So I've Been Playing Deep Rock Galactic A Lot Lately (for Those Unaware, It's A Horde Shooter Game About

Rock types and Ground types are heavily intertwined in both public perception of them and in biological terms (referencing several species, namely from the far East in regions such as Kanto and Johto), as many argue there was no need to separate them at all, and in fact, exist as the same typing. Yet, that glosses over the reason why they were separated in the first place. 

Granted, both typings control and manipulate inanimate earth, or generally parts of the Earth’s crust. However, considering the two the same declines both types the nuance which gives them distinction. Yes, species of both types often have tankier, more defensive battling styles, sometimes even coming paired with overwhelming offensive capability. However, it’s what part of the earth that is manipulated which provides the distinction, as well as some biological factors regarding the aforementioned defensive capabilities.

Rock types focus on what is completely and utterly solid. Stone, crystals, fossilized remains, or in one particular case, tar, of which this is the main exception. Rock types embody these solid, sturdy traits and require serious offensive power to either crack their rock bodies or pierce their thick, stone-like hides. Meanwhile, Ground Types control earth, but the more particulate kind, sand and soil being the primary examples. Ground types are just as defensively oriented, but are more bulky with their flesh as opposed to the natural armor of rock types. For example, a Coalossal may be covered in large coal blocks that shield it from harm, but a Seismitoad is bulky and has a thick layer of fat to help absorb direct hits.

What’s especially interesting is how this makes the two, at least in a defensive standpoint, complete opposites of one another. Rock types, with their thick armor, are more adept at shrugging off more piercing, slashing, or energy-based hits, while taking severe damage with blunt collisions that could crack their armor. Meanwhile, Ground types with their bulkier builds are better made for countering those same blunt attacks, while slashing and piercing, as well as energy-based attacks, do significant damage. 

Despite the differences, this is still a heavily debated topic in the scientific community, and yet another reason as to why the typing system is in desperate need of maintenance and reform, as to better classify all Pokemon within its bounds. 

Humanity’s Place in Pokemon

Ok, hear me out.

Humans are weak as hell.  Compared to Pokemon, they’ve got no semblance of a chance in a fair, one-on-one fight. Pokemon can breathe fire, or control nature, or shift the earth with merely a thought. Humans? We can... punch, I guess. Kick. And it’s far weaker than any fighting type.

When humans evolved in a world of Pokemon, they needed to find other ways to even the odds. Tools, first. Then makeshift weapons. Then machines. Civilizations sprung up out of necessity, specifically in places where humans could have a chance of surviving: breeding grounds. Fertile areas, full of resources, food, and great places to nest made these little areas less prone to extremely strong Pokemon, places like the Indigo Regions, or Hoenn, Unova, Kalos, etc etc.

And that’s probably it. These little places on the coasts of great continents, carved out of the wilderness with back-breaking effort and so so much time are the only bastions humanity has against the terrifying, powerful depths of whatever lies outside the borders. Crossing the wilds is unthinkable, it’s suicide. The only option for travelling between regions is by sea, or by air (excluding Kanto-Johto). So these regions are all that humanity has. Little islands of safety in a world of unimaginable power and strength.

TL;DR: Humans are survivors, and had to MAKE their place in the Pokemon World, because otherwise they would have gone extinct a LONG time ago. 

sometimes i think about the fact that the name i chose a couple years ago to be the name i'd be known online as (ophion) happens to be shared with a giant, hypermuscular, dad-bod, scaly-ass dragon from some japanese mobile card game and it haunts me at night

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

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"

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.

I think my absolute favorite kind of game has to be class-based co-op horde shooters. Games where you, preferably in a party of friends, mow down waves of enemies, but specifically where you've picked a particular class, so you have abilities or gadgets that others do not.

A great example of this is Deep Rock Galactic, or DRG, where the gadgets of each class compliment and work with others. For example, the Engineer has a platform gun, which can be placed on cave walls, so that the Scout, with the grappling hook, can get those previously unaccessible resources.

Another example is the Borderlands franchise, though the classes less "work together" and more "have different ways of slaughtering as many enemies as possible." In Borderlands 3, one character has helpful pets that draw attention away from the player, with skills that focus on critical hits, survivability, or upgrading your pet. Meanwhile, another character has a large, tanky mech suit, with skills that focus on high damage output, explosion damage/radius, or becoming a glass cannon.

However, as much as I love these types of games, to a certain degree, you are locked in. You choose the class which you enjoy playing the most, and are locked into that in your party for the extent of either the full story or that particular round/mission, only helping in the ways your class can.

So I have an idea. I want a fantasy, class-based, co-op, PvE game that allows you to have multiple classes.

Let's say you the maximum party size is the four, as is common in these kinds of games. Before you jump in, you each get to pick three specialties or proficiencies out of a long list, perhaps 20-30 or so. Each "class" is simple, having a few small perks, but you're free to build your character however you want. Progression works by playing with that class equipped, and your abilities in that class slowly grow stronger as you play with it and they level up.

Some classes would also naturally compliment one another, but you could mix it up for variety in case you want to do multiple things. For example, you could dedicate yourself fully to support, picking three classes which specialize in 1. party-wide healing, 2. single-target healing, and 3. offensive buffs. OR, you could mix it up, picking 1. single-target healing but also 2. bulkiness (for health and armor) and 3. self-buffing defense, to become a benevolent healing tank.

Parties could customize the skills they want to take in a particular session, working together to make something overpowered with every person playing what they want to play, without being limited by whatever the class' intended limits are, instead deciding for themselves what pros and cons they want to live with. The classes would be locked in, but there would be opportunities to swap them out at regular intervals so you weren't fully stuck. Customize, make the fantasy character of your dreams with all the features you want!

(Side note: this could also apply to a sci-fi setting as well, but I personally like the idea of a fantasy setting more).

Alright, it's two AM, and I need to ramble, so forgive me if this is awful. Yes, this will contain lore spoilers for the following game.

ULTRAKILL.

It is by far my favorite shooter of all time, and I like to put in at least one or two cybergrind runs every day (my record, considered modest in comparison to many of the far more skilled ULTRAKILL players, is wave 42) and I am at least half-decent at it, something I am quite proud of.

However, I don't know if anyone else realized this, so I need to share.

Gabriel's monologue in 6-2 was an emotional, riveting and overall incredible addition to the game (thank you, Gianni). However, one part of it made me stop in my tracks and think.

"Limbo. Lust. All gone. With Gluttony soon to follow."

This line hit me with such guilt and regret. "Wait... was this my fault? I didn't want this." And I didn't know why, but I think I've figured it out.

We didn't just go deeper. We, and all the other machines, have GENOCIDED the layers. We, as V1, (and V2, just ahead of us) cleaved a path of gore to sustain our need for blood, and the lesser machines? They followed us, picking off the scraps. Machines had already been in hell, feeding off of the lesser husks, but we condemned the layers to die as the survivors were picked off.

And then we defeated Gabriel. The guardian of the lower layers. No machine had made it past him yet. We opened the floodgates, and in our selfish quest for more blood, condemned the lower layers to the same fate as the first three as the streetcleaners, sentries, drones, swordsmachines, and mindflayers picked off the scraps.

The souls, they were already suffering, enacting their punishments... and perhaps the souls on the lower layer deserve it, that much is true. But Limbo? Lust? No, we'd already killed all humans off in the robot revolution. They'd already been forced to suffer at our hands.

And we just killed them again. We couldn't even let them find some form of peace in their somewhat sour afterlife. We did this.

Minos was right. Perhaps our punishment should be death, for our crimes are too great to be forgotten.

Perhaps we let the blood dry up.

homestuck tumblr please tell me im right about this

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