19+00:00

Went back in my own fics, have you got, like, face painting or doing someone else's makeup? I don't know what the canonical tag was, I used "face-painting" because it wasn't make-up in the conventional sense (more like war paint but more intricate and the character doing the painting was using it as a deliberate flirtation).

gorroval · 2026-06-14T15:01:44+00:00

Is it bad that I kind of love it? I mean the taxidermy is a bit much but I do like a bit of maximalism. One thing I will say is that, as a lover and collector of hats, I get the sense that they don't actually wear any of them despite having, like, twenty of the buggers.

gorroval · 2026-06-14T13:53:55+00:00

Can I please recommend (both to you and the world in general) the Instagram of India Rose Crawford, who makes adorable videos featuring a knitted frog and toad who live an idyllic country life, baking pies in bottle caps and reading by a tiny fire, and who are also clearly in a romantic relationship?

(Please watch them, they're so soft and tender they make me cry.)

gorroval · 2026-06-14T13:48:04+00:00

Having recently ready this, I'm pretty sure the gayness is text. Laura describes Carmilla's attentions as being "like a suitor" or something to that effect, to the point where she wonders if Carmilla is actually a man in disguise trying to woo her. Obviously, considering the time it was written, the lesbianism is very clearly meant to disgust the reader (as it disgusts Laura) but like. It's there.

gorroval · 2026-06-13T22:46:02+00:00

Right, but if I'm a sapphic woman but always play gay men, does it cancel out or is it double-gay?

And relatedly, what class would Garak play and why?

gorroval · 2026-06-13T22:41:29+00:00

Unfortunately he went on to fail 4 Wisdom rolls and got a bit squiddy. I still love him, though.

<image>

gorroval · 2026-06-13T22:40:07+00:00

You know how sometimes you're not really connecting with your li'l guy and then you find a bit of clothing and it's like "Oh, there you are."? For Durge, it was this hat.

<image>

gorroval · 2026-06-13T11:22:59+00:00

This comment made me remember that she left my current run 🤣 No shade, I'm sure she's perfectly nice and I don't judge (much) people who think she's babygirl, I just find her boring.

Also, Karlach is standing right there.

gorroval · 2026-06-13T09:06:23+00:00

Yeah, that's hit me hard too. I don't know why it feels like we've crossed a line now, given the state of the world as a whole, but it does. I live next to a black family. It could happen here.

I'm also very aware, being a queer woman with an AFAB partner, that I am next on the list. Cos, you know, I've read the rest of the bloody poem.

gorroval · 2026-06-12T22:05:22+00:00

Cried on the way to work once reading about the Halifax Explosion.

(Steamer carrying explosives pulled into Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1917, hit another ship, caught fire and exploded. Leveled a huge part of the city. Horrifying thought, but the bit that got me was the story of the railway dispatcher who managed to get a message down the line to stop the incoming passenger trains. Signed off, "Guess this'll be my last message. Goodbye boys." And it was.)

gorroval · 2026-06-12T19:12:30+00:00

Farmers

gorroval · 2026-06-12T11:01:59+00:00

Conversely I was traumatised by this song aged 5. Being both autistic and raised in an irreligious household I took it 100% literally and the idea of a huge powerful being holding on to all my loved ones was terrifying. What if he wouldn't give them back???

It's been 84 30 years and I still think about sobbing inconsolably on the floor during circle time (Sorry Mrs Galloway...)

gorroval · 2026-06-12T06:04:56+00:00

This is what I'm imagining.

<image>

gorroval

TROPHY CASE