#I was a horse girl at one point

[rexbalistidae]

Weekly normal 💪

Also here is the original drawing for that first one, it’s over a year old from like June I think

[sunderwight]

Thinking about a crack SV AU where Shen Yuan transmigrates into a horse.

Luckily he is not a normal horse, no! He is a spiritual stallion, a character that was mainly a joke about the novel's genre in PIDW, originally bred on Cang Qiong's beast tamer peak but not actually encountered until Luo Binghe's "raze cultivation society to the ground" phase. At which point there was a subplot about him finding the stallion and letting it loose to run free, as like, an allegorical reference. Occasionally Binghe would find other horses across the years that were obviously descended from that one, as more jokes, until Airplane forgot about the reference and never brought it up again.

Shen Yuan, of course, was always Big Mad that Binghe never got to actually ride this super magical mystical horse, and never got the horsegirl arc he deserved! Where is the man's companion animal? How can someone with nine billion wives and even more nameless underlings be fated for a life of perpetual loneliness??

Naturally, the first thing Shen Yuan does upon figuring out that he's this magic horse is break out of the beast peak and make for Qing Jing. He's not necessarily planning to go bond with the protagonist or anything, but he's not particularly keen to live out his fate as some feral horse that fucks other horses either, and he's extremely valuable so it's unlikely anyone will kill him even if they catch him again. So, might as well take the opportunity to clap eyes on his favorite character before he's doomed to a life of eating hay and whatever, right?

Horse SY manages to arrive on Qing Jing Peak right before the start of the skinner mission, though, just as Ming Fan is telling Luo Binghe that there aren't enough horses. Ning Yingying points out SY and is all oh look, one of the stable hands must have realized the error and brought another, and everyone else is kind of like "uh that is... not a normal horse...?" but then Shen Qingqiu gets impatient and snaps at them to get a move on, and fear of their mercurial shizun overrides everything else to the point where Binghe just clambers desperately onto this mystical saddle-free horse.

Airplane borrowed kelpies for his demon beasts at some point and they are pretty common, so it occurs to Luo Binghe only after he's climbed onto the strange and definitely not normal Horse SY that he might be on the verge of getting carried off and drowned. But SY just kind of rolls with it, and falls into line with the other horses.

Hey, it's an excuse to leave the sect! And practice doing horse stuff! And also, he's not going to buck Luo Binghe off of his back!

Of course as it happens, the specific kind of magical horse that Shen Yuan is comes with a specially bred-for trait where they only bond to one rider. They're usually bred for like, kings and emperors and other highly important figures as status symbols, like magical companion animals but ones with perfectly mundane utilities. He's also got Shadowfax-like stamina and speed, meaning that Airplane can treat this kind of horse as interchangeable with a motorbike, and of course the capacity to cultivate. Which means that when the party finally arrives at their destination, everyone suddenly realizes that Luo Binghe has unwittingly bonded with a horse that's worth a fortune and won't ever let anyone else ride it now.

Shen Qingqiu flips his shit, Shen Yuan bites Shen Qingqiu, Luo Binghe hyperventilates, Ning Yingying gets kidnapped, and the situation basically resolves with Shen Yuan kicking the shit out of the skinner demon in defense of his new BFF the baby protagonist.

Well if he's going to end up letting anyone ride him for the rest of his life, Luo Binghe would be his first choice.

Anyway they get back and Shen Qingqiu is still spitting mad and offers Luo Binghe's head on a platter to the lord of the beast peak, but Beast Peak's people are actually kind of pleased. Like sure it's a little inconvenient, because Luo Binghe is a Qing Jing disciple and not one of theirs, but they were honestly beginning to worry that this stallion wouldn't bond with anyone! It's really hard to manage them when they don't! And SY in particular comes from a long and illustrious lineage that has nearly died out a few times, so they were never planning to sell him off even for a high price anyway. With a rider chosen, the odds of them getting him to cooperate for breeding purposes are a lot higher, plus it will be much easier to take care of him now! Though they will be taking Shen Qingqiu up on his offer of Luo Binghe's time, since "punishment" for this transgression will involve splitting his time between the peaks in order to help take care of SY (all the beast peak disciples are super relieved, apparently before Shen Yuan transmigrated, the horsey original goods was extremely prone to biting and kicking...)

Shen Qingqiu basically tells Luo Binghe not to bother coming back, which fills Binghe with despair, but he gets over it eventually. The beast peak is nice! They give him a cultivation manual as well, in order to help him understand what they do, and it seems that Binghe can understand it a lot better than his QJP one. The peak lord gives him permission to use the dorms as well, since there will probably be times when he has to stay overnight, and no one says much about it when Binghe basically moves in full time. On the books he's still a Qing Jing disciple, but functionally he's a transfer student now. He even sits in on classes and lectures, and a lot of the peak are just under the impression that he was transferred over to their peak in full.

Shen Yuan considers this a big improvement, and expects Luo Binghe to enjoy running around with all the pretty girls on the peak. But Binghe mostly seems to spend his time with him, in fact, asking questions upon questions not only about Shen Yuan's breed, but about his specific background and lineage. The beast peak is overall pretty nice, although sadly it's not full of cool monsters and companion animals as Shen Yuan would have hoped. Mostly the peak specializes in the cultivation world's equivalent of livestock and work animals, training beasts like spirit eagles and horses like himself, and raising animals prized for their meat, organs, bones, or other parts for medicinal, alchemical, or culinary ingredients, or sometimes components for weapons or other spiritual tools. They work the most closely with Qian Cao, Wan Jian, and An Ding.

Being a horse is honestly kind of boring for Shen Yuan, although running is fun, and he at least gets plenty of time to work on his cultivation.

By the time Sha Hualing's invasion happens, he's gotten pretty comfortable in his new state of affairs. Binghe has even figured out that he likes being read to, and has started reading aloud to him from various texts in the evenings! So far no good novels, or even bad trashy novels, but it's better than nothing!

Binghe also takes him for a lot of rides around the peaks (not Qing Jing) which is how they end up caught on Qiong Ding when the rainbow bridge goes down. When Shen Qingqiu tells Luo Binghe to fight, Binghe doesn't even have a weapon at hand.

Actually, he doesn't have a sword at hand.

Turns out having your magical horse kick a demon to death is still pretty effective!

Shen Yuan even manages to avoid getting poisoned too. Rather, Elder Hammer threatens to poison him and Luo Binghe charges at him shouting "stay away from my horse! I'll kill you!" and etc, and does get nicked by the thorns, but only Binghe and Shen Yuan notice and of course the poison doesn't work on Binghe, congrats for unlocking a new hint as to Luo Binghe's mysterious origins!

Yes, Horse SY shows up to help Binghe in the Dream Demon event. He still looks like a horse for it, but it also marks the first time he's able to speak to Luo Binghe, which successfully distracts Luo Binghe from a lot of the tormenting visions of his past because talking magic horse friend has a way of doing that.

So the Dream Demon is like, that's not a normal horse, and Luo Binghe is all "stay away from my horse! I'll kill you!" and Shen Yuan gets knocked out of the dream as usual. Wakes up to Luo Binghe rushing to his stall to check on him and prepare him some nice warm congee and double-check that he can't talk for reals (only in dreams for now, alas).

Anyway Luo Binghe has no reason to hide his demonic cultivation practice from his horse, so Shen Yuan gets to sit in on it as Binghe tries to put Meng Mo's teachings into practice, which he finds super cool. Binghe's normal cultivation also progresses quite a bit, but he's still very much disadvantaged there because the beat peak is only giving him like, half-assed guest disciple status lessons, no personal one-and-one tutelage, and he's unofficially banned from Qing Jing and wouldn't get any help there anyway (apart from Ning Yingying). The beast peak lord isn't really his shizun and Shen Qingqiu isn't going to take Binghe to do things like claim a sword from Wan Jian, either.

Luckily, Binghe can now confer with his horse in his dreams! Shen Yuan has such helpful ideas as compelling various hall masters and combat teachers to dream about their lessons, so that Binghe can insert himself into the form of their students and supplement his tutelage with nighttime training from all around the sect. And also stealing some blank documents from An Ding and forging paperwork to turn over to Wan Jian to make it look like Binghe has permission to claim a spiritual sword without Shen Qingqiu's approval.

What a way to pass the time before the Immortal Alliance Conference!

Horse Shen Yuan would like very much to just carry Luo Binghe away in the opposite direction, thank you, but he does have a system and it is still holding a metaphorical gun to his head about this. Still, there's no force in the world that could keep Shen Yuan in his stable when shit starts to go down, or that could stop him from kicking the snot out of Shen Qingqiu when he tries to throw Binghe into the Abyss. (Binghe's thoughts on the fight: "stay away from my horse! I'll kill you!")

However, Binghe does still get thrown down, and Horse SY runs off whilst weeping crystalline tears of dismay as his mane whips in the wind, imagining a future where a blackened Luo Binghe returns for his revenge arc and symbolically sends his beloved horsie companion away forever to go frolic or some shit, which Shen Yuan is not interested in!

