Another new week, and thus a new Fantasy with Friends post: the prompts are hosted at Pages Unbound, if you’d like to join in. This week’s prompt is about the merch you’d like to see:

If you could design merch based on any fantasy books, what items would you want?

I don’t buy a lot of merch because I don’t have a lot of room for it — or rather, there’s room, but I tend to find it feels cluttery and I don’t know of many items that have uses that I’d want to be fantasy-themed. Except the biggie: bookmarks. I collect free bookmarks, of all stripes: my favourites are ones that advertise bookshops, especially indies, but I have a soft spot for ones that display books I’ve actually read, too. I got into the habit because of the free bookmarks the Book Depository used to do, and now… well, I have far more than I can use, even though I tend to use multiple bookmarks at a time (marking out stuff like where the chapter ends or other convenient stopping-points).

And even though I have more than I can sensibly use, I’d still love more. I’d love some danmei-themed ones: I think I have a couple based on Heaven Official’s Blessing, if I remember rightly, but I’d love them for other danmei as well, because the illustrations are often gorgeous. These covers in particular, for example:

But really I could go for bookmarks of anything I’ve read, even if the cover isn’t particularly pretty! There was a fun set somewhere with stats from a book/series, maybe Game of Thrones? With like a body count and other stats like number of battles… that kind of thing could be neat.

Some stuff like that is out there, but it’d be kinda nice if every book came with it — my British Library Crime Classics books do, for instance, due to my subscription!

Other than that, I do enjoy bookish t-shirts: I have some for Mo Xiang Tong Xiu’s books, like a t-shirt with “OOC OOC OOC” on it (from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System) and one with cute bunnies representing Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian (from Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation). I’m always game for that kind of thing. Maaaaybe a tote bag here or there? And I’ve had a few necklaces with pendants that looked like specific books, or earrings like that. I have some Hua Cheng-inspired earrings, too; I don’t wear earrings a lot, but I do like to be able to be nerdy when I do.

Anyway… “mostly bookmarks” is probably a fairly boring choice, but it’s honest, haha.