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Statues by Rounderhouse and Snapdragon133

This is a record, a new bind just a week and a half after the previous one!

I have always been a lurker fan of the SCP Foundation. Over the decade, I have dipped in and out of the site to read the tales and articles that lie within. So when I heard that there was a story in another form—Statues—that links to the earliest SCP ever written, and that one of the writers is @rounderhouse, the man who wrote the REDTAPE series, I just had to see and read.

This bind is a celebration of one of the oldest articles in the SCP Foundation archives, as well as to a story that humanizes the statue that made the universe possible.

(Extra: I further experimented with pasting images into this book—as per the last bind—by gluing them at the top and spine edges, but leaving the bottom + foreedge glue-free. Result: a much sturdier connection with less chance of creasing, yet still with enough freedom for the printed images to breathe and bend without buckling or bubbling. Yes!)

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your half of the ransom by definitelynotshouting

After the massive chonker of my last bind, I wanted to do something simpler and less complicated. And there was one fic that is in my to-bind list that is both short and sweet to typeset: your half of the ransom by @definitelynotshouting.

Buuuut trust me to not do some experimenting, even now.

Also, apologies for the terrible lighting. And for adding glue to the spine which resulted in the ripping at the gutter for the title page. Oops.

As a fan of the Life SMP Series, I always wanted to bind something from Secret Life but kept it off due to other projects coming to the forefront. Well, that list is cleared! Time to do justice to the marooned GoodTimesWithScar and his empty sunflower fields!

I have done many a sewn-boards binding, but I wanted to experiment to see if I can make one for a single signature / booklet. If this is successful, I can use this to bind and embellish really short fanfics and even zines into proper books, with endpapers and hardcovers and even a nice spine!

Not only did my experiment turn out well, It has made me want to search for more short fics to turn into proper hardcovers!

I also tried another experiment with applying fanart and prints. I have pasted artworks onto book pages before, and they always end up either warping or waving from glue moisture. So this time, I only dabbed glue onto the top edges of these images and pasted them onto the beginning and last pages of the fic proper.

Verdict: they don't warp and are freely flexible, no stress onto the pages or spine! (yay!) But their bottom free-wheeling corners like to wedge themselves against the opposite pages next to the gutters, making them a danger for creasing and wear (nay!)

Special thanks to @definitelynotshouting for writing this fic and to @l3o-draws for her permission for me to use her beautiful Secret Life Scar fanart for this fic! You both are amazing!

[keystonepublishing]

The Dreamwalker by Hydre

When I first stumbled on this fic, I knew I found something I wanted to bind. And after 3 months of work, it's finally finished!

At 135,787 words, The Dreamwalker by Hydre (@leva-prava) would be the second-longest fic I'll bind. But it's so worth it! The fic is soooooo good! Tommyinnit getting transported to our world? While asleep? And meets alternate versions of his friends and enemies? And gets cared for by an alternate Dream? Who genuinely cares? Where have you been all my life.

After my last time binding something this massive, I've since learned a few new techniques that would further stabilize the book and enhance it, like endbands! And ribbon bookmarks!

From the start, I wanted this fic to have a distinct visual feel: Home and house. Solid-minimal headers. Distinct-yet-unobtrusive page numbers. Distinct section breaks to visualize how drastic things can change.

The house was particularly important. The fic has heavy themes of home and belonging and I wanted a silhouette of a house that could convey that. But after weeks and weeks of trawling through the internet to find AI images of houses, I manned up and drew my own from scratch (with the exception of the tree as a stock image from elsewhere). It now dots every page and every chapter!

Cracks indicate sudden scene shifts, black with white line indicate a peaceful transition, and a black line shows a scene break within the same day, setting, or action that is relatively minor in importance.

I also packed in so many subtle details into the text such as different fonts for political campaigns, back-lighted words to convey terrible memories, comm chat, text messages, even darkened pages for dream sequences.

The fic writer also made drawings of some parts of The Dreamwalker and so I tried my best to lighten them up and add them into the pages at their relevant plot spots! Some of them were a bit of a challenge - you'll notice the double-page confrontation of Wilbur and Tommy is less-cleaned up, because I couldn't find a way to brighten them without losing the pencil work. Dammit!

And lastly, I added the chapter notes as footnotes in almost every chapter in a way to save the meta-text, which were important in their own way as they explain the author's thoughts, motivations, and directions for the characters within the fic.

