D3m0n-c0nc3pt5 - D3m0n

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

Hello

So I’ve been binging a bunch of DPxDC crossover fics cause they’re hella fun. And I wanted to make some fanart for a handful of the fics I’ve been reading just to show how vastly different Danny gets portrayed. It’s really fun!! I love when ppl make Danny get Jack’s tall ass gene’s, but it’s also funny to see him as a scrawny lil guy. He’s a pretty moldable character

Anywho, it’s just been fun, so here’s some fanart. Thanks to the authors for writing them 🙏

Fics in order of art:

Like Beta Fish Do by @clockwayswrites

Ghost in the Morgue by @the-witchhunter

Secretary Danny by DeathlySilent13

If You Give a Bat a Burger by @noir-renard

If you give any of these a read, just make sure you mind the tags/ratings

One of my favorite things in Fallout 4 was how synths can randomly replace settlers in your settlements. And people in real life all talked about how you could tell who a synth was by checking their energy resistance in VATS. Having energy resistance = you’re a synth.

Except this was completely made up by players trying to find an easy way to find synths. Settlers can just randomly have energy resistance for various reasons.

So in a game about paranoia and witch hunts, players created a real life equivalent of witch trials and plenty of random innocent NPCs were butchered over paranoia about synths, started by real life rumors.

Have noticed that differences between humans and fantasy races or beings tend to fall neatly into either “physiology” or “culture,” so here, some ideas for how fantasy beings can differ from humans in their thinking and perception:

They all have synesthesia. All of them. There are lots of forms of synesthesia, so, plenty of angles to explore. Imagine a species for whom numbers, calendar days, and other abstract concepts just...have colors and smells, and it’s hard for them to understand how people...think about things otherwise. Or maybe they can’t understand the distinctions others make between, for instance, sound and visual stimuli. The linguistic rules that say an image can be “blurry” but a smell can’t are incomprehensible to them. It gets even more interesting if the associations are in some ways consistent between members of the species.

More ideas for sense perception, possibly applicable to the synesthetic species: What if, just like we have a large number of senses but sort them into five (pain, touch, and proprioception are not the same senses, but we categorize them all as ‘touch!’) they don’t have categories for ‘types’ of sense perception, at all. In their own language(s), they can describe their experiences to others this way, but they have to learn to be able to clarify for non-members of their species whether they saw something or heard it.

Superhuman time sense, or no time sense. The fascinating thing about humans is that we can percieve time based purely on internal cues, but we’re kind of bad at it—we often have to count to give exact measurements of seconds, and we’re prone to not realizing how long or how late we’ve been doing something. Perhaps a fantasy being can percieve time in a more exact fashion—which could lead to amusement about how humans’ time sense tends to warp relative to how much fun they’ve been having. Or, perhaps a fantasy being can’t perceive time at all without external cues (for example, sunrise and sunset). This would make being isolated from those cues, like if they were trapped in a dungeon, incredibly scary and disorienting. They would also have a difficult time if they were asked, “How many days were you trapped down there in the dungeon?” They would probably respond, “There weren’t any! It was dark!”

A telepathic species, but they don’t have a “hive mind” or no sense of individuality. It makes sense that it would take an active effort to “read” someone’s thoughts, past just noticing how they’re feeling or the general “trend” of their thoughts. So it would be cool to have a telepathic species with, y’know, a sense of boundaries regarding thoughts. It’s probably a lot like touch in humans—certain levels of closeness or intimacy are permissible in certain levels of relationship, and a lot would be inappropriate with a stranger. Yes, they technically can sift through your memories, but why would you do that, what the fuck is wrong with you. For humans, rape is practically the worst thing you can do to a person. Among this species, entering someone else’s mind and viewing or actually tampering with someone’s thoughts is just as absolutely abhorrent, except that they probably have many different levels of unacceptable and unthinkable acts of violation that we can’t meaningfully distinguish in our languages. Among these beings, friends might share pleasant thoughts and experiences, relationships are a subtle interplay of feelings and thoughts and images. Being allowed to go deeper into someone’s mind is always a huge deal. Yes, members of this species might occasionally be recruited to pry information out of people, but doing that is just so vile to the vast majority that it’s not at all a common thing, even if only because the punishments are so severe.

A species whose memory just doesn’t degrade. Everything that goes into their memory remains perfectly preserved for...well, ever. They’re fascinated by, and a little suspicious of, the way human memories seem to change over time, how anecdotes humans tell have little inconsistencies in them, and how humans can straight up forget things. It seems like a terrifyingly chaotic way to live.

Alternatively, a species whose way of encoding and storing memories is just...different. It’s pretty weird, when you think about it, that mnemonic devices...work. Like, singing a song or saying a nonsense rhyme to remember information? “Thirty days hath September” is easier to remember than just...remembering which months have which number of days? Imagine being a member of a fantasy race that just...can’t?? remember things?? That way? Then they catch a human trying to alphabetize something and singing the ABC’s under their breath and they’re like “what the FUCK are you DOING”

A species that doesn’t really have “stages” of emotional or cognitive development. Like maybe their brains develop before they hatch or emerge or whatever, but once they’re conscious, they pretty much have an adult brain. The fact that humans spend part of their lives cognitively limited and unable to regulate their emotions because they’re underdeveloped, and not because of a lack of experience, is very bizarre, and the fact that being out in the world, making bad decisions with that half-developed brain, is in fact necessary for humans to develop properly is even weirder and honestly a little freaky.

