Rock Types And Ground Types Are Heavily Intertwined In Both Public Perception Of Them And In Biological

Alright, so, uh, hi! Intro post time.

I'm Ophion, he/him, and I am a gargantuan fucking nerd. I love good worldbuilding or interesting concepts, and because of that I have often found myself obsessing over tv shows, games or movies with awful fandoms. I liked their ideas, don't judge me.

My main hyperobsession is Pokemon, though (yes, I'm neurodivergent. ADHD diagnosed, high probability of having autism as well). Probably because I'm a biology nerd, and I'm studying Bio in college right now. I play a shit ton of video games, and read a LOT of fanfictions. Mostly the ones trying to tell a good, cohesive story, though. You could hold me at gunpoint and you could not force me to read anything unsavory.

I'm mostly planning on posting my worldbuilding ideas for either those media bits or personal worldbuilding projects. Or just inane ramblings somewhat related to those things.

You've been warned.

We've lost a lot to the onslaught of enshittification but I can think of none more brazen than Discord getting rid of the send button

motherfucker ate all my crabby cakes

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.

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

this guy gets it

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. 

BEING A TANK. IS ALL ABOUT LOVE.

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).

So I watched the new Spiderverse movie a couple weeks ago and all of my friends just immediately wanted to make spidersonas (I had no idea what that was at the time lol). Anyway, their little sketches ended up inspiring me to make my own!!! Basic idea behind this guy is that in his universe, it’s the not-so-distant future and the world kinda ended? But like everyone lives underground in cavern cities now. To counteract the gloomy atmosphere of subterranean NYC, most of the lights are all neon, to make a really pretty nightlife. Also, the whole city runs on chemical energy, so it fits the vibe. Anyway, this guy here also fits the vibe of the city with a funky neon suit! Also maybe neon powers? IDK I’ve barely figured out their powers or the whole worldbuilding lol But yea, I’m not very good at art, so I’m really proud of how this turned out!!! I think it might be my favorite piece of artwork I’ve ever done, so I hope you guys like it too!

Plant Pokemon are somewhat of a contentious subject among scientific communities. Are they a Pokemon, or something else entirely? How does their (and many other grass types) chlorokinesis work? This is still a subject being heavily researched by many top professors and scientists around the globe, though some common theories remain.

1. Plant Pokemon are not sentient flora, but instead are fauna who take on the appearance and attributes of flora. The theory states that sometime in a certain lineage’s ancestry, a line of fauna developed a kind of natural symbiosis with a plant. Over time, the two grew more intertwined, until the two were simply one organism. This theory has incredible merit, as we have multiple cases of flora-fauna symbiosis in nature. The most notable example is the Bulbasaur line, with each new member of the species being given a seed bulb which takes root in the Bulbasaur’s back. The two will then provide energy, minerals, protection, and a variety of other things symbiotically to one another. Thus, Pokemon such as Lilligant are simply Pokemon that have grown to become one Pokemon with their chosen symbiotic partner. It’s been observed in several different autopsies of plant Pokemon that their makeup is a strange mixture of both plant cells and animal cells. Plant cells typically comprise the exteriors of plant Pokemon as well as key appendages such as leaves or vines, while having a few key features of fauna such as nervous systems and digestive systems. 

2. Chlorokinesis is an advanced form of kinesis. It’s been proven that almost all typings have some form of psychic ability. However, more often than not, it is specialized towards a certain element. For example, Fire Pokemon generate heat and fire naturally (more often than not, in some specialized organ), but can manipulate and control it outside of the body using pyrokinesis. However, chlorokinesis does not work the way that other psychic abilities work. Instead of manipulating the already pre-existing substance, which is produced naturally, chlorokinetics instigate extreme, controlled growth in plants, even to the extent of making specific plants grow for specific purposes (ex: leech seed). This could be in their own plant appendages, or naturally existing plants. How this works is unknown, as the energy and minerals have to come from somewhere to instigate such insane rates of cell division and movement, but there are no current explanations for this.

3. All plant Pokemon are both autotrophs and heterotrophs. This theory has the most evidence for it out of all the theories listed, as studies and experiments have been conducted thousands of times across the centuries on Bellsprout in particular (being an ideal test subject for exhibiting both). Bellsprout was observed eating and digesting various meat samples, and later using the highly corrosive acids within the cup to break down the meat samples for protein content. Later, within an hour, it was observed taking large amounts of time to stand in the sun, conducting photosynthesis. Due to this dual nature, most plant Pokemon completely lack respiratory systems, as the oxygen produced as a by-product of photosynthesis can directly be used in cellular respiration, which produces carbon dioxide, and the cycle continues. Plant Pokemon do have stomata in case of an imbalance, but most of the time this is unneeded.

We may not fully understand plant types, or grass-type Pokemon as a whole, but at the very least, it provides plenty of interesting theories and experiments for years to come.