My dog not 5 minutes later:

So I don’t know about you, but I’m often frustrated by the ridiculous smallness of girls’ pockets. At a bare minimum, I need to be able to shove my cellphone in there - come on, pants companies! So what I started doing was making myself pocket extenders. I’ve done this several times, for pants and shorts. It’s great.

I just got this pair of jeans, so I thought I’d show you how to do it. I kind of feel like it just hasn’t occurred to some of you that this is an option, so maybe now it will. All you need is your pants, some fabric (I just took a random piece from a scrap bin), a needle, and some thread (thread doesn’t even need to match the fabric since literally no one will see it).

See? Ridiculous. Like, half a cellphone, or only 2.5″. Useless.

 So turn those inside out to expose the pockets.

Figure out how big you want your pockets to actually be. I kinda go by whatever looks like might be right. I didn’t really measure them. Fold the fabric in half, so you have a pocket, and then fold it in half again so you can have two equal ones.

Try to get the edges to line up enough, pin it in place, then sew up the sides! Are your stitches crazy uneven and wonky looking? Doesn’t matter; nobody’s going to see it. These are in the inside of your pants. The only thing that matters is that it holds up. So I double-did the corners, since those tend to get the most stress.

Cut open the bottom of the existing pockets.

Pin it in place, then sew around, joining the new pocket to the old pocket. I did this by keeping my hand on the inside, so I wouldn’t accidentally sew through the other side. Again, I reinforced the corners, and didn’t worry about what it actually looks like. Then I turned it in side out to make sure the inside was all joined properly.

Yay all done! And the pockets are so much bigger now!

I believe your exact words were "pics or it didn't happen" (though I admittedly wasn't the anon in that's ask)

So here it is, by printed and bound version of what has quickly become my favorite fanfiction - Salvage, by MuffinLance

Still waiting on the last chapter obviously, (Currently praying to a tiny child god) but once it's done, the book is only a few short steps away from being finished. I am loving the outcome and can't wait to finish this project!

Quote on back is from chapter 12: "When Ozai called him son, it was as different from how Hakoda said it as the crew's laughter was to the Fire Nation royal court's. As 'couldn't go back' was from 'wouldn't'."

End id.]

Disclaimer: I had never bound a book prior to this.

Step 1: Formatting and Printing

Once I had decided that I did indeed want to print and bind Salvage, I started by formatting what I came to call the “Master Text”. 

To make the master text, I made a word document and immediately went to File>Print>Page Setup.

When you do this, a menu will pop up, go to Multiple Pages, and select book fold. At the top of the menu, under Margins, you will also be able to change the margins. in the picture below you can see my preferred settings. Be sure to also change the Gutter (It will automatically be set to 1″ on all sides. IMPORTANT: change Margin settings after selecting bookfold, as when you select bookfold they will be flipped)

(my margins are .8" top and bottom, .5" inside and outside, and .25" gutter)

Once this is all done, go back to your document and start working - it will be a little hard to notice, but your page will be changed, and what you see on each page will be how it should look once it’s printed.

At this point, I basically just copied and pasted the entirety of the fic into the Master Text, formatted the chapter titles to look pretty, numbered the pages, and added a Table of Contents on the first page. I usually make my font size 9 so that the thickness of the book is as thin as possible to save on printing, while still being very readable. (smallest readable font size is 5, by the way. In case anyone was wondering.) I also like my font to be Times New Roman, since it’s universal.

This is when things get tricky, so bear with me. 

I would imagine that someone with their own printer could set their “Sheets per booklet” setting to 4 (shown above as set to 16 but that is [probably] not correct) and just go ahead and print the whole thing. and be done with it.

However, in my case, I wanted to be able to control how much I printed (since the last chapter is not out yet, and I was paying for how many pages I was printing) AND I was using my school printer system, which went through google docs which took all my stuff and change the font and the spacing, and overall was just a disaster.

SO for anyone who would like to control how many pages you print at a time (which I have actually found super useful regardless) the following steps and information are for you.

First thing you need to know is that your pages should be grouped into “Signatures”, which are made up of 4 sheets of paper, printed front and back, which will contain 16 of your book pages. Below is an illustration demonstrating this.

So what I have done is made a folder for each Signature, and in each folder is 4 documents - one for each sheet in the Signature. Each document has two pages - formatted Landscape, with the same margins as the Master Text. In layout, make it so that each page has two columns. Each column will end up being a page in your book.

In the footer, you can manually type each page number and use the space bar to put them in opposite corners of the document. Be sure to mark either “Different odd and even pages” or “Different first page” so that the two sides of the sheet can have the numbers for all the pages. 

IMPORTANT: be sure to format the gutter between the two columns. If you’re following my margin and formatting, the gutter between the columns will be 1.5″. With custom margins, the formula is:

(side margins x 2) + (gutter x2) = column gutter

I label my Signatures A-Z for ease of finding and following along. Here is a chart breaking down how the first 5 signatures should pan out. The different colors dictate that they are on the same sheet, the different tones of those colors dictate that they are on the same side of the sheet. If you have trouble figuring it out past that point please feel free to message me and I can help you.

IMPORTANT: Your smallest and largest number on each sheet should always be on the same side, with the smallest number being on the right side, and the largest being on the left. On the other side of the sheet they should be in numerical order. (As shown in the above chart.) In other words, each sheet will have two sets of consecutive numbers - they should be diagonal from one another.

Once you have all that figured out use your Master Text to copy the page you need and paste it in the correct column. Do this for all of your pages.

(Optionally, this is also where you can do some fun formatting, such as adding Headers or designs to your pages, as these will be the final copy)

IMPORTANT: If you are adding a table of contents - that will be on your page 1. (I also like to make this the title page.)

When you have every sheet for every signature done - you are ready to print. Print each sheet double sided, on the short edge. When I was printing I printed 1 signature at a time, made sure everything looked right, folded each sheet individually, and stacked the four sheets to make each signature.

FUN FACT: My Salvage print is a projected 18 Signatures.

Step 2: The Fun Part

Here is where I step back and let a professional do the talking. Here is how to make what is called a Text Block:

Here is a more in depth video on the stitching style used in the above video:

Feel free to check out more of this lady’s videos. She recommends a lot of products you can use and has a lot of videos on different stitching styles, though I’ve found this on to be my favorite.

For the “two thick sheets” of paper, she mentioned towards the end of the video (the black ones she glued to the front and back), I’m using construction paper. In fact, I just went out and bought a pack of construction paper, of which I will use almost exclusively for everything else in my Salvage printing and binding process.

She also uses a number of tools in these video, such as an awl and bone folder (whatever the heck that is). Instead of an awl, I used a pushpin, and instead of a bone folder I used my fingers, or my ruler.

And finally, for the cover I have this video:

In this video she uses something called bookcloth, which you can buy or make pretty cheaply, but I had construction paper, so I decided to use the contraction paper, which works just as well, and is even cheaper.

The problem with my construction paper, was that the kind I bought wasn’t big enough to cover the entire length of the cover - which is how I came up with the two toned cover idea, with the spine being different from the side flaps. (I also really liked the way it looked

To get this effect I cut out my chip board for the sides (which you could also get fairly inexpensively..... or you can by a cheap binder and cut out the board from within, like I did) measured out as instructed in the video, and wrapped them both in the color of paper that I wanted. I used the purple dries-clear glue stick Elmer’s glue sells, and it worked so good, but you have to work quickly because it dries fast. I also recommend having it dry pressed underneath a Flat Heavy Object TM, like a text book or something, so that it dries flat. 

TIP: Use a glue stick when gluing your material to your covers, but use liquid glue when gluing the signatures together. If you want more information on what kind of glue to use, check out this other video. But also keep in mind she is mostly talking about gluing “perfect bound text blocks” which means they aren’t sewn together at all. (therefore Elmer’s craft bond should work fine for gluing signatures)

When I finally got an idea of how thick the spine was going to be (I recommend having a finished text, so that you can just trace the spine like she did in the video, but I’m impatient) I cut that out, as well as the spine color construction paper. I knew I wanted an inch of overlay onto the sides of the book, so I did the following math:

(side cover overlay (1 in) x 2) + 1/2 in + spine width = width of black spine paper.

After that I decorated the cover as I liked, highly recommend metallic sharpies and pens, and practicing on scrap paper.

Finally, I will (eventually) glue the text block to the cover, as shown in the hard cover video.

When an English teacher, or reader, taught or picked up 1984, it wasn’t with the intention they were going to love the protagonist. They picked it up with the intention of reading a whole story and trying to grasp the theme or catharsis from the story. If the protagonist was a *shitty* person it played into the the themes or the story, because it wasn’t about morally judging the book or *liking* or feeling attachment to the protagonist. Sometimes and often times, books were just about gaining another perspective. 

No one read Lolita expecting to endear, or like, or be inspired by Humbert. You are supposed to be upset by his behavior, you don’t read Lolita with the intention of being inspired. You read it to learn more about what the fuck is going on inside someone’s head when they behave like that. How children get sucked into abusive situations. Or read “The Great Gatsby” not because they want to fall in love with Gatsby or Nick, but to better understand and analyze the experience of the 1920s or destitution of the American Dream. 

A lot of internet and fandom culture has changed that though. When we say something like “I love the Great Gatsby” it comes with the idea or association that means you must *love* or relate to one of the characters. And maybe you do, but the first assumption is not longer about the quality of the work or themes, or cathartic impact-it’s about character admiration. And with that character admiration, in tumblr stan culture, or kin culture, or exalting characters with fanart/romance/so on you don’t just ‘admire’ or find that character ‘compelling’ it now translates to ‘you LOVE that character’ or you ‘DIRECTLY relate to that character.’ 

You can’t say “I love how Humbert is written, it’s so fascinating and dark”, without it directly translating you somehow relate to a child abuser or condone his actions. Taking in media has become an act of worship and connection. We no longer watch meant to just see the story as a whole, we watch expecting to connect to a character and if we offer them our “worship” as it’s become, as opposed to just attention or interest study as it traditionally was, it means we are condoning the character or saying we directly empathize with all their actions. 

I think that’s why there is often now so much fuss over *toxic* characters or not. Or whether that classical novel is showing good or bad things anymore. We’re treating the characters as people we should love or want to draw or write about. Sometimes a story is just about getting the the theme or catharsis or learning another perspective. We don’t NEED to like the character. Or we don’t HAVE to like a character to be impressed by how they’re written or intrigued by their behavior. 

And this is where “unhealthy relationships” in fiction come in too. Well-written, complex stories of bad relationships aren’t supposed to be good and healthy examples. If it’s held up that way (Twilight), then the issue is the writing and the writer. Unhealthy relationships in, say, Anna Karenina are obviously unhealthy but they are, to misquote James Joyce “portals to discovery.” You can know that a fictional relationships is seriously bad and still find it interesting. Psychology! Complexity! 

Also I want to add that some characters (Humbert Humbert is a good one) are written so that if and when you find yourself sympathizing or saying “Yeah, I know that feeling” you’re supposed to stop and consider that. Not in terms of “I am a sick individual and deserve to die.” but more like “is it possible to have compassion for terrible people?” and “what is it in our culture or my upbringing that makes me think like I do?”

I’ve heard way too many people say “I will never read Lolita because of what it encourages” and I just…you’re missing the point? Completely? Like, you’re so missing the point that it’s almost meta? You’re not supposed to like Humbert??? You’re supposed to either be like “wow, gross, dude” or “oh fuck, wait, why do I have even 1 thing in common with this guy?” Nabokov is not going to be straightforward with you! 

It’s like the jokes about being mad at your teacher for asking why the sky is blue in a certain book. Maybe there really is a reason. Did you think of that? For a bunch of people who’ll write thesis-length defenses of your favorite ships and trace down one instance in one minute of one episode of the 15 season show to prove that you’re right, it concerns me that you’re not as willing to look at a lot of other things with any depth. To say nothing of multi-chapter fanfic.

If you surround yourself with only good and pure and wholesome media approved by the purity-culture police, then you just don’t get to do a lot of introspection and I think that’s kind of a shame. I feel like it really limits your view of the world.

I dunno. There’s a weird kind of anti-intellectualism disguised as protection and good intent sometimes. Or it feels like the kind of prudishness that labels some books “dirty” and the people who read them equally disgusting, but just relies on social ostracism to enforce the labels. You know, “Think of the children!!” 

Did I once again start a new fic even though I promised myself I wouldn't before I finished something else?

to thousands of people making phony images and replying to them with their passionate desire to have them as a tshirt to overload the bots with nonsense and junk and send out warnings to shoppers like this:

and now we even have people replying to pictures of baby yoda with “i want this on a tshirt” knowing how ravenous disney is being with copyright in hopes to get the stores taken down altogether