SleepingPatterns

I make fanfiction (and other things) into books!

[sleepingpatterns]

On Hiatus!

Hello all! I’ll be on hiatus from bookbinding until Spring 2023.

Exciting life-stuff has fortunately interfered with my capacity for book-stuff, but I can’t wait to get back to bookbinding when I’m able, and to see the projects y’all are working on.

Cheers! SP

[gutsandeverythingg]

absolutely exhausted with anarchist omegas thinking we can just synthesize suppressants in the bathtub. first of all not how that works

[moreclaypigeons]

Sometimes there's an elaborate bit, and then you commit to it and put a lot of time into creating something with it, pick up a new hobby or two... anyway. Here's Gatsby Great The

[deisderiumbooks]

Now Entering Incognito Mode! fanbind

@travelingneuritis was kind enough to give me permission to bind Now Entering Incognito Mode! for the Renegade Bindery Exchange 2025. I loved getting to work on this, typesetting to include the beautiful illustrations. I wanted the cover to be a little incognito as well, so I decided it shoudl be monochrome. As well, I have been wanting to embroider a cover, so I decided to satin sitch the title and stitch a firefly (to reflect luo binghe's pseudonym) for the back cover.

All in all, this was a delight to bind, and the embroidered cover is definitely a labor of love! I'm very happy with how it came out.

[chubsonthemoon]

Fandom Trumps Hate 2026 - Moonham Press Fanbinding

Hi, everyone! I'm participating in @fandomtrumpshate again this year. I'm offering one hardcover and one paperback fanbind of a fic of your choice, with author permission. More details under the cut! (This is cross-posted from my Craft Stall on Dreamwidth).

What I'm offering:

One (1) custom-made, fully typeset, hardcover fanbinding of a fic of your choice. (Must be your own work or have author permission; please see below for more details).

One (1) custom made, fully typeset, paperback fanbinding of a fic of your choice. (Must be your own work or have author permission; please see below for more details).

Details - General

I can bind your own fic or someone else's! If the fic has been written by someone else, I ask that you please provide a screenshot of the author giving explicit permission to bind their fic for this event, or send a screenshot/link to a blanket permission statement from the author. The only exception to this rule is if a fic has been posted anonymously or orphaned.

Due to the nature of how I typeset, the fic must be posted to AO3.

I'm very open to suggestions or design ideas, especially for fandoms I'm not familiar with! That said, I reserve the right to make any final decisions re: design and construction, based on the materials I have on hand.

I can include art pieces; however, you must have permission from the artist to include their work.

I will not be binding anthologies or series; if you would like a shorter fic bound, please feel free to check out the paperback auction!

Fic can be any rating, but if it is rated Explicit, you must sign the age statement in the bidding form confirming you are over 18.

Bidders may participate in both auctions if they wish.

I will not bind anything related to the Harry Potter series/franchise. 

Details - Hardcover

Please choose a fic with a word count in the 25k to 150k word range (some leeway of a few thousand or so words here is fine).

I offer three book sizes, but please note that if your WC is higher, it will be easiest for me to make a half-letter book. (Please see below for notes on sizing.)

Minimum bid: $45 USD

Details - Paperback

Please choose a fic that in the 5k to 20k word range (some leeway of a thousand or so words here is fine).

I can do three sizes of book for the paperback. (Please see below for notes on sizing.)

Minimum bid: $15 USD

Details - Sizing 

Depending on the length of your fic, I offer different sizes! 

From left to right (dimensions are estimates; actual dimensions may differ slightly): 

Half letter: ~5.375" x ~8.25"

Quarto legal: ~4.125" x ~6.75"

Quarto letter: ~5.375" x ~4.125"

Details - Shipping and Timeline

I will pay for tracked shipping within the United States. If you are outside the US, I am happy to craft for you, but please note you will be responsible for the shipping costs, which can be significant as books are heavy. Please look into how much it costs to ship a book sized object from the US to you before bidding.

