#spec advice

[jomindraws]

Hi! I am a fellow spec worldbuilder and am wanting to dive ever deeper into what i make because spending months on a singular world is not enough apparently lol. Any chance you could share what resources you use in your worldbuilding?

Sure thing! I've fallen into my own, convoluted system over time, but I can give you some resources to start! You don't need a subscription to a complex program-- just using Docs is good enough to organize! For complex organization, I like to use Obsidian which is also free ( and very very helpful).

If you're looking for some basic guides to start the geography of an Earth-like planet, I would look at Artifexian's tutorials... he has a sort of follow-along guide for a lot of tectonics etc, but its not necessary to follow exactly to the tee.

For spec bio/evo, Biblaridion has a FANTASTIC spec evo series which should get you a rough grasp on spec mechanics. Atlas Pro also has some good videos for following along Earth's paleontology and animal evolution to give you some ideas as well.

As for programs, like I said Docs works fine, although some form of Excel/Sheets/etc is good for calculations. I cannot recommend Obsidian MORE, it is a lifesaver. As for drawing maps and such, GPlates is OKAY for tectonics, but its not intuitive whatsoever. Although I make my maps on Clip Studio Paint, there are free alternatives like Krita you can use (or you can try Adobe Illustrator if you're feeling frisky). (For research, a lot of aforementioned ones should cover your back but I do recommend searching your local library for any books about ecosystems, phylogenetics, tree of life adjacent things, etc.) A lot of spec worldbuilding is pretty much a stone's throw into a dark chasm, so you have to use your own intuition and logic for a lot of it. Remember that the farther you stray from Earth-like, the less hard-science materials you will have to firmly go off of - BUT, the less boring and more """alien""" your life can get. So by all means, make your system life on an ice giant orbiting a dead pulsar !... but be ready to fudge some numbers.

[troythecatfish]

[elbiotipo]

Some notes on worldbuilding with carnivorous cultures:

Animals feed more people than you think. You don't kill a cow for just one steak, this is a modern misconception since we're removed from the actual animals we eat our meat from; a single cow has several kilos of meat. In fact, slaughtering a single cow often means a feast time for possibly dozens of people. Every part of an animal can be used, and you can see this in cultures that live by ranching and transhumance.

Here, you should look at the Mongols and the people of the Eurasian Steppe, the people of the North American Plains, the people of the Pampas (fun fact; Buenos Aires was called the "carnivore city"), European and Asian cultures that practice transhumance, and those of the Arctic circle.

There are many ways to cook meat, but arguably, the most nutritious way to consume meat is in stew, as it allows you to consume all the fats of the animal and add other ingredients. In fact, mutton soup and stew historically was one of the basic meals for the for people in the Eurasian Steppe, who are one of the people with the highest meat consumption in the world.

Of course, meat spoils away easily. Fortunately, from jerky to cured meats, there are ways to prevent this. In pre-industrial and proto-industrial societies, salted meat was the main way of consumption and exporting meat. This makes salt even a more prized good.

Often, certain parts of animals like eyes, the liver, the testicles, the entrails, are considered not only cultural delicacies but as essential for vitamins and nutrients unavailable in environments such as the poles. The Inuit diet is a very strong example.

Pastures and agriculture have often competing dynamics. The lands that are ideal for mass pasture, that is, temperature wet grasslands, are also often ideal for agriculture. So pastoralism has often been in the margins of agrarian societies. This dynamic could be seen in the Americas. After the introduction of cattle and horses, the Pampas hosted semi-nomadic herdsmen, natives and criollo gauchos. The introduction of wire eventually reduced this open territory, converting it into intense agriculture, and traditional ranching was displaced to more "marginal" land less suitable for agriculture. Similar processes have happened all over the world.

This also brings an interesting question to explore. Agriculture is able to feed more people by density. What about species that DON'T do agriculture, because they're completely carnivorous? The use of what human civilization considers prime agricultural land will be different. They will be able to support much higher population densities than pastoralism.

Pastoral human populations have developed lactase persistance to be able to feed on dairy products even in adulthood. This mutation has happened all over the world, presumably with different origins. In any mammalian species that domesticates other mammals such a thing would be very common if not ubiqutous, as it massively expands the diet. Milk provides hydration, and cheese, yogurth and other such products allows long lasting food sources.

What about hunting? Early humans were apex predators and we are still ones today. However, humans can eat plants, which somewhat reduces the hunting pressure on fauna (though not the pressure of agrarian expansion which can be even worse). An exclusively carnivorous species (for example some kind of cat people) would have to develop very rigid and very complex cultural behavior of managing hunting, or else they would go extinct from hunger before even managing domestication. These cultural views towards hunting have also arosen in people all over the world, so you can get a sense of them by researching it.

