I think there's something that needs to be said about encouraging readers to leave feedback.

For me it's not about "tell me my writing is amazing and stroke my ego"

It's more about "please engage with me so that I can experience your joy secondhand and foster a connection with you"

I understand that not everyone wants this in their reading experience, some people are shy and a million other reasons why maybe someone wouldn't want to engage and that's perfectly fine!

But what I'm trying to steer away from is being a passive content creator with passive consumers. What I want to steer toward is fostering a community that is essential to fandom. I want to see your reactions because it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.

On encouraging reblogs —

I understand that not everyone is comfortable reblogging, especially explicit content. This is ok!

But just consider that the only reason you were able to enjoy a fic or fanart is because someone else shared it, and by not sharing it yourself you are potentially robbing someone else of the opportunity to enjoy it as much as you did.

As OPs our reach only goes so far and this website relies on reblogs in order for anything to truly get seen by a wider audience.

So that's really it! That's why I encourage these two things at the end of every story I post. Not because I'm trying to be demanding and "make people feel bad" if they don't do it.

I know most other social media sites encourage mindless content consumption and that's just the way of the world nowadays, but I am from a time when community was at the heart of fandom and I just don't want to lose that.

But what I'm trying to steer away from is being a passive content creator with passive consumers. What I want to steer toward is fostering a community that is essential to fandom. I want to see your reactions because it makes me feel like I'm a part of something.

The Pack Survives by @astolat.

My second bind had to be this Robb Stark centric masterpiece that has lived rent free in my brain since December 2023. I wanted to get this finished before the year anniversary hit in December.

I love this bind and she is my beloved second born but holy hell I’m glad she is done.

In all honesty, this bind was cursed from the off. Everything that could have gone wrong with this bind went wrong. I had to resew the signatures because wood oil, I made my design slightly too big so adding it to the cover was wonky and I melted parts of the black vinyl adding my silver vinyl to the book cloth to name but a few mistakes. I didn’t dare try to trim her edges, lord knows where I would have ended up.

All that said I’m still proud of her and wanted to share. Done is better than perfect and I hope I look back in a year and see how far I have truly come.

The Pack Survives can be read for free on AO3.

so im hearing @astolat is god??? what's your 10 commendments my liege

My best stab! lol

@cesperanza, additional thoughts?

LOL. Okay, give me a minute, I'll work up nine circles of fannish hell for ya. :D

Outside of hell--mundanes, circling and circling!

Inscribed on the gate:   “This work could have adult content. If you continue, you have agreed that you are willing to see such content.”

1 -  Limbo – happy monofans who are still in ST: TOS or Starsky and Hutch (we salute you!)

2 –  Lust – In a fandom where everyone’s lusting after the wrong blorbo or pairing omg

3 – Gluttony - lying awake reading fanfiction at 5 am I am so going to regret this.

4 – Greed: Hoarders  and Squanderers:  “When are you going to finish this WIP!”  “Where’s the sequel! Write faster!”  Also: people who are writing chapter 230/400, people with 1000 open tabs

5 – Anger:  Shitposters, failfandomanon, don’t read the comments!

6 – Heresy:  “Avengers: Age of Ultron was my favorite,” “I prefer Zachary Quinto’s Spock,”  “Bring back Jar Jar”

7 – Violence against self, others, God, etc.: Giving explicit fanworks to actors, selling fanfiction on Amazon, doxxing, etc.

8 – Fraud – Sockpuppets, bots, the lurkers do not support you in email!!

9 -  Betrayers (George Lucas, JJ Abrams, Joss Whedon, etc.) Also: “You have already left kudos here :)

prime and protector fanart for @astolat's story, fool's hope on ao3

oh how awesome! <3 <3 <3

so im hearing @astolat is god??? what's your 10 commendments my liege

My best stab! lol

My first full-sized bookbind!! This is Heal Thyself by @astolat; ie the fic I loved so much that I decided to take up bookbinding just so I could have a physical copy of it! It was definitely one hell of a learning curve, and while it certainly isn't perfect I'm super happy with how it came out <3 I've uploaded the cover/spine/back PNGs here! Feel free to use, though credit would be appreciated :D

I love this one so much. :D

Continuing my Astolat bookbinding collection, I bound Royal Flush by @astolat!! My favorite Game of Thrones fic, and one that's I've gone back to re-read more times than I can count!! I'm super happy with how this bind turned out; I had learned a lot in binding Heal Thyself that made binding this one much easier. Also have I mentioned that I've fallen in LOVE with holographic foil??? I've uploaded the cover/spine/back PNGs here! Feel free to use, though credit would be appreciated <3

<3 <3 <3

Astolat’s Complete Person of Interest Fic!

