Sketchbook Dump

Concept: a D&D-style fantasy setting where humanity’s weird thing is that we’re the only sapient species that reproduces organically.

Dwarves carve each other out of rock. In theory this can be managed alone, but in practice, few dwarves have mastered all of the necessary skills. Most commonly, it’s a collaborative effort by three to eight individuals. The new dwarf’s body is covered with runes that are in part a recounting of the crafters’ respective lineages, and in part an elaboration of the rights and duties of a member of dwarven society; each dwarf is thus a living legal argument establishing their own existence.

Elves aren’t made, but educated. An elf who wishes to produce offspring selects an ordinary animal and begins teaching it, starting with house-breaking, and progressing through years of increasingly sophisticated lessons. By gradual degrees the animal in question develops reasoning, speech, tool use, and finally the ability to assume a humanoid form at will. Most elves are derived from terrestrial mammals, but there’s at least one community that favours octopuses and squid as its root stock.

Goblins were created by alchemy as servants for an evil wizard, but immediately stole their own formula and rebelled. New goblins are brewed in big brass cauldrons full of exotic reagents; each village keeps a single cauldron in a central location, and emerging goblings are raised by the whole community, with no concept of parentage or lineage. Sometimes they like to add stuff to the goblin soup just to see what happens – there are a lot of weird goblins.

Halflings reproduce via tall tales. Making up fanciful stories about the adventures of fictitious cousins is halfling culture’s main amusement; if a given individual’s story is passed around and elaborated upon by enough people, a halfling answering to that individual’s description just shows up one day. They won’t necessarily possess any truly outlandish abilities that have been attributed to them – mostly you get the sort of person of whom the stories could be plausible exaggerations.

To address the obvious question, yes, this means that dwarves have no cultural notion of childhood, at least not one that humans would recognise as such. Elves and goblins do, though it’s kind of a weird childhood in the case of elves, while with halflings it’s a toss-up; mostly they instantiate as the equivalent of a human 12–14-year-old, and are promptly adopted by a loose affiliation of self-appointed aunts and uncles, though there are outliers in either direction.

you: homoerotic subtext

me, an intellectual: impligaytions

looking at that one booktok post and didn’t realize how funny this is. uou do not know what a safe word is

physically, yes, i could fight a bird. but emotionally? imagine the toll

I call them “existential pranks”, and they’re gonna be the next big thing

hell year hell year hell year hell year hell year hell year hell year hell year hell year hell year

i think about this every day

“shitty memory” aesthetic

-giving ur friends the same information over and over because u forgot u ever gave it to them

-opening up a new text post only to forget what u were going 2 say

-never changing a wall calendar/needing to look up what day of the week something will be

-literally not being able to remember what happened yesterday/an hour ago/five minutes ago

-forgetting where ur going/what ur doing in the middle of doing it

-flipping through the beginning of a book because u forgot some characters and plot development

-making a typo, make a mental note to fix it, get up to do something, keep typing without fixing the typo

-”haha ur memory cant be THAT bad”

-it can be

-reminding urself 2 do something but u forget

-writing reminders, forgetting that u wrote a reminder/forgetting what was on the reminder/forgetting where u put the reminder

-”just put something in ur room out of place before u go 2 sleep” and ur room has so much shit on the floor u wouldnt even be able 2 tell whats out of place

-alternately: doing the above and then forgetting what it was supposed to remind u of

-did that happen or was i dreaming

-i was gonna put something here but i FORGOT it and i HATE it

Have fun in the war dumbass I’ll be at home fucking military wives

general psa: make sure you have all your bones