[fluffyrockyroad]

[Fanbind] And So They Met

And So They Met by @DragonSorceress22

Typeset and illustration by cArt

Fandom: Detective Conan + Magic Kaito

Relationship: Kudou Shinichi/Kuroba Kaito

Size: A7, 25332 words, 278 pages. Printed on Stora Enso 60gsm cream book paper. One sheet of A4 short grain paper per signature (cut into 4 A6 sheets)

Part of 2026 Tiny Book Bang @renegadeguild

This is an accidental bind. I wasn’t going to do a tiny book but I saw the typeset and the typesetter’s region I just HAD to bind this. This brings back so much of my teenage years!

Detective Conan and Magic Kaito are two manga series drawn by the same author Gosho Aoyama. Detective Conan is a teenage detective who got de-aged into a school kid by a mysterious gang. Magic Kaito is a teenage magician who is also a Lupin type thief. Through the author’s self confessed inability to draw faces, the two main characters look exactly the same. They started doing cameo in each others' series. Mistaken identity/best frenemy shenanigans ensured.

The cover design was inspired by Kaito’s hat. The ribbon on the cover is a blue bias tape backed with heat n bond and tissue paper. So I basically made book cloth. The headband is sewn on with embroidery threads. The bookmark is cut to mimic Kaito’s tie. Can you tell I loved Kaito?

For some reason I always thought Kaito wore purple. I didn’t realise his colour scheme is the reverse of Conan’s colour scheme which is pretty cool. I am also today year's old when I realised Kaito is a play on word.

Can we please take a moment to admire cArt’s amazing illustrations and the typeset that makes it look like a manga?

Size comparison with my normal sized Heron’s Everyman Library book. Trust me this is a TINY book. It is just that my lit Conan is even tinier...

There can only be one truth!

(Or whatever the English translation is)

[ship-to-starboard]

[fluffyrockyroad]

Hornblower and Matthews, feeling inspired by One Piece.

[runfrost]

As I looked, there was a pale horse, and its rider’s name was Death

Follow-up to my previous post More under the cut!

[paranoiareigns]

Ok i cant stop thinking about hodgey as war. Hes my favourite representative of it. War is usually some aggressive personality, loud or assertive or angry. Hodge brings real aspects of war to the table!!

Hes soft spoken, puts value on appearing a gentleman, pleasant in person and disposition. He also slaughters indigenous peoples across the globe with little afterthought (his service before the plot, the Netsilik family...). Hes a good representative of war as it it targets and displaces the lowest in the hierarchy of power, perpetrated by white men as britain as the primary case study. And that, after all the posturing and expensive facades of morality, his actions are fuelled by a selfish urge to consume. The dichotomy of his disposition versus his actions is also a good parallel to the reality of war versus the reasons people find to wage them, or even the leaders themselves.

Ugaough. I love good art that makes me think

[vastwinterskies]

A year ago on the deck of the Daring, Admiral Lord Hornblower sacrificed his honour, and with it, all that he held dear in the world. Half-mad with grief, he retreated to a deserted West Indies islet, where he hopes to meet a merciful end -- by thirst, shark, or hurricane, he cares not which. Captain William Bush, however, is not made to allow a friend to suffer alone.

Hornblower's Lost Honour by @sanguinarysanguinity destroyed me. So I had to make a playlist about it.

spotify | youtube

[slayknif]

Happy birthday Horatio

[hangingfire]

“Voyage of HMS Cornwallis” by Tom Bowline aka James Fitzjames

Hey Terrorholics. Who wants to read James Fitzjames’s honestly kind of terrible poem about his experiences in the First Opium War? Sure you do.

Like anyone who’s gotten bitten by this bug, I learned about this poem from William Battersby’s definitive biography, James Fitzjames: The Mystery Man of the Franklin Expedition. And I have found some truly obscure Franklin-related primary sources through some fairly determined search engine abuse, so I figured this must be out there, surely.

Well, it was a little harder than I thought, because I had to dig up both the 1842 and 1843 volumes of The Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle, and then hope that the versions I found actually had the relevant goddamn pages posted online. But I succeeded, and here’s the fruits of said labor.

It’s not good. It really isn’t. And it’s bloody long. But of course you want to read it, don’t you? (And it’s still better than “The Explorer’s Grave”.)

