i am skeptical you could do that actually, tiktok user

YUDHO

had an au thought and ran with it o/

btw it wont be the first or last time i say it but sheezy.art is cool.

if youre an artist and youve been looking for somewhere to actually make friends/form an art community rather than just sadly refreshing your feed for likes/rbs i would recommend sheezy.art!

it's in beta rn and theres a timer that lets 10 people register every few hours, but theres also a kofi you can support thatll just let you register right away

the website's staff and multiple friends were the ones who brought the site to my attention (thank you lemmy), and every who ive met/talked to there has been super active and sweet ^_^ ik social media can be kind of daunting if you do art for fun so now its my turn to push you guys towards the site

on worldbuilding, and what people think is going on

there is one facet of fantasy worldbuilding that is, to me, the most interesting and essential but i don't see it come up in worldbuilding guides or writing prompts or anything, and that is the question of:

what do the inhabitants of your world believe about how the world works, and how are they wrong? a lot of fantasy media will set up their cosmology, gods, magic systems, planar systems, concepts of the afterlife, &c., and proceed as though the inhabitants of the world know and understand them.

from someone whose entire academic career is focused on studying human culture in various regions and time periods, with a focus on belief systems (religion, occultism, mythology, folklore): that sort of worldbuilding is unrealistic and missing out on so much fun.

people are always seeking new understanding about how the world works, and they are mostly wrong. how many models of the solar system were proposed before we reached our current one? look at the long, turbulent history of medicine and our various bizarre models for understanding the human body and how to fix it. so many religions and occult/magical traditions arise from people disagreeing with or adapting various models of the world based on new ideas, methods, technologies. many of them are wrong, but all of them are interesting and reflect a lot about the culture, beliefs, values, and fears of the people creating/practising them.

there is so much more to the story of what people believe about the world than just what is true.

to be clear: i think it's fine and important for the author to have a coherent explanation for where magic comes from or who the gods are, so they can maintain consistency in their story. but they should also be asking what people in the world (especially different people, in different regions/nations and different times) think is happening when they do magic, or say a prayer, or practise medicine, or grieve their dead. it is a rich vein for conflict between individuals and nations alike when two models of the world disagree. it is fascinating how different magic systems might develop according to different underlying beliefs.

personally, i think it is the most fun to spawn many diverse models of the world, but give none of them the 'right' answer.

(bonus points if you also have a thriving academic system in the world with its own theory, research, and discourse between factions! as an academic, it is very fun to imagine fictional academic debate over the topics i'm worldbuilding. sometimes i will be working out details for some underlying mechanic of the world and start imagining the papers being written by scholars researching it)

@starshinescribbles developed this incredible resource for ttrpg creators, and it’s too good not to share!

Pictures, sounds, fonts, frameworks, and no AI shit!

everyone should be weirder about their ocs more.

I joked about this in the tags of another post, but I don't think it's mentioned enough that the first two Fallout titles deliberately used stylized stop motion puppets to depict their characters!!

You may think "Oh maybe that was just easier at the time than making them realistic" but NO!! Tons of games used real life FMV footage in the exact same way Fallout used its stylized puppets!

It's also part of why the OG fallout models still look way better than any of the modern ones!

The original Fallout creators deliberately wanted all their mutants and ghouls to look like fucked up claymation dudes and the more the series strays from that the worse off it will be!

in a perfect world what character would you own a life size cardboard cutout of. you get one and I want you to answer in the tags with your heart. if you asked me right now I would say columbo

Hellppp some transphobe found my posts about getting surgery and is yelling in my asks about how I mutilated my ‘perfect feminine body’ . I got my wisdom teeth removed.

⛓️✖️INDUSTRIAL HEARTTHROB✖️⛓️

Boop: Concentrated feelings of boop create a devastating paw.

worldbuilding research stages

stage one: "hmmm... whats the climate here? Tropical?" stage two: "Every culture has a dumpling, a bread, a staple grain..." stage three: "Oh, ok, yeah, it'd make sense for them to wear thinner, looser, less covering clothes to handle the humidity!" stage twelve: "wikipedia is far too mean about the nesting habits of scarlet ibises." stage forty: "There are NOT enough resources on native caribbean language groups." stage seventy-eight: "Dumplings are the superior food." stage ninety-nine: "I think we should be legally allowed to kill people who destroy wetlands."

Game Jams' Influence on Interactive Fiction

by Sophia de Augustine

Sophia (@thesophiades) and Manon (@manonamora-if) chat about running game jams to foster creativity and experimentation, and to build bridges between different IF communities and forms.

Read the full article on The Rosebush.

The Rosebush | Submissions | Mastodon

Shout out to all the Black ppl that can no longer participate directly in the fandom they love because of the stresses of racism 👍🏾 you contain multitudes of value and I'm sorry that the color of your skin and the power of your voice makes people not want to acknowledge that.

is Shrek canon in bungeon I gotta know

hi dart