like 3 months ago had a dream which was basically the roman trading card game you posted today but all the artwork used for it was made by members of the tumblr ancient history community AND the cards had types . they looked pretty much like pokemon tcg "fullart" cards. but i have absolutely no idea what the types were. and the emperors had dual types . and claudius had some special skill which was very OP. every deck had to have claudius or it sucked

the project was made as some big collab where you could join if you applied to it via a google form and each artist had to design two cards and they had to be of two different romans . it would be cool to host an event like this but i dont think a lot of people would join and all cards probably would be of like the same 10 most famous romans

It's a super cool idea, to be sure! You'd probably need a team of professionals - game designer, balance specialist, card template designer, writer, editor, fact-checker, artist coordinator...There have been videogames and board games centered on ancient history, so I think it could be done, it'd just be a Serious Undertaking, and need fundraising and such.

It might be more feasible to make a zine. I'm not able to coordinate that, but could contribute image edits or short fiction if somebody else did.

Also, "Every deck had to have Claudius or it sucked" made me laugh so hard - so that's the real reason he was sidelined! The other Julio-Claudians were trying to preserve the game balance!

just two partners relaxing after a mission <3

i should do one of those relationship charts for my splatoon agents, i want to talk about them so badly. the problem is that im bad at talking to ppl in general about literally anything

im stilllll in a dreammmm snake eaterrrrrrrrrrrr

it's funny how you said that pugs are abominations because they kinda are. But what about chihuahuas?-🌟

Chihuahuas have less health problems and also probably shouldn’t exist, but pugs are much, much worse.

Pugs have been bred so that they are born unable to breathe properly. Their tails are deformed. Their eyes are prone to just falling out. They are ugly creatures who live their shortened lives in pain. Movies like Men In Black which featured a pug made them popular and more pugs have been bred (I don’t blame the movie, but any movie featuring an animal will have this effect, like Finding Nemo made kids want pet fish). When pugs are fitted with breathing tubes for surgery (which is common because they ar prone to organ failure), they don’t want them off. Unlike other dogs, who hate breathing tubes and find them painful, pugs are the opposite of desperate to rip them off. Its because they have a squashed face, and are unable to even get enough oxygen. There are programs to try and breed pugs back into a reasonable existence where they are more like actual dogs, instead of the inbred creatures they are. All of this is because the features of pugs were arbitrarily decided cute.

Pugs are not the only dogs which have been ruined through the selective breeding of humans, but they are one of the worst examples.

There are similar issues in other pets. Reptiles can be selectively bred to contain different colorations referred to as “morphs.” The hobby is huge, with countless breeders dedicating decades to achieving unique animals. Ever seen a photo of a solid black gecko? Or a snake with smiley faces? Those aren’t always photoshop. Sometimes, photos are uploaded with filters, but the most part, it is real. On websites like Morph Market, breeders can list reptiles for sale. If you sort by rare or expensive morphs, you can see these animals.

I’m most familiar with ball pythons. I have one as a pet and have done the most research on them over other pets. Ball pythons have hundreds, maybe even thousands of different morphs which have been selectively bred. Most of them are fine, great even. Countless beautiful snakes are out there with vibrant colors and patters. Unfortunately, certain morphs are linked to certain traits. For a harmless example, ‘banana’ morph (also known as ‘coral glow’) ball pythons tend to be male. Unfortunately, certain colorations which have been selectively bred over time are linked to various health defects and neurological issues.

