Palindromes - Tumblr Posts

You know, palindromes - like "NASCAR" or "Taco Cat"

Okay! Here's a little thing about social saltpan palindromes, since they won the poll. These guys live in the salty desert in the middle of the continent, a hostile place but where life flourishes nonetheless.

They're very dark both inside and out. They're a bit shorter than the average palindrome and they have a very high tolerance to the salts and other evaporite minerals in the water that they drink and cool off in. They're a bit skinny on average and their opercula are a bit wider and flatter.

They don large garments which reflect as much light as possible, and their specialty dyes are light pink and blue. The light pink comes from the red microorganisms in their water, and the blue from copper salts. These blue pigments are both rare and toxic, so they're generally reserved for important figures.

Instead of building walls like many other palindromes do, these fellows seek out open caves to live in. They're very fond of wall art.

Saltpan palindromes only have four words for colors, since their environment comes in few colors. They have a word for dark colors except blue, light colors, dark blue and red. They're the only palindrome ecotype to have their word for "water" not be blue.

When it comes to names, red patches use a low note, blank mouthparts use a resting note, and green patches (which they'd call light patches) use a high note.

Next up is the grasslands! Grassland social palindromes aren't actually quite common because the grasslands are more frequently populated by drifters. However when they leave to forage elsewhere, these guys always stick around in their home. Grassland socials live in the various grasslands, obviously, and are very welcoming to migrating palindromes who are crossing the continent.

Grassland palindromes are generally a light blue, green or mint and are covered in white markings. They're about average sized, and they aren't seen turning asymmetrical as often as other palindromes so their top legs don't typically curve inwards. There's a lot of variance inside the grasslands ecotype, including those with stripes instead of spots on the west grasslands, those with a cooler base tone up north, or those with dark colorpoints under the spots. Fun fact! Most drifter palindromes have grassland ancestry.

Grassland fashion is rather simple, including fitted belts, blankets and "saddles" which are designed to stay on the body when flipping. Although they aren't as dedicated to staying equilateral like drifters are, it's still of moderate importance to be able to switch sides so they make sure their clothes won't fall off. Their signature dye is yellow, from earth pigments and the "grass" that lives in their biome.

Their architecture is rather simple, made of little mounds which represent their territory. Each settlement is built near and dedicated to a single tent. These guys have a lot of importance and reverence for tents in their culture, and they don't build their mounds too high so that they can always see their "mascot" tent and so that they don't build tall objects which will disrupt the winds of the grasslands.

They have more colors in their language than the saltpan palindromes covered in the previous post. They have colors for darkness (any dark color), light (white, pale yellow or pink), people (mint), quiet leaves (yellow), loud leaves (cyan to blue), soil (grey or brown) and tents (cooler blue). Their name tones use a high note for a red patch, a midtone note for a blank patch and a low note for a green patch.

I was going to include archipelago palindromes here too but I'm going to include them in their own post.

And now for rainforest palindromes! These fellows inhabit the tropical areas of Confibula, the large expanses of flooded jungle.

These fellows have become rather small in comparison to their other counterparts, and they're typically a dark teal with rosettes, and sometimes false eye markings too. They have very dark blood, and their eyes are light to take in as much light as possible in the dark of the jungle. There are three subtypes: Western, who has blocky rosettes, Eastern, darker and with more freeform rosettes, and Island, lighter and with more false eyes.

Their clothes are typically dyed with orange dye but they also use yellow and red frequently. These guys love to trade. Their clothes are very detailed, with beads, stones, braids and many layers often being used.

Their homes are typically made from "trees" bent into shape forming a platform and stilts above water, and covered in mesh made from bones to prevent small animals from entering while also being able to enjoy airflow and a view of their surroundings. There are also many cave settlements as well.

They have five named colors: Dark (dark colors), Light (light colors), Person (dark teal), Leaf (cyan) and Soil (orange, red or yellow).

For their name tones, they use a low note for red patches, a midtone note for no patches and a high note for green patches.

Next are the tundra palindromes! These guys live way up north on volcanic steppes whose foliage is filled with ph-responsive dye. It's very cold, even for palindrome standards, but these guys are a very populous ecotype.