It is possible for pastoral nomadic people, without any agriculture, to have cities? Of course. All nomadic peoples had amazing cultures and in Eurasia, they famously built empires. But they traded and entered conflicts with agrarian societies, too. They weren't isolated. Most of nomadic societies were defined by trade with settled ones.

The origin of human civilization and agriculture is still debated. It would be probably completely different for a non-human carnivorous society. One possible spark would be ritual meeting points (such as the historical Gobleki Tepe) or trade markets growing into permanent cities. But in general, pastoralism, hunting and ranching favors low-density populations that would be quite different.

Fishing, on the other hand, is a reliable source of protein and promotes settled cities. One can imagine acquaculture would be developed very early by a civilization hungry for protein.

Other possibilities of course are the raising of insects and mushrooms, both very uncommonly explored in fiction besides passing mentions.

Of course, most carnivorous species have some limited consumption of plant matter and many herbivores are oportunistic predators. The main thing to ask here is what the daily meal is here. For most human agrarian cultures, it's actually grain (this is where the word meal comes from). What about species that cannot live with a grain-based diet? You will find that many things people take for granted in agrarian society would be completely different.

As I always say: the most important question you can ask is "where does the food comes from?"

I hope you found these comments interesting and useful! I would love to do a better post once I'm able to replace my PC (yes, I wrote this all in a phone and I almost went insane). If you like what I write and would love to see more worldbuilding tips, consider tipping my ko-fi and checking my other posts. More elaborate posts on this and other subjects are coming.

[cjlouwho]

Something from Tommy’s past shows up that disturbs Buck’s mind because he thought his guy was pretty perfect. Tommy doesn’t dwell on this past thing. Admits to it, hates that it happened, but it was a very long time ago and he’s made amends and grown a lot since then. But Buck spirals because the young Tommy he’d made in his mind doesn’t match up.

He gets good advice from Bobby, and his sister, and even Josh. But there’s still a nagging in the back of his mind. Until Eddie calls him mid-crisis. At Eddie’s, he’s told that Christopher finally talked to him but none of it was good. He can’t let go of the mistakes Eddie made, and Eddie’s having a hard time letting go of it himself. All that keeps going through his mind is how he’s a screw up and really doesn’t deserve Chris’ forgiveness. Buck’s adamant that Eddie needs to forgive himself. He recognizes what he did was wrong, he’s working to be better, he doesn’t deserve his whole life to surround this one mistake. He doesn’t have to be defined by that.

Oh.

That’s when he realizes he should take his own advice. Everyone deserves a second chance if they’re willing to make a change. He goes to Tommy after leaving Eddie’s place, because his relationship with Tommy is one worth fighting for, and he’s gonna do whatever it takes.

[thelamb1429]

As someone who’s aroace spec who does feel a bit of romantic attraction, here’s some older brother advice to any other aroace spec people who like romance but don’t feel the attraction a lot.

No butterflies in your stomach? That’s perfectly fine, yknow? At the end of the day, if your partner makes you feel at peace, safe, remembered, content, then your heart not racing when they’re around is not a big deal. If they kiss you and you don’t feel jittery, but you feel calm, happy, taken care of, then that’s love. Love doesn’t have to be ground breaking emotions and physical sensations, love can be wanting someone in your future forever, love can be falling asleep in someone’s arms, love can be many things, and the lack of typical physical sensations doesn’t mean you can’t love.

If you love your partner but they don’t give you butterflies, that’s okay. Butterflies mean nothing when compared to feeling secure, understood, loved, acknowledged, etc.

Love’s about wanting the best for someone and walking hand in hand to make it happen for you both. It’s about having someone who cares about you to come home to at the end of the day.

Anyways yeah i need sleep hope this is semi comprehensible

[ravenclod]

are friend crushes a thing? i know they are in the sense of "oh i want to be friends with them " but what if youre already friends?? like you giggle and kick ur feet thinking abt them and smile and want them to be happy so much and love hugging them n it sounds weird bur cuddling w them but u dont get butterflies or imagine dating them or kissing or get blushy crushy or get nervous and giggly or whatever. please help

[l3m0nteeth]

So bout that friend from a while back who kept making sexual jokes about me even though she knows I’m aroace and has been explicitly asked multiple times to stop!!!