I'm aiming to have all books completed and shipped out by September/October; however, this deadline is tentative and subject to change (either earlier or later) depending on the complexity of the project. All books will be shipped no later than the FTH deadline of December 31st.

Examples of my work You can also find more examples of my work via my tumblr fanbinding tag, here!  You can also see my previous FTH work here and here.

How to bid

The auction will run from Tuesday, March 3rd at 8 am EST to Tuesday, March 10th at 11:59 pm EST.

Please fill out the forms linked below:

Hardcover auction form: here

Paperback auction form: here

You can check the status of your bid at the links below:

Hardcover auction status: here

Paperback auction status: here

I will contact the winners within 24 hours of the auction closing.

Upon winning the auction, please donate the amount specified on your bid directly to any one of the following charities (you can read more about these orgs here):

Advocates for Trans Equality

Disability Law United

Gaza Soup Kitchen

National Black Womens' Reproductive Justice Agenda

National Immigrant Justice Center

Freedom to Read Foundation

Any of the anti-poverty direct aid groups listed here or below:

Houston Food Bank

Proof of your donation is due Wednesday, March 18th.

After I have received proof of your donation, we'll talk details about your book :]

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions! I look forward to crafting for you <3

[ticklefighthockey]

every day i can feel the universe bending towards the brain-melting possibility of hudson and sidney interacting with each other….

I think hudson will behave as long as no one gets him drunk. but if they do it’s all over. he’s going to be sitting next to sid in a bar telling him how he modeled his O face on sid’s golden goal reaction

[starblightbindery]

My personal goal is to try and make fanfic binding as accessible to everyone as possible, so here are some resources on how to make a fanfic hardcover for under $25.

This is a barebones bind for the broke college students and such. Happy to field questions, too!

Here's a proposed budget breakdown:

Loosely organized thoughts:

Fanfic bookbinders often share typesets amongst each other. Never pay for a typeset for a fanfic.

You'll hear a lot about grain direction for your printer paper, but as a newbie on a budget without your own printer, settle for some nice 92 bright paper. If you like the hobby, splurge after but expect to pay at least 2-3x more for short grain paper.

Printing is a pain because some copy shops won't let you print intellectual property smut, and it's very expensive. You are better off bartering instead or looking for a free printer on Buy Nothing.

You know the thick paper wrapping that comes with online orders? It's a good weight for endpapers if you need to scrounge. Paper grocery bags or gift bags (birthday presents) might work, too.

Ask your local library to give you covers from books they are throwing out. Ask for outdated textbooks (those covers are built like tanks) or three-ring binders that are too busted to be binders anymore.

Obtain a used book that was mass produced (so your destruction of it does not impede anyone's access) and maybe even become a little vindictive with it.

If you can afford it, I recommend the Olfa SVR knife (~$10)

If you can afford it, upgrade your ruler to a t-square.

I really hope this resource is helpful! I want to stress how possible this is and encourage people to cherish what they love through art.

If you are interested in fanfic binding and have a little more disposable income, I have an affordable Fan Fiction Bookbinding Starter Pack that I carry on my site. I pack them myself and drop them 1x/month on the 15th.

[shalottpress]

This is such a great resource for anyone starting out fanbinding!

[sleepingpatterns]

So glad to see this!

I would add three things:

1) Instead of a press, you can literally stack every book you own in a precarious tower on top of your text block. Works great. I did this for ages. Just make sure the bottom book is big enough that it distributes the weight evenly (or use a piece of plywood or a cutting board at the bottom of the stack)

2) if you are going to splurge, splurge on nice bookcloth and board!

3) While I'd say it is very good advice to not get too caught up in the grain direction of your text block, DEFINITELY pay attention to the grain of your board and bookcloth (especially if you splurged on it). It is so tempting sometimes to ignore grain in service of "squeezing" another book out of the materials, but in this case, it'll fuck up your cover. Its worth doing it right!