I am continuing on my quest to bind all of @astolat ‘s fic in the fandoms I read. This is a two volume set of all of her Person of Interest fic, taking my collection of her works to 9 volumes. I decided to title each volume after one story—and how could I resist the bookbinding pun of “Dangerous if Unbound”?

These books have been two or three months in the works. I did the typeset way back over the summer, printed it in early September, and had to leave the folded pages sitting in my press for weeks because I didn’t have time to even do the sewing. Then I had a week where I had to make time for bookbinding or I was going to go insane, and was able to get them done AND teach myself how to make slip cases.

Books and case are all bound in black buckram. Foil decorations on the books. Endpapers are painted textured paper. Silk endbands. Inside of the box has homemade paste papers.

these are so beautiful!

Aww, lovely! 💐

I am a suave detective in the 1930s. This is acceptable.

I'm the emperor of the known universe and wow is there a LOT of sand around here.

I finished my first ever watch of Star Trek: The Original Series last night and wow, what a journey.

I’ve loved all the Trek I’ve watched before, but for years I avoided TOS. I had watched a handful of episodes and not really been into it, and I didn’t want to deal with any sexism or racism or other remnants of the 60s. I bought into the Kirk Drift and thought he was an asshole, and I didn’t want to watch 79 episodes of an asshole.

But after finishing Lower Decks my husband and I decided to dive in and watch all of it. I expected to adore Spock and groan at the special effects. I expected to roll my eyes a lot.

Friends, I was so wrong. I am delighted by this series. There was plenty of things to roll my eyes at and cringe at and yeah there’s stuff that has aged poorly or maybe was bad from the start. But overall, what a joy to watch. It was so fun to see the origin of so many things in science fiction and Star Trek. The costumes and sets were fun to look at. The fighting scenes are sometimes goofy but fun to watch. So much of this show is FUN and you can tell they had a blast making it.

And yeah, I loved Spock. But Kirk, Kirk surprised me. He’s such a deeper and more interesting character than I realized before watching. He’s not really an asshole at all. He’s smart and sweet and a good leader. He loves and ship and his crew. As Spock would say, he’s fascinating.

I knew vaguely about K/S and the history of fanfiction but watching it it’s like…yeah. Of course. Of course these two are together. Of course they launched fandom as we know it. Of course people saw the way they looked at each other and knew they should be married.

If you haven’t watched it yet take this as your sign that you should give it a try. You probably don’t have to watch every episode. There are some real stinkers in there. But give it a try, go in with an open heart, and you might be as delighted by it as I am now.

The Pack Survives (4193 words) by astolat Chapters: 1/23 Fandom: Game of Thrones (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence Additional Tags: Tags Coming When Complete Series: Part 20 of Game of Thrones works Summary:

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival. —Thornton Wilder

This mad story (which is complete at 173k words long) has taken me a year to wrangle to the end. As I got close, I was going to advent calendar it, and then it was going to be for Hanukkah, but I was still fighting my way out of it with much help from @cesperanza and lim, and now it's DONE and I'm too impatient to wait for the 12 days of Christmas so it's going to be *waves hands vaguely* the solstice to the new year!

As I've done before, I'm posting untagged and will add tags when the whole monster is up. Speculation and conversation welcome in comments!

I'll update here a few times along the way, but I confess that I do not have the spoons to update tumblr 23 times, so if you want notifications as each of the chapters go up, please subscribe on AO3!

Happy holidays and I hope this is a season of light for you all! <3

Chapters 4 and 5 are up!