yeah she hasn’t stopped. Instead she’s been blowing the comments off and saying I need to take a joke and that I’m overreacting :(

anyway today was finally the breaking point. She said “you seem like the kind of person, where if same sex marriage was ever illegal, you’d marry a gay man(implying he would secretly date a guy and I would secretly date a girl)” I replied to her saying no I wouldn’t do that because I’m aroace and that would have literally no benefit for me and she decided to respond by saying “well yeah but maybe you’d fall in love”

…

I’ve bee open about being aroace with her for about 3 or 4 years now. Until now she’s been making mostly sexual comments and jokes and I guess I never really felt to bad about them and was able to make myself forget it because anything involving sex kinda feels fake to me but idk this was the breaking point. Her implying that I’m wrong about myself and that I will fall in love someday (Ik it’s not exactly what the quote said but based on our past and other factors I know this is what she’s thinking)

what really broke me tho was afterwards another friend came up to me (she said this at our lunch table in front of many other people who also know I’m aroace and didn’t react at all) and talked to me bout it. I’m actually so so grateful they came up to me and told me what she did wasn’t right and that they’d noticed all the other times she’s said things like this. And idk I was holding back tears

Up until now no one has ever really acknowledged what she’s been saying or anything so having someone actually do that and agree with me that she should not be acting like that… idk it meant a lot to me. They hugged me and asked if I wanted them to talk to her about it and I just felt so cared for ig? Idk I’m really grateful for all they said

Anyway the point of this post was to say I’m going to try and talk to her one more time tomorrow and try to explain why I don’t like these comments and how she’s being homophobic and try to explain more in depth ig that I’m not only aroace but also romance and sex repulsed

So wish me luck and if you have any advice pls share ty for listening to my ranting <3

[aro-culture-is]

sorry if this isn't the place to ask, i'm just feeling really dumb right now and the blogrunners here are very good at explaining things in a kind way i can understand: how do aplatonic people think of the people in their lives if not as friends? i don't ask to be judgemental, i'm really sorry if my question sounds rude, i just want to know if most aplatonic people see their (nonromantic, nonsexual) relationships as purely transactional or if it varies from person to person. i maintain a lot of impersonal transactional relationships myself so i get that, i'm just curious

hiya! i think this is something that's more of a personal question that varies among aplatonic folks.

we (the blog runners) are a system, with some members alloplatonic, others apl-spec, none who primarily identify as apl currently. Our apl-spec headmates usually call individuals we're close with our friends, in a similar way to how ace people can have sex and aro people can have romantic relationships - it's not exactly the same, but they don't feel strongly about not calling those people friends. they feel no particular drive to hang out with specific people, thought they may do so for an assortment of reasons. those are often either transactional, about maintaining relationships with people that our system values, or about community building and care, which we are very driven towards. (as in, regularly start up connections for the purpose of community building and forming affinity groups)

I'll also encourage other folks under the apl-spec to respond to this via reblogs!

note: Our blog preference, to be clear, is that we do not receive follow-up asks from anons on previous topics, as it just gets pretty confusing to navigate. when our inbox used to be in the 6-7 hundreds regularly for this blog, we'd often have asks from over a month prior appear and disappear from the inbox by just... refreshing the same page. thank you for understanding!

[realthoughtsreal]

Aceness

Um guys. Fellow aroaces.

How the fuck do you find people to date?

Seriously, what f secret am I missing here?

I want love so badly.

[fatedroses]

Emotions running high.

[aceysun]

hey so i have a question

im a allosexual lesbian and my gf told me today that she thinks she may be asexual. i told her that its fine and not a big deal. that it didnt change anything more me. were only 17 and having sex wasn't really on my agenda anyways.

id rather die than make her uncomfortable or make her feel like shes wrong for being ace but still a part of me is disappointed. and i feel awful for that. id never ever ask anything like that of her but part of me still is sad i suppose that we wont have that part of our relationship.

im not in a relationship with her for sex or her body or anything. i love her as a person above all else. and like i said i cant stand the idea of her even feeling the slightest bit uncomfortable or guilty about it. i feel bad for feel sad about it.

i want to be supportive ofc but do you think its okay to still be a little sad about it? what should i do to be sure i dont fuck it up?

that was so rambly im sorry @-@

Definitely a very valid question to have. I think its very understandable that you're a bit sad about it, it can be difficult to know a person you love don't have the same feelings for you as you have for them. Feel it, talk to your friends about it, write it, and if you do it in the right way and in the right context you can tell her its something you're struggling with.

I think the most important thing to do is to support her, this can be a very hard time (I know it was for me) and listen to what she has to say!

one thing you can do is to look up the split attraction model and talk about the other types of attraction you feel for each other. It can be comforting to know what other things are mutual and how much else there is except sexual attraction!

