Keystone Publishing

A place where I place the books that I bound. A member of the Renegade Bookbinding Guild: https://renegadeguild.tumblr.com Dreamwidth blog: https://keystonepublishing.dreamwidth.org

[keystonepublishing]

The MCYT Metazine by @mcytmetazine + Interview transcriptions by @antimony-medusa

This bind was supposed to come right after the Etho Zine bind, but a combination of work pressures, Ramadan, post-Ramadan shenanigans, and me being burnt out from all the previous stuff delayed the completion of this zine. For weeks the unfinished text block sat below my cabinet workspace, calling me to clothe the pages.

About a week ago, I finally kicked myself to finish it!

This is the MCYT Metazine, made by the brilliant and talented people at @mcytmetazine, who made this to celebrate the meta analysis of the MCYT fandom. With such a large and diverse base of players and fans, there are a myriad of research studies that could be done; shipping, setting, storylines, interpretations, music, how creators present themselves to their audiences, and so on.

As such, I believe such a publication is deserving of the hardcover treatment. I decided to go on a semi-split boards bind, the same as with the Etho zine. The process is easier now due to familiarity, although I may have made the yellow paper strip overlapping the bookcloth spine and the title paper too large. Mea culpa.

Besides that, I also added a bonus!

I also included an appendix! More specifically, I included the essay '[Meta] Keeping Things Platonic: in Conversation with DSMP Authors' by @antimony-medusa. Not only does her work became one of the analysis pieces in the zine, but she also conducted interviews with 13 other fans whose answers inform her final piece in the zine. Given the valuable context of these interviews, I decided to include them into this bind proper.

All in all, it took me 3 months to finally finish this. I wish I could have completed this bind earlier, but at least now I can put this on my shelf! Special thanks to the amazing team at @mcytmetazine and @antimony-medusa for making this zine bind possible!

[keystonepublishing]

The Etho Zine by @ethozine

Well, a month has come and gone, and my latest project is complete!

I have never expressed my open liking of Ethoslab - I'm more of a Tango and Jimmy fan, if my past binds are any example. More often than not, I lurk in his videos and in the tumblr tags which is how I got to find out of the Etho zine project by @ethozine.

When I saw the finished work, I instantly knew this would be my next project after binding the MCYT Couture zine.

Continuing in my experimentation, this bind is made as a split-boards bind and despite some hiccups I found myself really liking the result! The hinges open without much pushback and the book feels so sturdy. I think I might have a new binding style...

I also added some cheekiness to the project. I used the fanmade emojis made by the zine team to decorate the front and back endpapers. The result? Mini-Ethos inviting me as I flip the covers!! (with the exception of ice cream Etho. noooooooo). To all the fanartists who made these, you all rock!

And finally, I had a sudden thought at the last minute as to the design of the cover label. In Malaysia, the bus networks here used to have these old tickets that are now fondly remembered as memorabilia. I looked at them one day and realized that these would be perfect to bedight the zine! So I drafted a cover label based on these bus tickets and printed them onto some leftover paper. It looks so beautiful!

Plus, the combination of the label, black bookcloth, red strip, and green-yellow endpapers create an almost Japanese aesthetic to the whole cover, which kinda fits as Ethoslab's skin is Kakashi from Naruto (and that his favourite color is green too!).

Special thanks to the team of fanartists and creators of the @ethozine for making this zine possible!

[keystonepublishing]

MCYT Couture Zine by @mcyt-couture-zine

It is safe to say that this is my final project to send-off the year of 2025! After four months of printing, pressing, sewing, and very slow progress with experimentation, I have finally bound one of things I've been looking after for months: a digital zine! More precisely, the MCYT Couture Zine by @mcyt-couture-zine.

This is the first time I have dealt such such an image-heavy bind, especially one with such an emphasis on visual look. So I decided on making this bind truly one of a kind... with unexpected results!

Making this zine bind was a tall endeavour. This is my first time ever printing a full-colour zine and I wanted to make sure all the art looked crisp. Solution: sneak around and print the pages using my office's laser printer. Then, I painstakingly folded every one of the 248 pages precisely in half to ensure all the images and layout don't get swallowed up in the gutter (or get bad folding creases).

