Bookbinding, ACOTAR and crazed Maasverse theories.
(And that's just for breakfast)
Binding under Hedera Press 🍃 | She/her | EU-based
A millennial still trying to figure out how tumblr works 👩🦳
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And speaking of Sophia Tolstoy, her diaries are just so depressing.
“I am to gratify his pleasure and nurse his child, I am a piece of household furniture, I am a woman. I try to suppress all human feelings. When the machine is working properly it heats the milk, knits a blanket, makes little requests and bustles about trying not to think […].“
She wrote this when she was 19, one year into her marriage to Leo and as she was pregnant with the first of his 13 children.
A few years later, when she was 25 or so:
“I am so often alone with my thoughts that the need to write in my diary comes quite naturally … Now I am well again and not pregnant—it terrifies me how often I have been in that condition. He said that for him being young meant “I can achieve anything”. For me […] reason tells me that there is nothing I either want or can do beyond nursing, eating, drinking, sleeping, and loving and caring for my husband and babies, all of which I know is happiness of a kind, but why do I feel so woeful all the time, and weep as I did yesterday? I am writing this now with the pleasantly exciting sense that nobody will ever read it, so I can be quite frank with myself […].“
During her 12th pregnancy she wrote about taking scalding baths and jumping from high pieces of furniture to try and miscarry. And at one point while reading her husband’s diary (which he told her to read) she found the sentence “There is no such thing as love, only the physical need for intercourse and the practical need for a life companion.” In her own diary she wrote “They ebb and flow like waves, these times when I realise how lonely I am and want only to cry…”
A few years before her husband’s death, she published a cycle of prose poems titled “Groans”, under the pseudonym “A Tired Woman”.
“I have served a genius for almost forty years. Hundreds of times I have felt my intellectual energy stir within me and all sorts of desires - a longing for education, a love of music and the arts… And time and again I have crushed and smothered these longings… Everyone asks, “But why should a worthless woman like you need an intellectual or artistic life?” To this question I can only reply: “I don’t know, but eternally suppressing it to serve a genius is a great misfortune.”
☙ “It's too hard. I don't wanna do this.” “Oh, is it? Sure, that's fine. We can stop. Maybe when they come to kill you, you can tell them how hard learning to fight was and they'll have pity”
☙ “Can you help me? I can't figure it out.” “Fine. Meet me in the training grounds later.”
☙ “Why would I need to know this? I know how to fight, isn't that enough?” “You must still be having childish dreams of war paid with glory. Violence should only ever be your last resort. If you cannot engage in diplomatic correspondence, your hand should never carry a sword.”
☙ “You cut me!” “You were being sloppy.”
☙ “But it hurts.” “I know. But next time it'll hurt just a little less, and the time after that as well. As long as you keep getting up, the pain will get easier to carry.”
☙ [on the battlefield] “What is that?” “... Probably an arm. Don't look too closely.”
☙ “But why can't I play with my friends?” “They're normal kids. You're not”
[Prompt Calender: July 15th, World Youth Skills Day ]
Hi!!! I'm just a quarter of a way through A Strange and Stubborn Endurance, and was so happy to find you have a blog!! It's been a lovely read, I love the prose and the world building, the normalization of queerness and how it would look in a fantasy setting on a functional level. I really appreciate that the inclusivity in queerness doesn't immediately make Qi-Katai an idyllic paradise and there's a level of groundedness to how things work.
I can't wait to finish the duology! I was wondering if you had any specific race/POC rep in mind when writing Vel and Cae, because just based on description, I've been picturing Vel as potentially South Asian and Cae as perhaps East Asian? I'm not completely sure. Would love to hear your thought process!
This is an interesting question, because while representation of all kinds is relevant to SFF stories, I don't think it makes sense to analyze secondary settings in quite the same way we do those which, by whatever logic, are considered an extension of the real world. In the case of racial representation, the reason for this is that race is foremost a social construct rather than an immutable biological category: it's a word we've looped around the (predominantly visual) expression of certain traits with reference to a (perceived) shared cultural, religious, geographic and/or historical framework, and as such, even when a given fictional realm is (arguably or explicitly) based on a real-world setting, I'd argue that the act of redrawing the cultural context means implicitly reconsidering our associated racial assumptions, too.
