#yadda yadda nuance

[cheese-water]

I don’t care if it’s has already been debunked. I don’t care if it isn’t a “widely accepted truth.”

Alternatively, if you had to create a theory video about Generation Loss, what would it be about?

Please put in the tags how/why you believe what you believe cause I'm fascinated by the vastly different interpretations people can make from this project! :D

[clottedscream]

you mentioned in the chat of a jello stream that you disliked how much fantasy magic crystals were shaped like Quartz. are there any specific crystal shapes you think are underutilized in fantasy?

I always like it when i see a nice beryl-or-andalusite-esque columnar crystal, or something botryoidal or acicular in a way that it makes little pom-pom shapes. And dogtooth (scalenohedral) crystals are a nice way to have that classic spiky shape without going quartz about it. But there's a whole entire world of weird and unique crystal shapes out there to base your fantasy crystals on, and I can't show off every possible shape that a crystal can come in with just one post. Pretty much every shape that a crystal can be is underutilized in comparison to the quartz shape.

the big thing that gets me about the "oops, all giant quartz clusters" method of designing fantasy crystals for your fictional world is that the shape a quartz crystal comes in, even though it's seen as like, the ubiquitous crystal shape that we think of all crystals as being, is actually very specific to quartzes!!!!

This is a figure from the mindat.org page on quartz. the top three shapes (a, b, and c) should be very familiar images to you! These are the most common shapes that crystals will be in fictional media. They're also three idealized crystal habits of QTZ - normal (prismatic), trigonal (prismatic), and pseudo-hexagonal (prismatic).

That's a lot of long words, but it all boils down to the describing geometry of a quartz crystal, and the geometry of its atomic structure.

QTZ is made of polymerized silicate, which, again, sounds fancy, but a polymer is just a long chain of many smaller molecules, and silicate is just the common term for the molecule SiO4. Silicate is a tetrahedron shaped molecule, meaning it's a pyramid with a square shaped base. A QTZ unit cell is made of a chain (a polymer) of silicate molecules linked together.

Here, we use unit cell to mean the simplest repeating building block in a larger pattern. like, say, if you build a giant lego cube out of all identical cube shaped legos, each cube shaped lego represents a unit cell of that giant cube. But QTZ unit cells aren't cube shaped. They're rhombohedrons- ie, 3d shapes where each face is a rhombus.

and if you stack a lot of rhombuses next to each other, they form a hexagon.

So when all the little unit cells of QTZ fit together, their ultimate shape is going to be hexagonal.

Quartz are not the only hexagonal mineral. Calcite famously also has a rhombus shaped unit cell. In mineralogy terms, this is called having trigonal symmetry- tri for three, as in the three rhombuses it takes to make a hexagon, or the three planes of symmetry a rhombus has.

But calcite doesn't form in in those tall prisms that terminate in pointy pyramid shapes made up of isosceles triangles or pentagons. It sometimes forms in dogtooth crystals, but dogtooth crystal faces are scalene, and they don't have that long prism body with a pyramid at the top like an endcap- they're spikes all the way to the base. Why is that? Why is quartz different from other trigonal minerals? why are its crystals weird like that?

Well, theres a lot of reasons, but one major one is that on top of being made of rhombohedrons, Quartz is ALSO made of helixes!

Thats right. Quartz has TWO fundamental patterns happening in its lattice. At the same time!

You can see by the overlayed yellow rhombohedrons in the figure above that each rhombus-y building block of QTZ fits together into a helix-shaped chain. QTZ forms in helixes because each of the basic silicate (SiO4) molecules in QTZ is sharing two of its oxygens with the other silicates its connected to. Because each block of the helix chain is made of a rhombus, when you stack those helix chains all next to each other to get a big quartz lattice, those chains make a hexagonal net. But helixes are also chiral, meaning they have a handedness to them- they can mirror each other and still be non-superimposable, like human hands.

To get the scope on why this chirality makes a difference to the structure of quartz, lets compare it to another mineral with trigonal symmetry, the aforementioned Calcite. If you could see atoms, this is what a chunk of calcite mineral would look like to you:

nice and simple, right? That's a very normal looking rhombus. everything slots together in a very straightforwardly rhombus-y way.

Now let's look at quartz.

ough.

When you combine these two features of QTZ geometry, the rhombus/trigonal symmetry and the helix shaped network of interlocking molecules, you get a pretty unique structure, which leads it to grow in very unique shapes when it gets bigger- hexagonal prisms with many interlocking chiral faces, terminating in those striking pyramid points composed of isosceles triangles.

That all sounds pretty cool right? it sounds like quartz is a really striking and unique and beautiful phenomenon of geometry, right? so why would I be annoyed? why would I be annoyed that a fantasy crystal has that unique shape? BECAUSE THAT SHAPE MEANS THE MINERAL IS QUARTZ.

Do you understand now? Out of all the possible permutations of different shapes a crystal can grow into, QUARTZ IS KIND OF THE ONLY FUCKING GUY THAT DOES THAT PARTICULAR SHAPE! nobody is out there doing it the way my guy quartz is doing it! So much so, in fact, THAT THIS IS THE ENTRY ON MINDAT FOR IDENTIFYING QUARTZ:

BY EYE.

QUARTZ IS ONE OF THE ONLY MINERALS YOU CAN ID BY EYE.

So, when you designed your mystical blue glowing crystal that has the power to harness a wizard's mana or whatever the fuck? And you picked that shape for it to be?

