fantasy-anatomy-analyst

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

I hear some stuff about writing that doesn’t have believable or meaningful cultural differences when it comes to fantasy settings/cultures, so i want to ask: what exactly makes a culture meaningfully distinct? what differences in a culture make sense, or lack of differences that don’t? just like where do i start with all that it seems complicated

Disclaimer that I am a white american, so like I don't think im an expert on this lol a lot of other people probably have more to add with actual personal experience in seeing their own cultures crop up as bastardized fantasy cultures, possibly mixed up with a few other cultures as well. I am opening this up to my followers! Please add your opinions!

The first thing to note about fantasy culture is that it can be difficult to create a new culture entirely from scratch without taking ideas from real cultures, because of course the only references we have are real world human cultures! So step number one in writing a new cukture is to give yourself some grace, because you're going to end up with some details that might seem similar to any number of real cultures, and that in itself is not inherently a bad thing. It's not appropriative, for example, to write a fantasy culture that has some important dances involving some form of costume with masks. This concept alone can be found in several real cultures around the world because people like to use music and dance and costuming in order to tell stories, some of which even have religious significance.

But if, say, you find yourself directly referencing more specific real like cultural dances in this category, copying their styles and even taking the stories they tell with those dances, you should probably step back and rethink it.

A personal example: there is a dance in the opening chapters of my current story draft. It is an orcish funeral dance, in which a raven-like bird is shown guiding the spirit of the deceased person to the afterlife. Costumes and masks are used in this dance. But I also know that the real life Native American cultures in my own area have raven dances that tell specific stories about a sacred raven figure. So when I design the dance costumes and try to describe the dance in my story, i do my best to avoid copying real life raven dances. Am I perfect at it? Absolutely not. But I am trying.

And it helps to build up your fantasy cultures as whole interconnected things, not just disconnected pieces of things that seem cool or only support one or two plot points and have no other impact.

But I think maybe am diving in a little too deep too quick here, so let me back up.

I interpreted this ask at first about making fantasy cultures distinct from real world cultures, but the other interpretation is making fantasy cultures distinct from each other within their settings. Which is equally important!

For example, while in fantasy it is useful to kinda lump your people groups up as species (elves have elf culture, orcs have orc culture) it is also a good idea to vary them somewhat (elves from location A have a different culture than elves from location B, even though they share the same cultural ancestry and have more in common than they do with orc cultures)

Making these cultures meaningfully distinct, to me, means they feel organic and alive and not like cardboard cutouts reusing the same stock ideas every time. Which is not to say that you can't use the same ideas that are commonly used with things like elves and orcs, but that you should explore deeper and figure out what you personally enjoy about those fantasy folks and then expand on it.

The thing about culture is that it affects every aspect of people's lives. So your fantasy cultures also need to do that!

One common example I see is worldbuilding that has a surface level attempt to make a fantasy world modern and feminist by just having some female deities and putting female characters in leadership roles. But then immediately under the surface they're still using very patriarchal and sexist details that line up with exactly the real world they've grown up in. It's a lack of deeper thought. What does it actually mean for these fictional people to worship a goddess? Why if they're ruled by a matriarchal figure are they still degrading the role of motherhood and treating women as lesser than men? And why does the female protagonist feel like a #feminist not-like-other-girls girlboss from a Twitter thread? (This one is a major pet peeve of mine, can u tell)

Hmm I feel like i am saying an awful lot but I don't know if I have actually answered the question.

Let's go back to "how do I start?" Because I think that is the most important detail, right? Where do you begin to write distinct fantasy cultures that isn't just a list of "well here is some stuff other people do wrong" or "don't copy real world cultures".

Start with two groups of fantasy people. They don't have to be related.

What are their physical traits? Are they human or something else? What environment do they live in? What resources are available to them?

With those resources, what can they make? What do they eat? How do they gather the resources they have access to?