For instance: Cae is described as having bronze skin, brown eyes and straight black hair. In the real world, this could plausibly describe a person from any number of backgrounds, because none of these traits, either singly or collectively, is unique to a given group. But for precisely that reason, if I gave Cae's description to a character from a story set in the real world, there'd be a reasonable expectation that I specify their heritage, not just so the reader could picture them better, but because knowing whether they were Thai or Native American or Turkish would impact other aspects of their characterisation. Cae, however, is Tithenai, and Tithena is neither a real place nor based on a specific real-world culture, which means that, regardless of whether you picture him as resembling someone who's Thai or Native American or Turkish or any other thing, the cultural underpinnings of those racial categories are irrelevant to the text, except inasmuch as you might also choose to imagine other aspects of Tithena - the clothes, the food, the architecture - as being similar to that particular real-world culture.
But, by the same token, you might just as easily choose to imagine these things as disjunct, or to forgo overt real world comparisons entirely. How you build the visuals of the story in your mind palace is up to you! But what I'm trying to get at is that "specific race/POC rep" is not a given in this milieu, because the relevant categories are all ultimately derived, not from immutable biological separatism, but real-world social distinctions born of centuries of geopolitics, migration and cultural intermingling that don't necessarily have meaningful analogues in an invented setting. Even highly oversimplified terms like "white" and "black" are ultimately products of a specific cultural discourse, and while we might employ them of necessity, we should still keep in mind the fact that their parameters are no more fixed than their implications are neutral or their usage universal.
At the same time, however, there are unequivocally many instances where authors intend the inhabitants of their secondary worlds to be firmly associated with specific real world analogues, even at a granular level. Whether by overt implication or authorial word of god, these are stories and settings which, despite having no in-world connection to any version of our Earth, are still presented as spiritually deriving from it, as though possessed of a sort of cultural haecceity. Which is, I hasten to add, entirely fair; and particularly given the strong historical bias towards white Eurocentrism within fantasy as a genre, the more recent boom of stories that take their inspiration elsewhere is entirely justified, to say nothing of being wonderful. It's just that, as a general point of principle, I think it's important to acknowledge that race, by virtue of being socially constructed, does not have to retain the same boundaries and categorizations in a secondary world that it does on Earth. While readers and creators alike are still inevitably influenced by and thus beholden to the real world optics of race - meaning, to give just one example, that "But it's a fantasy world!" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for uncritically replicating a pernicious racial stereotype - it doesn't therefore follow that all secondary world fantasy characters and cultures must have a set real world analogue; that we cannot ever imagine them fluidly.
All that being so, therefore, you're absolutely free to imagine Vel as South Asian and Cae as East Asian! I do not have any immutable facecasts for either of them, and am delighted with all permutations. However, when A Strange and Stubborn Endurance was first released, Tor commissioned this gorgeous artwork of Cae and Vel by Nicole Deal, for which I was asked to provide some vibes-based visual references for the artist. My choices for Vel were Mika Zibanejad,
Damiano David
and Riz Ahmed;
for Cae, it was Booboo Stewart
and Paing Takhon.
None of these are definitive, but they're certainly fun to look at, and either way, I hope this answers your question! :)
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You know how much of a more compelling (and sexier) character Cassian would have been if he was forced to cope with broken, mangled wings? He could have dealt with all that, then actually stood in solidarity with the Illyrian women.
He would have had no contenders anyways because of nepotism with Rhysand. And still could have “fought like Enalius.”
Imagine him put swords or something on his wings.
But, noooooo…
He gets to have everything the women can’t never have and then pretend he’s on their side.
We open with Ithan, who is currently doing work for Jesiba. He's grappling with this book's ripoff of the Monster Book of Monsters from Harry Potter, which he only successfully wrangles with Jesiba's help. And he gives it the finger, because these books are all grown-up and mature and definitely not stuck in the stage where the finger is the height of humour.
He’d been working nonstop for the past day,
[...]
He didn’t leave Roga’s office. She had food delivered from the House’s private kitchens—and if he needed to rest, she ordered him to curl up on the carpet like the dog he was.