[uispeccoll]

Multi-Mini Monday!

(Okay, posted on a Tuesday, but, whatever)

Let me just start this by saying that the absolute joy that I felt from holding an actual handful of miniature books is unparalleled.

These are dollhouse books! There are 26 books, and the coolest part is that they are all readable! Sometimes when miniature books are made for dollhouses, they are blank books with decorated covers. These books were created by a wide variety of people and publishers, and I think that it shows how wide ranging the world of miniature book creation is!

Each book is unique, and they range in size from 18 to 25 mm. Some of them are gilt, some are illustrated, and some are quite plain. The bookcase itself is 11 x 9 x 4 cm. It is a beautiful wooden case that is decorated with gilt embellishments, orange silk, and golden ribbon trim.

More often than not, the miniatures in our collection are housed individually. It was very cool to see these items in a context that they originally could've been in. You can imagine playing with and reading these books and putting them back on their shelf as one would a standard sized book. It is so fun!

-- Hailee M.

Smith Miniatures Collection Z1033.M6 M56

[zhalfirin-binds]

Graphite Edges

I did some graphite edges again, this time going for a mirror finish (I'm still not sure they couldn't be even more shiny).

(The 2 pictures above show the difference between the graphite edge on a trimmed but otherwise untreated edge and a trimmed and sanded edge with burnished graphite.)

When doing all 3 edges, I always start with the front edge because that's the most difficult one to do without making too much of a mess when it's curved from rounding the book.

My process is first of all sanding (so much sanding in bookbinding).

I started out sanding with a 120 grit and worked my way up to 400 before applying a graphite-paste layer. There are pre-made liquids for graphite edges, but I mix my own batch each time, because graphite powder is what I have, so I use that and it's not really difficult to mix it with a thin paste.

It looks pretty patchy before polishing, which is perfectly normal. When applying the graphite paste the edges should be dust and fuzz free to avoid weird specks on the finished edge. The issue with those specks is that they are usually thicker than the rest and tend to flake off.

Next is waiting for the graphite-paste to dry a bit and then start polishing with a wad of cotton or any soft fuzz-free cloth until the edge is shiny and no graphite comes off anymore.

My graphite paste was a tad too thin though. I polished it, but noticed after a bit I wasn't getting a good coverage on the edge. So I just added another layer, let it dry again and polished some more.

This time I really wanted to see if I could get a mirror finish by burnishing the edge with an agate burnisher. If you do this, make sure your tool, agate burnisher, bonefolder or whatever you use, is clean and unmarred. it's terribly annoying to get scratches on the edge at the very last step. I finished up with a thin layer or wax to protect the paste from getting reactivated, polished and burnished again with cloth and agate.

I'm not sure that's the best it can be, but it certainly is more shiny than the merely cloth polished edge.

[perfectlynormalbooks]

One-volume binding of Shimeji Simulation, one of my favorite mangas of all time. Folio size, Polar Duo, metallic silver HTV + case (with a little hole so you can see the girls being tender together 💙)

I made this one for a friend who mentioned that he'd be interested in reading the manga, but preferred to read manga in physical form. There's no licensed English translation OR print run of this, so I decided to make my own - I downloaded the Orchesc/a/ns translation/scan on MangaDex, compiled it all into a single volume, and reversed the PDF page order before imposing it into signature-form, so it can be read right-to-left, as intended! The edge art is hand-drawn by me, meant to mimic those geometric doodles that show up throughout the story. Hand-sewn headbands, to pull it together! And a little mushroom + fish charm bookmark, because OBVIOUSLY!

Fun fact: this is the first book I've ever bound that's been too chunky to fit in my home guillotine. It was nearly too big for my bookpress, too - but only nearly.

[mythrilthread]

My magnum opus, the jewel of my Binderary round-up, the result of four months of hard work (that is to say, a lot of force applied over distance), the project affectionately known as The Motherfuckers (because it was rather unclear if I was going to finish these books or if they were going to be the end of me).