What do they consider to be important? How does thus affect their social structure? Their form of government? Their spiritual beliefs? Do they value wealth? How does that look for them?

You'll want to explore several different cultural topics and connect them back to these central questions. Some important topics are clothing and accessories, transportation, architecture, cuisine, and entertainment.

If your two people groups live in separate environments and/or are different species, it will be easier to create unique distinctions between their cultures. But if they are the same species in the same environment, they may share some cultural foundations and differ more in things like spiritual practices and social structures (like government). The important thing to keep in mind is that the details of their culture will effect every part of their lives, so you need to create consistent rules for how to write them.

Also, people who interact with each other will end up influencing each other in one way or another. How do these two groups interact? What do they trade? Are they allies or enemies? Does either group oppress the other? What does that look like in this case?

And then of course you can repeat this process as much as you like with more groups in your world. And don't be afraid to research real life cultures! You do actually want to know what's common in particular environments. Like for example, what clothing styles are most common in arid environments? How about cold environments? What animals and plants are available as resources in a temperate forest?

I think a lot of us are tired of seeing desert dwelling fantasy people who wear skimpy outfits that would actually give them serious sunburns and heat stroke, for example. Please stop doing that.

I have also seen some newly popular fantasy books that give absolutely zero consideration to what the people in their worlds would actually have access to and know about. Like a woman living in a fantasy desert surrounded by sand and suffering through a near constant drought, with no mention of any other countries with more fertile land, should not be able to easily access any grain based alcohol while complaining of a lack of water rations. She also should not just casually make reference to a "feast day turkey". Girl what turkey. What whiskey. You don't have those things. You live in a place that resembles Tattooine. (Sorry, more pet peeves)

Just put some actual thought into your fictional cultures and be genuinely curious about it! If you're having fun with it, exploring all the options and making it consistently cohesive, it will read fine. Also just have the chutzpah to pull it off. A fantasy world that unapologetically and enthusiastically puts a lamp post in the middle of a forest is better written than one that seems to just copy every common vaguely-old-fashioned-western-europe fantasy setting that has ever been written and never does anything new or fun with it.

Your elves can still be nigh immortal forest people who do archery, your orcs can still be big buff warrior types, but you gotta find a way to make them your own and have some fun with it.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

How would you go about creating a powered-flight-capable humanoid with draco lizard style "wings?"

well, I don't know if you could make them fully powered-flight, since draco lizard "wings" are essentially just a built in glide suit, much lie sugargliders and flying squirrels. they don't flap their wings, they just stick em out and maybe grab the front part to steer themselves.

the struts that make the shape of their wings are basically rib extensions, so I do think you can design a humanoid that way! anything with a ribcage can be redesigned to have a really weird highly specialized ribcage. reptiles are just extra weird about their ribs.

(image description: sketches of a draco lizard and a humanoid figure with similar wings. the wings are wide flaps of membrane extending off the torso. end description.)

if you want powered flight with a big membrane off the ribs, I think it will have to connect to the arms in a way that allows for actual flapping, which is a type of motion that requires a lot more energy than just gliding and turning. the more bones you put in the wings, the more joints have to be involved in the flapping motion, which means more muscle attachments and therefore more energy, especially if you want them to flap fast.

but if you kinda space the rib-struts out and lengthen the torso, you might be able to make it work like those ribbon shaped sea slugs, with a ripple effect in the flapping. it won't be as efficient or aerobatic as other types of wings, but it might be enough to at least create lift so they can fly a good distance and not just glide along.

maybe add an extra joint on the front wing struts so they're more flexible, and that will allow for more flapping ability.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

How would a big creature with body armor lay down?

Hi, I want to ask you a question regarding creature design/specbio. Here’s my alien which I showed you some time ago:

Recently I’ve decided to redesign it by removing the limbs on the neck because I found them excessive, and I’ve considered making their stance more upright by making the front pair of walking legs longer than the back ones.