Okay, "past day" is a little ambiguous, but, really? During the course of a day's work, Ithan needs to curl up and have a little nap? Just how long is the "past day?" An eight-hour shift? A full 24 hours? Somewhere inbetween? I've worked some long shifts before, and never needed a freaking nap during them.
But, Ithan is glad enough for it, because angst, of course. What else?
Kept him from thinking about the blood on his hands. The body he could only hope was indeed on ice somewhere in this subterranean warren.
That does raise an interesting question - how the fuck was Jesiba able to get Sigrid's body? Had the Viper Queen not disposed of it already? Was she just sort of..... hanging on to it? Why? Apart from convenience, of course.
He might have objected had she not been the bearer of good news: Hunt Athalar, Ruhn Danaan, and Baxian Argos had escaped from the Asteri’s dungeons during a rescue operation that had incinerated the entirety of the Spine.
Oh yeah, they incinerated the Spine during their escape for... some reason. Again, why, apart from just wanting to make it more awesome? The escape would have worked just fine without it. It's literally a footnote that Flynn and Declan had to randomly pull up in a van to convey to us. And it all feels a bit self-congratulatory, tbh.
The Hind had done it. Tharion and Flynn and Dec had done it.
Correction: Lidia had done it. Full stop. The only other one who contributed was Declan, and that's only if you consider making cameras do suspicious things to be contributing. I thought Flynn was the getaway driver, but then he just drove off without anyone, so who even knows. He and Tharion did jack shit.
Ithan randomly brings up that Jesiba's books were from the library of Parthos, leading to a conversation where she assures us that no, the humans never had magic, it's Jesiba's enchantments that make the books come alive. Ithan also seems bamboozled about why she wouldn't sell priceless illegal history books. But Jesiba isn't worried about it for the obvious reason, no.
She gave him a withering look. “Because my spells are written in there. I’m not letting that knowledge loose in the world.” Roga had been a witch before she’d defected to the House of Flame and Shadow and called herself a sorceress instead.
Notably missing, even after the better part of two-and-a-half books - any indication of what the difference between a witch and a sorceress actually is.
Jesiba describes what was in the books, and it sounds like the Greeks wrote them, tbh. She gives some exposition that could be a curiously non-bungled allusion to the rampant anti-intellectualism today, and also tells us that the merfolk were responsible for helping the one human ship that got away, get away. Because of fucking course. The humans can't have any achievements of their own, no. There's got to be a fucking Vanir or ten who are actually responsible for everything.
Ithan keeps asking how she knows about all this. As if the obvious answer isn't obvious - she was involved, Ithan, duh.
“I’ll refrain from making the comparison to a dog with a bone.”
She says, as she makes the comparison.
“Quinlan knew when to keep her mouth shut, you know. She never asked why I have these books, why I have the Archesian amulets that the Parthos priestesses wore.”
Wait... so.... the humans didn't have magic....... but their priestesses wore magic demon-repelling amulets? That we know work, because it was a (badly executed) plot point in the first book?
Well, Jesiba snaps her fingers, and then turns into an even younger form. Quite randomly, I must say.
“So you’re … able to do magical makeovers?”
She didn’t smile. “No. I was cursed by a demon. By a prince who intercepted my ship and the books on it.”
So..... she's a human....... who can do magic.....?
Well, apparently, her ship was stopped by Apollion, who refused to believe her when she said there were just books on board. And so, he cursed her for her impudence. What kind of curse, you might ask?
She gestured to her longer hair, her softer face. “To live, unchanging, until I showed him the true power of the books,” she said simply.
Yeahh. That is a weaksauce fucking curse if ever I heard one. That'll, er, show her, I guess? It's not like humans have been seeking the secret of eternal youth basically forever or anything. She does explain where she got her magic from, though, since humans apparently don't have magic. Only magic amulets.
Her gray eyes darkened like the stormy sea she’d sailed across long ago. “When Apollion found my ship, he was ripe with power. He’d just consumed Sirius. I don’t think he intended it, but when his magic … touched me, something transferred over.”
From the way she said touched, Ithan knew exactly how she viewed what he’d done to her.
Go on, book. Say it.
It won't, though. It wants the grimdark cred, but doesn't have the guts to say "rape," or even "assault." And if you don't have the guts to say it, then you shouldn't be writing about it. Also adding insult to injury, the book makes the comparison, but doesn't seem to realise that this "assault" gave Jesiba very powerful magical abilities. Yes, she didn't ask for them, and may well not want them - but it is something you need to keep in mind if you're trying to make parallels with real-life traumatic experiences that are, in general, overwhelmingly disempowering for the victim.
Anyway, yes, Jesiba is apparently a 15000 year old human with demon-given powers.
Horror sluiced through [Ithan]. “Do you want to … start aging again?”
Yes. Aging. The horror.
But, Jesiba says no (because of course). Not until a world exists where the books will be safe, which tbh makes her better protagonist material than literally any of the protagonists in this book.
Next chapter opens with Bryce, who is apparently pleased that she's pissed off the Autumn King. In case we needed any more proof that she was a horrible, immature person.
“So close,” she purred as she shut the door and approached the desk, “but so far. So unworthy.”
Just. Stop, Bryce. Please. I only have so much hatred in me.
She's randomly decided to tell the Autumn King about the night he sent people after her mum. Which I'm p sure we already heard about in one of the other books, but damned if we aren't going to hear it again, I guess.
"And that night your loser guards caught up with us … that was the first time Randall picked up a gun again. He put a bullet right through your chief security officer’s head."
But I assume he grew a new one? Or because he's not plot-relevant, it instantly killed him, is that it? Bullets through the head are lethal, unlike bullets through the heart and getting your brains splattered across the oceans. No, I'm still not over this.
"Because in that moment, even after only three days on the run, [Randall] knew that he was already in love with my mom. And that there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.”
Because... what, if he wasn't in love with her, there'd be no reason to save her and her kid from the goons chasing them? He'd have just left them to get fucked? God, every time I think the morals in this book can't sink any lower, I'm always unpleasantly surprised.
Anyway, Bryce apparently somehow got the magic-stopping shackles off her wrist, and clips them onto the Autumn King instead. No, I'm 99% sure we knew nothing of this plan until right now. What the fuck else is new.
Oh. No, apparently it's worse than that. See, we're just now learning that Bryce actually landed in the Autumn King's house on purpose, all as part of her plan, because she Just Knew that he knew something about the Starsword and how it worked and... honestly, I don't even care anymore. I'm just tired. How can I be invested in a book, when random crap keeps happening that the books swears was part of the plan all along, and thinks all it needs to do to justify it is just have a character come along like
Spoiler: that's not how it works. At all. All you do is piss people off and undermine any semblance of tension your story has, because we know it's all going to be solved by a Deus Ex Machina infodump that was Totally Part Of The Plan after the requisite number of pages have passed.
Apparently she got out of the shackles because Ruhn conveniently had a key in his room, because abuse or something. Sure, whatever. I don't care. I can't care. There's no reason to care, because nothing that's been written before this matters. Bryce will just retcon in a brilliant plan and monologue at us about it.
Bryce says she'd totally kill the Autumn King, but apparently they have a bargain, and she has a hot date. I remember neither of these things, but sure, whatever. Like I said, none of it matters. She decides she's going to lock the Autumn King in the basement.
Ever since Vesperus had writhed under the two blades, there had been a thought niggling at the back of Bryce’s mind.
Good to know the book has learned the meaning of the word "writhe" since last time. But, er, when was this thought niggling at you, Bryce? First we're hearing of it. Fuck me, there's only so many ways I can say the same thing.
She shuts him in the basement, he makes threats, etc, etc.
Whistling to herself, propping the Starsword on a shoulder, Bryce strode out of the basement.
Tell me you only care about the appearance of a badass without telling me you only care about the appearance of a badass. Seriously, who does this completely unironically? It's just so utterly cartoonish.
She wanders into his study to get her phone, and sees his prism and orrery there. And starts thinking about stuff.
[Bryce had] claimed [Silene's] magic, she supposed, as Silene had surely left it there for future heirs to take. But why hadn’t they? Why hadn’t her son, who’d heard the truth directly from her mouth?
Convenience, presumably. 15000 years of convenience.
With a sharp inhale, Bryce rallied her magic. On the exhale, she sent a stream of her starlight into the prism, her power faster than ever before.
How fast/slow was it moving before? Because we call lightspeed "lightspeed" for a reason. It's how fast light moves. It doesn't really get faster or slower.
Speaking of physics fails (although this one might get a pass bc magic):
Where the rainbow would have been full of color, this one began in shimmering white light and descended into shadow.
An anti-rainbow, as it were.
No, it's greyscale. Close, though. But, it seems this is all because of Silene's power, where Bryce's starlight was "pure" before, now it has a layer of darkness. She angsts about it without really saying much. Whatever. I'm sure it'll be fine. Protagonists are never allowed to be wrong in a Maas book.
She starts thinking about how prisms can smash light together or something (don't ask), and then...
All that smashing light, those little bits of magic bashing into each other, would produce energy. And fuel her up like a battery.
She hoped.
I thought you didn't need to be charged up anymore? Like, that's what Silene's power did? And why you were able to open the portal back here? Where the fuck was the editor? Actually, on that note, I saw a post today where apparently there were three or four different editors on this book. I'm guessing SJM rejected the feedback of every single one. There's no other explanation for why the book is such a hot mess of basic errors like this.
Blah blah, stepping into her power, light it up, time for an epic conclusion to the scene, no?
With a parting middle finger to the floor at her feet
*sighs* What can I say? Really, what?
But, yes, she spends too many words telling us she teleports to wherever Hunt is, and then we POV switch to Ruhn. Too many words are spent saying his hand is mostly grown back now, and Lidia is unconscious, until she's not, and she opens her eyes.
Then Lidia asked very quietly, “Where are we?”
The question surprised him. She’d planned this escape. Had her injury affected her mind? Gods, he hadn’t even thought about the potential damage from going without oxygen for so long.
So, the book does understand that this is a thing, then? Does Vanir superhealing and/or magic firstlight resurrection not fix damaged brain cells? If not, why not? Reasons? Also........ I'm getting the horrible feeling that some kind of brain/memory issue is going to be Lidia's "get out of jail free" card for all the heinous shit she did as the Hind.
Ruhn tells her they're on the Depth Charger, and Lidia... freaks out? Rips out her IV (which is a terrible idea btw, never do this), charges off down the hall, etc. Ruhn goes after her. She runs to what appears to be classrooms? Where there's some golden-haired non-merfolk kids there. Flynn assumes that they're Lidia's brothers, but she says they're actually her sons. Dun dun dun!
......yeah, I'll be very, very surprised if they're actually her biological children, especially since this is a cliffhanger chapter ending. But, who knows? This book is really, really weird about children.
Ah I almost didn't remember why I'd given up on the book on this particular chapter. It's the prism stuff.
I guess SJM skipped all the physics classes just like she skipped the poetry ones (so not useful you guys!), because this is optics and thermodynamics level zero.
Even if we give a pass to the absurdity of a light beam being decomposed into shadow (??? "dark light"/ultraviolet light is still light, not shadow), did energy conservation fly out the window? If Silene's energy was inside her to begin with, and assuming there's perfect conductivity and no dissipation (which never happens), all that mirror/prism play does is inject the same exact amount of energy back into her. Prisms don't magically make more energy out of thin air - is this not intuitive?
Anyway, this was my limit, so now I'll take @snarkformysanity 's word to know what happens in the rest of the book.
Book Decoration: AKA All The Ways I Don't Use a Cricut
(this post is for people who don't want to buy an expensive cutting tool, or for those that do have an expensive cutting tool that would like to mix things up a little)
1. Print That Shit
If you're already printing your own textblocks, an easy step for titles is to print them. Above is a title printed onto an "obi" of decorative paper. I measured out where I wanted things on the finished book and laid it out in Affinity, then printed it on a full sheet & trimmed it down to wrap around the book. A more simple method is to print & glue on the label into a slight indent in the cover (to protect it). A third option is to do the spine in bookcloth, while you print on paper for the cover and then glue that paper onto the boards (this usually looks even better when it is a three-piece bradel bind).
