Etherati's Gay and Stupid Books (affectionate)

my books and also other people's books.

[gotylocks]

Happy 10th birthday to the best tweet of all time.

[egasbabindery]

My first tête-bêche binding, my first octavo, and my first time working with leather. This is a combination of two Star Wars fics I've adored for years, and which I nearly always read as a pair, so this combo seemed really natural. The stories are 'Wonderterror' by Peradi and 'Luke Skywalker. 19. Full Human.' by Samvelg. They both explore the premise of the Skywalkers as Eldritch creatures as a result of Anakin's (lack of) parentage, and they are amazing. I made an effort to reach out to both these authors for permission but received no response; if either of them request that this post be taken down, I will of course do so. But as this is a personal book for my own collection that will not be sold or distributed, I felt that showing it off was fair.

Printed on legal paper, font is Uni Neue(body text), Gearus (titles, headers, cover text), and Typographer Caps (drop caps). Images are composited from standard star wars and kraken/cthulhu conography, which is duplicated on the covers (with nearly invisible black squiddies underlying the flashy star wars logos, love how subtle they came out). Typeset in Affinity. Covers in black fairly low grade cow leather with HTV, endpapers printed from an image found in rawpixel's public domain archive, and headbands sewn on. Specifically made the bookmark ribbon long enough to run through the book twice, to potentially mark places in both fics at once.

[etherati]

So, this is the other book I finished this weekend! Another legal quarto and this one is the first in a set of three anthologies--each one will examine one side of the throuple, and this is the Trevor/Alucard installment. I included one of my own fics because 🤷 going for an old fashioned fairly tale vibe with the archaic font and the intro. So much struggle with this one, but so pleased with the result.

Typeset in Caslon Antique, with Vtks Revolt for drop caps/inside titles and Trinigan for the outside covers. Bound with allure bookcloth in crimson and a lovely black floral paper I found locally, lettered with cricut gold HTV. Endpapers from a French pattern multipack. The ribbon had to be mounted behind the endpapers instead of on the spine because it was too thick for the spine, and I was too in love. Headbands sewn on. All stories credited to their authors and included with permission.

[etherati]

I'm so proud of this bind!

So this is What Light Tastes Like by AshesAndHoney, and it's just such an endearing, sincere, and sexy execution of the "they wander around the countryside dealing with ever increasing levels of sexual tension and accidental feelings, while figuring out how to put it all together" trope. Which, I gotta say, I love being in a fandom where that's a common trope because ❤️💛🩵

The cover is done entirely by sunprinting with cyanotype treated fabric-- no augmentation or editing whatsoever, entirely printed with the power of the sun. I've included some process pics for this one because I really wanted to show that off. It's also my first typeset using Affinity, which allowed me to do some really fun things with the chapter header pages.

Legal quarto with patterned endpapers from French. The titling font is Swingset BB, the window icons are from the font Nature Boho, sun dingbats from the font Cute Sun, full page spread graphic is a stock photo that was heavily edited, and headbands are sewn on.

Done in advance for Fanfiction Writers Appreciation Day 2024, will be shipping second copy to the author as part of this event.

[etherati]

I'm having so much fun, people.

This is Ten Second Tidy by Somethingmoresubtle, one of my favorite post s2 trephacard fics mostly for its complete irreverence and willingness to lean into the absurdity of three idiots cleaning Dracula's Castle all on their own, while also being entirely sincere and genuine in the emotional bits.

Wooqu purple bookcloth, cover paper from local art store, gold metal HTV. Printed on French parchtone white in 80lb text weight, though I think they may have mislabeled the grain direction 😬 Cover font is Good Dog Plain, body text in High Tower Text, title headers and drop caps in Manuscript. Chapter header is just a screencap from the show put through infinite Photoshop filters. Hand wound headbands. Typeset in Word.

[etherati]

The newest quarto binding, featuring my first hand-wound headbands - the four finished stories in the watchmen Carrefour AU. Cover design meant to evoke the idea of crossroads, along with marigolds, which were an important image in the story. I wrote these collectively with Daylilymoon back in the day, and it's one of my fondest memories. Daylily if you are still around, please reach out to me, I'd love to make you a copy too--and I won't even fuck up the spelling on the spine, for your version DX

Text is Sylfean, Trajan Pro for the titles and drop caps, Caslon Antique for the cover text. Chapter header graphic and back cover version of the Kalfu veve by me. The text block was printed on some rustic, thick grain paper that I bought ages ago at Meiningers and I have no idea what the brand was, but it seemed appropriate for an 1800s era story. Cover and endpapers are art paper also from the art store. Siser metal HTV as usual.

