don’t make a promise you can’t keep

my old Pike/One art for Circ_Bamboo's fic Nine Years Later which was for a big bang back in like 2010 on LJ

Bound: Do Every Stupid Thing by @thepartyresponsible

Typeset and bound by: me, @phoenixortheflame

Featuring art by: @minhyongi and @adayka

Whew! This one was a doozy. Four fics, two volumes—and two copies to boot, since I made a set for the lovely @sammialex.

In the end though, it was worth it, and I'm fucking thrilled with how these turned out, especially the typeset (more on that later) and the dust jackets, which were inspired by Hayley Williams' single art for "True Believer."

I knew I wanted to do a Bucky cover and a Tony cover (since the fics are from Jason's POV), and I scoured social media trying to find the perfect art. Bless @minhyongi for letting me use the piece featuring a young Tony Stark and @adayka for the Bucky Barnes art.

The dusties were fully—and painstakingly—designed on Affinity. The "lockscreen" photo on the back of volume 1 is of a floor drain—a visual cue for torture, and one I couldn't get out of my head thanks to this series. The photo on the back of volume 2 is of a car battery because THEY TAKE TONY.

The theme for this bind was "Tony's metal band t-shirts" but mostly that translated to lots of upside down crosses and the New Rocker title font.

The upside down crosses on the cover are meant to look random, like they're falling form the sky...rain or, better yet, bullet casings.

The endbands nearly killed me, as did hand sanding the top and bottom edges of three out of four books, but—look how pretty!

Endpapers were Crepaldi (I KNOW) but also thank god one of my besties, @maleekamolscreates, is a superstar paper marbler because at the last minute I decided to scrap my original case idea which meant sacrificing one pair of endpapers. Her replacement papers are on the far right.

The typeset is perhaps my favourite I've ever made and the biggest drop caps I've ever attempted.

A massive thank you goes out to @thepartyresponsible for writing this amazing series (and please reach out if you'd like copies, I'd love to make you a set!).

Some poor intern or something, eye bags darker than the dried coffee stains on their shirt: Confirmed. There's no mention of it in any existing Star Trek franchise. Across 25 total seasons of 5 shows, and 10 movies, over the last 40 years, there is absolutely zero conclusive evidence that Florida survives to see the founding of the Federation

short form writers look at people writing 100k+ fics as though this is some sort of talent given as part of a fae bargain, that the commitment required shows some sort of ungodly mental fortitude.

you would receive the supply once a month

the brand/type will vary so you could

And after getting over my initial (rather emotional) response, I wanted to reply properly, and explain just why that hit me so hard.

So back around twenty years ago, the internet cosplay and costuming scene was very different from today. The older generation of sci-fi convention costumers was made up of experienced, dedicated individuals who had been honing their craft for years.  These were people who took masquerade competitions seriously, and earning your journeyman or master costuming badge was an important thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but – here’s the important bit – a lot of them didn’t share it.  It’s not just that they weren’t internet-savvy enough to share it, or didn’t have the time to write up tutorials – no, literally if you asked how they did something or what material they used, they would refuse to tell you. Some of them came from professional backgrounds where this knowledge literally was a trade secret, others just wanted to decrease the chances of their rivals in competitions, but for whatever reason it was like getting a door slammed in your face.  Now, that’s a generalization – there were definitely some lovely and kind and helpful old-school costumers – but they tended to advise more one-on-one, and the idea of just putting detailed knowledge out there for random strangers to use wasn’t much of a thing.  And then what information did get out there was coming from people with the freedom and budget to do things like invest in all the tools and materials to create authentic leather hauberks, or build a vac-form setup to make stormtrooper armor, etc.  NOT beginner friendly, is what I’m saying.

Then, around 2000 or so, two particular things happened: anime and manga began to be widely accessible in resulting in a boom in anime conventions and cosplay culture, and a new wave of costume-filled franchises (notably the Star Wars prequels and the Lord of the Rings movies) hit the theatres.  What those brought into the convention and costuming arena was a new wave of enthusiastic fans who wanted to make costumes, and though a lot of the anime fans were much younger, some of them, and a lot of the movie franchise fans, were in their 20s and 30s, young enough to use the internet to its (then) full potential, old enough to have autonomy and a little money, and above all, overwhelmingly female.  I think that latter is particularly important because that meant they had a lifetime of dealing with gatekeepers under our belts, and we weren’t inclined to deal with yet another one.  They looked at the old dragons carefully hoarding their knowledge, keeping out anyone who might be unworthy, or (even worse) competition, and they said NO.  If secrets were going to be kept, they were going to figure things out for ourselves, and then they were going to share it with everyone.  Those old-school costumers may have done us a favor in the long run, because not knowing those old secrets meant that we had to find new methods, and we were trying – and succeeding with – materials that “serious” costumers would never have considered.   I was one of those costumers, but there were many more – I was more on the movie side of things, so JediElfQueen and PadawansGuide immediately spring to mind, but there were so many others, on YahooGroups and Livejournal and our own hand-coded webpages, analyzing and testing and experimenting and swapping ideas and sharing, sharing, sharing.  

I’m not saying that to make it sound like we were the noble knights of cosplay, riding in heroically with tutorials for all.  I’m saying that a group of people, individually and as a collective, made the conscious decision that sharing was a Good Things that would improve the community as a whole.  That wasn’t necessarily an easy decision to make, either. I know I thought long and hard before I posted that tutorial; the reaction I had gotten when I wore that armor to a con told me that I had hit on something new, something that gave me an edge, and if I didn’t share that info I could probably hang on to that edge for a year, or two, or three.  And I thought about it, and I was briefly tempted, but again, there were all of these others around me sharing what they knew, and I had seen for myself what I could do when I borrowed and adapted some of their ideas, and I felt the power of what could happen when a group of people came together and gave their creativity to the world.

And it changed the face of costuming.  People who had been intimidated by the sci-fi competition circuit suddenly found the confidence to try it themselves, and brought in their own ideas and discoveries.  And then the next wave of younger costumers took those ideas and ran, and built on them, and branched out off of them, and the wave after that had their own innovations, and suddenly here we are, with Youtube videos and Tumblr tutorials and Etsy patterns and step-by-step how-to books, and I am just so, so proud.  

So yeah, seeing appreciation for a 17-year-old technique I figured out on my dining-room table (and bless it, doesn’t that page just scream “I learned how to code on Geocities!”), and having it embraced as a springboard for newer and better things warms this fandom-old’s heart.  This is our legacy, and a legacy the current group of cosplayers is still creating, and it’s a good one.