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Ficbinding: A Poison Tree by @mildredmost

A year and a half ago (ish), I was getting started in bookbinding and one of my first projects was A Poison Tree, a Poldark fic I loved. I was proud of it at the time, but I've learned a lot since then and thought it was time to have another go at it. (long post ahead)

The fic: Poldark, Ross Poldark/George Warleggan, E, 50.6k

What happened between Ross and George at school that began their life-long feud?

The reason I like this fic so much is that it surprised me. I was looking for Ross/George fics and this is one, but not only. George's character is so well-explored here that you can't help but be on his side (while understanding why the things he does offend Ross) and wish him to be happy. I'm not usually into OCs, but the one in this story is so good I loved him as much as the other characters. I went in expecting something specific, the author went another way midway through, and I loved it. The atmosphere is perfect too, it's faithful to the time period and the show/books.

The bind: I kept some ideas from the original bind, such as the color of the cover, headbands and bookmark, and the paper type, but I improved the general quality and added details. I used blue and green because they're the Warleggans' heraldy's colors in the books. The endpaper is a florentine design with golden touches, the kind of luxurious-looking stuff a 1780s nouveau riche would love. I added the Blake poem the story takes its title from at the beginning because it's one of my favorite poems ever.

New things I tried:

This is the first time I combine several elements for a cover. The green strips scared me because MATHS but they turned out good in the end. I'm still not interested in putting titles on my binds, but I think I'll keep exploring decorations of that kind.

Real endpapers. Up until now, I used paper that wasn't made for bookbinding because the thinness of true endpapers scared me, but it holds up perfectly. The book still feels strudy. And look at it, it's so FANCY.

Free vector images to make decorations. There's a wealth of free resources out there!

Huge positives:

I printed, folded, sewed, glued and trimmed this a first time, but wasn't satisfied with the cut. If you've read more than one of these posts, you know I'm desperately wrangling my guillotine into compliance. The second time, I trimmed the texblock before sewing and gluing, which is scary because the signatures are LOOSE, but it worked perfectly. The result is so fucking neat. I was ready to sandpaper the edges but didn't have to.

Look at this snuggy fat boy. This is the thickest book I've made at the A6 format, and it sits very nicely in the hand. The spine is round, the leather is smooth, and it's still very light. A pretty baby.

Details:

The typesetting: I tried many fonts (what's new) before I landed on the right one. It had to have serifs to fit with the period context. I already mentioned the decorations (I looked up georgian-period books to get inspired and discovered they weren't all that decorated, so I made those up). The drop caps are very nice.

The tree: I decided to get the most out of my printer and, after fiddling with the settings a little, got it to print in color with magnificent quality (which you can't see because of the cold light. It's cloudy today, I'm sorry).

Negatives:

The cover boards should have been wider. The pages are very close to sticking out from the edge of the cover. They're not, but it's a tight fit. I think that from now on, I'll use a 5mm "overhang" (is that the word?) instead of a 3mm one like I've learned. I like my spines too round, 3mm are not enough to compensate.

That's it this time. I don't want to brag, but I'm getting good at this (it's been a year and a half jesus).

Characteristics: Fonts: Castellar (title), Colonna MT (author name), Bell MT (text), Apex Lake (drop caps) Materials: blue and green apple leather and endpapers from Schmedt, 80g/m² Clairefontaine ivory paper, pre-made headband and synthetic ribbon.

Feel free to ask me more about materialsand fonts (or whatever), it won’t bother me at all to tell you what I used, but I’m too lazy rn to write it in this post that’s long enough already.

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Comparison (because why not):

#ficbinding #poldark #sorry that was a long post #no I shouldn't be sorry this is my blog #anyway huge rec for the fic as usual even though I know I don't have Poldark people in my circle here #bookbinding #my bookbinding #I hope you don't mind the tag and my doing this mildred

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Demographic of people in the Witcher fandom iirc convinced there's such a thing as 'lute oil' which best as I can tell is incorrect

#I think book!Jaskier would just be like 'hey here's my lube' #but otherwise I'm totally ignorant on the matter of lutes so sure lute oil #the witcher

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You know how Discord automatically saves any picture you look at? Yeah. Shoutout to everyone on the Luke Arnold Thirst channel for fueling my depravity. Loving how he looks recently; very season 2 Black Sails but like...an evolved form with the fuller adult facial hair you get in your thirties 🥵

My Patreon

Commission Info Pinned

Donations❤️

#wow wow wow #Kelsey strikes again #awesome art #luke arnold

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Training dogs into police dogs is animal abuse and I stand by that 👌🏻

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How do you not know? You think I want to end up in a hotel bathtub with my kidney carved out? In Chechnya?