But I’ve got some trouble with figuring out a resting position for them. I’ve tried using large Earth animals such as ungulates and elephants for reference, but my aliens have a different limb configuration, plus the hard body armor around the legs pose an additional problem.

My aliens aren’t true arthropods, they’ve got an internal skeleton just like Earth vertebrates. I’ve considered solving the problem by shrinking the armor around the limbs to give more space around the joints allowing for more freedom of movement.

Would that be a feasible solution, and could you provide some refs or advice for how they could lie down?

---

i remember these guys! love their design. i think letting the armored parts be a little more spaced out or allowing them to overlap a bit would help with the bending/folding concern, if you’re struggling to work that out. and even though they’re not true arthropods, looking up images of insects and arachnids with their legs folded might help (though they usually don’t have a distinct resting leg position, as they move differently from vertebrates and only have their legs fully folded in when they die)

they could have a sort of tendon situation like ungulates who sleep standing up. it locks the legs in place to rest without laying down.

but here are a couple sketches of what it could look like for them to lay down as well:

(image description: sketches of a large insectoid creature with four big legs and two smaller forelimbs. in one sketch it’s standing up. in two other sketches it is laying down, with the legs sprawled outward in one version and folded along the side of the body in another version. end description.)

this would require some ability for the legs to turn at certain joints, so a ball-and-socket situation instead of a hinge joint.

hope that helps!

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Hello I do not know if this has been asked yet sorry if yes. But how could one fit two pairs of avian wings on a single quadrupedal creatures back without the feathers of one pair getting in the way of the other wings. Must I stretch out the creature like a dashound or can I have the wings closer together. maybe by angling them so the tip (that is the tip of the bit with the bones and muscles) of the fore wings is angled forward and the tip of the hind wings is angeled a bit towards the back? Or would that absolutely screw up its ability to fly?

Sorry if the description of the last bit is confusing, your blog is super useful thank you for making it.

so my first thought is dragonfly wing arrangement. close up slowmo starts around 40s into this first video:

(video description: the first half of the video is mostly setup with specialized cameras. the second half of the video shows some close up footage of a dragonfly flying in slow motion, showing the way its wings move in alternating flaps. end description)

the best way to translate this to feathered wings, I think, would be to give your creature narrow wings, like the shape you see on a lot of seabirds. being narrow will allow them to move past each other more effectively, especially if their tertiary feathers close to the body are softer compared to the rigid flight feathers.

you may need to give your creature a longer upper body just to make space for the wings, but you should be able to fudge the anatomy to fit two pairs of wings on the back without having to move the second pair too far down.

here are some messy sketches to show what I mean:

(image description: several sketches of a vague quadrupedal animal with a long stiff tail and two pairs of feathered wings. the wings are narrow, with the second pair being slightly smaller than the first. they are shown spread and folded, as well as gliding and in flight as the two pairs flap past each other, one pair moving up while the other pair moves down. end description)

another option would be for the second pair to be significantly smaller and used more as stabilizers while the front pair does the bulk of the work. in that case, I would make the second pair more rounded rather than narrow.

good luck!

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Feel free to ignore this unsolicited advice, but I also had wrist pain from using a Switch and getting a case with hand grips helped a *ton.* It is a bit less portable, but the one I got had a case that comes with it, so I don't mind.

Something like this:

[ID: a lightweight, non-protective case that would slot around the back and sides of a Nintendo Switch, with hand grips on the side like an X-Box controller. End ID.]

Thank you! I will absolutely look into getting one of these

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Hey memento-morianon canI ask You 3 things? 1how would goat dwarves look in perfect mix goat-human? 2 Can I use your drawing of goat dwarves in my work? Do you know what's up with the dwarven women with beards? It seems to be rooted in the subconscious of fantasy fans, but it appears more often in independent projects (such as yours, a very interesting project by the way) and parodies, so where did it come from in the subconscious of fantasy fans?Sorry if I ask for too much ask too much question

looks like you meant to send this to my writing blog! but I'll answer it anyway.

I think, or at least this is how I feel about it, that dwarven women with beards came from a desire to make dwarves more cohesive as a fantasy people.

so many fantasy dwarf characters are men, and their beards are such a major focus of their character designs! and then of course, a lot of mainstream fantasy, especially video games, will give their fantasy people the most inexplicable sexual dimorphism, making the males really unique and intriguing while the females are just sexy humanoid ladies, maybe with oddly colored skin, different proportions, and a few bonus traits like horns and tails.

so to see buff and heavily bearded dwarven men right next to sexy curvy, maybe chubby, dwarven women is super disappointing. why not lean into the beards more? make their facial hair a whole central focus of their species design! give the ladies beards and big muscles too! that's how I feel about it lol, we love a fantasy species that defies modern human gender ideas.

also Terry Pratchet's Discworld series has a whole plot about a dwarven woman and it goes all in on dwarven gender expectations, and I think a lot of people my age read those books and latched onto that little bit of worldbuilding, so any media that won't give their dwarven women beards feel so cowardly in comparison.

also also, facial hair as a gender neutral or even explicitly feminine trait is super fun and should be embraced more. because why not.

anyway, back to the actual first part of your question:

goat dwarves! a very fun idea! I assume you don't want them to just look like satyrs/fauns, and just making anthro goats doesn't quite give you the same vibe as a fantasy dwarf.

here are some inspiration sketches to help you get started: (wild goat reference photo taken from wikipedia)

(image description: sketches of goat-like dwarves. at the top is a traced image of a wild goat to show its proportions and body shape, next to a sketch of the standard fantasy dwarf body shape. below this are a few hasty sketches of a goat-dwarf's face, hands, and torso, giving them a shorter face shape and smaller horns than a typical goat so they look a bit more humanoid. their hands are just modified even-toed hooves. end description.)

and again, if you want to use my art in your projects, please commission me so i can give you higher quality art that matches your personal vision better! these unpaid doodles are made quickly just to get the idea across so they can be used as inspiration. i think you should focus on learning how to make your own art or paying artists you admire to draw it for you with proper credit. it will ultimately be more satisfying and better suited to your personal preferences!

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

I have 3 very weird questions 1how humanoid being between homo genus cheetah plant would work? 2how humanoid insect mammal reptike would work? 3 Dud I can use your answers to first two questions in my project?

Sorry tha I forgotten to write this but I wanted hom genus-cheetsch-plant hybrid to be elf abd insect-reptiles-mamnal hybrid yo be an orc, how this could be working and did I can use Yours answers in my project ?

okay! I think I'll direct you to some of my other posts for advice on this:

first, a post discussing making a common fantasy design uniquely yours while still retaining enough expected features that people will recognize it

and secondly a post on how to combine creatures to make a new design

but of course, you're going extra far by combining traits from entirely separate parts of the tree of life. plants combined with a mammal, and mammals combined with insects, while also trying to make them recognizably elves and orcs, respectively. this is a very fun and ambitious project!

when you get further away from realistic combinations, the best solution is to make it more whimsical and magical, because not everything can be or needs to be scientifically plausible (we are still in the fantasy genre here! making things grounded enough to be believable is fun and I encourage it, but sometimes you do just have to go off the rails a little and have fun with it! if you give it enough chutzpah, you can make a lot of weird things work!)

