loki/keller : prisoners
Shooting Dogs (2005)
c'mon, friends. do you see it. do you see the vision
actually yeah this deserves its own post. river’s relationship with isobel and with spider being so similar… i loved you. i did love you. just not enough.
not enough stick around for you / not enough to not betray you. not enough to choose you over my freedom / my career. isobel wanted her own life, spider wanted his ambition.
i did love you. just not enough to choose you over the kind of life i wanted.
Everybody always talks about "oops the fic was longer than it was meant to be"
But shoutout to my fellow "can't/can rarely write a multichap/anything longer than 5k or so max, often way less" writers who just can't seen to stop their fic from being shorter than intended.
Anyway longform and shortform writing are different skillsets and while fandom often only cares about, appreciates, and praises the former, I always love you, fellow shorter fic writers. A drabble is a challenge, and not every story needs to be 30k+. Shorter fics are amazing.
I am SO excited to finally share this project with everyone!! Way back in the fall of 2023 I embarked on my first foray into bookbinding, and I thought, what better work to start this hobby off on than with one of the greatest works the Brokeback Mountain fansphere has to offer, written by my dear friend Emily?
And so began my year-long journey with this work, haha.
The book is a square back bradel style binding, covered in turquoise bookcloth. I used a kettle stitch to sew the textblock, and then Lineco-brand PVA glue as the adhesive for everything that needed to be adhered.
While I'm proud of the entire book, I have to admit the thing that I'm most proud of is the cover design.
To make a long story short, I wanted to find a way to make fully illustrated covers on bookcloth, and most of the popular methods of cover design that I had seen were all very limiting for me as an artist to do the things I wanted to do. Thus much of the time I spent making this book went into deep-diving into the world of textile design and ink transfer methods.
In my research, I discovered these types of toner sheets called Direct-to-Film (DTF, lol) transfers. Basically, you can print any design you want at most any size using the full range of the CYMK color spectrum + black + white, then you use a heat press to transfer the design onto your fabric et voila: your design is embedded into the textile.
Because neither the Renegade Bindery discord nor the bookbinder reddit groups really knew what I was talking about when I asked if anyone had ever tried this method out, I put my little rodent ears on and became the guineapig lol.
The first practice attempts I made at this came out tentatively successful, and when I tried it again for the real cover, it came out perfect. I'm still floored by the results tbh. This is such a game changer and I hope more binders can utilize direct-to-film transfers in the future!
Anyways, I really hope you love your belated birthday gift as much as I loved making it, Emily 🥰 Thank you for sharing your talents with such a small fandom sphere, and I can't wait to bind more of your works in the future!!
Editing by me
Typesetting by me
Binding by me
Art by me
"There’s a docile sweetness to the way he leans into her hold"
"“Sorry,” he murmurs again, but this time she knows he means that he’s sorry for scaring her. His next ragged exhale whispers against the heel of her palm. “Didn’t mean to.” "
🌹🌹🌹🌹
to the surprise of ABSOLUTELY NO ONE i am once again yapping on about camcorder kidnapping :)
Carefully, she eases her wrist from River’s grasp and inches closer, moving with a snail’s slowness. “River,” she says, and then, choosing not to overthink it: “Darling, it’s me. It’s Catherine. Can I… can I touch your face?” She waits for his nod, which comes after an agonizing pause, before cupping her palm to the gentle curve of his face, the feverishly-bruised quality of it. Her thumb traces his cheek once, twice. “I’m sorry for shouting. I shouldn’t have. But you scared me, River. Your shoulder’s been dislocated. You can’t move it until I set it.” River’s jaw tenses beneath her palm, but gentles almost immediately. There’s a docile sweetness to the way he leans into her hold, a flower seeking the light of the sun, a cat sprawled under the amber-drenched sky. “Sorry,” he murmurs again, but this time she knows he means that he’s sorry for scaring her. His next ragged exhale whispers against the heel of her palm. “Didn’t mean to.”
A month after France and Frank Harkness, Slough House is floundering beneath the weight of grief none of them quite know how to deal with. Fortunately, Catherine has returned, and she’s determined to fix things — starting with River, who’s carrying a secret that’s affecting how he acts both with her and with Lamb — until she and River are kidnapped from Slough House by a group of former slow horses that have a very serious bone to pick with Jackson Lamb. It will be fine. Catherine knows that Lamb will come for River, and River knows that Lamb will come for Catherine, and until he does they simply have to keep the other alive long enough to be found. But what they’re not expecting is that these former slow horses don’t just want to hurt Lamb; they want to break River, and force Lamb to watch it happen. But the former slow horses have made a significant error of judgement. Because with every recording they send of River’s torture, the more determined Lamb becomes to rescue his boy, and when he finally does get River and Catherine back he is never going to let them go. It’ll be a long, difficult road to recovery, but they’ll walk it together, all three of them.
or: the camcorder kidnapping fic, at last
read it here on ao3!
“I wish I knew how to quit you.”