violentlyexplosive

[violentlyexplosive]

au au Mafuyu

[violentlyexplosive]

~ The Every-Day Cook-Book and Encyclopedia of Practical Recipes, E. Neill 1892

Let's all denude ourselves and dance in the sunlight

[violentlyexplosive]

what are yall doing that we need this??

[violentlyexplosive]

Dado (Miodrag Đurić, 1933-2010)—The Baboon In Love [oil on canvas, 1968/1969]

[violentlyexplosive]

redraw of my first tumblr post from ~3yrs ago. first image below

i think ive improved :)

[violentlyexplosive]

ghost buster...

[violentlyexplosive]

Been seeing some people lament Niigo getting their "happy endings taken away" in WL2 and I think Ena deserves a word.

[violentlyexplosive]

[violentlyexplosive]

Dendera Temple complex

[violentlyexplosive]

[violentlyexplosive]

fear is 20 years old

[violentlyexplosive]

Mi-Young Choi (Korean, b. 1971 London based)

Enlightenment, 2013

Oil on Canvas

[violentlyexplosive]

[violentlyexplosive]

Millard Owen Sheets (American, 1907-1989)

The Night Herd, n.d.

Watercolor, charcoal and ink on paperboard

22 x 30 in. (55.9 x 76.2 cm.)

Private collection

[violentlyexplosive]

Hey hey! May i ask what is your stance on THE sexual dimorphism on drow? I personally really love the idea of smaller males though there seems to be a bit of a debate as to whether the females are actually bigger or it's just nobles. All of the official artists seem to straight up ignore that either way :(

For me, I like to portray males as not just shorter but more finer-boned with proportionally slightly longer limbs (irl spider dimorphism lol) and not so top-heavy. Females on the other hand are taller and slightly thicker with tone, stronger in both upper and lower body, but still very elegant, a lethal kind of grace, and they have more prominent fangs/canines.

I have a pair of drow sibling ocs and the brother is a little irked by the fact that his sister is more muscular than he but she trains less.

And one thing I did like about the lady penitent book is the subtle suggestion in difference between males and females, aka "sword and stealth".

But that's just in general, individuals vary ofc. So how'd you incorporate this in your hcs? :3

My answer is that it's both. I think it's both, and I'm going to use this as a chance to talk about my thoughts on Drow Genetics as a whole.

My simple answer is that I'm actually of the third secret opinion that there's otherwise very little sexual dimorphism naturally within the drow. I don't think it's a matter, as your example cave, of woman putting muscle on easier and men don't. I think this is one of the areas in which they are elves to the core. Their bodies are doing the same thing regardless of gender, women just often get prioritized with the resources they have access to, and so they're able to gain muscle and grow easier because their body have what they need to do that. But if given the same resources the men would largely generally have the same stature and appearance.

Now, you can get into the way environmental trauma and long term effect people on a genetic level, which I also think does happen here especially in places that go bit on the gender divide like Menzo, but I think that's specific to those places or where you would begin to get into the nobility/working class divide.

I personally like it because it adds to the main theme of the drow to me, which is that so much of their hell being something created, not born. Woman aren't naturally physically stronger/more muscular, it's an extension of the systemic issue at play.

Added bonus. I think the only people outside of the drow able to tell the difference between men and women is other elves. I don't think woman have chests large enough to be noticable and men have the exact same kind of hip structure (to pull from standard human sexual dimorphism)

Now my NUANCED answer infodump under the cut.

So my starting point here is that there's actually an implication in earlier editions that Drow (on the whole) evolved to be shorter not just because of the everything about them (Malnutrition, infighting, constant culling and death, ect) but because Mindflayers live in the underdark, and originally there was a size requirement on mindflayer transformation.

BG3 and current editions have done away with that, both because (I imagine, I don't work there) of the convenience of letting player characters play as any race AND because there's more of a horror to it if anyone can be targeted. But IDK. I kind of like this from a world building perspective. Cook on this with me.

Even outside of Male/Female, I don't think most drow from the underdark are growing above 5'4 because (Even outside of implied resource limitation and the underdark being an incredibly difficult environment to live in) I think there's a very reasonable conclusion that you could come to that even outside of things I'm about to talk about a lot of tall drow got targeted by mindflayers in the early years, and mindflayers just don't bother with the short ones because they know it's going to fail.

(Now my own oc's do have an exception to this, because sometimes the body just decides to do that despite all genetics telling you it shouldn't. But we're talking averages)

On matter of height/weight averages, and what the average eye/hair/skin tone is;

1) Think this is VERY location based? I think a lot of people forget not only how big the underdark is, but that a lot of drow cities are less of an innerconnected empire and more functionally city states isolated in the middle of nowhere. They're not dissimilar to islands to me, just separated by the mushroom horrors rather than water. The things that are going to be "normal" are going to change, and that will further trickle down by class expectation (Which will be the next point.)

(Using the three cities I have marked here as an example just because I already have the map posted elsewhere and edited) The pool of genetics for something like Lolth's zealot capital of the underdark Menzoberranzan is going to be DRASTICALLY different than, like. Sshamath. Which not only overthrew lolth, but has other races (even if there's an equally strange little wizard oppression structure going on) Which will also be different than somewhere like Guallidurth, which is across the continent to menzo.

I also think that this would become DRASTICALLY different when you get on the surface, who have access to proper nutrition and calories. Honestly I think surface drow (especially those who have been have on the surface for multiple generations) are a lot taller and stockier than the ones from the underdark, just because of what they have access to.

2) I do think that there are certain traits that would be associated with nobility, regardless of gender. I think the working class, in general, just tends to have more genetic diversity as a result of being less insular and having less of a reason to Murder for Fun, and a lot of things like height, weight, and even just hair and eye color suddenly becomes a lot more diversified. Especially once you get into characters with Merchant Clan roots. People, even in fantasy races, are the way they are and I think it's inevitable that once you leave isolation people are going to Couple Up.

Anyway. Chart about how this effects my oc's and how I've designed them.

Note: I don't generally try to advertise the fact Ilphaer is transfem outside of design notes, because I think the story should carry that in itself. But it feels relevant here because she was born as one and spent the entirety of her time in the underdark identifying as a man, which is relevant to this because it effects how she was seen and raised and the resources she was given access to in her early life, especially given that she is someone who earned status rather than was born into it.

TL;DR: I generally agree that I think drow men should be smaller than drow woman, but I think it's not like. A natural thing, and when designing my own characters I like throwing in consideration of their class dynamic, and where they were born and spent most of their early life. And also, I like subversions of expectation so sometimes you get the Ilphaer or Nymryn of the group. And also official artists failing to consider any of this just to do woman smaller man bigger human figures is BORING. Let your men be SMALL.

[violentlyexplosive]

Wilderness from my new book Faraway Dreaming. 🌱🌲 Available on Kickstarter until 24 June, 2025!

[violentlyexplosive]

Ancient egyptian: I wonder what shape we should give our pharao's tomb

The perilously pointy pyramid: