#all of the king's horses

[orange-peony]

Thanks for tagging me on Sunday @alexalexinii, @hushed-chorus and @you-remind-me-of-the-babe!

I've been working on my fic for the @drarry-mini-bang, but unfortunately I can't share it yet. I've also been desperately trying to finish something for the @erotic-grope-fest which started off as a drabble for a the tropes ask.

Here's a snippet:

I know he can see me better than I can see him. I know all about him. I remember the way he felt against my lips, that night when he set the woods on fire. I can still recall the way he tasted. The way I held him under the stars. The smell of smoke and the crackling of the fire behind me. The way nothing else mattered, only the feeling of Baz in my arms, crying and clinging to me. He shivers, and I snap out of my reverie. “It’s cold,” I say gruffly. “You take the bed.” “I’m not letting you sleep on the floor, Snow,” he replies, like he always does. It’s a careful dance we’ve crafted over weeks and months. I still wait for him to say it, because I don’t have the courage to do it myself (I wonder if I lost it when I lost myself). “Your bed can fit two grown men.” And then, “Come here. We’ll keep each other warm.”  I wonder what will happen when the days grow longer and warmer. Will there be no more excuse for this, and I’ll have to sleep on the cold floor, then?

Tagging (apologies if you've already done it, I am scheduling the post): @pato-roldnart, @bubble-gumhead, @artsyunderstudy, @larkral, @cutestkilla, @hushed-chorus, @alexalexinii, @you-remind-me-of-the-babe, @rimeswithpurple, @regretfulcorrine, @excalisbury, @littlewinnow, @basiatlu, @martsonmars, @thewholelemon, @letraspal, @crazybutgood, @okay-sky, @fatalfangirl @facewithoutheart, @imagineacoolusername, @blackberrysummerblog, @tea-brigade, @ivelovedhimthroughworse, @ebbpettier, @captain-aralias @leithillustration, @vukovich and @peachpety.​

[joleneghoul]

Decided to make an actual ref for The Queen. I think Fallout NPC ocs are really really fun honestly- like yesss add more to the game.

Text under cut in case its hard to read on photo!

Originally a performer from New Reno, Queen now resides on the outskirts of New Vegas, with The Kings- after life on The Strip turned foul.

It seems she has had a hard time settling down in the past, probably because of her affinity for a good revenge plot. Never let it be said that The Queen can't hold a grudge.

Quest: The Night The Lights Went Out In Vegas*

After Reaching Idolized Status in Freeside The Queen will embellish and customize The Couriers clothes for them.

*A Wildcard/anarchy sided Quest Titled after "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia" by Vicki Lawrence

[crosallin]

WHO COULD EVER LEAVE ME DARLING…

[arealtrashact]

Were they animals, that music could move them so ?

[laurents-secret-diary]

oh damen we're really in it now.mp4

[shirecorn]

Tumblr keeps popping up to sell me ad free dashboard. But what it doesn't understand is that me and the ads have a sort of symbiosis at this point.

The guys from the fake gameplay trailers for a predatory mobile app are my blorbos

[specialagentartemis]

unfortunately if I want to independently develop a hypothesis about Rohan's economic/subsistence structure I really need to learn things like the requirements of taking care of horses in the winter and the growing seasons/growing lengths of crops like lettuce, radishes, carrots, and kale, and metalworking time and space commitments, and the types of houses that can be erected and torn down quickly, and the required land area of grazing per horse, and the social organization of Iron Age Eurasian horse cultures, and what other animals might naturally live on the Mark, and productivity and caloric value of mare's milk,

and like. also reread the Lord of the Rings lol

[morrigan-sims]

All the King's Horses - a recolor set

There's a decided lack of non-modern horse cc in the community, so when I saw @objuct's Traditional Arabain Set, I knew I needed to make some recolors.

Info: - Requires the meshes - Both versions included (tassels + no tassels) - Saddles have 25 swatches each, halters have 19 each. (There's a matching halter for every saddle, though!) - First few swatches are modifications of Objuct's swatches. The rest are all mine. - Previews are unedited, no reshade.

TOU: - Respect the original creator's TOU - Don't reupload behind a paywall or claim as your own - Basically, don't be an asshole

DOWNLOAD (patreon, free, no ads) | DOWNLOAD (google drive, no ads)

@ts4medieval

[turtle-ly]

did you know that macaque's staff has a name in jttw too? It's called the "acquiescent staff of iron"/ “Acquiescent Iron Pole Arm” (随心铁杆兵, "Suíxīn tiěgǎn bīng"), or Tùy Tâm Thiết Can Binh in vnese. It clearly mirrors wukong's staff in name, the “As-You-Will Gold-Banded Staff” (Ruyi Jingu Bang), or Như Ý Kim Cô Bổng.