2. Foil Quill / Heat Pens
The heat pen is one of my go-to tools, but it can be a bit touchy about materials. The most popular version is the We R Memory Keepers' Foil Quill (which is one of the most ergonomic), but other pens exist that can get you to a higher heat temp, finer lines, or more consistent foil. For example, I have a pen created by a local Japanese bookbinding studio that fares way better on leathers than the WRMK quill & with a finer tip, but it's hell to control. Best results in general are on paper or smooth bookcloth (starched linen, arrestox, colibri - even duo will work but its less solid). The fuzzier a bookcloth is, the less your foil quill wants to deal with it. This means the heat n bond method of making bookcloth does not play nice with a heat pen usually, but there are two solutions: 1) use this tutorial on paste + acrylic medium coated bookcloth instead that will get you a perfect surface for the heat pen, or 2) use the pen on paper & then glue onto the cloth. I did a video tutorial for both foil quill use and this type of homemade bookcloth for @renegadeguild Binderary in 2023.
You get the most consistent results by tracing through a printed template that is taped in place, as I do in the video above.
3. Paint That Shit
Acrylic paints will do you fine! The above is free-handed with a circle template, because I wanted that vibe. If you need straight lines that won't seep, lay them down with tape first & then paint over it first with a clear Acrylic medium, then your color. Same goes for stencils. Two more examples of painted bookcloth:
4. IT'S GOT LAYERS
By using layers of thinner boards, you can create interesting depths & contrasts on your cover. You can also make cutouts that peep through to the decorative paper behind. The most important part to this technique is the order in which each edge is wrapped. To get a good wrapped inside edge, you will split the turn in into tabs to get them to conform to a curve. You can also layer multiple colors of bookcloth without multiple layers of board, as seen below left, so long as you mind your cut edges for fraying.
5. Inlaid... anything
Mirrors! Marbled paper! I saw someone do a pretty metal bookmark once! The key is creating a little home for it to live in, which is pretty similar to the above layering method. On one layer you cut the shape, & glue that layer onto the bottom solid board before covering. You can do the top layer as an entire 1 mm board (like I did for the mirrors) or a sheet of cardstock, like I would use for inlaid paper.
6. Decorative Paper
Decorative paper is always helpful & adds to the paper hoard... & its effects can be layers with other techniques, as below. Marbles, chiyogami, momi, or prints & maps of all kinds can be great additions. Some papers may need a protective coating (such as wax or a sealer).
7. Stamps (with optional linocut)
While I've not used many more regular rubber stamps, I do know some who have, successfully! And I've used one once or twice with embossing powder (see photo 3 up, the gold anchor on the little pamphlet bind). What also works is to carve your own linocut or stamp, & then use block printing ink to ink it onto your fabric (as i did above). A bit time intensive, but it was nice how easily reproducible it was, and I liked the effect I got for this particular bind.
These methods are not exhaustive, just ones I've used, and there are of course many others. I haven't gone too into detail on any of these for the sake of length (& post photo limits) but feel free to ask about more specifics. Usually I'm using them in combination with other options.
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Commissioned by @chunkypossum for @pippsmcgee to honor her amazing lore about Eris’s hounds! You saw it published here for @azrisweek, here's some closeups and process.
After the initial sketch, I pretty much copy-pasted borzoi photos in different positions and then traced them. Is it cheating? Idk, but 13 dogs is a lot! 😅 Then it was a matter of adjusting lights and shadows to be consistent. The illusion of details is done with textured brushes.
Thank you for giving me a challenge like this, the whole idea of commissioning azris artist to honor azris creators is so amazing and lovely, and i loved working on it ❤️
i get so emotional every time i think about fanfic culture. it's just so beautiful that people are writing and anonymously posting these thousand-word stories about characters we all love and not even getting any money or public fame from it. it's literally just for the love of the game.
shout out to everyone who participates in fanfic culture, be it reading or writing fanfics. you are contributing to such a lovely thing <3
Fanfic is as old as writing, if not older. A HUGE body of work in Ancient Greek was literally just Homeric fanfiction. And Homer himself may have been working off older stories, making it fic of fics.
The most primal human urge upon hearing any story is to write fic about it.