Force over Distance by cleanwhiteroom. It is currently also on AO3.

I was first introduced to this incredible story by a dear friend, who first sold me on actually watching SGU, and then said that they remember this fic since like 2011, which is always a promising sign. I went digging and found out I was in luck - the story was being rewritten and reuploaded on the author's blog. The next two weeks are described by the same friend as "one of the scariest moments in our cohabitation" as I'd spent literally every waking moment injecting the story directly into my eyeballs, and let me tell you, I'd not been doing a lot of sleeping at that time.

Then I gathered up my courage and reached out to CWR re: my burning desire to bind this story. And the rest, well. Let's dig into it, shall we?

This was my first time typesetting 540k words. Considering I tend to prefer larger font sizes for increased legibility, it was immediately obvious that this was going to be a multivolume project. I settled on three, as it's the relationship between three individuals that forms the core of the story.

I also knew I wanted to keep the typeset in black and white, but play around with light and dark a lot. So I did. One of the first design idea I actually had was the way I wanted to handle projected speech. Mental link between Young, Rush and Destiny is THE most vital part of the story, and I wanted to make it immediatly obvious. I also wanted to be able to take one glance at the page and tell how much of the action is actually just two guys staring each other down :) Hence the blackout effect of thoughts being represented as light over darkness.

I also wanted to preserve as much of my reading experience as possible. So I saved all the chapter quotes/summaries in the TOC, and hid the chapter content warnings in the frame of the gate that marks the beginning of each chapter. For most of the chapter the warnings stay the same, so after a while you stop really noticing them, but then you open a new chapter and see that the familiar shape of the words has changed, and get this UH-OH feeling. Which, I think is very much how it works in my design, because when the warnings change there's usually another line of text added.

For flashbacks and dream sequences I switched from italics to a lighter shade of gray. I woudn't say it's more legible per say, but it's in keeping with the overall light/dark theme.

There are instances of people using handwritten notes in the story. I collected more than a dozen of assorted handwriting fonts, with each character having their own "handwriting". So when, for example, someone begins writing in someone else's hand, you immediately know it.

The most insane, labor-intensive part of the typeset, however, was the way I decided to handle the Ancient translations. CWR's gone through the trouble of setting up hover-to-discover for it, which gives you a very different reading experience than, say, having the translations in the endnotes. So, naturally, I said to myself that I want to replicate that, and footnotes just won't do the trick. So. Every instance of Ancient in the text has an underlay of light gray Ancient script. And an OVERLAY of paper vellum with the translation printed in blue. Now, not to toot my own horn too much, but if looks SICK AS FUCK. You also MAYBE SHOULD NOT LIVE LIKE THIS. For the two copies of this work I had to cut up 10 sheets of vellum into strips, and then spent from 20 minutes to an hour per volume tipping the strips in their proper places. I then had to wear kinetic tape on both my hands to help with the joint pain. (It was worth it.)

Now for the title spread. It is also paper vellum that you see as soon as you turn the first page (the half-title), and see it covering the title of the book and author's name. And then you turn it. And the shields sing the matter wave of Destiny through the black. And yeah, I think that's very, very clever of me, actually.

Then, of course, were the endpapers. All 12 of them are unique abstract paintings done on black cardstock by hand with brush pens and correction tape, I scanned a sample of each set for posterity. All of them are my interpretations of characters' midscapes. For volume 1 I went with the fire wind of Rush's thoughts. Volume 2 was for Young, and I went for the reverse blackout poetry effect (because for all the mental talking they do, the unprojected thoughts are opaque to their counterparts) and all the loops, hairpins and blocks he does. Volume 3 is for the combination - Rush's fire wind, changing its color to match the circuitry pattern of Destiny's AI.

