#my bookbinding

Smash or Pass is one of those fics where immediately after finishing it, you start reading it again. It is so side-achingly funny and over-the-top emotional drama—often at the same time—that you can’t put it down. And it fits the alternate universe setting perfectly! If Alex Brightman had been hired to play a sleazy podcast host, this is exactly how he would have done it. 

One of the things I love about Smash or Pass is how cleverly horror movies are incorporated throughout, and what each character does or doesn’t know—or pretend to know—about the genre. I osmosised so much info reading this fic. From Lydia’s artistic sentiment to Betelgeuse’s low-brow focus, it’s a treasure trove of info and clear love poured into Lydia’s lofty essays on the evolution of the genre that BJ disregards on air. 

For this bind, I pulled design ideas from Suspiria, one of the most important movies to the plot. Seriously, if you’ve never seen it, the Technicolor in this movie is STUNNING (and it also has a bangin’ soundtrack). I wanted to pay homage to old horror posters with tons of fonts and more modern designs, which I did by starting each chapter with a 2-page spread of one of the iconic horror characters Betelgeuse rated Smash or Pass (spoiler: they’re almost all smash), recolored using different iconic combinations from Suspiria.

Other design elements take inspiration from the podcast where BJ does his reviews + ratings. The cover replaces the bloodied ballerina on Suspiria’s cover with a microphone stand and a cable pooling beneath it. Instead of page numbers, an episode progress bar crosses the bottom of the pages, color-matched to the character spread that starts the chapter. Each chapter also features icons tied to each character (Godzilla’s spikes that glow before using atomic breath, the curling iron Angela uses to kill Judy…) And the bookmark has a pause button on it, which I thought was a perfect fit!

The project: A year ago, I saw a gif of the CM Punk/MJF dog collar match on tumblr and I discovered wrestling. That's the first match I watched, and I fell in love with the wrestlers and their story. I went on to read many fics about them and the quality of writing in this fandom blew my mind. So I wanted to collect my favorite here for easier re-reading, and it was an occasion to work with a satiny fabric for the cover to mimick wrestling gear.

The bind: This was quite a complex project for me, I learned a lot and had to use my bookbinding skills (such as they are) to the max. For the cover, I replicated Punk and Max's gear during the dog collar match. See the inspo pics and the full cover:

Not too bad! A hurdle or two: the fabric has lines that couldn't be smoothed out completely, you can see them here. It's literally lines, this cloth has been ironed smooth. If I'd worked with real spandex it wouldn't have happened I think, but I'm not there yet, so I stuck to cheap satin. Also, when I added the burberry ribbon to the cover, I realized PVA glue wouldn't do the job, so I had to superglue them, and a little glue seeped through on the top there. What can you do. By the way, burberry ribbons?? I had to buy it from a small online shop that sells doll making supplies, it was hard to find.

While we're on the technical stuff, the massive new thing I tried here was chisel trimming the edges to get a smooth result. And it worked, after a lot of training and hours and hours of hand-destroying work. I'm really happy with how straight and smooth the edges turned out. Fun fact: I printed, folded, sewed and trimmed this book a first time, then because the result wasn't good enough, I used that textblock to train with the chisel, and then I started over and printed a second book, the one that you see here.

I chose green for the endpapers and endbands. I love me some green. Have some details:

Guys, believe me, this book is prettier in person and the colors are more vibrant. Damn phone camera.

Now something I find exciting: the typesetting!

The fun thing with wrestling is that it's very visual, so I can incorporate more pictures than I usually do in my books, and my new printer gives good results. There are pictures of the dog collar match and other pics of Punk and Max scattered throughout the book. I tried to put them in relevant places.

I made a little cover page for the Risky Fuel series. All individual fic have an intro page with all the info (author, rating, word count, tags, etc.) and a QR code to the fic on AO3.

Overall I kept it pretty simple, I didn't want to overcrowd it with decorations. This is for reading, after all. Here's what a normal text page looks like (the book has 460 pages btw):

I'm very satisfied with the evenness of the margins on all sides. The first word in Old English font is a callback to MJF's logo and Punk's "straight edge" tattoo.

Nitpicking: I think this is it with straight spines for me. Every time I try to do one, I have issues, it never turns out perfect, and it bugs me. The result here looks good, and the book lies flat as it should, but in person I see the imperfections and I hate them.

I'm a rounded spine guy and that's what I'm going to keep doing, even though they have their limitations (the only one I can think of right now is that you can't do a color split on a rounded spine because it will crease where the cloths meet, which I can live without).

In the end, I'm very happy I bound this book, because I'm going to be able to enjoy reading these fics cosy in bed for a long time. They're so good, guys, go read them!

Fonts: Cover page: Damage Plan and Old English. Text: Leelawadee. Fic titles: Built titling rg. All free with Windows or on Dafont.

Materials: Grey board 2mm thick, online-bought polyester "satin", Heat'n'Bond Ultra Hold, tissue paper, white copy paper 80gsm, synthethic ready-made bookmark and endbands, endpaper from Schmedt.