#hard fantasy

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

My mom bought me this book for Christmas

The Resurrectionist by EB Hudspeth, a fantasy field guide full of anatomical illustrations of monsters and cryptids.

The musculoskeletal systems are fun to look at, but not nearly as in-depth as I would have liked. If you have more than a passing knowledge of taxonomy (or in my case, access to Wikipedia), a lot of the details fall apart under scrutiny

The harpy has four upper limbs connected to one shoulder girdle; it shouldn't have arms, only wings

The sphinx is not classified as a mammal, but is still somehow in the family Felidae with cats (and like the harpy is also drawn with only two girdles despite having six limbs. I will give the author credit for giving the sphinx a keel for the wing muscles to attach to)

It lists the Hindu deity Genesha as a cryptid, which is a no-no.

Cerberus is also explicitly not a mammal, but somehow still a canine (literally in the species Canis with wolves, dogs, and coyotes)

Both mermaids and dragons are listed as members of the order Caudata; the only extant members of Caudata are salamanders, which kinda makes sense for dragons, but not so much for mermaids (also, the author keeps playing it fast and loose with cladistics; both mermaids and dragons are in the same order despite being in different classes, and while dragons are explicitly said to be amphibians, mermaids are given the fictional class mammicthyes, which means mammal-fish. At that point, why not just call mermaids amphibians? Why make up a fake latin hybrid name?)

But what bugs me most of all is the classification of the Minotaur as its own order of mammal when in mythology it is explicitly described as a hybrid of two known species (made possible only by the cruel machinations of the divine, but still)

To use actual taxonomical nomenclature, the minotaur's species would be B. taurus × H. sapiens (specifically B. taurus♂ × H. sapiens♀; there are, to my knowledge, no legends of H. sapiens♂ × B. taurus♀). That's how ligers, tigons, mules, zorses, pizzly bears, narlugas, etc., are described.

If I had written this book, I would have leaned more into evolutionary biology. Most land animals have four limbs because they all evolved from boney lobe-finned fish, which split off from the boneless sharks and rays millions of years earlier, so any six-limbed vertebrates would need to be descended from a fictitious category of six-finned fish which would either be an offshoot of boney fish/tetrapods (I guess they'd be hexapods, though that term refers to insect arthropods), OR a precursor to boney and cartilaginous fish that both clades split away from much earlier (it's easier to lose structures than to gain them, so it makes more sense for a six-limbed ancestor to spawn four-limbed descendants than the other way around).

Think about how different elephants are from humans, and humans are from aligators, and aligators are from penguins, and remember that they all evolved from the same ancestor tiktaalik, an amphibious fish that existed some 375 million years ago. Imagine a precursor six-limbed species and how diverse all its descendants would look after 400 million years. Save for the occasional instance of convergent evolution causing two unrelated species to independently evolve similar body plans to fill the same niche, tetrapods and hexapods would look nothing alike. There would be very little recognizable overlap between the two. A six-limbed "pegasus" would not look like a real world horse, and a six-limbed "dragon" would not look reptilian/dinosaur-ish, for much the same reason that giraffes don't look like frogs; they're just too distantly related. Bonless sharks and boney fish and whales/dolphins all have similar looking bodyplans only because their environment requires the same hydrodynamic shape, while terrstrial vertebrates are much more physically diverse.

[ukrainian-groove-metal]

I love you hard science fiction I love you hard fantasy I love you stories that explain exactly what happens and why I love you logical progressions I love you magic treated like science I love you detailed explanations of fantastical situations

[wuzhere75]

Unicorns for a hard-fantansy head world I’m building out. Kind of mixed deer/kirin inspirations with more western horse unicorns. I imagine there some sort of taxomic anomaly; something that mostly resembles an equine but has cloven hooves and a horn that behaves more like a rhinoceros that a deers alter or bovine horn. Wild species native to wetlands and other wet places, as a small nod to Kirins

[and-corn]

just like riding a bike

(part 3 of this comic)

[milkygothgf]

Milky goth gf at your service<3

[thebestbookrecommendations]

Book Recommendation*:

(While this book is part of a series, I personally will not be reading on and will be considering this a stand alone novel)

Dune - Frank Herbert

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Classic

Keywords: Chosen One, Space Travel, Desert Planet, Prophecy

Length: Long

Rating: 3/5

Find on Goodreads:

Find on StoryGraph:

[dumbbunnyg1rl]

Need a gross older man to call dad

[natjennie]

something about "your anger isn't scary to me" is making me so emotional. something about as above so below, cassandra as a mirror of kristen. something about "I've been dropping the ball a lot lately" and kristen's struggles with adhd. something about teenage girls and rage and fury and justice. something about adaine's vision of ruining fallinel and the sylvaire looking for revenge. something about sadness and doubt and anger and love. something about "I choose to understand" being the absolute core theme of d20 in general. something something.

[sweetgirlm]

use me <3

[friendlyneighborsslvt]

Submission from a friend 🤭🥵

[pyroangelo]

SHOUT OUT TO THE CLERICS WHO’VE DIED

WHO’S GONNA HEAL YOU FUCKERS WHEN THE CLERICS ARE DEAD?

[lovelylittledarlingxoxo]

Thinking about becoming a breeding bitch. Just strapped down and having cum fucked into me at all hours of the day and then well into the night. I imagine being pumped full of hormones to keep me constantly so needy that it hurts and being put on a specific diet to keep my body soft and curvy. I'd have a collar locked around my neck branding me as nothing more than an animal. Just a little cow. Being used and abused and forced to spend forever being milked and breed and fucked stupid. I'd be conditioned and groomed into being the perfect little cow for my owners. Id compleyely forget about my old life as a human. That life is behind me. I'd have constant hypnosis keeping me brainless and submissive. disobedience would never be a thought in my mind. Kinda hard to think at all when your just a little cow. I want my face to be a mess of tears and cum from where my owner's fucked my mouth and released on my face. I want my tongue to be lulled out of my mouth and drool dripping down my chin. Want to be talked down to and have someone mockingly ask me "does the cow need anything? Cmon use your words." But all that comes out of my mouth are whiney moo's and whimpers. Just like they knew would happen.

(my dms and asks are always open)

[qaey]

telemaine mispronouncing things is a very funny bit but like it NEEDED gorgug as a straight man. it was funny on its own but it got iconic with gorgug just like frustratedly trying to figure out the logistics behind what telemaine could and couldn’t pronounce

[spinaholi]

brennan almost falling out his chair pretending to be a rat showing its asshole to lou is true friendship right there

[milkygothgf]

Oops! They just keep falling out..

[dumbbunnyg1rl]

Older really bad vid of my little tits