writing with a side of bookbinding

ThatWildWolf on AO3. my writing blog? idk I guess it's mostly shakarian. 》Buy me a coffee? 》main blog 》art blog

[that-wildwolf]

All my Shakarian fics - a masterpost

Crossing A Line - First Contact War Shakarian AU: Garrus finds a wounded human soldier and tries to nurse her back to health. It’s only 4 short chapters, but I love it nonetheless.

Behind Closed Doors - sequel to Crossing A Line. Shepard and Garrus being a couple for 27 chapters straight. There’s an overarching plot, but it’s mostly fluff. And also angst.

Edge of Yesterday - Shepard survives after ME3 but her memories since Cerberus revived her are gone. And Garrus is still in love with her.

Tomorrow’s Light - a kinda-sorta sequel to Edge of Yesterday; a longform take on post-canon domestic Shakarian still struggling with their trauma.

one-shots:

Snipers - Shepard watches Garrus sleep and realises how much he trusts her.

Lullaby - Shepard can’t sleep, so Garrus decides to abandon all of his dignity and sing her a lullaby.

Beauty is Merciless - after getting the missile, Garrus realizes he’s not pretty anymore.

i’ve been looking for incredibles, the meanings of unbelievable - Shepard has trauma responses and accidentally punches Garrus during a panic attack.

i even hope for tragedies (if it goes with the thrill) - Shepard throws herself into danger with little regard for her safety. Garrus notices. Takes place almost immediately after the end of ME2, when their relationship is very new and they’re still figuring it out.

Keep reading

[thatwildwolfwrites]

Bound: triptych. by @thychesters

grey linen book cloth with spine and corner decorations from decorative cardstock. cover decoration is three indents to represent the triptych form of the fic. art by @mounted-archer (used with permission, of course!)

My first time rounding the corners for an entire book! Not sure if I'll keep doing this: I liked it as an experiment, but it makes the book look a little bit like a notebook 🤔

I haven't had much time for bookbinding recently but maybe once I finish the fic I'm writing, I can get back into it! I still have a lot of fics I wanna bind...

[teleportbooks]

Footnotes in Affinity Publisher

Footnotes in Affinity are a pain. The lack of a built-in footnote function is one of its main disadvantages when compared to InDesign. I wrote up a guide for how I format footnotes and use master pages to help streamline the process.

[thatwildwolfwrites]

Your book binding is GORGEOUS I'd love to hear how you got into it!!! What's you'd favorite book you've done? How do you choose what fics you want to bind? Have you ever bound a published book?

I... genuinely don't remember how I got into it. I know my first attempt was back in early 2022 and I bound one fic and then I didn't do anything like that until a few months ago. I don't even remember what it was that made me decide to get back into this. My brain's a noodle strainer sadly, full of holes. Maybe I talked to someone about it and they'll remember? Hopefully lol

I've bound two published books: Bram Stoker's Dracula and Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World, both rebinds of paperbacks because hardcover is superior, both as practice for my "actual" bookbinding which is definitely fanfics. (You can see these are early projects, very underbaked 😅)

As for how I choose which fic to bind, there is A LOT of factors, requirements to fulfill. I will only bind fics I've already read (this is because printing is so expensive, no other reason. I'm not risking a huge amount of money on a story I don't know if I'll like) and I try to avoid very long ones for the same reason (I've only did one and only because that was a gift). After binding a 10K words fic, I have also decided to maybe impletent a lower limit as well😅. So for now I'll mostly only consider binding fics that are roughly in the 30K-90K words range. Of course this is a made up rule in my brain, but that's mostly what I'm looking at right now. It also helps if it's a fic I reread often (see: everything in the Garrus anthology is there because I keep going back to those fics anyway) or a longfic I'm planning to reread soon (as with Peace, Life, and Recovery or drowning in plain sight) and would prefer to do so as a physical book.

I wish ink and toner were cheaper, actually, because I'd love to first experience fics as books and I really enjoy the process of bookbinding so I wouldn't mind doing so even for a story I've never read, but... the price of that is not worth the risk that I'll not like it :/

Oh wow you asked a lot of questions! My favourite book I've done so far is... probably this notebook I made a few days ago, actually.

