#once again poorly disguised as a few talking points from my thesis ^^;;

[chubsonthemoon]

DOVEEEEEEEE oh gosh THANK YOU SO MUCH. This is???? The kindest most flattering thing ever AHHH I am beside myself!!

the way art and creation is part of an ongoing conversation no matter where it's happening and the way that fandom in particular is so founded on that community and the creation of that conversation in real time for the love of it--YOU!!!! YOU GET ITTTTT oh gosh exactly what you said right here!! This is exactly what I set out to capture and I'm SO happy to hear you say that.

This part especially is making me tear up >>> hosting it in the same format as that used for the long-term version of that collaborative process in a volume like the Odyssey (the conversation between the storytellers and translators and academics and historians surrounding something like a Homeric epic) I ADORE how you say "long-term" here, because YES!!! That's what these books are made for, really (although the love they get now continues to astound and humble me!)--they're for the future, and your pointing it out here is so vindicating. It also reminds me of how we even got here--how the many pieces which now make up the Odyssey were orally transmitted before they were ever written down, and what it means to take those pieces and bind them. What it truly means to bind a story--anchoring it to not only a physical location, but also to a specific point in time. Beyond annotations in the margins (MARGINALIA MY BELOVED) and just straight-up tearing it apart and Frankensteining it to something else, the story is set. It's...like a congealing, of sorts, set in something not quite as permanent as stone, but still very difficult to change.

And now with Wings--what it means to bind fanfiction of it. I've heard modern media fandom described as modern folklore in our capitalist society (wrote a bit about it here in my reply to Heather!), and idk I just think it's kinda neat how unique (or perhaps not unique at all--perhaps only unique recently, with commercial book publishing in its current form) the fic writer-fandom relationship is. We're all just sitting around a virtual fire listening to each other tell stories, and like you said!!! It's ongoing, it's collaborative, it's yes and-ing each other to make new narratives.

Layli Long Soldier once came to my university to speak, and she said something I will never forget, about how orally transmitted histories and stories are just as reliably passed down and preserved as the written word. I don't know how true that is (and there's undoubtedly Very Heated Discussions going on about it in a room somewhere), but it still really got me thinking! About what we remember and what we tell others--human memory is fickle, but are we not containers of stories also, just as much as any codex or scroll or line of code on a screen? And beyond that, we have direct access to the means and medium of telling that story (I guess...our brains? Our mouths? Our hand motions? But then that is all influenced by language which is in turn influenced by culture and individual experience and AHHH--), and we can alter it at will in a way we just can't with something physical. When we tell a story, we're also physically anchoring the intangible to the tangible; we breathe life into it, literally. What never was, is not, and never shall be--and yet we somehow make it so!

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this--every book I bind, I think about what myself and other fanbinders doing--taking fics from the ether of the Internet and giving them a physical home in meatspace. (Reading and watching The Sandman has certainly lent a particular sadboi goth flavoring to the thought process XD) I'm three years into this fanbinding thing, and I don't have any plans of stopping. But I think even if I stop one day, I'll always be thinking, whenever I read a story, about possible methods to increase the chances a binding of it might live on, how to best represent this or that element of the story in a physical space, and with books like Wings--how to best represent a community at a certain point in time. Like, explicitly that community, with a focus on its members and their conversations, in addition to what one might be able to glean about that community from the story itself. Providing context--both for the story, and for the people surrounding the story (which are, perhaps, even the same story), if you will.

ANYWAY. I won't have the answers today or possibly ever LOLL, but thank you so much for listening to my rambles and for this incredibly generous response. On a less armchair note: OMGGGG twinning Robert Fagles translation!!! I love hearing the stories of books and this is now one of my favorites--the lard ball has me CACKLING. And it such an honor to even be mentioned in the same sentence as a specialty edition of the LOTR, thank you so much, I am crying a little T_T

Thank you as well for pointing out all the little details you noticed--you have the keenest eye and are so generous and insightful in your analyses of not just my work, but the work of others in this incredible fandom!! I'm also so mf glad we get to chat about this kind of stuff--it's so uplifting, interesting as hell, and above all just plain pure fun :3

Thank you so, so much, friend!! It means the world <333

Last Binderary book is DONE!!!! This is the incredible Maybe sprout wings, by @moorishflower.

This post is going to be a doozy, so gonna just skip straight to the cut!

INTERIOR

INTRODUCTION

I really wanted to model this bind after my own copy of the Odyssey, (which is all highlighted and bookmarked and annotated to hell from my Great Text courses in undergrad ehe, so this bind was such a fun trip down memory lane!). But beyond just the cover/general aesthetic, I also wanted to give the book a similar feel to these kinds of editions of classics--there's usually an introduction, translation notes, and other supplementary materials, right? Like, a physical manifestation of the work of many, many people, all having conversations with one another across time and space.

So that's what I did! I wrote a short introduction (I will also probably post it to my AO3/my blog as well, in the name of preservation etc. etc.) and began reaching out to folks in the fandom who I knew had created art and meta for the fic. The result? 18k words of analysis, comments, and meta, and nearly twenty pages of art!

And this is what I love most about this bind, I think! This book is the work of several people--truly a collaborative work by the fandom--all of whom I will now be shamelessly calling out below :D

CHAPTER HEADER ART

First and foremost, this book would not be what it is without the gorgeous header art by @fancy-rock-dove! Thank you so much Dove for letting include your work, and for being so supportive and kind these past few weeks about this bind <3 You in particular have contributed so much to this book (which I will be getting more into in the next section ehe), and I'm so psyched I get to hold your art and words, too!

