Zero's Fic Binding - Straight On Till Morning
Straight On Till Morning by @sineala
Ship: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
I've had SotM on my binding list since I first pulled the trigger and jumped into this hobby. I had an idea for what I wanted this bind to look like, and MTH2024 gave me the opportunity to do all the things I wanted to with it.
I...love this book. I love this entire bind - from the wild cover to the spine to the end papers to the chapter headers. The sparkly black book cloth. The color contrast on the cover. And the art. I especially fucking love the art.
Gods this cover is so many lines. So many lines.
I wanted to wrap the book around the fic. I wanted the space themes, the trek font, the chapter breaks to all match the theme.
I will admit: I am not a Trekkie. I'm not typically a space gal, with the expectation - it seems - of any space fic related to Stony. I'll eat that shit all day and ask for more. But when it came to the slices of Star Trek lore that I wanted to add, I did the best research I could to get the vibe right. But there is SO MUCH of it, that I had to settle with doing the best I could to match the vibe as well as possible.
I treated this bind as the 'main' book bind for Marvel Trumps Hate 2024 winning bid - in that I wanted to go above and beyond with what I had originally proposed. So, I went on the hunt to get my hands on something I love more then anything to add to my fanbinds: I commissioned art.
@zappedbysnow fucking knocked it outa the park. I am, honestly, blown away at the art that she made. I picked out at one scene per chapter for her to draw, provided my (frankly lackluster) trek research, some (not well articulated) descriptions with some (really bad) rough sketches for the compositions of the illustration I wanted. Zapped took my brain dump and ran away with it.
Special shout out to the Trekkies in the CapIM discord for the assist as well. Nether Zapped nor I are versed in Trek lore, so our collective research on the very specific outfits for this very specific time period were...not as good as we (read: I) originally thought they were. The lore-accurate check was wonderful - thanks for the help, ya'll!
I love this fic. If you haven't read this wonderful novel - please do yourself a favor.