My Very First Worldbuilding Project Is Perhaps One Of My Favorites To Date. Sure, It Desperately Needs

A tutorial on a (bit cheating) way of creating fictional maps.

Open your editing software (RECOMMENDING Krita, since it's free and it's very good).

Step 1: Google "X country silhouette" and copy it.

Paste it onto the canvas.

Step 2: Separate the silhouette from the background you copied with it! You can do that by using magic wand selection tool or by making a gradient map with black on 49,9% and transparent on 50% on the slider.

Step 3: Repeat several times with numerous countries and/or islands, cities, municipalities, communes, continents et cetera.

Step 4: Combine, mesh, stretch, rotate, mirror - go ham, make it work.

Step 5: Erase and add.

Step 6: Have your map outline ready, copy/paste it several times in the same doc on different layers and edit in different ways like biomes, kingdoms, mountains and other.

Step Mountains+: To figure out mountains, make another layer on the doc and do something like this:

-and then in every polygon you add an arrow.

Where arrows meet or transfer onto continents, add mountains.

Color the sea with a couple layers of depth and you're done :D

Bug types (a personal favorite type of mine) are often underestimated, due to the plethora of weaknesses known to it and very few advantages, which are mostly only useful in specific battling rings or matchups. However, this is partially due to the way that standardized battles are structured in order to create fairness in our League Circuits and Conferences. One-on-one, up to three-on-three battles are all sanctioned by the league, and the amount of Pokemon has be equal on either side. However, this has created significant weaknesses for a couple of Pokemon types, which can be exploited. For example, rock types thrive in this environment, being fully capable of defending themselves on their own, as many rock types live solitary lives finding food and caring for themselves, only living with other members of their species when they are a mated pair, or are caring for young.

Bugs and Dark types are the polar opposites of this. They are often considered frail, having low defense stats in most cases, and often cannot survive long-term, one-on-one engagements. They are not meant for this kind of battle, instead, where they excel is teamwork and numbers.

Bugs are in roughly 90% of species, social Pokemon. They might exist in a small swarm of 3-10, or in a massive hive with thousands of members. Bug Specialists are limited to their 6-Pokemon capacity, often having to focus on bugs that are naturally strong, or are more suited to solitary lives, such as Scizor, Pinsir, Volcarona and Drapion (yes, this isn’t technically a bug, but since it suffers with the third type problem, I’m including it). However, a truly talented bug specialist might have a range of 7-10 Pokemon all suitable and trained for the standardized arenas of the Leagues, while on a personal space, having tens, if not hundreds of smaller bug Pokemon that all work as a part of a trainer-fostered “hive,” as a community, to be unleashed upon a series of targets on a whim.

This has been witnessed several times by bug specialists in the present and the past. A more modern example is Elite Four Aaron of the Sinnoh League. When members of the Sinnoh League were dispatched across the region to try and wipe out any Galactic Bases (the most notable of which is Sunnyshore Gym Leader Volkner, who wiped out an estimated 75% of all bases eliminated by the League on his own), footage of Aaron’s battling style was unveiled to the public: he did not use his signature team as his only fighters, instead unleashing a gargantuan swarm of an estimated 10,000 bugs to infest the base (comprised of Yanma, Ninjask, Ariados, Combee, Venomoth and Beedrill), systematically eliminating anyone (save for civilian hostages) found inside. 

So next time you see a bug, don’t underestimate it, as while it may be weak on its own, the swarm might be in another nearby bit of trees, listening for the cry of distress that will invoke the wrath of the collective.

Poorly drawn Pokemon of Myth

Alright, so, uh, hi! Intro post time.

I'm Ophion, he/him, and I am a gargantuan fucking nerd. I love good worldbuilding or interesting concepts, and because of that I have often found myself obsessing over tv shows, games or movies with awful fandoms. I liked their ideas, don't judge me.

My main hyperobsession is Pokemon, though (yes, I'm neurodivergent. ADHD diagnosed, high probability of having autism as well). Probably because I'm a biology nerd, and I'm studying Bio in college right now. I play a shit ton of video games, and read a LOT of fanfictions. Mostly the ones trying to tell a good, cohesive story, though. You could hold me at gunpoint and you could not force me to read anything unsavory.

I'm mostly planning on posting my worldbuilding ideas for either those media bits or personal worldbuilding projects. Or just inane ramblings somewhat related to those things.

You've been warned.

Mood for today and every single week that will follow

A little bit of a color palette thingy

Hooboy alrighty

Elias, Talia, Hera, AND Reagan posting

These lovely things are characters belonging to myself and @ophionswill

Their story takes place entirely within the Pokemon worldbuilding project Ophion has been working on! He's been posting about it a bit, so I suggest taking a look :-)

sometimes i think about the fact that the name i chose a couple years ago to be the name i'd be known online as (ophion) happens to be shared with a giant, hypermuscular, dad-bod, scaly-ass dragon from some japanese mobile card game and it haunts me at night

I’ve kinda wondered what would happen if you took little trope inside jokes or realizations off the internet and made them into full games. For example, this is Tumblr after all. What would happen if someone saw our many, many ramblings about humans being space orcs and made a full game off of it? What would it look like?

For me, if I had to design a “Humans Are Space Orcs” Game, I think I’d do it as an MMORPG. I think I’d actually start it off as a completely human-free game, where you get to choose an alien species to play as (with various benefits and drawbacks) being part of this gargantuan intergalactic collective of species and peoples and planets. There’d be classic “go out and do stuff adventures,” but I think I’d also take stuff from the idea behind that MMORPG called “Albion Online” where everything is a player-built economy, and have highly expansive routes you could take for crafting things. Though now that I think about it, that might just be “EVE: Online” but with aliens. So there probably would be a lot more options in terms of alien ships and weapons and parts and all that.

However, the “humans are space orcs thing” would come in a form of one of those crazy expansions and events MMORPGs do. I’d have a sector of this one galaxy be hyper-dangerous, known as the “Dead Sector,” not because it’s lifeless, but because that’s what it does: make you dead. Quickly. A high population of gargantuan interstellar space worms, death worlds, all that jazz. Entering it would yield high resources, if you could make it out alive.

However, in this expansion, would enter THE HUMAN RACE and all the marketing would make them sound like they were weird and foreign and strange. They wouldn’t be playable yet, that would only be unlocked after the next major update, when they’ve really started to proliferate across the galaxies. But the whole “story” of that update would be learning about the humans and their culture, exploring Earth and slowly dawning upon the realization that oh my god these people are fucking insane.

That’s how I’d do it, anyway. It’d probably be fun.

So I watched the new Spiderverse movie a couple weeks ago and all of my friends just immediately wanted to make spidersonas (I had no idea what that was at the time lol). Anyway, their little sketches ended up inspiring me to make my own!!! Basic idea behind this guy is that in his universe, it’s the not-so-distant future and the world kinda ended? But like everyone lives underground in cavern cities now. To counteract the gloomy atmosphere of subterranean NYC, most of the lights are all neon, to make a really pretty nightlife. Also, the whole city runs on chemical energy, so it fits the vibe. Anyway, this guy here also fits the vibe of the city with a funky neon suit! Also maybe neon powers? IDK I’ve barely figured out their powers or the whole worldbuilding lol But yea, I’m not very good at art, so I’m really proud of how this turned out!!! I think it might be my favorite piece of artwork I’ve ever done, so I hope you guys like it too!

Alright, so. First proper post on this site.

I wanna talk about Pokemon.

I've been working on a Pokemon-based world-building project for about two years now, coming up on three, with the intent to make it more realistic, and explain some of the science behind certain Pokemon or behaviors, or at least providing logical explanations. Parts of it have been taken from the games and the anime, and synthesized into a narrative I feel works. Not to say it doesn't need work in some areas (it does), but that's part of why I share it: to have conversations about it, and get new ideas to fill the gaps.

And in some cases, cutting some things out because I don't like them, and potentially replacing them with something better.

I'm gonna have to admit, a LOT of this has been ripped straight out of (or inspired by) fanfics that I've read. I simply liked their ideas about the world, and added them to my world. I'm not claiming them as my own, they're just cool and I believe what they created was a very good or plausible explanation. If you end up seeing something that you might find familiar, don't judge me.

Where to begin... right, overall story/narrative.

The apocalypse is on its way. No thanks to Mewtwo.

When Mewtwo escaped from the clutches of Giovanni, realizing his manipulation and bringing down the entire hidden Rocket Headquarters and bringing an end to the 30-year Rocket Age, he isolated himself away on New Island, with the purpose of ending humanity via a series of gargantuan hurricanes fully capable of wiping every human civilization off the face of the earth.

He didn't, thankfully, as he was stopped, but there were still consequences. The shockwaves of psychic power used to create the storms echoed across the Earth... reawakening the Legendary Birds.

Cue the Shamouti Incident. More shockwaves. Greenfield. Even more.

But those incidents could be covered up. What couldn't was the Sootopolis Catastrophe.

It was a horrifying blow to the people of the world, to know that at least some Gods did exist, and weren't simply fabrications of the ancient past. The International Pokemon League, or IPL, assembled a press conference to address the fears. They confirmed it: the Gods existed, and have existed for a very long time. A government list was posted of the gods that are confirmed to exist, gods that are likely to exist, gods that are unknown to exist, and gods that certainly do not.

And now, the regions of the world are left to wonder: where will the legendaries reawaken next?

I'll give you a hint, it's not Sinnoh. The dominos that are the echoes of power haven't grown strong enough yet to even attract the gaze of the Creation Trio, let alone Arceus. They'll be the grand finale of the narrative.

Instead, it goes to the richest region in the world, of luxury and extravagance, of ancient architecture and diversity, the melting pot of the Pokemon World:

Kalos.

They're not prepared for what's going to hit them.