It's just a notebook. For writing in. I like it. Might be recency bias though. Feels like every time I make a new book, it immediately becomes my favourite bind 😅

So it's either this notebook or Peace, Life, and Recovery. I spent a long time on that typeset and I like how it turned out. (There's a different plant at each chapter, you can't tell that from the photos I shared, I now realise).

Thank you so much for enabling me to yap <3 mwah. big kiss for you

[thatwildwolfwrites]

Bound: Out of the Fade, into the Fire by @whiskynorocks

This is my first gift ficbind (and in typical me fashion I forgot to take any pictures of it so these are prettier than usual because whisky's the one who took them :P) and I am so happy to finally use this hobby to actually give back to fandom writers.

The fic is here if anyone wants to read, which I absolutely recommend. (Where are my post-canon hurt/comfort and PTSD recovery girlies at? This is for us)

As always more about my process under the cut :)

This is by far the longest fic I've ever bound. I was worried about that because I'd never rounded a spine before, but with longer works like this (this is ~400 pages!) the swell from stitching becomes a lot and you end up having to round the spine if you want the book to close at all. But I printed this on 70g short-grain paper specifically because I was trying to minimise swell and... I ended up with none whatsoever lol. Very perplexed. Some nice people on the bookbinding subreddit talked it out with me and I ended up rounding it anyway, but everyone on there was fascinated by my completely flat 400 page bookblock lol. That was funny, people fussing over those photos like I was showing them a cryptid 😂

Anyway, the rounding actually turned out very decent. It was closer to a triangle shape than a half circle at first, but after putting on headbands and the cover, that became completely unnoticeable.

This is also my first time including fanart inside a book. I know there are many ways to go with that, but since this was meant to be a gift, I couldn't exactly mess it up, so I opted for the least risky option which was just glueing on the photo paper onto the desired page. (I barely remembered about it in time, I almost sent it with two pages that just say "image" 😅) Maybe in the future I'll try including the photo paper in the folio or something, but for now this seems like the best solution to this "problem".

In any case, while I don't feel like I learned all that much from this bind, it was definitely all my previous experience coming together, and that's very satisfying. Also, the endpapers didn't warp at all! That's a first for me! I don't know what I did right to make it so though 😅

[thatwildwolfwrites]

Okay, this is the one I actually wanted to learn bookbinding for in the first place.

An anthology of my all-time favourite Garrus one-shots, including works by @mostmagical, Mysti_Fogg, @harbinger-of-whimsy, @thychesters, @whiskynorocks, @camalyng, and myself.

I instantly had the design for this cover in my head as soon as I compiled the fics. I knew Once Upon A Time on Omega was going to be the title from the moment I set out. I struggled more with designing the back cover — I wanted to include a synopsis of at least four or five of the stories, but HTV and small letters is a tough combination, as anyone who's ever tried will tell you... Similarly did I have to give up on my dream of QR codes linking to each of the fics on the back cover; I'm still learning what I can and can't do with the tools at my disposal, especially the plotter, but with where my skill level is at right now, I'm more than happy with how this turned out.

This is probably going to become the most reread book I own.

[joomju]

Fantastic work, OP! It looks gorgeous!

For anyone wanting to peruse the fics, I'm assuming they're all linked on OP's AO3 bookmarks. Hopefully.

[thatwildwolfwrites]

They are, in this collection :)

[thatwildwolfwrites]

Okay, this is the one I actually wanted to learn bookbinding for in the first place.

An anthology of my all-time favourite Garrus one-shots, including works by @mostmagical, Mysti_Fogg, @harbinger-of-whimsy, @thychesters, @whiskynorocks, @camalyng, and myself.

I instantly had the design for this cover in my head as soon as I compiled the fics. I knew Once Upon A Time on Omega was going to be the title from the moment I set out. I struggled more with designing the back cover — I wanted to include a synopsis of at least four or five of the stories, but HTV and small letters is a tough combination, as anyone who's ever tried will tell you... Similarly did I have to give up on my dream of QR codes linking to each of the fics on the back cover; I'm still learning what I can and can't do with the tools at my disposal, especially the plotter, but with where my skill level is at right now, I'm more than happy with how this turned out.