Tundra palindromes are the largest of the palindromes. They're a light blue with colorpoints and light spots most of the time, and their insides are significantly lighter than other palindromes. The type shown here is the central tundra type, while the other three are included on the side: Western, which is lighter, Eastern, which is more vibrant, and Island, which is darker and spotless.

They use dyes from the red/blue groundcover that surrounds them, and it almost always ends up red after a while. Though... maybe if you poured something acidic on their clothes the red parts would turn blue? However, with ash falling around from the volcanoes all the time, their red clothes tend to stay red. They use a lot of layers in their clothing.

Their settlements are usually a handful of X-shaped walls made of plaster and clay, and no matter which way the wind is blowing there will always be a quiet corner that isn't hit by it. They're fond of wall art.

As for their language, they have a similar color system to grassland palindromes which has a word for darkness, light, people (light blue), two states of foliage (red and blue), soil (greyish brown) and an additional unique word. Here this color represents the fluorescent pinks of the auroras that they see.

For name tones, they use a low note for red patches, a midtone note for no patches, and a high note for green patches. Or, they wouldn't call it green, they'd probably call it "light".

More palindrome ethnicities! There's probably more subdivisions of these but more than this would clutter the map a good bit. I'm hoping to cover at least the most prominent of these ecotypes, their cultures and fashion and such.

T1 - Western Tundra (Pale periwinkle with colorpoints and spots) T2 - Central Tundra (More vibrant) T3 - Eastern Tundra (More contrast) T4 - Island Tundra (Darker) TG - Southern Tundra (Minimal colorpointing and larger spots)

G1 - Grasslands (Mint with white spotting) GF - Savanna (Mint with white striping)

R1 - Eastern Rainforest (Dark teal with blocky rosettes) R2 - Western Rainforest (Darker teal with round rosettes, occasional false eyes) R3 - South Islands Rainforest (Teal with round rosettes, bright false eyes) RG - Archipelago (Bright teal with dark and light blotching)

F1 - Southwest Woodland (Dull teal with dark stripes) F2 - Central Woodland (Brighter) F3 - Eastern Taiga (Darker and cooler with irregular face splotching and a solid band around waist) F4 - Western Taiga (Slightly warmer than F3 with stripes in place of splotches) F5 - Western Woodland (Warm teal with low contrast stripes)

C1 - Western Coast (Light blue with darker banding) C2 - Central Bay (Darker) C3 - Eastern Coast (Higher contrast and thinner bands)

W1 - Western Wetlands (Indigo with blocky spots) W2 - Eastern Wetlands (Darker with spots absent on waist)

S1 - Southern Chaparral (Warm grey with banding) S2 - Northern Chaparral (Cooler grey with single light band) S3 - Coastal Chaparral (Slightly cooler grey with chevron banding)

D - Saltpan (Dark)

These mainly apply to social palindromes because drifters rarely stay in one place while social palindromes may travel, but they always have a place they return to. Drifters frequently have more ambiguous genetics, though there are some who match a social ecotype pretty perfectly (take Patrick for example) as well. Those palindromes may either be social palindromes who have taken on a different lifestyle, or they just look like that.

How do palindromes think ? Since they have two heads do they also have two brains ?

And what is their society in general like ?

(Im sry if you already explained it somewhere aaa)

Palindromes have two heads, but only one brain. It's in the middle of their body and hangs out with their digestive organs, and there's holes and stuff for tracts to enter and exit around. There are "centers" with a lot of nervous stuff behind each of their eyes that I just call sensory processing centers, which are like very simple brains that compile information before sending it to the actual brain which does the thinking and decision making work.

Here's a little diagram I made a while ago about it! Because of the distance between the sensory organs and the brain, they have slightly slow reflexes. They must have some pretty crazy vision...

Their society isn't anything too crazy 'cause they're in their stone age right now. They trade with other groups and make their own clothes and tools and have their own languages. Some of them live in their own sedentary settlements while others are nomadic.

A baby palindrome and a baby phony side by side. When phonies are young, they have side countershading and eyes close to the ends of their mouth. As they grow, the side markings fade and their eyes get pushed further back.

Phonies also come in more colors than palindromes do.

DOUBLE MIKU BEAM!

I keep seeing miku everywhere... i wanted to turn her into a palindrome