Spent Some Time Autisming The Concept Of Man-eating Horses 🐎

this from the guy who wrote the sting pain index, a scale he constructed after letting himself be stung by insects

Roar, 3d creature design by Sadan Vague

the son of the dragon lives up to his name

this looks so sick

Epigenised (Opal-CT, Lussatite) Helix Ramondi snail fossil, from Dallet, Puy-De-Dôme, France.

The thirst trap the people truly want

My personal favorite use of the standard fantasy tropes is that all the stock characteristics of fantasy races are the stereotypes/caricatures the other races use for them. For instance:

Goblins

Stereotyped as thieving little tricksters with big noses and ears, but in reality they are extremely diverse, often to the point of not being related at all. Hobgoblins, Bugbears, traditional Goblins, Gnomes, Halflings, etc have all been called ‘goblin’ at one point or another, despite having very little in common. The thieving hordes idea comes from the fact that Goblin society is super socialist and they really don’t have a concept of personal property. The idea of locking a door in goblin society is alien, as everyone shares what they have. A goblin walking away with a set of silverware is less to do with greed, and more to do with the fact that their neighbor was complaining the other day about losing all their forks, and the goblin in question saw how many forks this tavern had, and decided to equal the scales a bit.

Dwarves

Dwarves are stereotyped as hard-drinking, dirt eating, greedy, hotheads. When you live underground rickets, anemia, and scurvy are all common, and displays of physical robustness become a cultural sign of status. At the end of the day Dwarves work well together, and drink a fairly normal amount, generally only drinking heavily among company. Dwarves are hospitable to a fault, and the way they show that is by engaging in eating and drinking in excess, to encourage similar behavior of their guests. A successful Dwarven feast ends with empty flagons and plates, and still full serving bowls. Stereotypes regarding digging greedily only come about from the twin facts that space is limited underground, necessitating regular expansion into newly built caverns, and in a magical world there are monsters all through the ground. And honestly, while the most famous Dwarven cities are subterranean, most live in hills, on cliff-sides, or on the rocky shores.

Orcs

Orcs are often stereotyped as unintelligent ravaging hordes who roll up to towns and wreak havoc. They steal away with women and children, rob livestock, and burn homes. Orcs in reality are generally nomadic. In the wide open plains, where water and food are scarce, to stay in place would mean certain doom, as their herds overgraze and soil water sources. Traditional Orcish clans have ancestral grazing lands millions of acres across. Distant corners may be visited only every decade. To graze on another’s land is a high crime among the orcs, as ever bite of browse is one stolen from the lifeblood of another clan. To prevent accidental trespass, Orcs have markers, large stones carved with jagged Orcish script. When humans (etc) wander into Orcish Land, they build farms and towns, and the Orcs feel they are in their right to remove them. Humans who are ‘stolen’ by Orcs are often just guests. In the open desert, Orcs can find water easily, and have plentiful food. They are eager to trade their fine leather goods and horn bows for goods from afar. Orcs also maintain cities, far flung and small, based on elaborate commerce. Each clan maintains a Great House in the city, and any Orc unfit to ride a Warg will stay there taking care of the family finances, trading goods, and teaching the young. Orcs of any gender ride, hunt, and herd with equal success, as a result an Orcish patrol might look very much like an army of large men to a human settlement, especially when that same party demands they leave their home and offer some settlement for their robbery.

Elves

Elves are stereotyped as haughty, distant, and immortal. While Elves are long lived, they are anything but immortal. The myth comes from Elvish naming conventions, and their religious connection to family history. Elves have given names, but rarely use them after the death of a parent, at which point the eldest same-gender child of a nuclear family will almost always adopt the ancient family name, and carry it, along with the history it is tied to. Elves think very generationally, always seeking answers in the future and past, digging through ancient tomes and burying themselves in study. Elvish librarians and scholars keep extremely detailed notes on present goings on, and as a result Elvish scholarship has a very black-and-white view of the past, informed by very deliberate attempts to remove bias. Elves generally don’t correct folks who think they are centuries or millennia older than they are, because the Elvish idea of the self is a very dispersed one, where every individual is, in a way, their ancestors. Perceived haughtiness of emotional distance arises from the fact that, to an elf, the past is settled, and the present is best lived through a mindset of calm, stoic inspection. To react with sudden, poorly thought-out, or overly emotional haste is to betray your ancestors, past and future.

Whoever made the mod for RE8 that removed the hair textures, thank you.

I’ve been looking for Vârcolac anatomy references but the hair got in the way, and my own speculations could only satisfy my curiosity so much.

It’s my fave depiction of a werewolf transformation

Look at this thing!

The way the jaw OPENS!!! Skin can only stretch so far so fast and the implication is the transformation was so quick that the skin didn’t have time to stretch is a detail I enjoy (even though that sort of drastic change in phisiology would take years, but this is a resi game)

The crease at the back of its neck and the way the throat sort of bulges! Human spines don’t connect to the skull the same way most quadruped spines do, meaning it’s technically looking “up” at all times to compensate

The extension of the maxilla (upper jaw) and mandible(lower jaw) its like somebody just pulled the face away from the rest of the skull, and it likely has larger, more sensitive olfactory bulbs as a result.

The extension of the forearms and increased muscle mass in the back and shoulders is more obvious too, adding to the uncanny valley effect due to the messed up proportions

Love this kind of shit

One of my favorite things in Fallout 4 was how synths can randomly replace settlers in your settlements. And people in real life all talked about how you could tell who a synth was by checking their energy resistance in VATS. Having energy resistance = you’re a synth.

Except this was completely made up by players trying to find an easy way to find synths. Settlers can just randomly have energy resistance for various reasons.

So in a game about paranoia and witch hunts, players created a real life equivalent of witch trials and plenty of random innocent NPCs were butchered over paranoia about synths, started by real life rumors.

Centaur Watching Fish by Arnold Böcklin (1878).

I love love love Böcklin’s mythical pieces, they have this sense of realism, and often even sensitivity.

falling down a flight of stairs stimboard ?