Motherfucker Ate All My Crabby Cakes

So I've been playing Deep Rock Galactic a lot lately (for those unaware, it's a horde shooter game about space dwarves in an alien planet) and it's got me thinking.

Space dwarves, in this universe, exist. Obviously. So do elves, because the dwarves constantly mention "leaf-lovers." Space elves. The voice over at Mission control is likely a human, owing to the lack of a beard and very different accent/tone. Goblins are also implied to exist via voicelines, though it's only like one or two mentions (via insults in case of friendly fire).

Now, of course, this is just one game. There have been other cases of elves or dwarves or similar-looking creatures in sci-fi, such as Warhammer 40k, with the Eldar, and the Orks.

But it's the first instance (that I am aware of) where true fantasy races, with no augmentations, reached technological advancement high enough not only reach space, but develop their own intergalactic or at least interstellar civilization.

If all the classic fantasy races went to space, what would they all be doing?

The dwarves would be miners, obviously. Like in DRG, they'd like their weapons, have an eye for precious metals and gemstones, and love mining and underground locales. It's in their blood.

On the other hand, the elves might be more nature-centric. They might be more dedicated to protecting planets that are full of life from expansion and industrialization, mostly by humans, as humans do what humans do: expand, conquer, wage war, all that jazz. They showed this to a certain degree in DRG's seasons 1 and 2, with a gargantuan rival incursion. While it's not stated who runs the rival company, it's likely humans, due to how advanced the tech is, and the fact that they only use tech. No living organisms are sent down into the planet's caverns.

Orcs? They'd probably continue to wage war. Question is, would they be like the Orks of Warhammer 40k, with eyes only to destroy and conquer other peoples, or could they be hired? Say, "we'll give you a shit ton of gold and riches and in exchange you go kill off anything bad on this planet, ok?"

That's just my ideas, though. Who knows, maybe DRG will expand upon this lore in later seasons (I sincerely hope they do).

Mood for today and every single week that will follow

My very first worldbuilding project is perhaps one of my favorites to date. Sure, it desperately needs revamping, yet the ideas (however poorly executed) still resonate with me. I made it in my freshman year of high school, so it was bound to be exceptionally bad, but what can I say. It was heavily reliant on fun tropes that I enjoyed at the time, but the core concept behind it was the one that I liked the most:

What if Earth was tidally locked to the sun?

What if one side of the Earth always faced it, and one side always looked away?

Science says that it would have been a wasteland. If any water had existed in the enlightened hemisphere, it wouldn’t anymore, as the very earth would have been scalding, pure magma, or close enough to it that it might have resembled what Earth looked like in its infancy. Meanwhile, the darkened hemisphere would have been so absolutely cold after billions of years of nothing but the black void of space that even the atmosphere would have frozen over and snowed to the ground. 

A slightly more fantastical world would have had the idea of all life being centered around the border between the enlightened and darkened hemispheres, a band of warmth and life that extended around the world.

I wanted a fully living world.

Granted, I never really came up with a good solution other than “ooo magic exists now so it’s fine,” but that can be worked on later (if I ever return to the world to revamp it).

I envisioned the border to be roughly cutting through the North American Midwest and western Asia (Russia, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan/Pakistan, maybe a little bit of India), with the Enlightened Hemisphere illuminating the North American East Coast, South America, Europe, Africa, and West Asia, while the Dark would have comprised of almost all Asia, as well as the totality of Oceania and the North American West Coast.

I did this because I wanted a couple things, starting with my wants for the enlightened hemisphere:

The center of the enlightened world needed to be Europe, as a pinnacle of humanity’s endeavors in science and technology. NYC would fit its name of “The City That Never Sleeps” even more, considering it would never be night there. South America would be a tropical paradise, with the jungles growing to utterly insane heights (and I wanted to introduce a kind of semi-sapient giga tree that could house entire cities within its branches). I had this really nice idea of Russia having a civil war within itself between its dark and light halves, with neither side really being “better” or “in the right,” they simply just existed and were warring across the horizon zone. Lastly, I had this idea of buffalo grazing upon the great plains in eternal twilight. 

Meanwhile on the Darkened Hemisphere, I wanted it to be a place of magic and wonder, to contradict the Sols (the people on the light side) forgoing magic to learn about science. The Nox people were something similar to elves, with pale skin and long ears, but were most notable for their massive eyes compared to Sols, who looked the most human (if you want a reference, think Alita: Battle Angel). For the dark, I wanted a few things:

Almost every plant or animal would be bioluminescent of some kind, making the world dark, but still very glowy and beautiful. China would be the center of the Darkened World, being the home of magic and wonder. They’d still have their infamous glowing lanterns, but they’d be biological, as a kind of gourd-like fruit hanging from trees. Either they’d put candles inside them, or a kind of bioluminescent bird (called Pseudo-Phoenixes) would make nests inside their carved-out innards to have shelter from predators below. Australia would be even more chaotic than normal, being a mish-mash of dangerous biomes with even more dangerous fauna. Finally, the American West Coast would actually be populated almost entirely by indigenous peoples, having managed to resist American expansion across the horizon due to them having the advantage (they are all Nox, having migrated across the land-bridge and spread out over both Americas) and establishing their own nation made of many different kinds of tribes that either natively lived there (such as the Navajo or Apache) or migrants (such as the Cherokee or Seminole). 

That’s just the basics, though. There’s a lot more nuance I put into this, but this post is already insanely long and it’s probably time to put a stop to this before I get so distracted that I can’t do my work later today. Thanks for reading if you make it to this part, though.

this was my first pokemon game and it was my childhood, i have not played a better pokemon game since

you bitches had pkmn mystery dungeon, pkmn ranger, xd and gale of darkness, pkmn snap or even that one talk to pikachu game but MY pkmn spinoff was MOTHER FUCKIN POKÉPARK

I never finished it and I don’t even remember if it was even that good- but damn it I played the SHIT out of this game as a kid and it defined a good chunk of my childhood and I will always remember it

do you have any recommendations for support Pokémon for autism related sensory overloads? I’m getting mixed results on Rotom Search

a roselia might be useful since they’re pretty common & are pretty soothing, esp if they learn aromatherapy and grass whistle, plus sweet scent (if youre into like. scented candles and stuff). ive also heard solosis gel can be soothing as something to stim with. take my words with a grain of salt because theres no one-pokémon-fits-all for autism, look for things that suit your needs specifically rather than the blanket diagnosis

ok hear me out

if regigigas moved all the continents of the pokemon world into place, it probably fucked up a few times

like maybe he was just tugging on this world’s version of the horn of africa and then woops it tugged just a little too hard and now the nile river’s a chasm that runs well into sudan

or maybe it was just trying to shape the curve of south america and uh oh, now the entirety of brazil is just an island and the entire amazon basin is flooded

A tutorial on a (bit cheating) way of creating fictional maps.

Open your editing software (RECOMMENDING Krita, since it's free and it's very good).

Step 1: Google "X country silhouette" and copy it.

Paste it onto the canvas.

Step 2: Separate the silhouette from the background you copied with it! You can do that by using magic wand selection tool or by making a gradient map with black on 49,9% and transparent on 50% on the slider.

Step 3: Repeat several times with numerous countries and/or islands, cities, municipalities, communes, continents et cetera.

Step 4: Combine, mesh, stretch, rotate, mirror - go ham, make it work.

Step 5: Erase and add.

Step 6: Have your map outline ready, copy/paste it several times in the same doc on different layers and edit in different ways like biomes, kingdoms, mountains and other.

Step Mountains+: To figure out mountains, make another layer on the doc and do something like this:

-and then in every polygon you add an arrow.

Where arrows meet or transfer onto continents, add mountains.

Color the sea with a couple layers of depth and you're done :D

BEING A TANK. IS ALL ABOUT LOVE.

The Hybrid Fossils

This "fossils" pokemon are not revived from bones, but rather they are cloned from prehistoric blood samples, recovered from another fossil pokemon

This ancient Bug/Rock pokemon can be found and revived, to extract blood samples with which you can re-create the ancient pokemons, however, the blood samples recovered from the mosquito are usually deteriorated and to create a complete DNA sequence you will need to mix 2 samples. There are 4 diferente Blood samples: Mammal (Ice), Reptile (dragon), Bird (Rock) and Fish (Water)

Mammal/Reptile becomes Ice/Dragon, it is based on the inostrancevia alexandri the largest species of Gorgonopsid

Mammal/Bird becomes Ice/Rock, it is based on the Aepyornis maximus known as the "Elephant Bird", the largest terrestrial bird that ever existed

Fish/Reptile becomes Water/Dragon, it is basd on the shastasaurus sikanniensis, the largestest species of Ichtyosaurus

Fish/Bird becomes Water/Rock, it is based on the Palaeeudyptes klekowskii, the largest penguin to ever live

The man in charge of this experiment of prehistoric splicing is Professor Marrow, an expert on "Paleogenetic" and the one who discovered the whole process

Professor Marrow is based on a mix of John Hammond from "Jurassic Park" and Dr. Moreau from "The island of Dr. Moreau"

I’ve kinda wondered what would happen if you took little trope inside jokes or realizations off the internet and made them into full games. For example, this is Tumblr after all. What would happen if someone saw our many, many ramblings about humans being space orcs and made a full game off of it? What would it look like?

For me, if I had to design a “Humans Are Space Orcs” Game, I think I’d do it as an MMORPG. I think I’d actually start it off as a completely human-free game, where you get to choose an alien species to play as (with various benefits and drawbacks) being part of this gargantuan intergalactic collective of species and peoples and planets. There’d be classic “go out and do stuff adventures,” but I think I’d also take stuff from the idea behind that MMORPG called “Albion Online” where everything is a player-built economy, and have highly expansive routes you could take for crafting things. Though now that I think about it, that might just be “EVE: Online” but with aliens. So there probably would be a lot more options in terms of alien ships and weapons and parts and all that.

However, the “humans are space orcs thing” would come in a form of one of those crazy expansions and events MMORPGs do. I’d have a sector of this one galaxy be hyper-dangerous, known as the “Dead Sector,” not because it’s lifeless, but because that’s what it does: make you dead. Quickly. A high population of gargantuan interstellar space worms, death worlds, all that jazz. Entering it would yield high resources, if you could make it out alive.

However, in this expansion, would enter THE HUMAN RACE and all the marketing would make them sound like they were weird and foreign and strange. They wouldn’t be playable yet, that would only be unlocked after the next major update, when they’ve really started to proliferate across the galaxies. But the whole “story” of that update would be learning about the humans and their culture, exploring Earth and slowly dawning upon the realization that oh my god these people are fucking insane.

That’s how I’d do it, anyway. It’d probably be fun.