NOTES ON THE TEXT

This section was divided into four parts: Asks and Answers, Meta, Selected Comments, and Chapter Heading Art: Process

For Asks and Answers, I trawled Heather's blog for meta she had written in response to questions and other meta about the fic. Asks came from @fancy-rock-dove, @quillingwords, @kulapti, and myself! (I THINK I got all of them--tumblr's search function is finnicky even on its best days, so so sorry if I missed something T_T) I first got hooked into reading this fic because of one of these asks, so I'm very fond of this section in particular :D

For Meta, I included two wonderful essays written by @pastrypuppy (also known as @kulapti) about Hob as an author figure and the Disrupted Fisher King narrative in MSW. Her analyses were so fascinating and I just had to include them in the book! (And thank you as well for your permission, friend!) (also hello fellow Renegade comrade 🫡)

For Selected Comments, I owe everything to (once again :3) @fancy-rock-dove, whose insights are the epitome of transformative fandom at work. I'd look for their comments after I read every chapter to see what their takes were on this or that element of the story, and every single time I would go "!!!!! I didn't even realize!!!" or "OOOOOOOH I hadn't thought of that!!" It was like being in a lecture hall and always whipping your head around when one of your classmates raised their hand, because you knew they were going to say something fascinating that you hadn't considered before.

Aside from one of my own comments, Dove's comments make up the entirety of this section (for which I owe you my life--your long-form responses to fics are a gift to this world) but GOSH was it also so much fun going through the comments section while typesetting and seeing all the keyboard smashing, yelling, and crying from the other commenters. Communal nature of storytelling and ongoing meaning-making of fanfiction, babey!

And finally for Chapter Heading Art: Process: once again Dove coming in clutch with some wonderful insights into the design of each of the chapter heading art pieces! This kind of stuff is honestly my favorite: meta about art for a fic which is, in turn, a transformation of an existing story (not even to mention that The Sandman is its own kind of fanfiction of existing mythologies and histories)--I just!! Think it's all really, really neat :'D (for more coherent/polished thoughts on this pls see my introduction asjdfkls)

ART

The art gallery!!! A million thanks to @fishfingersandscarves, @honeyseller, @jazzpsych, @doctor-rainbowfoxey, and (HI AGAIN DOVE) @fancy-rock-dove for granting me permission to include all of your beautiful pieces!

As usual for artworks in my binds, I printed each piece out on specialty photo paper to really make the colors pop, then sewed each page separately to the text block! Behold, everyone's beautiful beautiful pieces!

The art gallery also satisfies the certain "oooh shiny" part of my brain that always activates when I see pictures in a book, so am also very fond of this section :3

CONSTRUCTION

And now on to the nitty gritty stuff! I used the German Bradel binding technique again, my second time using it. Even though it's more complicated than the case bind, I really love how it gives you the full board space for the cover designs (~it's free real estate~). Keep it a secret but I kiiiiiiind of made a small goof in the last few steps (I did the turn-ins a step too early and so had to paste an extra sheet of cardstock to secure the spine to the boards, whoopsie), but it's a pretty small difference, aesthetically speaking, so it wasn't the end of the world XD

Edges are once again fake gilded, but this time I tried something new with the colors! I did two layers of acrylic paint--one watered down shade of red for the base, then one metallic gold on top of that. I really like the red/gold effect! I'll have to keep experimenting with this kind of layering:

ALSO. Y'ALL! I think I'm finally getting the hang of endbands!!! Many thanks to the folks at Renegade who hosted all the endband workshops last month--I'm still working through them, but even the few sessions I've seen have been TREMENDOUSLY helpful. I learned that tension is Very Important, as well as thread thickness, so I tried doubling my thread and keeping a Very Close Eye on how I was holding the threads while doing the beads. And behold! I still have a ways to go (and one day I would LOVE to do the fancier designs), but I'm v happy with the progress I've made so far!

And finally the covers!! ARCHIVAL MOD PODGE MY BELOVED. I printed on the same matte presentation paper that I used for the art, then did several coats of archival matte mod podge + a pass of gloss mod podge over the title strip to make it ~shiny~. Then once those had dried and I'd adhered them to the boards, I sprayed two layers of matte clear acrylic sealer (also mod podge!) to finish it off. I had some issues with the paper tearing when I handled it before it was fully dry, but luckily the blemishes were small enough that it was easy to do spot corrections with my black acrylic paint. And now I know to be more patient next time LOL

(some non-photoshoot shots that show the shine a little better!)

FINAL THOUGHTS

I had a lot of thoughts while I was binding this book--about Sandman fandom, about Dreamling fandom, about the Odyssey, about storytelling, about fanbinding, about Binderary, about Renegade, about my friends--but really what came to mind the most was gratitude!

Simply put, I'm so grateful to everyone I've met both in this fandom and throughout the years I've been active online--this is SO fun, y'all. It's so much fun to love stories together--to talk about them, to write them, and of course to bind them! I hope I've adequately conveyed that gratitude.

But of course, this book would not exist without the wonderful words of @moorishflower. Heather, thank you so, SO much for sharing your stories, thoughts, and time with us--it is always a happier, better day when I get an email notif from you and when I see you on my dash. I love your work so much, and I'm so happy I finally get to put it on my shelf! So thank you so much again, for everything <3

and OKAY THAT'S IT FROM ME FOLKS!!!!! Binderary 2023 is officially a wrap! I had SUCH a blast--will probably write up a reflection post on it uhhhh after I take a very long nap ajslkdfjslk _(:3」∠)_

all my love! <3