All in all, this entire bookbinding took 3 months and many days from beginning to end. I worked this intermittently with other projects as to not be burnt out, and I think I have delivered a bind that does some justice to this fic. Go read it! And full thanks to Hydre / @leva-prava for such an amazing fic!

[keystonepublishing]

Daddy's Little Secret by contrary-izybel

After the monumental effort that was my last bind, I wanted to de-stress and do something less fiddly or time-consuming. Luckily, I have been eyeing a certain fic from the bowels of Disney Kink at LiveJournal from the ye olde time of 2012: Daddy's Little Secret.

It was my introduction to the wild world of kink memes and the premise was a head-turner: a Finding Nemo fic where Bruce the shark is a Sydney biker who is in love with Marlin and wants to be a dad to Nemo. You can't get a wilder non-NSFW introduction to kink memes than that! Perfect for a single-signature bind!

[keystonepublishing]

The Mutandaverse — an anthology

Finally! After over a month of work, it is finally complete!

Jonathan Edelstein has always been one of my favourite short fiction writers, as evidenced by my numerous binds of his previous works. But this is my most ambitious of them all to date. A 335-page chonker of his short stories about the Mutandaverse — A sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, Afrocentric and Afrofuturistic universe.

Despite not having any proper presses, I aspired to create a book with a rounded and backed spine. And although the overall result is a little squished, the mushroom shape of the spine is enough for me to call this project somewhat of a success!

For the cover, I wanted the reader to be able to 'peek' into the Mutandaverse, hence the cutting of a 'window' to which the setting showcases itself. I'll talk about the image later, but I like how the juxtaposition of the skyscrapers and the suited African man entices the eyes.

For this bind, I wanted the setting of the Mutandaverse to permeate through the entire book, pages, text, and all. As such, I went to great lengths to convey the anthology's vibes in design and form. For one, I scoured font sites to find a typeface that evokes a Black Panther-ish vibe: both modernist yet also African in feeling.

Instead of using Arabic numerals, I wanted the very numbers of the stories to evoke the Afrofuturist/post-apocalypse feel, so I eschewed using Arabic numbers and instead looked to Sub-Saharan scripts for inspiration. All 9 stories in the bind are marked using the Njoya script, from Cameroon.

As the stories of The Mutandaverse are scattered throughout the internet in various forums and archives, I wanted the reader to be able to trace them digitally. So I opted to have a story header that incorporates QR codes: one to the original story and the other to a version that's saved in the Internet Archive. Each story header comes complete with an Njoya story number and a header picture that is different for every story!

Finally, I wanted to use art by Sub-Saharan artists for the endpapers. Jonathan used the artworks of Ikiré Jones from Nigeria as a basis for some of his fiction, and it is those that I print and use as endpapers. Out of all the artists, Ikiré Jones' truly evoke the messy feel of what it's like to live in a universe where starships and skyscrapers mix with slums and street culture.

I have read the short stories of the Mutandaverse for over a decade now, and I hope my bind have made them justice.

[keystonepublishing]

Not sure if this works, but here's trying: does anyone have a full stash of fics by @tomseus on AO3? They wrote a large number of fics, only to orphan and delete them late last year.

I know they wrote several Tommyinnit and Awesamdude fics, but I can't find them now. The Internet Archive doesn't save the fics either. If anyone knows of any copies or accessible archives, that would be really grateful!

[keystonepublishing]

my god, my champion by oh_snapperss

*crawls out of work*

Never do multiple fanbinds at a limited time, folks.

Your grind will never end.

Why yes, I did watch Parkour Civilization. Evbo now shares my brain with so many other characters, and this fic caught my eye after stumbling upon a beautiful fanart of Mavbo that was drawn because of it. With work on other stuff piling up, I thought a short fic would make for an easy bind.

Ironically, I didn't think of making any idea on cover design until very very late. I originally wanted to make a Klimt-patterned cover to match the interior decoration (and the ending fanart), but I recently brought some Japanese mulberry paper that coincidentally have Evbo's colors! So I made the cover using that mulberry paper and fashioned the title and back strips based on Japanese aesthetics.

That, and because the title was too long to make it a beautiful horizontal label.

The end result is an exterior that looks visually different from the interior, but now I feel they complement each other.

The interior, though, was full-out Klimt.

I wanted to make the interior match the fic-fanart I saw that inspired this bind. Golden strips made out of Klimt patterns and paintings frame the text, while I chose an old-ish font (Doves Type) for the text. The drop cap was a product of experimental masking with more Klimt patterns with a font picture, and the entire shebang lies on top of paper that has a subtle Klimt pattern on it.

All in all, it took some brain-crunching to make the design and layout in a limited amount of time, but the end result was so worth it!

Special thanks to @oh-snapperss for writing the fic in the first place, along with @aofikofi for her fanart of it. And a very special thanks to @setacin for his incredible fanart of Mavbo that inspired me to design a Klimt-style bind for the fic! If only I had gold leaf to complete the style!

[keystonepublishing]

Why Not Both by Varnes

A long time ago, I wondered if there was ever a fanfic that actually tried to resolve the whole "Hermione and Ron catfight over Viktor Krum during the Yule Ball and in Book 7". I thought, why can't they both fall in love with Krum?

Fast forward to a month ago when someone recced a fanfic in the Renegade Discord server. It was this one: why not both

My prayers have finally been answered!

For this bind, I wanted to make the book look 'modern, but classy'. This entailed looking at fashion magazines and artistic periodicals to see how they did their layouts and typesetting. I collected a bunch of pictures to create a collage that would open the first chapter and give off the 'vibe' of the fic.

I had to discard almost all of them because they. didn't. fit. the vibe.

Same thing too for the typography. An extreeeeemely large drop cap, paired with a big first line? Classy, yet also modern in a way, like some sort of fashion magazine article opener.

And lastly, because the fic does have Viktor 'BIG ARMS' Krum, I just had to make one page look like a tabloid shoot from a trashy magazine.

Very Arms, indeed!

Full thanks to Varnes for writing a rarepair fic that I didn't realize I still loved!

[keystonepublishing]

YES, I AM SO HAPPY THIS IS A THING!

The eyes-endpapers are something I never thought of printing for my bind, but they fit very well for the subject matter! And the inset is cool too! It looks so crisp and well-made!

First time doing a title inset so thanks to @keystonepublishing for the wonderful typeset on a piece of not very well known piece Malayan (before the Malaysian Federation existed) history on the local version of The American Red Scare.

I fucked up the Bradel binding and had to jerryrig a fix which probably made the hinges a bit too stiff so I ended up with a not-ideal throw-up (yes that's the actual term)

And here's some process photos

Yes I used an expensive bottle of foraged wild jungle honey to apply directed pressure to shape the inset on the cover after applying the book cloth lol.

[keystonepublishing]

Canary Card in the Dungeon Dark by Ciel_Creations

(Note: this fic, like most that come from Twitter, didn't actually have a title. The title here is one I kinda made up, based on the plot.)

After the last mammoth bind, I decided to take some weeks off, relax, and pay more attention to other stuff rather than continue bookbinding. Unfortunately, this came to an end when I looked through my AO3 bookmarks one day and discovered several fics—one of which I wanted to bind—completely deleted!

That punted me off my relaxin' ass and go straight to saving and binding fics I like from being gone forever. One of which was this: a fic from Twitter about Jimmy being a guide in Decked Out!

First off: Yes, there are people who write fics on Twitter.

Since the fic came from Twitter, I had to do some tweaks before printing. Besides the aforementioned title and the usual typesetting and editing, I also wanted to preserve the original tweet. But instead of just a screenshot, I decided to go hard mode and recreate it in Affinity Publishing. For what it's worth, at least it wasn't complicated.

The fic writer noted that the work was inspired by a fanart they saw. Specifically, the Dungeon Guide Jimmy fanart by Hybbart! So that had to be included, though that did raise some questions as to how should I 'decorate' the fic to match the Decked Out theme.

Birds and cages form important elements in the fic, so I wanted to include them within the typeset. Additionally, I wanted to experiment with page numbers after seeing some examples in other books, and make them a larger part of the overall layout. Solution: smash together the numbers and cages at the edges of pages! It did took a while to figure out how to make the numbers stand out against the bars, but the end result looks beautiful!

The bird element was much easier to handle. A canary silhouette as a section break was enough. And since this is minecraft, I decided to format the death message like if it came straight from chat.

Special thanks to Ciel_Creations for writing this fic!

[keystonepublishing]

Crap, I forgot to add the fanart links!

@leafdoodles: here! (and more fanart and sketches!)

@hybbart: here!

@foxyola: here!

@azzayofchaos: here!

LOOK AT THEM. They deserve all the love for such amazing works!

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!

[keystonepublishing]

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!

[keystonepublishing]

Under The Brine by bonesandthebees

Wow, it's really been nearly two months since I posted! Besides the usual life stuff, I also took the plunge and bought Affinity Publisher just so I could control the typeset to a greater finesse than clunky Microsoft Word. And this is my first result of that!

This fic, Under The Brine by @bonesandthebees is one of my favorite Crimeboys fics, and I had so many ideas to try out to visualize the situations and vibes of the plot. As you will see, the result was a mix of established layouts and new experimentation. The cover itself is made using Affinity, printed onto paper to give a papery feel on the hands!

The chapter pages are designed with voluminous double-spread images because I wanted the reader to "fall in" to the story. I want to bring the feel of unnatural uncertainty, fear, and dread into a visual form; if a picture tells a thousand words, the right one can convey the mood of an entire arc. Having the opening paragraphs shifted to the side accentuates the visual feel.

As per usual, I have my layouts for pre-fic notes along with an appendix section for end notes and author comments to curious readers (albeit this time on Tumblr). But I also diverged by adding a playlist, curated by the author for this fic, along with a Spotify code if typing the song names onto YouTube is too much.

With Affinity, I also took the time to lay out the fic's dream sequences. I wanted a complete opposite to a normal page to convey the act of dreaming, and so made the pages all-black. However, the volume of needed black ink did confuse my printer and created a number of paper jams, so I don't think this style is going to be used much.

Additionally, I formatted the phone-text-messaging part of the fic so it actually looks like a text message convo! This was one of the most fiddly parts of typesetting as I had to balance not only the text messages, but the error alert symbol and words as well.

And lastly, I experimented with putting last paragraphs and the ending image together, instead of putting them onto separate pages as per my other binds. I do this because I wanted to visualize the moody feel of the ending... and because I was running out of paper and wanted to save pages.

Full thanks to @bonesandthebees for writing this fic!

[keystonepublishing]

Psychological Warfare of the Malayan Emergency by Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.)

Have you ever been taught a version of history at school that seems weirdly simplistic? And then years later, you find more evidence that shows the whole affair was a giant, complicated mess?

Guess what I learned over the past few months about the Malayan Emergency.

For context, the Malayan Emergency was a conflict that raged in the British colony of Malaya from 1948 until the 1960s between communist forces and the British government, later continued by the independent Malayan government. The government forces won, but any school teachings of the conflict was presented in a manner that simplified the complex (and often, grey) nature of the Emergency.

I knew since then that a lot of truths were hidden away, but I didn't realize that there was a psychological aspect to the Emergency until I stumbled upon this webpage by a retired military officer about it. Given the length of the information provided and that it's the only one of it's kind — and therefore at risk of information loss if deleted, I sought to bookbind it. Pictures and all.

Given the amount of information contained and the sheer number of images, this project took about a month!

I had to divide the continuous stream of information in the webpage into readable chapters.

Then, I had to layout the images with the text, which was actually harder than expected — the size of the image could shift relevant text into the following pages, so it was a process of balancing image size to textual placement.

In-between that was the regular work of typesetting, but also of formatting quotes and examples, of which there were a lot.

And then there were pages that required special attention. For example, these pages:

The pages on the right was relatively simple — a double-sided leaflet that could be showcased in a double-page spread, with contextual information in the following pages.

On the left however, to create the list of dead / living people, I had to finagle a table in Microsoft Word and constantly adjust the cell size to make the long names and positions fit. The whole endeavor was an exercise in patience.

Leafing through the pages, there are some parts I am annoyed with, such as pictures on the right page with their annotated message in the following left page. But as it is, I'm just glad this is done.

Special thanks to SGM Herbert A. Friedman (Ret.) for compiling this information that astonished me to create this bookbind.

[keystonepublishing]

The House of Aunts by Zen Cho

Well, it's been a while since I updated, and not for nothing. The fasting month has arrived and much of my weekend energy is preoccupied elsewhere. Also, there are several longfics that are currently WIP, full completion uncertain.

So imagine my feelings as they got slammed against the wall by this: The House of Aunts by the Malaysian-born Zen Cho. An original vampire fiction that is set in Malaysia, uses traditional Malaysian monsters die Dracula, and deals with issues that hit close to home for anyone living in this part of the world, such as overbearing parental figures, unspoken religious and ethnic boundaries, and familial shame.

