#fanbinding backlog

Bind #9

Vulcans are Fangirls Too by @jouissants

Date Completed: 12/28/2024

Size: Octavo. 10,838 words, 116 pages.

Copies: 1 (for now...)

My former college roommate has been obsessed with Star Trek since she was a kid, 100% shipped Kirk & Spock, but had somehow missed the world of fanfiction.  Since we routinely give each other whatever strange new craft we’re learning, she needed a fanbinding gift for Christmas.  I wanted a fic that was short enough that it didn’t feel like I was giving her an assignment but still long enough to have a real plot, plus not too fluffy and not too angsty.  "Vulcans are Fangirls Too" was the goldilocks fic.

I am now in love with Octavos (8 pages per side of printer paper).  They’re so small and cute and perfect for stories around the 10,000 word range.  I had fun finally using the “command gold” bookcloth in my stash and I think I’m finally getting the hang of HTV - it turned out nearly perfect this time.

Formatted in LibreOffice Writer with Liberation Serif as the body text font, Eras ITC for the title page and page numbers, and Federation Classic for the spine title. There are several letters in this story so I used the Ink Free font for Kirk's handwriting and Segoe Print for Spock.

Finished late at night right before going to visit and exchange presents the next day.

Bind #7

Ordinary Numbers by @kryptaria & @bootsnblossoms

Date Completed: 11/30/2024

Size: Half Letter Folio.  44,163 words, 151 pages.

Copies: 1

This is a fantastic James Bond AU.  He may not be in the Quartermaster’s branch but Q can’t escape tech, and imagining him dealing with other mundane IT tasks in between his calls with James is hilarious. The banter between the two of them while Q is saving James’ missions is great, as are Q’s coworkers and the assumptions they make because a 00 agent knows him by name.

This was my first half-letter typeset.  I had a lot of fun choosing fonts for when James was leaving hand-written notes with his questionable gifts and when the two were communicating via computer.  Of course, after everything was printed and bound I found a rather glaring error, but such is life.  This is also when I discovered that you shouldn’t leave paper in prolonged contact with the bare wood of my press - it acted like a bit of a sponge and transferred enough extra moisture to make the edges of the page a little wavy.  It’s mostly noticeable on the top and tail of the book rather than the fore edge and trimming helped a little with the problem.  Still - good to know for future projects!

It would have made sense to go with very boring, understated materials for the cover but for some reason I settled on lime green endpapers, which dictated everything else.  I’d had this rather bizarre piece of scrapbook paper hanging around in stash since college so now was its time to shine.  Not exactly what you’d expect when looking at the demure navy blue of the spine, but it’s fun.

For the Glory of a Good Pudding by @soft-october-night

Date Completed: 02/18/2025

Size: Folio.  109,100 words, 357 pages.

Copies: 2

9th and 10th books of Binderary

This is one of my favorite Terror fics - a modern AU where everyone is participating in a knock-off baking competition called Barrow’s Baking Boys.  

This was the first story I knew I wanted to bind for Binderary.  I started the typeset way back in early January and decided to switch things up a bit and give formatting in GoogleDocs a try.  The story had a couple different narrative styles - voiceovers and interviews for the show, plus some conversations over text (a first for the stories I’ve bound).  So in addition to learning a new typesetting program I got to find a way to represent those distinctly, and in the process learned that google docs doesn’t maintain its formatting between firefox and chrome.  (That was a lot of misprints/glue sheets…)

Bind #6

Every Longitude Leads by @acephalouscreature  Illustrated by @mcclintock

Date Completed: 10/31/2024

Size: Legal Quarto.  32,475 words/181 pages

Copies: 2

I was itching to work on my next fic after Binderary and got author permission for this particular story pretty quickly.  However, I dithered for nearly 6 months before I mustered up the courage to ask the illustrator if I could include their work, since it was a Big Bang.  No idea why that was the more intimidating of the two.

I got into The Terror because my dormant childhood Franklin Expedition obsession suddenly realized there would be some “what if they survived?” fics and this is one of my favorites in that genre.  I love stories about people being competent and I really appreciate that this story gives Sophia Cracroft such a good role.

First time doing a full cloth binding in ages.  It took forever to get the HTV title and cover design to adhere and even now they are a little bit more “rustic” than I intended.  Still pretty pleased with the design elements though!

I was worried about doing the illustrations justice and ended up doing some surreptitious color print jobs at work after printing all the black and white pages at home.  I should have done it in the opposite order because I then discovered that the printer settings were just off enough to make the font size noticeably different between the two machines and I had to print it all over again.  Live and Learn and buy more toner.

Impulse Decisions by ListerineZero

Date Completed: February 27, 2024

Size: Legal Quarto.  42,763 words/193 pages

Copies: 1

Life got hectic, but I was determined to make one measly book for Binderary in 2024.  Why this fic next?  Well, I found some battered scrapbook paper in the sale aisle of JoAnn’s and the print reminded me of this fic for some reason.  And I was feeling nostalgic, since X-Men First Class was one of the first fandoms I got into while the property was still current.  

Set with Times New Roman and a title font called Subway which seemed fitting for the New York locale. 

Cute cat to make up for any potential spam: