Greetings STARFIGHTER

This initially wasn’t going to be a hardcover binding; I was actually thinking about doing a Japanese-style binding. It’s a fairly short fic, and I already had some ideas brewing. I’d even bought some paper for that purpose and sketched some of the ideas I had. But once I knew I could use Anticia’s illustrations, I realized that that binding style wouldn’t quite allow those illustrations to shine, at least not at my current level of experience. So, I switched to a hardcover binding. Properly incorporating the illustrations into the typeset was a new, but fun experience!

I also decided this would be the book where I would try making a dust jacket. It’d be a cool new thing to try, AND a great way to simultaneously use Anticia’s cover illustration and execute some ideas of my own. It also meant I could leave out the summary page I usually include in these bindings, which felt a little weird

Disjoint is fairly short compared to most of the other books I’ve made, and for a while I wasn’t quite sure there’d be enough pages for a hardcover binding, but thankfully there were!

Making the book block was mostly quick and uneventful. Though, the thing that should’ve been the easiest part, trimming it, became the most troublesome. I don’t have the tools to trim a book block myself, so I usually let a local printing shop do it for me. However, they had closed for a few weeks, and I was under pressure to finish this book roughly within a week. I actually traveled to a nearby city to see if any print shops there could trim the book block! It was a very fun experience because my walk to both print shops took me through parts of the city I hadn’t ever seen before.

Since the dust jacket would have an illustration and the title and everything, I decided the design on the cover itself would be simple. Since the fic is about Bruno, I wanted to add elements reminiscent of his character design. The obvious choice was replicating his suit pattern, which was a nice and easy change of pace from previous cover designs.

Also! An idea left over from my initial idea and modified a bit, a reading ribbon with one of Bruno’s zippers attached to it. Like the cover pattern, it wasn’t difficult to make but I had a lot of fun. I cut out the base shape from some really thick black paper, and cut the details from some nice textured gold-colored paper, and glued those together. I thought I’d use my screw punch to make a hole to pull the ribbon through, but the hole I’d included in the cutting pattern was big enough for me to use a needle to thread the ribbon through. Once that was done, I tied the ribbon into a knot and glued the loose end to the ribbon to make things look a little neater. Probably could’ve just glued the ribbon to itself without the knot, but whatever

The dust jacket was both easier and more trouble than I expected to make. I thankfully didn’t need to adjust the illustration’s size much to have it wrap around the spine and still look good, but I still needed to reprint it a couple of times (I’d made some easily fixable goofs which showed up more obviously on paper than on my screen XD). My old-ass printer also didn’t care for the slightly sturdier printing paper I wanted to use, so I had to use regular paper instead. After all that, though, I just cut off the excess parts, folded the dust jacket around the cover. I was done, and right on time too!

This project was an absolute delight. Especially after my previous binding went awry at the very end, this was perfect to cheer me up again. Making the book block didn’t take nearly as long, and the cover design was a lot easier to figure out. At the same time, I got to try tons of new things! Integrating illustrations into the text, making a little charm to attach to the reading ribbon, and making a dust jacket! This book really feels like it’s got a bit more character when compared to some of my previous bindings, and not just because it’s a fanfic and binding centered around one fictional character in particular ;p

Some of the ways they did this were actually before marriage. We tend to call every inheritance a woman was to receive a dowry but that's incorrect, most of Austen's heroines don't have a dowry, though we know how much they'll inherit upon the death of their father and/or mother. Fortune =/= dowry. The Bennets of Pride and Prejudice, the Dashwoods of Sense and Sensibility, Anne Elliot in Persuasion, and even Emma Woodhouse in Emma all will inherit a little to a great deal of wealth but not as a dowry. This means that even Emma, who will one day have the staggering amount of thirty thousand pounds, would not be bringing wealth immediately into a marriage (though in her circumstances she has a father who would hardly let her live impoverished if she had chosen to marry a penniless man).

