lobmster,,,,,lobster shrimp guy,,,, its a character of my friend's, @wojnalik and i swore to draw him because hes just magnificent alt colors:
i don’t know what else to say except that AI art is no longer simply a source of creativity or a wonder of human creation. it has become actively hostile and destructive toward the very thing it pretends to uplift and celebrate. it is void of any human element, any soul or ounce of emotion or self-expression. continuing to use AI art knowing that it comes from theft and robbing artists of their livelihood is disgusting. we need your support now more than ever. stop giving these thieves your money and admiration.
werewolves can be anything. they can be ANYTHING if you just believe. metaphor for trans. metaphor for gay. metaphor for autism. metaphor for disability. metaphor for anger issues. metaphor for generational trauma. metaphor for mental illness. metaphor for addiction. metaphor for wanting to kill someone. you can do anything with them truly
The creature….
me when sun characters are terrifying and destructive. me when light is an overwhelming damaging power. me w
blah blah Bethesda bad anyway
my favorite thing about Elder Scrolls is how goddamn fuckin weird it is
like on surface it's just some dnd game but like even a cursory glance shows tis fucking insane like:
The moons is the corpse of a god
the stars are actually holes in reality when alot of primordial spirits hated that mortals were becoming a thing and fucked off
The demon lord of forbidden knowledge/resident Cthulhu stand-in might also be the beta version of the entire fucking universe made sentient when it wasn't chosen to be the used reality
there are cat ppl that take the form of furrys, lions, or regular cats, so you can have a cursing Pirate legend whose an alcoholic & wanted in 5 countries but is also a like basic tabby cat
the wood elves are so pro-nature they're cannibals and also they murder vegetarians
Vampires came from the Lord of Rape doing well ya know
Werewolves came to exist bc the lord of hunt got bored and is a furry
sex is treated like a fucking ip copyright contract on what aspect of sex is happening and what god it's under. There's been many religious wars about this
The lizard ppl are part tree
the Dwarves all fucked off somewhere and disappeared bc they were so atheist they did math to break relativity and literally no one has any idea where they went God or mortal (except maybe Cthulhu and hes not telling)
Said Cthulhu stand-in treats hiding your grandma's secret cookie recipe & hiding a spell that would end the universe and slay a god the exact same and he will murder you for either
Everyone wants to fuck the Orcs but will never admit it and they got so bent out of shape that a demon god killed the og orc god, ate him, and shat him out bc she couldn't deal with everyone complimenting them all the time so now all Orcs are cursed to be hated but they're all still sexy & so is their god
Centaur Watching Fish by Arnold Böcklin (1878).
I love love love Böcklin’s mythical pieces, they have this sense of realism, and often even sensitivity.
Ass deep in the Dragon Age wiki again, and apparently there’s a mysterious chanter character who appears around the Hissing Wastes.
the part that gets me:
Have noticed that differences between humans and fantasy races or beings tend to fall neatly into either “physiology” or “culture,” so here, some ideas for how fantasy beings can differ from humans in their thinking and perception:
They all have synesthesia. All of them. There are lots of forms of synesthesia, so, plenty of angles to explore. Imagine a species for whom numbers, calendar days, and other abstract concepts just...have colors and smells, and it’s hard for them to understand how people...think about things otherwise. Or maybe they can’t understand the distinctions others make between, for instance, sound and visual stimuli. The linguistic rules that say an image can be “blurry” but a smell can’t are incomprehensible to them. It gets even more interesting if the associations are in some ways consistent between members of the species.
More ideas for sense perception, possibly applicable to the synesthetic species: What if, just like we have a large number of senses but sort them into five (pain, touch, and proprioception are not the same senses, but we categorize them all as ‘touch!’) they don’t have categories for ‘types’ of sense perception, at all. In their own language(s), they can describe their experiences to others this way, but they have to learn to be able to clarify for non-members of their species whether they saw something or heard it.