This is probably going to become the most reread book I own.

[thatwildwolfwrites]

cringy god of war fanfic vs cringy bloodborne poem, fight

[thatwildwolfwrites]

I gotta get a nicer background than my cutting mat but I have officially improved and learned and now I am back to my "I'm gonna singlehandedly bring bookbinding into the mass effect fandom" agenda!

This is Peace, Life, and Recovery by @mordinette. It's one of the first Mass Effect fics I read (and has been an embarrassingly big influence on my own Shakarian fics, especially Edge of Yesterday and Behind Closed Doors) and one I've been meaning to reread recently... Now I get to reread it in hardcover!

I am horrible at taking photos of my binds im afraid. This one is so much prettier than how it looks, I promise! The title is in gold lettering on the spine, which isn't on any of the pictures, and looks great on my bookshelf even though it's a little askew.

I already had this floral theme going on with the typeset, so I opted for green headbands, endpapers, and a green ribbon bookmark to go along with it. I spent a long time trying to figure out how I should make the cover look because I don't own green bookcloth, and eventually I ended up making my own out of a thrifted tablecloth and some paper. I think it looks lovely, giving very Jane Austen-y vibes, which is kind of what I was going for here anyway.

I really enjoyed making this one, even though I fucked up the printing TWICE and wasted a lot of high quality paper (hard to get) and ink (expensive) 💀 But I'm super satisfied with how it turned out. My next bind will be a Garrus-centered one shot anthology!

[thatwildwolfwrites]

Reflections of Lost Stars

Category: M/M

Character(s): Nihlus Kryik, Saren Arterius, Commander Shepard

Pairing(s): Kryterius

Summary: After Sovereign's attack on the Citadel, Saren Arterius is captured and detained by Commander Shepard. He's later released into the custody of Spectre agent Nihlus Kryik, who plans to use that as an opportunity to study the effects of prolonged Reaper indoctrination... And maybe to see if the man he loves is still in there somewhere.

Chapter 8 excerpt/sneak peek:

Saren looks down. "It wasn't… violent." His good hand grasps the prosthetic. New and cold and unfamiliar, it's not what he lost nor what he gained. It's something else, something entirely disconnected from that pain. "It was not how you might imagine." "How would that be?" Nihlus is so still he might be a statue: vivid green eyes unblinking, completely focused on Saren's words. "Forced. Sudden. Painful." Saren can feel his throat clench around the lie. He can still feel the searing pain even now as he recalls the memory. His arm ripped from his body, muscles and tendons tearing right in front of his eyes as he breathed through the pain. "It was not any of those things. It was…" A sacrifice. An offering. "…a deal." "A deal?" As much as Nihlus was an enigma before, now his emotions are clear and overwhelming: the disgust, the anger, the envy, the disapproval. "With Sovereign?" The hatred.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[thatwildwolfwrites]

2025 Writing Roundup

tagged by @thychesters and i'm gonna do this one because i like you.... 👉👈

Words Posted:

67,831.... yeah, 2025 was not my year in many ways. at least there's a low bar for 2026?

Additional Words Written:

am i gonna count this.

13,984. That's even sadder. Like I said, 2025 was not my year!!!

Fandoms:

mass effect and the legend of zelda

Highest Kudos + Highest Hit One-Shot:

Control for both which I'm not surprised by but... sigh. As for non-smut, Blue Glow was the highest so I'm choosing to believe that's my #1 this year...

New Things I Tried:

I have no idea what it is, but whatever I did with State of Denial lol

I also started taking part in writing challenges like the ficwip 5K (which I wrote three fics for! All of them performed horribly, but I wrote them!) and the "a picture is worth a thousand words" challenge. I even made a separate AO3 pseud for my shortform works so they wouldn't clutter my main profile.

Fic I Spent The Most Time On:

am I allowed to say pirate AU if I still haven't posted the pirate AU. Other than that, Control. It always takes me an embarrassingly long amount of time to write smut. This one had been a WIP for three, almost four years!