I can't design these things for you directly, unless you commission me. I prefer to encourage people to develop the skills and make their own designs! all I can do is offer advice and inspiration.

cheetah-plant elf: consider what types of plants you want to use! what features of a plant will be most helpful for your elves? perhaps they can attach themselves to the trees to gain nutrients, via some sort of root system in their feet or tail. maybe being part plant allows them to photosynthesize, and perhaps being part plant is an explanation for their long lifespans! if you go with a carnivorous plant inspiration, they can passively consume smaller creatures and insects, but then put on bursts of cheetah-like speed to catch larger prey. if they're covered in spots like a cheetah, they can also blend into the dappled light of a forest, perhaps being more of an ambush predator.

mammal-insect-reptile orc: orcs are big and strong, usually with some form of large teeth like tusks. these orcs could have insectoid exoskeletal armor, as well as an internal skeleton. this isn't entirely out of the question, when you consider how many reptiles have hardened bumps and spikes on their skin. turtles have a whole shell on their bodies! but being partly mammalian, they can also avoid the trouble of temperature regulation by being warm blooded, allowing them to live in colder regions than most reptiles. they might have insectoid mandibles in place of tusks! and a third pair of limbs, maybe a pair that's smaller and more versatile while their other limbs are for walking and fighting. it's up to you to decide what sorts of insects and reptiles you want to use as inspiration here; a lot of insects and reptiles are venomous, which would be a neat trait for your orcs as well.

consider all those details and go have fun designing! you've got a pretty awesome project, it sounds like

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Right thumb is feeling better, left wrist varies in pain levels, so I'm opening commissions again! I don't really need my left wrist for drawing.

But I think the actual pain culprit is mh nintendo switch lol, I picked up zelda totk for a replay and it seems the way I hold the device with my little baby hands really does a number on my left wrist. Fascinating.

Cannot see myself buying the switch2, which is just a less colorful switch with much larger proportions.

Anyway. Commission info is up on my ko-fi page.

https://Ko-fi.com/E1E46K3T

I'd like to have enough money for a new drawing tablet, but I don't think that will happen until I've gotten those new illustration projects this summer. My touchscreen laptop folds over to be a tablet, but the stylus is rather small and even though I recently replaced the nib, it's really been struggling with pen pressure lately >:/ which obviously makes my work rather difficult. Especially if I want to focus on making that fantasy art advice book. I can keep my laptop around for writing, but it just isn't the best for art.

The tablet I want is the Wacom movink, which is less than $800! Between that and a nice tablet stand and also shipping costs, my current finance goal is to save up $900. So any commissions I get will be very helpful!

And as always, of course, while my advice doodles are free for inspiration, if you want to use my art directly in a project, just commission me! Thanks!

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

I'm considering changing the normal elk in my story setting to a new dire elk instead and just replacing the standard deer with unicorns.

Gonna blame the limited ungulate populations on the centaurs, who likely outcompeted a lot of other ungulates way back when their territory was more extensive.

Dire elk got big and grew extra large dangerous antlers, made themselves a real problem for the centaurs who had to choose between fighting dire elk for territory or staying away from their only predator, the urukai. And then dire elk also outcompeted their own smaller cousins.

The unicorns are just small deer with one antler who can inexplicably use magic and seem oddly intelligent. They hide amongst the dire elk for protection and also warn their large companions of approaching predators.

But if a unicorn thinks the predators are targeting it, because it is weaker than the dire elk, it might turn on the dire elk and injure one of them just to keep the predators focused on a more appealing meal.

After the centaur-urukai war, when the remaining urukai were renamed as orcs, the dire elk found itself as the new main prey for orcs in this particular region.

I just have to figure out what dire elk antlers look like lol

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

(Image description: doodles of simple dragon designs. The first has big wings with a full membrane attaching to the body, labeled with "yuuup, this animal flies". The second has tiny wings that would be useless and barely look attached to the body, labeled with "aww aww". The last one has big wings but the membrane doesn't really attach to the body, labeled "die".

End description)

Quite literally one of the main reasons I made this blog lol

when a dragons wings are too small to realistically fly thats fine its reasonable i think to size them down to allow them to fit in a space better and be more readable as a character. but outside of really specific circumstances (like cartoonishly small wings) when a dragons wing webbing stops way too far up? punishable by death. in seymourworld.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

The tentacles of a cephalopod surround its mouth, like that is what they're for, so whenever a character design has a bunch of cephalopod tentacles as legs I assume there's a second mouth down there or maybe the mouth on their visible face is actually something else???

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

This also does not have to be restricted to TTRPGs! These tropes exist in the majority of fantasy media, looking back several decades all the way to the present.

If you're a fantasy or scifi writer, ask yourself some questions about the way your world defines People. Which groups are People and which are not? Why is that? Do you have a big antagonist group that is all one species/race? Why?

I think there is still a place for big high fantasy adventure stories that have some sort of clear hero and villain situation, because those stories are still fun! It's cool and exciting to write about heroes saving the world from an evil force that seems impossible to overcome!

But it is also very easy for those stories to present clearly sapient non human people groups as inherently evil and that trope relies on and reinforces certain real world biases and oppressive systems.

I think this can be subverted, and not just by saying "oh, well maybe this time orcs are good and elves are evil". Frankly, "this species of people is all good" is just as troublesome as "this species of people is all evil".

Maybe consider having both your good guys and bad guys be diverse groups. Real life "evil" sucks people in, makes promises and provides justification for cruelty, turns people agaisnt each other. And yes, this can be connected to systemic oppression! You can put one fantasy group in a position to oppress certain other groups, and use that as part of the good vs evil plot.

Just make sure it's not set up as actual canonically unchangeable racial traits. Make it more real than that (while also avoiding any one-to-one metaphors like "elves are white people and goblins are native Americans" because that also won't go over well.)

Putting all tabletop players into a college level ethics class and forcing them to turn in a paper on moral philosophy before buying a new book

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

trying to configure satyr/faun/other digitigrade legged creature in a wheelchair. works alright with crutches or cane, but I cannot figure out how digitigrade creatures would sit in any chair, and wheelchairs are a bit more complex bc of footrests. please and thank you!

for some general wheelchair art references, here are a couple useful posts I've found:

the way you design your character's wheelchair largely depends on whether or not they'll be pushing the wheels themself, and whether or not they could have a power chair (even a magic one) or if they'd need another person to push the chair for them.

if your character can't easily push their own wheelchair, then whether they rely on another person or they have a power chair, the back will be higher than it is on a manual chair, and the wheels will be smaller. the whole design will be more focused on long term comfort and support, probably having nice arm rests, maybe allowing the character to lean back more.

a manual wheelchair should still be long term comfortable to sit in, but it will have a lower back to allow for better arm mobility, really big wheels, and any arm rests on it shouldn't get in the way of the wheels. it's more focused on active mobility, it's lightweight and more compact compared to the other type of chair.

digitigrade legs have shorter thighs and calves and longer feet with a narrower point of support than plantigrade legs. so the seat area on a wheelchair will be shorter for them, and likely will need a gap in the backrest to accommodate a tail (since many digitigrade characters just also have a tail of some sort)

I defaulted to a manual wheelchair design that allows the calf and foot to stay in a straighter alignment with each other, so the length required for the footrest isn't actually that different from a human wheelchair. But I also made two more options: one where the foot is laid flat and the footrest is therefore higher off the ground, and another where the foot rest is further forward, changing the angle of the leg position.

Obviously these wheelchair designs are heavily simplified, the frame would need more structure to it on a real wheelchair. these drawings are just to show the general form and shape.

(image description: three simplified sketches of a satyr with goat-like legs. In the first image, there is a standing satyr to show the basic body and leg proportions, next to a satyr in a wheelchair. The wheelchair designs of this and the next two images all show the chair in bright red shapes while the main wheel is drawn as a faint blue overlay. the last two images show variations on the wheelchair from the first image, all of which match the description above the images. The first wheelchair mostly resembles a normal human wheelchair, made for manual use, but there is a space for the satyr's tail at the bottom of the backrest, the seat is shorter, and the footrest sits slightly more forward and lower to the ground to accommodate the longer calf and foot.

in the second and third image, the wheelchair has been altered further. first to add a much higher and longer footrest so the foot sits flat, and then splitting the difference with a footrest that is both high and further forward so the leg rests at a wide angle instead of an almost 90 degree angle at the knee. end description)

hopefully those sketches give you some inspiration on how you want to design your satyr/faun wheelchair! and I think it should help with the general design of other chairs too, wheeled or otherwise. You can also give your satyrs/fauns/other digitigrade people a different manner of sitting in domestic spaces! like cushions, low benches they can lounge on, stools, etc. they don't need to have modern human chairs.

have fun! good luck with your project!

