shark vs the universe
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
The Bowery Presents
Product Placement
KIROKAZE
PR's Tumblrdome
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
Game of Thrones Daily
d e v o n
macklin celebrini has autism
Love Begins
bliss lane
No title available
untitled
No title available
No title available
Andulka
taylor price
Noah Kahan
Color Me Curious
seen from Germany
seen from India
seen from Serbia
seen from China
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Switzerland
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Bangladesh
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
@salscollective
It's funny and sad that in this heat ppl now suddenly start talking about more green space in city environment.
Like babe I'm sorry you are so cityfied that you don't know the grace and mercy of being in the shadow of a big tree.
And shame on governments that only see the money in buildings and flatten parks to the ground. And now they want praise for saying "hey we going to not do that ( for the time being )"
I'm so ready for cities going solarpunk
can we remove the expectation that mutual romantic/sexual attraction means you should act on it? like you can acknowledge that there’s love in the relationship, more than platonic, and it doesn’t have to lead to a dating. stop dating out of expectation. two people with romantic feelings for each other don’t need to date. normalize that it’s okay for there to be love between people and for them to not do anything about it.
One thing that has made me a much more well-adjusted person is a clip I once saw of Hank Green saying that anyone can be in amazing shape as long as being in amazing shape is one of their top three priorities.
(This is obviously a generalization that isn't true for everyone. But it is true for most people and I'm proceeding from there.)
This "top three priorities" framing has genuinely reduced my tendency toward jealousy and self-comparison a lot. Now when I feel envious of someone’s spotless, aesthetic home, I think to myself, “Having a spotless, aesthetic home is probably one of their top three priorities. It’s definitely not one of mine, so I shouldn’t expect my home to look like that.”
Or when I see an influencer with a body that takes a ton of work to maintain: “Maintaining that body is obviously one of her top three priorities, because it’s her livelihood. My livelihood is my brain, so I’m never going to prioritize my body like that.”
It also helps me to identify areas that I actually DO want to prioritize more. I realized in recent years that my envy for my friends who prioritized writing more than I did was NOT going away, so I started to prioritize writing more. (Not top three, but higher priority than it has been in the past.)
I like this. It's also a reminder that as long as I have a full-time job and young children, two of my top three slots are filled and I only have space for one other high-priority thing in my life.
No matter how progressive or well-read you are, there are always going to be moments in your life where somebody pushes back against something that's so culturally ingrained you never even considered it before. And you'll say "Huh, it never occurred to me to challenge this but you're right" and that doesn't mean you were "morally toxic" before, it means you're a non-omniscient human capable of growth.
Elon Musk isn't a sociopath Trump isn't a narcissist Jeff Bezos isn't a psycho they are terrible racist bigoted assholes but I'm begging y'all to fucking give a shit about people with personality disorders. PLEASE.
We need to bring back the athletics body type post
This one
Tumblr has 10+ image limit had to add these on too
Humans are incredible and we all look different!!
Oh god what have I done.
Fishfolk tend to varying degrees of off-putting in the sagaverse—same as everything else, really—and I tried to explore a design that made some anatomical sense while retaining the distinguishing features of a mermaid in a technical sense. It's got arms, see.
It’s been several years since I’ve watched that fake mermaid documentary that Discovery made as a prank, but it had to be somewhat? scientific?? because it had to be semi-believable. That may be a good watch for humanoid fishies, although I’m honestly liking this one, even if it’s mildly horrifying. <3
I think the hot new trends for this summer should be reading comprehension and critical thinking skills
when you walk in and they have this on their wall
you know the panties hit the floor
Knowing what birds are making the sounds you hear every day really can help you to appreciate those sounds more. So my advice for you today is to learn the sounds the birds make in your area of the world, and listen for them.
This works even if you live in an urban area. Birds nest on and around our buildings. There may be less variety where you live, but those birds still matter.
A while back I got a comment that demonstrated a misconception as to what the character design process actually entails, and I thought it had real "teachable moment" potential. So let me make this perfectly clear:
Drawing a character is NOT the same as designing one.
Let's say I wanted to draw a guy. No backstory, no defined personality traits or preferences, no details about his current life, just doodling some random, generic guy who popped into my head.
That's just a drawing.
But what if I decided to flesh him out more? What if I wanted his appearance to reflect his lifestyle and inner life as well? Here's where the note-taking comes in.
And now for the visual research:
I thought the bodybuilding angle would provide a fun contrast with this guy's profession. The mental image of a huge, burly dude working on a clock or watch with tiny, precise movements just makes me smile. Perhaps I could give him small, nimble hands that would suit his line of work.
Now that I have a better idea of how Mikhail's face and body will look, it's time to establish a pose.
Of course, I never expected to employ all the personality traits I started out with inside this single pose; those were just a jumping-off point. No one drawing will ever be able to encapsulate every single facet of a character, unless they're extraordinarily flat and generic (see also: random guy I doodled at the start of this post). If I wanted to write a story with this guy, I'd have to figure out how all the traits play off each other and how they'd cause him to react to different situations. There would be a lot more note-taking and development involved, but for the sake of keeping this post (somewhat) brief, let's just focus on visuals for now.
On to color!
I decided to give Mikhail a carnation in his pocket (for its round shape), specifically a red one, which represents deep love and an aching heart. Thus, the flower needed to maintain its red color for the symbolism to come through.
For some reason I initially pictured this guy wearing a pink shirt (perhaps as an offshoot of the "romantic" angle), but I wanted to try some different colors inspired by the 70s catalog pages I found. I ended up really liking the contrast of the cool blue shirt with the warm red pants, and that option made it into my top three as a result. I lined them up next to each other to compare them, and in the end, blue won out over pink. I think it also reflects the "colder", more cerebral, less-emotional parts of his personality well (namely "systematic", "stern", and "callous"- one from each column!). Just goes to show that you shouldn't get too attached to your first draft, as better ideas are just around the corner.
I then lightened the blue of the shirt so it wouldn't compete so much with the rest of the outfit, and wouldn't be quite as loud and "in your face". Mikhail strikes me as a bit of an introvert, so the calmer, quieter blue is a better fit. I added a darker belt and watchband and de-saturated the flower just a bit to make the values feel more balanced, and I think we've got it!
Let's see the final result!
Y'all, I was not expecting this process to make me emotional, but there's something special about fully realizing a little guy you've spent hours working on. All of a sudden you look at him and go, "Oh my god, there he is. That's him." This man wasn't even a twinkle in my eye a couple weeks ago and now I'd protect him with my life.
And the thing is, the only reason I'm calling this design "done" for now is that I basically just brought it into existence to make a point. But if this dude were attached to a larger story, he'd be nowhere near finished. I'd have to make a ton more iterations and go a lot more in depth with my research than I did (especially with the Armenian cultural stuff). Overall, though, I hope this quick project properly highlighted the difference between a single drawing and a more fleshed-out character.
Later!
the same applies to non-human characters! and it applies to realistic art styles as well. I think a lot of people associate more creative character design with cartoony styles, but it really truly applies to all art styles when you're designing any character or creature.
I'm loving Dungeon Meshi's mix of quasi-probable magical biological realism and "It's magic fuck you."
Red dragons swallow their prey whole and use the undigestible remains as fuel for their fire breath, which is lit by creating a spark with their tongue. Living armors are colonies of mollusks who expand and contract to mimic muscle movement. Actually "man-eating" plants is a misnomer, they catch small animals with a filament that retracts when touched and they use their decomposing prey as compost.
These mushrooms can turn you into a gnome. It's magic fuck you.
While Ryoko Kui doesn't explain how the mushroom magic works, I love that she does still explain the ecological niche of those mushrooms. When a creature gets covered in spores and is transformed magically, it gets cast out by others of its kind and driven away. Then, when it dies, the spores sprout into a new mushroom circle. This doesn't explain the magic, but it does explain why mushrooms with that magic effect would have evolutionary success.
I love that even when the mechanism for something is just "it's magic", she still puts so much thought into the world around the magic and how it fits into the broader picture. Absolutely one of the reasons her worldbuilding is so generally stellar.
another thing fantasy writers should keep track of is how much of their worldbuilding is aesthetic-based. it's not unlike the sci-fi hardness scale, which measures how closely a story holds to known, real principles of science. The Martian is extremely hard sci-fi, with nearly every detail being grounded in realistic fact as we know it; Star Trek is extremely soft sci-fi, with a vaguely plausible "space travel and no resources scarcity" premise used as a foundation for the wildest ideas the writers' room could come up with. and much as Star Trek fuckin rules, there's nothing wrong with aesthetic-based fantasy worldbuilding!
(sidenote we're not calling this 'soft fantasy' bc there's already a hard/soft divide in fantasy: hard magic follows consistent rules, like "earthbenders can always and only bend earth", and soft magic follows vague rules that often just ~feel right~, like the Force. this frankly kinda maps, but I'm not talking about just the magic, I'm talking about the worldbuilding as a whole.
actually for the purposes of this post we're calling it grounded vs airy fantasy, bc that's succinct and sounds cool.)
a great example of grounded fantasy is Dungeon Meshi: the dungeon ecosystem is meticulously thought out, the plot is driven by the very realistic need to eat well while adventuring, the story touches on both social and psychological effects of the whole 'no one dies forever down here' situation, the list goes on. the worldbuilding wants to be engaged with on a mechanical level and it rewards that engagement.
deliberately airy fantasy is less common, because in a funny way it's much harder to do. people tend to like explanations. it takes skill to pull off "the world is this way because I said so." Narnia manages: these kids fall into a magic world through the back of a wardrobe, befriend talking beavers who drink tea, get weapons from Santa Claus, dance with Bacchus and his maenads, and sail to the edge of the world, without ever breaking suspension of disbelief. it works because every new thing that happens fits the vibes. it's all just vibes! engaging with the worldbuilding on a mechanical level wouldn't just be futile, it'd be missing the point entirely.
the reason I started off calling this aesthetic-based is that an airy story will usually lean hard on an existing aesthetic, ideally one that's widely known by the target audience. Lewis was drawing on fables, fairy tales, myths, children's stories, and the vague idea of ~medieval europe~ that is to this day our most generic fantasy setting. when a prince falls in love with a fallen star, when there are giants who welcome lost children warmly and fatten them up for the feast, it all fits because these are things we'd expect to find in this story. none of this jars against what we've already seen.
and the point of it is to be wondrous and whimsical, to set the tone for the story Lewis wants to tell. and it does a great job! the airy worldbuilding serves the purposes of the story, and it's no less elegant than Ryōko Kui's elaborately grounded dungeon. neither kind of worldbuilding is better than the other.
however.
you do have to know which one you're doing.
the whole reason I'm writing this is that I saw yet another long, entertaining post dragging GRRM for absolute filth. asoiaf is a fun one because on some axes it's pretty grounded (political fuck-around-and-find-out, rumors spread farther than fact, fastest way to lose a war is to let your people starve, etc), but on others it's entirely airy (some people have magic Just Cause, the various peoples are each based on an aesthetic/stereotype/cliché with no real thought to how they influence each other as neighbors, the super-long seasons have no effect on ecology, etc).
and again! none of this is actually bad! (well ok some of those stereotypes are quite bigoted. but other than that this isn't bad.) there's nothing wrong with the season thing being there to highlight how the nobles are focused on short-sighted wars for power instead of storing up resources for the extremely dangerous and inevitable winter, that's a nice allegory, and the looming threat of many harsh years set the narrative tone. and you can always mix and match airy and grounded worldbuilding – everyone does it, frankly it's a necessity, because sooner or later the answer to every worldbuilding question is "because the author wanted it to be that way." the only completely grounded writing is nonfiction.
the problem is when you pretend that your entirely airy worldbuilding is actually super duper grounded. like, for instance, claiming that your vibes-based depiction of Medieval Europe (Gritty Edition) is completely historical, and then never even showing anyone spinning. or sniffing dismissively at Tolkien for not detailing Aragorn's tax policy, and then never addressing how a pre-industrial grain-based agricultural society is going years without harvesting any crops. (stored grain goes bad! you can't even mouse-proof your silos, how are you going to deal with mold?) and the list goes on.
the man went up on national television and invited us to engage with his worldbuilding mechanically, and then if you actually do that, it shatters like spun sugar under the pressure. doesn't he realize that's not the part of the story that's load-bearing! he should've directed our focus to the political machinations and extensive trope deconstruction, not the handwavey bit.
point is, as a fantasy writer there will always be some amount of your worldbuilding that boils down to 'because I said so,' and there's nothing wrong with that. nor is there anything wrong with making that your whole thing – airy worldbuilding can be beautiful and inspiring. but you have to be aware of what you're doing, because if you ask your readers to engage with the worldbuilding in gritty mechanical detail, you had better have some actual mechanics to show them.
Since the entire premise of my blog is offering my personal advice and opinions on making more believable and grounded fantasy anatomy, I feel like this post fits here.
Most of the time, when I find a particular fantasy creature design poorly done, it's because the setting and art style are deliberately more grounded, realistic, or full of meticulous rules, like DnD. If you show me realism paintings of dragons, I'm gonna engage with their designs based on how realistic they are. Rule of Cool is fun! It's okay to be loose and aesthetic! But if you're gonna do some realism, make sure it's well balanced.
Fantasy pronouns updated! i just keep running into Problems when I try to use the pronouns for a few paragraphs and then realize they actually sound awful. so i have been wrestling with them! it does not help that i made so many, and there's only so many ways to make decent pronouns before you run out of unique letter combos.
half the problem is just that I'm trying to make them all fit into english sentences, since that's the language my stories are written in. but i figured it would be so much cooler to write all my characters actually using the pronouns they'd be used to in their own languages, even if i don't get around to pulling a full Tolkein and writing every language out.
these pronouns will be especially useful in the side story I'm working on with a drow protagonist, since drow don't have gendered pronouns. and it adds so much more depth to my main story, when the bird dude protagonist, who was raised primarily by elves for Plot Reasons, embraces the bird people culture and changes pronouns to reflect this. if all of my characters were using regular human pronouns, and then suddenly the bird dude is using fantasy pronouns, it just feels awkward. but if everyone is already using fantasy pronouns, it's way more clear that this pronoun change is part of a bigger narrative of cultural identity.
anyway, as stated when i previously posted the fantasy pronouns chart, please feel free to use any of the pronouns here if you feel inspired to do so. i hope they function alright.
Whoops, I forgot to explain the quetzalin seasonal prefixes. These are the tropical bird folk, they have a courting season. During the courting season, all adults who participate in the public courtship displays take on a specific role. Dancer, watcher, or those who do both. The prefixes show which role applies to the person in question.
xel/xos, adult pronoun all year round.
a-xel/a-xos, dancer pronoun
i-xel/i-xos, multi-tasker pronoun
u-xel/u-xos, watcher pronoun.
“Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”
— Vincent Van Gogh
“If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now. For wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.”
- Vincent van Gogh
Is this about how ppl born in the late 20th century have a unique and fluid experience of navigating barriers to information access and its our responsibility to teach the younger folks how to tinker with technology to avoid being spoonfed everything we experience in order to have critical skills that keep us informed, autonomous, and able to hold power despite looming threats of authoritarianism or..........???
i love love lOVE the additional element of “the only information that’s free is the ‘how we’re going to hell’” BS. Chef’s kiss.
I. HATE. IN-TEXT. CITATIONS.
Not just when I'm writing a paper, but when I'm READING a textbook it looks SO messy (Rick-Astley, 1969, p. 420) and it's SO distracting, (Morbius, 2022) and SO disruptive (Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, & Rudolph, 1964.) to my reading and (Bird, Grouch, Monster, & Monster, 1997 ) learning process. And why are some of them SO FUCKING (According, 2007; To & All, 1991; Known, Laws, & Of, 2378; Aviation, 57 B.C.E.) LONG???
today my wisdom is: the ecological crisis of our planet is not a thing that will Suddenly destroy us sometime in the next century—it has taken decades of continuous work for our biosphere to be preserved thus far, and it will take decades more of continuous work to continue preserving it.
The apocalypse is not a single event hovering in the future bearing down on us while we sit helplessly. We are at least 150 years into an ongoing "apocalypse."
Things will continue to steadily get worse without steady action, but "augh! it's already too late to stop climate change and mass extinctions!" is specifically the worst response