Now here's me being crazy based on the vnese translation alone, do NOT think of this as truth but there's at least a smidge of sense in my rambling because vietnamese is very close to chinese due to our history (the fancy names above and our old literature used a kind of phonetic translation of chinese called Hán Việt) and the meaning of chinese words more or less can be inferred by our Hán Việt version:

So the word "Như Ý" in wukong's staff name in almost only used in the phrase/blessing "Vạn sự như ý" in modern vnese, which means "may all things go your way/according to your wishes". Meanwhile, the phrase "Tùy Tâm" is used when asked about some sort of favor, for example a charity when asking for your donation will ask you to give an amount "according to your heart".

You see it right? "Như Ý" is more passive, you wish for it but not necessary go out of your way to achieve it, and "Tùy Tâm" being used in situations where your own conscience/empathy is judged, it demands you to actively question yourself to make an action. I've decided the names can play into mtwgo shadowpeach's mental states. Wukong wants freedom but afraid to pursue it at the cost of his sworn brotherhood, while macaque has always assessed the effort it takes to join in a fight, but ultimately he decided to go through all that hardship to right this wrong.

Furthermore, "Ý" means thoughts/ideas/will, which is one of the reasons the book has wukong store his staff in his ear/take the staff out of his "head", "Tâm" means heart in its literal sense and feelings in a slightly more abstract sense, so thats why i have macaque pull his shadow staff from the magic core in his chest. Fun detail isnt it? :3c

One more thing is that theres a chinese saying that goes like "mind-monkey, will-horse" (Tâm Viên Ý Mã) so Tâm -> Mind is also a very wukong thing. That says, in mtwgo macaque's staff/ his strength to fight is summoned to serve wukong :)

The altered form of wukong's staff that macaque gonna use in mtwgo will be called Suixin Jingu Bang (As-You-Feel Gold-Banded Staff or Tùy Tâm Kim Cô Bổng), combining macaque's resolve/loyalty and wukong's strength. When he swings that staff with its body painted in his own color, his victims will also know wukong's might when the golden glint of its ends becomes the last thing they see.

[greenhorn-art]

All The King's Horses | As You Are Now, So Once Was I by @samwpmarleau (grumkinsnark)

All The King's Horses [LiveJournal ch1] [Fanfiction.net ch1]

As You Are Now, So Once Was I [LiveJournal ch1] [Fanfiction.net ch1]

Fandom: Supernatural, Criminal Minds

Rating: Teen | PG-13

Category: Gen

Words: ~36,192

All The King's Horses: Protect and Serve. Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity. To what lengths would you go to uphold those oaths? When it comes to a particularly brutal and unsolvable case, the BAU just may have to resort to some more unorthodox methods. SPN/Criminal Minds crossover.

As You Are Now, So Once Was I: Sequel to "All the King's Horses." When Dean catches J.J.'s press conference on the news about a current case and notices a few...inconsistencies, he realizes the BAU is definitely going to need his help. Again. ON HIATUS

About the Book

FORMAT: Letter quarto, flatback bradel binding, french link stitch, no tapes

FONTS: EB Garamond [via Google Fonts], Supernatural Knight [via DaFont], D-Din [via Font Squirrel], Daniel [via DaFont], Permanent Marker [via Google Fonts], Arial

IMAGES: Seal of the FBI [via Wikipedia], Dean's handprint scar [by greenhorn-art]

MATERIALS: 24lb Xerox Bold Digital paper (8.5"x11"), 80pt binder's board (~2mm), 30/3 size waxed linen thread, embroidery floss (DMC #721), 1.9mm cording, brown cardstock, black Cialux bookcloth, gold foil transfer sheet (came with We R Memory Keepers hot foil pen)

PROGRAMS USED: Fic exported with FicHub, word doc compiled in LibreOffice Writer, Typeset in Affinity Publisher, imposed with Bookbinder-JS, title pages designed in Affinity Designer/Photo

.

I first read these stories on LiveJournal back in 2013, some time after I first encountered Tumblr, Supernatural, and the wider world of online fandom. Once I discovered SPNxCriminal Minds crossovers I devoured so many of them. Something about POV Outsider on the Winchesters, the existing connections with investigating monster vs human-crazy cases, and run-ins with the FBI... it's just works so well.

