balloonstand

[balloonstand]

you can tell a lot about a guy by the stuff you make up in your head about him

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[balloonstand]

When a fic doesn’t fit my head canons but it’s well-written

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Made a fake paperback cover for my latest fic :)

(Read it here)

[balloonstand]

S.O.S

Fandom: 9-1-1

Relationship: Buck/Eddie

Tags: Getting together, Depictions of emergencies/injuries consistent with the content of the show, Alcohol, Explicit Sexual Content, Post-Season 7

Word Count: 27,333

Chapters: 1/1

Summary: Eddie had been through way too much in his life to call what was going on with him now a "crisis." It felt stupid even thinking like that. He was fine, just fine. Yeah, his kid had fled the state. Yeah, he was exploding at his best friend for no reason. Yeah, it was impossible to think about the future without feeling like he was swaying in the wind at the cliff's edge. But that was just life. He couldn't be in crisis, not Eddie.

Read it on AO3

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fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you

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you're right I spelled his name wrong 124 times my bad

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my worst and most toxic trait is reading a mid fic in a fandom that I am essentially a stranger in and immediately wanting to write a fic that's better. even though I do not know this fandom. I am not familiar with the lore

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I just finished this AMAZING fic that @fellshish told me about and holy shit I think I am dead now. It’s just SO SO GOOD.

Run, don’t walk, to read this historical fic with some of the most beautiful writing, exceptional character takes and PERFECT tone.

No Second Eden by @balloonstand

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Aziraphale is an angel and a virgin. Cultists love him.

(x)

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heartbreaking:

girl has sooooooo many ambitions and ideas for projects but can only get 1.5 basic tasks done per day

[balloonstand]

My First Fanbind! A Black Sails Fic Anthology Series

It took me a year (and a lot of anxious research) before I worked up the courage to bookbind fanfiction, and after months of on-again-off-again work, my first fanbind is finally done!

I knew that if I was going to bookbind fic, I had to bind something from the Black Sails fandom, aka the fandom and show that have had the biggest impact on my life. Y'all, I almost went into academia to study slavery in the 17th-18th century Caribbean because of this show - when folks say this show rewires your brain chemistry, they are NOT kidding. THEE show of all time. Happy 10th anniversary to Black Sails! This fandom is small but mighty. May we continue to get our hearts and souls blasted to smithereens by this show for many years to come.

Ao3 abounds with magnificent Black Sails oneshots, so I decided to put together an anthology of my favorite Silverflint fics under 20k, which I split into two volumes. Included are works by @justlikeeddie, @vowel-in-thug, @balloonstand, @annevbonny, @francisthegreat, @nysscientia, and more! Thank you, thank you all, you brilliant wonderful people, for gracing the Internet with such amazing writing. When I read the fics in these anthologies I want to fling myself into the sun.

More on the design and binding process below the cut!

Vol. 1 Page Count: 270 (12 fics) Vol. 2 Page Count: 248 (11 fics) Body Font: Sabon Next LT (10.5 pt) Title Font: Goudy Old Style Other Fonts: IM Fell English, pirates pw

The typeset (which I did in Word) took a while, mainly because I'd never done it before. Manually adjusting the hyphenation line-by-line was especially tedious. After making these books, I abandoned Word in favor of InDesign, in large part because InDesign gives you way finer control over your justification and hyphenation settings.

Regarding my actual design choices, I'm happy with how the ocean motif on the title page turned out (it's not the same pattern as my endpapers, but they're complimentary) and I'm very fond of my divider dingbats, which are little swords! Goudy Old Style was a fun title font to use, since it's the font that Black Sails uses as its logo. The stories in Vol. 1 are divided into parts based on what Silver WAS at that point in the show (cook, quartermaster, or king), and Vol. 2 is split up into comedies, histories (AUs set in the canon universe) and tragedies - befitting Black Sails' Shakespearean ~vibes~.

I stuck to a flatback binding, as I wasn't feeling quite ambitious enough to try rounding and/or backing. I've learned that I ~Anakin Skywalker voice~ hate sanding, enjoy folding/sewing, and don't LIKE edge trimming but enjoy the results enough to make it worth it.

The real adventure was decorating the cover, which remained bare for months. After agonizing over Illustrator and experimenting unsuccessfully with HTV and lokta paper embossing, I ultimately turned to using stencil vinyl to paint on the designs. There was a bit of seepage under some of the stencils, but I was able to scrape off the excess with my Cricut weeding tool without damaging the coated surface of the bookcloth (probably Arrestox Blue Ribbon from Hollander's). Even though it was very time-consuming, I'm so happy with the end result of the stenciled paint job and I intend to stick with stencils for my foreseeable future binds.

Are there things I would change? Sure. It was humid out when I printed, so the pages have got a wave. There’s an extra two pages in Vol 2. that I have no idea how I missed, and I got a line of glue in the middle of one of my Vol. 2 endpapers. I’m pretty sure I didn’t case in quite right, since my endpapers pull away from the case at the spine. I think the inner margins are a bit too big, and despite going line-by-line there’s still some wacky justification spacing in the typeset. But man, am I proud of these books! It is so satisfying to learn a new skill - MANY new skills, if we’re being honest - and to make something both beautiful and practical. If I’m still binding in two years or so, I can see myself redoing the typeset in InDesign, cutting out the existing text block, and reusing the cases. I’m also already planning for Vol. 3, which will be Silverflint Modern AUs.

Thanks for reading!

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(x)

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*sits down to write a smut fic* The plot of this smut fic is that Character A believes himself abandoned by God.

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A meme I made that says it all!