I cannot believe I misspelled the spine, aughhhhhhhhh

[etherati]

My first REALLY tiny book, a bind of Four of Swords. A sextodecimo! This lil guy is about 3" x 2 1/4" and is bound with actual cards from the miniature edition RWS deck. Because of the fun tarot imagery I'd been wanting to bind this one, but it's so short, just about 5000 words, so it had to go really little :3

Printed on pop-tone white from French, spine and sword detail done with HTV. I printed the main narrative in black and the flashbacks in blue, for visual separation, and the endpapers are of artwork done for this fic by the incredible @sandwichartistdatzu !!

[etherati]

My first bind for another writer! This is Whiter Fang by Doubledog, in which Trevor and Sypha are a hunter and scholar without their soldier, Alucard is a wolf that isn't a wolf, and literally everyone knows what's going on except for Trevor. And it is hecking hilarious. So happy with so many aspects of this--the HTV worked much better this time, and the edge gilding turned out lovely, and the charms are so cute and perfect. And when I saw the endpapers with the yellow googly eyes on one side, I couldn't resist.

Details under cut.

Typeset in Word, printed on French Smart White 80lb text, in Sylfean. Inside titles in Charlemagne Std, drop caps in TypographerWoodcutInitialsOne, cover titles in Gill Sans Ultra Bold Condensed with some raster editing. Animal Prints font for the pawprint. HTV is Siser, cut with cricut, applied with home iron. Endpapers are from a retro pop art paper pack, bookcloth is generic BbH, and edge painting done with FW acrylic ink in Imitation Gold.

[etherati]

Two sketchbooks for two friendos!

The first one is just casebound like the rest of my books because it's all I knew how to do at that point, but I did play around a little with that round window in the cover as a display for the bat stamp :3 The second I made larger because the friendo in question tends to work larger, and I decided to try Belgian secret binding because it seemed like a nice flat-laying method that would work well for a sketchbook. Really pleased with how it came out!

[etherati]

An au fic that is near and dear to my heart, and one that spawned hundreds of thousands of words of follow-up, companion pieces, aus, and so on. AKA the one where I fixed canon by turning a major character into a zombie.

Lot of firsts on this bind -- first time using a guillotine for the edges, first time including a bookmark, and first time using heat transfer vinyl, for the lettering and bloodstains on the cover. For a first attempt, not awful; the letters came out a little raggedy but I decided to just roll with it since this is, thematically, supposed to be a bloodied and ratty relic of an apocalypse. And I FUCKING LOVE how the blood splattered page edges turned out.

Technical details under the cut.

Body text is Kozuka Mincho Pro R on French fleece white parchtone; titles are Haettenschweiler; chapter headers are Traveling Typewriter; chapter caps and Tshirt text are You Murderer BB. Blood splatters from a font called simply "splatter".

End papers are some kind of scrapbook paper from a "blood splatter" pack I found online somewhere. Bookcloth is generic BbH. Vinyl is Siser Metal HTV, cut with cricut, that I jacked up by using an iron instead of a proper heat press. Edge splatter with mix of liquitex naphol red light and FW Pearlescent black acrylic inks.

I think that's everything. Most ambitious bind I've done and one of the ones I'm happiest with in terms of overall presentation.

[etherati]

Another fanbind--still just my own fic, so I can experiment without worrying about doing poor service to someone else's work--and both my first quarto and my first quarterbind. This is still one of my favorite creations from my Watchmen era: The Widening Gyre, a really genuinely spooky ghost story with an extremely ambiguous ending. Only about 13,000 words, so a good small book.

Technical details below.

Text block is Adobe Garamond Pro on France French Parchtone in fleece white. Page headers are Traveling Typewriter and title page is Special Elite. Bird wingdings are from the font Birds of a Feather.

Endpages are just plain black Canson. Page edges trimmed with the chisel method and painted with Daler Rowney FW Pearlescent black acrylic ink. Headbands are premade, sorry, still not in that deep yet.

Spine in some generic black book cloth, covers in a natural fiber art paper I found at the local Guiry's, spattered with some red watercolor paint. Spine lettering done by hand with a Faber Castell pitt artist pen in white.

A lot of experimenting this time, really happy with the result.

[etherati]

Binding up Taproot! With some size comparisons with the Wellspring text block and the two finished volumes side by side. Also, SO proud of how little spine swell I managed to get on such a thick binding. I was anticipating having to do a rounded spine but didn't need to in the end!

[etherati]

I never did show off the final gold leafed version of my hand bound copy of Wellspring. This is actually the second copy, which is a gift for a friend, but my original copy had a few typos and weird formatting issues so I may just call that a defective first printing and rebind a new one to do a similar cover on.