Since the story is Malaysian at heart, I decided to use Malaysian pictures and themes.

The book cover is actually made from drawing paper, printed with the image of a rubber plantation to evoke the story's setting. The front side has a glued-on image of a frangipani flower - the flower of the undead in Malaysian stories — surrounded by Baba Nyonya tilework — the Baba being Chinese Malaysians who settled and intermarried with locals.

The printed endapapers threw me off. I wanted to have a tilework or frangipani motif, but none of the free internet sources came up with anything distinctive. I did eventually find a peculiar color gradient that reminds me of twilight, considered the time when Malaysian monsters strike the most.

The Malaysian motifs continue at the title page, where I used Baba Nyonya tilework and Malay woodcraft motifs to frame the title. Same thing too with the copyright page — believe it or not, I actually intended that part to be minimalist! But one curious placement of images led to another and soon, I was looking up different websites to find the right Malaysian decorative features to bedight the logos!

The story is divided into three parts, and I also wanted the headers to be minimalist. Something of that won out here more, as I decided to use plumerias to highlight the 'undead' parts of the story and the greyscale tilework/woodwork to highlight the human connections of the main character, whether they were broken or not.

This bind took me less than a week and it was actually refreshing to get my hands busy again. Full rights to the story goes to Zen Cho, who really deserves all the awards for writing a monster tale that hits at so many themes, it's quintessentially Malaysian!

[keystonepublishing]

Before anything else by anotperegrine

IMPORTANT NOTE: I began this bookbind before February and was well on the way to completing this (actually my second try, more on that later) when the whole abuse situation with Wilbur and Shelby became known. I was incensed, but channeled that anger into finishing this project out of pure spite.

This man will not destroy the love I have for this fic and the passion poured into it by both the fic author, fanartist, and me.

I rarely get engaged with the goings-on in the QSMP, and even then it's mostly towards my blorbos Philza and Missa (see my previous ficbinds). But Quackbur or TNTDuo has a certain small spot in my heart due to their tension and chemistry within the Dream SMP, and it was through that which I found this delightful number of a fanfic.

Before anything else by anotperegrine is a DSMP + QSMP fanfic where Quackity from Las Nevadas wakes up in a different world, where wars did not happen and a familiar face has a child. Cue extrapolation, angst, and a yearning for something he thought he could never have.

This fanfic is a sewn-board bind with inter-layered color papers (printed with black designs or title belts) glued on top of each other to make the covers. But it wasn't meant to be this way.

I had actually tried to make a 'first edition' of this bind, so to speak. It was supposed to be a bradel bind with a similar cover design. Unfortunately; (1) I did not measure the back cover properly, which (2) led to rough adjustments, which (3) led to improper casing, which (4) led to scrunched endpapers, which (5) applied pressure which distorted the text block, which then (6) forced open the front cover... it was a mess.

Also, I did not anticipate a gap between the top/bottom covers which became noticeable when I glued the middle strip. Ooops.

Hence, a 'second edition' redo.

The second try went much better, and I even made a successful experiment! Up till now, I have used tissue paper to strengthen the spines of my binds. After consulting some people over in the Renegade Publishing discord I decided to take a chance and applied an altogether different material: medical gauze.

Surprisingly, it worked! After gluing, the spine became stiff yet opens with a flexibility that exceeds using normal tissue paper. I'm definitely using gauze for my future binds!

Thanks to @anonperegrine for making the fic, with an additional thanks to javenvee on Twitter for her okaying with me using her fanart!

[keystonepublishing]

Wish Carefully by Ten Toes

Another old blast from the past! This time, it's a Harry Potter fic from 2008 that asks the question "what if the Death Eaters win but all the good guys just leave Britain?" The result... was not pretty. In fact, the level of how much Wizarding Britain fell apart genetically, socially, and economically was a shock to the 'winning' Death Eaters.

For this bind, I wanted to go easy and decided on a simple sewn-board binding with a relatively uncomplicated design and color scheme. With that said, I now wish I could've added some details like cracks on the Britain silhouette to signal how things fell apart.

It's actually nostalgic to read such fics during or just after the books' publication, since a lot of fanon was still up in the air and thus there was a lot of experimentation in fanfics. The number of "things fall apart" fics for Death Eaters who 'won' are comparatively rare today. Hence, me binding this for posterity!