#he's been roofied before‚ he knows :( #there's so much material in spn regarding sexual assault and Dean it's depressing #the lines in Ouroboros about John using him as a hitchhiking monster bait when he was young shouldn't have been cut #spn #dean winchester

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idk if it's just me but like. seeing so many people in the notes of those kissing polls act like an on screen same-gender kiss is the only way to "canon confirm" that a character is queer LIKE. i'm sorry but dean doesn't need to kiss a dude for me to know that he's queer. i have eyes and brain i literally saw him be queer for 15 yrs. yea it might've been nice to see him be "openly" queer but. i read the subtext. i understand. drowley summer of love. stanford era deanlee. countless other dudes he found attractive and gave little flirty smiles. and 12 yrs of love in his eyes for cas. i was there.

#do you ever watch a relationship and charaters be developed so much for years that the idea of a kiss confirming they're in love seems trite #people are boring #this show is still the best example of subtext queerness/queercoding #fandom #spn #filaire

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the thing about queer sam is that obviously whether someone is queer exists outside of whether they act on it but also being bisexual would have almost zero impact on his actual life because Sam Winchester Is Afraid Of Men. he's scared of 'em. he can't be friends with them and he would not be able to date them. regardless of attraction

#hey this is the shit #great take #it doesn't have a place in schrodinger's wip but it makes me want to write about it someday #spn #sam winchester #now that's a tag I never use #filaire

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boyfriend and i were watching a movie and there’s a scene in it that somehow does not follow nor precede hardcore gay sex

#saw #filaire #the reconciler

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what r ur guyses obscutify ratings im curious

#86% #music #obscurify is always fun #filaire

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To expand on my girl sad about her arranged marriage trope post, I think the trope can be subverted (woman is happy about arranged marriage) but it can also be done well and without modern sentiments (ew, sex with someone I don't love is yucky/I want to marry for true love/I want to be a GirlbossTM)

For example, princess is sad about her arranged marriage because:

-Her nation and the prospective husband prince's nation were at war five minutes ago and many members of her own family died in the war. The marriage is designed to cap off a peace treaty but what happens if peace doesn't last and she finds herself the queen of a nation at war with her own homeland? If you want real angsty enemies to lovers, the prince himself killed her own brother in the war.

-The nation the princess is marrying into is very culturally different from her own, very far away/a dangerous journey, and she hasn't been able to learn the language. She will be bringing some of her ladies-in-waiting but fears being very homesick in a place so different from her homeland.

-The princess already married for political reasons and her husband has now died. This time she wants to make her own choice because she's paid her dues (there is historical precedent for this)

-Princess has known her future spouse since childhood and was happy to marry him, he died suddenly and now she's being asked to marry his weird younger brother whom she knows well and dislikes.

-Princess is heavily prejudiced against the nation she is marrying into because of racism/xenophobia or whatever but they have a resource her kingdom needs and a baller army, so marriage it is! She overcomes her pride and prejudice as she falls in love with her husband.

#oh yes very good #tropes #filaire

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FAQ/Guidelines

#these are so funny lmao #“have you met them” #“won't die. like a stupid queerbait cockroach” #“they're everywhere and has a gif for everything” #ahahah I'm having such a good time here #but hey apparently we're not so annoying. I thoughts we'd go further #spn

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IG : @emperorofmischief

#“make of that what you will” lmao #this is so cool I'm all for rats being less stressed

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that's it. that's the whole show

AND BONUS

#poor sam he's just blurry in the background #this framing occurs so often #fun fact: I made myself a destiel boomark once with small stills of these scenes #sam is the ultimate third wheel and his presence makes the whole thing funnier #ugh I should have asked my mom to put that bookmark in the box she's sending me I miss it #filaire

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When I’m reading smut and the author breaks the flow of the story so that the characters can tell us that they have enthusiastic consent it feels exactly like when Dora the Explorer looks directly into the camera and says ‘Seat belts so we can be safe!’ anytime she gets into a motorized vehicle.

#amazing tags #this is how I like my period media ships #some tags for classification's sake #ripper street #poldark #fanfic #filaire

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Ideal ship dynamic is “person whose love language is acts of service” and “person who has never been cared for before”

#sorry not sorry but #destiel #both ways #filaire

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I made this zine last year to teach Japanese stab binding. It's a technique that every artist should know—with just a few tools, it's so easy to bind your own sketchbook or to make a physical version of your art/writing/etc. Download the PDF version (with bonus photos & tips!)

#bookbinding #I'll probably try that someday #filaire