Fic I Spent The Least Time On:

Any of the 1K prompt fills tbh, but Weather Vane I'm pretty sure was all in one sitting.

Favourite Thing I Wrote:

I posted the last chapter of Change Starts With Today in 2025, so technically I could count it as a 2025 fic... It might be one of my favourite things I wrote ever. I am also partial to State of Denial. Anything with a semi experimental narration style for me is fun.

Favourite Thing(s) I Read:

dreamt a cipher by @milkywayes is a fic of all time. Like this is the kind of writing that I feel makes me a better writer by just reading it.

Displaced by @airplanned because like holy fucking shit.

the space between by @thychesters because shakarian... like this kind of fic reminds me of why we write fic in the first place, not sure if that makes sense.

additional literature nobel prize for lifetime achievement goes to @mostmagical where i can't single out any one fic because everything makes me feral

Writing Goals for 2026:

I'm mostly gonna keep chipping away at Reflections, maybe with a Shakarian one shot every here and there (I have the Shakarian post-breakup/getting back together/breakup aftermath fic in the works still!) but I'm mostly gonna be focusing on Reflections. I need to finally finish that fic!

New Works:

none nada nothing i got nothing

Tagging:

@nicolasadrabbles @whiskynorocks and @epilogoest :)

[thatwildwolfwrites]

my AO3 wrapped 2025

[thatwildwolfwrites]

Title: A Little Green

Word count: 6,856

Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy

Relationship(s): Shakarian

Summary: While working a routine escort job for a high-ranking Hierarchy official, Shepard and Garrus have to deal with new feelings coming up for the first time in their relationship.

Excerpt:

Garrus holds up a closed fist as soon as he spots her, and she stops mid step. He nods his head at the hallway to the left and holds up a finger. Shepard nods. One hostile ahead. Shouldn't be a problem. She quietly makes her way to where Garrus is crouched at the corner. There is, indeed, a heavily armed turian guard patrolling the area. Doesn't look like he's here on vacation. Shepard slowly lines up her rifle's sights with the target. A quick draw, aim, and fire. The turian is dead before his body hits the floor, the bullet fired from Garrus's gun lodged deep in his brain. Shepard allows herself to smile. A wave of pride swells up in her chest almost as though she's the one who took that killing shot. "Nice work." She sends Garrus a small, approving nod. He's been keeping his skills sharp. The irrational unearned feeling of pride at the work he did does not go away, though.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[thatwildwolfwrites]

My upcoming Shakarian fic, A Little Green, the first 500 words

(aka brand new marketing tactic to get people interested in my fic ahead of time)

Garrus is awoken by the feeling of his omnitool buzzing as it comes to life around his forearm. For a brief moment, he's not sure where he is or what's happening. That only last for a second, though, before it all makes sense again: the unfamiliar bed and the familiar way its mattress dips under his and Shepard's combined weight; the dark room and the jarringly bright orange glow of his omnitool. Garrus groans, his sight still blurry, and squints to make out the words on the display right in front of his eyes. It's a video call. From Adrien Victus.

A quick glance at the time confirms that while it is late enough to be technically considered "morning", it is far too early for any sane person to be up without a good reason. Definitely too early to be calling someone out of the blue. "Ignore it," Shepard groans from somewhere on the other side of the bed. He hadn't realised she'd woken up too. "It's Victus," he explains. The look she gives him, just before pulling a pillow over her head, says that it's not enough of an argument to convince her. "We're on vacation," she points out, voice muffled by the pillow. She yawns and then rolls over so her back's facing him. "Just... Ignore it. I'm sure he'll call you back." On some level, Garrus is inclined to agree with her. They've been planning this vacation for quite a while now, and he doesn't often get a chance to relax. The last thing he needs right now is work, and there's no doubt in his mind that that's what the call is about. Isn't the whole point of going away for vacation to make it clear he's not available? Then again... Ah, damn it. Garrus shakes his head, mostly to wake himself up more. This is probably important. He normally wouldn't even consider taking a call while still in bed, but this is the Primarch. He just tries to angle his camera so as not to make it too obvious that he isn't wearing anything, and answers the call. "Primarch?" "Vakarian. There's a job for you." No preamble, then. Garrus fights the urge to yawn. "Sir. I am on vacation." "I know. It's urgent." A naked Shepard pops up from behind Garrus's shoulder, hair ruffled and eyes misty. "Primarch, it is five in the morning here." She groans, not nearly as willing to hide her displeasure. "Why are you bothering my husband?" "Ah, Commander. Good." Victus barely shows any reaction to seeing her in that state, beyond just acknowledging her presence. "You can help here." Shepard, still somewhat lazily, rubs her eyes. She briefly glances at Garrus, but turns her attention to the screen almost immediately. There's still some part of her, a part she actually tries to suppress nowadays but doesn't always manage to, that still makes her lock in and prepare for the mission ahead as soon as even the possibility of one arises.