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Argument for Mao Mao (from Apothecary Diaries) being Ace...

BTW, currently sick and can't do much else... so...

but people misunderstand what it means to be ace?

I thought I would correct general misconceptions about asexuality by talking about Apothecary Diaries and why Maomao could be read as ace, as someone who is ace spec.

I kinda want to show the gaps in understandings about asexuality. This isn't particularly OMG, I'm going to hate on people for their lack of knowledge. If you enjoy that thing, please go away. I do not support bullying of any sort, yadda yadda, I thought this might be educational for allos out there.

BTW, not only using reddit.

No, Asexuality is limited, conditional, or no sexual *attraction* OR no interest in sexual activity (in which case, this is more than likely Black Stripe Ace, though not always).

But she shows it later therefore she's not ace? Nope. It means she could be ace spec. She's about 20 by the time she discovers sexual attraction.

Aesthetic attraction and sexual attraction aren't the same thing.

Mao Mao constantly says she understands why other people are attracted to Jinshi, but she is not. That could be aesthetic attraction.

One can have aesthetic attraction, without the sexual component.

lol Me all through high school.

You know how Het people sometimes say how their own sex is attractive and they can understand why people fawn over them? Same with aesthetic attraction.

She doesn't even fawn over him.

When she hears about someone handsome, she has zero interest in seeing them.

When she states this she's dispassionate, but she only states this *after* everyone else fawns over him. She even passed him earlier in Episode 1 and didn't even notice him whereas everyone else noticed him almost instantly:

which shows she's going by other people's reactions, not particularly her own. I float sometimes doing that, BTW. Especially since I have limited Aesthetic attraction too.

Emotionally repressed and Low EQ people still have sexual attraction. Likewise, highly emotionally intelligent people can be ace.

But confess to me out of hand and I'll flounder.

So short bit here, but my Mom (white) is somewhat emotionally repressed and controlling of her emotions. But she definitely has and has expressed sexual attraction which left me floored.

She said, for example, my soccer coach was sexy, which was awkward as a teenager. I saw the aesthetic attraction, but not the sexual attraction.

Now I'm probably more high in EQ, very expressive, and I'm still ace.

Mao Mao might express that she doesn't like to talk about her feelings that much, is disinterested because she wants to work on her career, but she also talks about sex in a very cold factual way. One does not preclude the other. I don't get it? Does this mean emotionally repressed people appear asexual to people? Or that emotionally repressed people can't be asexual? We have to work on this one and workshop it.

The reason *i* think Mao Mao could be asexual is because she keeps saying, I understand why this woman or why this man would be attractive to *someone else* and keeps saying after the Courtesans "teach" her things, "But I will never use it."

And those are ace lines.

A lack of healthy of emotions or sex doesn't make people think things like But I can understand why this person could be attractive to other people. Ah, a lot of people seem to like this person.

I've talked to a lot of people who were in similar situations and they didn't end up ace or appearing ace.

She also actively cringes when Jinshi flirts with her.

Emotionally repressed as an excuse again. Emotionally repressed people can be ace. And likewise they can be not ace. I've heard people in abused situations who are careful of their own sexuality, but they don't *cringe* when they are flirted with.

lol I do get the distant feeling of, "Oh, this person is trying to flirt with me, I feel really uncomfortable. How do I reject them?"

My allo relative said they'd find it a compliment. But I semi panic every time.

From Episode 2.

Yeah, like this. When she did this, this was when I started to suspect she was really ace. Her age, also, at the beginning is 17. 17 is late to not have sexual attraction, even back in the day, though I think I posted an article about that misconception. This could also indicate she is ace.

I did see a few arguments that because Maomao is Chinese, that she couldn't be ace because Asian cultures are emotionally repressed. O.o; Huh? That's just racism right there. The people posting those indicated they weren't Asian...

I won't list those... since I don't want people chasing others. As a contrast, Saiunkoku Monotogari, which is often compared to this anime, I didn't think the main character, Shurei, of that anime/light novel was ace. She showed sexual attraction, but little interest in following through because she was focused on other things. Also, she was mostly oblivious, or acted like it on purpose.

Maomao, though has so little sexual attraction to Jinshi that she thinks he might be gay.

Episode 3.

She's not particularly invested in attracting Jinshi's attention beyond food and drinking poisons.

Demisexual is part of the asexual spectrum... It's part of the gra/ey-ace part of the spectrum.

People are confusing Black Stripe Aces with all of aces.

Lines she says from the anime come down to probably more towards Black Stripe, but in the grey area and probably Sex Indifferent, not repulsed.

BTW, I also didn't feel sexual attraction until my 20's.

But a lot of people think in order to be ace, you have to be sex repulsed and have absolutely no sexual attraction, primary or secondary. And no... not the case.

I also grew up in a household where both my parents were probably a bit too frank about sex. My sibling didn't end up ace spec, but I did. I also have a practical view of sex.

One can have romantic attraction or be gray-aro (which she sorta expresses too, like she's envious about people who can fall in love at times), and still be ace.

So you can be attracted to someone without the sexual attraction.

Maomao also shows Aesthetic attraction to women:

She seems to understand more aesthetic attraction to women than men, though this doesn't particularly make her lesbian given the contexts. (Not throwing out asexual lesbian or asexual bi either).

Bonus: Thoughts Maomao might be also aro?

She compares love to medicine, a thing she loves, but this also shows she's never been in love before.

I can hear, but they don't know what aromanticism is...

And the story says this in Episode 15 after saying someone made it to their 40th birthday without marrying. This indicates Jinshi thought this person (not giving the spoiler) thought this person had no romantic attraction and wasn't aware of any relationships.

She's 17 and never been in love and doesn't particularly show romantic attraction either...

BTW, someone did say the author specifically hates the Jinshi and Maomao ship and there is some indication already that the story might end sadly with Jinshi might need to sacrifice Maomao. (She requested if he ever does, he gives her poison, which, BTW, would also give the story an out to an indicated happy ending).

Conclusion

OK, What I'm pointing to here, is that people seem to have a really skewed view of asexuality, as a whole.

They think that demisexuality is a different sexuality from asexuality. (Or in the worst case, there are only three camps of asexuality Death to the Lithosexuals and Ace fluxes...?).

Or in order to be ace you have to have no libido, no interest in sex... and can't have romantic attraction. That you can't be emotionally repressed and be ace.

I'm telling you you can. I've met aces of all kinds. And I've met allo people who definitely express sexual attraction while they are really emotionally repressed.

Ah, I feel like we have a long way to go...

BTW, I'm also gray-aro, in my head canon, Maomao reads also aro.

Oh there was a claim that Japanese don't know about asexuality, but they do. There was an entire really good drama about it, too. Though the main character is Black stripe ace and rather chaotic at first. lol I feel that chaos energy (as a grey-ace, though). I cringe so hard, but I feel it.

Koisenu Futari

BTW, I pushed for this drama since no one would cover asexuality correctly from Korea, I asked someone Japanese to do it... TT You have no idea how many years I asked Korea and Korea failed a few times over. lol When I said I was totally clueless around sexual attraction and that one could still do found family in the request, they totally put that in. Though not the way I was accidentally insensitive...

They mainly covered Black Stripe, though. Which is fair. But still managed to cover shades of Black Stripe in this drama.

Anyway, it is a reasonable head canon to think Maomao is ace. One can be emotionally repressed and ace.

[troythecatfish]

[aaa-battery-not-rechargeable]

Hi! Do you have any advice on figuring out whether I'm aro or just want to be single for a while? I know that I'm on the asexual spectrum. But I'm not sure whether I'm aro, or just unhappy in my relationship. Thank you for any advice <3

hmmm i think it's worth evaluating what 'attraction' means for you. maybe look at some resources on how to identify 'romantic attraction', i know tumblr has a lot of blogs that can help

my asexuality and aromanticism go hand in hand, so it was harder for me to find and use the aro term, because for awhile i just didn't consider the possibility of being both. aromanticism is a worldview for me too, so it was hard to pinpoint which experiences set me apart from folks who do love

i've been in several relationships, and i understand the unhappiness. it could totally end up being that you're aro and that would explain it, but being aro isn't the only reason you could be unhappy with a relationship

regardless, i just encourage you to do what you think is best for you, and if that means being single for awhile (regardless of if you're aro or not!), that is a totally normal thing to want, and you should prioritize your own peace and boundaries before anyone else's feelings. you have the right to say you want to be single, aro or allo.

godspeed brother, i've got ur back

[sunsetsands]

More akada drawings, this time surrounding different facial shapes. I want to avoid them all just looking identical. Not sure if it’s easy enough to tell them apart, though.

[deadnatura11]

Someone pointed out that Eddie meeting the cheerleader kid's father was very similar to an early scene he shared with Ana, and...

We know the man is divorced.

Maybe he makes an assumption about Eddie and tries to initiate something which leads to Eddie thinking a few things over about his own life?