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Dungeons and Dragons Dragon Designs 2024

If you haven't already, please do yourself a favour and check out Alexander Ostrowski's designs for the Dungeons and Dragons' chromatic and metallic dragons, they are DELIGHTFUL

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

The put-tut, or often among different cultural groups known as 'half a sloman', are contradictory to a common belief, not actually half of a sloman running around the forest at night.

They are a very distant relative to the sloman, with their limb structure being somewhat similar and both having horizontal jaws and more posable head.

Half-sloms eat smaller animals and meggs that they find buried or hidden in treeholes, but if they get a chance, they won't say no to larger ground-dwelling prey. In this case, their arms are largely unused while their legs deliver surprisingly powerful kicks and tears to flesh. They can be found in many areas with some subspecies variation better fitting 'grass'land, forest, and shore environments. However, they are rare to witness, partially due to them being a popular bounty within sloman groups. These slomen believe in an inherent malice of the animal (as featured in folklore and a few religions). It probably doesn't help put-tuts find young slomen to be of suitable nutritional value.

Poobs are closely related to half-sloms but their diet is much more focused on invertebrates. When they do prey on larger animals, it's often a consequence of taking an unwilling hostage. When a poob hides or goes to rest, they don't bother making their own burrow and just find one they like and get in. Sometimes these homes still have residents inside that the poob will kick and scratch until the owner gets tired. Other times they take whatever food stash or baby animals are for grabs at the den as the owner desperately tries to get inside their home. The skull of the poob is thick, even if that means their brain gets to be a bit disproportional. They will also take mud baths and get their head dirty on purpose to better hide their identity.

In the few areas where poob and put-tut species populations overlap, put-tuts have learned to fish the poobs out of their stolen burrows, making for a tough but rewarding meal.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Thanks for your input! Looks like this will be a project worth pursuing. Don't expect it to happen any time soon though, this is a big project and it's going to take at least a year or two, I expect.

a friend of mine has suggested I try to make and publish a book with all the advice I post here (a process that would require me to organize things and draw them better and write cleaner explanations lol) and I think that's a good idea. I don't think it's something I could get finished in the next year or two, and I have no idea how to get a book like that published, but!

it would be a lot more polished and better organized than this blog currently is, and it might be a useful way to get my foot in the door for when I eventually finish and try to publish my fantasy stories. I'm sure it won't be an easy process, and I definitely don't have the money to self publish it, so I would have to find a more traditional route. but maybe it would be worth the effort, huh? maybe even a short series of books divided into categories, if it turns out I have too much stuff to talk about lol. (also feel free to offer ideas about general categories of advice I could write about in this potential book)

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

15 hours left to vote, so I'm sending this around again real quick

a friend of mine has suggested I try to make and publish a book with all the advice I post here (a process that would require me to organize things and draw them better and write cleaner explanations lol) and I think that's a good idea. I don't think it's something I could get finished in the next year or two, and I have no idea how to get a book like that published, but!

it would be a lot more polished and better organized than this blog currently is, and it might be a useful way to get my foot in the door for when I eventually finish and try to publish my fantasy stories. I'm sure it won't be an easy process, and I definitely don't have the money to self publish it, so I would have to find a more traditional route. but maybe it would be worth the effort, huh? maybe even a short series of books divided into categories, if it turns out I have too much stuff to talk about lol. (also feel free to offer ideas about general categories of advice I could write about in this potential book)