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.

i don’t know what else to say except that AI art is no longer simply a source of creativity or a wonder of human creation. it has become actively hostile and destructive toward the very thing it pretends to uplift and celebrate. it is void of any human element, any soul or ounce of emotion or self-expression. continuing to use AI art knowing that it comes from theft and robbing artists of their livelihood is disgusting. we need your support now more than ever. stop giving these thieves your money and admiration.

Something I think about a lot in fantasy worlds with lots of different exotic races,(mostly DnD, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fantasy franchise any near as many races as DnD) is how their cultures would handle jewelry, make up, or just general self-decoration.

Like, we humans have come up with all kinds of ways to pretty ourselves up, tattoos, hair dyes, piercings, rings, etc. But all of that stuff is based on our anatomy, some of it isn’t going to work for some races. And besides, why would other races/cultures use beautification techniques solely pioneered by humans? Surely they have their own based on their own cultures and bodies! Think of the possibilities!

Like, maybe Tieflings put piercings in the fleshy bits of their tails, to glam them up with jewelry! Or maybe they drill little holes in their horns, and string ribbons or small chains through them!

Or what about the Kenku! They’ve got nice shiny beaks and talons, what if they painted little designs on them, kind of like henna? Plus, they’ve got lots of feathers, maybe they could dye them? Or if they were feeling particularly adventurous, they dye their feathers to resemble other birds, like Bluejays, or Peacocks!

Orcs are pretty humanish for the most part, but the big thing that sets them apart, (aside from, ya know, being green,) is their tusks. I feel like the Orcs would be really into decorating their tusks. Maybe they’d put little caps made of precious metal on them, or paint them in Clan colors. Heck, maybe they’d even carve little symbols or runes into them. It would probably hurt like the dickens, but somehow I can’t imagine that stopping them. Lol

Speaking of carving, Tortles! I bet they carve all kinds of stuff into their shells! Or at the very least paint them! They’ve got a big ol’ canvas right on their backs, why not use them?

Tabaxi are covered in fur, making things like tattoos pretty difficult. After all, the point of a tattoo is to pigment your skin, and unless you shave it off, fur kinda makes that tricky. So what if they tattooed their paw pads? It’s basically the only exposed skin they have, except maybe the inside of their ears, which might be a bit too sensitive to tattoo. Also, I like the idea of Tabaxi painting their claws. They’re retractable, so you can’t see them most of the time, but on the occasion that a Tabaxi does decide to relieve someone of their face, at least they’ll be doing it in style!

Ever since the Rabbitfolk/Harengon (their the same thing, don’t worry about it,) were announced I’ve been thinking about bunnies with earrings. I mean, they’ve got so much ear real estate! Why not use it? Also, I imagine that those big flippy flops get in the way when you’re moving a lot, so I bet Rabbitfolk/Harengon use something like a hair tie, or something to their ears from flying around all over the place.

Centaurs! A cross between a horse and human! You know what that means? Caparisons baby! (For the record, Caparisons are those big fancy cloths knights used put on their horses. If you’ve seen a horse wearing something like a dress or a big skirt, that’s a Caparison. At least, according to my limited horse knowledge. Lol) It’s always struck me as a little strange then Centaurs were okay running around naked from the waste down, so this my answer to that. Fancy horse dresses! Also, I like to imagine that Centaur hair grows more like a horse’s mane than human hair, so really long, and tending to fall to one or the other side of their head. So maybe some Centaur cultures are really into braiding?

Minotaur time! Maybe it’s a bit stereotypical to imagine a Minotaur with a nose ring, but honestly it just fits in my brain. Maybe it has some kind of cultural significance, like maybe it acts the same way as a wedding ring, or maybe it denotes rank in their community. Another important bit are those big lovely horns! I can imagine all kinds of decorations on those bad boys! You could go simple, and just slap a few simple rings on there, or could a little more complex and do piercings,(Does it count as a piercing if it’s a horn?) and hang a bunch of dangly stuff on em! You could paint the horns, carve designs in them, heck, you could even drill holes in both horns, and run a chord or chain connecting them! All kinds of possibilities!

Finally, let’s talk lizards, specifically Dragonborn. Honestly, I can’t imagine Dragonborn painting their scales, or even wearing too much flashy jewelry. The impression I get from Dragonborn is that they are immensely proud of their Draconic heritage, and tampering too much with their scales would probably be seen as either disrespectful, or maybe even shameful.(Because why would you want to hide your scales, the single most visible sign of your glorious draconic lineage, unless you were disgusted by them, ashamed of them?) What I CAN see them doing is trying every possible way to show off and enhance their scales. Dragonborn would definitely take meticulous care of their scales, and that includes shining them up to make shine like a dang mirror. They might even use some kind of wax, or something to protect them from damage.

My point is, with all this rigamaroll I just spouted, is self expression should not be not limited to human sensibilities. No matter what they look like, these are people, and people aren’t manufactured on a conveyer belt. Get creative with your characters looks, take things like species, background, and culture into account, have fun with it!

we need to make using chatgpt embarrassing bc sorry it really is. what do you mean you can’t write an email

lobmster,,,,,lobster shrimp guy,,,, its a character of my friend's, @wojnalik and i swore to draw him because hes just magnificent alt colors: