all the tips I found for drawing a fantasy map are like :) “here’s a strategy to draw the land masses! here’s how to plot islands!” :) and that’s wonderful and I love them all but ??? how? do y'all decide where to put cities/mountains/forests/towns I have my map and my land but I’m throwing darts to decide where the Main Citadel where the Action Takes Place is
okay so i know i said most of this in the replies but it might be easier to actually reblog and say stuff instead lmao
Cities - go near water! freshwater lakes and rivers (rivers especially) are the best places for cities because A) source of water and B) travel and trade is much easier cus you can put your boats like right there. Basically ever relevant city ever was built on a lake or a river.
for rivers in general - because gravity, rivers run from mountains (forming from melting snow and ice (this is why they get fat in spring–more stuff melting)) to lakes/ocean where they can empty out (and even lakes will have rivers leading out that eventually get to the ocean), which can help when mapping out where those start and end. rivers are also much thinner and faster in steeper elevations and very slow and wide when the land is flat
mountains - i like to think of what the tectonic plates look like because that’s what makes mountains! mountains are also never standalone they’re always in mountain ranges (archipelagos are really just underwater mountain ranges babey). a cool trick I like to do is occasionally separate mountain ranges across continents, because over time the tectonic plates shifted and literally split the range in half. These mountains are really old tho so they’ve eroded and therefore it makes them smaller and rounder (like the appalachians) as opposed to relatively young mountain ranges like the rocky mountains which have taller and sharper peaks
Another mountain trick: if your mountains run along the ocean, the ocean side of the mountains will get a LOT of rain while the other side will be very dry–almost desert-like, in fact. think of temperate rainforests in British Columbia vs the drier conditions in the canadian prairies
forests - depends on how warm the area might be. coniferous forests are found further north (before you hit the tree line, and then it’s only tundra onwards) but as you head south you get leafier trees, and the leaves tend to get larger too
If you think about general elevation too, you’ll have places that might be swampy (wet + lower). if your world has an ice age like we did, then glaciers may have carved the land, leaving piles of soil in the south that was left when the ice receded and places where the bedrock has been bared north of that (like the Canadian Shield in Canada–the reason we see that is because of the glaciers)
You might also have a land that’s dotted in a shitton of freshwater lakes as well because the meltwater filled the holes that the glaciers scraped out (this is why canada has so many goddamn lakes)
and if the ice age was more recent than it was in our world, then you might not even have the forest re-growth and it could be a lot of open plains
tl;dr i like to think of major climate events that might have also shaped the land on top of some basic rules
Shouldn’t all the infected in the hospital be bloaters? There’s a stalker down there I thought infection was based on time
Hey, anon. thanks for being patient on this one. I had to do a little bit (a lot more than I probably needed to) of research so I wasn’t talking entirely out my ass and actually had a reasonable if not plausible answer for you. (If someone who is knowledgeable about fungal infections and the spread of infections, that wants to correct me please do. This is me using knowledge limited to the game, and my limited brain power, to make sense of information that I went along with because you gave me a gun and a child to protect I don’t have time to think about why things are just that I need to keep her alive.)
Also, this turned into more than what you asked for because I cannot give a simple answer. *finger guns*
There are a few notes lying around the lower floors from FEDRA soldiers, saying blow this hospital up because there is no way to contain what’s happening. Most of the people brought into the hospital had turned into stage one infected before much of anything was done and then shoved into one place and ignored for a looon time, with terrifying results.
That nest the Rat King escaped from is made of dozens to hundreds of people, how utterly fucked is that?
However, FEDRA is a rat king of arrogance and failure, so they didn’t fuckin’ do any of that, instead funneling more soldiers, doctors, and general people into the hospital to take care of the problem where a fungus needs as many hosts as possible to spread. Go, FEDRA. You absolute big-brained kings.
So all the people who were shoved into the trauma center, the first wave of infected originally mutated into the Rat King and those that died became the nest. Sealed off in an area that is damp and full of medical supplies. The perfect environmental factors for extreme mutations and growth over time. Which is what the team at ND worked on to explain how infected change over time. In an interview with Playstation, Neil stated, "In the first game, there is all this documentation about the different stages [of the infection], now we have to justify why there are different stages. Why are there mutations of these things? Without getting into it here, there is something about the environment and how much time has passed that has allowed these mutations to occur."
They laid out the time for stages in the first game as such:
Stage One: host is infected and begins to turn within 2 days (where you are bit plays a part in how long it takes)
Stage Two: two weeks out the host’s face will be deformed as fungal growths break through the skin and begin to grow over their eyes. fucking with the hosts visual cortex.
Stage Three: surviving a year of being infected will leave the host with no sight and fungal plates will have formed over most of the face
Stage Four: this stage takes up to over a decade to reach which means the environment they’re in is conducive to keeping the fungus growing and alive (this is why there are few bloaters roaming out in the country side most infected die off in places with low populations)
Shamblers were infected that mutated due to Seattle weather before reaching the fourth stage, becoming an entirely new infected. (Something I personally would love to see more of, different environments affecting the mutations and how different areas in the world might see vastly different infected iirc the first game said about 60% of the world was seeing the out break at the start so that would be wicked cool to explore new places over the world)
If the host dies from the infection, we see those bodies erupting with growth, fused to walls and emitting spores in the hopes of infecting anything that passes through the spore cloud. Almost always in closed off spaces where there is little to no human interaction. Which is why humans need masks.
Comparatively, in the first game, a similar environment we stumble into is when we are in the sewers of Pittsburgh. The difference being, that space while closed off, it is still more open. Like the flooded hospital it is damp, and anyone stupid enough to try and make their way through that isn’t Joel will turn and mutate along the laid out stages of infected.
So why aren’t they all bloaters in the hospital?
As Abby when you make your way towards the Rat King, many of the infected are sealed off in medical chambers that could have potentially stalled or slowed out the process of growth for a time. And that is what I think is the key as to why there are still some variety in the hospital, not just time, but the environment itself. This includes human population and what the fungus has available to infect to survive. Many infected die before reaching the final stages due to lack human interaction. Which is why closed off spaces like the apartments have so many spores/growths everywhere. The very composition of the Rat King bloater stalker hybrid, is terrifying in the implication that the fungus will mutate and adapt in certain conditions to survive without any new hosts if given the right environmental factors.
The other areas of the ward, were still operated out of for an undisclosed time. No one dated any of their notes so it’s safe to assume it was under FEDRA’s control, until at least the WLF took over. Which seemed to be for a while, not as long as a QZ like Boston, maybe. But, long enough that our buddy Boris was able to lock most of the remaining Hillcrest community away in a garage where they weren’t exposed to the elements as much and mutate into what I’m 92.613% sure is the transitional stage between stages two and three. Which takes a few years. Otherwise those guys got fucked a few weeks before Ellie showed up but that’s unlikely.
Back to the hospital. We see fruited bodies all along the walls and on gurneys of hosts that didn’t survive because they had been tied down, the stalker seems to be wearing tattered scrubs when it attacks as do several clickers, which makes sense as notes found throughout the level indicate FEDRA kept doctors working in the shitty conditions trying to get answers for the government, maybe a vaccine idk, instead of pulling everyone out to safety and blowing the building to high hell to stop whatever they could before it grew too out of hand to contain.
which is tooootally unrealistic because government officials would *never* leave the doctors and nursing staff to handle the worst parts of an outbreak, effectively sacrificing them instead of appropriately handling the issue to keep everyone safe, right....
Anyway.
The infected in this area that remain alive have been in several kinds of contained, sealed, rooms that might have contributed to the slow mutation, but it could just as likely be people were sent down to try and clear it more recently. However, in my quick look through, I didn’t see any WLF uniforms that would imply that there was an attempt to explore these floors. They probably got to the first section went, “Nope fuck that!” wrangled a few wandering infected into rooms, locked them in and no one ever went back down until Abby.
Another theory that is even more depressing, is that since there are stalkers, FEDRA was operating far longer than we thought and as a result the time between when this hospital was abandoned and the timeline of the infected has been less than ten years time.
As always this is just a bunch of wild speculation I pulled out of my ass. The simple, most likely real answer is diversity of enemies in a video game makes for a better game.
Cause I doubt having to fight four bloaters and then the Rat King would provide much enrichment. It would be level design at it’s worst if you needed to save resources to take on the boss. Blow ‘em all on four mini bosses? nah, you get some manageable clickers a stalker or two.
I will say, it would be real fuckin’ cool if this was something they want to explore in the show. The lore behind how CBI could mutate and adapt over time would be something I really want to see more of in any future TLOU content they release. Like if they made some books that focused on the world and the outbreak? Fuck, now I miss the time when video game developers hired people to write books on their IPs and expand the lore in ways they couldn’t quite do in game. That’s were the some solid world building was at.
Thanks so much for the ask, anon. I like puzzling things out an I hope this wasn’t too too much of a read and actually answered your question XD
sometimes I think about how red is the first color in the visible light spectrum to be absorbed in ocean water
and how many deep-sea creatures evolved to be red as a stealth adaptation, making them near invisible when there’s little to no light present
and it makes me think. If there’s never any visible light present in these animals’ lifetimes, if no ROV shines a little flashlight in depths that would otherwise not have light, would these animals ever get the opportunity to actually be red? that might be a stupid question.
imagine being a little deep sea creature and having no idea you’re red until something comes along and shines a light on you except you still wouldn’t be able to tell because you’re probably colorblind. anyway. I don’t know where I was going with this post
Like is color physiological and determined by the shape of whatever pigment cells that will always absorb certain wavelengths and reflect others?
or is color meaningless if there’s no light to absorb and reflect?
Is it completely relative because the way we percieve color is subjective, how even within our own species there are so many different kinds of ways people can observe color?
Red light doesn’t make it to the deep ocean from the sun, but that doesn’t mean red light doesn’t exist at that depth!
The stomiidae, which include the viperfish, dragonfish, and loosejaws, are one example of a deep sea animal that evolved to perceive and produce red light because it isn’t naturally present in their environment and most other organisms never hit on that adaptation. In most of this group, tiny red lights can be switched on and off throughout their skin to communicate with their own kind in secret.
More threateningly, some of them have high-powered “floodlights” of pure red just beneath their eyes; almost no other deep sea fish emit actual BEAMS of light to illuminate what they’re looking at because that’d make them a shining beacon to every larger predator in the area, but since it’s red, the only risk ends up coming from their fellow red-light hunters and those remain just uncommon enough to be worth the chance.
In many members of this group, most of all the loosejaws (hence the name), almost the entire skull can naturally detach from the rest of the body on specialized stalks at lightning speed so that their long, hooked jaws can grab prey in an instant, almost the same exact motion as the arm of a preying mantis:
If you were a little fish in this scenario you would see absolutely nothing but darkness around you and possibly feel pretty safe, because maybe you’ve evolved to blend in perfectly with the surrounding void and you can’t see any blue or yellow or green lights coming to get you. You have no idea that there’s been a spotlight right on you all along until its owner’s face flies off to impale you and shove you whole into its giant throat all in less than half of a second :)
someone explain why deep sea creatures are so fucking scary like is there a logical reason was god like hey that’s deep and dark so I shall create absolutely terrifying creatures who will haunt humans in their dreams
Think about the predators up here on land; bigger eyes, longer teeth and bigger mouths. We know these things indicate something that can harm us, or stalk us in the dark.
Now you multiply that the farther you go down the ocean.
If it’s darker, then they need bigger eyes. If it’s a LOT darker, then their eyes need more and more specialized anatomy nothing could ever possibly need up here in the sun, so by necessity they do not have the kind of eyes we know:
And food is so far between, the predators need even longer teeth, to make sure those rare meals they encounter really can’t escape:
And because it’s dark AND food is scarce, they need big, expandable jaws and bodies that are almost all stomach, to guarantee they can take advantage of more meals and don’t have too much more body to have to nourish:
Most of these look pretty reasonable imo but I’ve never heard of the loosejaw before and I gotta say, it looks like it has a puppet for a head, which is quite unsettling and seems like it shouldn’t be practical. Also, is that a second mouth behind its skull? Or does it have to reattach its head to swallow, and it’s just coincidence that the biomechanical structures behind its skull look like a mouth?
I’m glad people asked!!!
The loosejaw does have extra teeth back there to help keep prey from escaping, and the head structure all folds back together:
The most surprising thing about these features, however, is that they’re already present in many of the fish people are familiar with! The loosejaw pushes it to an extreme, but you can see how these freshwater carp also “unfurl” and “throw” their jaw structure:
The loosejaw just doesn’t have a skin covering this structure, because that allows it to fling the jaw even faster through the water with no resistance!
