[Note: This project was completed in June 2021.]

Do you ever read the first chapter of a WIP and just know you need to bind it once it’s finished?

Roots was that fic for me. Months before it wrapped up in April 2021, I was drafting layouts in my head, researching fonts, and hoping hansbekhart would be cool with me creating a physical copy of their fic. (I always ask author permission before I bind a fic, just to be polite.) Luckily, they were!

I wanted not only to play with the fic’s central image – plants endlessly growing from Lan Zhan’s body – but convey the pressing claustrophobia and panic that settles over him as the story progresses. So the design of the chapter headings started small.

Just a cute little leaf! A tiny vine curling up! And then…

By the second-to-last chapter, they splayed everywhere into this chaotic, choking mess that overwhelmed the actual text of the heading. I half-joked on Twitter that I was walking a very fine line between “this is thematically appropriate” and “graphic design is my passion!! (◡‿◡✿),” and I hope I ended up more on the side of the former.

You can read “The Roots Grow Riotous” at the link above! Trust me, it is well, well worth it.