After that, weeks of pressing them all to flatten any folds or creases. One that's done, I spent an entire day just sewing the pages and pressing them some more to squish out any spine-swelling. You will not expand on my watch!

Since I wanted the pages and images to open fully, I decided on making this book a sewn-boards + split-board binding. Meaning: I paste the cover boards onto the text block and cover the spine with cloth - actually cut from my own pajamas! My intention was to cover the spine and fold the top/bottom ends over the boards but behind the spine.

Unfortunately, this didn't go so well - testing the result actually resulted in the spine crumpling. I needed to make some cuts so the cloth could 'flex' as the book opens and closes, so I slowly cut 1 cm of cloth on either side of the spine, tucking in the middle piece.

Result: a flexible spine that opens fully with wide hinges!

Messy, but it works!

After that, it's all a matter of designing the covers (I added '2025' just in case there might be a future couture zine!), cutting them, and applying them onto the book, and voila!

The book opens very nicely, with only a few pages being difficult because the glue somehow seeped in, despite my best efforts. There were several page spreads that I had to punch through with a needle and thread, though thankfully the result did not ruin these pages.

The zine wasn't designed to be made into a book, and I did not check earlier to see if any visuals or fanart had to be punched through. If I had known about this earlier, I might have imposed or printed them differently so they wouldn't have thread obscuring the hard work of fanartists and writers. Mea culpa.

But with that said, this zine is a marvel, and I have to thank everyone on @mcyt-couture-zine for all their hard work in making this possible. The zine is beautiful! And I hope every contributor gets all the creative passion for their future, wherever that may be!

[keystonepublishing]

Tomsoos by BogFrog

Well, I never expected to go on a drought for over 2 months. After the last bind, I found myself in a bit of a funk which got exacerbated by increased work and a sudden (albeit temporary) shift in tasks. It took a while to get back on my feet on bookbinding - I finally got back to it slowly after hearing something that kicked me in the ass "despair is easy, happiness is work. Happiness is a choice."

So this is my choice. I may be much slower at it than I once was, but I will choose my happiness. I choose joy and contentment in small, measured amounts - day by day, week by week. And this is the eventual result: a Sam & Tommy fic that is sadly gone from AO3, but one I found again after some sleuthing. I will find what I like and keep them close, for it is worth saving.

Fun fact: this is the first bookbind that uses actual cloth - the spine is made up of cheap pillowcase linen that I glued with paper! I didn't expect this ficbind to have a rustic vibe, but I feel it adds to the charm.

[keystonepublishing]

No Ordinary Love - a Papa!Remmick anthology by hatethysinner

Finally! After almost 2 months of work, this bookbind is finally complete! This is a Papa!Remmick x OC anthology where the vampire from Sinners becomes a father, and I wanted to make a book that does justice to that. There is so much stuff that I packed into this ficbind that I'm surprised it came out as well as it did!

This is an anthology composed of No Ordinary Love, Nothing Can Come Between Us, and Shit! , all written by the talented @hatethysinner. Two of them involve Remmick stumbling into fatherhood, and one is about him crashing onto a roof, because I like him like that..

Given the common origins of these fics, I wanted these three stories to be connected together by a visual theme. Creating a half-title page(s) was relatively simple, but I wanted to make a colored double-page spread for the full story titles. Unfortunately, I am also familiar with my printer jamming up if I tried to do borderless color spreads.

Solution: make the double-page color spreads onto A4 paper, and then cut them to size to glue them onto the textblock.

They all turned out beautiful.

To set the mood. I wanted the opening pages of every fic to have an accompanying picture. So I used the technique I applied to previous ficbinds—print pictures on a separate piece of paper, cut them, and paste only the spine-facing and top-facing edges on the textblock.

End result: art prints that bend with the pages but aren't wavy when I close the book!

The fic writer also noted on Tumblr that she was inspired to write these Papa!Remmick fics based on several songs she heard. So I went to their YouTube videos and made QR links to them!

Besides this, the artist @yasmin-lee117 made several pieces of fanart for No Ordinary Love. After obtaining her permission to use them, I printed them on sturdier paper and pasted them onto the pages, designing a border to make them look prettier amongst the text.