But what can he do? By the time Binghe gets out of the Abyss, his need for a horse will be decidedly minimal. It already went down a bunch when he finally got Zheng Yang (that Binghe somehow almost never flew anywhere on, surely for reasons unrelated to his bond with SY), and with Xin Mo and all his OP talents, even if he did keep Shen Yuan, wouldn't he become as much of a useless background character as countless auxiliary wives in his harem?

No! He won't stand for it! There has to be a way for him to convince even blackened Binghe that Shen Yuan is still the best ride in town!

Luckily, Shen Yuan knows where there are some power-ups that might be able to help him. While he won't touch anything that would be vital for the protagonist, he's more flexible on screwing over random future harem members or side characters, especially when it wouldn't even really harm them all that much. So while Binghe is going through his gauntlet of horrors in the Abyss, Shen Yuan embarks on his own level-up quest to dramatically increase his cultivation, and become more capable of keeping up with Binghe.

When this leads to Shen Yuan being able to take on a human form, he gets really excited, but that's mostly for personal comfort reasons. He can finally hold books again! And talk to people! Who cares if he looks like someone's ponysona gijinka, he can walk over to a stall and order meat buns!

Unicorn form is next, and it's... meh? Mostly it's a boost in his cultivation. The horn looks fun but doesn't really do much.

When he upgrades to being able to take on a pegasus form, now that's really cool. He can fly now! Not only is it crazy good fun, but it also increases his mobility exponentially. Surely riding a flying horse would be more comfortable than balancing on a sword, too?

But that's not enough for his actual goal, he needs to keep going until he finally finds the right bullshit mythical item that will do what he hopes:

Turn him into a dragon!

Unfortunately said bullshit item is in the demon realms, which are a fairly difficult place to navigate as either a horse or a human. Beefing up for the trip takes Shen Yuan just about two years, and requires all of his other upgrades. But he does it, he gets to the demon realms, eats the creatively named Dragon Fruit Plant, and... gets... stuck???

In his new dragon form???

WTF this didn't happen to the random ox that Luo Binghe fed the fruit to in order to create a suitable beast of burden to impress the husband of Wife No.666! Although, thinking about it, maybe it did because it wasn't like the ox ever turned back into an ox afterwards. But Shen Yuan just figured that was because it was a simple beast of burden and saw becoming a dragon as an overall upgrade, why go back? He honestly hadn't really thought about it!

Cue Luo Binghe getting out of the Abyss only to shortly find that a random dragon is following him around. Maybe that just happens here? It doesn't attack him, at least, and he has no time to deal with it (or to sleep) because his first order of business is establishing enough of a foothold in the demon realms to regain access to the human ones, and find out what happened to his horse. And then kill Shen Qingqiu. In that order.

[zarla-s]

[previous] [next]

Never know when a flashback will strike! Although actually Gaster had a pretty good idea that it was likely going in. He actually kept it together pretty well until the laughing started.

I was going to have one of the other ladies in there with Jockey and Mousey, but Hunter doesn’t like books, Smoker’s a grouch, and Charger wouldn’t laugh that much. So I went through my old sketches and found one of Jockey’s nerd friends who died in the zombie apocalypse, Lorelei. She’s happy to be here!

[index] [patreon] [comicfury]

[foccaccia]

does anyone have recommendations for fictional media that has like. actual lesbians in it. not like supergirl Two White Skinny Girls, One Blonde and One Brunette Kiss media, or "its implied lesbianism!!!" but just regular fucking lesbians

[itsmegunsworddeep]

adding seasonal tokens to the game makes every holiday on jorvik feel like a visit to a fucked up chuck e. cheese

[shadows-of-almsivi]

For the writing prompt list: 18 & 15

18: Autumnal

The old ostler put out a notice for a horse trainer, when the Rorikstead crops were coming into their height. A small room for my boarding built into the stable, a meal and ten septims a day were, apparently, enough to buy me, to my own surprise. Still, it is only until the ostler’s son returns from some wedding or other, and I’d grown tired of sleeping on stony ground.

It’s been rather a delight for me here, truth be told, though the pay is poor and the work leaves my body numb with exhaustion. Horses are a fondness of mine, and even the meanest and foulest-tempered of the beasts passing through the ostler’s yards can kindle a little tenderness from me. I’m tasked to breathe a little spirit back into these worn-out old carriage drafts, to take wild-eyed Reach ponies and make them fit for the smallest child’s first saddle, and by and large I do succeed by some measure. Having no friends here to speak to nor inclination to find any, I spend all of my time with the horses, and the training goes all the swifter for the closer attention. The ostler seems pleased with my progress, as am I.