Of all the SPNxCM fics I read and enjoyed, All The King's Horses is among those that bookmarked themselves in my brain. Since it's been living there all these years, I thought it deserved a place on my bookshelf too.

(Rambling below)

Sourcing the Fic

I used FicHub to download the fics off of Fanfiction.net as HTML. Then I pasted them into LibreOffice Writer and created rich text documents of each fic, so I could Place them into Affinity Publisher.

The stories were crossposted, first on LiveJournal and then Fanfiction. I included the metadata from both sites in the appendices.

(It's fascinating to see the differences in the same work between platforms. FFN requires genres, so if the author doesn't add them on LJ then by default there's more info on FFN. But FFN limits listed characters to 2, so authors have to pick and choose the most important. Then there's the author's amusing disclaimers and spoiler warnings for these fics, which are only included in the LJ version)

Shoutout to the author for how they linked/listed their accounts on other platforms! Thanks to that I was easily able to track down all the tags/metadata for the fics, and find them here to express my appreciation for their stories!

Typesetting

Fonts

EB Garamond is my new favourite body font, 11pt as per my usual.

The title page is entirely Arial: 1) it was the closest match I have to the case file prop I was copying, and 2) if it was a government doc they wouldn't be using anything but the most basic fonts.

Headings and the the bullets bracketing the page numbers are set it Supernatural Knight, a free font in the style of Supernatural's title.

The location segments are in D-DIN, the closest free match to the font Criminal Minds uses (which is probably DIN).

Daniel is used for Dean's 'rushed but legible' note.

Permanent Marker for the 'thick black Sharpie' case file labels.

Artwork

Title pages designed as FBI case files, copied from a prop found online (specifically Etsy's propfictionstudios', but it's all over the web so no idea who actually created it). I had fun plugging in all the fanfic/bookbinding meta!

The ID# above the author's name is the FFN story ID, and the date is the date originally posted on LJ.

The handprint used in the headings of ATKH is Dean's scar. I traced off of a screenshot from s4e01 Lazarus Rising. I chose to use the handprint instead of the anti-possession tattoo or a Devil's Trap as my SPN art element because 1) it's specific to Dean, and 2) indicates/reminds that the story is not set during the season 3 Agent Henriksen/FBI arc.

Grabbed the FBI seal off of Wikipedia.

Construction

Both fics typeset and printed separately, then sewn together into one book. Title page for the sequel was tipped in like an endpaper prior to sewing.

Endbands sewn with orange embroidery floss (DMC 721) around 1.9mm cording. I chose orange because Dean's being in jail brought to mind the orange prison jumpsuits Sam and Dean wore in s1e19 Folsom Prison Blues.

Black bookcloth for the cover, like the Winchesters' beloved black '67 Chevy Impala. (I'd wanted a Supernatural reference to balance out the Criminal Minds-ness of the FBI case files).

I'd originally planned to make lineart of the front of the car, and have it stretch across the bottom of the cover (maybe even wrap around to the back). Even found a useful reference to trace [from here], but it didn't look as good as I'd hoped. Instead I reused the FBI seal and swapped out its text with the titles.

(The effect of shiny foiled FBI symbol on small black book reminds me of one of those FBI badge wallets!)

The foiling process was an unnecessarily long and gruelling affair. My laptop served as a massive power bank for the hot foil pen as I spent 2hrs ever so slowly tracing the image, and then 15mins on the author name and touch-ups. Did it need to take so long? Moving slowly, pushing down hard, going over everything at least three times? I'm sure it didn't. BUT I did not want to chance peeling up the foil to check how I was doing and risk shifting it. It was worth it in my books (haha) ‒ I feel giddy and kick my feet like a schoolgirl whenever I see it!

New Things

Used 24lb paper for the first time, and I love it! It's a little thicker and heavier then regular 20lb printer paper, feels more substantial.

The page numbers & running/section headers are along the outer margin, instead of in the header/footer. This was my way around Affinity's buggy-ness regarding pinning things inline in master pages. (More about that below). If I had been thinking, I could have formatted them like the tabs on a file folder and cut the textblock to match. Oh well, the things you notice once it's printed 😔

This time I also started new chapters/sections using text flow & paragraph spacing settings, instead of using a master. As always, there are pros and cons.

Pro: much faster and less involved. (find chapter start, apply paragraph style VS working from the end cutting text, inserting a frame break, unlinking frames, inserting new pages with master, relinking, pasting, and adding chapter title to a different text box)

Con: images need to be added manually (whether by adding image directly, or by applying a master with the image). I forgot to do this for the second fic, so only ATKH have Dean's handprint scar.

