I Don’t Know What Else To Say Except That AI Art Is No Longer Simply A Source Of Creativity Or A Wonder

Wahahahha ;u;  hello wastelanders! I got really back into Fallout 4. I love these two dorks.

Something came over me and I just HAD to get this idea out of my head. Partially inspired by this lovely fic by Scorpius_Wears_Short_Skirts about Nick and Hancock. Not referencing a scene in particular but the idea that Nick can’t see stars ;_;

Have a wonderful night/day!

my batfam face ref sheet i made for myself + my ethnicity hc's for them :]

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.

Ass deep in the Dragon Age wiki again, and apparently there’s a mysterious chanter character who appears around the Hissing Wastes.

the part that gets me:

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

werewolves can be anything. they can be ANYTHING if you just believe. metaphor for trans. metaphor for gay. metaphor for autism. metaphor for disability. metaphor for anger issues. metaphor for generational trauma. metaphor for mental illness. metaphor for addiction. metaphor for wanting to kill someone. you can do anything with them truly

The Queen is Dead!

There is this tiresome old trope in any science fiction that deals with ants, (or aliens that are stand-ins for ants or termites or bees or any other eusocial insect,) where the queen dies and then, suddenly none of the workers can function anymore. The workers in this theory of what a "hive mind" is are all just automata that extend the body of the queen. This is, of course, totally backwards. It's the death of human queens that leaves their subjects disoriented. We misperceive the order and smooth functioning of eusocial colonies for authoritarianism. No society could function so well without a tyrant, a single central mind, we assume. A great man or woman who drives their history must exist. This is all human mythology applied to the alien world of ants. What happens when the queen dies? Well let me tell you, because I've seen it happen... sadly. Queens are the longest lived members of ant colonies. So, naturally if you keep ants, you grow attached to the queen. And it's true that without her the colony has no future in the long run for most species of ants (there are exceptions, who can gain new queens, or who have multiple queens... but most ant colony have but one) So, when the queen dies it's sad. But, when she dies the workers ... keep going. You see the advantage of a "hive mind" isn't that there is one central node doing all the thinking, no, the colony is a distributed organism. And when the queen dies it's like menopause for a human body. There will be no new children. (though all eggs and larvae alive when the queen dies will be raised fully.) The ants without a queen continue to care for each other, continue to grow their fungus gardens, or heard aphids, they keep storing seeds and feeding the young. With time, the last of the eggs and brood are raised to be adults. The nest is cleaned and tidy, everyone is fed, with all these tasks done the ants huddle together to conserve energy. They will keep tending the nest and eating when they need to... possibly for years. Menopause isn't the end of an individual life, it's just the closing of a particular door.

I do think ant colonies like this, like my own queen-less colony can seem a little sad. Eggs and larvae and pupae are such joys for ants. They lavish food and attention on their little sisters. No more little sisters means a less active colony, it's like winter has set in permanently. But ants live through winters. Sometimes many winters. If you give a colony in this state brood from another queen they will raise them with great excitement. But there is no peaceful way to move the workers to a colony with a living queen.

This situation happens rarely in the wild. There are so many other things that can kill a colony long before a queen lives so long that she dies of old age. In the wild there are also parasitic species of ants that look for colonies without a queen, or with a queen that is weak and easy to kill. These sneaky queen ants will "steal" a colony. Though, from the perspective of ants without a queen, this is almost a mercy. But, there is none of this... everyone falling over and dying or everyone going crazy you see in stories about hives. The queen is just one part of the colony... a critical part... but still only a part. And each individual ant still has her own life to live.

Based on @just-another-ghoul-lover 's post here, I wanted to throw in my two cents on ghouls, but I didn't wanna take over their post nor make it look like I think they're wrong, which they aren't canonically.

But, since when have I ever let canon stop me?

My HC is more like what we get in Fallout 4: ghouls are more like horribly scarred by the radiation, but not in a constant state of rotting. If their ability to heal is keeping them alive, then eventually that healing will win out. I figure ghouls are also prone to losing other bits of themselves when injured and such, and let's face it, in 200+ years a lot of injury can happen. And, I like that some ghouls keep their hair for whatever reason, or if they didn't, I mean, if Deacon can get surgery to change his face very other week, why not hair transplants for ghouls? Or just wigs, if you want. Either way, everyone is different and it stands to reason, at least in my HC, that ghoulification is different for everyone. With Hancock's coming from an experimental drug, I feel like his body is reacting a totally different way, just like I think that Eddie Winter probably should've looked a little more unique as well.

As far as being radiated, radiation degrades over time. Hence the whole idea that eventually you can actually leave a vault - even if Vault Tec never intended that to happen in some cases. I can see it being low level radiation in ghouls, but thing is at this point, they are either about the same as the background radiation that the whole world exists in - so not much of a problem to people around them who already deal with it daily - or it's just enough to warrant some worry and keep Rad-Away around.

I don't think the more intelligent ghouls smell awful more than intensely musky, which isn't a smell everyone likes. And, it's worse when they're wet. So, if you don't like wet brahmin smell, you probably don't like ghouls. Intelligent ghouls, I feel, probably try to take care of themselves as much as possible. I mean, Daisy, for instance, strikes me as someone who is probably rather fastidious about it. And, there are ways to mask smells.

Feral ghouls, on the other hand, do not take care of any hygiene and will eat anything that moves which means they are constantly covered in gore, so they smell absolutely like dead things. Bodies who exist in that manner absolutely will start to rot after a while. Especially if they injure themselves and don't tend it, which they won't, so they get infections which causes more rot. So, I mean, being around ferals will absolutely make certain people jump to the assumption all ghouls smell that way, especially if they're racist against ghouls to begin with.

And, hey, again, I know my HC isn't canon, and I'm okay with that. I am also okay with people preferring to stick with canon. That in itself offers some interesting ideas in ghoul/human relations.

The blast furnace & hearth at Redcar Steel Works. Went for a look before it's all gone. The scale is quite mind boggling!