#ITS A FANTASY SETTING

[fantasticgothicpeachsludge]

“he's like a brother to me”...”he's my best friend”....

[bacchuschucklefuck]

truly this one's just for me. I can do what I want foreverrr

[kinerxy]

Honrses

[cubbihue]

So, a changeling is sort of like a p-zombie?

(For the unaware, “p-zombie” stands for “philosophical zombie”. It’s a thought experiment in philosophy that describes a being that’s outwardly identical to a human, but does not have a consciousness; that is, a p-zombie does not think whatsoever, although it looks like it thinks to an outsider observer. There’s a whole wikipedia article on it that explains the concept better than I can!)

They don't exactly think, as in "I dont want this" "I like that". But, Changelings do have a form of "Consciousness". It's just that their consciousness is more like a series of commands or tasks than actual formulated thoughts.

Timmy's Changeling has a very advanced "consciousness". It can predict future actions and reroute its tasks to pick only the best options for its situation.

We fill their heads with static to ensure that the Changeling does not form thoughts about anything. Thoughts leads to opinions, and opinions leads to incorrect actions. A proper Changeling should have more static in their mind than a TV screen on a defunct channel!

Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]

[antares-dupont]

started this at the beginning of sophomore year and now im nearly done w junior year lol

anyways. guess whos my favorite 👍

[heliianth]

more of these guys

[nabaath-areng]

I have this one "OC" that does not yet have a name that I've drawn several times for a couple years. I was thinking that if I tried making them in FFXIV that I'd use elezen as a base... but then I remembered what other race have their near exact hairstyle... and now I'm like damn... I played myself...

[heynhay]

let's drive out

[frogcroaks]

Hanasei, the chorus of Koegama

Height: 1.20-1.60m | Weight: 50-100kg | Hypercarnivores | Semi-aquatic

A frog-like species, Hanasei are known for their powerful vocals, using their gills for vocalization out of water and being able to mimic any sound. Their societies tend to live near riverbanks and lakeshores, constructing stilt houses with direct access to the water. Most are fishermen, but some host farms of larger animals in artificially constructed lakes and deviated river branches.

They have an affinity for water Aether, but hold a unique reproduction system of using it to create eggs, meaning they lose access to their water abilities for a few months each year and lack sexual organs. In trade, they can create from 50 to 100 eggs per reproductive season.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

dreaming abt sophomore year class swap bard!riz

[alicenpai]

started reading emma by kaoru mori today and by golly. i am not a binger by any means (far from it) but i zoomed through half of the story in a day. it's literally That Good................

[arcane-aries]

oath of vengeance paladin to ankarna bucky applebees is real and true to me

[galaghiel]

How tommy found shroud in the runaway au

[kingjasnah]

the further i get in my wok reread the more apparent it is to me that kaladin's depression is so central to who he is that you cant think of him as a protagonist w/o considering it. and yeah the premise of the radiant magic system means that people who are actively trying to heal from various traumas are gravitated towards pursuing oaths that help them do so but it's really good that all of kaladin's childhood flashbacks are like yeah no the depression was clinical. it was always there. all that terrible shit also happened and he is getting better but no matter how many ideals he swears he's still gonna have to deal with it. meg thee stallion said it best 😔 bad bitches have bad days too.

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

not a desert technically but I just visited the dunes in Monterey and gleefully trampled on some ice plant and I feel like you might enjoy that. if you wanna talk about the kinds of vegetation that grow in sandy soil or something I invite you to 👀

(also you're doing it! you're surviving! you'll get through that doctorate!)

ok ready this is my most important soapbox of all because soils in the desert are very special and have such cool organisms you don't find in these arrangements outside of drylands...

first lookee here. wauw beautiful utah

ok now look closer

no closer closer closer

CLOSER CLOSER CLOSER

WOW is that MOSS? you are thinking. the answer is YES. but doesn't moss like lots of water you are thinking??? WELL USUALLY. BUT in the desert you will notice that things like grasses and shrubs have lots of space between them unlike in more temperate climates-vegetation cover is not truly continuous. And there's less leaf litter than in forests obscuring the dirt. Which means all that soil is just sitting out in the open with nothing to protect it from being blown away by those harsh desert winds... except of course for our friends the BIOLOGICAL SOIL CRUSTS. also known as crypotbiotic soils, cryptogrammic soils, and biocrusts (for short).

These are communities of mosses, lichens, cyanobacteria (aka blue green algae--yes, those are usually Wet too, but ironically so so common in deserts), and the tens of thousands of surface and subsurface microbes that are associated with them. It's easy to forget just how many organisms are living in one single scoop of soil, especially because science can barely identify 1% of these microbes. Like of JUST the ones we have enough info to classify enough to count in my own master's dataset left me with over 25,000 unique taxonomic units I had to manage. don't worry about what that means just know it was very annoying and makes statistics a headache. anyway you find them all over the southwest US states as well as in other deserts around the world (spain, australia, sooo many in china, incredible ones in the succulent karoo in south africa/namibia, plenty in argentina etc etc), if you know where to look...

anyway OUR HEROS THE BIOCRUST aren't just there to look pretty (though you will can see from photos they also do this :) ), but are a vital component to the dryland ecosystem! They literally hold the soil surface together to prevent erosion, they influence hydrology in terms of rainfall runoff + infiltration, they impact how seeds germinate, they contribute to nutrient cycling and what plant-available compounds are held at the soil surface... like i feel like Tumblr in general has been made aware of how fungi & root networks interact in large scale systems like forests, but that is also happening on a more microscopic level in deserts! just in the top couple centimeters soooo much is happening. Cyanobacteria in particular are tiny organisms that produce little nets of sugars woven in the soil to climb around on and protect themselves, and if you crumble a little bit of soil from the surface you can see how the little spiderweb strings literally hold together the sand particles.

Now that you're Aware of biocrusts, when you look at larger scale landscape photos taken in un-trampled areas of desert, you will notice them as darker patches and textures on the lighter soil:

Yep there's these tiny little communities all over, that many people never learn to see. And now what I said before about mosses & cyanobacteria usually preferring wet environments--they have in fact adapted to life in the desert in ways that means they're dormant for most of the year. They live in stasis until the rainy season hits (or in some cases, winter moisture from a snow layer--many will photosynthesize through a few inches of snow since it's clear/white), and then burst into color and life. Many patches of biocrust will look utterly lifeless and dried out at first and then become vibrant and swell up within a few minutes of being exposed to moisture. Lichens, while more vibrant even when dry, will also mostly only grow/reproduce while wet. And biocrusts come in all sorts of colors, shapes, and preferred microhabitats!

anyway this post is long enough already so i'll be quick. while beautiful and important as you can imagine these are FRAGILE. if they get trampled too much, by humans or cows or cars, that's it. you're back to bare soil that can blow away whenever it wants.

I was lucky to get to participate in a 2x/year survey of one of the very few places in Utah to NEVER have cattle grazing or development, a remote area the entrance is kept secret to inside Canyonlands National Park, where you can see just how dense and lush biocrusts once could be in the US southwest:

ah... glorious. what special little guys. this is why if you visit many of the national parks in Utah you will see signs & stickers around with slogans like "Don't Bust The Crust" and "Tiptoe Through The Crypto" and etc. so heed that advice but DO stop and kneel down and get a better look at them!

[nabaath-areng]

I have way too many alts that I keep to myself (which is why I generally refrain from posting them), but I'm going to ignore that habit for a moment just because I'm feeling particularly insane about this guy.