"What is it?" she asks tersely. Almost like a soldier receiving orders. Almost like the thing she can't train herself out of being, no matter how badly she wants or tries to. It's still an instinct, still second nature. It's still at heart what she is, even after years of figuring out who she is outside of that.

[thatwildwolfwrites]

is it okay if i post a small snippet of my pirate au on here 👉👈

[thatwildwolfwrites]

My first ficbind is complete!

This is Somewhere Far From Goodbye, and while it's also far from perfect, I feel incredible being able to hold this little novella I wrote about these fictional gay aliens. I will definitely be doing more ficbinding and bookbinding from now on. And @bonksoundeffect was lovely enough to let me use this tender kryterius drawing for my chapter headers!

It's printed on standard copy paper that I trimmed by hand with a hand trimmer at work, each signature separately. I'm sure there's a better way to do this without an industrial guillotine, but for now that's the best I could do. I needed to trim this because at less than 10K words, this one was barely big enough for me to be able to sew it together - I had to increase the page count somehow and I decided to do it by just making the pages very small. The end result is 11cm wide, smaller than most of my paperbacks 😅

The cover is also made from regular printer paper — I was afraid of splurging on professional bookcloth with my first project, in case I didn't like this hobby... Now I wish I had gone for something more durable! The black and white does fit the vision I had, though, so I'm mostly happy with it. The spine is lined with this cool space-pattern fabric I picked up at my favourite local crafts store. They already know me (💀) and know I like space themed things (💀) so I was immediately pointed to these when I went in asdkfjhdgkj....... But yeah I finally found a project I can use them on. It was a whole bundle, so I expect future mass effect fics to have these space fabric spines as well.

Now for my mistakes: paper was not the best choice for the cover. I fucked up. I followed a tutorial on YouTube where the woman showed how to do a hardcover using paper, and it looks clean, but I just know this is gonna fall apart soon. Especially at the back, you can already see spots where it scraped off a little bit when I was applying it onto the glue. Maybe I'll eventually rebind it when I get better at this 🤔 I also cut the endpapers a bit too short, but you can't really tell when it's closed. It opens surprisingly nice, almost 180 degrees! I'm happy with that, even though the glue really warped the endpapers. I know to use a thinner layer now!

All in all, I'm pleased. I did a new thing that is going to become a fun hobby (I already printed out and stitched two other fics, and I'm typesetting a few more! I hope to have enough to have something to do during Christmas break when I don't have access to the printer at work.

[thatwildwolfwrites]

Title: Selfish

Word count: 4,184

Fandom: Mass Effect Trilogy

Relationship(s): Shakarian

Excerpt:

This will... be enough. Existing in her carved out pocket of time where the war doesn't reach, where she can be soft and gentle with him in ways that she doesn't show anywhere else, where each moment they share together doesn't feel stolen but instead earned... He can be here. He can be here and it will be enough, no matter how he feels when they're elsewhere. He hates that it's all he can give her. Just a few stolen moments of peace, away from all the chaos and death outside, just a few preciously short hours in his arms, in the lie he repeats to her and to himself even when she's asleep. I've got you. You're safe. Promises he can never deliver on, soft reassurances he can never assure. The lie of his embrace is a comforting one — she lets her guard down and falls asleep, forehead pressed to his keel, lips parted and her breath even — but it's still a lie. He can't give her anything more than that. He can't give her anything real. He dreads the day she will finally realise that.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works