Difficulties Encountered

Affinity Publisher is fighting me on pinning things inline on master pages. They like to disappear on regular pages I've applied the master to. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it only works on some of the pages. Idk what's up. (The bullet character only faces one way so I had use textboxes, flip/mirror one, and pin them inline to the page number).

So instead of having page numbers in the footer, bookended left and right by text boxes with Supernatural Knight's bullet, I put it vertically down the side.

Updated Publisher and all my paragraph styles' fonts changed/went funny. Something to do with the update's variable font support, I think. What was previously 'EB Garamond' regular, was now something along the lines of 'EBGaramond-Regular' which isn't a font. Issue seems to have ironed itself out in my original (near-complete) doc while I was busy remaking it. 😐

On the bright side, the update brought QR code generation to Affinity!

[a-lilacsong]

This was originally meant to be a 100% goofy funny comic, but somehow it turned into angst halfway through. I still think it's funny that Minimus canonically learns the truth before Amber and James though.

(And thanks to @ograndebatata for helping me rewrite the script to be more fitting).

Comic Script: Roland: … So, now you know the truth about my first wish on the well. I'm sorry I didn't tell you before. If any of you has anything to say, please do. Roland: Okay… one at a time please. James: Does this mean I'm half-wishing well? If someone put a coin in my mouth could I grant their wishes? Roland: WHAT?! NO! Absolutely not! Sofia: I'm sorry dad. Minimus and I already knew, and I think he has told every horse in the kingdom by now. Roland: That's not… how did you…? Amber: Daddy… does that mean I could have killed Sofia when I turned her into a cat? Would she be dead because of me? Roland: No Amber. That wouldn't have happened. Don't worry, no one got hurt. Amber: But Sofia almost was! Roland: But she wasn't. She's alright. All of you are. I'm sorry I only told you now. but please remember we both love you all very much. And we'll all get through this together.

[precious-little-scoundrel]

“it is well that war is so terrible

or we should grow too fond of it”

[alumirp]

a god known to no one

Trafalgar Law is the last sun priest. With his city burned to the ground by royal knights, the high priest missing and only him and a child as the last survivors of the crown-endorsed massacre, he is the last priest of a god long forgotten by all but the residents of the small village of Flevance.

A god known to no one its a is a dying god.

The essence of a god is in the tales and legends that surround him, the source of a god's power comes from the worship of his followers, the life of a god depends on those who believe.

A god known to no one is a dying god and even though Law likes to think his faith is real and firm he doesn't think Nika would survive having just two believers, no matter how much Bonney prays and makes offerings.

The word has to be spread, people need to hear and tell Nika's tales again, the world needs to once again recognize the existence of the god who once freed it. And in the absence of the high priest and as the adult in charge of looking after the little envoy of the sun god, Law is the one who has the job of making Nika known once again.

And there's no better place to begin this mission than in the capital. he just needs a little plan that allows him to commit treason, because the king is clearly the biggest obstacle between Law and his god's salvation.

It is just Law's luck that he ends up encountering a group of bandits whose destination is also the capital whose plans also involve the beheading of the king. Monkey D Luffy seems to think, for whatever reason, that he is the true heir to the throne and his group of weird friends seem to support the idea. He is the leader of the Straw Hat bandits and is also the man who…kidnapped Law.

It wasn't really kidnapping, of course. They got into a bar fight, made out in the bar alley, fought over who would pay the bill and then Luffy simply threw Law over his shoulder and put Bonney over his arm and carried them to his carriage. Using a bit of excessive force.

And now he was giving them an unsolicited ride to the capital where they would all dethrone a tyrannical king. Law was definitely not kidnapped, yes.

[hes-sunshine-im-midnight-rain]

A fair alternative for nightmare passes is having the option to get the card for free after doing in-game daily stuff.

PB actually had it done right with Leraye's long hair S-card. I obtained it from doing the daily log-ins and missions

For example:

Free option: login daily for the duration of the event and play nightmare dungeons etc (PB could add the option to watch ads for extra AP like what OM does) and get the card on the last day of the event

Pay option $: user can skip a couple days from the login but still do mission and stuff

Pay option $$: user can get the card earlier by doing half the in-game daily tasks

Pay option $$$: user gets the card right away (like straight up buying it)

[catilinas]

if i could be bothered. a fucked up horses of antiquity bracket contest would be funny

[newtonsheffield]

Sansa Stark was fighting for her LIFE when she was finally reunited with her siblings only for one of them to align them with a woman who burned the country to the ground. One kept saying mysterious things about being omniscient. And the third was a dramatic assassin with a trunk full of faces.