…And it’s also quite normal for all kinds of everyday fish to have additional teeth or a functional secondary set of jaws in the back of the throat:
i think a lot about how it is such a common experience to withstand our deepest pains and sorrows on our own and never even shed a tear, then, the moment someone offers us comfort, we break down completely
sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined
by ocean vuong
it surprises me, how a gesture so small can feel so very big. how sometimes you don't realize the nervousness or sadness you were holding deep inside until the touch of someone you love lets it all out of you, like your entire body is exhaling
This can explain a lot about one reason why some people might find it very, very difficult to accept tenderness or love. The feelings that come up are overpowering and they haven’t learned how to process them yet. It’s easier to run away from the feelings entirely. This is one of the ways in which love can be painful, it can open old wounds.
You know what I’ve noticed is kind of adorable about the photos on the farm? How everyone else seems a bit camera shy and Dina is just straight up beaming in most of the photos lol :)
And Ellie seems to have a habit of wearing her photos out while Joel’s and Dina’s are nearly pristine (Seriously how did Dina keeps her and her sister’s photo so clean? Joel’s is at least 20 yo too :0)
It’s also kinda sad Dina didn’t really get the chance to take a lot of photos w/her family but there is a photo album filled w/something…👀
@nd give me photos of ellie + jj and ellie/dina + jj as a family or perish by my blade 🗡
Like 16yo Ellie and Dina wearing their paper crowns? Dina w/her mom, Eugene or Jesse’s parents? Pregnancy photos? Ellie and JJ on the tractor with the sheep in the bg? ok I’ll stop now :(
I happily accept messages from friends who tell me I reblogged from someone trash because I can’t possibly know everything and I appreciate being told and given a chance to remove a reblog instead of people secretly thinking I’m terrible
“You’d be surprised”, said Xaldien, who just lost four followers and received a lovely “men can’t be raped” anon shortly after reblogging this the first time.
Out of 19000+ followers I have, only one of you actually reblogged about this issue, yet a lot of you have reblogged and liked a picture by playboy about catcalling and that how men should never do it.
Additionally, I have received abuse in my ask box (which I will be answering when I can) and threats. In particular death threats and rape threats.
I can see the real problem here already. Male domestic violence and rape is just invisible in our society because we don’t want to talk about this because it just damages the status quo of this fucking website.
Resources For Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters
Despite the fact that I am not deaf, mute, or blind myself, one of the most common questions I receive is how to portray characters with these disabilities in fiction.
As such, I’ve compiled the resources I’ve accumulated (from real life deaf, mute, or blind people) into a handy masterlist.
Deaf Characters:
Deaf characters masterpost
Deaf dialogue thread
Dialogue with signing characters (also applies to mute characters.)
A deaf author’s advice on deaf characters
Dialogue between deaf characters
Mute Characters
Life as a Mute
My Silent Summer: Life as a Mute
What It’s Like Being Mute
21 People Reveal What It’s Really Like To Be Mute
I am a 20 year old Mute, ask me anything at all!
Blind Characters:
The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Blind Characters.
@referenceforwriters masterpost of resources for writing/playing blind characters.
The youtube channel of the wonderful Tommy Edison, a man blind from birth with great insight into the depiction of blind people and their lives.
An Absolute Write thread on the depiction of blind characters, with lots of different viewpoints and some great tips.
And finally, this short, handy masterpost of resources for writing blind characters.
Characters Who Are Blind in One Eye
4 Ways Life Looks Shockingly Different With One Eye
Learning to Live With One Eye
Adapting to the Loss of an Eye
Adapting to Eye Loss and Monocular Vision
Monocular Depth Perception
Deaf-Blind Characters
What Is It Like To Be Deafblind?
Going Deaf and Blind in a City of Noise and Lights
Deaf and Blind by 30
Sarita is Blind, Deaf, and Employed (video)
Born Deaf and Blind, This Eritrean American Graduated Harvard Law School (video)
A Day of a Deaf Blind Person
Lesser Known Things About Being Deafblind
How the Deaf-Blind Communicate
Early Interactions With Children Who Are Deaf-Blind
Raising a DeafBlind Baby
If you have any more resources to add, let me know! I’ll be adding to this post as I find more resources.
dededos
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis
areudirty
andulkaphoto