That means it's not enchantenite, or lunarite, or or whatever the fuck you want to call it. It's quartz. it's just quartz. your lack of creativity and unwillingness to do anything other than the most basic, recognizable shape for your fantasy crystal has all but guaranteed it. Maybe start worldbuilding what trace elements in that otherwise extremely fucking normal quartz you have there cause it to glow.

Because you picked the one shape that basically only quartz can be!

Congratulations!

enjoy your magical silicon dioxide, you piece of shit.

[spineless-lobster]

Shoutout to homer for being the first two hit wonder he wrote a banger story and then wrote a banger sequel and then dipped

[conceptofjoy]

when the break through the narrative story has an open ending.

when the break through the narrative story has a sequel that goes into how bad it is that this exists and everyone perpetuates the themes of the precursor without understanding what it would take to solve their problems.

when the break through the narrative story has doc scratch 2.0 because no shit.

[dafpork]

it is my firm stance that Porky and Daffy are strictly Porkysexual and Daffysexual for each other. HOWEVER. as a Woman Liker i do enjoy occasionally passing down my Woman Liking onto Daffy. incredibly surface level but i've been wanting to draw Daffy flirting with some sort of '40s pinup gal and then you just see Porky grabbing his hand and begrudgingly dragging him away. good stuff

👆 good stuff

[weyoun-420]

life is hard as a weyoun kinner i dont think ive seen a single serious/realistic depiction of him by the fandom :-( curse of comic relief. which is hilarious on its own cause weyoun purposely creates that image of himself. i wanna draw something to fill that gap at some point...

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

You know, after playing for a while, I've got to say that, in my opinion, Veilguard is a good, fun game and I've been having a blast with it. Some legitimate criticism could and should be made towards Veilguard, yes. And those things are not mutually exclusive. But considering the current internet environment, I'd worry to be piled up with the howling maniacs that act like the game somehow killed their dog, stole their family jewels, and burned down their house with its writing alone (because the previous games were all absolutely perfect, apparently), or with the "anti-woke" brigade who get their panties into twist over every little bit of diversity in the game, spending their free time trying to review bomb the game everywhere despite not having tried it, and who sound like they want most of us dead, so... If I look like I'm just having some carefree fun here, trying not to think about this shit, it's because I am.

[vaaaaaiolet]

pissed my mom off well and truly because god forbid an unmarried girl step foot outside the country on an exchange program like thousands of other people do

[chatter-crow]

honestly i think people who have a huge dni at the bottom of every post are kinda annoying. if someone likes your stuff and they happen to disagree with you on one thing its not that big of a deal

[soviet-siscon]

Oh. Sorry. Why do you draw the line at recording someone without their consent? It just seems like an odd hard boundary as opposed to masturbating to them in person without their cosent? /g /nf

well one of them is jerking off while sharing a room with someone (common occurrence) and the other one is physically recording them without their consent (sex crime). it feels pretty self explanatory, really do not know what to tell you here. i do not want to hear about it.

[lysolstrider]

i think the funniest thing about ai prompted stuff is that if ai prompters had attempted to learn to draw when this whole debacle started, in terms of art schooling or self-teaching, they’d probably be halfway decent by now

[emotargaryen]

that poll where the majority of people have never been grounded and op is like 😱🤯🤯 is sending me so bad this is the website of nerds and dorks and "former gifted kids" that had no friends and read all day like are we surprised

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A LIGHTHEARTED POST I ALSO HAD NO FRIENDS AND READ ALL DAY DON'T TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD TRAUMA I DONT CARE THIS IS A JOKE

[signeficunt]

i really don't know why i still expect tumblr users to be sensible people

[janliko]

Not sure which option I like the most tbh

It could just be the classic gringo ass move of assuming the entirety of Brazil is in the Amazon. Which is funny considering that the distance between São Paulo and the closest the rainforest gets to it is still almost 2000km. New York is closer to Miami than São Paulo is to the Amazon rainforest.

But we could be charitable instead and assume OP knows that. Which is still funny to me, to imagine a small bird to live in the Amazon underbrush but also somehow in the streets of São Paulo. Which are not only that far away but separated from the rainforest by an entire savanna. And also inside a massive city, with an even bigger conurbation around it for a metro area, larger than any other on the continent (of America ;)). In fact, larger than any other outside of Asia.

Imagine finding a fucking uirapuru on the streets in São Paulo

Wordle is running out of words. Only 2,000 five letter words remain. When that supply is exhausted the Creation shall begin. One day the word will be ZHURM, and all shall get it, and all shall understand it to mean "an ache from suddenly remembering a long-ago friend, who meant something to you once, but whose face you can no longer conjure". The next day the word shall be JOROL, and all will get it, and all will know it means "the melancholy confusion of passing by somewhere where you once could have died". The next day it will be GREFT, and all will understand it to be a small brown bird with white streaks found only in South America, and suddenly, it will appear, in the underbrush of the Amazon, in the streets of São Paulo, and all will know that it once was not there, but now, will always be

[teamfortresstwo]

I can’t believe this is the stupid motherfucker I’ve gotten invested in ….. I hate hiiim . I hate him so much that writing and drawing him is the only way I can get him out of my system or else he’ll just fester and ruin my mind with hatred . I’m literally obsessed with him .

[sodacowboy]

there’s a similar issue to same face syndrome and disney face syndrome that I like to call pretty protagonist syndrome and I hate it so much