She also made some other Remmick fanart that I printed to use as endpapers!

Lastly (for the main book), I wanted to use an image to close out the ending of each fic, something that resonates with the theme of children and connection.

After some searching, I finally found a series of free graphics of different-sized hands holding each other, parent and child. Some reworking and paint, and now they look like Remmick offering his hand to his daughter (and wife!)

But the pièce de résistance of this entire bind is the secret compartment I made in the back cover that holds a booklet, full with Papa!Remmick headcanons from the author!

More specifically, this headcanon, this headcanon, and this headcanon.

It took some nerve-wracking measurements and veeeerrry careful cutting of the top/bottom edges of the booklet to make it small enough to fit. I also glued a ribbon into the hollow that I can pull to reveal the booklet. The ribbon also pulls double duty as a bookmark and wrapper!

All in all, this book took over a month and a half to make, from beginning to end. I had to do short bursts of work on my spare time after dinner (on workdays) and in whatever time I can find in weekends, which massively slowed progress. There were times when I felt despondent that this project would ever be completed. But now it's complete! And despite some mistakes made, it still looks amazing!

Special thanks to @hatethysinner for writing the amazing fics! And thanks to @yasmin-lee117 for her beautiful fanart!

(and thank you @nobledemons for the wrapped Remmick charm! IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL.)

[keystonepublishing]

Man Turns Animal by @hatethysinner

Well well well well well... looks like someone has turned into Remmick trash.

It's me. I regret nothing.

What can I say that haven't been already said by everyone else about Sinners? How it is a love letter to Blues, of the South, of monsters human and without. But thanks to the movie, I now have a new monster bae that I want in multiple flavors! And Man Turns Animal by @hatethysinner is one of the best I have read, a Remmick who has a disturbing love for a black!OC that utterly ruins her.

For this bind, I sought to make the typeset as minimalist as possible to make the story and the words shine through. With that said, I couldn't help myself from embellishing several of the story's poignant words at certain places at the end of each chapter (which were made from converting the section breaks in the original fic).

They were already pushed to an empty page by the preceding paragraphs, so why not make them impactful?

As for the book itself, I wanted to evoke a dark gothic cover that vibes with what is inside. So I got some fonts and borders and designed a cover with an image of Remmick being soaked and bloody red-eyed. Unfortunately, making the covers resulted in some of the printed toner coming off at the edges from me being rough. But I think that makes a weathered look to the ficbind that actually adds to the vibe.

Being a small book of 120 pages, I decided to not use thick cords for endbands. Instead, I rolled pieces of red paper to protect the top and bottom of the book. Simple, but effective.

Thank you to @hatethysinner for making such a disturbing and wonderful fic of our new favourite vampire boi!

(You wouldn't believe how much time it took for me to decide where the warnings and Tumblr tags should go!)

[keystonepublishing]

Methods of Humanity by local_doom_void

This work has been in the making for almost a year, with me stopping several times because of grappling with J.K Rowling's increasing nastiness and how remaining in the HP fandom feels more and more yucky. But if there's one thing I really really dislike, it's an incomplete project. So this, Methods of Humanity by local_doom_void is my final salute to fanbinding Harry Potter fic, at least for the forseeable future.

This fic series has been on my to-bind list ever since I started to learn bookbinding. My idea for this is based on the journal Harry gave to Thomas Moregrave / Voldemort, and how the professor writes. As such, I sought to make this bind as minimalist as possible but elegant in form, with allowing some penmanship detail such as the story titles (subtly colored based on his moods and character).

To the side of every title page, I designed a graphic that evokes a magical matrix, with a QR code in the center that links to an archived version of the fic in the Wayback Machine.

As for the book itself, I decided to be a cheapskate for the covers and endbands. I used lazer-printed patterns of marbled paper for the covers, while the endbands were made from colored paper that were wrapped around some cord. I did add an oxford hollow at the spine, but I made it using some more scrap paper, which might be why it doesn't throw up the book spine as it should be. Whoops!

This book went through several stops and starts. I hope that, with this work now complete, I can finally let go of the weight it had on me and move on to something better.

[keystonepublishing]

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!)

[keystonepublishing]

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!

[saltyteethbooks]

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]

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!

[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!