Totally not a bot

We do have a title on the spine though! That is pewter foil HTV and I thought it would be fun to make it vertical. I have done that a couple of times, but not all titles are suited for it and it doesn't fit the vibe for every fic. Here, however, it echoes some of the choices I made in the typeset, so I seized the opportunity.

Top view, showing off the shiny gray ribbon bookmark and the handmade endbands. The colors really are not shining through; they are chocolate brown and silver-gray stripe. It's a single core, very basic, and that's on purpose. This story is a lot less...frilly? flourish-y? than many others I have bound. I'm not sure those are the right words. It's hard to explain but a more tailored, less elaborate approach just seemed like the right choice. So the endbands are simple, the fonts are sans serif, the cover is less elaborate, and even the corner caps are a simpler design than the other choices I had on hand. It's a nice book, quality materials, feels good in the hand, but you have to meet it where it's at and understand what went into it to appreciate that. Given some of the story's themes I think that's fitting.

Alright, enough philosophy, let's look inside! The endpapers are cardstock, gray with this metallic gold circle overlay. I kind of wish I'd done an in-fill so the turn-in was less obvious under them, but I almost never do those so I didn't think of it till it was too late. It was hard matching anything with the cover material. My endpaper choices tend towards florals, highly-patterned chiyogami, and abstract marbles and none of those felt right, but plain ones would have been too understated. These were the right balance, though in hindsight I do wish they were silver instead of gold. Oh well.

Remember when I said Crowley is a mechanic in this? Yeah. He's dirty and it's hot. So we've got this streaky graphic I found on rawpixel that is probably supposed to be paint but to me looks like oil. I've got the whole thing on the title page and just the top part on the first page of each chapter, so it doesn't obscure the text. I tend to make my chapter headers kind of simple, which is fine but can get a little same-y when you do as many as I have, so I got a very little bit experimental with this one and made them vertical. The vertical spine title is echoing this. Gives the whole thing some cohesion. I love it.