I can barely believe this book is done, after 1 year of planning! 💗
There's this feature of the ACOTAR fandom, in which we have great writers who show us how much better the source material could be if we tuned up a couple of things... Like Rhys's villainous nature (or his caring side), Rhys and Tamlin's communication, or even if we added some actual difficulties for our beloved MCs!
In this anthology, I wanted to honor those retellings that I loved so much, here with a specific focus on Feysand - love them or hate them, you can't deny that Rhys and Feyre are really made for one another!
In order of appearance, here are the chosen fics:
"All He Thinks About Is Me", by @separatist-apologist: in which Rhys shows his darkest nature in some delectable non/dub-con UTM.
"Hate Me Instead", by @popjunkie42: in which Rhys acts more like a normal person and less like a douche and actually helps Feyre with all the UTM PTSD.
"The Portrait of a Male", by HopeLions13: in which Feyre goes UTM to save Rhys, and him and Tamlin get to have a much needed têta-à-tête.
"I Was Enchanted To Meet You", by @separatist-apologist: in which Rhys shows his darkest nature (yes, there's a pattern here), but now post-UTM.
"Chains", by @popjunkie42: in which Lucien succeeds in kidnaping Feyre back to the Spring Manor and some truths are revealed under the effect of substances.
Feysand's story is inevitably one in which Feyre transitions from Spring into the Night Court, and I wanted to bring that to the center of this book - as if she could look straight at Ramiel from her window in the Spring Manor ✨
The first endpaper is a collage of the Prythian courts symbols (made by me, inspired by those depicted in the back of the official Prythian map) beside this beautiful Velaris backdrop, created by GioSketches.
Cover was hand-painted - and that just goes to prove that you really can do any new technique if you set your mind to it!
Left: anthology title page. Right: Brazillian editions of ACOTAR books.
Brazillian ACOTAR fans may recognize the title font - because yes, I tried my best to emulate these beautiful editions from Galera Record, the best ACOTAR editions in my opinion.
I also incorporated the Brazillian edition's style of chapter headers, using a different element for each story.
This may be my favorite typeset so far, with all the little details added - the Night Court-themed dividers, and going full color explosion on the story title pages, really made it worth it to spend a year working on this book!
I really have to thank so much to all the authors featured, first for sharing their precious writing with us and then for giving me permission to bind their works 💞 This truly was a passion project if there ever was one!
It never goes without saying that all fanfic is and should always remain free: from fans, to fans, for free.
Materials & Techniques:
Endpapers: Velaris landscape by GioSketches; Prythian courts icons by me (made in Canva); Prythian map colored. Printed in matte photo paper.
Endbands: faux double core, made from wool-like multicolored thread.
Typeset in MS Word; printed on 80gsm white paper on an inkjet Epson ET-2850 printer.
Scene dividers and title pages made in Canva.
Bradel bind with 2mm bookboard, case covered in black faux leather and painted by hand using acryllic and fabric paints (and the tiniest brush you've ever seen).
Eris: This isn’t even one of the oldest. In the deeper parts of this forest there are trees older than the Cauldron. They are so tall their crowns block out the sun entirely and nothing can grow other than them, because they’ve evolved to not need sunlight.
Azriel: Really ?
Eris: They look like pillars of stone more than trees. When I was young my mother used to tell me that they used to be the columns that held up the temples of the old gods, before The Mother and faes ever existed.
Azriel: My mother used to say something similar about the Illyrian peaks.
Eris: They’re about the same age. Did you know the Illyrian mountains have trees with root development unlike any other in Prythian ?
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online numbers can really fuck you up when it comes to your creative work because you're sharing something you worked on with all your heart but it's very important to remember there's actual people behind those numbers. even if it's 1. that's one whole actual person. that's a human being who said "haha nice". that's a connection with a REAL person with a REAL life and REAL thoughts and feelings and experiences. like. damn. that should mean something
“There will never be anything like you again. Not for me.”
The words were spoken like a promise, but the threat lurking in each sound was a noose around Eris’s neck. They had never been so careless but as secrecy strangled them, their longing only tightened the knots.
Inevitability was at their core,their love and their loss.
Holla at ya boi if you want on or off the Azris tag train:
