The Psychic Type Paradox

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.

this was my first pokemon game and it was my childhood, i have not played a better pokemon game since

you bitches had pkmn mystery dungeon, pkmn ranger, xd and gale of darkness, pkmn snap or even that one talk to pikachu game but MY pkmn spinoff was MOTHER FUCKIN POKÉPARK

I never finished it and I don’t even remember if it was even that good- but damn it I played the SHIT out of this game as a kid and it defined a good chunk of my childhood and I will always remember it

So I've been playing Deep Rock Galactic a lot lately (for those unaware, it's a horde shooter game about space dwarves in an alien planet) and it's got me thinking.

Space dwarves, in this universe, exist. Obviously. So do elves, because the dwarves constantly mention "leaf-lovers." Space elves. The voice over at Mission control is likely a human, owing to the lack of a beard and very different accent/tone. Goblins are also implied to exist via voicelines, though it's only like one or two mentions (via insults in case of friendly fire).

Now, of course, this is just one game. There have been other cases of elves or dwarves or similar-looking creatures in sci-fi, such as Warhammer 40k, with the Eldar, and the Orks.

But it's the first instance (that I am aware of) where true fantasy races, with no augmentations, reached technological advancement high enough not only reach space, but develop their own intergalactic or at least interstellar civilization.

If all the classic fantasy races went to space, what would they all be doing?

The dwarves would be miners, obviously. Like in DRG, they'd like their weapons, have an eye for precious metals and gemstones, and love mining and underground locales. It's in their blood.

On the other hand, the elves might be more nature-centric. They might be more dedicated to protecting planets that are full of life from expansion and industrialization, mostly by humans, as humans do what humans do: expand, conquer, wage war, all that jazz. They showed this to a certain degree in DRG's seasons 1 and 2, with a gargantuan rival incursion. While it's not stated who runs the rival company, it's likely humans, due to how advanced the tech is, and the fact that they only use tech. No living organisms are sent down into the planet's caverns.

Orcs? They'd probably continue to wage war. Question is, would they be like the Orks of Warhammer 40k, with eyes only to destroy and conquer other peoples, or could they be hired? Say, "we'll give you a shit ton of gold and riches and in exchange you go kill off anything bad on this planet, ok?"

That's just my ideas, though. Who knows, maybe DRG will expand upon this lore in later seasons (I sincerely hope they do).

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

do you have any recommendations for support Pokémon for autism related sensory overloads? I’m getting mixed results on Rotom Search

a roselia might be useful since they’re pretty common & are pretty soothing, esp if they learn aromatherapy and grass whistle, plus sweet scent (if youre into like. scented candles and stuff). ive also heard solosis gel can be soothing as something to stim with. take my words with a grain of salt because theres no one-pokémon-fits-all for autism, look for things that suit your needs specifically rather than the blanket diagnosis

Poorly drawn Pokemon of Myth

A little bit of a color palette thingy

Hooboy alrighty

Elias, Talia, Hera, AND Reagan posting

These lovely things are characters belonging to myself and @ophionswill

Their story takes place entirely within the Pokemon worldbuilding project Ophion has been working on! He's been posting about it a bit, so I suggest taking a look :-)

Some Pokemon types are simple. Their definitions are solid, and are unchangeable. For example, Fire Pokemon. Fire is the type of not just fire, but magma/lava and most of all, heat. Or Ice, being the type of frozen water in the form of glaciers, icicles, and snow. 

Others... not so much. Either their type energy isn’t fully explained how it works or where it comes from, or it’s explained, but difficult to explain. As an example of the the first, we have the Dragon Type. Dragon energy is not fully explained, or understood, due to how volatile it is (which makes it so hard to contain and do research on), but it is thought to have been first used and harnessed by the first Dragon, or the common ancestor of the True Dragons: Tyrantrum, the Despot Pokemon, living roughly 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. This Pokemon would go on to split off into hundreds of different branches all across the world, creating the Dragon typing as we know it (save for those few species that haphazardly stumbled across it in a case of convergent evolution, such as Exeggutor).

As an example of an explained but difficult to explain type is Ghost and Dark, which are closely linked by an strange matter known as Distortion. Distortion is a corrosive substance, though its less corrosive on solid objects and more corrosive upon time and space as a whole. Most ghosts naturally hail from the Distortion World, or from some other world closely related to it, as they are almost entirely compromised of Distortion matter (those ghosts who are not from the Distortion World spawn as a result of a recent death and a recently deceased soul being exposed to distortion matter, and becoming a ghost Pokemon as a result). They are not fully corporeal, able to shift in and out of existence as they please, and gleefully break the laws of reality as if a game. Dark Types, on the other hand, do not hail from the Distortion World, and are corporeal, yet they wield distortion as a water type does with water. Their bodies naturally produce the substance (often at the cost of their own health and survivability), and as a result, the distortion is far more concentrated and potent, which overloads and disrupts Ghost Pokemon.

However, by far the hardest type to explain is Fairy. Ever since its discovery and classification in Kalos roughly 200 years ago, Fairy type energy has defied full explanation or understanding, and the creatures that wield it are hard to fully classify as “alive.” At this time, it is believed that the first fairies, like Ghosts, hailed from another plane of existence. However, unlike the ghosts, Fairies accepted a degree of physicality to become somewhere in-between corporeal and incorporeal as whimsical and magical, somewhat grounded in reality.

The most common theory, though, is that parts of them are and are not corporeal. Take the Gardevoir/Gallade lines, for example. It’s been found that the only truly solid part of their body is their signature chest spikes. Instead, the rest of their anatomy is somewhat incorporeal, requiring no organs or muscles, simply being controlled by the will of the Pokemon (Fairy types have been found to have a pseudo-nervous system made of pure, concentrated energy running throughout all of their limbs and appendages, which is likely how they manipulate their bodies). Since this spike is the only truly corporeal part about them, it is the only thing that does not dissipate after death, as the rest of the body simply fades away while only the spike remains. 

Fairy Types continue to defy explanation, and even the most telepathically adept fairies do not or cannot provide concrete explanations, so likely, the Fairy type will remain a mystery for years, if not decades to come.

Mood for today and every single week that will follow

I’ve kinda wondered what would happen if you took little trope inside jokes or realizations off the internet and made them into full games. For example, this is Tumblr after all. What would happen if someone saw our many, many ramblings about humans being space orcs and made a full game off of it? What would it look like?

For me, if I had to design a “Humans Are Space Orcs” Game, I think I’d do it as an MMORPG. I think I’d actually start it off as a completely human-free game, where you get to choose an alien species to play as (with various benefits and drawbacks) being part of this gargantuan intergalactic collective of species and peoples and planets. There’d be classic “go out and do stuff adventures,” but I think I’d also take stuff from the idea behind that MMORPG called “Albion Online” where everything is a player-built economy, and have highly expansive routes you could take for crafting things. Though now that I think about it, that might just be “EVE: Online” but with aliens. So there probably would be a lot more options in terms of alien ships and weapons and parts and all that.

However, the “humans are space orcs thing” would come in a form of one of those crazy expansions and events MMORPGs do. I’d have a sector of this one galaxy be hyper-dangerous, known as the “Dead Sector,” not because it’s lifeless, but because that’s what it does: make you dead. Quickly. A high population of gargantuan interstellar space worms, death worlds, all that jazz. Entering it would yield high resources, if you could make it out alive.

However, in this expansion, would enter THE HUMAN RACE and all the marketing would make them sound like they were weird and foreign and strange. They wouldn’t be playable yet, that would only be unlocked after the next major update, when they’ve really started to proliferate across the galaxies. But the whole “story” of that update would be learning about the humans and their culture, exploring Earth and slowly dawning upon the realization that oh my god these people are fucking insane.

That’s how I’d do it, anyway. It’d probably be fun.