The most common and well-known example is the ‘spider’ morph. The ‘spider’ morph is associated with a pretty spiderweb pattern, and one of the worst neurological issues. This problem (commonly referred to as a ‘wobble’) is linked to the gene that causes the pattern. Among other things, this results in a snake that cannot tell up from down. This results in the snake struggling to eat, and in some cases biting itself. Spiders are some of the most popular snakes with such defects due to their color. They sell, so they continue to be bred. Morphs containing ‘spider’ (as in, the when two snakes are cross bred to result in new morphs) are often names various ‘bug’ names (usually ‘bee’ is somewhere in there). Breeders will point to certain crosses or even individual snakes whose ‘head wobble’ is less severe, or even crosses the which seem almost fine as a reason why this morph should continue to be bred and sold. It should not and has even been banned from some reptile conventions. Some pretty patterns are not worth continuing to breed an animal which should not exist and is prone to moving backwards, upside down, and quite literally trying to eat itself. The snakes already exist, and I don’t see an issue in having a rescue as a pet, but breeders need to just stop bringing more into the world.

Spider ball pythons, pugs, even glow-in-the-dark goldfish. So many animals which should have never existed continue to exist due to selective breeding, capitalism and the barely-regulated supply and demand of pets. I’m not against selective breeding, but at some point there has to be a line.

This is not even getting into people who defend breeding spider ball pythons by comparing them to autistic people simply being allowed exist in this world and also to have children.

did not have "the game by ken dryden reminds me of american psycho by bret easton ellis" on my bingo card yet here we are

Ragtag Misfits Worldbuilding - A Map of The Region

(made by @solarg0blin for an art trade!!)

So very thankful to @solarg0blin for making these truly incredible maps 😭 The first one is the Sanskritized version and the bottom one is the Anglicized version!

Disclaimer : The map is completely meant for fictional purposes and shouldn't be taken at face value or a fact! Much research went into its creation but map is only meant to portray the historical fantasy world of Ragtag Misfits! (You can read Ragtag Misfits here)

Ragtag Misfits will explore largely 3 regions -

1. Territories in the eastern part of the Mauryan Empire (modern East and East Central India and Nepal),

2. The Kirata Mahajanpad - a name used to denote hilly regions to the east of Mauryan territories and in modern terms is the northern part of northeast India and Bhutan, and

3. The Kingdom of Manipur mentioned in the Mahabharat. In modern terms, this includes parts of Bangladesh and southern part of northeast India - states of Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, and parts of Assam.

Both the kingdoms of Kirata and Manipur are based on mythological sources. The Kirata kingdom in the Mahabharat is mentioned to be to the east of Videha and Manipur is believed to be a coastal kingdom close to Kalinga - though the Ragtag Misfits version does include modern-day Manipur with the kingdom's capital in Imphal. But Manipur and Kirata are uncharted territories for our protags! The Mauryan part of the map is more resolved with more cities listed simply because our protagonists know it well! More lore to come 😼

im turning my phone on silent idk why my posting anxiety is getting worse but its getting to a point where i almost cant do this anymore.

i want ppl to see my posts! i want to actually be involved in fandom and make friends who like the same things as me (which btw. i rarely if ever like the same things as ppl.) but i also feel like im gunna pass out anytime i actually tag something. and its not like my following is big enough to just rely on reblogs.

@unfavorableinstigation I need your professional help, I am suffering from Too Many Books

-500 page library sci fi on terraforming Mars (Red Planet) -800 page medieval history book (Heimskringla <3) -400 page Translation State -hold came in at the library a week ago for my book on Reconstruction-era politics -avoiding all of this by rereading the Accidental Warlord series, about which I have complicated feelings, but it's good because I'm writing fic and also trying to trick YouTube's algorithm into feeding me music composition education videos -incidentally still several weeks behind on CritRole -want to see what Shadowen's doing on Patreon

How do I resolve this crisis in the most beneficial way for the library? Return Red Planet, pick up hold, return it without reading it, and check them both out again once I've finished Heimskringla and Translation State?

❓ And 🕳️ for the oc ask game?

AHHH OK IDK HOW THESE ARE TRADITIONALLY DONE SO IMMA JUST DO THE OC IVE BEEN THINKING ABT MOST RECENTLY KSBSJDVDBD

Aubrey:

❓ : Basically her WHOLE plot line. I have no idea how I wanna do it bc ive not developed it beyond concepts at all but to dumb it down big time, She lives in the capital city of her world where she is a waitress literally just tryna save up to move away. People in this world have eye colours correspondent to an elemental power !! Although its very rare for people to be able use them stronger than like, heating up a stove (fire or water) yknow? But Aubrey was born with black eyes. For reasons yet to be determined, she travels to small civilisations on every edge of the world where she collects a gem for each element, hoping this will somehow aid her search for a sense of self. Every gem she collects does not do much at all though, until she collects the last one and gasp!!! Black is not the absence of colour but the presence of every colour!! So she was born to be a "Guardian of Life" which basically just means shes the grim reaper for a few hundred years lmao? but she meets the current one, and lets his soul rest by volunteering to look over the world early. But because she elects to help and isnt forced into it once she dies, she has to stay there basically forever. so yeah

🕳 : Aubrey is kind of forgettable in universe lmao. shes absolutely been locked in a classroom or cramped broom cupboard by accident

I both love and hate worldbuilding so much.

Like, I'm thinking about how I want to do languages in the Aethel, and I'm like, "there's language groups and usually language just drifts, it's rare people up and intentionally make a new language and it catches on, although trade and politics definitely can help a region's power swap from one common language to another" but if I want to make diverse languages, even if they don't actually appear front-and-centre, I have to do all this goddamn research.

Like, cuneiform looks like That because they used hexagonal 'pens' of sorts to press into clay, and kanji looks like That because they use brushes, and Irish ogham looks like That because it was typically carved into rocks, and Latin cursive looks like That because we used feather pens. But did we diverge alphabets from each other in the proto-indo-european days because of different tools, or was writing invented repeatedly in different places and that's why it's different?

Furthermore, what shapes language itself? Icelandic is a very gutteral language that hasn't really changed in a thousand years because it doesn't need to, but Japanese is a very melodic language with a very firm consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel structure. Why's that? They're both island cultures who kept to themselves for a good chunk of history. What made them different? Why is it that only like five languages use a tongue-click as a sound, and only some roll Rs? What happened to make these naturally happen, and why aren't they more common?

Why is it Japanese is an incredibly indirect language but also incredibly concise, whereas Hebrew and English are both typically pretty direct? Why do some languages not even have relational left/right, and only ever use cardinal directions? Aren't there a few completely atemporal languages? Why is it that English only has a few tonal indicators, but if you fuck up any tones at all in Cantonese, it changes everything you just said? Whose idea was that, and why did it stick around?

These are all questions that absolutely build and help make worldbuilding that much more natural and realistic. But answering them is going to require a goddamn linguistic anthropology degree. I can't just wikipedia this shit in one night and then keep going.

It's worse once you get different species in the mix. A draconic language is not likely to sound anything like a human language, and may not be at all possible for any human ever to speak. I've been writing Denellic almost entirely as "what if Icelandic people got the ability to roll every single consonant that exists, and also knew Latin, and aggressively wanted to insult Latin at every point, and was a language intentionally made to do so, but also the species that primarily speaks it has seven distinct arcanobiological genders with cultural meaning and expects you to stack them on every noun because being neutral on a topic is culturally unacceptable".

I'm literally dying. Am I having so so so much fun? Absolutely. But I'm also literally dying, and if anyone wants to help a worldbuilder out and knows the answers to some of these questions, please please please tell me it'll make my worldbuilding cooler.

I do really hope that mirror happens though just bc the original game has a lot of really good interaction potential and I wanna see more of it. we could get nageki actually Interacting w everyone else. we could have tohri takes anghel to mcdonalds. we can have the hatohouse kids!! I know bad things will probably happen in mirror but I wanna see all the silly character interactions!! hiyoko and kazuaki have a good amt of shared interests I wanna see them interact. can we have hitori and tohri being friends here too

Hey guys. gay rights

My beautiful baby lizard can have another edgy song on her spotify playlist. As a treat.

i want to close all my tabs but i'm not done studying :(((

Actually nvm I've got too much going on‼️‼️