Is this what it would have been like, to have held more conventional employment?

The mare I’m working today is a lively young Chorrol Red, near leaping out of her skin with excitement to be out of her stall. I can feel, in the shiver of her flank against my calves, how badly she wants to canter headlong into the open field, kicking free the stiffness of those long and boring days in the stable. Her previous master ought to be ashamed, to have let such a high-natured beast molder away indoors before trading her to us.

Her hooves churn the dirt as she dances anxiously in place. The brass bells about her bridle and breastplate, the training-tack for horses prone to flight or nerves, chime at every restless step. I hold her reins just firm enough to let her feel me; I prefer the more subtle touch of directing from the knee, but she’s liable to bolt without the extra guidance. Her breed is known more for racing and courier work than for level-headedness, more spirit than sense perhaps. She sees open grass before her and nothing else, and I’d best not let her have her head or else she’s likely to throw me at once, or snap a slender leg on some hidden stone outcrop.

But still, how beautiful she is, how uncommonly fine for this place. That rich chestnut coat shines so lovely in the pale sun, bright as a new-minted copper flashing between a street-magician’s knuckles. Her restlessness is infectious; I find myself, too, looking over those rolling plains with sudden, aching longing. There’s a crispness to the morning air that would feel wonderful raking through my hair, a sluggishness to my blood from my days here that I can’t wait to shake loose. Honest labor has its sweetness, but precious little thrill has stirred me since taking up the old ostler’s offer.

Perhaps a sprint down the road to the bridge would let us both focus a little better…

15: Soup.

I’d had such hope for a good fish soup for tonight. I should know better than to think of cooking before the catch, it’s bad luck to fish with a certain recipe in mind. My nets came up in empty tatters, gnawed through and picked clean. I’d thought slaughterfish, of course, until I heard those bellowing, ugly barks from a ways past the shoreline. I was surprised to see one in a lake; Skyrim’s fauna continues to astound me the longer I stay here.

But, regardless, curiosity does not fill the stewpot. No fish soup tonight, but my recipes adapt.

Tonight, then, it is seal.

I have heard horker is best treated like pork, and a seal shouldn’t be much different, I imagine. With this in mind, I selected a shoulder, diced middling-sized, and one fin to enrich the broth. The skin I set aside; its fur carries lovely marbled markings, and should be a fair trade for a new net at the tradehouse.

The raw meat was a deep red, less like an apple and more like wine, almost the same as the wine I poured into the hissing iron pot to steam and spit. Some cabbage I added next, some garlic, a little mora tapinella from the morning’s walk. Finally, a couple of bees, finely ground, just for alchemical safety-- I don’t believe the mushrooms’ poison to survive a long cooking, but you can never be too careful.

Now, the house smells quite delightful, and I can put my feet up for a while. The soup will want a few hours over a gentle fire, and I have some reading to catch up on.

[echojedis]

How do people do OCs, I can never get them to click properly

[nihilismtrcit]

i have such mixed feelings about the new pack but im so excited to see everyone’s gameplay. i’ll wait til yall get it and then see if i succumb to peer pressure lmao

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads // twitter thread

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach

sff novella merging a future recovering from climate catastrophes where the rich time travel to the past for recreation, and historical fantasy

a woman who’s spent her life restoring ecosystems puts together a small team to get the chance to time travel back to 2000BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers

aging MC with octopus leg prosthetics

[tardis--dreams]

Some of those doctors make hating oat milk their entire personality. I hate them. Cannot pretend to find them funny or like i give a shit. Fucking pretentious assholes

[nexus-nebulae]

thinking about when i had such intense phantom limbs as a kid i told my math teacher about it

[ear-motif]

i love hannibal’s choice in killers btw. hes really like ok ok so i have emo dog boy, check. eldest daughter syndrome, check. ik she doesnt wanna murder but we’ll get there. umm lets see therian bone boy, check. and im sorry a HORSE GIRL?? immediate check ive always wanted one of those

[drakonovisny]

why do my sims playthroughs always turn kinda fucked up :'D

[hauntingblue]

Sanji has adquired top sad wet cat status

[el3ctraaa]

My biggest culture shock on uquiz is that ppl have been giving me their Instagrams. Like their real life Instagrams with their real life first and last names 🤯. Has no one taught these kids internet safety ever???? What happened to choosing a full first middle and last name that you liked when you were seven and creating a whole person based on it??? Where's the creativity nowadays? Where's the spark? You can be anyone on uquiz but instead you choose to be yourself smh.

[artsyaprilmr]

I would learn how to draw horses for HER