Keep reading

[magneticrabbit]

jcRAT at da ocean

working pockets! with embroidered ‘f’ and ‘a’ ;)

the process

[fluffyrockyroad]

“… the earliest known letter in Hornblower’s handwriting, the first anyone bothered to keep. It was sent from the Retribution to Mr Bush”

From The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower by C. Northcote Parkinson, aka the OG Hornblower fanfic.

[deckhanddandy]

What a way to phrase it, Hornblower

[fluffyrockyroad]

Hornblower and Bush. From Hornblower’s Triumph, a 1959 abridged version of Commodore and Lord Hornblower for children.

[fluffyrockyroad]

To my fellow Hornblower enjoyers in the UK, the fabled additional chapter of Commodore is on Faded Page. The one where Forester was told by the US publisher to tell us Hornblower went back home okay instead of fading to black because he was probably too depressed.

https://www.fadedpage.com/books/20171128/html.php

[fluffyrockyroad]

Random thoughts at Pride.

Would Hornblower enjoy Pride Parade? Probably not. The music. The sheer idea of people parading themselves and not dressed to Admiralty standard. Perhaps some version of Hornblower who could openly be gay, like the one in Sanguinity’s Until Death or England Do Us Part, would use his political influence to organise Pride, and then resign to be tortured for a weekend.

[katherynefromphilly]

So I finally did it. I turned “and like the cycle of the year, we begin again” into an actual, whole-ass book. It’s the first book I ever typeset, printed, and bound. It’s been a journey, I tell you. Binding a 2 inch thick book should not be anyone’s first adventure in bookbinding… but if this ding dong can do it, then so can you.

HUGE thanks to the people on the Renegade Bindary Discord server (on tumblr: @renegadeguild), who answered a million questions about each phase of this process. Their knowledge and talent is inspirational.

There’s tons of mistakes in the creation of this book, and lots of stuff crooked and uneven, and I just KNOW there’s still typeos waiting for me to find them. But I don’t care. The perfect is the enemy of the done. And this as done as it’s going to be until I finish writing the last story in the series. Once that happens I’ll turn all the other stories into books for myself and decorate them all. I’m considering it an inspiration to get back to writing. :)

[moreclaypigeons]

Sometimes there's an elaborate bit, and then you commit to it and put a lot of time into creating something with it, pick up a new hobby or two... anyway. Here's Gatsby Great The

[boatcats]

"What did you just say? 'The characteristics of the bottom?' How dare you speak like that at a time like this! You are on duty!"

"I -- it's a technical -- it's a technical term! I'm trying to deploy the anchor!"

"IS THAT WHAT THEY'RE CALLING IT THESE DAYS?!"

[boatcats]

[ID: A page from a book with a section titled "Bottom Description." "Knowing the characteristic of the bottom is most important when anchoring." End ID]

[sanguinarysanguinity]

Sexting via Marryat's International Code of Signals:

(1073) What bottom have you? (T10 T25) JW

(1082) Good bottom for anchorage. (427) I am in want of an anchor. (681) Can you assist me? (T20 T8) SH

(5378) Very stiff under canvas. (548) I am well armed. (2470) I have long guns. (4192) I am ready for action. (5312) Get up all possible steam. (T10 T25) JW

(5301) My steam is up and I am ready. (2490) The harbour is good. (3917) You may come into port (3940) as soon as possible. (T20 T8) SH

(1390) I am acquainted with the channel. (3260) The passage is narrow. (3756) An excellent passage. (T10 T25) JW

(5179) I am in want of a spar. (5733) As much as I can take. (2496) Do you intend to come into harbour? (2596) Do not hesitate. (T20 T8) SH

(2594) I shall not hesitate. (2490) The harbour is good. (T10 T25) JW

(52) Let go your anchor. (967) You are in a good berth now. (T20 T8) SH

(2104) I am on fire. (4985) I shall shift my berth. (T10 T25) JW

(4896) Shift your berth farther out. (4897) Shift your berth farther in. (4896) Shift your berth farther out...

(from "(T2735) Eager, ly, ness (T9827) Your, s", in which I had far too much fun perusing a nineteenth century signals book.)

[littlestpersimmon]

Free Ornamentation IV. This work is dedicated to the public domain 🐌

[deckhanddandy]

Master and Commander: they’re published in chronological order, here’s a list for you! Have fun and be yourself!

Hornblower:

[fluffyrockyroad]

When I did my Hornblower bookbind I included a bibliography, in published and chronological orders. For this very reason.