#I am constantly amazed by ficbinders

[hms-tardimpala]

Ficbinding: Broken Road by @thegeminisage

The fic: SPN, Castiel/Dean Winchester, M, 109k

A 14.13 Lebanon rewrite. When Dean uses a wish-granting pearl to try and kill the archangel Michael before he can escape the cage in Dean's head, they instead wind up with a newly-resurrected John Winchester. It's been more than a decade since John died, and a lot has changed: Mary is alive, Sam and Dean have what passes for a proper home in the Men of Letters Bunker, and they're living with angels. John doesn't know angels are real, he doesn't know about the fragile new relationship between Dean and Castiel, and most of all, he doesn't know that Dean said yes to Michael, or that Dean's plan to defeat Michael would send him to a fate worse than death. Now Dean must contend with both his father asking questions he can't answer, and his loved ones learning about the darker truths of his childhood, all while constantly battling the archangel trapped inside him. But Dean coming to terms with his history may be the difference between this being the beginning of a journey—or the end.

This fic has been in my to-read list for more than a year because big wordcounts are daunting to me, but boy am I glad I finally read it! It's a treasure of character writing for all protagonists (and it is so hard to find a well-written John and Mary Winchester) and the canon divergence is brilliant. If you know me, you know how attached I am to canon-compliant stories, so finding a way to resolve the big threat of season 14 (a season I really like) in a way that's satisfying to me is no small feat. What I want from fics is to be able to think "wow, I could have watched this story happen in the actual show" and this fic succeeds at that. I also loved the attention paid to Michael's possession of Dean (that the show shoved aside when it was convenient) because I'm a whump lover and possession whump is amazing. Also, as a Deanguy, it's good to read a Dean fic with a great Sam.

So yeah, I loved it! Now let's talk shop.

The bind: This is the third blue book in a row (guess my favorite color). I chose a light blue because that's the color of the angels' grace, white for the wings, and silver because it's a color associated with angels a lot in the show (the blades, the walls and furniture in Heaven, the clothes angel vessels tend to wear). I used this palette because Michael is omnipresent in the story, so I wanted to show it through the binding, and also it's pretty. The white lines can represent a broken road, but I was having fun trying a new kind of superposition, mainly.

This is the biggest book I've made in a while, with 394 pages. It's 17,2x12,3cm and 2,9cm thick. I had a trimming accident and had to reprint it all and try again. That's my reminder not to do maths when tired.

I didn't use many decorations this time, I wanted to keep it sober. The text dividers for the first six chapters are angel wings and an impala for the last one (when Dean gets to drive it again). Wings and a car are both modes of transportation, that's neat. What's new this time is that I didn't do a chapter heading, but integrated the chapter number to the text. I thought about using drop caps, but it was too much. I did however use color, which I've been tentatively adding to my books. I figured what the hell, I pay for the color ink too.

Now, here's the main new thing I tried with this one: putting a title on the cover. I often say "no titles on my books" because I don't think they're necessary since I recognize the books by color and size, and I don't want to buy a cricut. But I didn't want to die stupid, so I tried transfer paper. Which worked, the title came out good, but naturally the transfer substance came with it, around the words, and it's very visible on cloth. I want to be clear: it worked as intended, I just didn't like the result. I think it'd work best with an image than with letters. With letters, trimming all the extra transfer paper would be impossible to do cleanly.

So I'm happy I tried, but still, no titles on my books.

Fonts: DK Plague Master (title and author name), Moonrising (chapter titles), Gontserrat (text). All free on Dafont.

Materials: Blue and white cloth from Schmedt, 2mm grey board, 70g/m² white copy paper, synthetic bookmark and headbands. Silver endpaper bought in a brick and mortar craft store.

Feel free to ask me more about materials and fonts (or whatever), it won’t bother me at all to tell you what I used, I just can't think of anything else right now.