Superhuman time sense, or no time sense. The fascinating thing about humans is that we can percieve time based purely on internal cues, but we’re kind of bad at it—we often have to count to give exact measurements of seconds, and we’re prone to not realizing how long or how late we’ve been doing something. Perhaps a fantasy being can percieve time in a more exact fashion—which could lead to amusement about how humans’ time sense tends to warp relative to how much fun they’ve been having. Or, perhaps a fantasy being can’t perceive time at all without external cues (for example, sunrise and sunset). This would make being isolated from those cues, like if they were trapped in a dungeon, incredibly scary and disorienting. They would also have a difficult time if they were asked, “How many days were you trapped down there in the dungeon?” They would probably respond, “There weren’t any! It was dark!”
A telepathic species, but they don’t have a “hive mind” or no sense of individuality. It makes sense that it would take an active effort to “read” someone’s thoughts, past just noticing how they’re feeling or the general “trend” of their thoughts. So it would be cool to have a telepathic species with, y’know, a sense of boundaries regarding thoughts. It’s probably a lot like touch in humans—certain levels of closeness or intimacy are permissible in certain levels of relationship, and a lot would be inappropriate with a stranger. Yes, they technically can sift through your memories, but why would you do that, what the fuck is wrong with you. For humans, rape is practically the worst thing you can do to a person. Among this species, entering someone else’s mind and viewing or actually tampering with someone’s thoughts is just as absolutely abhorrent, except that they probably have many different levels of unacceptable and unthinkable acts of violation that we can’t meaningfully distinguish in our languages. Among these beings, friends might share pleasant thoughts and experiences, relationships are a subtle interplay of feelings and thoughts and images. Being allowed to go deeper into someone’s mind is always a huge deal. Yes, members of this species might occasionally be recruited to pry information out of people, but doing that is just so vile to the vast majority that it’s not at all a common thing, even if only because the punishments are so severe.
A species whose memory just doesn’t degrade. Everything that goes into their memory remains perfectly preserved for...well, ever. They’re fascinated by, and a little suspicious of, the way human memories seem to change over time, how anecdotes humans tell have little inconsistencies in them, and how humans can straight up forget things. It seems like a terrifyingly chaotic way to live.
Alternatively, a species whose way of encoding and storing memories is just...different. It’s pretty weird, when you think about it, that mnemonic devices...work. Like, singing a song or saying a nonsense rhyme to remember information? “Thirty days hath September” is easier to remember than just...remembering which months have which number of days? Imagine being a member of a fantasy race that just...can’t?? remember things?? That way? Then they catch a human trying to alphabetize something and singing the ABC’s under their breath and they’re like “what the FUCK are you DOING”
A species that doesn’t really have “stages” of emotional or cognitive development. Like maybe their brains develop before they hatch or emerge or whatever, but once they’re conscious, they pretty much have an adult brain. The fact that humans spend part of their lives cognitively limited and unable to regulate their emotions because they’re underdeveloped, and not because of a lack of experience, is very bizarre, and the fact that being out in the world, making bad decisions with that half-developed brain, is in fact necessary for humans to develop properly is even weirder and honestly a little freaky.
that comic i wrote years ago about the wolf seeing a dog and getting freaked out by it sucks. i should have made it about turkeys
types of fantasy subgenres - writing help
high / epic fantasy - a genre of fantasy that holds its own world and creatures. examples of this could be J.R.R. Tolkien's LOTR, or C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia
low fantasy - a genre where there are regular magical happenings in "our" world—such as a magical school, or people with magical abilities. this could be found in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, or Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away
urban fantasy - essentially low fantasy, only it takes place in an urban setting such as a big city. an example of this is Cassandra Clare's City of Bones
sword and sorcery - fantasy that is centred around swords, magic, and witchcraft. it is a subgenre of high fantasy. a book is Robert E. Howard's Conan series
dark fantasy - fantasy elements mixed with horror. The Atlas Six, by Olivia Blake
fable - a story with a moral lesson
arthurian fantasy - anything derived from the tales of King Arthur (the Sword in the Stone, etc.)
crosswords fantasy - essentially where the main character crosses between their world and a fantasy world. an example of this could be Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland
dragon fantasy - what it sounds like.
historical fantasy - a cross between the historical fiction and low fantasy subgeneres. it could be set in a royal court filled with goblins, for example, in a time that was once present on earth.