For women as poor as the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice (though they should've had more money each, if their parents weren't useless, as has been discussed) the distinction between dowry and eventual inheritance didn't mean much: a max of fifty pounds per annum in interest was literally less than what some servants were paid so couldn't alleviate the need for their husbands to have an independent income. But what money a woman could bring into a marriage definitely increased the likelihood of her preferences being realised. Northanger Abbey's Catherine Moreland, who "would have three thousand pounds" means she has enough of a fortune to "smooth the descent of [General Tilney's] pride" and make him consent to the marriage of his son to her. She certainly would've been glad her parents saved this money for her, instead of feeling that she was an object being bought or sold. It empowered her choices, rather than reduced them.

That the inheritance of a woman is presented as a dowry also reduces the chances a woman and the man she loves will need to wait to marry until either of them inherit something or he makes a living. If Anne Elliot of Persuasion had had a dowry, instead of a future inheritance (a "share of ten thousand pounds which must be hers hereafter"), would she have broken off that original engagement? In ch23 she tells Captain Wentworth she would've been engaged to him when he had only "a few thousand pounds" and the likelihood of more thanks to an advantageous posting. If she would receive her own few thousand pounds upon marriage would that've been enough to remain engaged from the first, and perhaps even marry once he had added a few more thousands to that instead of needing to wait for Wentworth to build their shared fortune himself?

We can also see that a dowry was an inheritance parents provided for their daughter's benefit, rather than a sale price, by how carefully marriage articles were drawn up. This could legally define pin-money (how much money a woman would receive for her private usage and upkeep from her husband), and often specified that the husband couldn't diminish the bulk sum of his wife's fortune, only use the interest it generated, so that there would always be something to support the wife and her children no matter how spendthrift he was. Think of it like an old-fashioned pre-nup or family trust.

This is a huge reason why eloping was so bad, it meant there hadn't been articles drawn up beforehand and so the legal default of 'everything the wife has is now the husband's in full' applied instead of the chance to preserve her rights to her own fortune. If Wickham had succeeded in eloping with Georgiana Darcy in Pride and Prejudice her thirty thousand pounds would've become his in full when she turned twenty-one, though her guardians could've withheld it before then, and he could've spent it all and left her penniless without legal consequence.

There are plenty of historical examples of husbands without the regulations of marriage articles squandering the fortune and selling off assets, leaving the wife eventually destitute. Marriage articles are a response to that as father's wanted to protect their daughters and her future children. It actually limited the power of a husband in favour of preserving the comforts and rights of his wife, so was opposite of misogyny (though the society and laws which required these extra protections was undeniably sexist and male-centred)

Nor was receiving an inheritance upon marriage a specifically female-only practice. Eldest sons would generally receive the bulk of their inheritance when their father died, but it was common in this time and for centuries beforehand for them to be confirmed as heir or given a set income from their father (or one of their father's lesser estates, if we're talking nobility and the ultra rich) as part of the marriage articles (which would generally benefit the wife for the remainder of her life, either as a jointure or dower). Younger sons, if not already provided for, could also be given something upon their marriage and may have a commission in the army or a church living bought for them, to give them some independence. In Sense and Sensibility, after accepting the engagement of Edward and Elinor, Mrs Ferrars gives her son ten thousand pounds "towards augmenting their income" and this allows the marriage to occur. No one accuses Mrs Ferrars of selling Edward off in matrimony, even though what she's doing is so similar to a dowry that the narration points out it's exactly what "had been given with [her daughter] Fanny".

Fortune hunters and those marrying purely for money and a comfortable lifestyle definitely existed, as they do now, but dowries were not a socially and legally mandated way to give women to men to benefit them financially. 'Mercenary' marriages were frowned upon, and women were taught to look out for fortune hunters (like Wickham). Nor was it considered only men who might marry primarily to benefit from their spouse's wealth (Charlotte Lucas being a sympathetic female example). That both men and women could have inheritances gifted upon marriage, and were represented as seeking to marry for money, helps show that the practice of dowries wasn't a sexist practice which reduces women to little more than livestock.