The rest, in comparison, is easy. All volumes are stitched with 3 strands of embroidery floss, a combination of black, blue and silvery-gray. The French double-core endbands are sewn in the same color scheme (though with a different shade of blue and gray switched for white for added contrast). The edges are painted and splattered to look like space.

The covers feature my (signature at this point, I guess) half-cloth river pattern, with the base being dark blue linen and the printed parts being Spitzer telescope images of the W51 star forge, Jack-O'-Lantern Nebula and the Eagle Nebula (courtesy of NASA), waxed by hand for added sheen. The spines are foiled in silver with a foil quill.

Each set is 5 pound of solid hand-crafted book, with one set being my personal copy, and the other sent as a gift to the author.

And that's it, folks! This has been an incredible project to work on, and I'm very proud of what I achieved with it.

[teleportbooks]

Experimental bookbinding!

A couple of years ago there was a conversation in the Renegade discord about books styled after corsetry, and I thought it would be cool to model the actual construction after corsetry, not just the aesthetics. So,

Book pages are often held together by being sewn onto cords or tapes, which are then glued or tied to the cover boards

What if they were laced to the cover boards instead?

In this notebook, each section of folded pages is sewn individually. The sewing creates channels to thread the lacing through.

It took a couple of lacing attempts to get it to work. On an actual corset, the lacing would alternate being threaded out to in vs in to out, so that the corset would be able to lace completely closed. When I laced the book like this, the pages didn't stay in place--I needed the lacing to pull the pages towards the outside edge of the board at every pass through.

The pages are made of onesided graph paper, so they're blank on one side and gridded on the other. I plan to use this as a bookbinding planning journal. Technically, one could unlace the pages and replace them with a blank set when it's full.

The flat-felled seams and boning channels on the cover are purely decorative.

[fantailpress]

Trail Magic (Check Please!)

A gift for @ficcinghell! This Check Please fic was written AND typeset by @tiesthatbindery and features the frogs on the Appalachian Trail. I continue to love doing layered covers and mimicked the section of the AT that the boys hiked (Katahdin to around Allenstown).

The original typeset was for folio size, but I wanted it to feel a bit like a pocket book you would have gotten in the 70s so I shrunk it down to legal quarto. My original plan was to paint the edges in bronze but the bronze paint failed miserably, so I trimmed it off and painted with green ink instead, which further contributes to that retro novel vibe.

I used Lokta paper with a fern pattern for the endpapers as well as the underlayer in the cover.

Denois' typeset was understandably perfect already, and I am very grateful I got to use it! The immaculate retro vibes are wonderful.

[fanboundbooks]

Copy Press Restoration Part 2: electric bugaloo

It will only let me post one video per so I am going to try a sort of reblog chain to get this all in here.

[fanboundbooks]

Okay, my plan to try to add another video to the reblog didn't pan out so here is a link to the other video.

And now for the big reveal!

It took about a year to find the time to get them both done but, here they are! All clean, repainted, and ready to smoosh some books!

Since these two were gifted to me I made sure to get little plaques to add to them stating as much

For the first one I wanted to recreate the paint line pattern that was just barely showing beneath the rust. I am still forever in love with the discovered brass elements for this press.

For the second, I wanted to pull in the colors of my Bindery logo

And right as I was finally finishing up on getting the second guy all cleaned up I sort of tripped and ended up actually buying another press (oops)

He is in much better shape than his brothers were, but still will need some cleaning, oiling, and repainting. Guess I have a project for another day.

Trying to decide their names. oohh if I get a fourth they could be the four hobbits. Oh no, this lives in my brain now....

[elizabethminkel]

The Emerging Art of 'Fanbinding'

Fanfiction enthusiasts are learning “1,000 hobbies in a trench coat” to make gorgeous physical artifacts of their passions.

Earlier this week I reported on the very depressing for-profit fic pirating happening in certain corners of fandom—but (somewhat coincidentally, timing-wise) I also had the joy of reporting this story on fanbinding, and the work of the @renegadeguild! Featuring the words (and fanbinds) of the brilliant @celestial-sphere-press, @butterfingersbookbinding, and @fanboundbooks (who also talked about Renegade on the most recent Fansplaining episode).

Renegade's binders are strong proponents of the non-monetized gift economy—they truly embody the spirit of fanfiction, in my opinion, both in the communal way they share their work with fic writers and each other, and in the DIY way they approach making books:

There’s a strong parallel between the amateur, instinctive nature of fanfiction and the act of fanbinding. While plenty of fic is penned by formally trained writers, much of it is not. Tiffo, who binds as Fanboundbooks, likens the reverse-engineering involved in teaching oneself both activities. As writers, people try to figure out why stories work. Fanbinders collectively share the process of learning to turn that work into a physical object—tactile, clean, often beautiful. Fic is largely unencumbered by the forms and structures of traditional publishing, and fanbinders approach their work with the same spirit. “People will often say, ‘How do I do this?’ or ‘What’s the rule for this?’” Tiffo says. “The answer that we always try to throw in Renegade is, ‘This is what other people have done, but know that there is no rule to your book—you can make whatever you want.’”

It's a shame seeing people conflate the bad actors of the pirating situation—many of whom don't appear to be in fandom and seem motivated by pure profit—with the work of fanbinders at large, and seeing people scared to try out fanbinding because of the recent news. Not-for-profit fanbinding is just as legal as writing fanfiction, and I don't speak for all fic writers, but if someone ever bound one of my fics, I'd be so touched I would almost definitely weep. 😭

[elizabethminkel]

Lots of People Make Money on Fanfic. Just Not the Authors

Next year, SenLinYu’s Harry Potter fic Manacled will disappear from Archive of Our Own. They don’t want to take it down, but it’s the only w

As promised! I wrote about the illegal fanbinding that's led to writers deleting their works recently, how that connects to the current pull-to-publish wave, and what happens when the rapidly expanding sphere of fic readers starts to get disconnected from *fandom*:

The ever-increasing reach of fanfiction has inched the practice away from text-written-in-community to a more traditional author-reader relationship—and the context collapse that’s come with viral works being treated like any other romance novel has spurred clashes between different types of readers with different sets of expectations. In the past few years, fic authors across all corners of fandom have increasingly complained about shifting attitudes from readers who treat them like any other content creator, demanding the next chapter as you might demand your favorite influencer’s next video. But unlike on creative platforms like TikTok and YouTube, the fic writer doesn’t get revenue from their new installment.

We'll also talk about this in some capacity on the next episode of @fansplaining! (In contrast with today's episode, on the non-monetized, gift-economy practices of many fanbinders, whose hobby is also imperiled by the people selling and buying fic.)

[celestial-sphere-press]

This is really a fantastic article, and I recommend reading it!

While the timing of the Renegade Fansplaining episode and the increased discussion of illegal selling of fic in Harry Potter circles was unfortunate and has caused some confusion, it's also reflective of how the last few years have gone. Renegade Bookbinding Guild in its current form does not exist in a vacuum. (Please note I am not speaking officially for Renegade here).

@armoredsuperheavy gave us a firm foundation in anti-capitalist sentiment in Renegade, but as Renegade grew larger fanbinding also grew more prominent in other spaces besides ours. Some of those spaces were profiting off of the selling of HP fic. Direct confrontation seemed to work out best from inside of the Dramione fandom, so we turned to look at how we could affect things more indirectly, and how we wanted to impact our community. I watched volunteers in Renegade brainstorm events that would center a celebration of the authors and promote the gifting of author copies, how to best promote our ethos and the fandom gift economy on social media, determine how best to protect and manage typesets kept within the group, and dedicate time to teach and lower the barrier for entry into fanbinding so people could just do it themselves rather than buying it.

In 2022 we formalized the Renegade Code of Conduct, directly motivated by the profiteering we saw elsewhere. The ethics in the Code of Conduct weren't new - they had been common topics of conversation within Renegade - but it's much easier to have something to point to as things escalated.

But why has illegal selling escalated so much in Harry Potter and Dramione fandom? (conversely I have literally never seen a single one of the fics I've bound listed for sale, and some of them are hugely popular).

I think Elizabeth is entirely accurate here in pointing at context collapse as the problem. There is of course two sides - the sellers and the buyers. The sellers are outright grifters of both sides - if they're on Etsy, 90% of the time they're selling the same type of cheap binding you get from a print on demand company (i.e. worth about $20) marked up to $100-200, the rip-off of the century. If they're on Mercari, it's common to see people reselling books at a higher cost that they paid only materials and shipping for (back when authors were allowing at-cost bindings). Which fuck that, any bound fic in *my* library isn't leaving my grubby little paws unless gifted or in my will.

I really don't think this kind of grift would work as well if the potential buyers were more steeped in fandom culture. While I'm not in Dramione myself, the fandom is so huge you cannot avoid seeing it. I've seen Manacled get recommended right alongside trad-pub romantasy (in romance book clubs!), sent to big booktokers, and both heard and seen people asking in comments "where can I get this book?" Because the context is not there! They don't know what fanfic is or even what that means or any of the community associations with how fanfic is created. These dramione fics are many people's first encounter with fanfic, and if not properly explained many of them will just think it's a book they have to buy. The casual readers are the primary target of this grift - they go and type "manacled book" into google to find where to get it and receive a bunch of etsy listings. Case in point:

And there are even sellers of these popular dramione fics titles as ebooks, which is absolutely ridiculous and shows for a fact that people are just googling titles to find something they were told was a great book.

Looking at the trends of what's been targeted for profiting, I really do think this is currently centered in the Harry Potter fandom (especially the het fics). There's very few fics that fit the bill to be exploited in this way, so while very high profile I don't think most non-HP fan authors should be concerned.

But I do think there's a lesson to be learned from this, because it COULD happen to other fandoms, so we must make sure it doesn't. I think this has shown us we have to be careful about how we are introducing fanfiction stories to those outside of your normal community. It's great to get validation from mainstream culture, but it is more important to ensure that we are connecting people we are sharing with into the fandom context web, rather than cutting the fic out and presenting it to them without context. I think this is probably especially important on algorithm-driven apps like tiktok, where you don't know who will be shown your videos (though as I am not a tiktok creator I don't know the best way to address this).

I've seen a lot of people on Instagram in fandom working very hard to try and spread some understanding of fanfic culture to new fandom members, and I think that's a great start. But to help really shut down the problem, I think it has to be included as part of the first introduction to a fic - and the way they read that fic should probably be directly on Ao3. Of the articles I've seen about the problem, I think this one hits the nail on the head best for where we might be able to address how things get off the rails. I have hope that this is a problem we can keep isolated as the dramione fans work to contain it (efforts are underway that I've seen!). My heart goes out to the authors that have been affected like this, and I know there's been a lot of anxiety. Let's do our best to create a positive environment for our fandoms and give our authors positive engagement instead.

[mythrilthread]

Frigid by Guede

This story has a delicious dark fairy tale vibe. It's something I'll very much enjoy rereading on a cold winter evening.

❄️ Lovingly waxed the hell out of the covers, so they have a nice subtle sheen;

❄️ Really happy with this title page, I cleaned up an illustration from The Pacific tourist (1876) for it;

❄️ I knew from the start I wanted some fancy drop caps, and imagine my delight when I found that the author uses a letter form Goudy Initialen font as a userpic! Of course I went with it as a little easter egg!

❄️ For the endpapers I went for a dramatic red acrylic splatter over very textured paper for that blood on snow feel, because I can't resist being a bit cheeky;

❄️ And to complete the overall winter theme I painted the edges a fun glittery silver.